Bonjour, tout le monde! I have arrived in France all in one piece. In fact, after all the hassle about getting the flight in the first place, it was suprisingly easy. I had a middle seat, but right behind the bulkhead for the lavatories, so plenty of leg room, and the guy sitting next to me was nice and made sure the flight attendants gave me hot towels and things. I listened to Julia's plane mix until the tinyPod ran out of battery life and then I watched An Inconvenient Truth and part of X3. I didn't get a lot of sleep and it wasn't a whole lot of fun schlepping a hundred pounds or so of luggage all over Northern France, but hey, that's how these things go. Apparently I can ride trains in any language, and a couple of times people were really sweet and helped me with my bags when the stairs were particularly steep. I win.
Things I've learned: the TGV (train à grande vitesse) does in fact go really fast, as the name promises, and France is very beautiful. The weather is kind of grey and misty and cool, but I like it that way, and the countryside is gorgeous. The graffitti along the train routes is nice too; I'm not sure I've ever seen spraypainting that artistic before, especially in Paris. I thought I saw some Eurotrash, but they turned out to be American tourists. Big surprise. There are all these tall thin trees with leaves concentrated at the top that stand between the fields, and it's very green and all the buildings seem to be different colors of brick with tile roofs. Lots of moss on the roofs. That guy who wrote A Year In the Merde was right about the way people let their dogs do whatever they want on the sidewalks.
So now I'm in Cambrai at the auberge de jeunesse or youth hostel. My room has six beds in it in case anyone wants to come and visit, and I found a grocery store (and a MacDo's), so I have a big five-litre bottle of water and a loaf of bread and things to eat for dinner. I spent an unusual amount of money today, but it means that I have a phone again, which is great, and I can change more tomorrow. France is expensive, but I think it won't be difficult to live frugally, given that there are plenty of fresh fruit and vegetable stands with reasonable prices, and of course, bread is everywhere, delicious, and cheap. Cambrai itself is cheaper than most places, I suspect. It's Fayetteville-size, maybe, and lovely. Plenty of gardens, pretty buildings, a town square that's a mix of venerable and modern. There are lots of narrow streets and little shops full of pretty things and bits of walls and gates left over from the medieval fortifications, and tiny churches that are decorated within an inch of their lives. My hostel is off the Rue Saint Douan, and there's a little church along the way with "Saint Douan, Priez Pour Nous" engraved over the door. Everyone here either drives little cars or scooters or bikes everywhere. Just like in Darjeeling, the school children don't actually appear to attend classes, or maybe it's just that I keep being in the centre-ville over lunchtime.
My French is coming back pretty fast. I was able to communicate with the bureaucrates de tourisme who gave me a map of town, the cycliste who helped me find the hostel, the nearly cute pharmacist who sold me toothpaste, the proprietaire de l'auberge, and the guy who sold me a charger and a card for my beloved phone (hooray! I can have joybells as my ringtone again!) so that I can communicate with my contact and the other assistants. I managed to buy a sandwich, too. The French seem to put butter on everything.
Everyone's pretty friendly here. The other people in the hostel all filed in to breakfast this morning and said good morning (that one's easy), and someone whistled at me a little while ago. I spent a couple of hours walking around town (sore, sore, sore from carrying so much yesterday), and I blended in perfectly: I look just like a French girl, except for the part where it's completely clear that I'm American because of my distracted expression (among other things). All the people I asked for directions were nice and helpful and no one's sworn at me at all.
Yesterday was a little frustrating because so many things in France are closed on Monday and lunch hours are desperately long compared to American businesses', so I spent a lot of time sitting on my bags waiting for offices to reopen, but life started looking up as soon as I found a warm place to be. I'm still never sure what time it is (hooray, jet lag), but at least I've had some sleep, which means I'm not too tired to eat. This morning was my first meal in France, and I can tell I'm going to be looking forward to breakfasts.
Over the next few days, I plan to charge my camera battery and take a ridiculous number of photos. It'll be great. Hopefully I'll have an apartment soon and then life will be even better, because I won't be facing the prospect of lugging my huge bags across town anymore.
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