L'APPARTEMENT

We make the turn into the vineyard and even before I knew exactly where I was headed I knew exactly where I was going. Twenty-five hectares of vineyard were splayed out along the side of a mountain and I can't even see the restaurant and hotel that also rests on the estate. We twist and wind along the vines at a furious pace. I think the silence has finally gotten to her and she just has to get rid of me. (Later when she drives me for a bit of tour around town I learn that is just the way she drives, like a bat out of hell.) We pull up to the restaurant and she gives me a quick tour of the area and sets me out a plate of food and a glass of wine back in what turns out to be the break room and as people pass and talk the last moments of confidence are stripped from me as I now resort to shrugging and repeating "quoi?" et "je ne sais pas." I eat in a gathered silence and I remind myself that right here and now is the absolutely lowest I will ever be and to learn from it and concentrate on learning and, oh who am I kidding, it was just plain weird. But I knew it would be and that is what's been keeping me up at night. I wish there was some trick to advance the future all the while keeping the knowledge but skip the wrinkles. Yep, I want to stay pretty but it ain't easy when you live as hard as I do.

We finish lunch and as I'm following her we run into the father and the moment is that of encountering big foot but a weird thing happens as we meet. He speaks at me and I actually seem to understand what he says. I search for words and he finds them for me and I can only extend an emphatic "oui!" and before I know it we, the mother and I, are gone and off to the apartment I will call home for God only knows. Note: Adélaide told me that her father had warned her that I better not try and teach him English since he wouldn't be having it. The only English word he knows, supposedly, is no and that's because it's the same damn word. I mean if you forget the extra "n" and the nasal pronunciation but I think I already went into all of this. She gave me such nerves about the whole thing and here I find him to be a genuine and reasonably tempered person. She also did warn me to try and not drink him under the table since although I've considered going pro in the liquor ranks he will finish me. I believe her.

We drive up the mountain a bit further and duck behind a curve to reveal a beautiful chateau style home behind gates. After a beat we walk into the ground floor, which is my apartment and it is small but has everything I'd possibly need; dishes, a table, a shower, bed, an espresso machine and the best thing of all...heat. Not sure if I mentioned this or not but it is the beginning of March and it is cold and wet. She leaves me so I can get situated and I decide to finally lay down and take a nap. After thirty minutes of laying there I realize it's not going to happen so I unpack. I'm supposed to head upstairs for dinner at seven. Even though I'm sick, nervous, and can't speak the language I feel a sense of calm since I am now finally here, finally living what I had been talking about for so many months. I guess this is why women feel so relieved after marriage; they can finally stop talking/thinking about it. I should have married more of my girlfriends.

(I know it sounds sexist but it's true. No one says to a thirty year old man, "So you're thirty, huh? How come you're not married yet?")

MIND THE GAP

Sorry, one last thing about London. If I had never ridden another mass transit system like in NYC or Paris I would still think The Tube sucks. It's slow, very loud, sways as if it might leave the tracks and above all crazy expensive. For some reason they don't sell a three day pass like most cities do since, oh I don't know, most tourists come in for an f'n long weekend. In NYC when I was living there a three day pass was $7, a day pass in London is 7£ ($10.50) and that's if you don't leave during rush hour. The next step up is a week pass for 45£. I couldn't bear to look at what a month costs and I'm not exactly a person who thinks a lot on money.

To demonstrate what a sub standard system the whole thing is all you have to listen for is a pleasant sounding ladies voice say, "Mind the Gap," at every stop and she isn't kidding. I stepped up and over one spot that a person could have easily escaped into and started his own underground rodent empire. In NYC or Paris for that matter I'm not even sure if you could fit a shoe between most spots. I can see the court proceedings now, I'm going to picture them all with floured up wigs if you don' t mind.

"Sir, so you say your leg was sheered off by the train?"

"Yes."

"And you say you had both legs when you got on?"

"I think I'd notice one missing."

"So the said incident definitely happened upon departing the train?"

"Yes, my leg got caught in the space between the train and the platform."

"The gap?"

"Yes, the gap."

"Didn't you hear the pleasant lady say, mind the gap?"

"Well...yes."

"Case dismissed. He knew to mind the gap so it is his own fault that the gap was not minded!"

I'm also a bit of a germ phobe and the tube with all of it's cushioned dirty seats just looked contagious. I'm sure they had to add some comfort since it takes so long to get anywhere but I never found the plastic seats in NYC to be uncomfortable and I appreciated the fact that I knew what I was sitting on. Anything could be in those fibers and I suspect anything is. Maybe Purell could start selling ass liners like they have in airport bathrooms but now made exclusively for the Underground.

FRANCE (OR IS IT SWITZERLAND)

Although the clouds were thick all the way up until landing the only thing I'm pretty sure of is that I landed back on Earth. I saw a few industrial type buildings and such but outside of a lonely FED EX plane tucked off to the side I was pretty sure that this airport (Bâle, Basil) has to be either a bizarre after thought or bucolic thought towards the future. Either way, I'm here and I gather myself since this is for all intents and purposes the start of it all. Once I leave this plane there is no looking back. Oh, who am I kidding, if I looked back now all I'd see are another hundred people looking forward. I leave the plane and am kind of startled that I'm immediately out in the open. No customs people, no security, not even a janitor. After a few minutes I see my bag round the carousel and I head out the sortie. Easy enough I think as I finally find the customs agent waiting around the bend. She looks me over with a surprised look of confusion that I seem to strike most people with on this trip. She looks my passport over, front to back, literally just flips it to see if there is a cover on the back.

"You live in London?"

"No."

Now there are two confused people counting myself. Why would I live in London when I just got stamped there three days ago and wouldn't I have some sort of legalized visa to show why an American was living in England? Either way she shrugs it off and stamps my passport and I think the stamp answers my question. 

"So I am in Switzerland."

The reason I was wondering is on the Internet, depending on what site, it's listed as France or Switzerland. I thought the whole thing to be a bit odd until I walked out the door and realized that this airport is perfectly situated to enter Switzerland...and France, if you so chose to go out door number two but I left door number one and of course door number one is no longer available for reentry. Et voila! I am in Switzerland and my ride is in France.

I enter back through departures with the mission impossible theme song keeping me company until I find a British Airways worker who points me in the right direction. I find the French customs area and I begin to tell them what happened and all he does is wave me through once I reach the third word. The sign says to go down to enter France but there are no stairs and the area that points to France literally points to the concrete floor. I wander a bit more until I find an elevator and that is how I entered France, via a metal box. I soon find Adélaide's mother. She was supposed to have a sign with either my name or her name on it but as I was one of three people in the terminal and she being the second, well, we sort of figured it out...and then my lessons in French took the turn I was dreading. Total immersion...now!

I some how explained to her that the bastards in England poisoned me and that I haven't slept for two days and am very sorry for being such and idiot and only taking two (+) months to learn a language that I should have spent three years or more on. She said some things, rapidly, and before I knew it we were off. In reality this is probably how the KGB picked up unsuspecting patriots back in the day. One of the things I clearly understood was her question on how long I would be staying. Crap, she's probably already looking to be rid of me. All I can think as the conversation runs dry is that this is the mother; I still have to make acquaintances with the father. Mon dieux!

THE MORNING OF MY DISCONTENT

I am just not having any luck with this whole trip. So I have my train ticket from Victoria to Gatwick but I find that the Underground doesn't start early enough to get me to Victoria to catch my train. This is why you do your research folks. Don't be like Eric. Normally I am better than this but I thought I had a guide and all I've been doing with any moment of free time is learning French since that is how I will get through my day by day for the next three to eight months. Two plus days in London didn't rank that high on my priority list.

So I hire a car to get to Victoria which it turns out to be nearly the same price as if I had just hired a car straight away to Gatwick, I save 10£ and lose an hour of sleep I probably wouldn't of had anyway. Yep, you guessed it, I couldn't seep once again and I was so tired when I laid down last night I was sure I'd pass right out. Six hours later I'm sitting at the edge of the bed staring at Ray's Iphone waiting for the the alarm to go off. It does. I grab my bags, do a final run through and wait for the driver. I have to admit if you're going to get a lift it might as well be in a Mercedes. The driver is nice and he wants to talk but talking and watching the curving traffic from the wrong side of the road is really doing nasty things to my stomach. So I'm sure I didn't do much in the terms of American/Pakistani relations with this fellow. What can I do? I thought the most polite thing for me to do was to NOT throw up in his back seat.

Thirty minutes later and I'm at the platform with a whole host of workers who have no idea from where the train will leave. I finally ask a young girl who looks in the know and she confirms my suspicion...no one really knows. Five minutes before the train is due to depart the one right in front of me flings open it's doors and a man steps out and I can only muster, "Gatwick?"

"Yes sir, you'll want to be in the first four cars."

First four cars huh? Cool. Thanks for that info that I'm sure would have saved me the huge hassle of dragging my two backpacks down the narrow passage of the Gatwick Express. It all sounds so Harry Potter doesn't it? Funny thing is they never even mention Gatwick as one of the stops until way down the way and after the cars had separated. I looked back at the other cars after we separated and waved goodbye to the poor non-angleterre who were now headed to the lost city of Crumpetswick or the like.

Of course I have to make my way to the North Terminal and the train pulls into the South so I catch another train and am now able to move onto my new fear. Two nights prior I get an email from Easyjet saying that if my carry on couldn't fit in the overhead or if I had two carry on that I would not be able to board and would miss my flight...NO EXCEPTIONS. The night before I pushed and stuffed and twisted everything I could into my main backpack since I now had to squeeze my camera case into my secondary pack. They made it sound as if the plane was the size of Peter pan and I practice my plea and ponder just how much I'm willing to bribe the proper person with or even how much a train from London to Strasbourg would be. The primary moment was before me as I handed over my passport.

"You pack your bag today, sir?"

"Boy did I."

"Anything explosive or hazardous?"

At that point I thought it might be a bit of fun to mention my stomach but deferred out of fear security would make a piñata out of me.

"No sir."

I breezed through security and stepped out into this extremely modern terminal with Hugo Boss and cigarettes for sale everywhere. I mention this because I had just stood in a security hall that resembled something from the 70's TV show, Barney Miller, so this was quite the sight. I find my flight on the big board and it reads...BOARDING. It's gate number 101 and I am at 53 and I come to find that 101 is nearly back to the South Terminal but what's a guy to do but hoof it...again. I really don't care as long as my bag slides inside that beautiful storage bin. I make it there in plenty of time and slide my jacket over my sack so they can't get a good bead on just how fat the silly thing is. My plan always was that if I can get past the steward or stewardess that I'm home free because if my bag doesn't fit then I can slide out my camera case, collapse the bag, and slide both of them home. All this worry was for not as my fat ass bag easily slid into the overhead bin. It's a freakin' Airbus and they made it sound as if we lost power we could all just flap our arms and blow. I really need to sleep but as you all know by now...I can't sleep on planes.

So let's see, 5am-car, 6am-train, train again, security, sprint, hide and seek, and then the plane. Where's the slap and tickle I was promised?

LONDON - THE NIGHT

I'm not going to go into detail about the night but it was very reminiscent of the other time I got food poisoning. I finally passed out about five in the morning due to exhaustion. The second day of London was gone, I barely made it to the store to buy some Gatorade let alone go and check out the city. I guess I'll have to learn London on some other trip. I should come back though, even if I never really liked the place, which is strange for me since I love architecture and the old world and always feel as if I'm home when I find myself in those places. I'm sure that being sick didn't help but there was something askew with me from the get go. I can't put a finger on it and maybe I never will. I'll just chalk it up to being a bad first date but here, in London, I never felt so much as a stranger in a foreign land as I did here, and they speak almost the same language as I do. Oh well, off to France. I wonder what kind of English they speak there?

PS - Meredith and Ray did take me to an underground Belgium restaurant and we did have a nice time with all things considering so, thank you guys for letting me stay and for taking me out. Cheers.

LONDON: THE RECKONING

Yesterday worked out perfect. After several beers at a few local taverns, a home cooked meal, and a bottle of wine I turned in around ten and supposedly slept through a wicked storm. I woke up at seven and felt perfect. No jet lag, no hangover, and not even really hungry. I almost head straight out but I realize after my latte that it's about to be rush hour and the day pass is 3£ more and to be honest, what's the rush. I watch the BBC and I discover the only thing more dire than American news is European news and half of it is them discussing just what in the hell we are going to do. They poke fun at Gordon Brown and his pandering and goofball behavior when he meets Obama. I feel sorry for the SOB for an instant but then I have to think to myself, "There must be a reason."

I finally head out and take the District Line up to the Embankment stop and I meander my way in the most improbable of ways since I only have a simple without detail walking map. Up until two weeks ago Meredith, my friend in London, was going to be my tour guide but she finally got hired on and now couldn't take me about. I had been more concerned with learning French than figuring London so I decided to do what I do best, walk aimlessly and stumble into cool things. London is old world and in the old world streets lined up in a grid are about as hard to find as a working girl on Fire Island.

Street signs are located on the buildings at various heights and locations and sometimes not at all. Not to mention when you do find a map of any sort like at a bus stop or such they, the city or map people, flatly refuse to put "You are Here" on the map so unless you know where you are you have no idea where you actually are so therefore are still lost but now annoyed since you have a map to demonstrate just how lost you are. So if you get frustrated by not being able to simply walk two blocks, turn left, and there is where you wanted to be you might want to have someone else be the navigator. The best way to describe the London map is to look at it, squint a bit, and it'll appear as a thousand confused little worms. After a few missteps I find the Nat'l Gallery and all it's statues of dead men and panicked pigeons.

Don't ask me why I didn't go inside the Nat'l Gallery. I mean it's totally free and would have been a wonderful way to waste and hour or two and maybe even learn something but for some reason the sight of a 1000 tourists sort of repelled me. Don't ask me why since I am a tourist and in a sense at "tourist central." I make my way down Whitehall past Downing, where the British PM lives, and on to Parliament and over to Westminster and I take photos and watch the fashion of the people which has no rhyme or reason and I love it. I've always gotten a kick out of the locals way more than the inside of some nameless edifice.

I see a street sign for Buckingham Palace and Victoria Station and as I have no real plans and I do have to purchase a train ticket from said station I follow the signs for what seems to be roughly two miles, more if you count my inability to maintain a straight line as little nooks and alleys invite me down them. I find a little street closed to traffic and filled with the lunch crowd and one place in particular is handing out sandwiches as fast as people can order them. This must be the spot I think to myself and as I queue I hear the locals talk and order and many get the egg and bacon or the like so I decide to get the egg and bacon. Well folks, this is where London takes a sinister turn pour moi. The sandwich is good, surprisingly good really. The only problem is that about thirty minutes later I have my train ticket in hand and a sickening feeling that's either pointed north or south.

I can eat anything, really, anything and I pride myself on that. I've eaten street food in Mexico, Brazil, NYC, and many other places and never got a bit of the turns but here I was, well...sick as holy hell. I trudged on making the stops and turns that I wanted to make like Buckingham Palace and into the nooks of ST. James where Oscar Wilde made inappropriate advances and up to Piccadilly Circus. I wanted to see more but as I sat at the Circus and amongst the circus I could feel my insides turn to liquid. It was nearly rush hour so I hopped back on the tube and made my way back to the flat. I hope to get a little rest and relief before meeting up with Meredith and her beau at 7.

BTW: Pepto Bismol does not exist in England.

STEP ONE - GET TO LONDON

I stand at the airport before an older woman who squints through her glasses at the screen before her. She tries to tell me I only have a ticket to Atlanta and that she doesn't see anything to London-Heathrow. I bite my tongue as the comments inside my mind flow from comical to hysterical. Maybe you should get some glasses for your glasses or just finally retire I think to myself as I hold a controlled grin. After a few minutes of deodorant deteriorating moments she finally finds it and prints out my ticket and I double check my bag to make sure it's not marked to Atlanta and it is indeed headed to London. All seems swell but I can't shake the feeling of impending mishaps or the like.

I take off. I land. So far so good as I have three hour lay over but decide to settle London right away and head to the Delta desk where the lady smiles with that smile that tells me she doesn't want to deal wit the problem and tells me she can't check me into that flight. I have to go to concourse E14 (which involves a train at some point) so I head that way and it feels as if I've walked to Birmingham by the time I get to E14, which is closed or at least temporarily abandoned. Figures.

Quick fun fact: Every departure monitor I see shows no flight to London involving Delta so guess my mind set now. I console myself by reminding myself that Athena still lives in Atlanta and I could go and crash with her, I mean if I had her number which is on my cell phone back in Big Rapids but that's just one small detail. I would later find out that Air France was actually the carrier on my next leg but of course it says nothing on my itinerary. Thank you, Delta!

I head to the gate where the flight is scheduled to depart and all I find there are two people who look like they've seen the worst of the day. I head back down the hall and finally find a desk with living breathing humans. Luckily for me the one lady is a trainee so she has to help so she can learn and I rejoice until her trainer looks baffled and finally says, "You're headed to Grand Rapids?" I just came from Grand Rapids I tell him and he shrugs a bit and all I can think about is that lady all the way back before the walk to Birmingham and that grin of hers. As murderous thoughts invade my mind I suddenly hear the trainee meekly state "Is that his seat number?" Suddenly all is well as they realize they couldn't check or change my reservation since it was in use by some sweet angel who remembered to put me on the aisle. Apparently pre check-in and seat assignments with international flights are a misnomer. She prints me out my boarding pass and I can only giggle in relief, as if I'd won something.

One thing you should know, I can't sleep on planes. So trips like this always means that I'll be up for at least 24 hours or more and that's not counting the adrenaline spurt I get after I land where I decide to charge into the city. I had hoped it wouldn't be that way this time. I was exhausted when I got on the plane and I thought maybe a cocktail would help but liquor is more of a fuel than a sleep aid for me so I relented and soberly watched, "The Express," the Ernie Davis story. The following movie was "The Secret Lives of Bees." I don't know who picked them but they both have very strong racial overtones in regards to America's past. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to bring up these issues and such but what a horrible postcard to give all the tourists leaving America before heading back home. Why not just show eight hours of GWB answering press conference questions.

I land at eleven London time, it's five in the morning back in America and I feel absolutely and totally fine. I make my way through the whole passport-stamping thing in about two point two seconds. I tell you it's easier to get into England that it is out of Dallas-FT. Worth. I grab my ankles and change some money since I have to take the underground immediately and will need cash since they stopped taking smiles as payments years ago. I collect my bag, get a day pass, and then take the Piccadilly line to the District line back to Richmond where I scat about for my friend's boyfriend's place of work so I can collect a key to their flat. I'm on a budget and am not afraid to bum a bed especially when they have a spare. He gives me what I think are pretty direct directions until I get twenty feet and realize what he's told me doesn't make any sense. right at that moment, of course, it begins to rain. I search and search with sixty  pounds of gear strapped to me until I run across a DHL driver entertaining a deliver. I wait, where am I going right? I apprehend him and he immediately knows where I am to go and gives me succinct directions there. I look at him with the most tired pleading eyes of my life and ask if he could just drive me.  He, at first, was totally game but the reality of possibly losing his job made him repeat the directions as he scurried off. No matter, six or seven minutes later I'm totally on the other side of where the boyfriend had told me to be but I stick the key in and the door pops open. I am so sure this isn't the right place that I check the mail to make sure it says his or her name. It does...ah sweet relief.

I tramp up the stairs and find the spare and drop my bags as I sit on the bed. A decision has to be made. I either stay awake and switch my sleep schedule here and now or I take a nap. I look down and see that my shoes are still on and I can feel that there's a rumbly in my tumbly so I head out with keys and cash in hand to explore Richmond. Oh who am I kidding, I just wanted a beer.