The Vacation, First Part

The afternoon before I was set to depart on a two-week vacation, I stood anxiously before the ATM at my bank, Credit Agricole, awaiting my receipt and holding my breath. I was down to ten euros and a generous Christmas gift from my mother, which was currently unavailable; seeping through the regulatory maze of two different banks, in two different countries, in two different languages. And after a week of trying to shepherd my mom’s generous Christmas stipend across this electronic frontier, I had the impression of trying to bottle molasses, or that someone, somewhere was counting my money with stiff, cold fingers.

With the burst of the mechanical chatter that printers make, the white slip appeared. I extended a furtive hand, flipped over the receipt, and knew my fate: Salvation.

Hallelujah! The money had made it!

God, the relief. I had left myself no other recourse than to “somehow get money before tomorrow”. Now I could get through the first two stages of my winter travels. Stage three… well, I had a few days before I needed to worry about that. I set out to give my last English lesson before the Holidays, sobered by my recent poverty and determined to exercise good money management from now on. Thriftiness… that’s who I was. My father was thrifty, my grandfather was thrifty… Now I would don the mantle, take up the torch… I walked through town, passing with studied indifference the shops that sell my favorite things, with the contentment and self-assurance of a man who knew who he was; who had taken control of his destiny.

It was going to be a good vacation, but a modest one.

A month later, I’m broke again. I’m asking God for a second chance, and I know that this time I can really manage my money. Now I know my weaknesses. I can do better. For now, however, there’s nothing to do but make do; to spend with care the little I have left in my bank account, supplemented on a weekly basis with the money I manage to raise teaching English on the side. I look back ruefully on the profligacy of the holidays; on trains, rental cars, apartments, ballet, wine and cheese courses... I lived better than I really could, but I don’t regret it too much. I lived a hundred days in ten. It was a beautiful vacation.

Here are a few scenes from it:

Bordeaux: Part 1

“Do you want to wait here while I go check on the rental car situation?” I asked Rebecca.

She nodded and took a seat in the waiting room. Her expression was neutral, the stoic mask of someone who was in a truly bad mood. So was I. It was understandable. The train was over three hours late, and she had spent three hours in a poorly heated train station. Then, on the train, she had learned that the cause for the delay was a chevreuil… which is, well…

“I think it’s a deer,” Rebecca had said. She tried to confirm this with another passenger on the train, but his English was not perfect. The final translation came out as something like “It’s a like a goat, but with… (he mimed a set of antlers with his hands).” Rebecca was still pretty sure it was a deer.

“Worst case scenario,” I added, “the train hit the deer. How does that take three hours?” The frustrating afternoon had eroded most of my humanity.

I went to check on the rental car. I had waited too late to reserve one online, and I was now in a panic. Could I reserve a car? Would the prices have gone up?  At the desk, I told the gentleman I would like to reserve a car for next week, from the twenty-third to the twenty-seventh. After a few staccato bursts on his keyboard, he sat back to await the results of the search.

- I’m sorry, we don’t have anymore cars at the price you were quoted.

- Oh…well, do you…

- Let me check the next price level up…

- Oui.

- Okay, we do have some cars at the next price level.

- Oui…

- Let me check the prices.

- Oui.

- Okay, we have this one for ___________.

- So… a difference of three euros?

- Oui.

- Okay, um… oui. I’ll… I’ll do that.

He handed me a slip of paper with a reservation number on it, and I crossed beneath the station and rejoined Rebecca, grateful for the good news I was bringing. In writing, no less. Good news you could touch. We bought our tickets and boarded the tram just outside the station. Destination: Quinconces.

****

Less than half an hour after we boarded the tram at the train station, we rolled to a stop at the Place de Quinconces. I flashed our still-virgin tickets to Rebecca triumphantly – we can reuse these babies later! (After you board the tram in Bordeaux, you are required to insert your tickets into a machine aboard the tram that time-stamps them – this rule is not always respected, and it’s rarely enforced. However, if you get caught without “composted” tickets, the fine is pretty heavy – at least $50.) With bags in tow, we set off across the Place.

I had been living in France for about a year by this time and, gun to my head, the biggest difference between the two countries is not language, architecture, nor anything tangible, but rather a general impression of history. It is a country that is much more connected to the past than the country in which I grew up (up in which I grew?). In La Rochelle, there is an apartment in which the windowpanes were installed before the founding of my country. In Saintes, where I lived last year, there are the remnants of an ancient Roman civilization that was founded during the lifetime of Jesus Christ. Antiquities that boggle my American mind are the trappings of daily life for the average Frenchman. Just the names of the streets and squares in France represent an incredibly rich history unto themselves.

I had arrived at the Place de Quinconces many times, and I had always wondered at the name. Who were the Quinconces, anyway? A group of resistance fighters in WWII? Victims of Robespierre and his Reign of Terror? An ancient Roman religious order?

Turns out, a quinconce is a geometric pattern. The 5-piece in dominoes: That’s a quinconce. That’s how the trees on the Place de Quinconces were arranged, hence the name. Goddammit.

Either way, it’s a beautiful square, one that occupies the space once occupied by the twice-built, twice-destroyed Château Trompette. On the side facing the river are two pillars; at the other end, a statue commemorating the Girondins. In the middle is a lot of empty space, and the Place often plays host to enormous flea markets, antique markets, carnivals, etc. This time, in the middle of the Place was…

“…a reptile exhibit? That should be interesting in the winter.” I sneered, remembering that cold-blooded animals tend to be pretty sedentary when it’s cold out.

The wheels on my suitcase sunk into the white clay mud of the Place as we trudged along cutting across the western corner, toward the statue. My friend Jonah’s apartment lay just beyond, and it was with Jonah and his girlfriend Allison that we would be staying this weekend.

“These statues were actually almost destroyed in World War II,” I told Rebecca, “to make bullets.” As we walked along, I rattled off every piece of information that came into my head on the subject of Bordeaux, a free-association of barely-relatable factoids. In case she had forgotten, I had been here sooo many times.

“Lots of monuments were lost that way in World War Two… And speaking of lost things, there used to be a castle here… I think Napoleon destroyed it, maybe… Oh, and speaking of Napoleon, there’s a bridge that you can’t possibly see from here, and he had it built…And now we’re approaching Jonah’s apartment, which, if memory serves, is number 11… yes, now I’m sure that was it, and if I’m correct, the keys should be… yes! Alright, we’re golden… there’s a golden statue on top of Pey Berland tower, we’ll see it from Jonah’s window…”

****

On one of my last nights in Bordeaux before I went home for the summer, Jonah had paid for the first round in what turned out to be a one-round evening at the bar. Now, months later as we walked into a local wine bar, I was determined to pay the tab. The bar had just opened, but the hostess looked mildly surprised to have clients already (another gun to my head, a huge difference between the New World and the Old is that people seem to start their evenings much later over here…). Rebecca stepped up to the bar, and asked…

“Are you open?”

The bar tender seemed taken aback for a moment, then coyly responded “Why yes, I’m open!” Wink, wink.

“Oh là là!” exclaimed Rebecca. I was puzzled by the reaction. She had used the “vous” form, of course, which can be used to address either a group (“Are y’all open?” in my part of the USA) or a single person to whom you would like to be polite. Hence the confusion, I guess, although I had asked a thousand people, men and women, if they were open… now I’m wondering…

We chose a wine from the Côte de Blaye, which is near to Bordeaux. It’s also near to where I live, so I’m kind of proud of it. (Like any good Frenchman, I have a proprietary love for the things from my adopted region, which is Charente-Maritime. Of course, I am not a Frenchman, good or otherwise; my pride is a poseur’s desperate plea for legitimacy and sophistication. Oh well. I am as God made me, as they say, and I suppose it does no harm.) I swirled the wine around the glass, raised it to my face and inhaled deeply. Then, after holding the glass up to the light to check its color – it was, I can report with full confidence, “red” - I raised it to my lips and took a sip, swishing it around my mouth. Taking in a small amount of air, I swallowed, and gave the wine taster’s nod – a modest display of approval, carefully calibrated to avoid showing too much enthusiasm. It’s a carefully jaded culture, that of the wine connoisseur.

“No one ever sends it back… have you noticed that?” I asked, after we had each filled our glasses. “I mean, they always nod…”

“Well, you’re the one who ordered it. It’s your fault if you ordered a bad wine; you wouldn’t really send it back unless it was corked.” Rebecca replied.

There was no need to send this one back; It was a nice, woody red wine that splashed against our palates with the mild bite for which wines from that region are known. I tried feebly to analyze the taste, wondering vaguely when I even started caring about wine. The bar was warm against the winter chill, and I felt satisfied. It was a good start.

Coming soon… Part 2: Bergerac