I'm pretty sure gypsies can't afford 50USD cocktails

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This Sunday, I spent the night in a train station with two gypsy women and their crying babies. Hardly what I imagined for my first night in St Tropez.

After six hours, the TGV from Angers arrived in Marseilles on time at 7:15pm Sunday evening. I rushed to catch the connecting train set to depart at 7:59pm for St Raphael. From St Raphael I would take a bus to La Foux where Fred would pick me up and whisk me away to his beautiful house in St Tropez. I would be tucked away, drunk and full of Rose, in a warm bed by 1am, well-rested and ready for a day of boozing on some boat in the tres azur mer of the francais mediterranean cote.

System kind of broke down, to say the least. As I hurried along the platforms my elementary French was enough to tell me that all the trains running along the coast to Nice (to Toulon, St Raphael, Nice) were "en retard" for over an hour. That's not good. Upon arrival at my carriage, I find les francais in tres tres bad moods, crowding around the poor attendees (who themselves don't give a fuck about their jobs anyways) huffing and puffing on their cigarettes. This is their vacances the rail system is fucking with. If there's one thing I've learned in France, it's 1) to never, ever play with their cheese, and as I learned more than one thing, 2) do NOT fuck with their holidays, any 50 days of it. Take your chances, they just MAY go on strike.

I sit in the train for a bit, get bored after an hour, and after realizing we will be more than an hour late, I go outside to wait in the fresh air (full of Frenchies puffing away.) There is a woman standing near me, in shiny gold lyrca pants, heavy bronzer and outlined lips. Her hair looks permanently fried, and she has probably not eaten for a week in preparation for her debut on the St Tropez plage. "Excusez-moi, parlez-vous anglais?" A laugh and a head shake. Honey, you're going to need to speak some English so the heavily-cologned Russians know what you want to drink. I give up on her, she can't tell me anything. In fact I find most people on my train can't speak any English, which is truly amazing. I get back on the train.

You put me on a train for two hours with nothing to do and I eventually start talking to Strangers. It matters not that they speak no English and I only Caveman French. Enter Damien. Damien is sitting two rows in front me and hears me stuttering questions in broken French every time an important-sounding announcement comes on. Damien is from Bordeaux, is 24, and works now in Paris at CDG as an air traffic controller. He sits in the tower, he doesn't wave the orange sticks on the runway. Lean and tan, he wears a loose but fitted quicksilver shirt, olive cargos which stop at his knees (not the calves), and white quicksilver flip-flops. In this time of great frustration and upset, he remains calm and totally chilled out. A French guy wearing flip-flops? A tame Parisien waiting for a delayed holiday train? I must ask, "You surf?" He has just come from, of course, 2 weeks of surfing in Biarritz and is en route to Nice and Italy for a week. We quickly become acquainted.

This is around 10pm now and our 8pm train is still sitting there in Marseilles. There is a broken power line somewhere in the south and all trains to Nice have been indefinitely delayed, Fred tells me over the phone that it's all over the news. All of a sudden, another important-sounding announcement comes through, and I pleadingly look at Damien. He says we are changing trains, I should follow him as we can take the same train. It doesn't really happen, we get off the train and don't see the next one. They lied to us, but we can do nothing but wait for more news. The Marseilles train station is in total chaos. There are at least four or five trains delayed, how many people do you reckon you can fit on one of these TGV's? That many people, scattered about the station at midnight so thick you can barely walk around without finding the pockets of dirty tile ground to land your feet with each step. Some picture of elegant and collected France. Damien and I decide this is ridiculous and leave the gare to grab a drink while waiting.

Long story short(er), our 8pm train eventually leaves at 1:30am, bringing me to St Raphael shortly after 3am. Thank god for Damien, there is no way I would have survived the chaos without a real French-speaker. It doesn't hurt that he is rather good-looking. You could do a lot worse than be stranded for seven hours in the south of the most romantic country in the world with a tres delicious surfer.

Now, what the hell am I supposed to do upon arrival at a train station when there is no public transport to St Tropez? I'm not calling Fred to wake him in the middle of the night to drive 2 hours to pick me up. Call me cheap, but I'm not paying 300 EUR for 4 hours in a hotel either. Enter aforementioned gypsies. One of them smells rather strongly, I want to say of some sort of cheese. For the next few hours, their babies run around the little waiting room screaming as I try to sleep holding my bags extremely tightly.



Why Fred's parents had me staying at their house in St Tropez with them is beyond me. The first time I met Fred's father I had come into Paris from Cannes early June. I picked up a key from Fred's office and came to his family's flat in St Germain as his apartment on Ile St Louis was being renovated. Fred's parents are usually at their home in Brussels, but this night Fred's father was in and Dad walked in to a small Asian girl sitting in his living room. It was quite fun hanging out with him though, an even funnier sight to see Fred after 2 years strolling in the door after work to find me and his old man sharing war stories with our feet up on the coffee table. The first time I met Fred's mother I had come into Paris from five weeks in the Middle East early July, totally disheveled, a complete mess, a literal tornado through the flat with Fred rushing me to shower and change to catch the World Cup final with his friends. Mom certainly thinks I have a problem with succinct rudeness and perhaps hygiene problems as well.

Their house in the south is just outside of St Tropez in a small town named something that rhymes with "Gigolo," the actual name now escapes me. Yeah, I don't know. I have sort of lost track of how many houses they have in France alone. I don't really know anything about directions, but it is surrounded by beautiful vineyards and has a gorgeous view off into some body of blue, blue Mediterranean water. The skies are sunny all day, the clouds are few, the rays are hot but the breezes are cool.

The French really know how relax on vacation. After a late rise, breakfast is had outside on the patio. Relax until somebody rallies the troops to head down to the harbor to board the boat. Stare at cute boat boys while waiting for your boat. Basically from 12-6 is spent on the boat, lunching, taking the boat around to different beaches, swimming, doing nothing, "taking" the sun. Back at the marina, stare at cute boat boys again as they take your boat. Go for a dip in the pool back at the house, lay around some more. Dinner is casual smart event on the terrace as the sun goes down, conversation meanders around for another couple hours.

As for St Tropez itself, well I didn't see P Diddy or any American sports stars. I didn't even see Paris Hilton. I guess to be honest I didn't have much of an impression of St Tropez before going, past a picture of beautiful beaches and some nice yachts. The town of St Tropez itself is rather quaint and lovely. Cobbled streets (a serious pain in heels), small and expensive looking boutiques, cafes, winding roads. Throw in a lot of French people, and then some fat Russian magnates, all holding on to a couple really tall eastern European models. Oh yeah, and it's not cheap. Because eastern European models aren't cheap. And apparently, neither am I.

One night we decided to have dinner and go out in St Tropez proper. Fred took me to Spoon (of the same Alain Ducasse as in Hong Kong) at the Byblos. Beautiful atmosphere, the food was good but as with most of these big name restaurants, perhaps not as deserving of the alloted press coverage given. The dessert was amazing. Afterwards we thought we'd go shake our asses with the beautifuls so we went to Les Caves du Roy (the caves? cellars? of the royal) where I saw the most expensive bar prices I think I have ever seen. A Coke for Fred who was driving, and a G&T for me came to 54 EUR which is about 80 USD. Seriously.

Anyways, I am sitting here trying to figure out what to write about St Tropez and French vacations. But I didn't really learn much, because French people don't really do much on their vacations. At all. Apparently some nations in this world really do use vacations to "relax." I did feel some of this when I was in the south in June I suppose, so it wasn't a big surprise. I did learn that French people insist on peeling all their fruit (even peaches, apples, etc) and also that gypsies let their babies crawl around on the floor of bus stations.

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Photos

a traditional dessert from St Tropez
i don't remember what it was called, but it was amazing

little boat that runs around
to all the boats in the water selling drinks, coffee, ice cream, etc