The scarlet letter

For those of you who are wondering (all five of you), YES, over the summer I did indeed pass the super scary, totally intimidating, much-loathed practical portion of the French driving exam. In fact, I more than passed it: I got 31 points, which is like 107%. To be honest, I feel kind of silly now for making such a big deal out of it. I mean, I’ve been whining, complaining and generally freaking out over this thing for years now. YEARS! I’ve already written about it here, here and here, and I could easily write more. Way more.

Semi-obsessive tendencies? Absolutely. But that’s how I made it to France to begin with, so let’s keep things in perspective. In any case, according to Google Analytics, most of you reading this are not actually human, but are instead robots. Ukrainian ones especially. Therefore, if I go off on yet another driving-in-France tangent, will you care? Probably not. You’ll keep circling back and screwing with my stats regardless, so I may as well tangent away!

All right, so I have my permit. Actually, I have a piece of paper that is standing in for my permit until the real thing comes in the mail—in something like four months. The Man had better be hand-crafting that thing using some secret ancestral technique, because damn. And, réglementation oblige, I now have my very own, extremely visible “A” sticker (signifying apprenti) emblazoned on the back of our car. Now why go and stigmatize new drivers à la Hester Prynne? Because adultery in France may be no biggie, but learning to drive is serious business. Newbies have to sport the scarlet A for three years. Awesome.

At least it’s discreet.

So, equipped with the requisite paraphernalia, I am totally legit to take to the open road without anyone telling me to slow down/speed up/check my mirrors more often/sit farther back in my seat/quit driving like a Corsican granny. Only here’s the thing: my zany-but-loveable instructor may be gone, but the act of driving hasn’t become any less stressful. I thought it would instantly morph into a source of pleasure once I no longer had a sidekick commenting on my every move, but in reality solo driving is actually kind of a pain in the ass! No matter—I have been forcing myself to get out there and face the ugly traffic, negotiate the sickeningly narrow “2-way” roads, avoid the randomly parked cars, make sense of the surreal pavement markings and deal with the chronic tailgating (I have a big “A,” people! So would you please get off it?).

Here’s an amusing bit of French driving trivia: as opposed to the US, where license plates can be customized to form compelling personal statements such as TOPDAWG or LUV2SK8, France doesn’t allow any (intentional) funny business to creep into its vehicle registration. Cars are issued plates marked with a two letter-three number-two letter combination like this:

The attribution is automatic, so you have close to no say in what combination your car receives. You could end up with your own initials, or something cute like BB, or even a fun smiley like XD. But you could just as easily get stuck with something totally atrocious and thus become an object of highway ridicule. You see, as is the case with English, certain letters when pronounced in French sound a lot like whole words. Q is a perennial favorite, because it sounds just like cul, which is French for ass. See where I’m going with this?

Here are some classics, all of which I have seen while living here, alongside their US would-be equivalent (which may actually exist as well, but the DMV would have to be asleep at the wheel. Har har). Being awarded any of the following on one’s plates demands a seriously self-deprecating sense of humor or else it’s going to be a long ride, especially for the poor schmucks who find themselves stuck with two of them. Since most of this is bathroom humor, let’s begin with:

Letter combo	French signification	US equivalent
WC	toilettes
DQ	des culs
PQ	papier cul
KK	caca
QQ	cul cul
PT	péter

Yes it’s all completely sophomoric, but as car games go, one could do worse. Interestingly, France draws the line at certain potentially offensive combinations, such as SS (better late than never), meaning they cannot be issued. PD, on the other hand, which is a well-known derogatory term for homosexual, is definitely a possibility.

Here’s another tidbit: prior to 2009, the last two figures on French plates indicated the vehicle’s département. Paris is 75, for example, so cars registered in Paris had license plate numbers ending in 75. But this led to road rage being directed at specific départements: “Did you see that 62 cut me off? Typical...” Things tended to get particularly nasty between 75ers and 13ers, 13 being Marseille. Car vandalism, theft, even assault. When we bought our first car we actually had it labeled 92 instead of 75, just to be prudent (you can do that—69 is an especially popular choice).

Admit it: driving in France is a good topic.

Hot town

I know I shouldn’t start off by complaining, but I just have to. Why is it so friggin’ hot around here? Because it’s July? No. July can be perfectly pleasant. I’ll tell you why: because France, despite its many charms and areas of strength and superiority, does not GET climate control. Look, I spent the better part of my youth in seriously hot places: Ramona, California, for example (go Dawgs!), followed by Dallas, Texas (go Mustangs!). And I can barely even remember sweating for any serious amount of time. Why? Because AIR. Because CONDITIONING. What is so complicated? You buy a unit, install it, and then, you don’t spend the whole summer fantasizing about running naked through a snow storm. But no, no—the French seem to totally distrust air conditioning; even those who have it are reticent to turn it on too high because they don’t want to catch a chill. Every summer I hear the same lament: “I caught a cold from the air conditioning.” We Americans don’t know what this is; the right to crank the A/C up to “subarctic” is clearly written somewhere in the Constitution. I would never call the French wusses. Except when it comes to this. I mean come on. A cold? Really?

“I told you to set it on low!”

I had to take a suburban train the other day, along with little g. (notice his promotion from baby g.), a stroller and a bunch of luggage, in 107°F heat. Do you suppose there was any climatisation installed on this PUBLIC SERVICE transportation? Hell no. Within 15 minutes I was so sopping wet radiant that a fellow passenger reached out in a touching display of empathy (or perhaps just plain pity) and handed me a kleenex. It was sort of like trying to absorb a swimming pool using one paper towel, but I appreciated the gesture. What is France WAITING FOR to jump on the air conditioning bandwagon? Were 15,000 heat-related deaths in 2003 not enough? Are they trying to add mine to the list? Here we are in 2015, with the technology to avoid such catastrophes, and yet, do you know what “action” the French government is taking this year to protect its citizens from the patently lethal heat? Encouraging them to buy fans and drink water. That’s it. They’ve even come out with an official poster. I’ve lived here for a lot of summers, and not once has drinking water or sticking my face in front of a fan done anything to render the heat any less insupportable. One might posit environmental or budgetary concerns behind it all, but I would counter with “laziness” and “apathy.”

Insufficient.

No, the only way to escape the heat without heading to Brittany is to head to the bathtub. I stuck little g. in there the other day because his sweet baby cheeks were getting all flushed, and one can only empty so many cans of pricey thermal spring water mist on one’s inappreciative toddler, right? So I gave him a good old-fashioned spray bottle and left him to go at it while I attempted to get some work done. At one point, the giggling gave way to a full minute of silence, which as any parent of a two-year-old knows, is a surefire sign of high mischief and/or imminent death. So I popped my head into the bathroom to check on him, only to find that he had gotten into my (expensive) “feminine wash,” and was happily shampooing his hair with it. I should have been angry, but I was actually kind of proud. Only two years of experience with the world and he already knows how to shampoo his own hair! How adorable is that? I think the heat is getting to me.

Road rage III

Big news: I passed the written portion of the French driving exam! Champagne!!! I’m so relieved to be done; it was very anxiety-inducing, and who needs that? Not me; I have a toddler and a business and that’s all the anxiety I need, thank you very much.

Oh, but wait—the written exam is not an end in itself, but rather, a means to an end (quite possibly my own). Thus, for the past month, I have been putting my officially solid grasp of driving theory into practice behind the wheel of my very own test car, a Citroën C3, which I have so far not crashed and have only stalled 50 times or so.

Now, as I have mentioned before, despite my owning a California driver’s license, there are basically two factors that have deterred my ever bothering to attain a French one: 1.) the stick shift 2.) la priorité à droite (priority to the right). Why? Read on.

The stick shift

Remember that scene from Big, where Tom Hanks keeps putting his hand in the air during a board meeting and saying, “I don’t get it”? That’s like me with the whole clutch thing. Try as they might, no one has ever managed to get that particular notion through my otherwise fairly well-screwed-on head. The bicycle gear metaphor is no use. YouTube videos of mechanics presenting a real clutch are no use, either (they actually make things worse by adding all kinds of insane vocabulary—flywheel? Pressure plate? Whaaa?). I don’t get it. I also don’t get why everyone keeps going on about how automatic is so boooring, while manual is so exciting! Personally, I think the “excitement” factor is simply adrenaline rushing into the bloodstream at the possibility of imminent death.

La priorité à droite

I’ve been bitching and moaning for eons about France’s priorité à droite. But now, having finally experienced its heinousness from the driver’s seat, I realize I haven’t been bitching or moaning nearly loudly enough. Just look:

I actually made this. It’s a slow day, OK?

See the orange car arriving from the right? Logic would say that he should stop instead of just careening onto the main road. That may be, but this is driving in Europe, land of roundabouts and sidewalk parking; logic has no place here. Because he is arriving from the right, the orange guy can just GO. No pause, no yield, no stop; nothing. Just go. The blue guy, on the other hand, who was driving along on the main road minding his own business, has to slam on the brakes and let that jerk gentleman on the right get through. Imagine the consequences if the blue guy’s view of the intersection were to be obstructed by foliage or who knows what. Just put up a damn stop sign, people! Stupefying.

Do you know what la priorité a droite really is? Think about it. The cars driving on the bigger, wider, faster, obviously superior road have to yield to the cars arriving from the smaller, narrower, slower, obviously crappier road ... why, it’s a microcosm of Socialism! Making life difficult for the big guys so that the little guys, however undeserving, can get ahead. It’s like formalized cutting in line. No wonder it doesn’t exist in the US.

Other than that, my lessons are going fairly well. So far, I’ve driven with two instructors: the first one is an economics fan who talks a kilometer a minute (does that expression even exist?) and is convinced that France’s economy is going to implode at any moment, that Russia, China and the US are headed for war with one another, and that those paranoid survivalists whom everyone takes for crazy are actually the only ones with any sense; the second one is a laid-back musician-looking type with a diamond-studded double piercing who keeps telling me that I seem tense.

I am supposed to take the practical portion of the driving exam after 20 hours of lessons, which seems pretty optimistic considering I still don’t actually understand what I’m doing. But no matter! I don’t have to understand something to do it right. Take parallel parking. I went to “the Google,” typed in “parallel parking,” and came across a perfectly wonderful explanation of how to do it. No theory, no opinions, just clear, concise steps to follow. As the author says, “You do not need to practice, you just need to fucking follow the directions.” Very refreshing. Now if only that kind of pragmatism could get me through the exam!

Road rage II

As some of you may recall, I swore up and down that I would avoid getting behind the wheel in France, both for my safety as well as everyone else’s. But that was before I had a baby, who is growing at lightning speed and will be in driving school himself before I know it, which would be super embarrassing. Actually, the truth is that he goes to day care twice a week now, and the place is almost 20 minutes away by foot. This isn’t a problem when the sun is out; it’s a lovely walk, and hey—I’m sporty. But when the nice weather heads south and we’re stuck with the nasty, those 20 minutes feel a lot like 40 (you try pushing a stroller while holding an umbrella). So enough of that. Plus, we’re suburbanites now. I have clients to meet. Babykins has little friends to visit. The car was bound to become an issue sooner or later.

So I bit the proverbial bullet and signed up for driver’s ed—for the second time in my life. The first time, I was 15 years old and I think it cost my parents something like $300. This time, I’m much, much older and it cost—I kid you not—six times more (and my parents aren’t paying). I think this kind of blatant extortion heavy-handed pricing would spark a revolution in the US, but as I don’t live there anymore, and my Californian license is worth exactly rien to the French, my options were either to go (back) to driving school or find alternative means of mother-and-baby locomotion. There are a few, but they all seem inordinately cumbersome and/or life-threatening:

The bike: dangerous

The caboose: stupid-looking and dangerous

The rickshaw: unwieldy, stupid-looking, and dangerous

None of these being an acceptable alternative to the car (bonus: we already have one), I accepted the price tag, expensed it (obviously), and moved on to worrying about what I had just committed myself to. Because even after years of experiencing the French highway as a terrified passenger, it still strikes me as complex, overly aggressive and fraught with seemingly arbitrary, totally un-American rules like sidewalk parking and la priorité à droite. Perhaps worst of all (for me), automatic shift is as rare in France as it is ubiquitous in the US. But what do you do, go buy a fake permit online? Hey wait—

In France, as in the US, one can obtain a driver’s license (legally) only after passing a written test, followed by a practical test. But here, the written test is electronic. It’s based on a series of screen shots intended to simulate various situations one might encounter while driving, each accompanied by a multiple choice question. Preparation for the written test consists in taking practice test after practice test after practice test until one has pretty much memorized every possible question that could ever come up on the real test. For example:

How many points is this guy worth?

I can hardly wait for the practical part.

Are we there yet?

Paris is not beloved for its weather, so I shall resist the urge to devote an entire blog post to complaining about the fantastically depressing low-pressure system that has been ours to bear since mid-March, leaving me resentfully muttering “always winter but never Christmas,” and instead focus on one of my favorite topics: modern transportation and why it’s out to get me.

After a particularly difficult week at work at the end of last month, I decided to travel to my husband's parents’ home in the south of France for a much-needed weekend of R&R. The south is warm; the south is sunny; the south is full of cicadas going tse-tse-tse-tse-tse. I love the south! What’s not to love? I’ll tell you what: the 10-hour train ride it takes to get there.

“A 10-hour ride?!” you might gasp. “Surely not! France has wonderful high-speed transportation!” To which I might reply, “HA HA HA HA!!!”

Now, I may have had my differences with certain commercial airlines—whose names shall not be mentioned—but in general I enjoy taking the train. Sure it tends to run late, but it’s so much more convenient than the plane that I really don’t care about punctuality (hell, I don’t care about it elsewhere in my life; why care about it here?). However, there is normal, make-an-entrance late and then there is OMG-you’ve-got-to-be-kidding, theater of the absurd late. The difference? Four letters: S-N-C-F.

It all began normally enough: I left work “early” (6:45 pm), went to the Gare de Lyon train station and boarded my train. Foreshadowing the unpleasantness to come, my 1st class ticket had no seat assignment. This is a fairly new gimmick from the SNCF, France’s national railway company. The basic concept is this: you pay for a seat, but then don’t actually get one. Isn’t that innovative? But hey, you’re still allowed to board. If you’re lucky, you can snag a rare vacant seat at some point during your voyage. If you’re unlucky, you can stand (or sit on your suitcase in the dining car). Either way, the SNCF gets your dough. I’d say it’s a win-win deal (for them). So that’s how my voyage began: with no seat. Luckily, at about an hour into the trip, a kindly conductor told me that there were open seats at the front of the train. Score one for me!

Except here’s the thing: no sooner had I occupied my newly-found seat than the train ground to a halt. “Your attention please. Our train has stopped in the middle of the tracks. For your safety, please do not attempt to open the doors,” announced the all-too-familiar automatic voice of the SNCF. Uh-oh.
Ten minutes later: “Your attention please. Our train has stopped in the middle of the tracks....” This isn’t happening.
Thirty minutes later: “Your attention please.” Putaaaaaaaaain.

THREE AND A HALF HOURS LATER, a real voice informed us that the train was, in reality, dead. No sh*t. By that time, we’d lost electricity and were thus “stopped in the middle of the tracks” AND in the dark. Plus I was starving, so I figured it was as good a time as any to enjoy my little paper bag dinner. For those of you who have never tried eating a sandwich on a train in the dark, it’s an interesting experience. Since the air conditioning had obviously gone out as well, and of course the windows were all sealed shut, my fellow passengers were able to truly appreciate the aroma of my sandwich. Luckily for them, it was cucumber and not chicken curry. And luckily for me, they couldn’t have found me anyway.

See?

Sadly, this was but the prelude. At some point, we were given the reason for the train’s death: “la moteur a brûlé.” Oh good! So we’re locked in a train with the engine on fire, I thought. Why is no one reacting to this? And indeed, the stereotypical complaining Parisian was nowhere to be had; these people seemed rather stoic. Instead of rioting, they just sighed and made that distinctive “pfffffff” sound that expresses Gallic exasperation. Incomprehensible. I, on the other hand, was seeing black. Er, red.

At long last, we were informed that a new TGV had arrived behind ours and that firefighters(!) would be escorting all 650 of us along the tracks and onto the new train. At half past midnight, evacuation began (very slowly): one by one, we descended a dubious aluminum ladder out onto the sloping side of the tracks, which was basically one giant pile of over-sized gravel officially called “track ballast” (at least my vocabulary benefited from the experience). Dragging our suitcases/children/domestic animals through said ballast, we stumbled along as best we could, in the dark, for 400+ meters. A grand total of three firefighters were equipped with headlamps, which they kindly directed our way, but just between us it felt preeeeetty improvised. Like, I don’t think the SNCF staff exactly goes through preparative drills for this kind of situation (considering their lousy track record, they might want to reconsider that). The firefighters either for that matter. Sigh.

Similar to our evacuation route. Minus the “in the dark” factor.

All those people took a long damn time being evacuated (also disconcerting), which left us stuck for a good hour and a half before the new train finally sputtered to life ... and took us backward to the Mâcon train station, where we were given water bottles. That was nice of them. But by that point, I couldn’t have cared less about water; I just wanted to arrive already. With our backtrack taken into account, 200 km still lay between me and my destination. Plus, no sooner had the water been distributed and the doors closed for departure than a pregnant woman began to feel faint (no joke—that’s what midnight strolls with the SNCF will do to a person). So the firemen had to come BACK on board to tend to her, which added another hour. TGV: the only high-speed train that travels at zero kph.

False advertising.

Finally, finally, FINALLY we left. And went ... to Lyon (still not my destination). By then it was 3:30 am and the lunch boxes that were distributed to calm/nourish us held no interest for me whatsoever. I didn’t want a tin of tuna rillettes; I wanted to strangle every member of the SNCF executive board with my bare hands. “Railroad maintenance” kept us parked at the Lyon station for another 30 minutes (because as everyone knows, 3:30 am is the ideal moment to work on the tracks. Especially when it’s clearly the TRAINS that need maintaining). At long last, we began to roll; this time in the right direction. And at 5:30 am, I found my sleepy husband waiting for me at the station. By the time I fell into bed, cursing modern transportation and certain I would have been better off taking a steam locomotive (or a bicycle), the birds were chirping cheerfully away in the trees. Of course they were; I’d be cheerful too if I had wings. Merci la SNCF.

Les Misérables

Last weekend, I skipped the country and discovered Luxembourg City: close enough to Paris for a weekend, yet far enough away to feel exotic. Most of my entourage raised an eyebrow when I announced my weekend plans, as apparently the going rap on Luxembourg is that it’s a) small b) boring and c) unsexy. Whatever. For those of you contemplating a visit to Luxembourg, it is none of those things. In addition to being gorgeous, G. and I found it to be plenty big (it’s the damn capital, people! 50 square kilometers—get with it!), plenty interesting, and ... well, it may not be sexy per se, but what do you want? It’s wedged between Germany, eastern France and Belgium; it can’t have everything. What it DOES have is money. Lots of money. And an entire army of invisible street sweepers who keep the place impeccably groomed. That, my friends, is one clean city. Even the fallen leaves look somehow artfully fallen. There is no “5-second rule” in Luxembourg; if you should let any food fall to the ground, you could probably pick it up whenever you felt like it and keep eating. No worries.

They also have really big cheese.

Oh sure, there is poverty in Luxembourg. We learned all about it at the city museum, currently featuring a temporary exhibit cleverly entitled “Poor Luxembourg.” Over the course of a really quite elaborate series of displays and installations, including full-scale models of a homeless camp and a “social” grocery store, we learned that “poverty” in the Grand Duchy is not so much a question of true financial insecurity, but rather of coping with limited access to social pleasures (fewer extracurricular activities for one’s children, for example). We also learned that the gross minimum wage is roughly €1,800 per month—by far the most generous of the EU. In other words, indigence is such an oddity in Luxembourg that it’s worthy of an entire museum exhibit.

France is not Luxembourg. France has plenty of poverty—as well as a fairly conspicuous homeless population. I would know; I was sat upon this week by one particularly conspicuous specimen. Sat. Upon. I was taking the métro home from work with a friend, when an extremely alcoolisé gentleman sporting rags and a half-consumed bottle of whiskey staggered onto our train, screaming what can only be translated as, “You bunch of #@*$!! I #$$& this &$*@ piece of #$$& world of @$#!! Go @#$% yourselves!” Everyone in the wagon stopped talking and stared at him, at which point the doors closed and the train took off. The sudden movement was obviously too much; in slow motion, he toppled backward ... right onto my friend and me, strategically seated as though we had intended to serve as a human safety net. It was nice.

Enter at your own risk.

Like the subway of your average metropolis, the Paris métro has quite a population of “residents.” Some drink themselves into oblivion; some peddle illicit merchandise; still others beg. Of the beggars, I count three categories: the passive, the proactive and the performing. The passive find a spot somewhere in the labyrinth of tunnels and stations and just camp there, with or without a puppy/child by their side, silently admonishing you to spare a dime. There is one such woman who hangs out at the station Opéra, at the foot of the stairway leading to the line 3 platform, just glaring at each and every person who walks by, her eyes boring right into you as you attempt to breeze past nonchalantly. I once fearfully offered her a few lunch vouchers—the fabulous tickets restaurant—and she actually turned out to be way nicer than I had imagined. I almost wanted to give her some marketing advice about the whole catching more flies with honey than with vinegar thing, but thought better of it. If I were homeless, would I take advice off some random commuter? Probably not.

The proactive métro dwellers go ahead and climb aboard the trains themselves, passing from wagon to wagon, shouting over the din about who they are and why they need your contribution. Some are polite; others are frighteningly belligerent. Consider this: back at home, my parents are harassed day and night by phone calls from perfect strangers soliciting money, but here in Paris, you can get the same treatment face à face! Who says urban living is impersonal?

Finally, there are the performers. Some dance; some sing; some play musical instruments. Some are quite good; others are so ear-splittingly bad I would pay them to just STOP ALREADY. And while I’m at it, I would also happily, happily pay them to cease and desist massacring such cherished oldies as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Hotel California,” anything by the Beatles, and the perennial favorite, “El Cóndor Pasa” (yes, I realize the tune predates Paul Simon. That’s no excuse to screw it up). There are also plenty of métro gypsies, but they enter more into the “nasty pickpocket” category than the “unfortunate homeless” one.

For the record, I do not have a heart of stone (plus I’m a Democrat; I’m like obligated to at least feign sympathy). Although, with the price of Paris’s monthly métro pass likely to increase to a whopping €78 over the next year, there comes a point when those of us who do use the public transportation system for ... transportation ... are perfectly justified in demanding, I don’t know, the right to not be sat upon by drunken homeless guys for example. I’m just saying.

In the summer when it sizzles

It’s HOT in Paris right now. Hot-hot-hottttttt. It’s so hot that my boss has asked everyone in the office to draw the window shades and turn off our desk lamps, thus betraying his insanity for he must suspect that our energy-saving Ikea light bulbs are partially to blame. Ever the rebel, I have not obeyed orders because first of all, no way do these silly lamps generate any heat worth mentioning and secondly, never underestimate the parakeet effect, i.e. darkness = zzzzzz. I personally have no desire to awaken hours from now, the right side of my face decorated with key-shaped indentations, only to spend the rest of the afternoon taking witty remarks from my colleagues like, “Hey, fall asleep on your keyboard again?”

This sudden heat thing happens every year, always with the same effect: June gloom takes up most of the month, everyone bitches and moans about how wretched Paris weather is and how lucky those bastards in the south of France are and then, all of sudden, BONJOUR la canicule! Overnight the temperatures sky rocket and everyone seamlessly switches to bitching and moaning about how unbearably hot it is. It doesn’t last, generally speaking (the heat, not the bitching; this is France after all). A notable exception was of course the summer of 2003, which featured endless days of scorching heat, alternating with endless nights of scorching heat, and ended only after some 15,000 people had died of dehydration (a public health catastrophe that bizarrely no one seems to discuss anymore).

Never one to shun an occasion for harrowing adventure, my family made the trip over the big blue water to visit me in the middle of that very same 2003 heat wave. I remember us all sitting around my 5th floor apartment dinner table, eating only after 10:30 pm—when the heat had subsided just enough to allow us to conceive of consuming anything solid. We took cold showers at regular intervals, slept with spray bottles next to our beds and would awaken in the middle of the night, wander over to the open windows and stretch our sweating arms out into the stifling darkness, attempting in vain to catch even the slightest whisper of a breeze. Yeah, it sucked.

At the time, I had no fan (still don’t). This of course shocked my parents, even after my explanation that Paris seldom heats up enough to warrant a fan and that besides, where would I store such a thing during the 11.5 cooler months of the year? But faced with day after day of 100+ degree weather, even I was willing to hoist the proverbial white flag. We thus embarked on a wild goose chase through the city, visiting shop after shop after shop, only to be told that no fans were to be found—not there, not anywhere—and that furthermore, no new deliveries were expected anytime soon. This of course DOUBLY shocked my parents, who could not believe that a first world country could just run out of something as common as a stupid fan—and at the height of summer no less! France in their eyes was demoted right then and there to second world status (where it shall remain indefinitely). So we resorted to fanning ourselves with anything lying around my apartment: newspapers, museum brochures, table mats....

I have since discovered that the acme of H-O-T in Paris is in fact underground: aboard the RER, a mode of public transportation that is half métro, half suburban train. In the suburbs, the RER runs above ground, but when it passes through Paris, it actually descends below the métro—much closer to Hades in other words, which I suppose would account for the heat, as well as for the demon-like characters one may spot while on board. In addition to being damn hot, the RER is notoriously poorly-kept (that’s a euphemism for “ghetto on rails”). All of this leaves RER passengers with a serious dilemma during the hotter months: either a) dress conservatively and sweat away in silence (but avoid drawing any unwanted attention) or b) dress in skimpy summer attire and take their chances with the more dubious of their fellow passengers. Tricky. My tactic is to avoid the hot heinousness of the RER like the plague (incidentally, the RER and the plague have something in common: rats).

Between us, I am enjoying the heat this time around. It’s nice to eat outdoors, nice to wear sandals to work, nice to leave the jacket at home. And I’m sure that if, heaven forbid, the heat wave were to stay past its welcome, I could always just pop out and buy a fan (surely they are back in stock by now).

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 Terminal

So you know that remark I made a few months back about how I thought that my heretofore bad luck in the travel department might be changing? I, um, take it back.

I’ve just returned from two lovely weeks of vacation in the US, and while the trip itself was everything I had hoped it would be, the travel to and from was anything but. Now, as I have stated in the past, I have this thing with horrific airport scenarios. I miss my flight, my luggage disappears for days on end, weather leaves me sleeping on a bench in a deserted terminal.... One would think that such nightmares would leave me stronger, wiser—much in the way of a seasoned war general. By all rights, I should be the General Patton of air travel.

Alas, no. Not only do I seem to attract highly regrettable travel mishaps, but my subconscious stubbornly refuses to learn from its mistakes, thus leading to multiple repeats of said travel mishaps. Let’s take the example of G. and my return flight from San Diego to Paris on August 21, which set a new record in my already outstanding history of trips that could best be summed up by an emphatic “Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuu....”

Let me first say that in hindsight, we were kind of asking for it. Our two-week holiday was actually composed of two separate round-trip tickets: one from Paris to Boston, where we spent the first few days, and the other from Boston to San Diego, where we spent the rest. Both legs involved a layover: Reykjavik for the first, Houston for the second. And yes, I realize that I once said I would never go to Iceland, but can’t the occasional blatant lie be considered a péché mignon? Anyway, at least I now know that the cold, cratered surface of the moon is not limited to the moon itself.

Now, in the case of our return flight, we had to do all of that again, only in reverse and all in the same day. That is to say, San Diego to Dallas (no, not Houston this time, just for a wee bit of extra fun); Dallas to Boston; Boston to Reykjavik; Reykjavik to Paris. And as if that weren’t enough, the next morning G. was due back at the airport bright and early in order to fly to Crete for an additional week with his family. Got all that? Do you think we were already screwed even before heading to the airport?

Up at the crack (and I mean the CRACK) of dawn, we got to San Diego Lindbergh Field more or less on time, checked in, paid the $25 x 2 baggage fee (damn you, American Airlines!) and thought we were all set. No one was in the security line and we still had a good 30 minutes prior to boarding. Sensing the all-too-familiar lump of separation anxiety rising in my throat, I thought that a quick coffee with my parents before flying back to my home halfway around the world would be perfectly reasonable. *Wry smile*

Coffee consumed, we returned to the security line, which now had the equivalent of three airplanes worth of people waiting in it. And by the time that my foggy brain realized just how much trouble we were in, it was too late. Why? Because as I always manage to forget, major US airlines aren’t nice. They don’t want to hear your excuses; it’s not their problem. Either you are at the gate RIGHT when it opens, or you’re up that well-known creek without a paddle. And as we were at the gate 10 minutes after it opened, that was the end for us. (Little matter that there was a good quarter of an hour remaining before the indicated departure time and the plane was parked. Right. There.)

And here is where I clamber onto my pro-European soap box and say that with all due respect, this policy is bullsh*t. In all of my travels, which are never any better organized in Europe than they are in the US, not once have I been faced with a closed gate 15 minutes early and a smug airline rep telling me that she has been paging me repeatedly for the last half hour (riiiiiight) and that now it is just too damn bad. Never. And don’t you dare go citing tight schedules and TSA regulations because I’m not buying it. Iceland Air lets people still board freaking 10 minutes after its official departure time and do you know what comes of it? Nothing, nothing at all (score one for Iceland).

But this wasn’t Iceland Air we were dealing with, but American f-ing Airlines. And from that moment, G. and I were faced with two possibilities:

• Worst case scenario: we remain “stuck” in the US, unable to find room on any other flights because everything is booked, pay an absolute fortune in new ticket fees, hotels, absent days from work, etc., and G. misses out on a week of vacation with his family in Crete, to which he had been looking forward for months and months. And I bear the guilt of it forever.

• Best case scenario: we catch a magical string of standby flights and make it to Boston just in time to catch the original flight to Paris as planned; G. goes to Crete; I am cleared of all charges.

So there we were, standing white-faced and panic-stricken before a closed gate. In AA’s defense, the representative did take pity on me once she had accepted the fact that I had not intentionally caused us to “miss” the flight (or maybe she was just embarrassed by my sobbing like a little girl). As such, she was willing to give the two of us stand-by tickets for the next one to Dallas and from there to Boston, which if all went well, would theoretically still allow us to make the connecting Paris flight by the skin of our collective Franco-American teeth. But that depended on there being enough room on both standby flights and on both flights being totally on time. Meanwhile, our bags had left without us (remind me again about those TSA regulations...?). As to where they would land, no one knew for sure. Boston if we were lucky, Dallas if we weren’t (just ask JFK).

As it turned out, the first standby to Dallas was full, so we had to wait for the second. The second one let us on, but the Boston leg announced forty-five minutes of delay, thus immediately killing any and all chances of making the Paris connection. We did all we could to avoid despair: called Iceland Air (closed), tried to buy new tickets (sold out), interrogated various airline reps (95% unhelpful), prayed. A LOT.

And you know what? While the first three strategies yielded nothing, that last one did. In the end, we made it onto the Boston standby; the pilot somehow got us to the gate only 8 minutes late and not 45; our bags really had arrived on an earlier flight and were simply waiting for us to grab them in the baggage claim area; we caught an airport shuttle to the international terminal almost immediately, and by racing down the hallway we made it to the Paris check-in just minutes before it closed, where the rep at the counter murmured under her breath, “Just in time.” We gave her our bags, ran through security and MADE THE FLIGHT. Sinking into our seats and breathing the biggest sigh of relief of our lives, we immediately bought two glasses of wine and toasted to real-life miracles. Now if that wasn’t a personal intervention by God Himself, I’ll eat my hat. I’ll eat everyone’s hats. It was actually quite humbling, because as holy priorities go, I’m sure we weren’t anywhere near the top.

Lesson learned: when in the US, NEVER %#@! AROUND WITH BOARDING TIMES. G. was so traumatized by the experience that he actually took a taxi to the airport the next morning for his Crete flight just to play it safe (G. never takes taxis)! He texted me later to say that he was in fact early for the flight and didn’t know how to deal with it. And I am back to my Paris life, so thankful to even be here that I will say nothing about next week’s scheduled public sector strikes. I mean, I could be sleeping on a bench in the Dallas/Boston/Lunar airport right now, waiting for a miracle. But the miracle came right when we needed it the most, as miracles tend to do. No air travel for this girl until December, and even then I think I’ll show up to the airport a full day early. That is if I can even find an acceptable airline. Between AA’s shenanigans, Continental’s frequent last-minute cancellations and United’s well-known penchant for breaking guitars, what’s an expat to do?

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.