Advertisement
Published: October 17th 2013
It was probably only about ten metres from the entrance to the elevator. For inspiration I tried to bolster my confidence by recalling a scene from the movie Blow,
“When you’re carrying drugs across the border, the idea is to remain calm. The way I do it is to think of something pleasant, a fun party, a moment of triumph. A sexual encounter. I actually project myself to that place. Anything to keep your mind off the fact that you’re going to jail for a very long time if they find the fifteen kilos of cocaine in your suitcases.” Okay, I'm not smuggling drugs; this is far more traumatic. I’m trying to walk through the lobby of a hotel, in France, without anyone talking to me, in French!
There’s a young lady at reception, I try not to instigate any eye contact. I’ve also attempted to switch off my sound perception to quash my natural inclination to respond... I’m almost to the elevator when she says something to me. I don’t know what it is, and don’t respond, she could be speaking Yiddish for all I know. I jam the elevator button
Tower Bridge
Olympics, The Shard and a red bus.with an outstretched finger, the door immediately opens, I’m in, I press my floor button and the door closes…heart pounding… take a deep breath!
Being treated like an illiterate-foreign-peasant during my first foray to Paris, as a lone-wolf teenage traveler fifteen years ago, has clearly left an indelible mark on my psyche. Having just landed at Bordeaux airport, we’ve been in France less than an hour yet my fears and suspicions have already been firmly corroborated. For a Francophobe like me, the trip hasn’t started great/or exactly as prejudice expected it to be.
Half-an-hour ago, the driver of the 100 seat airport bus refused to let us board for the one-stop, one-kilometer ride to our airport hotel because we had “too much luggage”. “One bag per customer,” he says, with an assured smile and a puff on his Gauloises cigarette; "It’s the rules”.
The bus sits there, alighting; totally empty. We have four bags, we are four people, but apparently our two children don’t count as customers. I shrug my shoulders and he points dismissively to the taxi rank. I approach the driver at the front of the rank who sits
Millennium Bridge
The Thames, St Paul's and grey skies. happily smoking on the hood of his silver Mercedes. But he also refuses to take us because the distance and the subsequent fare, is “too small” and “not worth,” his time. I begrudgingly offer him twenty Euros for the kilometer trip. He shakes his head; he can get more for a fare all the way into Bordeaux. Our luggage is piled high on the airport trolley. I inquire at the information desk about the possibility of walking to our hotel but am informed this is not possible as there are no sidewalks.
The original plan had been to stay at the hotel overnight and return to the airport and pick up our hire-car tomorrow morning. Then we would embark on our twenty-nine day whirlwind tour of the Iberian Peninsula. (US credit card holders are
not required to pay any car insurance on rentals of thirty days or less -- the rental companies don’t like telling you this!). Fortunately this gave us one day to play with, and so we marched purposefully back into the terminal building to rent our car right away, allowing us to drive our luggage the kilometer from the airport to our hotel.
Jennifer out for lunch
The Montagu at Hyatt Regency Since the credit card/car insurance is in Jennifer’s name she’s the designated driver.
She also happens to speak English, German, Italian and Spanish, so she’s obviously also in charge of communicating with the local populace.
All I had to do at this stage of our Pan-European adventure was get the luggage from the rental car to our hotel room without anyone talking to me…or more specifically; without anyone discovering that I have the
nerve to travel in this country without the ability to speak French.
Back Home
Just this morning we were charging around South East England from a campsite in Folkestone to Gatwick airport, as part of 10 days back in England visiting family and friends…Though this time I tried to do things differently.
Over a decade since I left London, the city of my birth, I returned trying my damndest to be a tourist: Bowler hats, Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge, red buses, black taxis. Though these images are quiet different to the images I
have of this city.
To my mind; the famous bridges are a means to cross a river;
Big Ben
The Tube the attractions are simply landmarks, and the visiting tourists themselves had long since become part of the scenery. Every attraction viewed and every street walked reminds me of an actual lived memory from a distant past. Pointing my camera at the “sites” is seeing them for the first time through foreign eyes. They stare back at me with a confused grimace, a dismissive shake of the head.
Locals may know their cities better than visiting tourists. But looking at these very same sites, they can never see the same things; for they are looking through different lenses. The visiting tourists’ ideas come from circulating images, notions and stereotypes which flow around the world; they compare and contrast everything to that which they already know; the differences standing out as exoticisms or attractions. But London is my reference point, my anchor, my ground stone, and my norm. It is the benchmark of what is real, what is true and what is best. For twenty plus years London was my world in one city. In capturing images of London through my camera I attempted to see London as she is sold to the tourist; it was strangeness, verging on
the incestuous.
France
Our first morning in France and we are navigating the one-way Scalextric system of Bordeaux which necessitates one more time around the houses every time we miss the turn we think we want to take. Americans (see Jennifer) drive on the right, these Europeans drive on the right…how hard can it be?
However, unlike North American cities, European cities were designed and built long before the advent of the car, and so it and its tangled network of roads have had to fit in wherever they can. Forget about parking. That is until you discover there is a secret world below most European cities. Burrowed under hundreds of years history sits thousands of vehicles all neatly piled on top of one another in subterranean multi-story car parks. Which see people emerging from beneath the ground via cubicles and booths all around cities, like legions of ants coming out to forage, disappearing beneath laden with shopping.
We’d disappear down a warren marked with a “P”; and navigate our way up and out on foot to explore the surface area around our buried car. Time our return before the next
two-hour increment ticked over on the ticket (the subterranean world isn’t cheap) drive our car out of that labyrinthine tunnel system and navigate the one-way Scalextric above ground to the next strategic hole in it.
And what can I say. It was Europe. After the previous years spent between Asia and the Americas, everything we saw, smelt and tasted (aboveground) turned us on. In the afternoon I danced into the Tourist Information office as a happy tourist with my tail wagging and my tongue out eager to be advised on our next step.
Saint-Émilion
Situated on the banks of the Dordogne River this UNESCO World Heritage Site would be sold too short by the description “picturesque”. Honey-hued medieval village, twisting streets and verdant vineyards stretching to the horizon in all directions. Experiencing this place in the late afternoon light made me want to hold my head in my hands and weep like a baby. Time for some wine me reckons!
As an Englishman I realise -
yet again - I have been lied to my entire life. Not in the traditional sense of a false statement or an intentional untruth. No, this
is the far more sinister Swiss or Chinese lie…silence…what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Remaining mute; withholding the truth; propagating ignorance. How else could I not have known about this place? Why did our family take their summer holidays in Clacton-on-Sea or Bognor Regis when places like this existed in the world?
Had it not been for those lies – that ignorance - I may have even bothered to pick up some bloody French! And so you see dear reader the blame for my own ignorance lay squarely with my friends, family and country of origin! I would now dedicate the rest of my life to mastering the French language if it were not for those smug Frenchies reading into this an admission of defeat!
I had seen the name Saint Emilion previously on wine labels, for this honey-coloured stone village built on a hill and surrounded by miles of vineyards is famous above all, for this commodity. So as the sun dipped behind the hills, and unfortunately not in the market for
Premiers grands crus classes A Châteaux Cheval Blanc, we rushed back to the hotel with a box full of humble reds in the boot,
Saint-Émilion
Mama and Mandalay to start our running collection for this European road trip, which would see us drink in the
terroir of every place we visited in Europe, like a pair of Hannibal Lecters consuming our conquests.
The next day we headed south to Biarritz trying to make sense of the road signs, navigating round traffic, toll roads and French country ways. In Biarritz we followed street signs down through town as the road narrowed to a uni-directional one-way lane squeezing between increasingly labyrinthine streets until we were halted by the Bay of Biscayne. We swung the car left along the coast until we reached a car park closed to capacity, and manned by a very personable French policeman who spoke English and could even be described as polite.
The campsite and all the hotel accommodation in town was full, he informed us, due to our arriving at the start of some annual festival. People lined streets and the stone walls overlooking the Ocean. The few tiny beaches were standing room only. He did offer that if we headed back up and out of town some ways the chances of finding place at the Inn might increase, but he wasn’t optimistic.
However, up there, there were sirens calling. A road sign telling us that Spain was a mere 15 kilometers away: A country where we could speak the lingo. An allure that was just too great. We had a last lunch in France and headed for the border. But this wouldn’t be our last visit to France this summer. We were due to fly out of Nice on the Côte d'Azur in a few short weeks. Expect more lies... and buckets, nay
rivers of tears…
Advertisement
Tot: 0.361s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 51; qc: 175; dbt: 0.1782s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.8mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Home is where you are
For us, home is where we are living. I always twitch a bit when I go back to where I grew up and my sister says, I'm glad you're coming home. I have not felt that was my home for more than 30 years. But, it is an interesting process to go back when you've been gone a long time. You have some of the local knowledge (as many things changed over time, although subtle) but you really do feel like the outsider looking with new eyes. Laughing at your time in France. A lovely country. As you say, too bad you didn't go to Saint-Emilion sooner.