If you’re following along in your blogpostprayerbooks, this is going to be the “Wow! Things are so different in another part of the world and it has really, truly opened my eyes in ways I never expected!” part.
After taking a train from Paris, I spent the first half of my trip in Grenoble where my friend Megan lives. Though I was really looking forward to seeing Paris for the first time, I am very glad for my time in Grenoble because I got to see what life might actually be like for a person my age living life in France.
These are the things I learned about life in France:
1. They really do eat pastries for breakfast and baguettes with every meal.
Every morning, Megan would go out while I was still sleeping and get pastries and a baguette for the day (have I mentioned she’s amazing?). For breakfast, we would eat soft boiled eggs, fruit, an interesting yogurt/cheese hybrid type substance, and some of the pastries that she had picked up. My favorite was one that had almonds in it. The part of me that is overly concerned about sugar intake freaked out internally, but I told myself to shut the fuck up because we are in France and we’re going to have ourselves a French old time and enjoy ourselves doing it, dammit. Also no one in France is fat or has diabetes (statistic is 100% made up but also seemingly 100% accurate) so I think people only die of things in America, probably because of some sort of international accord that I don’t understand because politics isn’t my strong suit.
For lunch, we would picnic with sandwiches or simply a baguette and cheese.
One night, we went to a very nice and traditional French restaurant. I ate steak (I broke vegetarianism for the trip). It was delish. We also made friends with some Israeli table neighbors who were cool until one of them started talking about how Trump isn’t that bad and then we went home.
2. France does not believe in air conditioning.
France puts Los Angeles to shame when it comes to lack of proper climate control. Everywhere is hot and everyone is sweaty and no one is talking about it, aside from Megan who obviously realizes they’re all insane even if they are saving the Earth for all of us.
3. People bike everywhere.
Not only is everywhere hot, but everyone arriving everywhere is already sweaty because they biked there in 90 degrees. This, too, is not addressed. This, too, will save the planet. Basically, France is just one giant eco friendly humble brag.
I did expect the biking due to my trip to Amsterdam a few years prior. When I went on that trip, I hadn’t ridden a bike in approximately ten years. I don’t know if you know much about Amsterdam, but picking up biking there after a 10 year break is comparable to deciding that because you played basketball in your backyard with your little brother a couple times when you were 10 that you could hop into a pickup game at age 20 with tall, fit people who play every day and are actually secretly on a professional team and are just there for funsies and it’s possible they’re on steroids or were, at the very least, born with super human strength that is yet to be understood by scientists. By some fucking miracle, I biked that whole trip and left mostly unscathed (one of my Toms got mildly ripped when I had to squeeze between a parked car and an oncoming car and hope for the best). I don’t know if it was the magic of weed or if God smiled upon me for my first European jaunt, but whatever happened there made me overly confident that I’d make it through France okay, too.
Megan planned a really beautiful, romantic French day for us. We would bike to the train station, take a train about an hour outside of Grenoble to a town with a beautiful lake. We would then bike from the station to the lake and spend the day laying in the sun, swimming in the water, and biking around the lake in the cool breeze with baguettes in our baskets and sandals on our feet.
We borrowed a bike from one of her wonderful and kind friends. I would use Megan’s helmet because, in Megan’s words, “I have fancy French health insurance and you don’t.”
The bike we borrowed was, I want to say, 50 lbs. It was almost definitely more like 25-30, but a large, unwieldy metal object has a way of becoming impossibly heavy when you have to carry it up and down multiple flights of stairs at train stations.
I tried to feel confident about biking to the train station. I was definitely wobbly and looked like a freakin idiot, but I managed to get there okay even with the addition of a few leg bruises from clumsy bike carrying.
After the train ride, we got off and started our journey to the lake. There was less city traffic than around Grenoble and we were amped about our lake picnic and the beautiful view we would have, so we went a little faster than we had before. I started to really feel like I was doing it. My friend was killin it ahead of me and I was following her. She turned, I turned. And I was even getting less wobbly!
We were almost there! She took a right turn seamlessly and I…did not. I saw a car out of the corner of my eye and froze. In fact, I straight up just stopped in the middle of the street in front of the car and fell over. My ankle snapped as I fell and the 75 lb bike fell on top of me. If you were to ask me how I did this, I would liken it to a time you might have tripped over absolutely nothing and not known how to explain it anyone, even yourself.
I knew I would be okay, but the initial pain was too much for me to do much of anything. The man in the car started getting out and presumably asking if I was okay, but I don’t speak any goddamn French so I just started waving my arm at him in a swatting “I’M FINE JUST MOVE ALONG” type motion which did not seem to get the message across well enough because he continued to stand there. Eventually I yelled “MEGAAAAAAN!” and she returned to rescue me (as one does when they suddenly look back and see their friend on the ground under a bike waving their hand lazily at a Frenchman) and tell the cab driver, probably, that I was okay and he could go, or perhaps that I was just her simple minded cousin who has trouble with basic tasks such as riding bikes but not to worry because she’ll be okay soon and it’s good for her to try things on her own sometimes.
Somehow, miraculously, despite the horrible pain upon falling, I was able to walk and (lucky me) continue biking.
4. France can be stunningly scenic.
We made it to the lake and it was truly stunning.
The breathtaking beauty of this place took up about 20% of my brain while the other 80% was concerned with a combination of how bad my ankle would turn out to be and how I was possibly going to return back to the train station (and then from the train station back to Megan’s) without killing myself. Considering it was sudden lack of confidence that had fucked me over on the way to the lake, a post-injury trip was seeming less doable as time went on and panic rooted itself deeper within me. Not to mention the fact that the seat of the bike was so hard my taint was as bruised as the apple that’s been floating around in my bag for 5 days wondering if it has a purpose. I was stuck in the most stupid, bike themed self-fulfilling prophecy of all time.
Megan kindly distracted me from my worries by taking me through a 15 minute synopsis of Big Little Lies so that I would never have to watch it. Megan is a hero.
Eventually it was time to leave. Megan, with the patience of a saint or someone who has just stopped giving a fuck, let me walk the bike through “scary areas” (ones where there were cars or people) and we made it back okay.
The next day, we had planned to take a hike early in the morning but I decided based on the state of my ankle that I should pass.
We went to the Grenoble Bastille, which can be hiked but instead of further cankling my cankle we took a murder machine to and from the site.
I’m sure I learned a lot about France, but I can’t say with honesty I remember much of it at all. The coolest part of bastille were the caves. They were chilly and utterly silent. The walls and floors were wet and despite thorough googling we couldn’t figure out how a man made cave would hold water like that. If you happen to know how that works, please hit me up: aandreano11@gmail.com.
Also here is France from the Bastille’s point of view (plus me not knowing what to do with my arms or face):
5. The Bisou.
America has the handshake, Miami (decidedly separate from America) has the one cheek kiss, and France has the bisou. Technically, I think “bisou” simply translates to “kiss” but I heard it used colloquially to refer to the double cheek kiss that French people do upon both meeting and greeting. It’s used as universally, casually, and with as little meaning as when Americans say “it was nice meeting you” – you know, when you’re with your friend walking and talking and all of a sudden they run into someone they sort of know and they talk for a couple minutes and they’re not exactly important enough to fully introduce to you so you just stand there awkwardly trying to look like you’re neither annoyed nor intruding so you manage like a glazed half smile and then at the end of it all, you remark upon how incredible the experience was in the biggest lie of your life?
That’s what the bisou is. Or at least that’s what it can be in certain situations, such as this one here:
I was at a bar with Megan and her friend when they saw someone from their PhD program walking down the other side of the street with his girlfriend Olga. They was too far to call to, so they just spent a lot of time gossiping about him and Olga. I can’t remember whether Olga was bitchy or just weird but whatever it was, we don’t like Olga. Unexpectedly, dude and Olga crossed the street and changed direction which put them on a course for us. When they came up to our table, I was positioned at their access point and Megan and Bea were busy talking to dude so I ended up in an obligatory Bisou with Olga, the non-French stranger about whom I had just been engaging in shit talk. And then they left. It was nice meeting them.
6. France is big into street art.
I don’t know why I found myself surprised by this, but at least in Grenoble street art is a big part of the landscape. Some of it was grand:
Some was tiny:
And some was just perfect:
I saw the tag “Kunt” in multiple locations around Grenoble but we never snagged a pic of it.
As we got on the train to leave Grenoble after my 4th day, we mused “Maybe we’ll see some Kunt in Paris.”
Midnight Oatmeal 