FIN

            I finished up my final salon des vins in the ancient city of Chartres, just south of Paris and home to supposedly the largest cathedral in all of France, although the one in Metz appears larger to me. The city was utterly enjoyable unlike Metz where I pictured people hanging themselves behind drawn shades. No, Chartres was a place I felt I could hang my hat for a spell or two. The salon though was less than stellar as the weather (we were outside) was often cold, usually rainy, and always windswept. Needless to say the promenade of spectators looked upon us much like many do at the zoo, with curious questioning eyes that asked, “what are you people thinking?” I spent most of my time poking fun at the locals and Apolline and dancing and juggling and in general being an ass. I literally drank more wine than I sold and when I was bored, which was often, I strolled around centre ville. Every four steps was a real estate sales or rental place so I made a hobby of inspecting all of the listings to keep my mind occupied.

            We stayed at Paolo’s parents (Friend of the Family) home in Dreux, just south of Chartres, who fed us excessively and when we said we were finished they would pry open our mouths and toss more in for good measure. They were painfully sweet people and after the second night of two to three hour dinners I realized that I finally could comprehend French. Not all of it mind you but finally enough now that I could piece the information together without my mind twisting it into meaningless chatter. This of course I figured to be just a moment of clarity that would surely disappear once I returned to Alsace. As it turned out this was not true as I had dinner with Apolline’s family on Monday and sure enough, I understood. Now of course I am leaving France and am sure that unless I am very strict with myself I will forget it all.

            So I have mentioned the end and at the end is where I am. I am moving to Budapest for a stint and am not sure if I’ll blog on it or not since I am keen on doing a travel book on the city and it’s surroundings. So most likely this will be my final blessing to the blog and I bid it all goodbye with a sense of sadness. I have had my ups and downs with this whole adventure and sometimes I was ready to head fast into the crazy lane but it was all good, every last experience was just that, an experience.

An old love recently asked me if I had found what I was looking for and for that I have no answer.  Some of us search to find and the rest I feel search because searching is all we know. At least now I feel I can search without abandon.  

Maybe I have found what I was looking for.

MY FATHER IS WAYNE GROVER

            Sorry for the lack of posts and whatnots and usual witticisms but the only thing slower around here than me is the vineyard. Finally all of the intense things have been taken care of just as the weather has slipped into perfection. Ah, how I will miss standing out in the driving cold rain and being slapped mercilessly by the twig vipers. I am down to my final two weeks here and am still contemplating whether or not to come back for the vendange (harvest) in the fall before/after I go to Ireland with my sister. My usual phrase of “time will only tell” is what I’ll have to fall back on in regards to my future. I have one last salon des vins in Chartres and then that is that, smack my hands finished.

            I had hoped to stay in Europe for the whole year and in my research never came across an item called the Schengan Visa. That was until my buddy, Taylor, was told about it as he entered his new Nordic landscape. Apparently if I stay longer in any of these countries that have no “borders” for more than ninety days out of one hundred and eighty I can be fined, arrested, and summarily slapped by a man in a funny cap and then banned for five years. Luckily England is not part of all of that so I will scurry on back there just before the deadline. But the killer was I was just starting to line up house sits, where I care for someone’s home as they play far away and I toss a ball for their dog without the worry for me of rent or for them boarding fees. Since I will have to leave the countries with this agreement it pretty much kills me being in Europe for the rest of the year…or does it.

            So I woke up early on Saturday before last after a hard night of all things the night can bring and I decided, Budapest. So I pulled up Buda on the web and lo and behold they are not part of the agreement. So without thought I put an ad on Craigslist for a room/share/apartment/abandoned car and within a day I had several responders ultimately deciding to go with a grad student right in centre ville. So, once again, time will only tell in regards to my future.

            Enough of the future, let's talk about the past. On the very last day of intense “we have to get this all done” type of work I finally figured out the last mystery for me at the vineyard. What in the hell does Benoit’s cousin mean when he says, in English, but in heavily accented Alsacien, “my father is Wayne Grover.” I always thought maybe it was from a TV show or personality or maybe an inside joke. Finally though I put it all together and it wasn’t Wayne Grover at all, it was Wine Grower. He was saying his father was a wine grower. Yes, yes he is, but I knew that from day one. Thank you for confusing me.

INEVITABLE - PART DEUX

            I don’t know how it happened or when but I finally hurt myself. I know the timeline might sound weird but I have a very delayed reaction to pain. I was literally standing there as we all took a break from “clouet” and I began to notice a sensation in my left bicep. I was like, “hey, what is…oh my GOD!” Yeah, the pain kind of sauntered in and then made a mad dash and then quickly disappeared. Apparently I had ripped my bicep. Oh well, it’s not the end of the world and the pain is come and go. This has happened before to me and it will just take some time for it to do what it needs to do but it won’t interfere with me slinging that forty-pound nail into all those sunken trunks since I’ll just use my right arm.

LE WEEKEND - SUNDAY

            Strasbourg is 100km north of where I usually lay my head and Apolline and I are making good time on getting there, mostly because she drives like a Roman. The day is already about as gorgeous as you’d want it to be. We get to Strasbourg and if Apo hadn’t kept telling me she was lost I’d have never known. I just thought she was driving around so I could see the city. I guess the city has changed a lot since she lived here a decade ago. Everything changes I guess, well, except my home town. As we get more into the city center the town really starts to pop. The river, the buildings, the cafés, and of course what every French city has, a gargantuan cathedral. We circle about looking for a parking spot for what feels like forever since I am absolutely starving and we finally decide to use a garage, which apparently no one uses as they prefer to park on the sidewalks.

            We immediately find a café and I order a “moyenne” biere, which means average size, and it’s huge. I might just be too used to the little nursing bottles they normally come in. We have sirloin with French fries and really really good bread and when I see the check I realize that the beer was 8 Euros. Apolline thinks it’s funny that the same beer in America might be $4 (3 Euros). Yep, you can either get twice as drunk or just as drunk for half the price in America. We at least still have that going for us!

            We walk across the square after lunch and pay nearly 10 Euros to climb to the top of the cathedral. 10 Euros should get us carried up but the hike was good if not entirely dizzying since the stairs are totally wound as tight as, well you get the idea. The view is amazing though and you can actually see the time lines of the city from up there.

            Sunday really is not a day to visit anywhere in France. Almost all of the stores and shops are closed which means nothing to me since I’m not really into trinket or clothes shopping. We head over to Parliament and the UE and walk about and crack jokes and I have an overwhelming urge to do something stupid since there is a closed circuit camera ever four inches but I don’t and I’m proud of myself that for the second time in two days, I didn’t make an ass out of myself. When we get back to her car she turns the key and…nothing. She had left the lights on and drained the battery. I ask her if she’s ever popped a clutch before and that it won’t be a big deal. She says no and wants to call someone. I put her back in the car, push the car back, and then give her some instructions. I am sure she has it as I begin to push her on the long, flat, parking lot. Man, I would have killed for a hill. I gave her the signal to pop the clutch as I let go and all she does is coast and coast and coast. I realize she never popped the clutch but was really trying to turn the key. OK, there is a language barrier of sorts. She wants to push because she’s really nervous but there is no way she’ll be able to do it so I do my best cheerleader go team speech and just when I get ready to push a mom and her son jump off their bikes and help as well. Well thank you very much, strangers. We get her up to speed and I just have that feeling that she’s going to coast again so I start to bark, “Pop it! Pop it!” I see her shoulders squeeze in and touch her chin and low and behold she pops it. A thick cloud of black smoke brings me a smile as she takes off.

            I think she is really surprised that I know how to do anything but write. I have no idea how this stereotype has manifested itself into fact with most people.  “Oh, you write?” Then they give you that look like you’ve never changed a tire, ripped out a toilet, or stood in a foot of muck while you cut down half a vineyard. Yes folks, before I decided to try and write for a living I had your typical boy/man’s life of repairing my own car (when you could before all this computer shit), gutting my duplex, digging, fighting, and a whole lot of bleeding. Sorry for the gripe but for the last four years I’ve just gotten a shit ton of that crap.

            She is so jazzed by the whole popping of the clutch that she drives as if in the French Connection all the way back from Strasbourg utilizing the winding wine route through tons of quaint villages and towns and mountain peaks. It was so much fun I had to hang my video camera out the window. We end up in Colmar, a medium sized town just 15km away from home for some dinner and another cocktail. I ate two pizzas. One was an Alsacien special with a soft cheese, onions, and bacon on a feathery wafer style crust. Then of course I had a pizza pizza with whatever I could fit on the little thing. After dinner we walked about the darkened streets that either teamed with life or were deserted. I really like this town and am sure I’ll return before I finally head out on the next adventure.

LE WEEKEND - SATURDAY

            I’m going to consider this my “lost weekend” where I learned no French, ate pizza, and drank beer and scotch and nary a drop of wine. The family upstairs had a visitor in from London, a girl named Angeline who knows their daughters, and was visiting just for the weekend. I met her on Friday at the dinner the family was hosting. OK, yes, I had wine at the dinner but that was Friday and I’m thinking Saturday and Sunday.  I hadn’t understood that the day before that the father had said she spoke English or that she was living in London since he railed it off rat-a-tat style while hurrying down a hill. So you can only imagine my relief when I explained to her that I had only been learning French since December and she replied simply, “we’ll use English then.” I could have proposed marriage on the spot. She was definitely the highlight of Friday outside of being called a “bad boy,” by the Moldovan. I’m not saying anything but what I will say is this, it was a total accident that lead to the whole “bad boy” comment.

            I wake up on Saturday and have no plans except to steal the company car, fix the bike, and ride said bike. I start to head into town when I see Angeline down by the Cave so I stop and she’s waiting for a friend. She asks me what I’m doing that night and I fought all my normal retorts of seeing how many hookers I can get into the trunk or the like and simply state that I have no plans. She proposes we get a drink and I’m all for it. I don’t know if I lived in Los Angeles too long or just know too many flakey people because I half expected her to not show but there she was knocking on my door at seven.

            We head out and we’re already laughing which is good. I can be remotely charming in English but with French I’m still a bit, more than a bit, of a Neanderthal.

            “You pretty. Eyes. Smell of…” as I point to Jasmin just before pulling out my date club.

            She tells me of a small town up the way called Eguisheim that she had seen earlier and it’s either that or we go to the really tacky Safari Bar in Issenheim. We are there in a matter of minutes and the town is, of course, charming as all get out. I think this is the whole town as we stroll along the main street until she turns down a small alleyway and into another world. My god it’s beautiful. The old homes and shudders and lamps and aged glass all tilted over a cobbled road no wider than your average car. Homes ride alongside small restaurants and bars and some bars and restaurants look like homes. We finally decide on Auberge du Rempart and she takes me through the smallish bar area that leads out into a fountained terrace.  We talk over my beer and her tomato juice and I tell you, if there wasn’t such an age and intellectual issue I’d pursue this woman with everything I had, me, of course being the one older and obviously less intelligent. We eventually make our way back to the car and so far I haven’t had to speak a word of French and I know I should feel bad for writing this but I felt relieved.

            She had asked the lady at Rempart where she thought we should go next and the lady told her a village name that sounds just like this village but with an I instead of an E. We blaze around looking for said town but never find it but we do find the same exit a few times and a couple of turnabouts recognize us as we confusingly circled them.   I really didn’t care. She was fun and I enjoyed myself and I’m sure I’ll see her again. The night closes the door and I have to get ready for the next day of Strasbourg with Apolline. Apolline and Angeline, this is something I’d normally screw up.

GUESS WHO'S GETTING MARRIED

            Well it certainly isn’t me. I just wanted to congratulate my buddy John on his nuptials and I wish I could have been there when he toasted them. Actually that sounds kind of painful. Congrats John & Courtney.

INEVITABLE

The shattering of my drivetrain happened just far enough away for it to be really annoying. Oh well, it was a nice walk home and it kept me from bombing down the back of the mountain which would have meant a terrible, half day walk back home. Yeah, the bright side of life.