I'm writing this travelogue, sitting on my bed, trying to conjure up memories from three weeks ago. So much has happened since then. I'm even living in a different city.
Still, I'll return to the story of my first week in France. The week in the city of Herblay.
The day after I discovered that quality grapes actually taste like wine (I believe they were Muscat grapes), I took a trip back to the grocery store. This time I would walk there.
There are so many things you need when you're moving into a place. This place in particular needed a little extra love. Our apartment was at the same level as the garage, but for all intents and purposes it was a basement.
It had windows up toward the top of the wall to let in a little air, but it was so dark you had to have the lights turned on at all times in the kitchen and in the bedrooms.
The smell of something damp and dank permeated the air. It was something faintly reminiscent of the older dorm rooms at my alma mater (the dorm buildings that had the asbestos warnings written at the front entrance). I registered another stench, too. Maybe a mold of some sort.
It was dusty. At one point, I opened a cabinet in the kitchen just above the burners, then immediately closed it. Some very large spiders were chilling in there (none of that daddy longlegs stuff, I'm talking the real deal here). I quickly decided it was their cabinet, and that it was rude of me to open the door without knocking.
My room was fine, apart from the smell, the dust, some spider webs, and different spiders that were in this case small enough to share a living quarters with. I realize now that sentence sounds sarcastic. It was actually a sincere attempt to say it wasn't that bad.
The toilet is another story. A thick, brown, (and what I would soon find was close to impenetrable) coating covered the bottom of the bowl. But I have lived in my fair share of less-than-ideal places, so I wasn't alarmed.
I thought it was probably just mineral deposits from hard water and general lack of use. Then I scrubbed it once. Then twice. Then a third time. I only got real results when I poured Coca-Cola in the bowl and let it sit overnight. (Simultaneously a great and terrible advertisement for Coke).
The whole time, I thought it was just an old, mistreated toilet. I later found out that the other assistant in my program — who got to the apartment a few days before me — said flies had been buzzing in the toilet when she arrived.
So... not mineral deposits.
Anyways, the house needed some work. And I needed to go back to the store for more produce and more cleaning supplies. Of course, a simple trip to the store turned into a trek.
I lived at the end of a culdesac. Woods that looked straight out of Grimms' fairy tales were nearby. That being said, the closest grocery store was a 20-minute walk, at least.
I didn't know how to get there, but I didn't have phone data that would allow me to navigate once I left my apartment. No SIM card yet. Instead, I used the Wi-Fi at my apartment to get walking directions, then took a screenshot of them on my phone.
I was off. Then I quickly learned that street names in France are little blue signs that are oftentimes hard to find, and that most streets look more like curves and circles than lines and angles.
I was lost. I'd have to ask for directions. Time to practice my French.
I saw a nice, middle-aged lady outside a home. I asked her. She told me the grocery store was far. I said I didn't have a car, so I was walking anyway. She told me she would ask her mom for directions because she didn't know the area.
Her mom came out, still sprightly. She gave her daughter instructions, then the daughter told me. This was all in French, so I took a little bit of pride in being able to understand her. I followed the random dirt path she showed me. Then I got out to a street. I took some turns, got a little lost again, but eventually stumbled upon another random dirt path. Believe it or not, a tiny little marker toward the bottom of the ground showed it was a real street — or trail, at least. It was actually listed on my Google Maps directions.
It was the path of justice.
Really, that was the name. Chemin de la Justice.
Chemin de la Justice, an actual path listed on Google Maps
From there...
I would eventually find the supermarket.
I would eventually find the way back. After getting lost in the woods.
I would eventually buy a SIM card for my phone. A few days later.
I would eventually realize that maybe, even though I had found stable housing, maybe I didn't come to France to live by the woods, in a basement, a full-on hike from a grocery store, nowhere near a train station. Maybe, I should try to live somewhere else.
But I hadn't realized it yet. I thought I could still make it work. If you walked 6 minutes to the bus stop, then rode the bus to the train station, then took one train, then transferred to another, you could get to Paris in about one hour and 15 minutes.
That could work, right?
*** As I was writing, I got the alert from France's public radio station. France beat Germany 2-1 in the UEFA Nations League.
Great writing.
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