Wander In My Time

My next night in Paris, I moved to a hostel. The price actually comes out to about the same as a cheap Airbnb, sadly, even with those large dorm rooms, but the social element does add a certain spice to traveling, especially as a "young-adult." Hostels are a really unique social situation. Everyone there is ostensibly available to chat, because they have something in common with you, and because staying in a place where you've accepted to sleep through a stranger's snoring means you'll probably put up with an awkward get-to-know-you conversation as well. Some hostels are better than others at stimulating this kind of connection. In Paris, there was a table which met every day at 5:00pm where new-comers could get a free drink and meet each-other. I wandered over to this table a little late, and was surprised to find the crew fairly lit up already. I took the seat of someone who left, and soon found one quite loud USC law-school student from the States leaning ...

Don't believe what you hear--the French are not rude. But they are a serious people, and they dress in a way that makes participation in nonsense seem tragic, so I suppose they avoid it. I have met many french folk who are apologetic for their lack of English skills. Please!  I say. Or, rather, "see voo play! Mon français c'est plus mal." When I explain in five odd French words that I'm going to Prague to my Airbnb host, she makes a face that seems at first like she hates it there. Then she says "quelle jolie," or someting, and I realize she is just pained by the fondness of her memories there. "Beware of pick pockets" she says in French, miming a sneaky hand, "Oh yes?" I pretend that this is news to me, so we can celebrate a bit of conversation. I keep hearing people playing trap music out of their iphone in public, just for the ambiance. The speaker is so bad, it just sounds like the stuttering clicks of a child's toy, m...

My Airbnb host speaks very little English, and I speak just as much French. She is an older woman and I am sleeping in what may or may not be her child's old bedroom. She slumbers in the room next to me. The wall between us is thin; I think I can hear her breathing. I sleep for a while and then the my jet-lagged body clock wakes me up in the middle of the night with Mercy Seat by Nick Cave rolling around in my head. I don't know the lyrics, so it's just an every churning cycle of the snippets i do remember: and the Mercy Seat is something / and I think my head is burning / and in a way I'm yearning to be done with all this searching for the truth / an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth / and anyway I told the truth; and I'm not afraid to lie. I don't want these words in my head, they are just the thing that my brain chose to have me thinking instead of getting the sleep I needed. After what feels like an hour of staring at the inside of my eyelids, or the st...

After numerous bittersweet goodbyes, one last American cheeseburger, running bleary-eyed around a massive Paris subway station trying desperately to figure out what I had to do to get to the M4 train that my 5% battery iPhone recommended (the M4 symbol, paired with an arrow, seemed to chase itself in circles around a massive echoey room of people way more competent and/or sinister than me), finally settling on an Uber before my phone kicked the proverbial bucket, and hoping to God that my driver didn't pull anything funny while the one tool I had to keep him honest was donezo, I find my way to an airbnb where, despite poor technology and instructions, a friendly stranger on a balcony sees my gaping mouth and comes to the rescue. She is a short and stout woman with wiry brown hair and a weathered face. She says something to me in french. "Parlez-vous Anglais?" I shout from the street. "No," she replies. And so it's going to be complicated. I'm pretty ...

I am sitting on the porch of my parents' house in Portland, drowsy from a sleepless night and waiting for the delivery of my Eurail Pass from one of those jaunty brown UPS employees. I cannot miss it, or I will be landing in Paris $450 poorer with no ticket onward. More or less tethered to the porch until its delivery, I've been spending my time consuming alternately horrifying and charming articles on the internet, from  this fairly thorough compendium of harrowing scenarios that may come true given the current path we're headed down regarding carbon emissions, to this short piece on American's dislike for small talk. This unusual combination gives me the sense that my upcoming tour of European cities will be a glimpse of human history and ingenuity before we're destroyed by plague/famine/toxic air, and also the wisdom not to mention this to any strangers I meet in quaint cafés. Do you know how to feel strange in your own home? Look at the ground and wo...