Arrival Time

Whew. It's been a long couple days, but here I am in Aix-en-Provence after a couple unexpectedly exhausting travel days and some really busy days of initial post-arrival business, finally with enough time to write a blog entry after a nice, long nap! Anyway, this is probably going to be a fairly long post discussing my arrival in Aix and not much of what actually happened in the few days after that. I'll be writing another post immediately after this one to talk about more of this eventful first week.

I left Michigan City at around 11:00 on August 19, which already seems like an eternity ago, even though it was in fact, um, less than a week ago. I had to pack everything that I was going to need for the year in one 50 lb suitcase, one carry-on bag, and one extra carry-on item, which meant that I fortunately did NOT have to wear my black trench coat on the plane in August like I originally feared and setting every security sensor in the whole damn airport.  On my first flight (to Toronto) I ended up sitting next to a very attractive Swiss woman who was coming back from vacation in the U.S., and it turns out that she had spent a fair amount of time in Provence, including in Aix itself. We spoke in a mixture of French and English, and then we finished the short flight and I got ready to go my connecting flight in Munich.

And that's where my débutant status as an international traveler became incredibly obvious.

You see, the plane to Toronto was already over an hour late due to storms that were apparently occurring over Michigan, leaving me with slightly under an hour to get to the gate and catch my flight. Fine, easy. Except...this is me we're talking about, guys. I was surprised that we had to fill out a declaration form first (despite the fact that I was obviously doing nothing more than traveling through the Toronto airport and not actually touching Canadian soil), something which I didn't have to do in Germany (where I entered Europe and thus the Schengen Agreement Area, of which France is part) nor in France. You know, the country that I'm actually staying in. Where there was nobody at the customs counter for me to even report to. Nobody.

Anyway, when I asked which door I needed to go through after talking to the customs official (nothing was really clearly marked) he gave me some misleading directions which led to me walking directly past the portly Hispanic man who barely spoke English at the point of no return. Damnit. I actually stopped to ask the guy where to go next, literally as I had taken one step past him. The guy instead started yelling at me, babbling something along the lines of GTFO and go through security again, not my problem.

F#$@.

At this point, "youppi, I'm going to France!" Erik turned into this:

Just subtract the boobs and put on a shirt, you hippie. A Hawaiian shirt, to be exact.

 

Realizing that I know had about a half hour to make it through the last part of customs, go back through security, and make it to my gate, I went into powerdrive mode and went on the longest all-out sprint of my life, while wearing hiking boots and a Hawaiian shirt. I was the guy who was sweating bullets, was damn near bursting into tears, and nearly knocked over a poor old man who didn't hear me yell, "EXCUSE ME, COMING THROUGH!" as I was running full speed over the moving walkways on the way to security. And at that point, I saw how long and slowly moving the security line was and I thought my goose was surely cooked. But fortunately, a German family was right in front of me in line, and when I asked them in a pitiful, quivering voice if they were also flying to Munich, they told me that they weren't, but they seemed to understand the situation that I found myself in, because they told me to go in front of them in the line, and thanks to the infectious kindness of everyone in Canada except for the people actually working at the airport (who were taking their sweet time with everything), I ended up at the front of what was probably a half-hour long security line within a couple minutes. I made it through and, after hearing my name on the last call for boarding on the flight to Munich (which nearly made me void my bowels, good God), a sweaty, panting, and probably rather smelly Erik stumbled onto the plane, which ended up leaving late anyway. If the poor Indian man sitting next to me during the flight ever reads this, I am SO sorry that I had to be that guy. Jesus.

 

But wait! There's more travel drama to come, albeit not of the variety that a sadistic bystander would have found as humorous as my adventures in Toronto. Due to a delay of about 40 minutes in Toronto, I knew that the chances of not making my final connecting flight to Marseille were pretty good. Add to that the fact that I had a minor hang-up at the security checkpoint, and I pretty much knew that I wasn't going to make it. I somehow set off the metal detector in Munich and the agent that was doing the scanning was having some trouble finding what the source of the problem was, so I was treated to a lovely full-service patdown. It turns out that there was a paper clip in my shoe. A GOD DAMN PAPER CLIP. We all found this pretty hilarious, and the agent yelled to one of his colleagues to tell her what just set the metal detector off while we were all laughing our asses off. By the time I made it to the gate, it was already too late. But plenty of other people on my flight had similar problems, and the Lufthansa help desk (where the woman I talked too seemed relieved that there are indeed some Americans who can actually speak German) quickly arranged for me to go on a flight leaving four hours later.

 

As good airports for unexpected four-hour layovers go, Munich would definitely top my list, considering that I speak the language, I could sneak in some beer and currywurst, and I know how to get around the terminal since I'd been here once before. After a couple hours and a couple beers, however, all I wanted to do was get to the Hotel Adagio and crash. So you can only imagine how excited I was to see this at around 5:00 on August 20th.

.

 

This picture was one I quickly snapped from my airplane window of the Calanques (a rugged, wild area of the Mediterranean coast which is immediately next door to Marseille, the second largest city in France) and the southern end of the ville phocéene. It's not a terribly good one, but I was immediately struck by the beauty of the whole landscape (except for the mining areas). I should back to see Marseille and the Calanques pretty soon, but for the time being, I just wanted to get to Aix. I took a taxi into town, was dropped off at the Hotel Adagio and ate some goat cheese sandwiches and apple tarts with the other Americans (who, with the exception of one, all arrived before I did) and started to settle into my room. And finally, when the three other American guys and I found ourselves strolling on one of the narrow, crooked streets filled with smoky bars grouillant de monde (swarming with people) and we found ourselves sharing a bottle of wine and ordering kir and cognac to go with a pizza we were sharing, it sank in. I was in France.