Okay, sorry about that. Between the crazy pregnancy stories and the planetarium flashbacks, I managed to overly postpone my plans to tell you about my time in Paris.

So, I got there Wednesday -a week ago - after a typically restless sleep on the train. It’s mostly the rocking and rolling and related jostling, but it’s partly the subpar bunk-style Murphy beds.

Mister Corn. My new best friend.

And possibly they’re pumping poison gas into the air during the wee hours.

I have no actual proof.

But I do have suspicous anecdotal information.

Here’s the story:  As you may or may not remember, back in August on the train from Lisbon to Madrid, I accidentally slept with my ‘Day and Night’ contacts in. Supposedly you can wear these contacts for a month straight without issue, but my eyes will have none of that.

Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night that night and my eyes burned like sulfuric acid, and I took the contacts out and didn’t put them back in for three weeks…just to be safe. And then when I did put them in, all hell broke loose, and I actually thought I may have scratched the cornea or something, but happily it all worked out in the end.

With the Louvre behind me.

ANYWAY, my point here is that I woke up in the middle of the night on the train from Barcelona to Paris last week, and I didn’t have my contacts in this time, but my eyes were burning something fierce, and it was exactly like I remembered it…without the contacts and the corneal scarring.

Suspicious.

Otherwise, Paris was lovely. I like to just walk the streets and take it all in. Except when there are monsoon-like torrential rains, which there were, so that’s too bad.

As always, I struggled with the language. I took four years of French in high school and some overachieving part of my brain believes that I should still remember all that stuff, but the bulk of my gray matter will not cooperate with this aspiration. 

One night I had a dream that I remembered everything I’d ever learned and spoke with a spot-on accent, and when I woke up I was super disappointed to to realize it wasn’t actually real.

Did I mention it rained?

By and large we could get by, and what I do remember was enough. More accurately, it had to be enough, so I made it work, but I find it very frustrating to be unable to effectively communicate. The major hardship came in with the handwritten menus  scrawled in white on black chalkboards at pretty much every brasserie in town.

This is charming in theory, but in reality it’s like taking an eye exam and a foreign language test at the same time. Minus a few key items (pommes frites, names of known pastas like penne or linguine, and escargots), what was delivered to me was often not exactly what I was expecting.

Sometimes it was completely left field of what I was expecting in a “oh. So THAT’s what ballotine or rissole or soissons means…”

Oh well.

A brief but glorious parting of the clouds at Sacre Coeur.

To ease the foreign-ness and take a break from the rain, we went and saw Angels and Devils in its unaltered form. The movie itself was all right – not great, not terrible. Tom Hanks is looking good. He’s seen doing laps in the Harvard swimming pool early in the morning, and he looked so fit I would’ve bet money that wasn’t him. Actually, now that I type those words, maybe it wasn’t him? Maybe it was a much more buff body double? Who would ever know? Except me and my eagle eye (once outfitted with corrective lenses, of course).

Anyway, the movie was mostly a welcome dose of American English, but specific to the situation, everything said in Italian (which was a fifteen minute chunk of talking, all told) was translated into French, so I found it something of a double whammy for my saturated brain (which still furiously tried to translate despite the futility of the effort.)

Me at Sacre Coeur.

Otherwise, I saw through the plot almost immediately. I’m a bad person to go to the movies with. Within the first twenty minutes I identified the ‘real’ bad guy, and  announced my theory. Due to the filmmakers need for an onslaught of unfathomable and unbelievable twists and turns, for a long time going there, it looked like I was wrong, but in the end I was oh so right.  As always.

So there you have it: food, movies, and rain. The rains in Spain may fall mainly on the plains, but the rains in France dump all over Paris. And then some.

The first day, while walking back to the apartment from the Eiffel tower we got caught in a torrential downpour. It was the kind of rain so ferocious you’re confident it’s going to back off at any second. But it didn’t.

It just got worse and worse, and I seriously started to wonder if I might get struck by lightening channeled through my cheap H&M umbrella which would blow inside out at the first sign of the slightest breeze. But after a while, you realize you’re so wet that you’re committed, and you’re pressing on even if an ark comes floating down the road.

That’s how I found myself totally drenched up to my BUTT (seriously, my jeans soaked up so much water that even my underwear was wet) and neither the denim nor my shoes would dry out the entire time despite the fact that they were lying over a heater. In fact, I had had to pack them up wet.

Thank you, Paris, for making my brand new sneakers smell like mildew.

I’ll remember you fondly each time I catch a whiff.

I keep having these little snafus that make me wonder what the universe is trying to tell me.

Case in point, back in late July, I paid big bucks to ship a box of critical items to myself for pickup in Vienna next week. The shipping alone was three nights in an above-average hostel in a big city. However, it seemed worth it, as I reasoned that by two months on the road, I would be elated to find myself with the creature comforts of a polar fleece vest, my pill prescription, some new contacts and the magic cleaning fluid (which you cannot find here. I know. I’ve tried). Also, I’m overdue for a refill on my Aveda shampoo and conditioner, and who doesn’t love a big old pack of beef jerky? If there is one thing I miss – more for convenience and a quick and non-grease laden way to feel sated – it’s beef jerky. Why is there no European country that understands the genius of Jack Links!?!?

Anyway,I swallowed hard at the shipping costs and bit the bullet. When I opened that box of goodies, it was going to be worth it.

This is what makes it kind of upsetting to learn that the box has arrived…BACK AT MY HOME IN THE UNITED STATES.

I suppose the good news (the only good news) is that I learned this before I sought out the Viennese post office and went through any kind of upset that my box had been hijacked or lost forever, but it still kind of sucks. Mostly because I find myself running out of some key items that I really needed replenished or replaced. Case in point: my razor.

So in America you hear about a business philosophy of ‘give away the razor, and charge for the blades.” Apparently, here in Italy, it’s more of a “give me your wallet, and don’t scream or I’ll kill you” model. I spent about $15.00 for a new Venus razor today. It did come with one replacement blade, but I really do hope the Gillette people hang their heads in shame. Ironically, however, it’s worth it. The other day I bought a 2 euro ($3) “Lady Alfetta“in cheery pink. I’m not sure on the translation, but I’m pretty sure that’s Italian for “Lady Bloodletting.”

One would not think there is much difference between a basic razor and a “Venus” razor, but that is like suggesting that there is not much difference between heaven and hell. Seriously, the cheap razor is so bad it’s not even funny. It’s medieval. It’s like an unplanned suicide attempt. I

What’s most amazing to me is that it requires some serious thought and skill to use. It has just one blade set incredibly low in the cheap plastic frame, so you have to angle it and handle it just so. It’s a breath away from going after your legs with just a blade.

This brings to mind something I’ve always wondered: How has the barbershop industry managed to make the straight edge shave a luxury up-charge? Is it that it’s “old fashioned”? Is it misguided jealousy – women have pedicures, and manicures, and facials and makeovers, but guys have so few ‘manly’ options of the same stripe? Is it the adrenaline rush experienced when you realize that it’s just a shave, and yet your life is in danger? To me, it just looks scary. And screams out “bad idea!” Sweeney Todd knew a sucker when he saw one too.

Speaking of scary things, I met some Irish girls who have put the fear of god into me regarding my only other night train (the first being Lisbon to Madrid, which minus some minor molestation was no big deal). They were saying that on the train from Budapest (Hungary) to Krakow (Poland) they were robbed (only their cameras were taken, but still…),. As they were using their bags as pillows, they are fairly certain they were gassed for this to have occurred. Rumors abound about people filling train compartments with some kind of gas, knocking everyone out cold, and robbing them. It was the story from a girl who claimed she’d woken up naked on the night train to Rome and Naples that kept me from ever going south of Florence in 1992.

I was originally going to do two night trains: Budapest (Hungary) to Sighisoara (Romania), and Bucharest (Romania) to Sofia (Bulgaria). However, I have heard and read such bad things about Bucharest (the worst city in Europe, packs of mongrel dogs that are known to attack people, the ONLY thing to see is the second largest building in the world – whoop di do, and – if the wild dogs leave anything behind – muggings galore. I’ll give them a few years to pull themselves together before coming back.) Sorry, got off on a little tangent there: I read such bad things about Bucharest that I’m blowing straight through. I’m going from Brasov (Transylvania) to Sofia in one, long, train-heavy day. It will suck, but I will live through it…and that’s all that matters.

However, I do have a bed on the train from Budapest to Sighisoara, and I’m torn about how to proceed. I don’t want to invent worry or make my life complicated for no reason, but I also don’t want to wake up from an inexplicably sound night of sleep and find that I have no money, no credit cards, no computer, and no camera. I do know my passport will be safe, because when you book a bed on an international train they hold onto it and present it during the border crossing for you.

Thus, I’ve decided to proceed as follows (and this would be so much better if I could present it as a flow chart, but alas. You’ll just have to use your imagination):

1. Grill the hostel staff on historical safety of this night train. If concerned, abort and take a day train.

2. If given the green light, case out the situation once I get there. If it seems sketchy, stay up all night pounding coffee in the cafe car.

3. If it looks good and the other people in the room are fellow travelers (i.e. not locals of suspect nature) and the door to the cabin locks (as it should), then hide money and credit cards deeply in messenger bag. Use zip ties to seal bag shut. Place messenger bag in bottom of day pack (small backpack), put a ton of stuff on top of it, and lock day pack with TSA lock. Then (this is the part where it gets stupid, but whatever, if someone is going to gas me, I’m going to make sure they have to be Houdini to get to the good stuff and give myself every chance to wake up and scream bloody murder) take bike lock and large padlock and chain day pack to self.

   And don’t think I won’t do it.

   If they show up to rob me, and think I’m a suicide bomber with a bag chained to me…all the better! I’m not making it this far only to let some Romanian or Bulgarian @sshole rip me off.

So, with that resolved, I’m not going to think about it again until Hungary…or if I do think about it, think only good thoughts. For now, it’s off to walk around Trieste (former haunt of James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway) for few hours. Trieste was not part of any tourist trail, and really relied on the Illy coffee company (based here) for many years, but now it has become a big port for cruise ships on their way to Croatia. Yesterday there were no less than three giant cruise ships in the harbor, and there was a strange Oktoberfest-like bazaar going on in their honor. I’m at a point where any swell of tourists is enough to send me scurrying in the other direction, so I when I saw the big crowds and the inflatable pretzel, I knew it was time to bolt.

So onward and upward. There is no internet at the place where I’m staying the next couple nights in Pula, Croatia, but if I can find an internet cafe, I will check in with you tomorrow and maybe finally get some photos uploaded. Until then, enjoy your weekend!