Road rage I

I haven’t driven a car in over a decade. In Paris, you really don’t need one. The public transportation system, while far from perfect, is efficient enough to allow the city’s inhabitants to get around with relative ease. If you ask me, owning a car here is more a liability than a necessity; the streets are overcrowded, the parking cher et rare, and the security highly dubious (unless your car is made of some kind of un-keyable, un-bashable, un-burnable space material). So why bother?

Well, because cars are quite handy when one wants to travel beyond the city without having to rely on the train. And they’re good for professional purposes. And for those with young children, public transportation is not so convenient. I’m well aware of all these things. Truth be told, I’d have obtained a French driver’s license years ago if I could have. But alas, one of the (many) things that no one tells you when you move to France is that you have exactly one year from the issuing of your first residence permit in which to freely exchange your foreign driver's license for a French one. After that, it’s all over; you have to go through French driving school, complete with coursework, road lessons and a final driving test that is notoriously difficult to pass or even schedule, all for the peccadillo of €1,300 or so.

But that’s not all. You have to learn standard shift. In France, automatics are considered wimpy cars created for wimpy people who don’t know how to handle the road (Americans, in other words). Granted, plenty of my countrymen (my parents included) thumb their noses at such vicious stereotypes and embrace the stick shift. Not me. All through high school I happily zipped about in my late grandfather’s 2-door hatchback, an automatic that really hadn’t been conceived for the twisting, narrow roads of my native mountain town and thus struggled quite a bit with the steeper inclines. That didn’t matter; I was—and remain—incapable of maneuvering a stick shift. My dad courageously tried to teach me once.... I’ll leave it at that. Three pedals, three mirrors and five gears are just too many things to deal with simultaneously, even for a multi-tasker such as myself. In all honesty, I do tend to go through life with my head in the clouds—ask my 10th grade driver’s ed teacher—and one simply cannot have one’s head in the clouds while trying to drive stick. That’s why God invented the automatic.

But again, the French don’t do automatics (taxi drivers notwithstanding), or at least they’ll never admit to it. And so, if I ever intend on once more embracing the freedom of the open road, leaning into the wind at the helm of my mighty steed ... er ... whatever, then I am just going to have to grin and bear the humiliation of French driving school. Sigh. I hate being made fun of, and I will DEFINITELY be made fun of when I show up to class, a 30-something American amidst a bunch of snickering French teenagers, and proceed to demonstrate precisely how clueless I am when faced with a stick shift. “Ha ha! The old lady with the funny accent stalled the car again! Ha ha!”

But let’s just entertain the impossible for a moment and imagine that I somehow master the stick. I’d still have to face the sadistic free for all that is French motor law. Coming to a dead stop in the middle of an intersection if there’s a series of dashes running through it, for example. And whatever sick fool dreamt up the whole priorité à droite thing should be given the same sentence as Edmond Dantès. But my least favorite of all is probably the roundabout. I began calling them “death circles” the minute I arrived here and have remained true to my prejudice ever since. Those things were not meant to be negotiated by people like me.

Place de l'Etoile: where mediocre drivers go to die.

Incidentally, I’ve lived outside the Motherland long enough to no longer detain a valid US license, either. That’s right; I lack what is essentially the ID card of the average American citizen, a fact that never fails to get me into trouble when I’m home for a visit. Whether it’s writing a check (contrary to popular belief, one’s passport is not a universally accepted form of ID) or trying to buy booze, having an expired driver’s license is just a recipe for disappointment, extreme irritation and uncontrolled outbursts of anti-American sentiment quite ill befitting my generally easy-going (American) nature. I should really look into renewal one of these days, but with all the administrative hoop-jumping I already have to do as a French resident, I simply cannot accept the notion of also having to stand in line at the DMV. I’ve paid at the proverbial office, non? They should just SEND me a new one as a token of goodwill between fellow Americans. But in the meantime, I cannot legally get behind the wheel of a car in America or France, or for that matter any country requiring a (valid) driver’s license.

Which brings me to my next point. I discovered a few years back that having a French permit is not necessarily the sine qua non of legal vehicular operation in France. As early as the 1970s, European lawmakers went and approved the circulation of 2-person, permit-free cars. That’s right, cars that any idiot can cruise around in without ever having set foot in driver’s ed. Bizarrely, none of my French friends finds this blatantly criminal at all. “But the cars can only go 45 kilometers per hour!” they laugh. Right. Quick math quiz: A permit-free car traveling at 45 km per hour is heading south on la rue du Piéton mort. At the same time, another permit-free car moving at the same speed is heading north on the same road. A few seconds before the moment when the two cars meet, a small child goes running into the street between them, chasing after his ballon rouge.... What are the chances that anybody will walk away unharmed? I say, people without permits should limit their driving pleasure to Disneyland's Autopia and not go careening about on real roads, risking multiple lives behind the wheel of permit-free cars. I mean, just look at these things:

Just this side of a rickshaw.

I seem to recall having seen a similar contraption in a long-ago episode of Family Matters. And while at the time it appeared perfectly appropriate for the iconic nerd Steven Urkel to be driving one, today plenty of perfectly normal French men and women zip about in them without a second thought. On the other hand, in a country that fully embraces the Smart car as a credible—nay, even somewhat fashionable!—form of transportation, I suppose the permit-free car’s relative popularity should come as a shock to no one.

Thus, it appears that the only remaining option to my driving conundrum is to win the lottery and hire a personal chauffeur. I rather like this approach, which would offer the additional benefit of freeing me forever from early morning/late night dependence on Parisian taxis, whose dubious reputation is worthy of an entirely separate blog entry. A chauffeur it is, then. I shall leave driving school to the peons.

The revery alone will do

The daughter of two Self Realization Fellowship devotees, I try to avoid hating any living thing. Surely some good can be found in everyone; surely the divine spark is always there, even if buried far, far within. Actually, that’s not true; I openly detest entire categories of living things, most of which fall into the insect family. Namely spiders, mosquitoes and my arch nemesis: the yellowjacket.

Imagine yourself, on a sunny summer’s day, out to enjoy a delicious picnic on a lush green lawn. You roll out your blanket and arrange the succulent contents of your lovingly prepared picnic basket about you, marveling at the simple goodness of life. Only, no sooner have you begun to savor your joyous summer fare than a yellowjacket comes buzzing angrily into your face, desiring to steal a bite of your meal and threatening you with the prospect of a painful sting/bite/whatever. Then, another shows up. And another. Swatting at them does no good; it only seems to make them angrier. Ugh! Your moment of peaceful enjoyment has been ruined by an unwelcome horde of dangerous, ugly insects. How désagréable.

Let me be clear: I DESPISE yellowjackets. I see one, and my inner “irritation-o-meter” instantaneously rockets from “zen” to “apoplectic.” If I could, I would have every last one of the beastly creatures eliminated, and deal with the karma in my next life (no doubt as a yellowjacket).

I don’t understand those who blithely say, “Oh, just ignore them. They’re harmless.” Harmless?! Seriously? These people obviously have not entirely exited childhood and still think that insects are our friends. Sorry folks; yellowjackets—alias meat bees—are out to kill. They and their horrible little chewing mandibles are the very face of evil. The number of barbecues, picnics, outdoor cocktails and miscellaneous happy moments around the world that have been ruined because of these devilish fiends defies the imagination.

To those who still require convincing, allow me to offer an anecdote. At the tender age of 9, I took part, as I did every year, in that great American institution, summer camp. I always loved summer camp and dearly hope that I can find its equivalent in France for my future Franco-American children; without it, I fear that their personal development will suffer from the absence of kumbayas, handmade crafts and morning chapel that I so cherished throughout my youth.

So there I was at Special Buddy Camp on a fine summer afternoon, engaged in a game of water balloon toss with a group of my fellow campers. The brightly colored balloons glistened in the sunlight, droplets of water bounced to and fro, our innocent laughter rang in the air.... And then, pain. Excruciating, red-hot pain shooting through my inner thigh. OWWWW! I had been savagely stung by a rogue yellowjacket that had landed on me unannounced and uninvited. No good reason was to be had, either: we had no food nearby, nor was I wearing any kind of potentially tasty-smelling sunscreen. No, the wretched beast had landed on my delicate skin with the sole purpose of inflicting wanton suffering.

To make matters worse, my mother’s resolutely holistic approach to healing resulted in her rapid arrival armed with a giant red onion, which she proceeded to cut into round slices and tape—tape!—to my thigh. I was suddenly not only the girl who had gotten stung, but the girl who smelled like onions AND had a crazy mother. In a camp half composed of handicapped children, I had somehow managed to become the “special” one.

Little did I realize this was only the beginning; the damn things being an international source of misery, France has plenty of them as well. Why, only yesterday I was sitting on a bench in a park near my job, enjoying my take-away lunch in the late October sun while nourishing my soul with a book by Thich Nhat Hanh. It was a perfect moment of zenitude:

Breathing in, I calm my body. 
Breathing out, I smile. 
Dwelling in the present moment, 
I know this is a wonderful mo— AGGHHH!

Out of nowhere came an enormous yellowjacket, buzzing not at my food but at my person. Tossing my short-lived moment of zen out the proverbial window, I leapt to my feet and proceeded to do the exact opposite of what Thich Nhat Hanh would have done, flailing purse and book wildly about and unleashing a virulent stream of profanity that did not go unnoticed by my bemused fellow park-goers. I’d say that my journey toward enlightenment is far from finished.

If France has yellowjackets, then it must also have those wonderful gooey traps with which to kill them. I know what I’m doing this weekend. Enlightenment can wait.

Gesundheit

While getting ready to go to work this morning, I tuned in as usual to my favorite radio station, Europe 1. And in so doing, I learned that the Icelandic volcano Fjfqkdfkmdfjdslkf has intensified its eruptions, ensuring continued air travel mayhem. Sorry, I mean volcano Eyjafjallajokull.

While millions of travelers are cursing angry mother nature, I for one am selfishly thankful that for once I am not caught in the midst of it. I have a horrendous record of travel mishaps, be they by air, land or sea, and I wonder whether, by this, my own luck might not be shifting in that department. I’ll get a chance to test my theory in about a month, although if this unpronounceable volcano continues to belch monstrous clouds of noxious ash into the air then maybe not.

Volcanoes have always scared the living hell out of me. When I was little, I remember watching a National Geographic special on the ancient city of Pompeii: its customs, its art, its people and especially, its horrific annihilation by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. To this day, images of fossilized skeletons in the fetal position still pop into my mind whenever I hear about erupting volcanoes. As I grew up in the mountains, with a particularly large one visible right outside of my family’s living room window, the story of Pompeii’s tragic demise took roughly five seconds to convince my seven-year-old imagination that that juggernaut across the way—whose name just so happens to be Volcan—was a sleeping Vesuvius II and that it was only a matter of time before we all ended up like those poor wretches of antiquity. In reality, Volcan Mountain is not actually a volcano, but try explaining that nuance to a child who has just been subjected to this. Thank you, National Geographic.

I actually went to Naples last October, and despite being assured that there was no immediate reason to worry that Vesuvius would spontaneously awaken and kill everyone within a 12 km radius during my brief stay, I can’t say that I felt particularly at ease with its menacing silhouette bearing down on the city, either. Nor was I terribly disappointed to “not have the time” to visit Pompeii itself, and this despite my fascination with ancient history. What can I say? Mother nature will always have the last word, so maybe it’s best to just stay out of her way. Look at how this current eruption has taken the intricately choreographed ballet that is modern air traffic engineering and transformed it into thousands of grounded flights, legions of apoplectic travelers living out their own personal versions of The Terminal, and all manner of hand-wringing, finger-pointing and name-calling from governments, travel authorities and airline executives across the planet. It makes me think that all those disaster movies that I generally snub are probably fairly accurate in their depiction of the world’s reaction should anything TRULY serious happen (alien invasion, for example). It would probably be pure chaos.

But let’s look at the bright side. Aliens probably won’t attack us any time soon, and in a couple of weeks the international air space will probably be back to normal. And I bet trips to Iceland will be REALLY CHEAP for quite some time. Not that I’d go. Shudder.

 

Survivante

Well, I survived the ski trip. But I think I have only the brevity of my séjour to thank for that! For as I predicted, I proved beyond any possible doubt that when I say “I’m awful at skiing,” it is not what the French would dub “2nd degree” (tongue-in-cheek) humor. I have bruises in places I didn’t know could be bruised, muscle aches in muscles I didn’t know I had. Taking the stairs at this point is pure agony, but I did it. I skied the Alps. Or more accurately, I slid down the Alps on my face.

My introduction to le ski was brief but intense, all the more so for having gone with G.’s family—both nombreuse and particularly, how shall I say, exuberant. Being virtually the only girl in the pack, I had to make do with a decidedly masculine, “sink or swim” approach to a choice selection of activities: snow hiking, cross-country skiing and some bizarre form of postmodern sledding involving thin, plastic contraptions vaguely resembling over-sized shovel heads. Zooming down the snowy forest trails we went on these things, narrowly avoiding violent collision with tree trunks and terrified children. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned inner tubes?

And as for the cross-country, that too was lost in translation. Somewhere in my life I had managed to develop the obviously erroneous impression that this alternative form of skiing was “easy”—in the sense that it didn’t involve big gnarly descents—but oh ho ho! Whatever was I thinking? The uphill segments were just fine: no falling over, just a bit of slipping and sliding. But alas, what goes up must come down, and those segments were most assuredly not just fine. Thank God I sprained both of my ankles back in high school, because that endowed them with an elasticity that kept me from doing any serious harm to myself when I fell over … and over … and over … and over, on down the hill, twisting them in all directions because cross-country skis stay on no matter what. Who on earth invented this sadistic, ridiculously hard-to-learn sport? The jury is going to have to seriously deliberate before delivering a verdict on any hope for a possible Katrin Goes Skiing, the Sequel.

At least I was able to experience the singular beauty of the snow-adorned Alps and the extreme pleasure of returning to a Paris several degrees warmer than the one I had left. Rainy, of course, but definitely warmer. Dare we speculate that spring is somewhere nearby? I for one certainly want to. Not that spending my evenings cuddling with the radiator isn’t fun and all, but I have fond memories of days gone by when I could actually sit outside, on the balcony, and not even shiver! Ha ha! Or were those but the wild imaginings of my sun-deprived brain? Paris weather often brings back memories of reading Ray Bradbury’s short story “All Summer in a Day,” although the comparison is not entirely fair on my part; I should also point out that Parisian weather patterns are perfectly capable of swinging 180° in the other direction, resulting in record-breaking heat waves and extreme fan shortages such as that of 2003. Great year for French wine, incidentally. Rungis food market, on the other hand, will never be the same.

In any case, my skiing ordeal is over; here I am, back in Paris, snuggled up on the couch with a cocktail in hand, jazz in the background, and the extended edition DVD of Lord of the Rings to savor as I will. And I have to say, this beats any ski trip I can think of.

On winter recreation

In but a few short days I will be going skiing. Yes, I, Katrin Holt, have decided to blatantly put life and limb at risk. Why? Because love means making certain compromises—and in this particular case that means agreeing to extreme physical discomfort and a generous dose of ridicule because I’m the significant other of a Frenchman and in the winter, the French go skiing. With their significant others.

There are many sports at which I am bad. Volleyball was never my fort, nor was tennis. I never did manage the 7-minute mile back in junior high, despite the dubious pleasure of weekly opportunities. I’m lousy at basketball, never played water polo and the hand-eye coordination of softball was never my thing. But while my skills in these areas may be less than stellar, at no sport am I more pathetic than I am at skiing.

At this point in my diatribe (oft-repeated, especially around this time of the year), my interlocutor generally protests with something along the lines of, “But you said you’re from the mountains. How can you not know how to ski?” As if mountains were all the same, all across the world, each and every one of them outfitted for rock climbing in the summer and alpine skiing in the winter. Yes, I’m from the mountains, and no, my mountains aren’t known for skiing. Hiking, sure; apple pies, absolutely. But no skiing. It’s more a sledding kind of place. Sledding is fun; sledding is easy; sledding I like.

So no, I’ve never learned how to ski. And honestly, this ineptitude has never been the source of any significant sense of inferiority. On the contrary, the very concept of donning multiple layers of puffy, multi-colored ski clothes, strapping what appear to be 10-pound moon boots to my feet, and going sliding off on those precarious-looking contraptions popularly known as skis, risking a broken neck in the name of “fun” and coming home at the end of the day cold, wet and nursing a bruised body and ego, has somehow never succeeded in eliciting any form of enthusiasm from me. And yet, much of the world, including 99% of the French, sees things differently. How many times have I heard the praises of skiing sung? The beauty of the mountains; the thrill of the descent; the gratification of those particular muscle aches; the gustatory bliss of a piping hot fondue savoyarde or raclette at the end of the day. I could go on....

But I won’t. Let me just say that the skiing world and I have always had our differences. Even before ever attempting it, I already knew that it wasn’t my bag. Yes, I once took a shot at a quick bout of skiing, back in my wayward youth, at a site aptly named “Purgatory.” We only stayed for a day, the majority of which I spent falling over, careening into innocent fellow skiers and bouncing down gargantuan “kiddie” slopes like a human snowball much in the fashion of vintage Goofy cartoons, leaving random skis and poles dotting the hillside behind me. In the end, I sought refuge in a pseudo log cabin café, where I basically hid until day’s end, sipping hot chocolate and watching tiny children tearing the hell out of the slopes as though it were easy AND fun.

In light of my lack of affinity for winter sports, I long ago mastered the fine art of avoiding any form of participation in the masochistic post-Christmas French tradition of “le ski.” However, G. caught on to my heretofore-successful maneuvering and has somehow managed to finagle me into joining his ski-loving family this year for “just” a long weekend. We’re going to “zee Alps,” where I would just like to point out in passing that skiing deaths—deaths!—occur every single year.

But no matter. I shan’t be called a wuss. I shall go. I shall leave frozen Paris and travel to the even more frozen Alps, where I shall don the silliest ski clothes that I can get my hands on and spend every day acquiring the aches and pains required to earn my evening dose of raclette. Have I mentioned that I abhor raclette, right along with every other traditional Savoyard dish involving potatoes and/or bread and stinky, indigestible melted cheese? But never mind! I’ll go, and if I hate it (which I undoubtedly will), then I won’t go back again next year. That is the other half of the compromise.

And so, dear readers, if you never hear from me again, know that I at least left this earth in a spirit of adventure and diplomacy, risking my fragile ego and my (relatively) young life in the name of Franco-American relations. I should be awarded immediate French citizenship just for this. And if I do survive, you can expect a full report on this totally bizarre ritual fashion of rendering the already bleak winter just that much more unpleasant. Wish me luck!

Sonny Bono: I bet he agrees with me.