Voyage d'affair 
By Horace
J. Digby -- Editor-In-chief --
SandBagger News
Our trip to Paris took so
much planning, that I began feeling like Bilbo Baggins
preparing for his great journey. A grand
sendoff celebration would be the final step. Speeches,
fireworks, I'd invite the whole Shire. But
my wife, always the pragmatist, reminded
me that we weren't actually Hobbits and didn't even know where
the Shire was. She was right of course. Luckily, I
headed off my nephew Frodo, before he mailed the
invitations. I
don't think I'll tell him about the magic
ring.
Even without a party, the
details were endless.
The most important was to brush up on my
French. How hard could it be to lead my family on a safe and joyous romp
through Paris? With
my background in French (seventh and part of eighth grade) one
of those "French-for-travelers" CDs would be the ticket.
After all, French is like
math; you never forget it. So what if my last brush
with the language was . . . let me see, hmmm . . . four minus
three . . . carry the one . . . Maybe French isn't like math at all. Maybe
French is more like riding a
bicycle.
My wife and son got me a
mountain bike for my 40th birthday. It was great to be
back in the saddle, pedaling as fast as I could for the
park. It was like I'd never been off of a
bike. I'm sure that's what French is
like. With my
driveway just thirty yards ahead, I decided to see how fast I
could take the turn. We used to lay our bikes nearly
horizontal when I was a kid. You just lean into the
turn.
Swoosh-crshcrbbll-brrssh—I slid nearly
ten yards across the pavement, mostly on my left hip and
forearm. Of course when I stopped sliding, I jumped up
at once, acting like nothing at all had happened. This
is an important part of being a guy. The quicker you
jump up after a mishap, the better. Luckily, our garage
door was open, so I headed there with all the bounce in my
step that I could manufacture.
There was a lot of
pain and probably blood, but I couldn't look. Not
yet. You can't show pain, especially when
you got the pain by doing
something really stupid. This is the basis of all male
behavior. After I got the garage door closed, I would
wither and dissolve into a pool of quivering agony, but until
then, "I was fine. . . I meant to do
that."
Everything hurt. Heck, the bike seat was shredded, along
with my shorts, my shirt and a good deal of my hip and
forearm. A
week or so later, before all of the bandages were off, I bump
into my old childhood friend Ronny Pocan. I hadn't seen
Ronny in years. He was the kid who actually
taught me to ride a bike. My first real bike wreck was
with Ronny.
Ronny took one look at the
scab on my arm and knee and said, "I see you got a mountain
bike."
"How did you know that?" I
demanded.
Ronny didn't say a
word. Instead he just pulled aside his shirt to show me
his freshly abraded ribs
and left arm. "Me too," he said.
I was sure
French would be like that.
Luckily, there were scads of
French-for-travelers CDs at the book store. But that
meant I had to choose. Sure, I know they're all the
same. But this was about the safety of my family.
I had to make the right choice. I stood there,
a man of once mighty
Scottish and Viking ancestry, in a book store, trying to
protect my family by choosing the right French-for-travelers
CD. One million years of human evolution had distilled
manhood down to its raw essence--pretending not to feel pain
after bicycle wrecks, and protecting my loved ones by reading
labels on French-for-travelers CDs.
It isn't as easy as it
sounds. Just a year ago we were making the same sort of
selection for son, Horace, Jr. He was headed for
Slovakia as an exchange student and needed to learn the
language. As you might imagine, there isn't much of a
selection of Slovak-for-travelers tapes, so we pretty
much bought the only one available. When we plugged in
the tape, a gentleman with a thick British accent was saying
something like, "Pip pip old chap. This is Nigel
Rathbottom. Welcoming you to colloquial Slovak."
[To get the full effect, the reader is advised to reread this
quote using a very thick British accent, which everyone seems
convinced they can do.]
We had a great laugh,
until my son reminded us, that for all we knew this
was how Slovaks really talked. Fortunately only the
narration was in Cockney (or whatever that accent was).
The actual lessons featured Slovak speakers.
I chose a French CD
with a lot of writing on the label and photos of two
attractive happy-looking people apparently talking in
French.
They say, "Never judge a
book by its cover." But (and I looked this up on the
internet) no one ever says, "Never judge a
French-for-travelers CD by its cover." So it must be
ok.
Help! They Stole my
watch!
It turns out that
Nigel Rathbottom also does French
CDs—just kidding. Whoever it was
sounded very French (or perhaps Slovak). The first part
of the CD was devoted to "most needed phrases." This
seemed like a good idea, although I was a bit suspicious when
one of the most needed phrase turned out to be,
"Au secours! On a volé ma
montre!" Which apparently means,
"Help! They stole my watch!" No kidding. Who
ever did this CD thought I'd probably need to be able to say
that.
Another "most needed
phrase," according to the CD was, "Je veux un avocat qui
parle Anglais?" Which makes sense. If you are
going to hire a lawyer in France, getting one who speaks
English is a good idea. Although, it was hard to
imagine what sort of
vacation traveler would find this to be a most needed
phrase. But then, I'd never been to France. Maybe
it was a big thing over there. Besides, the people who
edited the CD knew more about traveling in France than I
did. Who was I to argue? So, I learned this next
phrase too. "Je ne peux pas bouger la jambe."
Which the CD assured me means, "I can't move my leg."
I'm really not kidding here.
I was still trying to get a
mental picture of the editors of this CD. Did they
really think that these were the most needed phrases for a
family vacation? Or this one, "Ce sont des pillules
ou des suppositories?" "Are these pills or
suppositories?"
I sort of figured if you
really need any of these phrases your vacation is already
pretty much beyond hope. So, what possible good could it
do to chat pleasantly about your situation in
well-formed, grammatically correct French
sentences? Although the one about the
suppositories might come in handy.
Soon, I was spending more
time worrying about the life of those poor editors
than studying French. Did they get these phrases
from their own experience? Did they also know these
phrases in, say, German? And, could I get a guarantee
that the editors would not be staying in the same hotel we had
booked?
And what about the thousands
of phrases that were left out? Like, "Help! They
kidnapped the Swiss Ambassador!"
Sure,
you might not need that one most of the time, but let's say
you attend a wine tasting party at the Louvre and
somebody runs off with the Swiss Ambassador. How will it
look if you just stand there making small talk about
whether or not you can move your leg, while everyone else is
yelling, "Au secours! On a volé Le
Ambassadeur du Suisse!" You should at least be able
to say something about the kidnapping. The French
consider such minor courtesies quite important.
Although, I guess, you could just pretend to be looking for
your wristwatch.
This detour of thought had
to end. I had spent good money on that CD, and most
needed phrases or not (including how to ask for more pepper,
Je voudrais du poivre s'il vous plait) it was time to
make the best of things.
We already had our
airline tickets, and room reservations in what had been
promised to be a nice hotel "avec douche," which I
hoped meant, "with a shower." But we didn't have any
French money yet.
Money
Matters
In junior high, I tried to
learn the names of French currency but it didn't take. I
couldn't remember any of them. I did remember,
however that the French are always saying,
Çane fait
rein (which I knew means either, "Don't worry about
it," or "There is no more rice.").
Happily, France now uses the
European Common Market dollar called the
Euro. Euros even have nearly the same change
as our money, nickels, dimes twenty cent pieces and pennies,
although they probably call them something
else. When I checked, the price of one Euro
was about $1.30. That seemed high so I checked again a
few weeks later. It had gone up to
$1.50.
I knew
the price would go down. I also knew this wouldn't
happen until we had purchased all of the Euros we would ever
need. And then the
price would never go back up again as long as we held any of
them. So, I did the only intelligent thing. I
pretended to buy some Euros. "Je voudrais du Euro s'il vous
plait," I said. Which is French for, "May I buy
some Euros?" I said this to nobody in particular,
because I was only pretending.
Then, in a squeaky falsetto,
I answered myself, "Je ne comprends pas." This
is basic French for, "Huh?"
Not getting anywhere with
virtual currency trading, the only alternative was to hold out
until the last possible second, hoping for some lucky
break�like the economic collapse of Europe�to drive the price
of Euros down.
Until then, I decided to
study more French.
Lessons Deux
French
English
Banker: Bonjour monsieur.
"Hi."
Tourist: Je
voudrais du Euro s'il
vous
"How much for some Euros?"
plait. C'est combien?
Banker: Où est
la garantie?
"More than YOU can
afford."
Tourist: La
Garantie?
"You
want my house?"
Banker: Vous vouloir Euro, n'est
pas?
"Yes."
Tourist: Je
ne peux pas bouger le visage. "I can't move my face."
Planning our trip was loads
of fun. We wanted to visit Slovakia first,
then rail to Paris before pushing on to London (we
also wanted to use other travel-related words like "explore"
and "navigate," but we were on a budget). Checking the
map, we learned that Paris and London both have a river
running through them, roughly in the shape of the letter
"n." Both
cities also have a perimeter highway around them, and in each
city the preferred mode of travel is by subway. We soon
realized the only actual difference between Paris and London
is that London has a really big Ferris
wheel where the Eiffel Tower would be if you were in
Paris. Other than that, the cities are identical.
In fact, if you rush up behind a group of Parisians and listen
in on their conversation before they know you are there, you
will often catch them chattering away in Cockney (or perhaps
it's Slovak) about fish 'n chips and ale.
We used the travel agent
method to planning our trip. This is the best way to
organize plans for travel to Europe. Your agent
will know all of the secret instructions
about getting a hotel with showers. Your agent
also has a much better chance of getting your money back if
something really goes wrong, like if Paris happens to be
closed for repairs when you get there [it happened to us at
Disneyland once] or if a really big corporate party (like IBM)
has booked all of Europe and you can't get tickets to do
anything [this happened on our honeymoon trip to
Kauai].
Whenever you face these or
other major problems on your trip, your travel agent can
really help. He or she is certain to know the MOST
NEEDED FRENCH PHRASE OF ALL, which is:
Vous ne puis-pas
exchangre ceci.
Which means, "All sales are
final."
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All "persons" "places" "events" "plants" depicted
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