The Kindness of Strangers (traveling tales)
Continuing the stories from my journal, from draig_tywyll and I hitchhiking through France:
8/1
Haven't had much time to see the sights today; we spent most of the day in the Bureau of Agriculture. Rob was asking questions about the vendange and the prospect of getting a job in the 5 weeks before the harvest. The answers have put him in a foul mood for most of the afternoon, and have set me to some worst-case scenario calculations. 500F to support two people for forty days could get creative.
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The fates have decided we were not meant to die of depression (or foreshadowing). The above was written on a sidewalk table outside a Quick Burger near the town center of Cleremont. Shortly after it was written, Rob came back from talking to his mother and a bank (still no easy way to get his money to him), and rather than be depressed (apparently he beat an ATM machine senseless when nobody was looking, so he already felt better), we decided to chat up three nice young ladies who were pounding on a wooden door next to the Quick Burger. It turns out they were students (English Majors :) at the university, and when the conversation started to lapse and it appeared that their friend, who lived somewhere beyond the previously mentioned door, wasn't going to show for a bit, we asked for directions to the university. Now truth be told, we were hoping for sympathy and floor space, but instead we were escorted up the street by two lovely young ladies chattering in English and one chattering in French, laughing, and receiving translations. The got us about halfway to the university, pointed us in the right direction, stayed for a brief discussion on the relative intensity of French swear words (maybe we were reaching), and wandered off.
We had left our packs behind the desk of the hotel Galleini (195 francs- we found a cheaper place the next morning, and we could have stayed at the university for 60 francs, but at the time it as raining, we were in the middle of town, and tired. Crest la vie). So we hiked back to the hotel to grab our back packs and bumped into Laura. Laura checked us in the night before. She is a dark-haired gypsy who spoke broken English in a Birmingham accent. She asked us where we were headed and how we were getting there, then offered us crash space if we were ever back in town. I'd say it was about that moment Rob and I lit up like a pair of christmas trees, and before too long we had offered a home-cooked meal, American music, and a first born to be named later in exchange for a piece of her floor.
Laura had a little place in the hills just outside of Cleremont-Fd. She got off work at 10, so Rob and I hiked out to the University and back to kill a couple of hours. After we got back, she drove us out to her place and showed us around. She's 23, and a self-professed "Bad Girl", and this is her first real place. Working at the hotel gives her enough money to get by fairly comfortably. You walk up 4 flights of stairs and past a little wood door (quietly, the landlord lives in the other apartment) and into her living room, which is sparsely decorated but looks like the home of a gypsy. There's a low little coffee table, a sofa, a bureau and a little stereo center in the lower corner (she has the top apartment, and the slope of the roof offers an interesting geometry). There's also a kitchen and a little bedroom on either side of the living room, and a bathroom with a tiny little square tub:
Rob and I made salad, Laura made fried rice, and we ate dinner on the floor in the living room while listening to Fleetwood Mac, Golden Earring and Iggy Pop. Later, as Rob talked to her about a year she spent in England learning the language and working, I climbed out her living room window on to the roof and tried to draw the Cathedral in the distance.
8/1
Haven't had much time to see the sights today; we spent most of the day in the Bureau of Agriculture. Rob was asking questions about the vendange and the prospect of getting a job in the 5 weeks before the harvest. The answers have put him in a foul mood for most of the afternoon, and have set me to some worst-case scenario calculations. 500F to support two people for forty days could get creative.
-----
The fates have decided we were not meant to die of depression (or foreshadowing). The above was written on a sidewalk table outside a Quick Burger near the town center of Cleremont. Shortly after it was written, Rob came back from talking to his mother and a bank (still no easy way to get his money to him), and rather than be depressed (apparently he beat an ATM machine senseless when nobody was looking, so he already felt better), we decided to chat up three nice young ladies who were pounding on a wooden door next to the Quick Burger. It turns out they were students (English Majors :) at the university, and when the conversation started to lapse and it appeared that their friend, who lived somewhere beyond the previously mentioned door, wasn't going to show for a bit, we asked for directions to the university. Now truth be told, we were hoping for sympathy and floor space, but instead we were escorted up the street by two lovely young ladies chattering in English and one chattering in French, laughing, and receiving translations. The got us about halfway to the university, pointed us in the right direction, stayed for a brief discussion on the relative intensity of French swear words (maybe we were reaching), and wandered off.
We had left our packs behind the desk of the hotel Galleini (195 francs- we found a cheaper place the next morning, and we could have stayed at the university for 60 francs, but at the time it as raining, we were in the middle of town, and tired. Crest la vie). So we hiked back to the hotel to grab our back packs and bumped into Laura. Laura checked us in the night before. She is a dark-haired gypsy who spoke broken English in a Birmingham accent. She asked us where we were headed and how we were getting there, then offered us crash space if we were ever back in town. I'd say it was about that moment Rob and I lit up like a pair of christmas trees, and before too long we had offered a home-cooked meal, American music, and a first born to be named later in exchange for a piece of her floor.
Laura had a little place in the hills just outside of Cleremont-Fd. She got off work at 10, so Rob and I hiked out to the University and back to kill a couple of hours. After we got back, she drove us out to her place and showed us around. She's 23, and a self-professed "Bad Girl", and this is her first real place. Working at the hotel gives her enough money to get by fairly comfortably. You walk up 4 flights of stairs and past a little wood door (quietly, the landlord lives in the other apartment) and into her living room, which is sparsely decorated but looks like the home of a gypsy. There's a low little coffee table, a sofa, a bureau and a little stereo center in the lower corner (she has the top apartment, and the slope of the roof offers an interesting geometry). There's also a kitchen and a little bedroom on either side of the living room, and a bathroom with a tiny little square tub:
Rob and I made salad, Laura made fried rice, and we ate dinner on the floor in the living room while listening to Fleetwood Mac, Golden Earring and Iggy Pop. Later, as Rob talked to her about a year she spent in England learning the language and working, I climbed out her living room window on to the roof and tried to draw the Cathedral in the distance.