Advertisement
Published: April 29th 2008
Edit Blog Post
It's been a long, long while - when measured in both days and kilometers.
Let's see. It has been about eight months since I wrote in this blog, and believe you me: it hasn't been for lack of things to write. Since getting 'home' to Vancouver after my four months of motoring, I ended up settling (in the worst sense of the word) for a divided living room as a bedroom for another semester at UBC. During this time I was 49% happy to be grounded for a while, 26% missing my girlfriend in France, 25% missing doing something new. But entirely convinced - again - that I was in no rush to finish my undergrad.
So, when a rainy October rolled around, with the weather making Le Doigt all but a paperweight, I decided to spend 10 days in France visiting Delphine and satisfying that 25% of me aching to feel at home being lost again.
I got to France on October 5th, I believe, spending the weekend in Paris and almost all of the rest of my time falling in love with Lyon (and a certain girl dwelling therein). I felt like France, although not as
exotic as some of my other travel aspirations, fit me pretty damn well as a place to settle down a while. After a few days back in Vancouver I knew that my commencement ceremony would have to miss me for yet another semester: the rain was just too much and the girl + portable job made France sound like just too attractive an alternative.
And so it was time to sell off the few things I had in Vancouver to fund my next expedition. My LCD TV and XBox paid for half my flight and the garage I would have to rent to bed Le Doigt for seven months. Even my blender helped out, morphing itself into a guide book with a brief stopover in Cash. I had just one stop left to make before heading off to Lyon to try the Old World out for a while. Key West.
Talk about juxtaposition. I spent 10 wonderful days in Key West - the low-brow but decadently relaxing American party town - with my family for Christmas and then was off to Paris. Flip-flops to Birkenstocks. Key West offered some great beaches and great family time while France ushered
in another world of class and chic (as best it could when I was left with one pair of clothes after ANOTHER lost bag courtesy of Continental Airlines: NEVER fly with them!)
Since getting to France I have found my own room in an amazing apartment and come to absolutely love Lyon. For once I feel like I live in a city I would be happy calling home. My excursions since getting here include:
* A week in Avignon (great food/sights, crappy hostel)
* A week in Berlin (half party half museum)
* Four days in Hamburg (Soccer, amazing hosts, and busy Germans; seemingly all on the water)
* Four days in Heidelberg (More incredible hosts, German beer, Autobahn, and Black Forest Ham)
* Ten days in Toronto (A wedding Made Right, and a nice visit with family and friends. SNOW!)
* Five days in Amsterdam (Oddly I don't remember what I did there apart from the amazing Van Gogh museum)
* A weekend in Arles (Back to Provence: wine, cheese, and hand-holding: my first EVER anniversary!)
* A weekend in Burgandy (With Delphine's great & characteristically French family; more wine and cheese with a welcome dose of
gorgeous countryside)
Mostly, however, I spend my time pretending I'm French - as best I can, given my aged wardrobe and limited vocabulary. I absolutely love it in Lyon and have more than once thought about calling it my next (first?) hometown since leaving.... my home town. I have also gotten a sense of why some people, I suspect, are so attracted to Europe after living in North America.
I have struggled quite hard to put into words my best guess on the subject, and still find it hard to pin down. There is a key difference between the way of life here when compared to more Americanized corners of the globe, and I think it has to do with transparency. You see, Europeans don't invite opaque ideas into their lives: nothing is allowed in that is not understood. This stretches from everything from household items (who knew you could REPAIR a chair as opposed to throwing it out??), food (Cote du Rhone isn't best served at 18 degrees because it says so on the bottle: it is because it TASTES better that way!), streetscapes (so what if chain stores save us money? What is money for
but living and living well?), to politics (policy #132-343 limits my freedom of speech: TAKE TO THE STREETS!). There are no black boxes allowed in the psyche of a Frenchmen. And that suits a guy like me just fine.
A bientot (hopefully in less than eight months, that is.)
Ciao for now.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.156s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 22; qc: 94; dbt: 0.0854s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb