Killer Bise and Bon Appétit; Customs I just can't get used to

I'm still working on Part II of the winter break story, so here are some other French things to keep you occupied in the meantime.

I was eating a baguette today (all anyone eats for lunch here is sandwiches made with baguettes) and a man I don't know walked past me and said, "Bon appétit."

I replied "Merci" sweetly but as soon as he was gone I thought to myself, WTF? And no, that's not French.

In France, when people see you eating they say "Bon appétit" pretty much no matter what. Sometimes they substitute it for hello or goodbye, sometimes that's all they say. I know it's just a polite thing to do, but for me the custom doesn't translate. Can you imagine walking past someone you don't know while they are chowing down on Taco Bell and saying, "Have a nice meal"?

It's true that the French have a different attitude toward eating than Americans. There are boulangeries on every corner (à la Starbucks) and even cafeteria food is delicious. But the thing that really bothers me about bon appétit is I have a sneaking suspicion that the French are really making fun of me when they say this. I don't know why ... there is just a certain evil look in the eye. Maybe it's because of the well-documented fact that only the French can eat a baguette without getting crumbs all over themselves. Je ne sais pas.

The other custom that really gets to me is the bise, or kiss. In France it's customary to greet friends and family with two quick kisses, one on each cheek. This is common throughout Europe, but different countries often have different amounts of kisses (in Belgium, for example, it's only one). I think it's a nice idea in theory, but sometimes a person you barely know ends up giving you the bise and then that's a little awkward. My most American trait, I think, is my attitude towards violation of personal space, and the bise definitely goes there.

Then there's also the hierarchy of who gets kissed and who doesn't. I'm friendly with some French people in my residence who never kiss me, and then there are some people I barely talk to who give me the bise once a day. But come to think of it, the other international students (excluding Brits, Americans and Australians) tend to initiate the bise more frequently than the French.

And when you're not used to it, there are all kinds of ways you can screw it up. One time I went to the right first (you're supposed to go left) ... that was embarrassing. And if someone is Belgian or Mexican you never know whether they are going to give you one or two kisses. That's hard for me because I have to mentally prepare myself beforehand for the kiss to be successful.

I complain now, but just wait ... as soon as I get home I am going to be kissing all of you.

Team Wiener's winter vacation: Part I, a comedy of errors

Only one word could aptly describe my week-long winter break ... it was an adventure. And like most good adventures (I'm guessing) it started with catastrophe.

My friends Shannon, Amy and I meticulously planned out a relaxing week in the south of France, with plans to go to Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Arles and Nice. Everything went according to plan with the exception of one small but important detail. There are two airports in Brussels, one was 10 minutes from the train station and the other was 50 minutes. We didn't know this and had only budgeted enough time to get to the 10-minute airport. We missed our flight and there wouldn't be another one to Marseille for three days. So we went home and re-worked our plans so we could still catch our return flight at the end of the week. This time we decided to be a bit more daring and booked a flight to Barcelona. It shortened our vacation a little bit, but we didn't mind so much because then we would be saving money on hostels and food.

So we left Lille for Brussels on Monday evening so we could spend the night there and make it to our 10:30 a.m. flight on time. Instead, we ended up on the wrong train and missed our flight a second time. We were all furious and depressed at first, but then we found out there was another flight to Barcelona that same day so we coughed up the extra €75 to transfer our tickets. It was probably the best €75 I'll ever spend. I knew that if I gave up and went back to Lille I would have spent the rest of the week depressed as hell that I'd had a shot at a real adventure and messed it up. We didn't miss any more flights, trains or buses for the rest of the trip.

Team Wiener was born the first night of our trip when Shannon's habit of saying "Go Team!" whenever we did something dumb led me to suggest we have a team name. We picked it randomly from a Tram map in Belgium along with our individual code names: Verboekhoven (Me - Verb for short), Houba de Strooper (Amy) and Groene Jager (Shannon). You gotta love Dutch. Team Wiener's existence became permanent when we missed our second flight ... it seemed like the perfect title for a group of people with a habit of making really dumb mistakes.

Team pride resurfaced in Barcelona when we ordered paella without knowing exactly what was in it. Although it was listed on the vegetarian section of the menu, the Spanish specialty arrived with whole shrimp (eyes included), muscles, chicken and pork. Except for the eyes, chicken and pork it was really good, but my team mates refused to eat any of it. In honour of my bravery, I was temporarily dubbed Houba de Strooper (which is clearly the best name).

PP (post-paella) we ended up drinking sangria in an Irish pub with two Brits we met at the hostel. An odd mix of cultures, I know but the sangria was good. So good, in fact, I think from now on my life will be incomplete without it.

The next day we explored Barcelona which, by the way, is absolutely amazing. The weather was a huge relief after Lille ... 20° Celsius and sunny. The city is full of big parks and amazing buildings. Even the street lamps in some areas were works of art. The people were nice, even the ones who didn't speak English. Amy knows a little bit of Spanish and we were able to get around pretty easily. We took a cable car over the city with amazing views, and hiked to the top of a green hill where we saw the site of the 1992 Olympics. On our way back down we stopped at an out door café to sip limonada and sit in the sun. We finished off the day at the Picasso museum, which is in the artist's old house. I could go on forever about this experience alone, so if you are interested in Picasso let me know.

Leaving Barcelona was sad, but since we were taking a train to Marseille we got to see some of the most beautiful Spanish coastline on our way out of the country. I flipped through the copy of Vogue España I'd bought and decided not only was I going back to Barcelona someday, but I'd like to learn to speak Spanish, too.

Putting €65 in perspective

I went to Paris for the weekend.

It's taken me some time to get over how casually I can say that ... but it's really not such a big deal given I'm only an hour's train ride away.

At first I was upset because I ended up spending €65 in train tickets ... a slightly painful fact when it is possible to get one-way tickets as low as €18.50 each. When I asked the woman at the train station why my ticket was so much more than that I couldn't understand what she said. So I vowed to find a French person who could explain it to me for future reference. In the meantime I am reminding myself that the fact that I can go to Paris for a weekend with little or no planning is one of the true wonders of living here. Besides, a plane ticket from Phoenix to Paris would cost hundreds of dollars.

So I went to Paris and had a great time. On Saturday morning a Frenchman named Jean Michel told me it would be the best day of my life because it was a beautiful day in Paris. He wasn't far off.

le iPod, and other musings from a quiet Sunday in France

Most of you would probably rather know more about what life is like in France than what I miss about the U.S., so immediately below you will find a post titled "Life in France" that will hopefully appease you.

But for those of you who aren't so picky, here is a story that is a little bit about music being a universal language, and a lot about how much I miss my iPod.

"I Pod before I go to work, Pod as soon as I get home. I have yet to get up in the middle of the night to Pod, but in principle I have nothing against the idea."

The quote is from a book I've been reading called "iPod, Therefore I Am" by British journalist Dylan Jones. He's made me laugh out loud repeatedly and, more importantly, made me miss my iPod as much as I miss my family. I am iPodsick.

I bought the little contraption about a year ago, just in time for a week-long trip to Europe. So why I ever thought I could last four months over here without it I have no idea. Luckily my wonderful older brother has agreed to get it fixed as a birthday present and send it to me and is going to great lengths to do so.

It quit working a few months ago, so it had to be sent away for healing. Once it comes back (hopefully in proper working order), Eli will likely have to refill my little black iPod with all my music ... which means a two-hour drive to get my computer from our mother's house. And since I have three to four times as many audio files (music + Margaret Cho) as will fit on the Nano, he will have to have instructions as to what to put on it. Then, he will have to pay to have it shipped to me here in France.

This really is quite a task, especially considering the poor guy has a full-time job and a full-time girlfriend. But once we (me and my iPod) are reunited, it will be the best birthday present ever.

Of course I miss my extensive Bad Religion collection, the play lists I made for each semester of college and the whimsical bunch of songs I've purchased off iTunes (mainly guilty pleasures like "New Age Girl" by Dead Eye Dick and "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" by The Darkness). But most of all I miss the instant gratification and rapid discovery that goes hand-in-hand with the iPod. iTunes makes it easy to look up any piece of music, listen to it and (if you like it) buy it in a snap.

The whole process appeals to my love of the eclectic. It's easy and cheap to get the one Britney Spears song I like (Toxic) without any of her other crap. I love that I can express exactly how I feel at any given moment by throwing together a playlist with any songs I want, be they "I Will Survive," "The Idiots are Taking Over" or "Eleanor Rigby."

But right now the thing that saddens me most is that without iTunes or my iPod I have no way of making a new soundtrack for my life in France.

The 10 Songs I'd be Listening to Right Now if I Could:
Immigrant Song, Led Zeppelin
Cease, Bad Religion
Satan, Lend Me a Dollar, Hill of Beans
Sleeping In, The Postal Service
That French song from the iPod Shuffle commercial
Snakes on a Plane, Cobra Starship (Don't judge, it makes me laugh)
Mine for Life, The Sounds
Accordion music (I hear it here and I feel like I am in a movie set in France)
Tiny Dancer, Elton John
Eleanor Rigby, The Beatles

Life in France

I've become so accustomed to life here that I often have to stop and remind myself that I am in France. Sometimes I literally stop in my tracks and look around for something very French (a row of 18th Century Houses, funny little cars) just to be sure.

The reality of life here is -- in some ways -- not all that different than it is at home. I go about my daily routine, eating, sleeping, studying and hanging out with friends. But there are two major differences that remind me I'm not in Kansas anymore. First of all, everything I do (except sleep) is split between two languages. I think in both English and French and sometimes the wrong language comes out at the wrong time (such as saying "sorry" to a stranger or "et you?" instead of "et toi?" when a friend has asked me how I am doing). It's hard for me to switch back and forth -- once I am in French mode I like to stay there, but obviously my limited vocabulary can't handle that for long.

Another thing I've noticed when speaking to the French students in my residence is that, in French, I sound like a really boring person. It took me years to become a decent conversationalist in English, but now I am back at square one with French -- again, largely a vocabulary problem.

The other thing about living here that keeps me out of my comfort zone is the mélange of cultures represented among all the international students. This is probably my favorite thing about being here so far. On Friday night I went out with two Canadians, an Australian, a Polish guy, a French girl, two Romanians and another guy who is French and German ... and me, the lone American. Four different languages were flying around and the Eastern Europeans yelled at me when I didn't look them in the eye during a toast (Santé!). But for the most part, when we are all going out for a beer and a good time, we seem the same.

Il neige!

Well, that should be in past tense. It snowed last night, which meant a long, slushy walk to la Catho this morning. I didn't mind except for the cold water that filled my shoes... My first class of the day is geography with a man named Arnaud ... he asked the class "Qui vient de Tempe, Arizona?" When I replied, "Moi," he asked whether it snows in Arizona... "Non," I replied. I know it does snow in Arizona (and did recently, right?) but it's been ages since I've seen it. I haven't learned degrees centigrade yet, but all the French just say "Il fait très, très froid." -- It's very, very cold. Je suis d'accord.

Belgium - Land of waffles, chocolate and Colin Farrell

That's right, I said Colin Farrell. Our first day in Belgium we visited a pretty little city called Brugges (which means witch in Flemish) where Colin Farrell is apparently filming a movie for the next 40 days. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780536/) The rest of the country was lovely ... full of gauffres (Belgian waffles), nice people and pretty buildings, but Farrell was really the highlight.

We were sitting on a bridge where they were going to film and a nice Belgian guy named Deter who was working as Farrell's stand-in told us what was going on. Five minutes later Colin Farrell walked by, said hello to us and said to my friend Kathy, "Ah, you've got a lovely smile," complete with Irish accent.

We spent half the day hanging around with the production crew, talking to Deter, Farrell's assistant and another (smaller) actor in the movie. It was a lot of fun, but finally we moved on to more typical tourist activities like climbing the 366 steps to the top of a belfry for a great view of the city and having cappucinos and a delicious gauffre in a café on the square.

The rest of the trip couldn't really compete with seeing Colin Farrell, but we had a good time and saw some really old buildings. We also had a grouchy old man yell at us in a frite shop in Gent, someone's wallet was stolen (not mine), and I found the metro in Brussels to be very dirty - sometimes smelling stongly of urine.

But it is only a 30 minute train ride from Brussels to Lille and I was surprised to find myself happy to be back in France. I never thought it would be possible, but this place is starting to feel like home.

P. S.
I have pictures of Belgium (including Colin Farrell) that I hope to post soon.