On Christmas day, one of Jen’s fellow Strasbourg assistants came to celebrate the holiday with her, Katelin, and me. We basically spent all day drinking wine and eating. It was an orphans’ Christmas. So don’t judge. I also made sugar cookies. That evening, we watched The Santa Clause on YouTube because that’s what you do on Christmas, right? We also made efforts to play in the massive amounts of snow, but the snow wasn’t packed enough to even make a snowball. Triste.
The next morning, Laura left. Katelin, Jen, and I decided to get out of the house and to go a marché-de-Noël-ing. So we set out. Naturally, it was super cold, but the walk to the market was pretty.
Jen wasn’t entirely sure of the way to get to the market for which we were searching, but the walk was nice. Particularly since Strasbourg is a legitimate city with a skyline.
We eventually made it to the market by the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg that Maryse’s roommate had recommended to me. (Maryse’s roommate, Cécile, is from Strasbourg.) The market was actually a bit of a letdown, especially relative to the other market that Jen had taken me to. But the cathedral is lovely.
I got a bretzel (basically a big pretzel. But not soft like Auntie Anne’s.), Jen got red vin chaud, and Katelin got some vin chaud that was white wine. We watched the kiddles ice skating like pros for a bit before deciding to head towards the bigger market so that Katelin could have a look.
We stopped for river crossing photos first, though.
Not much to say about the marché, except to mention the awesome old woman wearing a blue fur coat.
Also, I got some hot orange juice with honey that was super delicious. And the presentation was impeccable.
That night, this French guy who keeps inviting Jen to do stuff but with whom she wants nothing to do invited us chez son ami for a soirée. Since I’m all for meeting French people, we went. Naturally, only after we had some Christmas beer, some whiskey, and listened to some sweet jams.
We took the tram over to the stop and waited for Raphael to come fetch us. When we got to the top of the stairs, we were told to take our shoes off, and that’s when I confirmed my fears that my boots actually let water in through the seams. So, just think about how cold I’ve been with all this traipsing through the snow since the beginning of the vacation. Yep. Ice water’s all up in my bottes (boots). Shmanyshway, when we got upstairs, we were instructed to help ourselves to some rum and coke. Never one to be a party pooper, we helped ourselves.
Present were Raphael, his friend Pierre who is living in Brazil, Pierre’s parents who were smoking with the youth, Yoanny from Haiti (?) who has a pa in Atlanta, Michael (?), Michael’s girlfriend (?), the girlfriend’s kid (WHAT? I was all, “What is this child doing welcoming me to this party with blatant drinking and smoking?” when I walked in.), and Raphael’s friend Aurélie. Never have I ever been at a party with so many people who professed to hate French people. I mean, they were French themselves! But they all said how they didn’t like how cold the French are and stuff like that. Strange. But they were a fairly international bunch.
We basically sat around soaking up each other’s awesomeness and listening to music. (Well, except Aurélie, who fell asleep in the room where Michael was playing the guitar). Katelin, Jen, and I stayed until the wee hours and then shared a cab back to Jen’s with Yoanny because she, coincidentally, lives down the street from Jen.
The next morning, I saw Katelin off while Jen slept in. We didn’t do anything again until the 29th because I was tired of having freezing toes and so I made us stay inside a lot. Actually, on the 28th, Jen and I met up with Laura for some drinks after Jen and I went out to dinner. It was romantic and charming.
On the 29th, Jen and I made our way to Colmar, which is a town outside of Strasbourg that basically everyone in Belley had mentioned to me. So we took a train around 11 and planned to stay for just a few hours.
When we got in, we followed the signs to the marché de Noël, but we didn’t follow all of the signs.
As you can see, we had GLORIOUS weather.
We went into the cathedral at Colmar, which is lovely and old. But certainly not any better than Belley’s. Represent.
We went further into the city center to find the Christmas market, which was the most wildly overpriced I’ve experienced. But it was charming. Also, Colmar has a canal!
We had worked up an appetite from all that aimless walking through icy, sludgy paths, so we went to an indoor market and got some grub. Jen got some quiche, and I helped myself to a cheese sandwich that was described as tartiflette. Lies. Before we left, Jen got some vin chaud for the road, which she spilled on herself basically as soon as we went outside. I got some hot apple cider, which was horrible. So, that was nice.
We asked directions back to the gare after we realized we had clearly walked in the wrong direction. We knew we were cutting it close to making it back on time, but Jen said the train would probably be late. As much as I wanted to have faith in the French transportation system, I knew she was right. So we were very pleased when we arrived and saw that our train was 30 minutes en retard, which made us very much on time. We were not, however, pleased, when the train ended up being 2 hours late. So we got in line to pick up our train tickets to get to Paris the next morning. That’s when I showed Jen the train station times for Virieu le Grand, over which she laughed for probs 5 minutes. Legit.
When we got back to Strasbourg, we went to the Strasbourg Christmas market again because, well, why not?
AKA I was hoping to see the woman in the blue coat again. Alas. I only saw Jennifer covering her coat in powdered sugar.
Then we stopped at the mall so that I could pick up some wool socks because I figured they’d be a bit warmer than my crazy stylish but less than wool socks from Target. Got myself three pairs. We then went farther into the mall to the grocery store and picked up ingredients for grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. And also a bottle of wine.
We went back to Jen’s and lazed for a bit before having dinner. I made the soup and it was super bon. She made the sandwiches, and they were eh. Jokes. They were good too. Anywho, we decided to go back to Raphael’s for yet another soirée. We had some whiskey, got on the tram, and made the trek.
When we arrived, we helped ourselves to some vodka cokes and sat around for good times. When the vodka was gone, they pulled out some wine. After the wine was finished, Pierre went to his room to get some cachaça he had brought with him from Brazil. That alcohol has one of the strongest tastes evaaar. I don’t think I like it. So, let’s review where I am at this point: wine, whiskey, vodka, wine, cachaça. Okay. Great. This time, in attendance were Raphael, Pierre, Arno (some French bartender who currently lives in LA), Aurélie, and one of Aurélie’s friends. Blah blah blah. Drink drink drink. We go to some bar. Mistakenly, we got into the car that Raphael was driving. I don’t want to talk about the danger. So we’ll pretend there was none even though we were all piled into the same little car and he had definitely not been abstaining from booze.
When we got to the club, Raphael had us each give him 10€ so that he could get us a bottle of drank and some mixer. HUGE mistake, because whatever he got was narsty. But it was too late to turn back. So we danced and joked and chatted and did whatever is done at these places until the bar was shut down.
And then comes the reason that I’m going to get abducted.
So some dudes had been talking to Jen for a while. When we left the bar, Raphael was idiot because he couldn’t find his passport because it was in his jacket pocket ,and he had misplaced his jacket inside. So we were standing outside waiting for him to pull himself together. (I actually thought we were waiting for him to get his car keys so he could take us home, but I later found out that that was not part of the plan at all.) So then Jen and I were like, oh WAIT. We have a 6am train to Paris and it’s basically 3am, so we gots tuh go. So we started walking to all of the cabs there to ask if they could take us back but each one told us we needed to call the company to reserve one. I don’t know why cabs work this way, but it’s not working for me. So we kept trying the numbers the cabs gave us only none of them worked. So then the guys that Jen were talking to were like, oh hey, we’ll give you a ride. And I was like, “Welp. That just sounds like a great idea. Let’s do it.” So we did. Guy should so obviously not have been driving. Almost as soon as we got in, he nearly ran into a parked car. But one of the other guys in the car sitting next to me was from Chambéry, so with some Bugey (region that Belley is in) love in my heart, I let go and let flow.
(If you care, Raphael’s passport was found in his jacket in the bar. It was the last jacket left inside, so I really don’t think he looked that hard for it.)
We got back to Jen’s and I went to bed for 45 minutes before getting up to get on the 3 hour train ride to Paris. We were running a bit late because we missed the tram, so we were again hoping for a train being late. Success! But this time, it was only late by like 5 minutes, but it was just enough.
When we got on the train, we couldn’t find our seats, so Jen and I walked up and down the aisles before finding a girl who was in the same boat. She was French or but was studying in Poland or something. Anyway, she addressed us in English. We talked about being in the same boat, and she said we could go see the conductor. Which is obvio what we were already doing. “I speak French,” she told me.
“Me too,” I said. According to Jen, it came out bitchily, but I can’t help my tone on 45 minutes of sleep. Anyway, after he showed us our seats, the train set off. Before we all disembarked from the train in Paris, she smiled at me, so I guess she didn’t hate me too much for my snark.
After we got into Paris, Jen and I went to Maryse’s. We both took naps while Maryse ran some errands. When I woke up, Maryse and I had some chocolate and then went back out to get her some nail polish remover, soap, and some other junk. We made a pit stop at Ladurée so that I could get some macarons for pastry club on Wednesday since I had volunteered to bring them goods. We also stopped at the market to get quiche supplies before heading back.
Michael came over for dinner, and it was a lovely evening. The four of us went out for drinks at a SUPER hipster bar. Naturally, I loved it. It actually reminded me of the KWUR studio since there was writing all over the white walls. Ah, la nostalgie.
The next day, New Year’s Eve, Jen and I went to the Jean Michel Basquiat exhibit at the modern art museum. Hey, remember that time I was in Paris and couldn’t figure out what the massive building covered in graffiti was? It was the modern art museum. Makes sense, don’t it?
It was a really fantastic exhibit that had been recommended to me by Marc about one moon before. I actually wanted to go to the Larry Clark photo exhibit (which had been censored), but when I asked Jen (which I don’t know why I did because she doesn’t really care about museums), she said we should Basquiat it up. And then for the 12 room exhibit, she finished in 30 minutes even though we only have 1 hour to see the thing. I was being pushed out by security while she patiently waited for me. As we went back to Maryse’s, we stopped to pick up supplies. (At first I typoed that as “sipplies.” Freudian.)
Maryse headed out for dinner with her lady. Cécile and her cousin left for a party in the ‘burbs. Jen and I had a bottle each. Just before starting, though, my mom called to see how things were going. I told her I was really getting tired of Europe and that I was super glad that the vacation was almost over because I was really looking forward to getting back to Belley. (Yes. That was said.) Anyway, back to drinking. After we left, Jen and I stopped at a pizzeria on the way to the metro, where we shared a bottle of wine. Then I insisted that we leave because it was after 11 and we were supposed to be meeting Michael and another Paris assistant at the Eiffel Tower.
As Jen and I made a transfer at Franklin D. Roosevelt to get the next metro to Place de la Concorde, I went to check that we were getting on the right train. I really didn’t need to, though, since we had done the trajet earlier in the day, but can never be too careful. But apparently you can because, as I was weaving through the throng, my wallet was stolen. What did I lose?
Birthday gift wallet
Driver’s license
Belley library card (only a big deal because I’m sure it costs money to replace. Not that I ever will.)
160€ (including the emergency money from my Aunt Mimi)
Credit Cards
Because just when Europe gets you down, it spits in your face.
Then we missed midnight while I was crying in the metro and we were waiting for the next train. I yelled to the crowd that they could keep whatever money was in there, I just wanted the wallet back. No one cared. Surpreez.
When we met up with Michael, he informed us that even if we had been at the Eiffel Tower at midnight, we wouldn’t have seen anything because the Eiffel Tower just twinkled like it does at every hour. Classic.
Since we were speaking English, some Sofitel hospitality students from all over the world came up to us and started talking. One of them must have been from California because there’s no other reason we would’ve decided to wander with them for so long. Sorry I can’t remember, but I was in the middle of hysterical emails and phone calls with my mom trying to cancel all of my cards. Anyway, we decided we’d all go with them back to someone’s apartment and mooch some booze except then my mom called and I had to wait at the metro opening to keep service so we lost them. So then we all just went to some gay bar.
We went to a MacDo to use the toilets before trying to get on the metro because only some stops were open for entry. And then we couldn’t find an open station so we walked back to Maryse’s. Way to start, 2011.
The next morning, my mom called to say she had wired me some scrilla but that I’d have to get it from Western Union. Oh, thank goodness I’m in Paris, I thought to myself. There should actually be something open. So after I said goodbye to Jen, I got on the computer to have a look. Welp, it was 11:30, so anything that was only open til 12 was out. Because I was in Paris, but it was still a holiday. I eventually found one that would be open when I needed it, got my life together, and peaced out for Western Union followed by the train.
I somehow managed to find the Western Union and went inside to ask about the money wire. “Oh. We have the sign up, but the system’s not working yet.” Well, that’s super helpful, guys! Thanks! He said there was another Western Union up the road, so I walked for a while until I realized that there was nothing there and then called Maryse to see where the nearest one was, but my train was going to be leaving soon and wouldn’t that be just what I needed: to miss my train back to Belley. So I just decided to get on the metro. Oh wait, though, I don’t have any money to buy a ticket. So I waited for an attendant to show up and to cry to him/her, hoping for pity. Except since it’s France, no one showed up. I eventually just pushed through the exit to set off the alarm to get on the metro. Worked brilliantly.
Train ride back WITHOUT PROBLEMS. What!?
Nicole picked me up from the train station in Culoz and said that she could drop me off or would I like to come over for dinner. I said I could easily just go back to the school. She had ulterior motives, though, and so she took me back to her house where she asked me some questions about the English papers she was grading. Just after we arrived, her oldest son Xavier came by to borrow the car. Then he left.
While she prepared the meal (sausage and potatoes), I met her husband Jean-Michel. They’re a darling couple. Every time Nicole would ask him to do something, he would respond with “Oui, chef.” Which is mostly just enchanting because in French, “chef” means boss or chef. So it was a total double entendre.
Around dinner time, Nicole’s middle son Hadrian rolled up with his girlfriend, Lucie. We had a nice meal with a galette des rois for dessert. The galette is a cake that’s eaten in celebration of Three Kings Day. There’s a fèvre (a little token) inside that determines the winner, who then gets to wear a crown. It’s basically a King’s cake without the winner having to bring a cake the next year. I won the crown. Naturally.
After dinner, Nicole said Hadrian and Lucy would take me home. Except, of course, my bag was in the car that Xavier had just taken. So some phone calls were made, and we arranged to go fetch it on the way back to Belley. Legitimately, the least of my problems at this point. Lucie is lovely and quite talkative, so we had a nice little convo on the way back to the lycée. We also saw a wild pig native to the region run across the road. Twas the first she had seen since living here, so we’ll always have that. Hadrian sat quietly in the back.
Then I got home and exhaled.
OH my gosh, I’m so close to being caught up,
Jess
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| Daggers or flavorless popsicles? |
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| Seems like a perfect sleigh path. |
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| Perspective can do funny things. |
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| Christmastiiiime is heeeere. |
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| World's tallest building from 1647-1874 |
We stopped for river crossing photos first, though.
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| The sun'll come out tomorrow! (But it didn't.) |
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| Abominable Strasbourgian. |
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| Presentation is 90% of food. |
We took the tram over to the stop and waited for Raphael to come fetch us. When we got to the top of the stairs, we were told to take our shoes off, and that’s when I confirmed my fears that my boots actually let water in through the seams. So, just think about how cold I’ve been with all this traipsing through the snow since the beginning of the vacation. Yep. Ice water’s all up in my bottes (boots). Shmanyshway, when we got upstairs, we were instructed to help ourselves to some rum and coke. Never one to be a party pooper, we helped ourselves.
Present were Raphael, his friend Pierre who is living in Brazil, Pierre’s parents who were smoking with the youth, Yoanny from Haiti (?) who has a pa in Atlanta, Michael (?), Michael’s girlfriend (?), the girlfriend’s kid (WHAT? I was all, “What is this child doing welcoming me to this party with blatant drinking and smoking?” when I walked in.), and Raphael’s friend Aurélie. Never have I ever been at a party with so many people who professed to hate French people. I mean, they were French themselves! But they all said how they didn’t like how cold the French are and stuff like that. Strange. But they were a fairly international bunch.
We basically sat around soaking up each other’s awesomeness and listening to music. (Well, except Aurélie, who fell asleep in the room where Michael was playing the guitar). Katelin, Jen, and I stayed until the wee hours and then shared a cab back to Jen’s with Yoanny because she, coincidentally, lives down the street from Jen.
The next morning, I saw Katelin off while Jen slept in. We didn’t do anything again until the 29th because I was tired of having freezing toes and so I made us stay inside a lot. Actually, on the 28th, Jen and I met up with Laura for some drinks after Jen and I went out to dinner. It was romantic and charming.
On the 29th, Jen and I made our way to Colmar, which is a town outside of Strasbourg that basically everyone in Belley had mentioned to me. So we took a train around 11 and planned to stay for just a few hours.
When we got in, we followed the signs to the marché de Noël, but we didn’t follow all of the signs.
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| Weird... I thought I was in Europe already. |
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| No. We didn't. |
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| About as cathedral-y as it gets. (Foundations from AD 1000) |
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| Look, ma! Chairs held together by wood! |
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| Other side of the square. Quaint. |
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| Venice of the France? |
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| Everyone loves the architecture in Colmar. |
We asked directions back to the gare after we realized we had clearly walked in the wrong direction. We knew we were cutting it close to making it back on time, but Jen said the train would probably be late. As much as I wanted to have faith in the French transportation system, I knew she was right. So we were very pleased when we arrived and saw that our train was 30 minutes en retard, which made us very much on time. We were not, however, pleased, when the train ended up being 2 hours late. So we got in line to pick up our train tickets to get to Paris the next morning. That’s when I showed Jen the train station times for Virieu le Grand, over which she laughed for probs 5 minutes. Legit.
When we got back to Strasbourg, we went to the Strasbourg Christmas market again because, well, why not?
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| Daytime in the Capitale de Noël! |
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| Hot mess. As usje. |
We went back to Jen’s and lazed for a bit before having dinner. I made the soup and it was super bon. She made the sandwiches, and they were eh. Jokes. They were good too. Anywho, we decided to go back to Raphael’s for yet another soirée. We had some whiskey, got on the tram, and made the trek.
When we arrived, we helped ourselves to some vodka cokes and sat around for good times. When the vodka was gone, they pulled out some wine. After the wine was finished, Pierre went to his room to get some cachaça he had brought with him from Brazil. That alcohol has one of the strongest tastes evaaar. I don’t think I like it. So, let’s review where I am at this point: wine, whiskey, vodka, wine, cachaça. Okay. Great. This time, in attendance were Raphael, Pierre, Arno (some French bartender who currently lives in LA), Aurélie, and one of Aurélie’s friends. Blah blah blah. Drink drink drink. We go to some bar. Mistakenly, we got into the car that Raphael was driving. I don’t want to talk about the danger. So we’ll pretend there was none even though we were all piled into the same little car and he had definitely not been abstaining from booze.
When we got to the club, Raphael had us each give him 10€ so that he could get us a bottle of drank and some mixer. HUGE mistake, because whatever he got was narsty. But it was too late to turn back. So we danced and joked and chatted and did whatever is done at these places until the bar was shut down.
And then comes the reason that I’m going to get abducted.
So some dudes had been talking to Jen for a while. When we left the bar, Raphael was idiot because he couldn’t find his passport because it was in his jacket pocket ,and he had misplaced his jacket inside. So we were standing outside waiting for him to pull himself together. (I actually thought we were waiting for him to get his car keys so he could take us home, but I later found out that that was not part of the plan at all.) So then Jen and I were like, oh WAIT. We have a 6am train to Paris and it’s basically 3am, so we gots tuh go. So we started walking to all of the cabs there to ask if they could take us back but each one told us we needed to call the company to reserve one. I don’t know why cabs work this way, but it’s not working for me. So we kept trying the numbers the cabs gave us only none of them worked. So then the guys that Jen were talking to were like, oh hey, we’ll give you a ride. And I was like, “Welp. That just sounds like a great idea. Let’s do it.” So we did. Guy should so obviously not have been driving. Almost as soon as we got in, he nearly ran into a parked car. But one of the other guys in the car sitting next to me was from Chambéry, so with some Bugey (region that Belley is in) love in my heart, I let go and let flow.
(If you care, Raphael’s passport was found in his jacket in the bar. It was the last jacket left inside, so I really don’t think he looked that hard for it.)
We got back to Jen’s and I went to bed for 45 minutes before getting up to get on the 3 hour train ride to Paris. We were running a bit late because we missed the tram, so we were again hoping for a train being late. Success! But this time, it was only late by like 5 minutes, but it was just enough.
When we got on the train, we couldn’t find our seats, so Jen and I walked up and down the aisles before finding a girl who was in the same boat. She was French or but was studying in Poland or something. Anyway, she addressed us in English. We talked about being in the same boat, and she said we could go see the conductor. Which is obvio what we were already doing. “I speak French,” she told me.
“Me too,” I said. According to Jen, it came out bitchily, but I can’t help my tone on 45 minutes of sleep. Anyway, after he showed us our seats, the train set off. Before we all disembarked from the train in Paris, she smiled at me, so I guess she didn’t hate me too much for my snark.
After we got into Paris, Jen and I went to Maryse’s. We both took naps while Maryse ran some errands. When I woke up, Maryse and I had some chocolate and then went back out to get her some nail polish remover, soap, and some other junk. We made a pit stop at Ladurée so that I could get some macarons for pastry club on Wednesday since I had volunteered to bring them goods. We also stopped at the market to get quiche supplies before heading back.
Michael came over for dinner, and it was a lovely evening. The four of us went out for drinks at a SUPER hipster bar. Naturally, I loved it. It actually reminded me of the KWUR studio since there was writing all over the white walls. Ah, la nostalgie.
The next day, New Year’s Eve, Jen and I went to the Jean Michel Basquiat exhibit at the modern art museum. Hey, remember that time I was in Paris and couldn’t figure out what the massive building covered in graffiti was? It was the modern art museum. Makes sense, don’t it?
It was a really fantastic exhibit that had been recommended to me by Marc about one moon before. I actually wanted to go to the Larry Clark photo exhibit (which had been censored), but when I asked Jen (which I don’t know why I did because she doesn’t really care about museums), she said we should Basquiat it up. And then for the 12 room exhibit, she finished in 30 minutes even though we only have 1 hour to see the thing. I was being pushed out by security while she patiently waited for me. As we went back to Maryse’s, we stopped to pick up supplies. (At first I typoed that as “sipplies.” Freudian.)
Maryse headed out for dinner with her lady. Cécile and her cousin left for a party in the ‘burbs. Jen and I had a bottle each. Just before starting, though, my mom called to see how things were going. I told her I was really getting tired of Europe and that I was super glad that the vacation was almost over because I was really looking forward to getting back to Belley. (Yes. That was said.) Anyway, back to drinking. After we left, Jen and I stopped at a pizzeria on the way to the metro, where we shared a bottle of wine. Then I insisted that we leave because it was after 11 and we were supposed to be meeting Michael and another Paris assistant at the Eiffel Tower.
As Jen and I made a transfer at Franklin D. Roosevelt to get the next metro to Place de la Concorde, I went to check that we were getting on the right train. I really didn’t need to, though, since we had done the trajet earlier in the day, but can never be too careful. But apparently you can because, as I was weaving through the throng, my wallet was stolen. What did I lose?
Birthday gift wallet
Driver’s license
Belley library card (only a big deal because I’m sure it costs money to replace. Not that I ever will.)
160€ (including the emergency money from my Aunt Mimi)
Credit Cards
Because just when Europe gets you down, it spits in your face.
Then we missed midnight while I was crying in the metro and we were waiting for the next train. I yelled to the crowd that they could keep whatever money was in there, I just wanted the wallet back. No one cared. Surpreez.
When we met up with Michael, he informed us that even if we had been at the Eiffel Tower at midnight, we wouldn’t have seen anything because the Eiffel Tower just twinkled like it does at every hour. Classic.
Since we were speaking English, some Sofitel hospitality students from all over the world came up to us and started talking. One of them must have been from California because there’s no other reason we would’ve decided to wander with them for so long. Sorry I can’t remember, but I was in the middle of hysterical emails and phone calls with my mom trying to cancel all of my cards. Anyway, we decided we’d all go with them back to someone’s apartment and mooch some booze except then my mom called and I had to wait at the metro opening to keep service so we lost them. So then we all just went to some gay bar.
We went to a MacDo to use the toilets before trying to get on the metro because only some stops were open for entry. And then we couldn’t find an open station so we walked back to Maryse’s. Way to start, 2011.
The next morning, my mom called to say she had wired me some scrilla but that I’d have to get it from Western Union. Oh, thank goodness I’m in Paris, I thought to myself. There should actually be something open. So after I said goodbye to Jen, I got on the computer to have a look. Welp, it was 11:30, so anything that was only open til 12 was out. Because I was in Paris, but it was still a holiday. I eventually found one that would be open when I needed it, got my life together, and peaced out for Western Union followed by the train.
I somehow managed to find the Western Union and went inside to ask about the money wire. “Oh. We have the sign up, but the system’s not working yet.” Well, that’s super helpful, guys! Thanks! He said there was another Western Union up the road, so I walked for a while until I realized that there was nothing there and then called Maryse to see where the nearest one was, but my train was going to be leaving soon and wouldn’t that be just what I needed: to miss my train back to Belley. So I just decided to get on the metro. Oh wait, though, I don’t have any money to buy a ticket. So I waited for an attendant to show up and to cry to him/her, hoping for pity. Except since it’s France, no one showed up. I eventually just pushed through the exit to set off the alarm to get on the metro. Worked brilliantly.
Train ride back WITHOUT PROBLEMS. What!?
Nicole picked me up from the train station in Culoz and said that she could drop me off or would I like to come over for dinner. I said I could easily just go back to the school. She had ulterior motives, though, and so she took me back to her house where she asked me some questions about the English papers she was grading. Just after we arrived, her oldest son Xavier came by to borrow the car. Then he left.
While she prepared the meal (sausage and potatoes), I met her husband Jean-Michel. They’re a darling couple. Every time Nicole would ask him to do something, he would respond with “Oui, chef.” Which is mostly just enchanting because in French, “chef” means boss or chef. So it was a total double entendre.
Around dinner time, Nicole’s middle son Hadrian rolled up with his girlfriend, Lucie. We had a nice meal with a galette des rois for dessert. The galette is a cake that’s eaten in celebration of Three Kings Day. There’s a fèvre (a little token) inside that determines the winner, who then gets to wear a crown. It’s basically a King’s cake without the winner having to bring a cake the next year. I won the crown. Naturally.
After dinner, Nicole said Hadrian and Lucy would take me home. Except, of course, my bag was in the car that Xavier had just taken. So some phone calls were made, and we arranged to go fetch it on the way back to Belley. Legitimately, the least of my problems at this point. Lucie is lovely and quite talkative, so we had a nice little convo on the way back to the lycée. We also saw a wild pig native to the region run across the road. Twas the first she had seen since living here, so we’ll always have that. Hadrian sat quietly in the back.
Then I got home and exhaled.
OH my gosh, I’m so close to being caught up,
Jess
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