A joint entry! A few weekends back, my friend Steve and I took the slow regional train to Lyon to visit our friend Alicia. Because we're cheap. Being the adventurers we are, interesting people gravitate to our awesomeness. So we decided to write a blog entry together to google docs-ument our encounters, (haha). Et voila! Steve's black, I'm red. This could be the start of something very, very scary...scary awesome!
It all started with a great deal, the five o'clock train to Lyon at the unbelievably low price of 19 euros. Then Europe had to come and trip up some perfect trip planning with its functional efficiency, ironic in the same country where banks and public offices spend more time lunching than working. We all know that they've gotten rid of inches and feet, replacing clunky units of twelve in favor of the easily-plugged-into-any-math-equation metric system. In the same spirit, "The Europeans" have semi-abolished the 12 hour a.m./p.m. in favor of its military reincarnation, the 24 hour clock. Of the many things I've learned in this new language, it's one of the hardest things to get along by telling people that it's fifteen twenty o'clock when it's really 3:20 p.m. Therein lies the secret of a cheap trip to Lyon: try to go anywhere before the sun comes up and you'll pay in yawns not euros. What I had assumed was a 5 o'clock post-meridiem train was actually a brisk 0500 and there we stood in the Avignon Central station, sweating from our power-walk through the sun, wondering why our train had not been posted. Perhaps it was posted somewhere, perhaps in Paris by then, perhaps I felt unworthy of all those stamps in my passport for having booked a train that left twelve hours ago.
Annette filled me in that perhaps I should have acquired some 17 o'clock tickets, but since there were some more trains she wouldn't kill me for my novice traveler mistake. We took our newly issued tickets and sat down in the bar in the station. I ordered a coffee. Annette ordered hers with whiskey. Unfortunately, the barman didn't have any whiskey on hand (I suspect that he really did, but was in his late afternoon slump, or was not going to do anything outside of 'on-the-rocks' with whiskey, or was just not going to serve a flitty young American hard-A, or 'spirits' as the English say, or, what is most probable, just hadn't understood my request in the stilted French I speak).
What started as a mistake (Steve's total amateur move with the tickets) turned into possibly the coolest part of the whole weekend. Let's call it a gift. Luck favors the procrastinators in the world and good company comes to meet those who don't really seem to know where they are yet. Also: compartments! The trains we're usually taking around the PACA (Provence Alpes Cote d'Azur) region have boring, uninspiring seat configurations. All they inspire me to do is...talk really loudly in English and avoid looking other passengers in the eyes. Geez, all they inspire me to do is talk to old ladies about their sons and how they speak fabulous Anglais. But compartments! They're so old-school, so Hitchcock, so Anastasia (the animated Fox film, an old mild obsession of mine). I say it looked like the orient express. Exactly! If we were going to take the slow train to Lyon (3 hours versus 1 hour...consider it 'taking the scenic route'), we were going to sit in compartments!
Before we got to take in the scenery from our old school 8-seat compartment, the train rolled in like Chinese New Year, all fire-crackers and hell... louder than my American friends. I have never heard such an unnecessarily loud and obnoxious racket in my life (well, apart from me and Zandra chatting...anywhere...we are helplessly loud, and American, two points against us)! Apparently we were celebrating the final trip of our trusty conductor, we thank him for getting us here and there safely on those iron rails, and for bursting our eardrums while coming into the station. Getting to blow the horn for as loud and long as he liked, like a final 'fuck you!' to the man (and us). He was on a personal grève, maybe, but soon the racket died down and we climbed in, searching for a place to talk loud 'Merican and see the sights. The only unoccupied compartment had a single bag sitting on the bench. As the 'orange alert' airport lady played in my head to report the unattended baggage, I thought to myself, je m'en fou and we took up residence in our very own cabin. Yeah, and what's a bomb exploding in return for our very own corner sans Frenchies? If the owner ever did come back, I was pretty sure they wouldn't be able to stand being in such a cramped space with two loud (and awesome!) étrangers.
Soon enough the mysterious bag's owner came back to claim his spot, one of those guys that wears his 'does-everything' phone on a band around his neck. We clammed up and committed faux pas number one in France. That is, to not greet every single person in the room you enter is just so uncultivated. He stared in return at us aliens. Actually, more at Annette than me. I wonder if his "This is so much better than an iPhone" phone slung round his neck got a few good pictures of my traveling companion... it sure looked like he wanted one. It was a little disconcerting, but 9 months in L'Isle sur la Sorgue has gotten me used to pervy guys staring and making unwelcome comments...just practice for when I'm famous someday! Finally the staring became too obvious not to ignore, so one of us (probably Steve) opened the floodgates.
It went something like, "Bonjour, vous-etes d'Avignon?"
"No, I'm from the town where they bottle Vittel water." I wondered, is it like being from a town where they bottle a famous wine? I guess I'll never know. Well, you do live just a few kilometers away from Chateuneuf de Pape... Oh heavens, bring me my tire-bouchon, toot sweet! But back to our story. . .
"But I know where all the cool clubs are in Montpellier and I'll take you there!
"And you can meet my friends, they're famous footbal players!
"Look at my phone!"
If I know anything about pro soccer players and cool nightclubs in Montpellier (which I don't), I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be as eager to entertain us as this guy was. The last time we tried to get into a club with a dresscode they gave us the once over scan and decided the club was full. They had opened 15 minutes prior. Maybe it was the felt flowers I had attached to my lapels. Or my $7 Goodwill dress from the '70's! Which should have been an instant 'get in free' card if you ask me! No. Somebody in the group was wearing. . . des baskets! Rubber soles are death to cool.
As it turns out, this Sylvain (I'm only guessing from the email address he gave us) was a very chatty fellow. I'm currently using his email address as a bookmark...forecast for ever getting around to actually emailing him? Unlikely. We talked our way down the tracks as I worried we were on the wrong train (some inexplicable signs proclaimed loudly that our destination was Marseille, the opposite direction).
"I'm going to Miami!" For what he was (obviously cool and important enough to wear his social life around his neck like an Olympic gold), Sylvan was an easy going fellow. He loves his clubs, he loves playing dress up to go visit said clubs, and he loves Miami (which he's going to go visit this summer with his ex-girlfriend, he made sure to point out). IMHO, Miami is an imaginary town, whose population is 1/2 Cuban, 1/2 French, from what I've heard. I will believe it when I see it.
Fortunately Sylvain's stop came up about a half hour into the journey.
Tune in some other time for part deux: The Foreign Legionnaire OR Where The Hell Did You Pick Up an Accent Like That?
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