Travel log: Februrary 2006
Day 0. The Great Lady’s lights wink at me from the all-too-short ride across the 59th street bridge and I say my goodbyes to New York City. I suddenly realize that I have no keys: car, apartment, PO Box, just an empty key ring. I can’t remember being sans keys ever before. Even when I left the house for college mom let me keep a set of house keys. I realize that once I get on the airplane and the cellphone service cuts out, I will be completely cut off from everyone that I know and care about in the world. A feeling of adventure tinged with fear and an equal portion of pride in my courageous nature is just the first difficult-to-describe emotion in my odd tales of living life abroad.
Day 1. Depart from JFK. Arrive at Charles De Gaulle in not just another country, but a whole new life and culture to go with it.
I get off the plane in Paris and try to work the French payphone. After a full five minutes of trying in vain to translate the lovely-as-a-poem voice of the operator, I miraculously manage to punch in the proper set of digits in order to make contact with my new coworker. This is a very important step in re-establishing a link in the land of the living. I will get my new keys from her. Gisela, who I have never seen before, meets me with my 3 enormous suitcases at my new flat and hands me keys that are like none I’ve ever seen state-side. The door key is huge and turns ‘round 3 times to lock and unlock to door! Welcome to Paris.
The next item of business is to find someone to take me to the bank to arrange setting up my bank account. Sounds simple enough, right? I wind up at my new lab totally jet lagged, being introduced to tons of people who I can't remember since I am so tired. I arrive at the bank to speak with a very nice gentleman who I was told would have my bankcard/ATM card ready to use with an account that already had money in it. This is good, since I only have 30 Euros left after paying the cabbie for the ride from the airport. This gentleman speaks less English than I speak French, and I know virtually no banking terms in French (imagine not knowing the word for “account” and you see why I just signed where he told me to). Ultimately I walk out of the bank with some 30-odd pages of printed French contractual material connected to some sort of a banking account with 500 Euros in it, but without a clue as to how to withdraw money from said account, as I have no ATM card. I’m told it will take 2 weeks to receive this card in the mail. Well, that errand is done at least.
Now I set off for home, and Kathryn has drawn a lovely map for me as she waited a good half-hour for me to settle my banking affairs. I now know how to find the right metro station, but once I surface at Place de Nation which has no less than 13 streets coming off a traffic circle as big as an indoor soccer field; I am like a country bumpkin in the big city for the first time as I stare at the big sculpture-topped pillar demarking Avenue de Trone. Not to mention that the jet lag and its associated disorientation is setting in quite heavily at this point. I pull out my trusty map and realize… that’s right, the non-touristy section of town where I now live is nowhere to be found on it. Cool, I have keys to an apartment that I can’t find. Well, at worst, I can always get in a cab and give him the address, but I only have 30 Euros until I figure out how to get money. After a forlorn 15 minutes of wandering the side streets adjacent to what I think is the correct road that I now live off of, it occurs to me that there might be maps in the subway station. Lo and behold! I am saved! There is a map of the surrounding neighborhood and I find my street clearly written on it. Whew!
It's like, 45 degrees in the apartment, I guess she switched off the juice to save money on the electric bill. But man, it’s still really cold in here! I pile every blanket I can find in the place on the bed, put on jammie pants and socks and climb in. I wake up cold in the night and cover my head with blankets. After finding what I assume is the French equivalent of a fuse box the next morning, I realize that the big chunky-looking things are fuses that are flipped off. Well, that certainly makes a difference.
Day 2. Saturday with glorious electricity!
As I rejoice in the sounds of a fridge that works and a hot water heater that heats, I gaze suspiciously at those weird-looking appliances on the wall that are pretty much big toasters to heat the apartment. Ok they work, good. But there’s no phone, no TV, and much to my despair, no wifi connection appearing when the mac computer searches for one. Huh, this is NOT good, how will I find an apartment without the ability to email people and search for ads? I expected that there would be no phone or television, but hoped I could dial out with phonecard. Well, so much for that idea.
I go out wandering and find an internet cafe in the heart of Paris to jot a note to mom, and the damn keyboard has “w” “m” “a” and “.” in different places, and all of the banners on google.com are in French. I feel like I’m on Mars. I buy a really decent map with a page-by-page layout of each arrondissment of Paris, and some universal adapters so I can charge the computer and run my hairdryer. Really important thing to do #2, check!
I decide to have a really nice dinner, and recognize a restaurant that’s in one of my Paris guidebooks. It’s early, perhaps 6pm or so, but being that my watch has read two-thirty since I adjusted the time on the plane, I’m approximating. The place is devoid of life. Well, that’s no fun, better go and have a before-dinner drink at a café. I come back and there’s an hour wait for a table of one. Alright, the place across the street looks like they have fish. I like fish. The manager seated me and put up a big chalkboard behind me. (Huh, what’s that for?). The waitress comes over and asks what I’d like. Uh oh, I turn and realize that the only word on the entire menu that I recognize is “thme” (thyme). I ask her what her favorite is (remembering to use the formal “vous” for you), my standard trick when I can’t figure out what to have, and she doesn’t have any suggestions. Crap. Well, let’s have the blahbidy blouh avec thym. It’s a good thing I like to eat everything! A very beautiful fish encrusted with thyme comes out a few minutes later, and it’s some of the best fish I’ve ever eaten! I only get a fork to eat it with, and it’s still got it’s head and all of its bones. This should be interesting. I think I managed to eat it reasonably gracefully by daintily removing most of the big bones with my fingers before I shoveled it down the hatch. I had to chew and swallow the tiny ones. Glad I’m not squeamish either. The glace/ice cream for dessert was a work of art, it beat even Italian gelato, and anyone who’s been in Italy with me knows this is quite a compliment. On the way home, I even find a place that’s got used DVDs in French and English for less than 10 bucks. I buy one with visions of falling asleep on the couch in front of an English-speaking actor.
Day 3. Sunday. Sunday in French should really be translated into "If you don’t get out of bed before 10am just stay home".
Searching my 'hood for wifi spots ends in miserable failure. The markets close at like, 1 pm, and that’s if they’re open late. Some cafes and brasseries are open, but not many where I live. I worry about mom not hearing from me, and I feel as if I've been stranded on a desert island within an enclave of aboriginal peoples that speak by making those “click-clock” noises with their tongues, but I am bound and determined to see the Superbowl tonight. I try the internet at home for the umpteenth time to no avail. I have no way to find those American bars that I bookmarked in my computer, so I only have two potential places to see the game, which comes on at midnight by the way. I leave the house at 11pm and the trains quit running at 12:30 in this town (big change for a gal used to the all-night NY mentality) with the full realization that my trusty map with every single Paris street marked on it may not save me since I tend to get lost approximately every 10 meters.
Surprise! The “American Bar” I found on the internet is closed just like everything else in this town on Sunday. *&%$#@! I walk forlornly around for a bit, totally dejected and on the verge of tears. I mean it’s the Superbowl! I haven’t missed seeing one since I was old enough to watch TV, again feeling like an alien on another planet. But then- inspiration strikes! Go to a place you know, you don't even have to know where it is, just ask the cabbie! HA HA! Money is the solution to many minor pitfalls in life. If the Ritz Hotel is good enough for a guy like Hemmingway, well, they’re certain to play the game! Alas, there was no TV in bar, but luckily the concierge at the Ritz is very good (no surprise there) and he writes a name and address on note and puts me in cab, and I'm off to The Bowler, an Irish bar. I proceed to make friends with a nice stout Irish lad behind the bar, and he invites me to stay after hours to watch the completion of the game, and of course I accept. I vaguely remember donning a Kronnenberg shirt he gives me before pouring myself into a cab for home at 5 am.
Day 4. Monday. I awake with an incredible thirst.
Must buy Perrier (the wonder cure for hangovers) and a slice of pizza. Oh wait, this isn't New York. Do I have money? Yes, good -what's this? A note??? It reads "Meet Sean at middle of Pont Neuf at 8pm" and his phone #. Seriously? Is this a joke? Wait a sec, the wispy threads of memory are knitting together as my dehydrated neurons struggle to fire in my brain... I do remember a bit of this. I don’t make it to Pont Neuf at 8pm, I just don’t feel up to it, and besides I have no phone to call him. I could be living in a cave in Siberia and be as socially accessible as I am in this new life.
Day 5 -Tuesday- I try again to find internet places to no avail. !@#$%&* I'm going to kill her. Really, the gal that rented my place said she had internet access but was only poaching a signal, not paying for it herself! I schlep to work to use the internet. I find very few leads on the internet for apartments and I have to find a permanent place to live since the place I’m currently residing is only available for one month. Tonight insomina strikes as my worries spin round and round in my head with no one to tell them to.
Day 6. Wednesday. I get to work in the afternoon and I am exhausted after a 9:30 appointment to sign my contract for the second time. I already signed one and faxed it to them in France, but they needed three originals given to them by me in the flesh. WOW, oh wow, do the French love paperwork and things in quadruplicate. I have taken to just giggling at it at this point, since it’s useless to fight it. Ok- here's the other funny thing. For reasons that I still don't understand, I have to be paid in cash for this paycheck. Yes, that’s right, I have to carry around over two thousand Euros in cash until I run across a branch of my bank because, remember I can’t look up that useful information on the internet. Thankfully I found my $ belt in my three huge sacks of luggage so I didn't have to stuff the cash in my panties. I imagine the look on the teller’s face as I pull wadded 100’s out of my undies and begin to giggle.
Right, so it took me 3 tries to find a bank branch. One- closed. Two- doesn’t take cash. Excuse me? The teller points to a sign with a pictogram of cash money with one of those red circles with a slash through it. Silly me, of course this is a bank that doesn’t take money, whatever was I thinking!? Third time's the charm, I can deposit money without an ATM card, yeah!
I decide that it’s time to get connected to my stateside friends as this may be the cause of my insomnia. I make friends with the Moroccan-Frenchman at the phone store. He calls me "tres gentile" which is a very nice compliment. I don't hate France today, nor the French. In fact, I love everyone. I can call my mother and she can call me.
Even though I am dog-ass tired, I go to Gisela’s housewarming party. I can even follow and speak French in conversations if there are Americans included. However, when everyone in the lab gathers 'round and has a big chat in the lunchroom in French, I get maybe 30% of what’s going on. They all understand English, but refuse to speak it on general principle it seems to me. I am trying not to be irritated by this, but it's really **&^%$#@-ing hard to speak French all day long if you’ve never done it before. It’s exhausting and really frustrating. I was told that my work environment would be English and it's quite a shock to learn that no one in lab speaks English on a regular basis. My friends from New York who worked in labs in Switzerland or Germany told me that nearly everyone speaks English. It's the language of the business of Science and our work will all be published in English from this lab, so why not speak English at least half of the time? I had better start looking at this--French lunch--as a learning experience.
I’ve decided that while I realize that living in Paris brings challenges and rewards unlike those I am likely to encounter at any other point in my life. However, I realize that the physical distance makes a break with my friends and family across the ocean. So that’s why I am chronicling my times and adventures in Paris in these pages. Let me know how I’m doing.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Monday, November 27, 2006
Thanksgiving story
I was reminded this morning on the Metro why I am thankful this Thanksgiving day.
My boyfriend and I are going to our respective workplaces this morning when a head-scarfed woman asks where is St. Lazare in a heavy accent. My significant other did not understand her, but since all of my friends in this country are non-native Americans, my ears are well-tuned for this sort of application. I translate for him, as it's his neighborhood. He tells her that it's in the direction we are going.
We all three pile into the last car as the buzzer chimes for the doors to close, with me slightly worried that we'll be chopped in two, or at least temporarily lodged in a precarious position. Not this morning it turned out, and we share our peaceful morning moment holding hands and tête a tête . We arrive at St. Lazare and the woman searches our faces plaintively, and asks "St Lazare?". "Oui, descende ici." my love responds, though the sign to the right clearly indicates the stop. I question. Why would she ask for the stop? Why did she need someone to tell her which direction to take? Realization dawns as the feeling of receiving bad news.
"Oh god, she can't read. She can't read".
"She can... what?"
I enunciate more clearly this time in English, "She can not read".
"Ah yes, and she has something on her face".
It is true, she is sporting what looks like a shiner.
And I am immediately chastened. My throat tightens. How lucky I am to be a woman born into a Western culture where I am valued enough to be taught to read and my upbringing would never allow me to tolerate being beaten. I take a few slow breaths and thank whatever god of this universe has blessed me.
My boyfriend and I are going to our respective workplaces this morning when a head-scarfed woman asks where is St. Lazare in a heavy accent. My significant other did not understand her, but since all of my friends in this country are non-native Americans, my ears are well-tuned for this sort of application. I translate for him, as it's his neighborhood. He tells her that it's in the direction we are going.
We all three pile into the last car as the buzzer chimes for the doors to close, with me slightly worried that we'll be chopped in two, or at least temporarily lodged in a precarious position. Not this morning it turned out, and we share our peaceful morning moment holding hands and tête a tête . We arrive at St. Lazare and the woman searches our faces plaintively, and asks "St Lazare?". "Oui, descende ici." my love responds, though the sign to the right clearly indicates the stop. I question. Why would she ask for the stop? Why did she need someone to tell her which direction to take? Realization dawns as the feeling of receiving bad news.
"Oh god, she can't read. She can't read".
"She can... what?"
I enunciate more clearly this time in English, "She can not read".
"Ah yes, and she has something on her face".
It is true, she is sporting what looks like a shiner.
And I am immediately chastened. My throat tightens. How lucky I am to be a woman born into a Western culture where I am valued enough to be taught to read and my upbringing would never allow me to tolerate being beaten. I take a few slow breaths and thank whatever god of this universe has blessed me.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
The State of the Art Laboratory
So as it stands at the moment, as of today November 10th the year 2006 A.D., about 6 months after we have occupied the Brand New State of the Art Laboratory, we are still working in a space that more closely resembles M*A*S*H*4077 rather than a functional laboratory.
After spending my morning waiting for the electrician who was an hour late, then waiting for another 2 hours while he replaced a light switch, only to discover that he had forgotten to purchase the actual switch unit and intended to have me wait another hour and half, I finally decided to hell with it and left him my keys so I could go to work. I had nothing to eat at my apartment, so I walk expectantly into the kitchen/lunchroom at work to get my food out of the fridge and discover there is no fridge. In fact the only things remaining in the room are dust bunnies on the floor. I shrug, rather nonplussed to discover yet another major upheaval in the daily routine and walk back into the lab to announce, "Where's the kitchen?" The brand new kitchen has lovely blue flooring and clean white-washed walls, but oddly enough someone has forgotten to tell them to put a sink in. That's right, there’s a microwave, coffeemaker, water-boiling appliance, toaster oven and even a little hotplate to fry up some goodies if you’re so inspired but I can merely guess for what reasons the kitchen sink was not installed. I imagine that the wrong sink was initially installed and rather than finding a substitute fixture, we were left completely sans sink. Instead, we are using the sink inside the women's room that functions at the John for the entire floor including wandering students from the floors above and below. While washing my coffee cup I now have the pleasure of enjoying a gastrointestinal musical concerto free of charge. I did move to France in part for the cultural experiences, right? It’s got a lovely ambiance too with the brown crud floating in the soap dispenser which hangs on by a tenuous attachment on only one side of the apparatus, without paper towels or a functional hand-dryer (forcing me to use my hair as a towel).
On the way to the new kitchen in the afternoon, I decide to exit the far door of the lab in order to avoid the dark area in the hall where I nearly ran into someone earlier and was put into a state of utter hilarity by pushing two light switches. After pushing the first button about ten times, I begin to giggle uncontrollably at because it regulates the lights about 50 feet away. The riotous eruption of breathless giggles give way to howling fits of hiccup-laced laughter as I push the adjacent button that's actually on a piece of wall that's detached (is still a wall if it's detached? Nevermind) that has a functional button (amazingly enough) to illuminate the lights at the complete opposite end of the hall while the region above my head remains dark. I finally started howling when I look up and realize there are no light bulbs above my head. Seriously, if it didn't occur to any of our electricians that we required lights in the middle of the hallway, what does that say about the state of the electrical engineering for the entire laboratory? Great green googlies, are we in for some grandiose surprises in the lab, I think!
As I attempt to exit via the door on the far end, I discover that it is locked and my key won't open it. Well, that's supremely useful. I wonder how long that will take to fix, considering there are so many other things that are "more of a priority" according to my boss. Like having a "functional tissue culture". I heartily agree that updating our tissue culture facilities is of the utmost importance, but as I regularly check the progress in that room and I have yet to see the installation of any sinks, benchtops, or even any duct work: obviously an integral part of any system which uses suction and air circulation; I'm quite certain that someone could find the time to work on one of any great number of things that are still lacking in our workspace. For instance, the heating could work. Or the large trenches under the windows that routinely let in gusts of cold air when the wind blows outside could be filled in with some insulating material as it's currently mid-November and Parisiens are happily bundled in french-style scarves, hats and gloves. Or someone might install the drawers that I need to hold the zillions of tubes and bits of this and that which are necessary for the many different kinds of experiments that I do (or rather, would do more efficiently if I could FIND the god-dammned stuff that I need); some shelving would be useful to keep stock solutions on too. We have a technician who can make solutions for us, but no common stock area at the moment, as there's literally nowhere to put the bottles of 4 Molar NaCl. There's no common refrigerator either, so if you need a kit you'd better know who's doing what in the lab so you can ask them if they have it. Or just order one of everything you need yourself, and hope that it all will fit in your tiny dorm-sized fridge.
For several months there was a giant wooden clip holding the ice machine door closed that I would eye like Jimmy Stewart eyes that balustrade ornament in "It's a Wonderful Life". Remember the wooden ball that comes off in his hand every single night when he goes upstairs? At one point in the film, it comes off in his hand yet again for the upteenth million time and he eyes it with pure hatred, threatening to throw it across the room. I can tell you I've come mighty close to throwing that wooden clip and seeing how far it can fly across the Mighty State of the Art Laboratory.
I feel a bit like Tom Hanks in "The Money Pit" from time to time too. Especially at times like this morning as I look at the secretary with a dead-pan blank stare when she tells me that none of the shared printers work and I’m in that scene where I open the medicine cabinet to ask the workmen to hand me my birth control pills. I feel a small measure of satisfaction when I find a shared printer which I can reinstall without searching for a driver or an IP address, but then I grin widely as the other co-director realizes that the computer techs who are arriving today to re-establish printer connectivity will have a tough job ahead of them since the IP ports for the printers are not active. I walk triumphantly into the lab with the receipt for my e-ticket to England for the weekend, blissfully content to be leaving all of this behind me, at least for a few days.
They finally turned the heat on today, but it's not able to out compete the cold air coming through the shoddily installed windows. One day they’ll fix the holes under the windows and I’ll play Tom again when they install the stairway and he just giggles gleefully, racing up and down the stairs about thirty times. Neigh on fifty times in the film Tom asks, “How long until he work is finished”? “Two weeks. We should have it all done in two weeks.”
After spending my morning waiting for the electrician who was an hour late, then waiting for another 2 hours while he replaced a light switch, only to discover that he had forgotten to purchase the actual switch unit and intended to have me wait another hour and half, I finally decided to hell with it and left him my keys so I could go to work. I had nothing to eat at my apartment, so I walk expectantly into the kitchen/lunchroom at work to get my food out of the fridge and discover there is no fridge. In fact the only things remaining in the room are dust bunnies on the floor. I shrug, rather nonplussed to discover yet another major upheaval in the daily routine and walk back into the lab to announce, "Where's the kitchen?" The brand new kitchen has lovely blue flooring and clean white-washed walls, but oddly enough someone has forgotten to tell them to put a sink in. That's right, there’s a microwave, coffeemaker, water-boiling appliance, toaster oven and even a little hotplate to fry up some goodies if you’re so inspired but I can merely guess for what reasons the kitchen sink was not installed. I imagine that the wrong sink was initially installed and rather than finding a substitute fixture, we were left completely sans sink. Instead, we are using the sink inside the women's room that functions at the John for the entire floor including wandering students from the floors above and below. While washing my coffee cup I now have the pleasure of enjoying a gastrointestinal musical concerto free of charge. I did move to France in part for the cultural experiences, right? It’s got a lovely ambiance too with the brown crud floating in the soap dispenser which hangs on by a tenuous attachment on only one side of the apparatus, without paper towels or a functional hand-dryer (forcing me to use my hair as a towel).
On the way to the new kitchen in the afternoon, I decide to exit the far door of the lab in order to avoid the dark area in the hall where I nearly ran into someone earlier and was put into a state of utter hilarity by pushing two light switches. After pushing the first button about ten times, I begin to giggle uncontrollably at because it regulates the lights about 50 feet away. The riotous eruption of breathless giggles give way to howling fits of hiccup-laced laughter as I push the adjacent button that's actually on a piece of wall that's detached (is still a wall if it's detached? Nevermind) that has a functional button (amazingly enough) to illuminate the lights at the complete opposite end of the hall while the region above my head remains dark. I finally started howling when I look up and realize there are no light bulbs above my head. Seriously, if it didn't occur to any of our electricians that we required lights in the middle of the hallway, what does that say about the state of the electrical engineering for the entire laboratory? Great green googlies, are we in for some grandiose surprises in the lab, I think!
As I attempt to exit via the door on the far end, I discover that it is locked and my key won't open it. Well, that's supremely useful. I wonder how long that will take to fix, considering there are so many other things that are "more of a priority" according to my boss. Like having a "functional tissue culture". I heartily agree that updating our tissue culture facilities is of the utmost importance, but as I regularly check the progress in that room and I have yet to see the installation of any sinks, benchtops, or even any duct work: obviously an integral part of any system which uses suction and air circulation; I'm quite certain that someone could find the time to work on one of any great number of things that are still lacking in our workspace. For instance, the heating could work. Or the large trenches under the windows that routinely let in gusts of cold air when the wind blows outside could be filled in with some insulating material as it's currently mid-November and Parisiens are happily bundled in french-style scarves, hats and gloves. Or someone might install the drawers that I need to hold the zillions of tubes and bits of this and that which are necessary for the many different kinds of experiments that I do (or rather, would do more efficiently if I could FIND the god-dammned stuff that I need); some shelving would be useful to keep stock solutions on too. We have a technician who can make solutions for us, but no common stock area at the moment, as there's literally nowhere to put the bottles of 4 Molar NaCl. There's no common refrigerator either, so if you need a kit you'd better know who's doing what in the lab so you can ask them if they have it. Or just order one of everything you need yourself, and hope that it all will fit in your tiny dorm-sized fridge.
For several months there was a giant wooden clip holding the ice machine door closed that I would eye like Jimmy Stewart eyes that balustrade ornament in "It's a Wonderful Life". Remember the wooden ball that comes off in his hand every single night when he goes upstairs? At one point in the film, it comes off in his hand yet again for the upteenth million time and he eyes it with pure hatred, threatening to throw it across the room. I can tell you I've come mighty close to throwing that wooden clip and seeing how far it can fly across the Mighty State of the Art Laboratory.
I feel a bit like Tom Hanks in "The Money Pit" from time to time too. Especially at times like this morning as I look at the secretary with a dead-pan blank stare when she tells me that none of the shared printers work and I’m in that scene where I open the medicine cabinet to ask the workmen to hand me my birth control pills. I feel a small measure of satisfaction when I find a shared printer which I can reinstall without searching for a driver or an IP address, but then I grin widely as the other co-director realizes that the computer techs who are arriving today to re-establish printer connectivity will have a tough job ahead of them since the IP ports for the printers are not active. I walk triumphantly into the lab with the receipt for my e-ticket to England for the weekend, blissfully content to be leaving all of this behind me, at least for a few days.
They finally turned the heat on today, but it's not able to out compete the cold air coming through the shoddily installed windows. One day they’ll fix the holes under the windows and I’ll play Tom again when they install the stairway and he just giggles gleefully, racing up and down the stairs about thirty times. Neigh on fifty times in the film Tom asks, “How long until he work is finished”? “Two weeks. We should have it all done in two weeks.”
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
More tales of science in a strange land
Another daily accounting of why perhaps it's really best not to even consider doing ANY science in France, unless you have a totally capable bi-lingual secretary with the patience of Mother Theresa.
I need a price for 2 items from Roche. We can't just plug in our customer # on the Internet to obtain the price for our institution, because our funding source, Inserm, is afraid that we would leap to internet ordering which is strictly forbidden. They can't keep track of how much money we spend on what by using their infuriating "Product Categorization" system. This system by the way, requires a special ordering form and an addendum of an "Inserm category number" to each product that is ordered. I have to look up what this friggin number is every time I place an order. So I decide to speak in English when I call to get the prices. Why waste my brainpower speaking French, it's an international company, right? It should be no problem.
"Bonjour, Hello. I need to get the price for 2 items, please".
The operator transfers me without so much as a "Merci". The next person asks me where I am from, and transfers me to the Paris representative. I think I get transferred again at this point and the next person who answers has absolutely no clue why I am looking for prices, she's in the marketing department. My thoughts are that they kept transferring 'cuz they didn't want to speak English. I hang up.
I call back. "Bonjour, j'ai besoin de les prix pour deux produits, SVP." She asks for the product. "DIG washing and blocking set", I say, in English. I am NOT saying "wash-eeng ee bloc-ayh" with a French accent, I sound stupid. She says in French that she doesn't understand. I ask her if I can give her the product number (in french this time). "Oui". Ok, we have an accord.
I recite the number American-style, one number at a time, rather than saying the french four twenties plus nineteen (which equals 99 by the way) because I make my own head hurt for a 12-digit number like that. She zings off the price at a lighting pace, and the gals behind me are yakking in French and I can't understand a bloody thing. I ask her to please repeat it slowly for me, which she does, but rather than saying 179 Euros and 79 cents, she says "comma" in french and I don't know that word so I am yet again confused and have to ask her to repeat it for me one more time. Incredible.
And I should add that she couldn't find the second thing because the website had an old catalog # listed, so this was yet another 5 minutes while I searched around the website with her still on the line. There was no way I was going to call back and go through the whole painful process yet again. Evidently that would have been just too much for her to figure out the new # for me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today I am in the animal room doing my thing- trying to get out of the tiny, windowless, smelly room as quickly as humanly possible and I hear a huge bang, what sounds like a cannon being shot off inside of the fucking building. Good god! Either we're being bombed or one of the construction workers has just lit a cigarette and ignited some flammable material in the lab and everyone is engulfed in flame. Sweet Jesus have mercy!
I peek out the window in the adjoining room and see that it's become foggy outside. Wait! That's smoke, and the streets are filled with.... firefighters? Zillions of them. All in uniform, and quite pissed-off I might add, with some of them carrying flares, all of them shouting completely unintelligible angry-firfefighterman-french things. I make my way upstairs and the building is now reverberating with the explosions like we're being shelled. How the fuck am I supposed to dissect organs from this 4 day old mouse with this nonsense? As everyone in the lab is acting like it's a fucking circus coming down the street, replete with pink elephants and ponies on tricycles, I decide to take a peek out the window even though I am beginning to spew smoke from my ears and shouting things like, "How is anyone supposed to work with all of this god-damned noise?". I see that across the street the fire hydrant is gushing water all over the street and the pavement in front of the hospital is like a scene out of "Blackhawk down"- a roiling mass of very imposing-looking dudes who are now increasingly turning towards the hospital to shout towards the building at people gawking out the windows, I suppose. BOOM! I never did see what the hell they were using to make all of that noise, but how is that a part of PeACeFulL demonstration, pray tell?
I rub my temples, wishing desperately for at least the tenth time in 2 weeks that there were enough room in the tiny dorm-sized fridge for a six pack, or better yet a flask of 140-proof whiskey to hide itself. I decide to update my website while all of this is going on, as it's clear I won't be able to actually work. I would have gone to the library or another lab, but the only functional area is on the side of the building facing the brouhaha. A few minutes elapse and out of my peripheral vision I notice a strange face peering at me from the other side of the cubicle/shelf above my desk. What the hell? I get up and see a fireman in full regalia (ok minus the hat) hanging out the window. What is he doing? Taking pictures with his digital camera. Yep. A circus all right. Then the lab is flooded by at least a dozen fireman proceeding towards the widows to get a birds-eye view of the scene of mayhem below and appreciate their handiwork fully. By this point I am out of my chair and possessively tromping round the lab, they outnumber us scientists in the lab, and some of them are really quite large men. I am pretty certain that I have a mix of surprise, shock, incredulity, and a good portion of amusement written on my face at this point, and my jaw is gaping open quite noticeably. I am now saying things (in English of course, I default back to the mother tongue in emotional moments) like "Does anyone find this to be NORMAL behavior?", to no one in particular, but secretly hoping that some fireman will get the hint and get the hell out of MY lab!
After about 90 seconds of us staring at them and them hanging out the windows and shouting and waving like Charles Lindbergh were passing in the street below and this was merely a ticker-tape parade; they began to file out. I am more amused than shocked now, because, I mean, come ON- I get to write about this in my blog-man! I am mocked by a fireman who mimics my face as he smilingly parades out of the lab, and I realize that none of my friends in the States will believe what it's like to do science in France because the lab doesn't yet have a digital camera for me to document these moments; the moments of our lives.
I need a price for 2 items from Roche. We can't just plug in our customer # on the Internet to obtain the price for our institution, because our funding source, Inserm, is afraid that we would leap to internet ordering which is strictly forbidden. They can't keep track of how much money we spend on what by using their infuriating "Product Categorization" system. This system by the way, requires a special ordering form and an addendum of an "Inserm category number" to each product that is ordered. I have to look up what this friggin number is every time I place an order. So I decide to speak in English when I call to get the prices. Why waste my brainpower speaking French, it's an international company, right? It should be no problem.
"Bonjour, Hello. I need to get the price for 2 items, please".
The operator transfers me without so much as a "Merci". The next person asks me where I am from, and transfers me to the Paris representative. I think I get transferred again at this point and the next person who answers has absolutely no clue why I am looking for prices, she's in the marketing department. My thoughts are that they kept transferring 'cuz they didn't want to speak English. I hang up.
I call back. "Bonjour, j'ai besoin de les prix pour deux produits, SVP." She asks for the product. "DIG washing and blocking set", I say, in English. I am NOT saying "wash-eeng ee bloc-ayh" with a French accent, I sound stupid. She says in French that she doesn't understand. I ask her if I can give her the product number (in french this time). "Oui". Ok, we have an accord.
I recite the number American-style, one number at a time, rather than saying the french four twenties plus nineteen (which equals 99 by the way) because I make my own head hurt for a 12-digit number like that. She zings off the price at a lighting pace, and the gals behind me are yakking in French and I can't understand a bloody thing. I ask her to please repeat it slowly for me, which she does, but rather than saying 179 Euros and 79 cents, she says "comma" in french and I don't know that word so I am yet again confused and have to ask her to repeat it for me one more time. Incredible.
And I should add that she couldn't find the second thing because the website had an old catalog # listed, so this was yet another 5 minutes while I searched around the website with her still on the line. There was no way I was going to call back and go through the whole painful process yet again. Evidently that would have been just too much for her to figure out the new # for me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today I am in the animal room doing my thing- trying to get out of the tiny, windowless, smelly room as quickly as humanly possible and I hear a huge bang, what sounds like a cannon being shot off inside of the fucking building. Good god! Either we're being bombed or one of the construction workers has just lit a cigarette and ignited some flammable material in the lab and everyone is engulfed in flame. Sweet Jesus have mercy!
I peek out the window in the adjoining room and see that it's become foggy outside. Wait! That's smoke, and the streets are filled with.... firefighters? Zillions of them. All in uniform, and quite pissed-off I might add, with some of them carrying flares, all of them shouting completely unintelligible angry-firfefighterman-french things. I make my way upstairs and the building is now reverberating with the explosions like we're being shelled. How the fuck am I supposed to dissect organs from this 4 day old mouse with this nonsense? As everyone in the lab is acting like it's a fucking circus coming down the street, replete with pink elephants and ponies on tricycles, I decide to take a peek out the window even though I am beginning to spew smoke from my ears and shouting things like, "How is anyone supposed to work with all of this god-damned noise?". I see that across the street the fire hydrant is gushing water all over the street and the pavement in front of the hospital is like a scene out of "Blackhawk down"- a roiling mass of very imposing-looking dudes who are now increasingly turning towards the hospital to shout towards the building at people gawking out the windows, I suppose. BOOM! I never did see what the hell they were using to make all of that noise, but how is that a part of PeACeFulL demonstration, pray tell?
I rub my temples, wishing desperately for at least the tenth time in 2 weeks that there were enough room in the tiny dorm-sized fridge for a six pack, or better yet a flask of 140-proof whiskey to hide itself. I decide to update my website while all of this is going on, as it's clear I won't be able to actually work. I would have gone to the library or another lab, but the only functional area is on the side of the building facing the brouhaha. A few minutes elapse and out of my peripheral vision I notice a strange face peering at me from the other side of the cubicle/shelf above my desk. What the hell? I get up and see a fireman in full regalia (ok minus the hat) hanging out the window. What is he doing? Taking pictures with his digital camera. Yep. A circus all right. Then the lab is flooded by at least a dozen fireman proceeding towards the widows to get a birds-eye view of the scene of mayhem below and appreciate their handiwork fully. By this point I am out of my chair and possessively tromping round the lab, they outnumber us scientists in the lab, and some of them are really quite large men. I am pretty certain that I have a mix of surprise, shock, incredulity, and a good portion of amusement written on my face at this point, and my jaw is gaping open quite noticeably. I am now saying things (in English of course, I default back to the mother tongue in emotional moments) like "Does anyone find this to be NORMAL behavior?", to no one in particular, but secretly hoping that some fireman will get the hint and get the hell out of MY lab!
After about 90 seconds of us staring at them and them hanging out the windows and shouting and waving like Charles Lindbergh were passing in the street below and this was merely a ticker-tape parade; they began to file out. I am more amused than shocked now, because, I mean, come ON- I get to write about this in my blog-man! I am mocked by a fireman who mimics my face as he smilingly parades out of the lab, and I realize that none of my friends in the States will believe what it's like to do science in France because the lab doesn't yet have a digital camera for me to document these moments; the moments of our lives.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Top ten things I learned in Croatia
Top 10 list
1. If you travel among the small islands of Croatia, you will quite possibly be be required to place your trust in a, let us say, non-traditional taxi service, whose sole proprietor is a dude named Ivan. I counted on random dude Ivan to give me a lift to Zadar (45 mins away) at 6 am. You should have seen me sweat when he didn't show up till 6:08 am.
2. When you sign up for a sailing course in Croatia and they say that instruction is given in English, beware. One lesson coming from living abroad is that people are most comfortable speaking in their mother tounge, and will often do so in a large group, regardless of whether you can understand them or not. So cheer up! It's not a lonely time. Just pretend you are in a James Bond movie. Pretend they are the Russian villans and you are the super-hot sidekick to James Bond.
3. Never trust the ferry boat schedule posted on the internet. Or the one in your 2-year-old and seriously outdated Croatian guide book. (See lesson in previous posting on traveling to Morocco). All in all, never trust ferries if you really have to be somewhere on time. Perhaps I'll finally learn this one lesson myself.
4. That "modern highway" that replaced the coastal ferry service in Croatia isn't exactly the Ohio turnpike. In fact, if there has been a big enough rock slide, you may be required to get out of the bus and push. And don't think you'll get to sleep on this 6 hour ride from Istria to the Southern regions near Zadar. Yeah, by the way, if you get vertigo, don't sit on the side of the bus with The View. You might see the ghosts of Vacations Past flit before your eyes.
5. Take the plane next time. 32 hours return travel time from Island Murter in Croatia to Paris, starting with Dude Called Ivan's taxi, ferry boat, walk to train station, train to Milan without a single place to sit, even in the aisle- I had to share a space with my bags for 4 hours thanks very much, then train from Milan overnight to Paris- where there was a problem with my ticket that the very nice ticket agent in the special office for first class failed to notice that my ticket was stamped for TOMORROW night. Dude, I've been on vacation for 2 weeks, I've got no friggin clue what the date is today!
1. If you travel among the small islands of Croatia, you will quite possibly be be required to place your trust in a, let us say, non-traditional taxi service, whose sole proprietor is a dude named Ivan. I counted on random dude Ivan to give me a lift to Zadar (45 mins away) at 6 am. You should have seen me sweat when he didn't show up till 6:08 am.
2. When you sign up for a sailing course in Croatia and they say that instruction is given in English, beware. One lesson coming from living abroad is that people are most comfortable speaking in their mother tounge, and will often do so in a large group, regardless of whether you can understand them or not. So cheer up! It's not a lonely time. Just pretend you are in a James Bond movie. Pretend they are the Russian villans and you are the super-hot sidekick to James Bond.
3. Never trust the ferry boat schedule posted on the internet. Or the one in your 2-year-old and seriously outdated Croatian guide book. (See lesson in previous posting on traveling to Morocco). All in all, never trust ferries if you really have to be somewhere on time. Perhaps I'll finally learn this one lesson myself.
4. That "modern highway" that replaced the coastal ferry service in Croatia isn't exactly the Ohio turnpike. In fact, if there has been a big enough rock slide, you may be required to get out of the bus and push. And don't think you'll get to sleep on this 6 hour ride from Istria to the Southern regions near Zadar. Yeah, by the way, if you get vertigo, don't sit on the side of the bus with The View. You might see the ghosts of Vacations Past flit before your eyes.
5. Take the plane next time. 32 hours return travel time from Island Murter in Croatia to Paris, starting with Dude Called Ivan's taxi, ferry boat, walk to train station, train to Milan without a single place to sit, even in the aisle- I had to share a space with my bags for 4 hours thanks very much, then train from Milan overnight to Paris- where there was a problem with my ticket that the very nice ticket agent in the special office for first class failed to notice that my ticket was stamped for TOMORROW night. Dude, I've been on vacation for 2 weeks, I've got no friggin clue what the date is today!
Ghetto Science
Reasons you know you are doing ghetto science (better not count, it's downright depressing)
(Background: I am happily doing science in New York, making about as much $ as the guy that sells me my bagel with cream cheese in the morning, and the boss decides to move the lab to Paris, France. Well, at least I speak some French, so that will help. The following is a description of some of the perils of doing science in a land that's not exactly known for its effeciency.)
1. We's so poor, we can't even afford no weigh boats. We use paper that's only been printed one side.
2. It takes 6 months to gear up to do in situs.
First: locate glass coplin jars. The Trick- they are in our boxes from the NY move where the guys basically wrote "plastic ware" or "glassware" on the boxes, which comprises about 95% of the shit in the boxes. Not especially descriptive if you desperately need to find something.
Step 2: order all of the chemicals and translate the USA catalog #s to something that is actually sold in France. I thought I had everything, then read through the protocol and gathered everything up. Wrong.
Turns out that SIGMA FRANCE had something on backorder for 2 months and they were NEVER going to call me. Sweet. So I give them a ring (and make them speak English- how cruel).
They need me to fill out a form to promise that I'm not using said chemical product to produce illicit drugs. They said they faxed it to me 2 months previously.
"Really? I never got that fax. Were you going to call and ask me to send it?"
Sigma- "No, we don't do that".
That's customer service right there friends.
Oh, and I have to call 3 times over the course of one afternoon and the next morning in order to inpspire someone enough to take the effort to fax the damn form to me. BTW it's all in French. I fill it out in English. Ha- take that!
Hmm, perhaps I should do some research on the internet to find out what the heck this chemical can be used for, I could use some supplimental income.
I call on Monday to find out the progress of fax reception and if the product has indeed been shipped. The switchboard operator informs me that they are having a meeting and can not answer my question. "I'm sorry, EVERYONE is in a meeting?". "Yes, can you please call back at 2pm?". Good god, what a way to run a railroad!
3. The dingo ate your baby. (yes, this IS a Seinfeld ref.)
My mice are so unhappy living in an animal house where drills and jackhammers continually disturb their sleep and odd smelling-vapors permeate their room on a continual basis, that they keep eating their pups. Joy. How can a girl collect tissues if she ain't got no mice?
4. How can a girl do mouse experiments if her mice won't mate? (see above)
5. I've been waiting for 3 months for hanging folders. I keep asking our secretary to order them, but she doesn't like doing "administrative stuff". I give up. I'll just keep piling shit up on my bench until some caustic chemical spills on it and I have to throw out the whole mess. That would simplify organization, for sure.
6. The bartender across the street is starting to understand my English accent when I speak french. I am wearing my own butt-print into one of the stools due to my frequent visits and have memorized the happy-hour prices of all of the pints they serve.
7. I have been considering self-medicating before coming to work to be able to have patience to fill out forms for shipping mice to France from the USA. It took a full work week, me being transferred a dozen times within our funding agency to find a warm body that would pick up the phone in August, and recieving phone calls on my personal cell while on vaca in Italy of all places (which cost to the tune of two Euros plus per minute) to get 2 shipments of the cleanest mice possible delivered to our hospital in Paris.
Let's hope they are happy over there in the new building!
8. Everyone uses the building as if it's their own personal ashtray. They smoke in the hallways, in the offices... don't mind the fact that they are painting the building and using hazardous chemicals all over the place, we do science here on occasion, you know. So though I am a doctor who doesn't smoke, I am likely to get lung cancer anyhow. Nice.
9. We have to steal needles from the hospital using someone's mom who is a nurse in Spain. It's too complicated to purchase them using French sources, we must order them by the gross, I think. Instead, I went to the local pharmacy to special order some. Why needles with surgical thread are available from the corner drug store- I don't know. I would feel much safer having a French medical professional sew me up, frankly, but hey- perhaps that's not the rationale here?
10. The hood doesn't work in the lab. We've been here for 4 months now. Wonder how much longer it will take. A trip upstairs to a room with a functional hood requires a cart-full of shit: pen, eppie tubes, pipetteman, tips, samples, and keys to unlock the door. Not to mention that you must dodge from 0 to 5 workman who may or may not have ladders or other crap blocking the way to the door. (Depends on if they feel like working today or not; it's a roll of the dice).
11. The ice machine is closed with a giant wooden clip, think of the world's biggest clothespin. No joke.
12. I've already mentioned there's no air conditioning right? Yeah, so when you wanna open the window, you've gotta use this lead block that weighs like 20 pounds to keeep a stiff breeze from rendering me unconcious when the window smacks me in the side of the head. So one night, I decide it's probably fine if i just leave the window open a crack, I mean, it was 37 degrees INSIDE the lab earlier that week. During the night the lead weight falls off of the window sill and the pointy part severs my computer cord in two. You know, the one that has the transformer in it? Thanks please pay 90 euros because the folks that remodeled your work space couldn't get the windows right. I clearly don't get paid enough.
13. One more reason I don't get paid enough. Ever heard of a mouse facility in the States where you've gotta change your own cages when THE animal caretaker leaves on vacation? Me neither.
14. We have entered month #5 of occupation of the all new state-of-the-art Lab Space, which still has a non-functional hood and ventilation system. But we still often work under the hood when working with some noxious chemicals, I think it's more of an ingrained habit rather than serving any functional purpose. During one of these rather amusing episodes of someone working with something smelly in the "hood" which does not actually suck smelly air out of the lab, one of our rather soft-spoken labmates said, "The hood may not work, but at least you can switch the light on and pretend that it works".
(Background: I am happily doing science in New York, making about as much $ as the guy that sells me my bagel with cream cheese in the morning, and the boss decides to move the lab to Paris, France. Well, at least I speak some French, so that will help. The following is a description of some of the perils of doing science in a land that's not exactly known for its effeciency.)
1. We's so poor, we can't even afford no weigh boats. We use paper that's only been printed one side.
2. It takes 6 months to gear up to do in situs.
First: locate glass coplin jars. The Trick- they are in our boxes from the NY move where the guys basically wrote "plastic ware" or "glassware" on the boxes, which comprises about 95% of the shit in the boxes. Not especially descriptive if you desperately need to find something.
Step 2: order all of the chemicals and translate the USA catalog #s to something that is actually sold in France. I thought I had everything, then read through the protocol and gathered everything up. Wrong.
Turns out that SIGMA FRANCE had something on backorder for 2 months and they were NEVER going to call me. Sweet. So I give them a ring (and make them speak English- how cruel).
They need me to fill out a form to promise that I'm not using said chemical product to produce illicit drugs. They said they faxed it to me 2 months previously.
"Really? I never got that fax. Were you going to call and ask me to send it?"
Sigma- "No, we don't do that".
That's customer service right there friends.
Oh, and I have to call 3 times over the course of one afternoon and the next morning in order to inpspire someone enough to take the effort to fax the damn form to me. BTW it's all in French. I fill it out in English. Ha- take that!
Hmm, perhaps I should do some research on the internet to find out what the heck this chemical can be used for, I could use some supplimental income.
I call on Monday to find out the progress of fax reception and if the product has indeed been shipped. The switchboard operator informs me that they are having a meeting and can not answer my question. "I'm sorry, EVERYONE is in a meeting?". "Yes, can you please call back at 2pm?". Good god, what a way to run a railroad!
3. The dingo ate your baby. (yes, this IS a Seinfeld ref.)
My mice are so unhappy living in an animal house where drills and jackhammers continually disturb their sleep and odd smelling-vapors permeate their room on a continual basis, that they keep eating their pups. Joy. How can a girl collect tissues if she ain't got no mice?
4. How can a girl do mouse experiments if her mice won't mate? (see above)
5. I've been waiting for 3 months for hanging folders. I keep asking our secretary to order them, but she doesn't like doing "administrative stuff". I give up. I'll just keep piling shit up on my bench until some caustic chemical spills on it and I have to throw out the whole mess. That would simplify organization, for sure.
6. The bartender across the street is starting to understand my English accent when I speak french. I am wearing my own butt-print into one of the stools due to my frequent visits and have memorized the happy-hour prices of all of the pints they serve.
7. I have been considering self-medicating before coming to work to be able to have patience to fill out forms for shipping mice to France from the USA. It took a full work week, me being transferred a dozen times within our funding agency to find a warm body that would pick up the phone in August, and recieving phone calls on my personal cell while on vaca in Italy of all places (which cost to the tune of two Euros plus per minute) to get 2 shipments of the cleanest mice possible delivered to our hospital in Paris.
Let's hope they are happy over there in the new building!
8. Everyone uses the building as if it's their own personal ashtray. They smoke in the hallways, in the offices... don't mind the fact that they are painting the building and using hazardous chemicals all over the place, we do science here on occasion, you know. So though I am a doctor who doesn't smoke, I am likely to get lung cancer anyhow. Nice.
9. We have to steal needles from the hospital using someone's mom who is a nurse in Spain. It's too complicated to purchase them using French sources, we must order them by the gross, I think. Instead, I went to the local pharmacy to special order some. Why needles with surgical thread are available from the corner drug store- I don't know. I would feel much safer having a French medical professional sew me up, frankly, but hey- perhaps that's not the rationale here?
10. The hood doesn't work in the lab. We've been here for 4 months now. Wonder how much longer it will take. A trip upstairs to a room with a functional hood requires a cart-full of shit: pen, eppie tubes, pipetteman, tips, samples, and keys to unlock the door. Not to mention that you must dodge from 0 to 5 workman who may or may not have ladders or other crap blocking the way to the door. (Depends on if they feel like working today or not; it's a roll of the dice).
11. The ice machine is closed with a giant wooden clip, think of the world's biggest clothespin. No joke.
12. I've already mentioned there's no air conditioning right? Yeah, so when you wanna open the window, you've gotta use this lead block that weighs like 20 pounds to keeep a stiff breeze from rendering me unconcious when the window smacks me in the side of the head. So one night, I decide it's probably fine if i just leave the window open a crack, I mean, it was 37 degrees INSIDE the lab earlier that week. During the night the lead weight falls off of the window sill and the pointy part severs my computer cord in two. You know, the one that has the transformer in it? Thanks please pay 90 euros because the folks that remodeled your work space couldn't get the windows right. I clearly don't get paid enough.
13. One more reason I don't get paid enough. Ever heard of a mouse facility in the States where you've gotta change your own cages when THE animal caretaker leaves on vacation? Me neither.
14. We have entered month #5 of occupation of the all new state-of-the-art Lab Space, which still has a non-functional hood and ventilation system. But we still often work under the hood when working with some noxious chemicals, I think it's more of an ingrained habit rather than serving any functional purpose. During one of these rather amusing episodes of someone working with something smelly in the "hood" which does not actually suck smelly air out of the lab, one of our rather soft-spoken labmates said, "The hood may not work, but at least you can switch the light on and pretend that it works".
Friday, August 04, 2006
Can you say, "anti-climactic"?
It was pretty appropriate that I was reading "Hell's Angels" by Hunter S. Thompson on the plane ride to Spain, the perfect accompaniment to a weekend whose most bizarre moment was watching festival goers do lines of coke off a park bench. I'll be leaving that gem out of the version I tell my mother, that's for sure.
I get to Bilbao airport with a vague game plan. My ultimate destination is Pamplona. During the Feria of San Fermin, otherwise known as The Running of The Bulls, there will be no free rooms in town so I am going to stay up all night. I hear that it's a pretty good party, so why not? My idea is to find the bus scheds. to/from both Pamplona and San Sebastian, a nearby seaside town. Check, I can get to San Sebastian, but of course she has no info on getting to Pamplona from San Sebastian. What the hell, let's go to the beach first, it's still early.
San Sebastian is part of Basque Spain, famous for tremendous Tapas, ripe Rioja red wines, and festive ferias. They have an old town with cobble-stoned streets, great for wandering, exploring the wide array of Tapas displays and watching tall pours of this tart white wine that they make in that part of the country. They pour from a height over their heads, making a great show of it and it lands in the glass all foamy and white, but has a surprisingly tart yet crisp quality to it that is very refreshing, and likely kicks you in the ass from the alcohol content.
I have learned a minuscule amount of Spanish, and absorbed some from the Galician Spaniard coworker in NYC, Gisela here in my lab in Paris (we had a tapas meal- think Sunday tea but Spanish with a generous amount of alcohol, esp. for out of town guests- with her parents, brother, and assorted family friends, and I was able to follow a bit of the goings-on then which were all in Spanish) and Julien speaks decent Spanish. It's really fun to be able to enter a totally Spanish place and eat and drink and order and feel fairly comfortable. The french gal next to my bench remarked, "but how were you able to speak and be understood?". Hell, live somewhere where folks don't understand you half of the time and it gets pretty damn easy to go off somewhere
else and just blunder your way through. It takes a certain humility, for sure. Besides, I can mime my way through nearly anything. It's just a big game of charades that you play with a huge ass smile on your face.
Right, on to Pamplona. The line for the bus tickets is LONG, and everyone is wearing white with this red sash around their waist and a red bandanna tied around their necks. Hmm... evidently there is a required uniform which no one told me about. Oh well, I'm a tourist, no problem. I get on one of about 10 buses headed to Pamplona, realizing that there are going to be a plethora of other buses from other Spanish towns
arriving in Pamplona as well. This could get a bit crazy. The adrenaline rises.
I arrive in Pamplona to a sea of white-and-red clad bodies who predominantly speak Spanish. I wander around the streets trying to gauge the direction of where the action is at. As luck would have it, some gal was standing near the bus station handing out maps. Goodie, I can leave my bag at this Placa(plaza) called San Francisco. Cool. All
I have to do is find it. I wander for about an hour and a half through the most wine-sodden, raunchy, rowdy, group of people I have ever seen. I have been to Mardi Gras; I know something of the levels of filth people will succumb to after nights of bawdy drink and rabble-rousing, but this was on a scale I was wholly unprepared for.
The main square of the town was just chock full of people, and this square is about the size of an American football field! Many of them had acquired an odd faintish-purple color from pouring wine over each other onto those nice white uniforms. Now this is not wine like you and I drink Stateside, no- this is some raunchy stuff that comes out
of a tin-lined box; they actually put coca-cola in it to make it drinkable. Unfathomable! This horrible vinegary watered-down wine with coke in it is what's in most glasses. Blech. So this smell, an acidic hazy red-wine pall hangs over the Spanish drinking team of Emperor Nero's wet dreams.
I deposit my bag at the office. I take stock of the melange of humanity surrounding me. There are still some families around at this hour as the sun has just extinguished, and some folks are just crashed out on the pavement catching a few scant minutes of shut-eye amidst the foul feria atmosphere. I sit on a bench for a time and take it all in. Oh my drunken humanity! The band comes on with a crackling mind-bending
interference in the speakers and I can't sit any longer.
I alternate between sitting on benches and dodging drunken Spaniards for the next few hours; they think that since I am unaccompanied I am looking to get laid. I can't get wasted, god knows what these pagans might do to me. And frankly, if I drink another beer I'll have to fight a crowd of 20 for a fighting chance at a toilet. I find a quiet spot where some folks are crashed out on park benches. Why not? Yep, I
slept on a park bench like a bum. There's one to put in the travel journal. I thought that sleeping behind the driver's seat in the back of a Honda Civic in the middle of
the flattest country I have ever seen in South Dakota was the most uncomfortable sleep I've had, but that pales in comparison to the park in Pamplona.
I awoke to some drunken revelers splashing water on each other from the fountain just in front of me, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and warmed the blood back into my fingers and legs, and only then noticed that there were guys doing lines off the bench across from me. Great. Well, the lovers over there seem non-plussed, so why should I move?
Finally I have cramped so badly that it's hard to sit up. God, I feel old. I spend another few hours wandering around, for if I stand still for too long, some guy comes up to me and I have to ward him off in English, which is nowhere near as impressive as swearing in Spanish, who can out-swear NYC cab drivers. It is truly Impressive.
Finally, I decide to take some photographs to document the melee. And in the process of shooting a white and red uniformed mass of drunkenness packing the street just before dawn, this Spanish guy asks me in English with an Irish accent, "Are you here all alone?". He's all incredulous. And he asks if I'd like to hang out with them,
meaning him and his 2 other friends. They were pretty nice actually. Though Alfonso (let's call him that, as I don't really remember his name) really thought that since I was all by myself, all alone and unaccompanied, completely unchaperoned, tout seul as they say in French which literally means "all alone", that clearly I was looking to get laid. He was really offended that I didn't stay in town another day with him, or at the very least kiss him goodbye. (I can never imagine a gal thinking that she was owed some sexual favors if she spent a few weird hours with me at a festival) I realize that some things are cross-culturally universal. (sorry guys, I of course don't mean any of YOU personally are like that).
We decided to find a spot to watch the ensuing run. We climb around this wooden barricade erected about 6 feet higher than the stone wall which drops sharply about 30 feet to the ground on the other side. They climb the wall, using the wooden barrier for support and have to drag me up (did I mention I am wearing a skirt? yeah, uh huh)
so I can walk atop the wall to rest with my back against the wooden barricade to dangle my feet over the 30 foot precipice below. It is certain to be an exciting vantage point. I'm a bit mortified to be sitting here, frankly, but when in Spain for the freaky feria...
And then the cops wave us down. Boo. Hiss.
Right, so now we climb down, go under the barricade, across the street where the bulls will be running, and past the TV camera embankment to sit on the ledge. These look like fine seats. Tweet, tweet- the cop whistles at us, "You must clear out of there. Fuck. So we're left climbing the barricade once again, me now with skinned and bruised
knees just below the skirt hem and no decent place left to watch from. The other boys go home to watch on TV, and Al and I go across the ravine to find a lofty vantage point. I am foolishly hopeful in thinking we might actually be able to catch a glimpse of something.
The tension builds. The runners pray to San Fermin (patron saint of drinking and wildly reckless behavior it seems to me) which we can hear across the grassy valley. It sounds like a whole rugby team collectively grunting. We wait some more.
Finally the rocket goes off, the signal for the bulls to run through the narrow wine, beer and piss-soaked cobblestone streets of Pamplona that are now about as slippery as the surface of the Joe Louis Hockey Arena. The bulls are heading for a mass of purple-stained drunken Spaniards and half-insane Aussies clogging the street. What a show!
Wait, were those tan blurs the bulls? Dude, really?
Fucking-A did I wait a whole frigging night for that? Shit. Ok time for some much-deserved coffee and let's get the hell out of here.
On the way out of town I found some churros and Spanish chocolate. It was a pretty expensive cup of chocolate if you consider the price was spending the night on a park bench and warding off drunken horny men, but I considered it one of those great moments of really living Spanish feria culture, with me just as bedraggled and haggard as the rest of the sodden early-morning revelers, enjoying a brief moment of respite.
I get to Bilbao airport with a vague game plan. My ultimate destination is Pamplona. During the Feria of San Fermin, otherwise known as The Running of The Bulls, there will be no free rooms in town so I am going to stay up all night. I hear that it's a pretty good party, so why not? My idea is to find the bus scheds. to/from both Pamplona and San Sebastian, a nearby seaside town. Check, I can get to San Sebastian, but of course she has no info on getting to Pamplona from San Sebastian. What the hell, let's go to the beach first, it's still early.
San Sebastian is part of Basque Spain, famous for tremendous Tapas, ripe Rioja red wines, and festive ferias. They have an old town with cobble-stoned streets, great for wandering, exploring the wide array of Tapas displays and watching tall pours of this tart white wine that they make in that part of the country. They pour from a height over their heads, making a great show of it and it lands in the glass all foamy and white, but has a surprisingly tart yet crisp quality to it that is very refreshing, and likely kicks you in the ass from the alcohol content.
I have learned a minuscule amount of Spanish, and absorbed some from the Galician Spaniard coworker in NYC, Gisela here in my lab in Paris (we had a tapas meal- think Sunday tea but Spanish with a generous amount of alcohol, esp. for out of town guests- with her parents, brother, and assorted family friends, and I was able to follow a bit of the goings-on then which were all in Spanish) and Julien speaks decent Spanish. It's really fun to be able to enter a totally Spanish place and eat and drink and order and feel fairly comfortable. The french gal next to my bench remarked, "but how were you able to speak and be understood?". Hell, live somewhere where folks don't understand you half of the time and it gets pretty damn easy to go off somewhere
else and just blunder your way through. It takes a certain humility, for sure. Besides, I can mime my way through nearly anything. It's just a big game of charades that you play with a huge ass smile on your face.
Right, on to Pamplona. The line for the bus tickets is LONG, and everyone is wearing white with this red sash around their waist and a red bandanna tied around their necks. Hmm... evidently there is a required uniform which no one told me about. Oh well, I'm a tourist, no problem. I get on one of about 10 buses headed to Pamplona, realizing that there are going to be a plethora of other buses from other Spanish towns
arriving in Pamplona as well. This could get a bit crazy. The adrenaline rises.
I arrive in Pamplona to a sea of white-and-red clad bodies who predominantly speak Spanish. I wander around the streets trying to gauge the direction of where the action is at. As luck would have it, some gal was standing near the bus station handing out maps. Goodie, I can leave my bag at this Placa(plaza) called San Francisco. Cool. All
I have to do is find it. I wander for about an hour and a half through the most wine-sodden, raunchy, rowdy, group of people I have ever seen. I have been to Mardi Gras; I know something of the levels of filth people will succumb to after nights of bawdy drink and rabble-rousing, but this was on a scale I was wholly unprepared for.
The main square of the town was just chock full of people, and this square is about the size of an American football field! Many of them had acquired an odd faintish-purple color from pouring wine over each other onto those nice white uniforms. Now this is not wine like you and I drink Stateside, no- this is some raunchy stuff that comes out
of a tin-lined box; they actually put coca-cola in it to make it drinkable. Unfathomable! This horrible vinegary watered-down wine with coke in it is what's in most glasses. Blech. So this smell, an acidic hazy red-wine pall hangs over the Spanish drinking team of Emperor Nero's wet dreams.
I deposit my bag at the office. I take stock of the melange of humanity surrounding me. There are still some families around at this hour as the sun has just extinguished, and some folks are just crashed out on the pavement catching a few scant minutes of shut-eye amidst the foul feria atmosphere. I sit on a bench for a time and take it all in. Oh my drunken humanity! The band comes on with a crackling mind-bending
interference in the speakers and I can't sit any longer.
I alternate between sitting on benches and dodging drunken Spaniards for the next few hours; they think that since I am unaccompanied I am looking to get laid. I can't get wasted, god knows what these pagans might do to me. And frankly, if I drink another beer I'll have to fight a crowd of 20 for a fighting chance at a toilet. I find a quiet spot where some folks are crashed out on park benches. Why not? Yep, I
slept on a park bench like a bum. There's one to put in the travel journal. I thought that sleeping behind the driver's seat in the back of a Honda Civic in the middle of
the flattest country I have ever seen in South Dakota was the most uncomfortable sleep I've had, but that pales in comparison to the park in Pamplona.
I awoke to some drunken revelers splashing water on each other from the fountain just in front of me, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and warmed the blood back into my fingers and legs, and only then noticed that there were guys doing lines off the bench across from me. Great. Well, the lovers over there seem non-plussed, so why should I move?
Finally I have cramped so badly that it's hard to sit up. God, I feel old. I spend another few hours wandering around, for if I stand still for too long, some guy comes up to me and I have to ward him off in English, which is nowhere near as impressive as swearing in Spanish, who can out-swear NYC cab drivers. It is truly Impressive.
Finally, I decide to take some photographs to document the melee. And in the process of shooting a white and red uniformed mass of drunkenness packing the street just before dawn, this Spanish guy asks me in English with an Irish accent, "Are you here all alone?". He's all incredulous. And he asks if I'd like to hang out with them,
meaning him and his 2 other friends. They were pretty nice actually. Though Alfonso (let's call him that, as I don't really remember his name) really thought that since I was all by myself, all alone and unaccompanied, completely unchaperoned, tout seul as they say in French which literally means "all alone", that clearly I was looking to get laid. He was really offended that I didn't stay in town another day with him, or at the very least kiss him goodbye. (I can never imagine a gal thinking that she was owed some sexual favors if she spent a few weird hours with me at a festival) I realize that some things are cross-culturally universal. (sorry guys, I of course don't mean any of YOU personally are like that).
We decided to find a spot to watch the ensuing run. We climb around this wooden barricade erected about 6 feet higher than the stone wall which drops sharply about 30 feet to the ground on the other side. They climb the wall, using the wooden barrier for support and have to drag me up (did I mention I am wearing a skirt? yeah, uh huh)
so I can walk atop the wall to rest with my back against the wooden barricade to dangle my feet over the 30 foot precipice below. It is certain to be an exciting vantage point. I'm a bit mortified to be sitting here, frankly, but when in Spain for the freaky feria...
And then the cops wave us down. Boo. Hiss.
Right, so now we climb down, go under the barricade, across the street where the bulls will be running, and past the TV camera embankment to sit on the ledge. These look like fine seats. Tweet, tweet- the cop whistles at us, "You must clear out of there. Fuck. So we're left climbing the barricade once again, me now with skinned and bruised
knees just below the skirt hem and no decent place left to watch from. The other boys go home to watch on TV, and Al and I go across the ravine to find a lofty vantage point. I am foolishly hopeful in thinking we might actually be able to catch a glimpse of something.
The tension builds. The runners pray to San Fermin (patron saint of drinking and wildly reckless behavior it seems to me) which we can hear across the grassy valley. It sounds like a whole rugby team collectively grunting. We wait some more.
Finally the rocket goes off, the signal for the bulls to run through the narrow wine, beer and piss-soaked cobblestone streets of Pamplona that are now about as slippery as the surface of the Joe Louis Hockey Arena. The bulls are heading for a mass of purple-stained drunken Spaniards and half-insane Aussies clogging the street. What a show!
Wait, were those tan blurs the bulls? Dude, really?
Fucking-A did I wait a whole frigging night for that? Shit. Ok time for some much-deserved coffee and let's get the hell out of here.
On the way out of town I found some churros and Spanish chocolate. It was a pretty expensive cup of chocolate if you consider the price was spending the night on a park bench and warding off drunken horny men, but I considered it one of those great moments of really living Spanish feria culture, with me just as bedraggled and haggard as the rest of the sodden early-morning revelers, enjoying a brief moment of respite.
To the Frenchman who make lude comments, this is for you...
To the Frenchman who find it absolutely necessary to lude comments as I pass them on the street, please note the following:
I'm sorry that you are sexually frustrated, but what in your culture
makes it OK to bug a gal walking alone? Or waiting for a bus? Or
fucking walking back from the grocery store with my Oreo cookies
during my work day for god's sake! I feel like I need to carry some
brass knuckles in my purse after that guy tried to grab my boob on the
street a couple weeks ago. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to know
if you are just going to keep being verbally abusive or actually whack
me upside the head and drag me away by my hair to ravage me in some side alley?
In a country that's known for its romance and chivalry, do you really find it
absolutely necessary to offer to -whatever- just because I'm walking down the street by myself? I really love it when I can tell you're making comments when I have my headphones on too- do you think that somehow I can hear you, or give a fuck?
Just maybe I'm walking solo because my superfine foxy French boyfriend had a night out with the guys and isn't walking me home from the movies tonight. And I'm
sorry that I live alone, and this necessitates me walking home all by
myself but Mr. Horny French dude, do you talk to your Mother with that
mouth? I mean, pretend I'm your sister for about 3 seconds, do you really NEED to comment on my cleavage (which is not even juicy enough to warrant comment in normal outfits anyhow)?
In Paris in August trust me when I say that I am truly sorry that there is no fucking air-conditioning in this country and I have to wear this little scrap of cloth to work or faint from heat stroke, but that's how life is right now. But please, put your tounge back in that ugly yap of yours and don't BOTHER me! Do not offer me sex. Do not say how much you like my legs/ dress/boobs/hair/face/smile/oddly placed mole/dimple. I don't fucking KNOW you! Do not comment on how nice it is that I got caught in a rainstorm and you can see through my dress a little-I'm wearing underwear and a padded bra you creep, it is not a wet T-shirt contest.
Do I want to WhAt? Oh, really? Hang on, your totally tasteless appeals have won me over. Just because I happen to be walking "unescorted" at this particular moment in time does NOT give you the right to verbally harass me. Go soak your head, you bastard, I'm sweaty and smelly in this tiny dress and want to walk home in peace without hearing any of your shit.
I'm sorry that you are sexually frustrated, but what in your culture
makes it OK to bug a gal walking alone? Or waiting for a bus? Or
fucking walking back from the grocery store with my Oreo cookies
during my work day for god's sake! I feel like I need to carry some
brass knuckles in my purse after that guy tried to grab my boob on the
street a couple weeks ago. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to know
if you are just going to keep being verbally abusive or actually whack
me upside the head and drag me away by my hair to ravage me in some side alley?
In a country that's known for its romance and chivalry, do you really find it
absolutely necessary to offer to -whatever- just because I'm walking down the street by myself? I really love it when I can tell you're making comments when I have my headphones on too- do you think that somehow I can hear you, or give a fuck?
Just maybe I'm walking solo because my superfine foxy French boyfriend had a night out with the guys and isn't walking me home from the movies tonight. And I'm
sorry that I live alone, and this necessitates me walking home all by
myself but Mr. Horny French dude, do you talk to your Mother with that
mouth? I mean, pretend I'm your sister for about 3 seconds, do you really NEED to comment on my cleavage (which is not even juicy enough to warrant comment in normal outfits anyhow)?
In Paris in August trust me when I say that I am truly sorry that there is no fucking air-conditioning in this country and I have to wear this little scrap of cloth to work or faint from heat stroke, but that's how life is right now. But please, put your tounge back in that ugly yap of yours and don't BOTHER me! Do not offer me sex. Do not say how much you like my legs/ dress/boobs/hair/face/smile/oddly placed mole/dimple. I don't fucking KNOW you! Do not comment on how nice it is that I got caught in a rainstorm and you can see through my dress a little-I'm wearing underwear and a padded bra you creep, it is not a wet T-shirt contest.
Do I want to WhAt? Oh, really? Hang on, your totally tasteless appeals have won me over. Just because I happen to be walking "unescorted" at this particular moment in time does NOT give you the right to verbally harass me. Go soak your head, you bastard, I'm sweaty and smelly in this tiny dress and want to walk home in peace without hearing any of your shit.
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