Farewell Bordeaux; Bitch-slapped by Paris

This is the weirdest place I have ever blogged.

I am on rue Washington in Paris, off of the Champs-Elysées, minutes from the Arc de Triomphe, in a line outside the Chinese consulate. It’s 8:40 in the morning and I’ve already been here an hour, and I’ve got another 50 minutes to go before the consulate opens at 9:30. I came here obscenely early because yesterday, the consulate ran out of numbers to issue at 9:50…a mere 20 minutes after they opened their doors. Thus I am braving sore feet and a chilly Parisian morning in a miniskirt, which is my genius wardrobe choice for the day and the only thing keeping me from plopping my exhausted self on the dirty ground. My laptop is propped up on a windowsill. People are staring.

My last day in Bordeaux was wonderful and heartbreaking. Alexa and I climbed 281 spiraled steps up la tour Pey Berland for the first time, a tower next to the central cathedral which offers amazing views of the city’s red tiled-roofs sprawling homogeneously beneath. We walked through the Miroir d’Eau in front of Place de la Bourse, dipping our feet in the water with children in swimsuits. My host mom made pommes de terre farsi for my last meal, potatoes topped with minced meat, one of my favorite dishes. As a parting gift, I gave her a potted plant of gerber daisies, four red blooms, and she told me that they were like her four daughters – her three real daughters, and me. She cried. I cried. “This house is yours, any time.” I had planned to say goodbye to some friends and get back at midnight to finish packing, but my host sister decided to throw a last minute goodbye party at the house. Her Facebook status announced that I was leaving at 5 in the morning and wouldn’t need to sleep that night. This was news to me…but I didn’t mind. Corona and Frenchies beat packing any day. After emotional goodbyes to Alexa and others in the wee hours of the morning, I headed to the train station. It was a strange feeling – even though my room was empty and white, as if I had never lived there at all, I still felt like I was going on vacation and would be back in a week. But watching the sun rise over the hilly countryside en route to Paris, I knew it was the last time I would be making that trip.

And then everything started to go wrong.

First of all, my train to Paris was overbooked. I had counted on one of the extra seats next to the doors, but by the time I made my way over they had already been filled. After awkwardly trying to sit on my uneven suitcase, my unsupported ass had had enough, and I tried to sit on the floor underneath a suitcase rack. Because God hates me, the rack was just short enough so that my head wouldn’t fit underneath. At this point I was exhausted, cranky, and depressed, so I decided to throw away what little dignity I had and lie down. On the floor. Of the TGV. Right next to the toilets (read: lots of people staring at me while waiting in line to take a piss). The best part was that there was another guy who decided to sleep on top of the rack right above me. The strap of his bag kept dropping through the cracks and whipping me in the face.

When we finally stop in Paris, the strap of my suitcase breaks in half the second it touches the platform.

[Tangent: someone is listening to “Everybody is Kung Fu Fighting” on their cell phone outside of the Chinese consulate…what the fuck.]

Next, the sole ATM in the train station was out of order, so I lug my 100 pounds of luggage into a mall to get money. Then I walk over a mile to find a taxi, only to happen upon the bitchiest driver of all time, who didn’t know any streets and whose only form of expression was yelling at me. I finally rush to the consulate to get my Chinese visa only to learn that they are no longer issuing expedited visas, which I had been counting on in order to make my flight to Beijing on Friday. I have no choice but to change my flight, which cost me a fortune.

I can safely say that that was the worst morning I have ever had in my life. So this is where things stand now: I am staying in Paris an extra week, up until next Friday, which I suppose is a blessing in disguise of a curse in disguise of a blessing. Let me explain. While I am grateful for this extra time in France, and especially in Paris, which is undeniably one of the most beautiful places I have been, I feel like I’m stuck in some sort of strange limbo. Maybe it’s my lack of spontaneity talking, but I would like to either be in Bordeaux, with my friends, or Beijing, with my family. I think I would be thrilled to be here alone under any other circumstances, but it gets a little difficult when you can’t stop looking back nostalgically on the last five months.

That being said, there has been no shortage of breathtaking moments in Paris. I’ll write about them next. Enough of the emo.

Day 0: Pre-Bordeaux Notes

I was so excited on the flight over that I started manually writing journal entries at Heathrow airport. They're hardly relevant now in light of everything amazing/ridiculous/cold that has happened, but I amuse myself and am going to post them here all the same. So HAH. I am going to warn you that this is ridiculously long but I tried to label things accordingly so you can skip the boring parts.

Heathrow Airport, London, 1/5/2009, 11:00 AM

Try as I may, I will never be one of those women who waltz off airplanes looking like they just stepped out of a spa, completely fabulous and calm. Me? I'm always carrying too many too heavy bags, heaving with effort as I drag monstrous suitcases through terminals and escalators. My Cal sweatshirt bunched in the most unflattering way possible around my waist, I scan departure screens nervously and push rogue strands of hair off a panicked face. It doesn't matter so much in the States, where I'm up against overweight and sunburned countrymen. But here at Heathrow I look much too American for my liking. Which is why I just changed into Ralph Lauren in the airport bathroom. I mean...

It doesn't help that every time I fly, something goes wrong. It's cute that you think I'm exaggerating, but any of my friends will tell you I'm an airborne curse [edit: this was written before I learned of the travel catastrophe of my fellow Americans who were stuck in Paris overnight and lost their luggage]. Take today, for example. My flight to London was delayed for half an hour. No biggie, except that I just missed my connecting flight to Paris. Which means I missed my connecting TGV to Bordeaux. AWESOME. The shit hit the fan when I heard the pilot's ominous voice upon landing in Heathrow - "We're quite a ways from the terminal, so we're going to exit the aircraft from stairs and take shuttles to the airport." His charming British accent fails to mask that he's the harbringer of doom.

So here I am, sitting in Heathrow across from the duty free shop (always a bad idea - just bought a box of unaffordable designer chocolates), stranded as usual.

On the plus side, I got a free long-distance call to France. Two British Airways agents told me I had to call my Bordeaux host family from a payphone, which I was having none of. It may have taken a little persistence (and okay, a little pouting and eyelash batting) but finally an agent used his phone to dial for me (I did have to bust out my Rick Steves Best of Europe guide to look up the country codes though - embarassing).

Speaking of which, I finally spoke to my host mom on the phone! It was the first time I had a conversation entirely in French with a stranger. Thank the lord she's a teacher because she's speaks really slowly and clearly. I can't wait to meet her.

P.S. Heathrow's terminal 5 is FAWESOME. Designer stores up the wazoo. They have a cool system where you wait in "waiting areas" instead of directly at the gate. Much more fun this way, since you're staring at handbags you can't afford.

Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, France, 1/5/2009, 3:00 PM

Just had my first taste of infamous French bureaucracy. To save money, I decided to take the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux and bought my ticket online ahead of time. But they don't give you a printable ticket - you still have to go to the ticket counter to pick it up. I trekked for like a mile to the TGV station in the airport, and now am faced with a line that is so long it wraps around itself 4 times. No one in line knows what's going on - there are no signs or helpful representatives, and 3 of the 5 registers are closed. I'm happy for you that you get a 2 hour lunch break, BUT MY TRAIN LEAVES IN 10 MINUTES AND I STILL DON'T HAVE A TICKET, YOU FUCKERS. I finally get to the front of the line and the agent tells me I have to pay for a new ticket because I missed my train. Um, the reason I bought my ticket online is so I wouldn't have to deal with this crap. Tant pis - too bad.

After shoving over 72 Euros with a complete sense of resignation, I make my way to the platform where a man in a funny blue hat tells me I have to make my way to car J. Except in French, J is pronounced like G and G is pronounced like J, so in a moment of anglophonic weakness I start getting on the G car until I finally figure out what's going on and have to sprint to the back of the platform. Always fun.

Now I am sailing through the French countryside on the TGV and dusk is falling, and it's beautiful. Everything is blanketed in snow, tractors parked forlornly and prim rows of fir trees. It was snowing when I landed in Paris and I couldn't stop smiling - snow! And in Paris! On a grassy patch between runways there was a rabbit hopping around.

French strangers I've encountered have been surprisingly kind of forgiving of my massacring their language, like when I kept asking "Où est la guère?" (Where is the war?) instead of "Où est la gare?" (Where is the train station?)

I will be at Bordeaux in 2 hours - no idea what to expect.

Francophonic nightmares

Last night I dreamt that I missed my flight to France.

Actually, it was much more elaborate than that, as my dreams usually are (Cara can testify - I've regaled her with dreamscape stories about whales in Paris and a quest to destroy Salazaar Slytherin (I'm still cool I promise)). The dream went something like this - 

I woke up, realizing that it was 9:00 and my flight was at 10:00. I must have been in Berkeley, even though my surroundings were decidedly Texan, because I remember thinking to myself, "I can't take the BART to SFO, it'll take an hour. Someone has to drive me." Some guy offered to give me a ride (I don't remember who, so we'll skip the Freudian analysis), and I left without packing - just zipped up my suitcase and shot out the door. In a later part of my dream I remember remembering, "Fuck, I left all my toiletries." We took this weird convoluted route through dirt roads and up mountains (yes, this is still San Francisco), finally arriving at the airport minutes late. They don't let me on the flight. The airline is Southwest, which is appropriate because they fucked up my last flight in all sorts of ways. Anyway, I look over and who do I see but Sophie! Apparently, she missed her flight to Madrid too. The next few minutes of the dream are taken up with me trying to decipher this convoluted chart that the airline rep hands me, which is supposed to be a flight schedule but looks like gibberish. There are no other flights to Paris. Ever. For the rest of time. With the same chart, Sophie finds another flight to Madrid and walks away happily, and I'm left stranded and alone, pulling my suitcase towards the automatic doors.

The upside is that now I'm going to set 3 alarms 5 hours ahead on the day I actually leave.

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I'm running a bunch of errands with my dad today for Bordeaux. We're getting euros from the bank, picking up adapters and converters from Radio Shack, and getting a new suitcase from Southwest because they fucking destroyed the one I had. I'm not bitter, by the way. I want to pick up travel guide books and a book of French slang. There are so many things to take care of that keep popping in my head, it's impossible to keep track. My suitcase is already overflowing - I'll definitely be leaving a few things I originally packed at my family friend's place in Texas. Better to be overprepared than not at all, right?