As an American in France

I can remember the days when I went along with the rest of America and jumped on the I-Hate-France bandwagon. Those were the days. Days when I could feel perfectly fine and very American to substitute the word “french” in for queer, lazy, or snooty. I, along with any friends that would do the same thing, would get their knowledge of the French people and government from reputable places like Fox News, movies, comedy skits, and maybe other friends who had friends that knew someone who had traveled there once. Although, I even had a cousin who had lived in France and would tell me how rude the French could be. The height of French bashing in America was when they kept creating obstacles for the U.S. in the U.N. when talking about invading Iraq. Bush just wanted to do a quick little wisp of an invasion and France would go for it; further promoting the stigma of how the French were lazy and not a people of action. Well, I bet they feel silly considering how well everything is going over there.

When Colin and I were doing our Eurotrip our two main French stops were going to be Nice and Paris. We had our first taste of French laziness in the booth car of the train that we shared with 4 smelly African knock-off salesmen. These guys were everywhere in Italy, but as soon as we got into France, the cops came in and took one guy and most of their goods (this one guy took the fall and the cops didn't have any proof on anyone else). The booth smelled a little better after he left, so I was already feeling better.

After swinging by Barcelona for a few days we headed north to soak up some of the gayness of Paris. To my dismay, I had a hard time getting anyone to be rude to me. I wanted a story to take back to my French-hating Americans. Instead, all I got was smiles and good customer service. Ok, not everybody was happy-go-luck, but they were helpful when I asked them for directions or needed to ask for things like when the next train was coming.

One time we Colin and I got a perfect opportunity to build up some good karma with the French people, just in case. You never know when you'll need some good karma. We helped this old blind lady cross the street. Yeah, I know, it doesn't get much better than that. I was excitedly telling Colin that this was money in the bank and then we started in to saying our good-byes to the old lady and we started to walk off. There were chest high poles at the end of the cross walk and we let the old blind lady walk straight into them because we were so excited about our good karma we were about to receive for good deed we had done. Probably not my proudest moment. The lady smiled and laughed nervously with us and we walked away in shame.

On the second day we went up to visit the Normandy beaches. It was an amazing and humbling experience to see how impossible it would've been to get through the water and up the hill at Omaha beach. The mortar impact craters were still there, as well as the very well hidden German bunkers that still had chunks of concrete missing from grenades and bullets. We spent some time there and went back to Bayeau to catch the train back to Paris after dinner.

We hopped on a late train that we were pretty sure was going to Paris. We soon found out that the train was heading south when it hit the town of Caen. So Colin and I made a blind decision to get off the train at Caen and hope that there was one last train going to Paris from there. It was one of those decisions where you make yourself feel confident because you don't know what else to do. We got off the centipede and I watched it crawl away as Colin looked on the board for our train to Paris. When he told me it wasn't on there I was still in denial so I asked an attendant in the station.

Ronnie: “Hey, are there any more trains to Paris tonight?”

Attendant: “blah blah blah scooby doo blah. Blah blah?”

Ronnie: “Um. To Paris. Paris. Sil' vous plait.”

Attendant: “Oohh! Hahaha. Paris blah blah blah thththbbbbt! Hahaha.” (ththbbbt = fake fart noise).

Ronnie: “Paris thbbbt, huh? Awesome. Merci.”

I mean, I get it that there were no more trains to Paris, but sometimes you have to break that type of news to someone a little easier than ththbbbbt. I walked toward Colin about the noise the guy made that confirmed the start of our new adventure. We accepted our fate as we walked out and passed the closed bus station; we were there for the night. I did get a wild hair up my ass one time and tried to convince Colin that it would be so much fun to try to hitchhike to Paris. I convinced myself it was a good idea, but he wasn't going for it. It was about a 3 hour drive. I started thinking about how we let that old blind lady hit the pole. Yeah, we probably lost a few karma points for that one.

The whole city of Caen was dead by 7:30. I'm talking about the shops were all closed except one that luckily served beer and there was almost no one on the streets. Colin and I were trying to save money since we were wasting money on the hotel room in Paris so we just figured we'd wait it out until 6:00 a.m. when the next train left for Paris. Another night spent in the train station like in Genoa was going to be rough, but at least it would keep us away from the chilly breeze blowing that night. So our spirits were all but shot when the police kicked us and a couple others out into the cold. We sat on the sideway for a good 20 minutes until we noticed that there was still one bar open.

The bartender let us in on the agreement that we would buy a couple drinks because their closing time was almost up as it was 1 a.m. The bar tenders were husband and wife and spoke some English. They asked, so I told them our story and out of no where they offered to let us stay on their couch-bed for the night after they close up. I was shocked. So we stayed with them till after they closed up and headed back to their apartment which was a short walk away. I could have fallen asleep on a bed of nails at this point, but they wanted to stay up, chat, offer us beer, and feed us some goose liver on a cracker. I had a little fun with this because I saw how Colin wasn't wanting anything to do with the goose liver, so I excitedly told them we would love to try it. It was worth staying up a little longer see him have to try it. I personally thought it tasted like a lighter version of spam, but I think Colin thought it tasted like a darker version of spam... mixed with fish eyes. These people were really the perfect hosts though. They gave us an alarm clock, blankets, pillows and their first born.

We slept well for a few hours and left to catch our train. That pretty much ends my story in France. I loved the liberal and relaxed atmosphere in France, which is something that is rare or nonexistent in America. It still amazes me how hospitable those strangers were and they forever changed my opinion about the French, and I always tell any Americans that haven't had much contact with them.