A Fun French Detour

June of 1989 was a month that was wrapped up in travel throughout Germany and France. I was heading to start my summer French course in Paris at the beginning of July, but I first wanted to experience a little more of France than I had in 1987 during my German course in the Black Forest.

In my 20s, I stayed in youth hostels throughout Europe while dreaming of an America where that kind of accommodation was more prevalent and safer. Still hasn't happened. I took the train most everywhere. In France, I discovered hitchhiking and the 80s were still a pretty safe time to hitchhike. Strasbourg was one of my train stops into France from Germany. I stayed for a couple of days and got on the train for Paris. I thought that I would simply head on to Paris and get my bearings in the city. Fate had a different plan.

I sat down on the train next to another American. Slowly becoming an early 20s Gen-X Eurotrash snob, I spoke to her in German first, then in well-planned French. To my "surprise", she was an American studying Political Science and Journalism at Colby University, but traveling around Europe for the summer on her divorced dad's dime. We ended up having a great conversation on the way to Paris. She, Jennifer, convinced me to come with her to Caen, France, and spend the week there before heading to Paris for school.

I had never heard of Caen (Normandy), except from having found it on the map when trying to find Cannes (Provence on the French Riviera) the first time. Jennifer and I stopped off in Paris to change trains to Caen, which proved not to be an easy task. I also took the opportunity to dump my extra bags in a locker for the week - knowing that I'd have to pick them up from the station porters later.

We got to Caen Monday afternoon late. The manager (1/2 American, 1/2 French) of the youth hostel gave her and me the apartment at the end of the hallway with a little kitchenette! By Tuesday we'd met another American and a Brit at the hostel. During the day, I had found out about a disco we should visit called, appropriately, "The American Disco".

We got to the disco and were all wearing sneakers. I had left my better shoes in my suitcase in Paris and the others, well, they simply didn't have anything else. We were all students after all. We had to knock on the door to get in. The bouncer looked me up and down and said we couldn't come in and, after glancing around our foursome, slammed the door in our faces. Undeterred, I knocked on the door again and asked why we couldn't come in. He said, looking me up and down, "Vous portez les chaussures de mauvaise!" ("You're wearing the wrong shoes!") and went to slam the door.

I exclaimed, "Nous sommes Americains!" casually forgetting that one Brit was in our midst.

He replied exuberantly, "Pour-quoi tu ne m'as pas dit ça que la première fois?" ("Why didn't you say that the first time?") and let us in. He happily ran around the place telling everyone that we were Americans (not realizing that one of us was British). Everyone, and I mean everyone in the place was excited to hear we were there. People came over to us and bought us drinks. They got us on the dance floor to awful disco music trying tragically to teach us the Hustle. The evening turned out great and they showed us that not all French hate Americans. The people in Caen's American Disco explained that only the Parisians really hate Americans, but also that the Parisians hate everyone - even themselves. We found out that in Normandy, in particular, Americans are highly revered from our storming the beaches to save France from Nazi occupation.

We eventually made it to Omaha and Utah beaches, Jennifer and I, to see the remnants of the floating docks. There were great museums that depicted what Americans did during WWII to secure the beaches. It was deeply moving to know that my forefathers (my own father included - who thankfully didn't die) offered their lives to our country to save France and eventually Europe from such evil domination.

Granted, a free ticket into the disco wasn't really the resounding, "Thanks for saving our country!" anyone would necessarily expect, but at least our sneakers didn't fully stop our entrance, either. Having WWII discussions over French beer on a Tuesday night in an "American Disco" in northern France and speaking a mixture of Franglais was interesting. Meanwhile the Brit kept trying unsuccessfully to explain that he wasn't American.

Great Quote!!

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. Susan B. Anthony, reformer and suffragist (1820-1906).

I guess in this quote she coined a phrase?

Hitchhiking 101 - the French Version

Hitchhiking was never something I planned to do - ever. I had scary memories of different horror flicks highlighting hitchhikers dying. My father had told me stories from the 1930s of his friends and him hitchhiking up to New York City from rural NC for the Worlds Fair. My hitchhiking experiences started in the 1980s in the north of France. That phrase to me, "The North of France," now carries a chilly, though romantic tone of its own.

Normandy is a little chillier than one would expect in the summer. Even in the summer, temperatures can get down to about 55 degrees in the evening with a wind. The coastal towns are constantly shrouded with fog and haze from the English Channel. The tides are strong and in some areas run very shallow and later very deep.

Caen, Normandy, I learned, shoulders a lot of historical significance from the home base of soldiers in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (which also set England into the Middle Ages), and William the Conqueror (the Duke of Normandy), to Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc), and eventually WWII. Touring Caen, we passed by a statue of Joan of Arc in the center of town and went walking around the markets where I bought what became one of my favorite jackets in college.

Jennifer and this area of Europe taught me that hitchhiking was, in the 80s, still a safe way to travel. In order to begin hitchhiking, we found ourselves having to walk 2-3 kilometers toward the outskirts of towns and throwing up our thumbs ("Faire de l'autostop", as the French call it - make the cars stop). Walking backwards was never easy for me - even sober! I guarantee that my tripping over things and hitting a couple of vicious signs endeared drivers to pick us up. "If I don't pick him up now, I'll hear about him on the news and feel guilty!"

One day, Tuesday, we wanted to go to Omaha and Utah beaches. First problem: Trains didn't go to the beach in Normandy. In order to get close to the beaches by train, we had to stop in Bayeux. Second problem: We had to hitchhike to and from the beaches successfully timed to make it back to Caen for disco night.

The train ride to Bayeux was interesting (for me) because of all the eye candy. One cute blue collar guy going to work, wearing his dusty clothes from the day before, sat across from me. His jeans were already tight in that 80s way, but made tighter around his crotch because he kept readjusting himself. I lit up a cigarette, a Gauloise Rouge (a little tastier than a Marlboro Light), exchanged a couple of words with Jennifer, and took out my Walkman to listen to the Smiths, trying to nonchalantly glance at the cutey across from me and not be too conspicuous when his hand dove toward his crotch. I put out my cigarette and changed the tape in the Walkman, when I noticed the guy looking at me. With a steady gaze at me and his head bobbing left and right from the movement of the train, he motioned for my Walkman. I thought, "What's he trying to do?" I took off my earphones and asked him what he wanted. He wanted to borrow my Walkman and listen to some music. Cute.

So, I loaned him my Walkman for a few tunes. We exchanged a couple of words now and then, and I changed out the tape once from the Smiths to the Cure. He was moving his head to the groove of the music as he pulled out his light blue pack of cigarettes. I'd never seen these before and he offered me one. To my surprise, they were Gauloise, as well, but I didn't see the filter facing the opening of the pack when I pulled mine out. More to my surprise, there was no filter - on either side! Making sure to "man up", I let him light my cigarette and went to puffing away, stifling rabid coughs, while my face turned a little red. Jennifer, happily, was asleep during this entire exchange. When she woke up close to our stop and saw the guy handing me back my Walkman, I had to explain the whole thing to her. We got off the train before the blue collar cutey. He shook my hand very firmly, which instinctively made me look at his hand, grin, and glance upwards back at him. He winked, smiled, and said, "Bonne journée!" ("Have a great day!")

On our way to and from the train station in Bayeux - the town with a train station closest to Omaha and Utah Beaches - we hitchhiked. The little white truck stopped on the side of the road and the guys in the cab motioned for us to get in back. This was my first hitchhiking experience - ever! My initial excitement, however, was short-lived.

We got in the back of the truck when an overpowering scent hit us: very pungent paint thinner. There were two painters in the back of the truck with no ventilation at all, except from the flapping back door. The painters must have been heading to a job. We had to hold onto the door so that it stayed open for air, but carefully so that neither Jennifer nor I careened out to the speeding pavement behind us.

Jennifer and I smelled paint thinner on each other for the next two hours while we spent the day walking first around Omaha Beach. Then we hitchhiked again on the back of a different truck to Utah Beach. I was on sensory overload with the stories and visions of 3000 soldiers dying on the beaches. So, we walked through the rolling countryside for a while passing cow pastures thumbing for a ride. A local businessman picked us up in his Citroen sedan. He was heading towards Bayeux anyway and dropped us off right at the train station. Sadly, we didn't spend any time in Bayeux because we had to get back to Caen to meet up with the guys from the youth hostel for a night out on the town. We were heading to the American Disco! Couldn't wait.