Excusez-moi, avez-vous une éshelle?

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After a whirlwind weekend of daytrips, I settled back into the routine of Nice for week three. Most of my days consist of going to school from 9 - 4 p.m., doing a wee bit of school work in the evening and then going for a walk around the city (usually along the beach, or as every student says when asked by their teacher what they did the day before, “Je suis allée à la plage”). However, I was greeted with a bit of excitement mid-week when I learned that, every year, on June 21st, there is the “Fête de la Musique”. All over France, musicians take to the streets and set up anywhere they see fit and play music until, well, they get tired. I was very excited about this event, as I imagined cute French guys playing acoustic guitars belting out emo music or violists playing Mozart, etc. Well, when I ventured out that night, I quickly discovered that 1) rather than acoustic guitars and violins, it was young heavy metal enthusiasts wanking on the guitar and wannabe DJs spinning club music on every street corner and 2) thanks to today’s technology (i.e. generators, cordless mics, etc.), the sound was amplified 100 fold. Okay, not what I expected, but it was still cool to see everyone out enjoying the music. I do have to say, though, that, no offense to the french, they may know food and fashion, but I don’t give them music. Hasn’t anyone told these 15 year olds that ACDC is a bit passé? 😉

I met up with a few people from school, but since all of Nice and its tourists had the same idea, we decided to go to a beer store, grab some acohol (I opted for ice cream instead, which, thanks to Nice’s close proximity to Italy, is very similar to gelato) and go to the beach. We weren’t sitting there long when a girl came up to talk to a guy I was with. I turned to listen to their conversation (always the nosy one!) and turned back not even a minute later to find that someone STOLE my purse. To say the least, I freaked out. Now, luckily, I had heard that the festival was infamous for thieves, so I had left my wallet and passport at home, but the big losses were my camera (with all of my photos from the previous three weeks), my mobile (that I had borrowed from the daughter of the lady I live with), and....the keys to my apartment. Now, usually, the latter wouldn’t be such a concern except for the fact that my host was at her country house and wasn’t planning on returning until Saturday, after I was supposed to leave to meet my friend Claudia in Rome. So, immediatlely realizing that I was locked out of my apartment, panic set in. Of course, with thousands of people on the beach, I knew there was no way that I was going to find my purse or the thief, but I vainly attempted to run up and down the beach looking for anyone mysterious. After calming down a bit, I decided that the best I could do was file a police report and crash at a friend’s place until I could try to get a hold of my host the next day (as it was after midnight). Well, the police station was fun. You would think that in a city where the tourist crime rate is high, it might, just might, make sense to have one, even one, officer that speaks english in a city where half of its inhabitants speak english. Oh no, not so. So, I think I practiced speaking more french that night than I have all month.

The next day I had the pleasure of going to two other police stations without the ability to fall back on my english. Fun. Having left numerous messages on my host’s mobile, but realizing that, too, was in vain, as she told me that she doesn’t get reception at her country house, I decided to try to find a way to break in. I had called a locksmith and was told that it would cost over $200 to open the door for me, so I pulled out my spidy senses and said to myself, “How the heck can I get into an apartment on the fourth level?” Well, luckily, due to the heat, I had left most of the windows open, so I had a few options there. Unluckily, the ceilings are 14’ at least, so it did not make scaling walls and balconies very easy. I enlisted the help of the cutest little old french couple who live below my apartment to help me, as they had a balcony that would potentially give me access to a bedroom window. Un problème...we needed an “échelle” (word for “ladder”, which I will never forget!). I decided to go on a hunt for a tall ladder and went to my school to ask for help. After lecturing me about how dangerous my plan was and how I could get into trouble if the police saw me, the oh-so-helpful administrators then told me they did not have an “échelle”. Facing defeat, I went back to the apartment to discover the little old man in my apartment! I guess they found a tall ladder from one of the nearby merchants and my little buddy scaled the terrace railings and jumped in. I officially love the cute little french couple below. Neither of them spoke a word of english, but we were able to carry on a bit of a conversation and, after showing my gratitude (as words could definitely not express it) by giving them flowers, I caught that they are both going to visit and stay with me in Canada for a month. Ha! Wouldn’t that be hilarious! Good luck not knowing english in Alberta!

Anyway, I got back into the apartment and was ecstatically happy to see my toothbrush, hairbrush, and, most importantly, my wallet and passport. Not a fun week, but it could have been much worse. Plus, I’m now best friends with two 70 year olds!

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