Munich, Germany--
Sitting at an EasyEverything, the fairly cheap chain of internet places you can find in all the major cities of Western Europe. We arrived in Munich this morning about 6:30 a.m., having taken the night train from Prague. That train cost about double the previous and now we are back in the land of EXPENSIVE. The toilet in the train station costs $1.10. Coffee is almost $3 a cup. I havenīt figured out the price for breathing, but I am sure they have one here.

We decided that $30 apiece extra for the private sleeping cabin was too much, so we opted for the couchette. Twarnīt as bad as the bus, but it is not a good sleep. With the window and the door to the compartment closed and six metabolizing bodies at work producing heat, the place gets positively oven-like. And for me, who needs a periodic cooling off every night, it was a slow roasting. At one point I went out into the corridor and opened the window and just leaned into the breeze.

This morning over coffee we met up again with our buddy the skateboard Aussie. He had his Canadian girlfriend in tow and they were planning their itinerary--leaning towards Hungary and Romania and then a run through Italy. This chance meeting again and again is something that is part of the road experience. The route around Europe isnīt all that complicated and Vilnius to Warsaw to Krakow to Prague to Munich is a fairly common itinerary. Still it was fun to see Jamie again.

Prague

It was quite literally in places wall-to-wall tourists, but it was fine to be walking down a street and to pass as many as ten different languages being spoken in just a few minutes. There were tourgroups of French people, Germans, Americans, Scandinavians, Spaniards, even one from Martinique. And yes, Prague is as beautiful as they all say. The Paris of Eastern Europe, they say. The most beautiful city you can afford in Europe. What is it that makes a city "beautiful?" This one had Gothic cathedrals. It had Art Nouveau buildings. It has an old medieval town square with a clock that does gymnastics at noon. It has monuments standing magestically at the top of wide boulevards of fountains and flowers. It has a river running through it, and so boat trips. It has a castle on a hill overlooking the river. There is this now-pedestrian bridge, the Charles bridge, which was built 700 years ago and is lined with life-size statues of saints, and artists with photographs and watercolors, musicians and jewelry dealers. It has concerts and art galleries and museums, though I confess I didnīt stick my nose into even one museum. Prague has parks all around the castle, in nooks and crannies all over the city. Everywhere you look there is a statue or a building facade or a church, all of them old and glorious, most of them restored or repainted since independence.

And compared to the rest of Europe, it is still inexpensive. We were staying with our Servas hosts, and so didnīt have to price hotels, but you can have a beer, a half a liter of delicious dark chewy beer, for under a dollar and a meal with meat and dumplings for two for less than $10. We buy liter-and-a-half bottles of water everywhere we go. Keeping yourself hydrated on a trip like this is a major daily task. You forget to buy water and you end up with pee that looks like orange Fanta or even darker. In Prague, water was less than a dollar a bottle. We ate salads with bleu cheese and great bread for lunch for under $5 for both of us.

As usual, we spent the first day just wandering. After I checked the guidebook, it turned out we had passed in front of all the tourist-check-list sites except the Jewish cemetery by the end of our trip. Itīs just that we didnīt actually know what they were while they went past. For us, Prague was mostly making friends with our Servas hosts, Roman and Iva Branbergerovi. He is a business consultant and communications trainer and she is sales director for a group of online tech magazines. But in the European tradition, we talked very little about their work or ours. Itīs funny that American START talking about their work and then, if they like you and feel you and they have hit it off, they move into other subjects. When we left, Roman said we were their 295th Servas guests since they started in the late 80īs, but that they had gotten to know us as well as they had their first guests. I have come to the conclusion that Servas visits are like that-- sometimes the magic just really works and you feel you have made a friend you want to come back to see, someone added to the World Friend List. And while our hosts in Krakow were everything one could ever expect, and though they were really kind and very helpful and even fun, we didnīt have the same instant recognition, the way that conversation flows effortlessly from one topic to another, the feeling that you want to give and give to these folks ("Letīs buy them a bottle of French wine while weīre out, okay" and "Hereīs that magazine we were talking about, letīs get it for Roman and Iva" and "Here is our leftover coffee and olive oil, we wonīt be needing it...") and that they are feeling the same way. At the end, Roman drove us to the train station and then parked the car and came in with us, waited the hour before the departure time and put us on our train. The affinity was just there. Sunday afternoon, we did an hour of yoga together using my audio tape. Iva spoke less English and yet the meals she cooked for us--chicken schnitzel and spinach pie and pasta in a tomato cream sauce, salads and homemade cheese spread and homemade jam on lovely dark bread-- spoke as eloquently as Romanīs enthusiastic conversations.

Two other encounters that I will write more about later-- We had a rendezvous with Jakub, the Czech photojournalist that we met on the west coast of Lithuania. He took us to a secluded non-touristy "Literary Cafe" and gave us reams of great advice on hidden sculptures and great eateries. And talked at length about techno-music-parties, a phenomenon he wrote about for his magazine, Koktejl. We also met an Aussie couple of puppeteers. They were in a puppet shop that we had wandered into, and Steve told me all about what makes a great puppet and how a puppet "breathes." More on both these encounters later, as I now have only seven minutes to publish this before my session ends.

Munich, Germany--
Happily ensconsed in our new Servas host home...Our bedroom is also the computer room. I think Iīve died and gone to heaven. Another great stop. Bridgitte and Seth greeted us with an easy welcome, installed us at the kitchen table and we have been there ever since, talking about intercultural stuff. Bridgitte works with the Russian office of her company and Seth is from Ghana. She has done a lot of traveling in Africa and twice traveled in the US on a Harley Davidson. So, okay, we also talked motorcycles. She threw together a delicious stew. What is it about these European women who can toss together a memorable meal seemingly effortlessly, all the while discussing the politics of Eastern Europe and the best African films they have seen?

Finding a Servas host is one of the challenges I really like about this kind of traveling. The host book gives you address and phone number as well as a brief note on how to get there. For instance, todayīs instructions were: U5 to Liemar Platz. After that, it is a game of finding a likely local, asking directions, confirming several times along the way, wandering up and down unfamiliar streets looking for house numbers. Some of our hosts have emailed more detailed directions. In Krakow, we knew to get off Tram 24 at the third stop after the McDonaldīs. We had the entire bus looking for the McDīs for us.

Our Prague

Photos of Our Prague.The Prague we ended up visiting was an eclectic mix of tourist list destinations--the castle, the Charles bridge--and a combination of pure happenstance and advice from our local friends. We saw the statue of Good King Wenceslas, the one we sing the Christmas carol about, on a horse. Then we found the parody done by David Cerny, a famous Czech sculptor, that shows the horse dead, hanging from the art nouveau dome ceiling of a nondescript pedestrian passageway, and the good king riding its belly. Same kind of discovery--there is a wonderful turn-of-the-century cafe in the heart of the Prague train station. When they modernized the station, they kept the old train lobby with its wooden ticket windows and inlaid tile floor and domed ceiling and made it into a cafe. But there is no indication of this jewel in the bustle and efficiency (or lack thereof) in the train station below. Roman, our host, took us there to wait for our train.

Prague is a puppet show city, we learned from Steve, the Aussie puppeteer we met in a shop by the river. Most of the puppets were made to be hung on a wall and admired for their artistic beauty, he told me. Someone who wants to perform with puppets has very different requirements than the mere showy aesthetics of the puppet. Puppets need to be able to roll their eyes to show they are thinking, he said. The feet shouldnīt just dangle there...a real person would be in a hospital if their feet acted like most of the puppet feet on sale in the shop, he told me. There is another reason why my encounter with Steve and his detailed lesson on the care and feeding of puppets touched and moved me. I felt that somehow my friend Linda Tanenbaum --who was an inspired and very talented puppeteer-- was with me still as I talked with Steve. She would have loved to hear him tell me that for a long time he had only two puppets and that they would never tolerate mediocrity in him. Meeting Steve felt just a little bit like still having Linda alive and with me.

Toilets

If you are too squeamish, do skip this part. Toilets the world over fascinate me. I have already written about how they donīt put their toilet paper in the toilet in the Baltic countries and that has certain olfactory consequences that only the most conscientious of toilet tenders can remedy. I will now comment on German toilets. I am not sure that they are actually German, but I know they have them here (including the house where we are staying) and have seen them more and more often as we approach Germany. These toilets are constructed with a little shelf to the rear of the actual pipe with the water in it. Which means that when one defecates, the fruits of oneīs labors, so to speak, rest on the shelf. The flush is strong and determined and disposes of this display as soon as you press the lever.

Ah, but WHEN do you press the lever? The Germans we asked about this--and I brought the subject up tonight (long after the evening meal had been served, consumed and the dishes washed, by the way)-- said that the products of oneīs digestive system often tell us a lot about how things are doing in there. We can learn a lot about stress levels and general health, as well as specific information about intestinal upsets and the like from oneīs stools. Hence, the shelf. Bridgitte told me tonight that her sister, who is an architect and also someone versed in matters of health, recommended this type of toilet when they were remodeling the house for the same reasons. I told her that I appreciate this type of toilet, but I donīt think they would do well in the United States, where we have some very definite taboos about odors of all kinds and especially those that reek of bodily functions. We are phobic about SWEAT, for heavenīs sake.

Can you picture the American olfactory reaction to this kind of toilet? This led us into a discussion of other toilet habits--the Muslimsī habit of not using toilet paper at all, and how that relates to the very strong taboo against eating or shaking hands with the left hand. Which led into a discussion of peoples who eat with their fingers and how JF, for all of his cosmopolitan openmindedness, just canīt eat that way without a strong sense of revulsion. Ah, the cultural differences that make us who we are! If we really ARE all alike under the skin, it certainly doesnīt mean we are all alike in the WC! (more)

Munich, Germany--
Bridgitte and Seth, our Servas hosts, have provided us with a map and guide book to the city, the keys to their place, towels and all the information we need to use the shower, fix ourselves breakfast or lunch, or just coffee or a cup of tea. The host we had in Berlin, Dr. Weiss, put both himself and us through all kinds of contortions of fixing exact minutes when we would rendezvous so that we could get in to his place because he couldnīt imagine giving us a key. Some of the other hosts we have had would be astounded at the idea of handing a complete stranger a key to their house. But then again, we arenīt really COMPLETE strangers, since we have been interviewed by a regional coordinator of Servas and have also a few Servas visits behind us. They have a copy of our letter of introduction complete with address and phone number at home, name and phone number of our interviewers, and a seal of approval from the national organization.

Beds

Bridgitteīs system of bedding has the same sheet sack over a comfortor combination that we have seen elsewhere. But there is another feature which I have seen but not thought about. We get TWO blankets wrapped in their sheet sacks, so that the covers wrestle we generally participate in at home is a thing of the past. I have my covers and JF has his. He can roll himself into a cocoon all he wants and it doesnīt affect me. Both blankets are smaller than a blanket we would have except on a single bed, so you donīt end up with piles of covers between you either.

Baggage

I have been wishing I had brought a small day pack that I could use during the days instead of unpacking my library backpack every morning and then having to repack it all when we move on to the next place. I have one pocket with sunblock and neck pillow, another with toilet paper, another with alarm clock, calculator, flashlight, calendar. All that stuff weighs in on the balance when I am schlepping the pack around all day, and I could whip out the day pack, throw in the water, the books I am reading and the maps for the day and be off.

Tomorrow we take the train at 8 a.m. Maybe Iīll get in briefly tonight.

The Worst Day

Train from Munich, Germany to Chambery, France--
Wednesday was a day from hell. A day from pure unadulterated hell.

That was how I started my journal entry about yesterday's 17-hour, rain-soaked, disorganized German train fiasco and the subsequent arrival here in Chambery to nobody home at any of the addresses and phone numbers we have. The ICE, Germany's equivalent of the French high-speed ultramodern TGV broke down about two hours into our fairly expensive trip. For the next four hours, we got the full blast of German bureaucracy's inability to deal with the unforeseen. No wonder they are so rulebound, so organized, so precise. A train with about a hundred passengers on it up and quits on them and they can't begin to rise to the occasion.

For one thing, about a third of those on the train are English speakers, and the Germans are not the Poles or the Lithuanians who only learned Russian in public school. They are capable of seeing that there needs to be information disseminated in at least a couple of languages, theirs and at least the next largest language group. Which would be English. But no. For the full four and a half hours between the breakdown of the train and the time most of us boarded a train that would finally take us to Zurich, we had inaccurate and garbled information in German. Only if you followed the conductor around like a sheep and then begged translations off the other passengers could you get the vaguest clue about what was going on. As it was, only some of us heard that vouchers for 25 Euros were being issued and then there was not enough time to stand in line to get one before the mad dash back through the pouring rain to the crowded buses where some people had to stand in the aisles.

Okay, the train breaks down. We wait --like sheep in a chute-- in the drizzle beside a perfectly dry and comfortable train for over an hour while they promise another train is coming, will be here any minute, etc. We run for buses that are guaranteed to take us to Zurich but in fact only take us to the next train station, park 100 yards from the station entrance so we have to dash in what is now a downpour. We are told a train is coming in twenty minutes to take us to Zurich. No, there will be no train, we are to dash back in the rain to the buses, which take us to another train station, this time just over the border in Switzerland, where we have an hour and a half wait to catch an actual train going to Zurich.

In Zurich, now four hours late, we dash for a train going to Geneva (we have a total of six minutes). At this point, our Euros are no good because the Swiss are not part of the European Union. In fact, our money has been no good since we crossed the border on the bus. In Geneva, I realize that the only thing between me and breakfast at 6:45 a.m. has been a granola bar and a handful of BBQ potato chips. I am STARVED.

Then two things happen. JF realizes that we can get on a train to take him to France in 10 minutes and he also sees the prices at the station restaurant. $5.90 for a quarter of a medium pizza. He is adamant about not giving the blinkety blink Swiss a penny of his money but concedes that I need to do something about the serious deficiency in my blood sugar level. But he is rushing me about the ten minute train and I end up with anchovy, the only kind of pizza I seriously hate. They had hidden the little salty buggers under a ton of cheese which had subsequently slid off the slice revealing them in all their dry and yukky tasting glory. We pay with Mr. Plastic and run for the train. I discover the fishy undergrowth after we're on the train.

We end up in Culoz, a tiny mountain village with a two-hour layover. We have now ridden two buses and three trains and it is 9:30 at night. JF rustles up a little meal at the local hotel-restaurant-bar, sighing with pleasure to find once more menus he can read, food he knows is going to be well-cooked, delicious and reasonably priced. He gets trout, macaroni, cooked carrots and scalloped potatoes for about eight dollars. I order a creme caramel "and I'll see if I'm still hungry after that." JF goes into his patronizing mode about how we are in France and you don't start with dessert here and I retort that I don't give a shit for the local customs, if I want to start with dessert and have a sandwich after that, I damn well will. He retaliates by smiling indulgently when the waitress arrives and saying, "My wife will have a creme caramel and perhaps something else. I told her one starts with salty dishes first in France but..." and he shrugs "what-can-one-do-?" I decide that I will strangle him later and leave the restaurant to call Christine, the friend where we are staying for the next few days. Curious. She is not home.

Happily filled with good French food, we make our way back to the train station where we start our new read-aloud book, The Razor's Edge. All goes according to plan until we arrive in Chambery, home of Christine. The answering machine is still on. And nobody is home at her ex's house or their neighbors the Pastors. We try--it is now midnight and we have been on the road for 17 hours-- to find the way to Christine's house, but we have no map and can't seem to orient ourselves from the little map on the wall at the train station. At this point, I decide that I will never travel with Jean-Francois again. In my life. Yes, it has been a tough day, but that's traveling, I am thinking. One rises above. One remains basically cheerful. He is snarling and angry at Christine, the Germans, and my frigging cheerfulness, in that order.

After our second failure to find the street leading to Rue de la Republique, we capitulate and decide to find a hotel. My only request as JF heads down the road to check out the neighborhood hotels is that I want a bath in the room. I am tired and I am sweaty and I smell like 17 hours on the road. Screw European showers down the hall. We take the miniscule French elevator up to the third floor, which is our 4th floor, and collapse on the bed. The windows overlook the train tracks, but I have this weird passionate love for the sound of trains, so what might have kept another tossing and turning is lullaby to me.

This morning, I called Christine's house before 8 and got her daughter who had waited at the train station for an hour at the time I had emailed the train would arrive, the on-time train that we had missed by four and a half hours. I agreed to meet at her house at noon. Then I went back to the room for a really nice hot shower in a private bathroom, and went out again for a croissant and a beautiful cafe au lait, stopped in at the tourist office for maps and directions to Christine's, found the cheapest internet in town $1.50 an hour, and answered emails. By the time I finished, JF was sitting on the square with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, much refreshed and not at all contrite for his miserable behavior of the night before. I had already forgiven him and decided that I probably WILL travel with him again; after all, he is just obnoxious in the face of rain and disaster. The rest of the time, he's my zig-zag king...he zigs when I zag and vice versa.

Tomorrow there will be a musing on why people tell me secrets. And a profile of the True Believer we met before the train broke down.

Chambery, France--
We are in the French alps, a beautiful town called Chambery, with our friends Christine and Gerard. The trip, as a traveling adventure, is over. From here on out, we are with friends and family, just hanging and talking. Christine is the one who does the most exotic traveling of any of our friends. This year she and her daughter who is Natasha's age spent a month in the south of India. Christine is in love with the Sahara desert and has done several trips where she walks the desert, camps at night, and then walks...for two or three weeks. She encourages and inspires me to think of traveling, she understands deeply what it is, what it does to a person to travel this way, what it MEANS to get close to the ground and spend just a little money and really FEEL a place.

I want to start a traveler's club when I get back, like our New Zealand friends Judy and Gary have, gathering together people who like to spend an hour or two looking at your pictures and hearing about your trip and who have their own stories and photos to share. I know that most people get bored with one's vacation pictures after about 20 minutes max, though MY friends tend to be a bit more tolerant than most. But what we do seems so unthinkable, unimaginable that people don't want to hear too much about it. I kid myself perhaps in thinking that this Web log, its immediacy and detail, has made our experience a bit more accessible to some. But I need people like Christine, people who are already dreaming of their next trip, reading up on it, poring over maps, etc. JF gets home and loses the momentum. He starts dreaming of house projects. Then it is more difficult to get him excited again about getting on the road.

Souvenirs

Sunanda from Calcutta writes: Are you planning to take back any souveneirs from your travels? If so, what kind of stuff do you go for?

Susan from Bangkok also asks if I don't want to buy something pretty and lightweight.

We don't do souvenirs, or almost not at all. In Lithuania, JF bought himself a leather vest with all kinds of cool pockets. If we were back in Turkey and could afford it, we would probably go shopping for carpets, since we love them so much and have those hardwood floors that would really look so good with Turkish carpets on them. Most of the stuff on offer is shoddy workmanship and fake replicas of real handicraft and workmanship, so in order to get really good stuff you have to really know what to look for. In Prague in the Czech Republic, for instance, I noticed they were selling these beautiful Bohemian garnet necklaces. But I know squat about garnets, and at any case, it would have meant a trip to the countryside where they are produced, since in the capital the products are invariably overpriced and of questionable quality anyway. I love to look at the lace and linens, the embroidery, the silk, the beautiful wool. I like crystal and I like ceramic tiles.

My favorite thing to do is to spot the stuff available in a country in the big city, then find it again in the countryside where it is produced and have the craftsmen and locals give me a crash course in the methods and marks of quality. Even then, I don't usually care to OWN the stuff. When I just look, I have the pleasure of the beauty of a thing and then I have the pleasure of the money I didn't spend, so I win both ways. JF is more of a shopper than I am. He buys vests, leather stuff, small things sometimes. And he will take all the time necessary to look in twelve different shops, listen to the shopkeepers tell him all about how it is made, etc., and then come back to bargain furiously with them. I usually need or want an article of clothing, one of those beautiful hand-woven shawls. I saw some beautiful flax-colored linen outfits in the Baltic countries and I could have been tempted to buy one if I were working and needed that sort of thing for my job.

We travel so light that we really don't have room in our luggage for a bunch of extra things. We buy our friends post cards or we take photos especially for this one or that one according to their interests. One year when I went to Turkey, I found a bead wholesaler and bought a whole huge sack of different colored glass beads. When I got home, I invited my girlfriends to select enough beads for a necklace. Night before last in Munich, our great hostess Bridgitte pulled out a sack of different African necklaces and asked me to choose one as a remembrance of our visit with her. I was really honored and think it is a great way to buy presents.

For me, it is the stories from each trip that are my memories, my souvenirs. The stories and the photographs. And I want to spend time on my trip meeting people if possible, or wandering, or savoring the food, or hanging with other travelers, or seeing the tourist-check-list places or discovering little museums or artists that nobody else has discovered. I really resent spending time shopping for STUFF. I don't mind food shopping or even restaurant shopping. But stuff...I can get that at garage sales at my house and I don't have to schlep it for the next several weeks in an increasingly heavy bag.

Stories and Secrets

The old women leans over. She is still beautiful. You know, just looking at her now that she was once stunning. "My English is so bad," she says for the fourth or fifth time. She will tell me her story, she says, and I must promise not to tell anyone.

What makes her want to tell me, with whom she can barely communicate?

I recognize that it is a quality in myself, something in me that ignites the other. There is my curiosity, but that alone is not enough. I know how to simplify my English dramatically, to reduce the grammar to simple verbs and simple nouns. I can get at the meaning of what I want to say by coming at it in different ways, using opposites, acting it out, making noises, drawing pictures. I have the patience to go a long way around to express an idea, and I have the patience to wait for others to do the same. I can often help someone say what he wants to say. This lady, for instance, wants to say "celibate," which is the same word in Polish or German. At first I think she means "unmarried," but she doesn't, she means celibate, all the implications, so we can get to the full expression of her frustration with her widow's life.

There is something even more to this quality of being a kind of confessor than facility in communication and curiosity about people. Is it empathy? Is it a willingness to listen to the other without judging? Or do they sense a deep yearning in me to connect, even across the gulf that separates us of years and languages and culture? I don't FEEL what the other felt, but I often understand what she felt; so maybe her willingness to tell me her secrets and stories comes from that. The realization of this quality in me works both ways, in fact. Some people deliberately avoid me because they feel this in me, feel the impulse to tell me the details they have never told anybody else, and they wonder if I won't misuse their stories.

I admit that I'm sorry to be sworn to secrecy; there is that much of the journalist still in me. I want to tell the stories I'm told, because in every person's story there is the spark of life, the glimmer of what it is to be human. The old lady, whose story is secret, once was enormously rich and now is poor. That is not her story, but is an outline of many stories, including my own. In mine, the father began poor and so always wanted to keep that poverty behind him. He wanted things that would show--cars and houses and a wife in jewelry and furs. And because the way out of poverty involved being a risk-taker, there were regular periods in my childhood when our luck ran out and our fortune diminished, when creditors called and threatened to repossess the car. I can understand when someone tells me about going from rich to poor; we did it over and over when I was a kid.

There is also something disquieting about admitting to being someone to whom people tell their secrets. As if I should keep THAT a secret, and pretend that her story is the only one anyone has ever told me. It is easy to give the impression that I'm some kind of scrap dealer, a collector, a trophy hunter. In the end, though, this gift of mine, if it is a gift, is the main reason I travel, because it brings the world to my ears and eyes, it offers me an increasingly complex vision of us, the humans. For no other reason, really--not museums or monuments or souvenir shops or spectacular scenery-- do I want to see the world.

Brian

Brian sat next to me on the train from Munich, the one that later broke down. He revealed very quickly that he is an English teacher and a vegan--that is, he not only doesn't eat meat but doesn't eat animal products at all, no milk, no cheese, no butter. He is glad to be out of America and in Europe and doesn't care if he ever goes back. Brian waxed eloquent about the sins of America. I can almost list what he has been reading--and certainly he has read a great deal--conspiracy theory combined with a little neo-nazism, books on simple living and against the Trilateral Commission and a One-World/Zionist approach, Montana survivalists, esoterica. He can name the five families now in control of the United States. The connection between Yale's Scull and Bones and the Bush family. Dick Cheney is Richard Nixon's cousin, says Brian. There is documented proof that the freemasons, bankers and Jews, all adhering to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, have all the power. The Chiapas Indians in Mexico speak Hebrew and there is documented proof that the Celts if not the Egyptians lived in America several centuries before the arrival of Columbus. (I have actually read some of this discussion and the evidence is not at all "documented proof.")

The effect of all this is a kind of Dr. Bronner's Soap label mishmash, filled with "facts" that I am certainly not in a position to refute, even if Brian stopped talking long enough to be contradicted. The Tibetans have a symbol of a swastika INSIDE a three-dimensional Star of David and the Norse myths are really Buddhist in origin and why do you think the lamas in Tibet finally agreed to open their doors to the rest of the world, because the Dalai Lama is in possession of the secrets of the universe.

I had stumbled on a True Believer. He talked on and on. Some of this stuff I have heard, some I've heard tell of. The beauty of how it all fits together for him, the ugly truths, the wild theories, the esoterica awed me more than a little. He has an English girlfriend who after 9-11 was deported out of the states and barred from ever entering again. She too is a vegan, even more strict in that he only eats raw vegetables and fruits.

I can't help feeling that this kid is ripe for something, that he is a product of our culture's anti-intellectualism that throws out rational inquiry and analysis along with conventional history, sociology and economics. During the War in Vietnam, we learned that our government does lie to us, that it is often under the influence of vested interests, especially ones with dollar signs nearby. There have always been crackpots, and Brian seems to have read everything from the freethinking fringe right into the most improbable Velikovsky absurdities, believed every word, and here he is on the train next to me, asserting with terminal naivete that Europe is a better place to be.

JF, sitting across from us, retreated almost instantly into his book. Keeping up his steady stream of information, Brian came along as I went to the club car for a cigarette. Indeed, he bummed a couple. At the train station, he bought a bag of BBQ potato chips and shared them with me. When we were finally herded onto the buses headed eventually to Switzerland, Brian didn't run for a seat the way we did. Instead, to his credit he stayed back, helping the old people and those with what he called "mobility issues" and ended up standing in the aisle. I wish him well.

Chambery, France--
It is difficult to focus on Things French while we are in France, since they are so much a part of our normal life here. Still, since yesterday we have had a couple of typically French experiences that I will share.

Christine and her daughter Estelle live in downtown Chambery, minutes away from the clogged streets of the Saturday market, across the street from the summer jazz festival, and just a block away from a great patisserie, luxuries that France offers even the casual visitor. Christine belongs to an food-coop and we walked over yesterday afternoon to pick up her weekly grocery bag of vegetables. The coop is actually an employment scheme for the unemployed. Christine shares a half portion of veggies every week with a girlfriend and they pay roughly $160 apiece a year for organic vegetables in season. This week's sack had two heads of lettuce, a couple of pounds of carrots, about three of zucchini, and the same of tomatoes. She will share this with her friend, since Estelle, at 20 and with a boyfriend, doesn't often eat at home.

In the early evening, Estelle drove us up to mountain to have dinner with her father, Gerard, who has just had a child with his new wife. Gerard always was the one to live out in the country, but this place is further out in the mountains than most of us can imagine. We drove up and up, many switchback turns into a dell overlooking a verdant valley with the majestic French alps standing in the background. Gerard has only recently sold the house he built when he lived with Christine. We were astounded that he would ever sell that house, since he did all the work himself from the ground up. Both he and Christine are psychiatric nurses, and Gerard used all his spare time on building and renovating projects. His new place is in what they call here a hamlet, which is smaller than a village. In fact, it is a collection of about four houses out of sight of any other houses or villages. Between the four houses, you can practically reach out and touch the others. Still, this is the country, deep country. Gerard bought a house that had already been mostly "updated," which for them means tile floors, new staircases, and modern bathrooms. Behind the house is a beautiful flagstone terrace and a flower garden climbing up a steep hill. Behind Gerard's land is a field of wheat and pasture for cows and horses.

Gerard has about a 45 minute drive into work every day, but it's worth it for him to come home to calm and the kind of pastoral beauty afforded in the Alps. Frankly, I find it hard to imagine the trip in the winter after a really good snowfall, but Gerard is used to snow, for sure. He also has what he calls "dependances." We might call them outbuildings, except there really is only one, half a huge barn that is divided into little rooms, cellars, and storage places. He will turn them into guest rooms or an art studio for his new wife, Laura.

One of Gerard's restoration projects was on an old mountain chalet over in another valley, where they make exceptional cheese, the Beaufort. He and his partner in the business had big plans to open a kind of ashram there. Gerard does theraputic massage and body work in his job and thought to open a kind of conference center. They have more or less dropped that plan, but now rent the place out to individuals and groups. The prices are so good that I will quote a couple here, in case anyone wants to get in touch with me for an exceptionally beautiful and cheap vacation in the French alps: Individual beds, 11.45 Euros (which we count as roughly equal to a dollar), rooms with four or five beds, 42.70. Or you can rent the entire chalet, including kitchen space and fireplace for 122 Euros a night. You can rent the entire chalet, with space for 12-14, for a week for just under 800 Euros. There are also options including breakfast or both breakfast and dinner, "wine and coffee included." To make reservations, write (M. PONCET Maurice, Les Grangettes, 73250 St. Jean de la Porte, France), email (lajoux.chalet@free.fr) or phone (from the States: 011.33.479.28.52.77).

We have spent a couple of weekends up at the chalet with Christine and the kids and the view is magnificent and there are great hikes in all directions.

This morning, we started with a typical French breakfast for a weekend--croissants and pain au chocolat with coffee or tea. Already I am blissful. We are just so thrilled to be eating French bread and cheese, we could live on just that. Joelle, a woman Christine met during one of her treks in the Sahara desert, came in last night from Paris where she puts out a magazine for the agricultural industry. Another one of Christine's friends arrived, as well as Estelle's boyfriend, Alex.

All together we went out to get what we needed for the noon meal. The stroll through the market, stopping to buy cheese, vegetables, fruit, and pastries--all for the meal that you are planning to consume today, for me this is part of the quintessential French noon meal with friends. They have three of my all-time favorite cheeses here, the Tomme de Savoie, which has a gray mouldy crust and a sharp tang, the Reblochon, which looks a little like a Brie, but is a little less runny inside, and the Beaufort, which I have come to appreciate since we visited the Chalet in the mountains up where they make it. Beaufort manages to be both creamy and sharp at the same time.

The meal, like all the meals at Christine's, was absolutely simple and perfectly delicious. She made a tabouli salad, a green salad and served the cheese and bread at the same time. Of course there was wine, the French rarely have a meal without wine. This was a Merlot, while night before last we had a Gamay and Christine thought the Gamay was better. Since all wine makes me sneeze (an affliction the French regard with horror--live without wine is hardly living at all!), I couldn't agree or disagree. And for desert, we had seven different pastries, one for each of the seven people present for the meal. Usually, a French person will have a favorite pastry, so that whoever's buying will get each his preferred kind. For JF, the religieuse--two cream puffs, a small one sitting atop a larger one, filled with chocolate cream and iced with chocolate. For Christine, the mille-feuilles--a layered cookie with vanilla cream between the different layers.

After lunch, several people retired to have a siesta, JF included. I would have, except I drank a hefty dose of strong coffee this morning for breakfast, so afternoon sleeping is out of the question.

At 5:30 this afternoon, we will take the train to the south, to one of the oldest cities on the Mediterranean, Marseille, where both my children were born and where JF and I began our married life together. Marseille has changed since we lived there, but it is still, I think, a mostly undiscovered jewel of a city. The Americans go to Aix-en-Provence, which is a smaller university town to the north, a more photogenic and touristic town. The other tourists on the Riviera head for the beach so that at this time of year it is literally beach towel to beach towel from the sidewalk next to the beach highway to the wet sand where the waves are lapping. Excuse me! Pardon! Bitte! as you step over bodies in various stages of undress. The completely nude sunbathers usually have their own beaches, but bare breasts are the rule rather than the exception, and age and aesthetics play little part in the decision to bare or not. Marseille has a strong place in my heart; we lived a lot when we lived there, times of wild music and great food, times of despair, loneliness, hospitals, desperate hope.