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Published: June 26th 2006
Sara and I are on the train to Amsterdam. This, in and of itself, is not surprising. What is surprising, especially to us, is that we are in first class. It was a fluke. There is free wine.
I am listening to Prince. Rocking out to Raspberry Beret eating my little mandarin oranges and salmon sandwich…life is feeling pretty good. The woman across the aisle is reading Men are From Mars and Women are from Venus and drinking what looks like white zinfandel. Le heavy sigh. Le eyeball roll.
We arrived at Gare du Nord hoping to catch a train to Amsterdam, knowing not when it left or how much it would cost. We have been disorganized in this manner basically the whole time. It creates the need to kill time in train stations and nearby cafes, which tend to be great opportunities to people watch and meet other travelers. We were offered two options: the early train for 90 euro per person or the later train for 80 euro first class with a meal. Now, we considered the minor debacle upon arriving late in Paris, walking for three hours in the rain with fifty pounds worth of backpack uphill searching for a cheap hotel…that was pretty awful. But, a free meal and a cheaper ticket? Thus, we waited for five hours by the station to ride to Amsterdam in style.
Free wine.
We spent two hours of our waiting around time at a café across the street. Repeating what we had done for breakfast the day before, we split up - Sara bought us Nutella and banana crepes from the crepe guy and I ordered two coffees (coffee seems too base a word for such a heavenly substance, I am dreading the return of American coffee). We sat under an awning, sipping from teeny tiny little cups, eating crepes, watching the rain. Since it was the last day in Paris, it figures our waiter was the funny cute Parisian I had been searching for. I gave him a bite of my crepe. He kissed my cheeks and told me I must learn French. Oui, cute waiter man, oui.
I said au revoir to mon petit waiter, headed back to the train station to wait some more. The bathrooms were coin-operated and cost one euro. Taught well by our depression-era grandfather and his penny-pinching offspring, we spent an uncomfortable couple of hours refusing to pay to pee. We vowed to EXPLODE before putting any money in that damn machine….
Of course, given all that time spent waiting around, we almost missed the train. Gare du Nord is rather stingy with information. Information like where you are supposed to go, which trains are two seconds from departing, that kind of information. We found our train, and each attendant stood in front of his or her respective entry point, waving us toward the front of the train yelling, “Hurry run you’ll miss it!” Why they wouldn’t move out of the way and let us in one of THOSE doors, I can’t say. So we get to an attendant who lets us on and walk BACK THROUGH THE TRAIN to our seats, bumping people with our backpacks the whole way. I guess they assumed we weren’t boarding first class. Can’t blame ‘em…
The lady just came around with more sandwiches. She is very nice. I wonder what would happen if I extracted my headphones from their jack and let the whole car rock out to Prince...
And now, because everybody loves the top five gimmick…
Top Five Encounters with Strangers
5. Fat Hairy Naked Guy
Fat Hairy Naked Guy (FHNG) stayed in the first hostel of the trip, a nearly all-male joint down a Dublin alley. Just as I was putting my stuff down he entered all naked and hairy and plopped himself onto the bunk below mine. He seemed to be drying his feet or something, I don’t know. I was finding other places to put my eyes. He put on clothes and we greeted one another. I took a pair of underwear and a tank top to the bathroom and washed it in the sink and hung them on my bungee cord clothesline (of which I was rather proud.) Later in the day, during a stroll along the river Liffey, I passed FHNG and we exchanged an awkward wave of recognition. That night, while trying to sleep, FHNG emitted noises that might have technically been snores but I refuse to call them that. They were eruptions from deep within FHNG accompanied by jerks and twitches, kicking the wall, growls, grumbles. They were frequent. Sara and I, separated by the entire room on our respective top bunks, communicated through heavy sighs and “ahems.” Now, all of this might have been alright. FHNG has every right to be fat, hairy, and naked. He might have some unfortunate condition that necessitates making inordinate amounts of noise during sleep. I don’t know. But FHNG had, earlier that day, accosted Sara regarding my bungee cord clothesline. Apparently, the displaying of my freshly washed underwear offended FHNG. He was irritated by the mere sight of a woman’s underwear hanging out there in the open. FAT HAIRY NAKED guy was offended by my laundry. So began my plotting to kill FHNG. Rather, he is in queue. I’m still thinking of what I might do to the Aer Lingus people.
4. Potential Rapist I & II
Unknowingly, Sara and I arrived in Paris during the annual music festival in celebration of the summer solstice. Dancing to James Brown at three a.m. in the middle of the street, drinking pastis from the bottle, surrounded by a throng of gyrating Parisians, we shouted, “Is Paris always like this?” The answer is no. But anyway, we were wandering the streets until very late and the whole night was flooded with music. It was awesome. Then, it was dark and we were lost. Two young men approached us and, as young men had been doing all god damned night, became immediately touchy-feely. Now quite drunk and damn sick of people refusing to respect the bubble I abandoned my earlier, more polite method of shoving them out of the way while saying “au revoir” and adopted the new method which involved threatening to kill them if they didn’t back the fuck off. They thought this was all very cute. They followed us through the dark, now quiet, Paris streets (whether or not we were headed in the direction of our hotel was, at this point, a mystery.) I was explaining to Sara that I really thought I ought to kill them. She was laughing and saying very patient, amused things while gently telling them to please go away. They wouldn’t go away. Eventually we came upon a staircase leading into a little park. No woman on the planet was going to descend this staircase with these two idiots. So we’re standing on the top set of stairs, they one step below, begging in French for our company. At this point I had had enough and took my best shot at a left hook, knocking Potential Rapist Two down several stairs. Potential Rapist One found this even cuter than the threats. I am quite pleased with my punch and think I might go ahead and kick him in the balls but the whole thing is interrupted by a group of Americans. Sara tells them that these gentlemen need to be told to go away. We leave the three Americans to deal with the potential rapists and escape into the night.
3. Aneurism Guy and Jim, the Spitting Croatian
Of all the people Sara and I met in Dublin, few of them lasted in conversation longer than two minutes. Mostly, everyone suffered from the same case of the “touchy feelies” that so plagues the French. Also, it was very loud in Dublin. Since Sara and I are basically deaf and our conversational gems tend to come in the form of under-the-breath commentary this city didn’t serve us well. And we just aren’t the bump-n-grind in lieu of conversation type. Alas, we ended up staring at each other looking awkward most of the time. But we were standing around looking awkward in a different country so, you know, it was kind of cool. Anyway, late night in Dublin we entered a slightly quieter bar and ran into a pair of older gentlemen. Aneurism Guy, whose name was sort of like Fleekwort or Balcor or… (I only remember it prompting Sara’s comment: “what, is he a wizard from Lord of the Rings?”) He was very nice, actually. But he found it necessary to tell me, two minutes into conversation, that he suffered an aneurism and is alive by some miracle beyond the comprehension of mortals. His friend Jim engaged Sara while I learned what it’s like to re-learn words and emotions after thirty years of age. Jim, five feet three and suffering from a case of the close-talking-spitter disease, had Sara’s left arm almost totally drenched before last call. Aneurism Guy bought six or seven pints of Guinness and returned to our corner. Sara gave me the look like, “You better thank me later.” Except, she wasn’t really playing the wingman role because, although he was nice and all, Aneurism Guy was not a love interest. By the end of the night, we had all grown quite close. Then, sigh, we had to return to the lair of FHNG and try to sleep.
2. Nineteen Year Old Springfield Native and his Long Island Counterparts
On the ferry from Ireland to France there was a group of people who had no cabin and no reserved seats. These people tended to be young and drunk. Sara and I were among them. Waiting at the bar for a glass in which I planned to pour my smuggled bottle of wine, I overheard a young man asking for a corkscrew. The bar, serving only twist-off single serve bottles, had no such device. I asked this young man, who looked like a member of a boy band and, I would soon discover, had the cognitive ability of an eggplant, if he needed a corkscrew. “You have one?” Silly young thing, I may travel without many things (a passport, for example…) but a wine opener, don’t be ridiculous. So he introduced me to his traveling companions, a couple of over-partied buxom blonde Long Island natives. They had a bottle of wine each. They went off to play cards somewhere else on the ship. During his adorably incompetent attempts at opening a bottle of wine, I learned that he hailed from Springfield Massachusetts. We acknowledged the coincidence, silently conceding that that was probably the only thing we really had to say to one another, and parted. Ah, cute little nineteen year old boy band guy, I am sure you had fun in Paris.
And the Number ONE Stranger so far is:
Larry McCormick. I was sitting at an outdoor table in Dublin, alone with my favorite date, my laptop. Larry, who suffered a bit like Jim the Croatian, from a spitting-during-conversation affliction, approached me using the old, “Can you teach me how you use that thing” routine. I, with as much kindness as I could muster, explained that no one touched my computer except me. Larry took this rather well, and continued along with conversation. I was in the middle of my first Guinness in Ireland - and, unlike so many things for which we wait a lifetime, it was all I had hoped it would be. Larry, among other things, is a musician. He explained that he was waiting to hear back from the National Academy of Music regarding his admission. I should mention that Larry appeared to be in his early sixties and homeless. I don’t think he WAS homeless, but he had that unwashed, ragged thing going on. According to Larry, he owns a two million dollar estate in Howth. He wrote down the address for me, in case I ever wanted to come visit. Larry has played guitar with Eric Clapton. It was during this jam with Eric Clapton that he realized he should quit drinking, because Eric asked him to be in the band but he was too fucked up to properly respond. Larry had more stories than I had time to hear. Whether or not they were true, they were certainly well told. And he had several tag lines. He would be in the middle of the story, pause with a finger in the air and say, “Larry…Lawrence…Lawrence of Arabia, yes yes yes.” Or, after a particularly pregnant pause mid-story he would break into song with, “I was walking in the park one day…” Or, my personal favorite, “Kelly, Kelly, Scottish but okay with me, I will go to my GRAVE before I tell a lady a lie.” Several times he interrupted himself to say, as if about to reveal something very essential, “The whole principle, the WHOLE PRINCIPLE, the whole principle of the matter is…” Larry never got around to the whole principle of the matter. When he kissed the backs of both my hands upon our parting he said, with great sincerity, “You’re Scottish,” (pause), “But one Hell of a lady.”
(First class update: Free wine tally: two carafes. Visits from snack lady: 6. Snacks accepted: 5….Sara just got a cup of tea on a tray with lemon and sugar and the tiniest spoon in existence. This is too much for me. iTunes: Tangled up in Blue. I’m tangled up in Bleu. Cheese.)
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Elena
non-member comment
you're one hell of a lady
Dear Kelly, It relieves me greatly to know you walked home (WITHOUT A MAP, AT 3 AM ON FRIDAY NIGHT, ALONE, BACK TO THE north OF PARIS) safely. I can't believe I let you leave. I blame my anvil-filled eyelids. I apologize for not making it to the Without Underwear on Saturday night. For this, I blame the fact that I was wearing underwear (and would never fit in) but moreso the Gay Pride Festival which overtook my terrace with 12 gay men from 2 PM-11 PM. Really really dunno how that happened, I was SUPPOSED to have a productive day. Was so fun to see you. Come back to visit soon! You are one hell of a lady. Love, Elena