An American in Provence

Went to work yesterday and spent the day annoying my coworkers with my constant hacking. It was one of those days where if you are at work you feel sick enough to just want to be home and in bed, and if you are at home and in bed you feel well to feel guilty about not being at work.
I got home and took a hot shower, as hot as I could stand it. I wanted to vaporize my lungs. Not vaporize like Star Trek, just vapor-ize. Not sure it helped or not. When the frenchman got home, he said "you must have a fever, take your temperature." I told him I had just taken a hot shower, but he made me take my temperature anyway. It was 38.8. That's not a fever! I informed him. Oh yeah? The average body temperature in Celcius is 37. Oh. Whoops. I took my temperature on Monday, I can't remember what it read, either 36 or 38, so I might have had a fever since Monday. Which probably would have been useful information for the doctor to know. Guess I skipped the chapter on Temperatures in the book "Welcome to the Metric System: living and loving it" by Knott Reelly.
Spent the rest of the evening sweating it out under heavy clothes and a blanket, and spent all night tossing, turning, and drooling on my pillow due to the inability to breathe through my nose. I never used to be a drooler before moving to France. I have a system- flip pillow, rotate pillow, that I do in my half-sleep during the entire night. This ensures that when one area becomes too warm for my cheek and too wet, I have a nice cool dry area to begin again on. When the entire pillow is used up, well, then I just migrate over onto the Frenchman's.
Woke up this morning when my alarm went off at 6 am. Took my temperature, it was again 38.7 (over 101 F). Decided, nah. I'm not going to work.
This afternoon I have to go over to another doctor's to get another sick note to take into work tomorrow- my last day!!! Also will explain this fever thing. Perhaps it is the flu? Gosh I hope not. I had better be alright by next Monday.

I have been harboring a cough all week, ever since my cold went away. I thought it was just due to the dry weather, but woke up this morning achy all over. Even my eyeballs hurt. I crawled out of bed, checked webmd for bronchitis signs- commonly follows a cold. Check. Dry cough, painful, some muccus. Check. Aching body parts. Yeppers. Fever. mm, fever? (goes to take fever- realize I have no real reference for what "fever" is in Celsius) No, I guess not.
Webmd helped me five+ years ago to self-diagnose my appendicitis. I was staying home from work. Only four days left and my replacement has started anyway. Spent the morning trying to sleep and not hack up a lung, then slowly plodded to my doctor's for his open hours starting at 2:30. Waited a good hour to be seen. There were all of two people in front of me- that drives me nuts about French doctors. They don't have assistants to do the basics, like take the temperature, blood pressure, etc. so the doctor does all of it, and you end up waiting 30+ minutes per patient in front of you. Finally got seen, and I guess I don't have broncitis, just an infection that descended down into my throat/lungs after the cold. Got a packetful of prescriptions and headed out.
On a good note, I have lost some weight, which was a surprise to me after the foodfests of Christmas/trip to Rome/New Years.

Cost for visit- 22€, most of which I guess will be reimboursed.
Cost for medicines €4.76.
Day spent in bed- priceless.

And the rest of the time I merely dislike them.

No, that isn't totally true. I think in general there are very nice, open, caring French people. Heck, I wouldn't be living here if I didn't think so.
It is just hard to remember sometimes that when someone is rude to you that they are doing so because
A) they are a rude person
and/or
B) they are having a hard day.
It is much easier to chalk it up to "They are just being French and French people are (rude, ungracious, haughty, fill in adjective here)."
If the same thing happened to me in the US, I wouldn't blame it on them being American. I would blame it on them being a jerk.

But anyway, today I was doing some shopping the center of the city. A woman stopped me, obviously doing some sort of poll or something. I was about to say sorry and walk away, when she said "You get a free sample of a new perfume".
My ears perked up, so I said okay.
Then she said "Oh, you aren't French are you?"
(thinking that perhaps they needed French nationality people for some reason)
I said no.
She said "Oh, well we need people who live here"
"Well, I do live here in Marseille".
"No, that's okay. You wouldn't understand."
"Excuse me but I understand just fine."
"No really, they call you up and ask you questions and there are a lot of complicated words."

I was so pissed off I just walked away. Felt like yelling in English "F*** you b****!" Yes, I know, terrible. Excuse my English.

I was so mad about it, that I decided to return and give her a piece of my mind. I was going to say that she had insulted me, that I wanted her name, her supervisor's name and telephone number. I walked back to where she had been and didn't see her. Two other woman stopped me and asked me if I would like to answer a few questions. I could tell that they were part of the same group, so I told them no, that I had already been stopped, that the woman had so insulted me that I wanted nothing to do with them. I explained what she had said, that it has been two and a half years that I have lived and worked here in France, and that I found her behavior incredibly rude.
And walked away. It wasn't quite the revenge I was hoping for, but I bet they tell their coworker what I had said and I hope she feels bad.

I mean really, what sort of big complicated questions could they have asked? What is your NAME? Do you like this PERFUME?
It just really pissed me off that she had judged my level of French in a few one-worded responses.

One thing I will have to say about Americans, is that I don't think that strangers are so dismissive if someone has a foreign accent. But this has happened to me so many times in France. People will come up, ask for directions or what time it is, I will start to answer, then they will just say something like "Oh never mind" and walk off. It is so frustrating.
I hate to be that Crazy American Woman who just starts screaming obsenities in English, but it might just happen someday. I don't care if they can understand me and I don't care if they can't understand me.

Last Saturday I went to get my haircut. This has always been an interesting experience for me.

Exhausted.
This has been a very slow week. On Sunday I started to come down with a cold- always starts with a sore throat for me. By Monday, it was a full-blown cold. In my office of three, two of us were sick. One guy, stuck right in the middle of us, was not yet sick. He still is not sick after a week of sharing an office and shaking hands with us. A miracle.

On Tuesday we had "K par K" come so that we could sign the contract to get the window in our bedroom and window/door to the balcony on the street side replaced. We get quite a lot of street noise, and last Saturday we got an estimate for the top of the top double paned, super anti-noise windows- 4000€. Yikes. At least it includes transportation and installation. It is supposed to be 42 dB and is supposedly what is used in airport zones. Our current windows were installed in 1993, and are 27 dB. They help a lot, but not enough. I hope these new ones do the job. We had an estimate from another company for 35 dB I think it was, for 2500€ including installation. We figured that we might as well pay for the best. Then we at least know that we did all that we could.

Anyway, back to Tuesday. The technician was supposed to come at 7:30. When I got home from work I noticed that there was water all over the kitchen floor. Our water heater leaks, and we put a bucket underneath to catch the drops. Well, the bucket overflowed. I was moving the small table with the microwave and other electrical appliances out of the way, when all of the sudden the electricity went out. I checked in the corridor, and there were lights, so it was just our apartment. I got a flashlight and looked behind the small table- yep, the power strip had fallen into the bucket of water. Duh electrical engineer.

Yes, I know, it is super dangerous. I don't need a lecture.

I was standing there in the dark rather stupidly when the technician shows up, about 30 minutes early, and Alain still hadn't come home. Hello Mr. Stranger. Please come into my apartment when I am home alone in the dark. He was nice and helpful, and we managed to move everything out of the way. I got the ladder and we fiddled with the electrical box. Nothing. Alain came home and managed to fix the situation while the K par K guy sat out in the hallway and started filling out the paperwork. This must have been one of his more interesting visits.

Anyway, we got the lights on, he came in, we signed the contract. One thing that irks me is that people tend to ignore the foreign half of the couple, especially if that foreign half is a woman. It went from being Mr. and Mrs. P's project to just Mr. P everything. His name on the papers. His signature. His contact information. What am I, chopped foreigner? Anyway, soon another technician will come to take the exact measurements, then the windows will be made, which will take up to eight weeks, then they will be installed, which should only take a day. Perhaps finally I can stop sleeping with earplugs. I thought about asking how much the double-paned glass would be for the entire wall but didn't. Oh, one unexpected bonus is that the government will reimburse 1300€ of the 4000€ price. Not because of the noise but for thermal insulation.

And now, finally, it is the weekend.

The French don't seem to be quite as into making New Year's Resolutions as Americans are. They figure "Why make a resolution I am only going to break in two weeks?"
At any rate, here are my two resolutions for this year (keeping it simple).
1) Do well at my new job, starting in February.
2) Finish this apartment.
That's all folks.

We woke up at 5:30, got dressed, and took our breakfast with us (though this time sans coffee as our host didn’t want to brew coffee at 5:30 am). We walked back to the train station, and tried to buy tickets from the automated machine. We selected one trip to the airport (5.50 €), tried to pay with our credit card, then put a 20 € bill in. It spit out the ticket, but no change. I thought that perhaps we could still use the money in the machine, so I pressed the button for another ticket. Nothing happened, so we put another 20€ bill in, and got our ticket.
Turns out that the machine doesn’t give change for more than 9€, it gives you a receipt that you then have to cash in at a ticket office. We took the train to the airport, figuring the ticket office would be open there. We arrived a little after 7 am, and the ticket office was supposed to open at 7:10. We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, at about 7:25, we decided to go check in, and then come back. We went and checked in (why more people don’t use the automated ticket counters and prefer to stand in line I don’t know). Then we went back to the train station, to find the ticket office still closed. I think this beats even France. In France they would be there, just glare at you as they help you for actually wanting service and disturbing their early morning coffee. Oh well. We will try to call or email and get our money back, and if not, just chalk it up to traveling. Anyone going to Rome and need a train ticket from Fiumicino airport?

This time Alain managed to get through security, deodorant intact. This is why I think airport security is such a joke. The guy was much more interested in chatting up his female coworker than actually looking at the screen. Boarded the plane for Nice, and again got stuck in front of a kid. Why does this keep happening to me? We arrived in Nice at around 10:20, and the shuttle bus took just long enough so that we missed the earlier train to Marseille. So we sat outside at a café right next to the airport, had croissants, coffee, and then later sandwiches and a brownie before catching our 1:30 train to Marseille. Much fewer people this time.

Alain slept most of the way while I read my new book that I had bought in Italy. We arrived in Marseille at 4, took the subway back to our apartment, and were very glad to be home. To celebrate New Year’s, we made some special pasta that we had bought in Italy (pretty much the same as any store-bought dried pasta I think) and we watched Gladiator because we wanted to see the Roman Forum sites. I fell asleep after about the first five minutes, then stumbled off to bed about halfway through the film. Alain slept off and on, woke up a bit after midnight, said “Happy New Year” and came to bed. Supposedly I mumbled “Happy New Year” in response, but I have no direct knowledge of this fact. We lead wild and exciting lives. Happy New Year!

(No pictures from this day because for some reason they don't want to transfer from the camera to the computer)

We had quite a late start on Sunday, our last day. We planned to spend the entire day at the Vatican Museum, which I read in the guidebook was free on the last day of the month. What I didn’t take into account was that every other tourist in Rome had the same guidebook. We got to the Vatican about 10 minutes before noon, at which time the pope appears for his weekly blessing of the masses. We thought we would be clever and go to the museum line while the hordes were piling into St. Peter’s square. As we made our way up the street to the Vatican Museum entrance, it was definetely like swimming against the stream.
We stopped to eat (again from another street vendor- not good). I read a little further in my book and came across the “last entrance is at 12:20 pm on Sundays” awww dangit. There was no we would make it through the line in 15 minutes. Sigh. I guess we will have to save that for our next trip to Rome, which will probably be in 15-20 years. We decided to go up to the Janiculum area, a large park/residential area.
We spent a quiet afternoon wandering around the park and calmer side streets. We stopped and had a cappucino in a small bar. When Alain went to pay, the woman said “Four Euros” he assumed, after our previous experiences, that she meant four euros each, but no, it was four euros total. Just goes to show you what the difference in location can do to food and drink prices. We then went to a small museum with many old pictures of Rome, as well as some beautiful watercolors of Rome from the late 1800’s.
Finally, we went to another pizzeria, very small and crowded with one poor waiter and way too many tables of hungry customers. The pizza was good, limoncello is totally not what I expected (I was thinking it was a lemon fizzy drink, not a strong alcohol apperitif), and the cheese platter that I had as an appetizer was very good as well. No wine for us as we had an early wake-up call.

Alain and I spent the morning packing, charging batteries, withdrawing money, etc. At around 1:30 we left to walk to the metro, then took the metro to the train station. We arrived at the main Marseille train station at around 2 pm, our train was scheduled to leave at 2:25. Plenty of time! No problem! Well, it turns out that there was a problem in that the 2:25 train did not exist. Nope. Not displayed on the board with a sign saying “Canceled Suckers” or “Late because of Strikes AGAIN”. Nothing. It turns out that we weren’t the only ones who had bought tickets for the Phantom Train. Lots of other travelers were milling around aimlessly, trying to flag down SNCF information guys (who, as a rule, don’t know anything and just direct you to go stand in the 1 km line for actual information). I started to panic and just wanted to hightail it home, hop in our car, and drive to Nice. (which would then incur gas, toll, and parking fees but at this point I didn’t care I just wanted to get to Rome dagnabbit). To our somewhat luck, the train that was supposed to leave at 1 pm was an hour late. We were informed that we could change our tickets for this train. Yeah right. And by the time we get through the line and get our tickets changed, it will be 4 pm. We just hopped on and hoped for the best. So two trainloads of people were squeezed onto one train of space. I managed to find a seat after a bit, but Alain was left standing for a good hour. Just want to get to Rome… Just want to get to Rome….

We arrived in Nice at about our scheduled time. We took the shuttle to the airport and checked in. Alain got his oh so dangerous deodorant taken away (I won’t even go into how silly airport security rules are). We boarded the plane, and I got Seat Kickin’ Kid behind me. It is only an hour flight… It is only an hour flight…Arrived in Rome around 8:30 pm and had to figure out how to get into the city. Thank goodness for guidebooks because I was able to figure out which train to take. We eventually found the train station, managed to figure out how to buy tickets, then when I went to validate my ticket, it got stuck in the machine. No train, wait for me!! Just as we got our tickets validated, the train left. Drat. Half hour wait for the next one.

I had told our B&B hosts that we would arrive around 9 pm. That clearly wasn’t happening. We finally boarded the train at 9:30, had a half hour ride to our train station of Trastevere. At this point we were starving, but trekked off to our host’s, about 15 minutes away. We managed to find the apartment building with no problem, but had an unpleasant surprise when we could not find the name of the person that I had been communicating with on the intercom box. Which one do we press? I tried calling out Hello? but I guess no one heard. I tried to call the number that he had given me, but it was unable to go through. I was ready to just start pushing buttons when my cell phone rang. It was our host. He had my cellphone number (I didn’t remember having given it to him, but I guess I must have luckily). He was wondering where we were, since we were about an hour and a half late. Uh, we are standing outside your apartment building on the street. He buzzed us in. His apartment was on the fourth floor, and he apparently rented out three bedrooms. Luckily there were two bathrooms. He gave us the keys, and then left to go eat. We were still very hungry, and walked down to the main street, but the area was a residential one with no nearby restaurants that we could see. Finally, tiredness won out over hunger, and we went back to the B&B and went to sleep after a long half day of traveling.