I'm in France and it's all finally happening. This is the first time that I've just... been here. I don't know how to explain it, but it feels so different. Like I'm me, and I'm not going to let the French bully me. And the awareness that this is just another place- somehow it seems less magical, but I think that's just because by now I've been here so much. And it's weird coming into Paris from the countryside, in the rain. It's a new perspective and I like it. 

I think the new magical place will be Spain. 

I just feel very in the moment right now, more so maybe than ever before because I have no idea what to expect. I'm very serene to let every moment let itself unveil itself individually and take life as it comes. Now begins the adventure. La vie commence. 

jet-lagged musings.

I'm realizing that I have all of Europe at my feet for the next five months, and it's fantastic. I have definitely not lost any of my obsession with travel- it's what makes me feel alive. I can feel myself changing already! 

And I feel very awake. I think I pulled together about four hours of sleep on the plane. I'm glad I went through Ireland because
a) I got 2 stamps on my passport! and
b) I have this extra time to reflect.

I feel like I've gone back three years and have my whole life ahead of me. 

Which I do. 

And I love it.

in which the bonnes are re-united.

Bonne and I had a joyful reunion on the corner of a neighborhood street, outside the apartment we would be occupying for the next three days. Bonne's ex-host family had put us up in their maternal grandmother's upscale digs; Nana was away for the summer. 

Squealing with delight at our good fortune, we pulled our luggage inside, squealed some more, explored the rooms, then headed for the garden courtyard so we could dish about our summers and dream about the days ahead. Any tiredness I had felt was replaced by sheer excitement, and I announced that I was game for a jaunt around the neighborhood.

 The jaunt turned into coffee and cigarettes in the heart of St. Germain des Pres, and then a steak dinner washed down with a bottle of wine. We politely declined the propositions of the restaurant's exuberant Greek waitstaff, and headed out to find more titillating nightlife. 

We inadvertently crashed a "safari party" at a local bar, and ended up talking to the only two men who were not clad from head to toe in khaki; once the bar closed, we accompanied them to a more underground venue. 

It was all very well and good until the guy I had been talking to all night offered to escort Bonne to the bathroom. I may have been drunk and jet-lagged, but I wasn't stupid, and I followed after just in time to see them disappear into the stall. 

"WELL!" I thought. "What a fine way to kick off our year together! Not to mention end a long, exhausting, day of traveling!" And with belligerence rising and tears pricking at my eyes, I stomped up the stairs to hail a cab. 

The bouncer looked up in surprise as I slammed out the door and stalked by him. He followed me to the curb as I lifted my hand to the empty street. 

"What about your friend?" He asked. 

"She's NOT my friend!" I barked. I looked in the other direction, but there were no cabs to be found. I sighed and turned my head back to where he was regarding me with dark, sympathetic eyes. 

"You're angry," he said. "And you don't want to do anything you will regret. I'll tell you what you can do." 

He reached in his pocket. 

"Here are the keys to my car," he said. "It's parked right over across the street. I'm going to let you sit in the car, and you can cry, and yell, and do whatever you want, and when you're ready you can go talk to your friend. How does that sound?" 

I looked at him in disbelief. It sounded absurd, was how it sounded. And that's how I ended up sitting in a bouncer's car by myself at 3 in the morning on my first night back in Europe, looking out at the Seine, thinking existential thoughts about life and friendship. After a half hour or so, I took a long, hiccuping sigh and breathed calmly. I felt ready to go back in. 

The bouncer nodded proudly and gave me a clap on the back before I started back down the stairs. I marched straight to the bathroom, where there was an increasingly long and disgruntled line waiting for the occupied stall. I excused myself firmly and shuffled past until I reached the wooden doorway, upon which I gave a curt rap. 

"BONNE?" I said. 

There was a lot of scuffle inside and muted voices. Then Bonne cried out apologetically, "I'm coming, Bonne!" 

I rolled my eyes, partly for the benefit of the people watching. 

"I know," I said, "and I'm leaving!"

There was more scuffling and I heard Bonne give an insistent, "let me OUT!"

She appeared, disheveled, at the doorway and I turned on my heels and began pushing my way through the crowd again. I heard her scrambling to catch up with me and it only made me walk faster; we proceeded like that through the bar, and it wasn't until halfway up the stairs that she caught up and the yelling could begin. 

"I'm so, so sorry Bonne!" she started, "but in my defense..."

"I don't want to hear it!" I screamed over my shoulder. "Don't even talk to me!"

We walked in silence past the bouncer; he looked relieved. But we hadn't made it three blocks in the cab before Bonne started whimpering from the back seat. 

"I know you're upset," she said, "and I can see why, but you have no IDEA how traumatizing that was for me!"

"WHICH PART?!" I countered, "The part where you were HOOKING UP with the cute Parisian for an hour?" 

"He wouldn't let me OUT!" She yelled. "I didn't WANT to hook up with him! Well, I did a little bit. But then I tried to leave and he wouldn't let me!" 

"Oh, BOO-HOO!" I flung back. "How DIFFICULT it must be to have such strong feminine wiles!"

It went on like that across the rest of Paris, with the cab driver making a timid interjection every so often to clarify directions. We arrived at the grandmother's apartment, had a good bout of shouting at the kitchen table, and by the time dawn's light was beginning to seep in, were both mollified and tearfully swearing our deep appreciation for each other. 

Bonne had succeeded in convincing me that it was in fact a terrifying experience, and I had confessed to her my myriad insecurities in the realm of love. We decided that the whole thing had been designed by the Universe to bring us closer together, and then we retired to our rooms, Bonne to green and I to blue. With the early morning traffic starting up outside, I sunk my head onto the pillow and gratefully accepted sleep.  

rock en seine.

The next day we awoke with the "bathroom incident" far behind us. We ventured out to procure a delicious breakfast at a nearby patisserie. Then we hopped aboard a train to the outskirts of the city, where we would spend the rest of the day at "Rock En Seine."


We lay basking in the sun under the open sky listening to India Arie and Kasabian and drinking one Heineken after another.

By the time the sun had set and the Raconteurs were taking the stage, we were good and jolly and had lots of new friends.

We left the concert regretfully, but perked up when we realized we were in the neighborhood of Bonne's ex-host family.






Their last name was Kramkimel, and we decided that the appropriate way for me to stop in and say hello, after not having seen them for five years, was to burst through the door, hold up both hands in the "rock on" sign, stagger slightly behind my sunglasses, then rasp, "LES KRAMKIMELS!!!! YEAHHHH!"

I would then proceed to play air guitar to the tune of their first names; "JEROME! OLI-VI-AHHH! YEAHHHH!!"

In our Heineken saturated state we had endless fits of laughter over envisioning our entrance, but managed to pull ourselves together by the time we reached their doorstep.

They were ecstatic to see us and immediately set out a buffet of cheese and crackers and crudites, which we devoured with gusto. After we had sat for a while catching up, and our stomachs had figured out what to do with the rare bout of solid food, we headed out again in search of more beverages, this time with Arnaud, the eldest Kramkimel child, in tow.

Arnaud had been 12 or 13 while we were studying abroad, and gangly and arrogant. Now he was still arrogant, but 17 and very cute. Bonne had a shameless crush on him.

I was just glad we had brought him along when it came time to leave the metro, and it was midnight and a gate had come down. Bonne and I started hyperventilating at imagining having to sleep in the photo booths, while Arnaud calmly pressed a button to his left side so that the gate began to rise again.

"Oh," Bonne and I said.

We found a bar with just the right energy. As most of the patrons trickled out in the early morning hours, a core group of us stayed on dancing, energy building to the point of shouting and banging on tables and drumming on plates.

We all tottered out together into the dawn and bade farewell, and Bonne, Arnaud and I, still buzzing with music, joined the commuters on the metro and dozed until we reached the grandmother's apartment.

in which bonne, arnaud and i enjoy paris.

Nothing particularly of note happened that day, except for when I fell up the stairs at a movie theatre, and later face first onto the floor of a bar.

"Maybe your falling is like the expiation for us having a really good time," Bonne mused.

I huffed as I reached for the bottle of wine. "It doesn't seem very fair. Where's your part of the expiation?"

Whatever it was, we didn't find out that night, but we still had a jolly good time gallavanting around St. Germain. At one point we stood outside a hotel with a crowd of people waiting for Madonna, but she never showed.

Before we knew it it was 5:30 AM again, and the light was rising as we crawled into our beds for a last brief sleep in the grandmother's apartment. We were off to Brussels the next day.

We justified the fact that we had arrived late to a sold out coach section by finding the many things to appreciate in luxurious first class. There was a sizeable lunch served, and unlimited free drinks.


"I wonder how those peasants on the rest of the train are faring!" I crowed, tucking my napkin into my shirt.

We were partaking of our free drinks to the greatest extent possible when, of all people, a bartender from the Rock en Seine concert walked through our car en route to the bathroom. We were ecstatic. She was bemused.

Our cab driver to our hotel in Brussels was a boisterous man from Marrakesh. 

"You HAVE to go!" He yelled into the rearview mirror, one hand barely grazing the wheel as we careened from one side of the street to the other. 

"It's LOUD, it's SMELLY, there are people EVERYWHERE!" He said with glee. "It's horrible to live there! But you HAVE to see it, you'll never find anywhere else like Marrakesh!" 

Bonne and I promised him that we would- indeed, I'd been envisioning a trip to Morocco ever since reading similar advice in my trusty Rick Steve's guide to Europe. Rick advised to hang your head out the train and howl at the passing desert, and it was an image I felt all too inspired by. 

But for now, we were in Brussels, and determined to make the most of it. After dropping off our bags in a cozy garrett of a hotel room, we headed for the main square for window shopping and dinner. We planned to ask the locals for advice on enticing nightlife, but after beers # 30, 31, 32 and 33 of the trip, the only thing that sounded enticing was bed. 

Four flights of stairs later, Bonne went face first onto the comforter and was out like a log. I planned to follow suit, and was just starting to fall into a delicious snooze when I heard church-bells ringing. 

"How nice," I mused, dozily. "What a perfect lullaby right before sleep."

But after ten minutes, I realized, the bells were not about to stop. Nor did they lull; in fact, as time went on, more and more instruments added into the medley until it sounded as if a symphonic orchestra were playing outside our window in the main square. 

"What the hell?!" I muttered, sitting up and rubbing my eyes blearily. Bonne offered a helpful snore. 

"What IS that?!" I growled, stomping to the window and looking out. From somewhere amidst the rooftops came the awful racket; now, it sounded as if people were actually applauding it. 

"At least that means it's over," I assured myself, crawling back to the bed and throwing the blanket over my head. 

After another few minutes, the noise subsided. I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Sleep, delicious sleep! I pulled the blanket back down, turned on my side, and drifted slowly back into dreamland. 

The dream had hardly gotten rolling before a cuckoo clock came floating into its midst. 

"Oh, no," my dream self began to say before the bells started again, and I was jolted awake into a chiming, clanging cacophony. 

"This can't be HAPPENING!" I groaned, not knowing whether to be more disturbed by the fact that this might continue to go on all night, or the fact that Bonne hadn't yet moved a muscle. I was supremely jealous, and becoming increasingly aware of how fast my heart was beating, and how little sleep I'd gotten over the past 48 hours, and how much beer I'd consumed, and how little water.... 

and so mainly what I remember from Brussels is having a three hour long panic attack while horns blared and bells chimed, and Bonne snored happily beside me. When I relayed my story the next day at breakfast, she furrowed her brow. 

"Are you sure you weren't imagining things?" She said. And then she saw my expression and quickly changed the subject. We were off to Amsterdam that afternoon. 

Everything feels so different, and in such a good way. Except for my freak-out last night. I don't know what's going on with that, it's like I'm having so much fun and am so happy but at the same time there's this dark, morbid feeling underneath. But maybe that's just life. Right now it all has the feeling of being a movie, and I guess I don't regret being at camp this summer because it was truly the end of an era and preparation for who I am now. I don't know how to explain, I don't even know what I'm really feeling, it's one of those things where you need to wait until after to let it all sink in.

it begins.

amsterdam.

A friend of a friend of Bonne's ex-boyfriend had passed on advice about where to go for "the best sandwiches in Amsterdam," and we wasted no time in locating the address. Our subsequent sighs and squeals of ecstasy as we wolfed down the salami cheese and rye, along with hearty pitchers of beer, were due largely to our belief in how good these sandwiches were; for all we knew, any corner shop or even gas station had a better offer. 

But we never took the time to find out; so great an impression was made that day by those sandwiches, those hot layers of salami amidst melting cheese and dark, crisp bread, the mid-day sun beaming down at us, the Heineken dancing merrily on our tongue, all of Amsterdam at our disposal... that on each preceding afternoon of our stay, varying levels of blood sugar and states of inebriation would find us pedaling our rented bikes wildly across the city,  desperate to reach the shop before it closed. We always made it in time, and the sandwiches were always hot and delicious, but they never quite managed to re-create the feelings of the first day; that hazy, heavy, hauntingly blissful feast.