| HOME Doggy Style Archive On the Road Holidays Doggy Style Blog Novel |
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Part I |
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Until now I’d been used to starving on flights and eating candy bars when I landed because I have a firm policy of not putting anything in my mouth that I A) can’t identify and, B) isn’t a color found in nature. |
Traveling can be
a disorienting experience when you cross time zones, oceans, and that person sitting next
to you on the plane who thinks his elbow can be in your side for 12 straight hours without
your saying a word. Maybe you didn’t notice, but that was Rod Serling standing
at the entrance to the boarding ramp, even though he was trying to disguise himself by
wearing a blue airline employee uniform that was in style for five minutes in 1958. Maybe.
Obviously whoever it is that designs these uniforms either wants to make sure there will
be no testosterone on board ("Please check all excess testosterone with the Sky Cap
before boarding") or just plain hates women. This particular flight, from San Francisco to Paris, was an eye-opener. In a non-paid plug for Air France I have to say they disproved one long held belief of mine—that the Mile-High Club is a myth. Just kidding. Unfortunately. No, it turns out what they really disproved is that airline food is inedible—theirs was damned good. We feasted on terrine, duckling or salmon, camembert, good bread, flan, and free wine. Even seconds on the bread and wine. Hell, until now I’d been used to starving on flights and eating candy bars when I landed because I have a firm policy of not putting anything in my mouth that I A) can’t identify and, B) isn’t a color found in nature. They also proved that the myth of the sexy flight attendant is
true, something which, at the risk of incurring the wrath of flight attendants everywhere,
I didn’t believe. No, it wasn’t just the accents, though that was a big help. It
was the person in Human Resources (which in a nod to old world charm they probably still
call Personnel) who laid down the law that only women with slight overbites could work for
Air France. Someone give that person the Nobel Peace Prize—thanks to him or her I
dreamed peacefully the entire flight, even when I wasn’t sleeping. The flight
stewards, or guys as they like to be called, may have had overbites too, but to be honest
I didn’t pay any attention. |
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I slept all the way to Rennes, waking up at the end to say a prayer to St. Samsonite (the patron saint of travelers and jumping gorillas) that my luggage was still there. And full. I think I like this country already. |
The sound system
on the plane was better (electronics instead of pushing air—what a concept!), the
seats were a touch more comfortable though just as cramped, and the movies, well, they
sucked as usual. But that was okay, they put me to sleep, which made waking up to a flight
attendant with a slight overbite leaning over me murmuring in French that it was time to
wake up a very nice bienvenu. True, it would have been nicer had the other 400
people not been on the flight, but I’m trying not to be too picky. I’m headed to St-Malo, a seaside vacation town in Bretagne on the English Channel. Bretagne is French for Brittany. Français is French for French. I’ll be using as much français as possible through this because I want to get into the swing of French life (la vie française) during my two-month stay. Well, that and I’d like to prove that three years of High School French, a $40 Berlitz CD-ROM, and a French For Traveler’s phrasebook that thinks "Je crois que je suis perdu" (I think I’m lost) is actually a good thing to say to a stranger in a foreign country can actually pay off. I take the train to Rennes, where my friend Vincent, who got
me into this, and his mother pick me up, saving me from taking a second train to St-Malo.
Not that it would have been a problem since I slept all the way to Rennes anyway, waking
up at the end to say a prayer to St. Samsonite (the patron saint of travelers and jumping
gorillas) that my luggage was still there. And full. I think I like this country already. |
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I sat in his kitchen, still disoriented, drinking tea from a soup bowl and eating rock hard pieces of baguette with jam while listening to this retired physics professor tell me—mostly in incomprehensible French—about his life teaching mécanique physique. |
We had dinner in
a restaurant that specialized in choucroute (sauerkraut and sausages), joined by
Mme. Lelievre’s dog. Dogs, you see, are welcome in restaurants in France. Well, the
ones that don’t serve them, anyway. Just kidding. After all, this is France, not
Korea. By the time we got to St-Malo and I settled into my small apartment by the sea, I was more than ready to crash. Funny how being totally turned around by time zones, drinking wine, and filling your stomach can do that to a person. I tried to check my email but things were being strange and I wasn’t in a state of mind to figure them out. I climbed into the bottom bunk bed—What? No cowboy and Indian flannel sheets?—and crashed. The next morning, no sooner had I opened the outer doors to let some light in than Paul, my landlord, appeared and invited me upstairs for petit déjeuner. "It’s always fascinating to see how other cultures do things differently than we do," I thought while sitting in his kitchen, still disoriented, drinking tea from a soup bowl and eating rock hard pieces of baguette with jam while listening to this retired physics professor tell me—mostly in incomprehensible French—about his life teaching mécanique physique. It wasn’t until a few days later that I discovered these quaint customs were just Paul being Paul. His wife, Miréne, you see, served me tea in mugs while apologizing profusely for my being fed stale baguette. And she hasn’t used the words mécanique and physique in the same sentence to me yet. Yet. ©1999 Mad Dog Productions, Inc. All
Rights Reserved.
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