Femme à France

Houseboat on the Seine

2009-04-16T10:18:00.021-04:00

I am either the luckiest dog in the world or the biggest sap. Probably both. Somehow in my net-sleuthing I uncovered a link for a houseboat (une peniche) for rent in the heart of Paris and contacted Georges (if that's his real name) to check availability. Miraculously, La Chali k is free for several of my nights in Paris. If this isn't a total scam it is a total miracle - an incredible old Dutch barge parked on the quai in front of the Gare d'Austerlitz and within stone's throw of Le Jardin des Plantes (botanical gardens).

Teak chairs on the deck will allow us to eat our meals en pleine aire and watch river boats pass by filled with envious tourists. There is a small aft cabin with double bed (for me, of course!) and a recessed sleeping nook in the Salon for my buddy, who is a tremendous midnight fusser and must be isolated. Naturellement, we will be drinking wine at all times and chatting with our neighboring boaters in French. This George fellow says, "On an other boat live a women alone since she left her husban." I'm with you sister.

I do wonder how up-and-up this is, since George's emails dropped off considerably after I sent a deposit via Paypal (I finally figured how to send Euros to France, so simple it had me flummoxed - merely click the "send money" tab and Paypal tabulates the euro amount and sends it to the email address you proscribe). I'll wait a day and assault him again.

(I'm a little anxious with the emails and have already alienated one concierege in Paris with repeated requests for a reservation confirmation, causing him to write: Nous prenons bonne note de la réservation de Chambre ... which roughly translates, through steely clenched teeth: "we have noted well your room reservation." Ugh. Note to self: Prepare for terminal politeness from French.)

I am also compiling a list of Must-Do's in Paris that are most excellently quirky:

Take tea and pastries in the mosque.

Go to a street market:

Visit the Cata com bs:

Or ...

Take in the Magic Boat on the Seine, a cheesy magic show/dinner theater with: d'éblouissantes beautés Asiatiques, qui apportent subtilité, raffinement et glamour aux époustouflants numéros de Magie de Jan Madd.

Translation: Dazzling Asian beauties who carry themsleves with subtlety, refinement and glamor during the heartstopping magical numbers of Jan Madd. There is not one thing I don't like about the sound of that. (Watch this highly amusing video.)

Why Do Women Travel?

2009-03-02T21:38:00.014-05:00

So, why do women travel?

The underpinnings of modern travel might be traced to the 19th century, when Victorian ladies traveled with their husbands to exotic lands. Some were amateur biologists hunting for rare butterflies. There were the teeming masses of young ladies, who took their requisite tours of Europe to "finish" their edges. There were sturdy missionary mavens conquering the unclean souls of Africa and South America and Asia.

But what of the solitary middle-aged female traveler of the late 20th and early 21st century – that new breed of self-inventing heroines made famous by books like Under the Tuscan or Eat, Pray, Love. For these women, the pleasure of travel is mixed with the interior voyage of self-discovery.

My friend Bonnie has sailed the world with her husband Earl, aboard their 65-foot schooner Bonnie Lynn. She says she knows the exact moment when she realized she was a traveler: “I was five years old in Michigan. And I remember looking around me and thinking, “I’m outta here!” I couldn’t wait until I was 18.”

So why do I want to travel? I could come up with several plausible reasons, but they all boil down to one basic premise: I want to be the actual heroine of my story and I want to get new chapter headings.

Based on my last trip to Europe – 10 days solo in the Netherlands about eight years ago – the experience of arriving will hardly be the thing of legend. In fact, it was during that trip I first felt my invisibility, a haze from which I suspect I will never emerge. I was a ghost strolling down the Prinsenstraat, made corporeal only momentarily when I asked a rushing Dutchman for directions, answered always in that clinically polite, perfect English.

I was a shadow preventing the frustrated masses from seeing works on paper at the Van Gogh Museum. I was both lover and beloved when I bought myself two huge armfuls of tulips at the flower market, took them back to my small room and spent the whole night just looking at them. No one in the Netherlands sought me out for conversation or met my eyes. I ate alone, drank alone, wandered the botanical gardens behind a pair of American girls just so I could hear them talk. … The Dutch are not renowned bottom pinchers. But, as my secret agenda was to meet A Rich Dutch Architect, the man I unaccountably felt was my destiny, I feel Holland failed me.

One exception: That trip did renew my friendship with Mr. Marlboro – whom I first met secretly one night at a Brown Café in Amsterdam, then quickly succumbed to during the day. I remember the company of a specific cigarette in Deventer as I looked out my hotel window with Scriabin on the radio behind me. I remember the Delft Marlboro that I swore would be my last. I remember bumming a smoke from a young man in a tuxedo outside a pub (wedding?) who would have given me the whole pack. (I did eventually give Smoke the heave, but he is always lurking.)

I tend to think travel is more of an outward adventure for men. They like to attain destinations. They like to know the distances between cities. They get worked up about the history of places. Their pride is caught up in their ability to negotiate hotels and money and streets and waiters, all of which invariably make them grouchy.

It is different for women. We need the exhilaration of not knowing where we’re going. We crave the melancholy of moving. We ride on trains and stew over our choices. We find a rare tenderness for ourselves as we wake up to our thoughts outside the bus window. We want to start at the beginning. We hope to be discovered as treasures. If we’re lucky, we hope we’ll have a meal on a high hill with people who laugh easier than we do.

We travel to experience perfect moments.

Train photo courtesy of Jason Niedle's travel blog.

A House in Languedoc

2009-02-21T18:22:00.014-05:00

I realize it's not exactly original to be a disappointed, middle-aged lady longing to go to France. Things are cliché because they are commonplace. But if you start on that slope, having a baby or falling in love or burying a parent are also cliché, experiences most women find to be heartbreakingly, uniquely personal. I'll dispense with the apologia for now with a confession: I actually have a house waiting for me in Languedoc.

Here it is, or at least here is its terrace. My best friend's husband, L., has just purchased it as a lieu de refuge (another thing I get to do is pepper my posts with pretentious bons mots). He's a bit of a refuge specialist and a wonderful wood sculptor. She's a professor with a fantastically 19th century European pedigree: countess-like mere who was the toast of Paris in the 30s; Nazi-resisting German intellectual father; a transcontinental childhood that included stints in a convent school in Rome. More on them anon.

Their house is in a small village outside Bézier, an old Roman city along the Orb River which is just outside Montpelier, about 6 miles from the Mediterranean, and a 1.5 hour drive west of Aix-en-Provence. A quick search just turned up this fascinating fact: Miss France 2006 was née à Bézier -- I will upload her glam shot in a separate post of Fun Things to Know About Bezier.

I can't say that my friends' village sounds like a thrilling spot ... no dimly-lit cafés, fountain-laced gardens, or beauty queens ... apparently just a sports bar down the road and winding streets full of stone houses. But I like the price and plan to earn my keep by helping them tame their terrace (right now, a heap of tangled cinderblocks) and by assuming the role of chef d'hotel. My professor-friend, G., assures me that Bézier is only a 10-minute bicycle ride away and has all sorts of Frenchie delights. They also have several language schools there and a university. I'm thinking of taking a 2-week conversational French course during the mornings at Centre Hobson. In an email, the center's manager Jaqueline assures me "We put a stress on everyday conversation, what w e call the strategies of the conversation : what to say or to do in such or such situation !" If only I had met Jaqueline earlier, my whole life might have been different ...

Beware of Lists

2009-02-20T19:46:00.008-05:00

During a particularly hopeless period in my 20s, my therapist suggested I make a list of the Top 10 Things I Want to Do in Life. For a somewhat scratchy, unconventional woman, I really ought to have come up with a more original string: get a dog (did it); act (did it); write short stories and poems (did it badly); see a career counselor (waste of $200); get married (did it, did it). One interesting addition was my desire for a short stay in a sanitorium. Though I doubtlessly qualify, it's a goal that has escaped me thus far. Those who have achieved it, however, assure me it is nothing like the restful sanctuary of my dreams, which has vaguely kind nurses, beautiful views of a lake and time to just sleep.

So, while I've done nearly everything on the list, one achievement has eluded me all these years: I have not spent a month in France.

It's easy to talk yourself out of going to France: No money. French meanies. Clumsy grasp of language. No time. The stranglehold of wifery and motherhood. But what happens when you suddenly find yourself jilted by Husband No. 2, deserted by fledgling man-son, in possession of 31 vacation days, and climbing the walls of despair in the middle of a Maine winter?

In my case, I took a brief, feverish spin on Match.com (check out my would-be suitors: "denialboone" [actual spelling] didn't have all his teeth, but he did send along plenty of grinnin' photos astride a four-wheeler, a snowmobile, and a John Deere, woo-hoo!) Barring love, I refinanced my house.

Which brings me to now: I am going to France. I am going to France this summer with money I should be saving for retirement. I am going to France to study French, eat like a bastard, flirt, travel, get lost, and drop myself through the rabbit hole of my own life. You're welcome to come along ... I hope you will.

One caveat: I don't usually write in niblets. So, think of this as the installment plan, like Dickens. And be patient with me.