Tran interested me, as her boisterous external personality reminded me of a part of my own personality that needs refinement; At first she struck me as uncomfortably, stereotypically American, until I dug the common connection that was rooted in the lonely world of being different as a kid, and subsequently embracing weirdness as a strength. If you are then recruited away from the normal social realm into Microsoft or the Silicon Valley, you work long hours with similarly freaky people, and it takes that much longer to notice that you haven’t made that many friends, since you still haven’t had much call for trying to relate to other people on a more basic human level.

Or was that the theme in _Microserfs_, which I finished reading just before Italy? Either way, I think this adventure has done me some good in that regard. I’m pretty sure this is one reason why Mary told me “Just Go!”

Upon arrival in Avignon, we were told that there was a train to Barcelona leaving at 3PM, and it had room. I shared with Yiling that I felt very upset about having spent the €25 to get to Avignon to discover this when I should have been told at Lyon so I that I could have used a travel day. Since we were in Avignon, we decided to give the place a day, and we reserved spots on the Thursday train.

We took a bus over to the hostel, which was closed until 1700, but the folks who were scraping paint off the walls were happy to let us stow our packs in their laundry room.

Avignon is cool because they’ve kept their old wall pretty much intact, so that it looks like something from a fairy tale. Avignon is crappy because because the drivers will yield to pedestrians only with great reluctance, and the path between the hostel and the old city requires us to cross this bridge that is at best ugly and noisy, and at worst a dangerous exercise in hurdling ditches and climbing over barriers, and then dodging traffic.

The big palace of the popes, from what we could tell, featured a tour through some really big, empty rooms, that was more expensive than it was interesting, so we gave it a pass. More interesting was the cute little bridge that made it halfway across the river, that had been completely rebuilt once and then repaired several times after flood damage before they just gave up on it and let it become the cute tourist attraction that it is today. Yiling seemed quietly intent on not spending the €3 to visit it, and I quietly wondered that if it cost €3 for us to walk on a bridge that doesn’t cross the river, they ought to charge at least twice that to all the cars that were successfully crossing the river on the other bridge.

We had a meal, which took some exploring because the town was mostly closed for Halloween. We took a quiet, dusky stroll back along the river bank and across the bridge to the hostel, which cost us each a humble €10,50 for the night, and which offers no security whatsoever, to the point that neither our rooms nor the hostel itself lock anyone out at night. This made a little sense when I considered that the hostel is part of a campground. I padlocked the laptop bag to my bunk, and kept it under my pillow for the night.

I explained that most Americans, even if they didn’t vote for him, were inclined to suffer through his presidency without too much complaint, because there was only so much damage he could achieve in four years, compared to the trouble it takes to change a government that one is less than happy with. The environment? Many Americans aren’t inclined to worry about it, and those of us who are, generally don’t see it as worth beating our heads against the wall while our little oil prince is in power. The environment takes time to affect, and the few years that George has left at the realm aren’t going to make a really big difference.

Yiling explained that the Taiwanese people, especially the youngest generation, see themselves as a people distinct from China. She explained that, for example, when traveling abroad, the whole “Taiwan is neither China nor is it actually a nation thing” is at best, an irritating nuisance. In Taiwan, she said, Identity is very important, how Taiwanese see themselves, to such a degree that Nationalist fervor has become something of an annoying litmus test at all levels of politics. The ultimate question was whether it was worth risking War … blood … would you die for the idea of Taiwan?

Yes. And I hope that if it comes to that, you will help us.

I offered my opinion that, given our own history, the United States would be morally obligated to support the will of the Taiwanese people, if that were there will. I talked about what great personal risks our own founding statesmen took in staking their lives on Independence, relaying the old “my only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country” and explaining how “John Hancock” had become synonymous with signing your name to a document.

It turns out Yiling is merely a month older than me. Taiwan’s fate will probably be resolved in our lifetime, and it is something we are all likely to remember. In a larger sense, how China manages or fails to care for its billion people in a sustainable manner, along with how we all manage the environment … well, these are some of the really big questions that our generation is going to have to answer.

Sooner or later? For my part, I won’t be back in Cali ’til January …

After lunch, we trekked over to the Tony Garnier, which is actually a set of twenty-four outdoor wall murals, depicting Garnier’s vision of the “Industrial City” around 1900, which featured then-novel things like zoning different areas for different use. His plans were detailed, and utopian: the houses should look like this, the train station here, the hospital, designed in sections, up on the top of the hill, hydro power. Lyon implemented a small part of this in a modified form, along the Boulevard Etats Unis, or “United States Boulevard”. The utopian intentions were a fascinating dessert to our worldly lunch discussion. Along the way we ran into an old Vietnamese lady, and an older Hungarian man, both polyglot ex-patriots who haven’t returned home since the wars that separated them from their childhood homes. I was glad I’d stayed another day.

Yiling had met up with another Taiwanese girl, Emily, who is a student, staying at the hostel while waiting for student housing. We walked downhill with Michiaki, who travels fantastically light, and who was headed to the train station for his next adventure. Emily and Michiaki spoke with each other in French, while Yiling and I conversed in English. Yiling had just finished a one-year Master’s program in London. Michiaki had just given me his contact information in Tokyo. Once we saw him off, I noted with a smile that we had a language triangle, as the girls knew Mandarin, and Yiling spoke English with me, while Emily and I shared French.

We took Yiling’s bag to a locksmith, who cut the defective combination lock off of it, and I finally got to purchase the padlock I had been seeking. After that, we visited the Lumiere Museum, which was fairly interesting, especially the old school color prints, that had a bit of a pointillist feel about them. I was reminded again about how all the museums have tended to play up Lyon’s important role in history, and felt a bit of kinship at the whole sense of civic pride that Chicago has been known to derive from its own “second city” insecurities.

I think too much.

It could just as well be Fear of Technology, but that would be too obvious, after the younger brother goes on this tirade about how this is all just an elaborate hoax perpetrated by thirty year old men who never got to have girlfriends, the Nerds, who are able to orchestrate hoaxes on a more massive scale now thanks to the Internet, simply because they never have anything better to do.

Fear of Microsoft.

And the little girls asks, concerned, “Why couldn’t they have girlfriends?”

Okay, perhaps Signs is a great movie.

Afterwards, I dropped anchor at the Internet cafe I’d found the day before, Caps Lock, just downhill from the hostel, and checked in on my own elaborate hoax, after which I enjoyed a chicken basmati at the Gandhi restaurant a few meters away, across from the Funicular station. Great service. Not horrible prices.

Back at the hostel, laundry took only two hours. I saw that the wash was available in an “eco” version, which, after Hamburg, I carefully avoided. Wash took an hour and a half, and a half hour more to dry. I napped for half-hour intervals, and during one of my “check-if-the-laundry-is-finished-yet” runs I found myself in conversation with a Taiwanese girl, drying her hair in the stairwell. She was considering the Contemporary Art Museum, the Lumiere Museum, and the Musée Urbain Tony Garnier. I discouraged her from the first of those, and was tempted by the latter two, not to mention the companionship, and the savings from another day at the €12 hostel. I decided to sleep on it.

Next to the contemporary art museum was a movie theater which was playing Michael Moore’s new movie, “Bowling for Columbine” in English. I went and saw that, while my companion went his own way, since he didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of following a movie by reading French subtitles.

The movie was a grand dialog about contemporary American society, concerned with the roots of our epidemic problem of gun violence. He managed to keep from getting preachy and self-righteous, sticking to his strength of trying to offer and sympathize with all points of view. The result, in my opinion, was nothing short of fantastic, and if you have the opportunity to see this film, I strongly encourage you to do so, preferably with a group of friends or loved ones that you can share an interesting conversation with afterwards. The image of NRA President Charlton Heston, Moses himself, retreating uncomfortably from the image of a six year old girl who was shot and killed by her six year old classmate … well, it is a classic moment. Priceless, and filled with complex, genuine emotion. I loved it!

After the movie, I walked through the park where the cinema and the museum were located, snapping some fun pictures of deer they had in the park along the way, after visiting a greenhouse. I walked clear to the other side of Lyon to visit the Urban Museum, which was closed by the time I got there at 1800, but seemed to consist primarily of giant, outdoor murals, half of which were missing their interpretive signposts.

I purchased une demi-baguette, some confiture des fraises, and a pastry to snack on back at the hostel, with the juice and cheese I’d bought the night before, whilst updating the journal. On the way back, I discovered another, cheaper theater, that was closer to the hostel, and was playing “Signs” in English. After that, I found a place just down the hill from the hostel, that would sell me an Internet hook-up for €3 per hour. By dinner, I had the next days itinerary set up: Fine Arts Museum, movie, Internet access, and laundry. Yay!

I wandered along with them, for the hell of it. At one point there was a throng of police down a side street, clad in riot gear. This seemed weird to me, as I’ve never seen such a thing at an American protest - are the French more skull-crackin’ old-school? Nobody I talked to understood why they were guarding such a side street. Then they advanced, and entered one side of the street we were on, which caused some consternation among the demonstrators. It was a tense scene at which my camera ran out of batteries soon after I figured out that the police had advanced in riot gear to form a protective barricade around their station, to fend off whatever harm might be caused by a somewhat anarchistic crowd that was protesting police power.

Fair enough. The crowd passed without incident, and proceeded to the park in front of the Perrache train station, at which point the procession turned in to a small rave, an event, with jugglers, a fire-breathing maniac, three different sound systems, and dogs rolling around in the fountains. It was all very funky, and one of the truck managers was kind enough to stow my backpack with its computer for me while I got my dance on. I hadn’t done such a thing since California. I bummed two tokes off an extremely stoned youngster. The party broke up at 19h30.

Sunday morning spent overlooking a modern city from the remains of an ancient city, high on a hill on an overcast day. For company, I had a few other tourists mingling with the ruins, singing birds, and the peal of bells at a handful of cathedrals, appealing to the heavens for the clouds to part and reveal the day in its full glory. The same appeal of people of this place made towards different gods in the same sky two millenia ago.

I wandered more, found myself at the Cathedral Notre Dame de Fourviere, with another great view over the city. Downhill, I arrived at Rue du Boeuf (Beef Street) and took a picture, because of my friends’ affinities for all things meat. For 20€ I splurged for a three-course lunch and a bottle of wine at Les Pavés de St. Jean, just down Rue St. Jean from the Cathedrale St. Jean. The Salad Lyonnaise had chewy bacon and a poached egg in it. I hunger for that salad whenever I think of it.

I wandered more, past street vendors on the river, scoping out Internet cafes reccommended by the guidebook. I picked up a sandwich and a bottle of wine on my way back, as well as some postcards. I spent the evening at the hostel, which has an extremely chill atmosphere of young international students looking for housing, sharing bottles of wine, to the accompaniement of an ever-changing, ever-great soundtrack, mixed by the super-hip-but-still-friendly staff.

I wrote postcards, and talked with Italian and African students about the ramifications of American foreign policy. By bed time, counting lunch, I had consummed two and one third bottles of wine, and a neat vodka-beer thing. I had a slight headache the next morning.

The final leg, Strasbourg to Lyon, was six hours on a desolate, lonely train, through a wonderful sunset. The car was older and the seats less comfortable than Germany. The conductor told me not to put my feet on the seats, then explained that it was okay if I took my shoes off.

I got in to Lyon about 23h30, and wandered around in the dark, mostly-closed station of Lyon Part Dieu. I figured out where the Metro was, and took it over to Vieux Lyon, where I walked up a steep hill. The narrow street turned, and then there was more steep hill to ascend. This happened a couple more times. I hadn’t had the phone card necessary to call ahead, and the Metro was beginning to shut down. Should the hostel have room to accomodate me, I’d be extremely grateful, because at this hour, the alternatives, after climbing this steep hill …

They had a bed. 12€. I was grateful.

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Gotta take a leak at Gare du Nord? It’ll cost you a wee bit, but it’ll be . . . McClean! I am surprised that McDonald’s hasn’t leaned on these guys . . .

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A traveller enjoys a sandwich next to a pair of TGVs. Pigeons look on hopefully.

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While whiling away a layover at Gare du Nord, you can watch the dance of the mechanical signboard, flipflipflipflipflipflipping through the schedule, looking forward to your train making its appearance.

I hope the French have sufficient nostalgia to hold off replacing this.

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A group of students wait collectively for their train.

It ran me 30€ to get back from Bayeaux to Paris, another 20€ for an overnight couchette to Hamburg, and 60€ for the ferry to and train through Denmark, which is not covered by my rail pass.

I spent the early hours of the 28th relaxing in Bayeaux, giving the tapestry a pass and instead stocking up on provisions for my journey: a sandwich, half a baguette, a small bottle of wine, and some camembert cheese. This kept me fed clear on through to Copenhagen.

14h48 from Bayeaux to Paris St Lazare, Metro over to Paris Nord. I spent a lot of time that day waiting in railway stations. At the arrival of the night train, we sought out our beds. Mine was in a second-class cabin, which seemed weird because I’d paid a few euro extra for a first-class couchette. Upon further observation, my roommates for the evening concluded that first class means four couchette beds instead of six. This makes first class worthwhile, because in the six-bed configuration there is no room to sit up in your bed.

The train had that feel of dispassionate German efficiency. When we arrived in Hamburg, we were across the platform from the train that three of the four of us were taking on to Copenhagen. This was very cool, because we only had ten minutes between arrival and departure. Apparently, “night train to Hamburg” is a popular way to get to Copenhagen.

I dozed off on our 7h30 train from Hamburg, which was a Danish train with a fancy electronic representation of our route. I woke up and saw that we’d just pulled on to the lower deck of a ferry, crossing the water for Denmark.

I went upstairs, snapped a picture or two, and browsed around the legal gambling, tax-free booze, and overpriced restaurants. I payed my last 3€ for a Coke, no ice. I tried filling my water bottle, but beer came out instead. I asked where I could get tap water, and was told that such an odd request could be satisfied in the bathroom. I’d been skeptical, because all of the trains I’d been riding warned you not to drink the water. The lack of warnings and the presence of restaurants on the ferry re-assured me of potability.

Back on our train through Denmark, I spent some time talking to a Chinese tour guide. He explained to me that while English-speaking tours were on the decline, business from China was steadily increasing. I dozed off again and found myself in Copenhagen’s Central Station.

The Guided Tour via bus costs upwards of 30€. I can afford solitude.

This morning I got a nice sandwich on a baguette for 1€90, a couple of apples for .95€, a bottle of wine for less than 4€, a pocket-knife with a corkscrew for 13€, and a bike for the day for 13€. I rode off on the backroads, where bicycling is safer. The guy at the bike shop told me it was an hour or an hour thirty to Omaha Beach. It took me two hours each way, as I was lost and flabby. I was exhausted when I got to a quiet stretch of Omaha Beach, and sat down with my sandwich, which was a bit worse for wear, but still delicious. Opening the bottle, I broke the cork, but was able to fit the better half back in. I had the beach to myself to unwind from the first leg of my journey, and to think about things.

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SALVATORE S. ARNONE
TEC 5  12 INF  4 DIV
NEW YORK  JUNE 11, 1944

E pluribus unum.

Then it was off to the American Cemetary, with over 9,000 crosses laid out in orderly rows, officers and enlisted men buried together with those Known Only to God. I spent some time walking amongst the graves. I sat down in a quiet spot in the middle, just me on the grass, in the sun, hearing birds chirping. Each of those graves was another man that would never be a grandfather to my generation. They died for the liberty of people on another continent, where they will remain forever.

They are the grandfathers of an idea. Liberty, freedom, democracy and peace are all their progeny. I am a grandchild of the world that they helped create.

It was a tough ride back. Another day in the saddle. I wasn’t sure I’d make it back before the bike shop closed at 18h30. Setting out, I felt pretty good: high on America, and what a young man might accomplish in Normandy. At the most exhausting, lonely, uphill parts I considered myself rolling along with the grandfathers, staggered along the road, gear and rifles on a road march to Bayeaux, first significant town liberated in June, 1944. Sometimes I sang cadence to myself. The country was beautiful, filled with ancient stone churches, chateaus, and cows, horses, sheep. “Bonjour, les vaches,” I must have greeted the cows one hundred times. One lowed at me.

Round Trip: About 50km

That evening I acquired a baguette and many sweets. Some Australian retirees gave me a tomato, some cheese, butter, a spare knife, and an extra corkscrew before they set off to bed. As the cork was now useless, I finished off my evil feast, and the bottle of wine, and slept from about 9PM until 8AM, breakfast the next morning.

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The French do have some cute trains. I spied this one while waiting at St Lazare.

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Taken two days later, when the sun was shining. The photographer asked if I was German.

Metro to St Lazare, St Lazare on a lonely train to Bayeaux. Looking for the Auberge du Family Home, a local drove me a little ways up the hill toward the cathedral, dropping me off across the street from Family Home. I thanked him and gave him .60€ for the trouble. While it wasn’t very far at all, it seemed polite to chip in a few cents for gas, and I certainly appreciate not wandering around lost in the rain.

I hung out alone in the Family Home reception area, until the lady got back from wherever she had been, and hooked me up with a room. Then off to the Bayeaux Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy, which held a large collection of newspaper clippings, uniforms, soldiers paraphenalia and military hardware, and descriptive labels in French and English, as well as a half hour film made of period newsreels.

I was most fascinated with the posters telling soldiers how to identify different tanks, and how to disable an enemy tank if you should encounter one in the field. Of all parties to the battle for Normandy, I most readily identify with the technical concerns of a young American field soldier. I felt a great deal of gratitude to be growing in a world of peace. As a traveller, I also had to be grateful for a world of plastics; No heavy iron binoculars in a canvas sack for me, but light-weight, synthetic fibers with plastic zippers!

Back at the hostel I got to practice my French with a gaggle of Parisienne school girls.

The evening wound down in conversation with my Algerian roommate, who introduced himself as “not a terrorist.” Among the questions of where one is coming and going, what one is studying, and whether one is engaged or happy to sample the lovely ladies met on the road, we drifted in to politics. I was treated to a new spin on a contemporary frustration: “Why does George Bush hate Arabs?”

While in America we see the occasional crazy Muslim trying to threaten random lives, Arabs see autocratic regimes propped up in nations like Saudi Arabia, and people starving as the indirect result of sanctions against Iraq, the frustrations of a dozen Arab nations with American foreign policy, which seeks to divide and conquer a downtrodden corner of the world, to ensure in this backwards “stability” a steady flow of oil.

I lamented the fact that we failed to finish the war in Iraq, leaving instead this ugly detente of a stalemate. Arabs see hungry Arab children on TV. Americans will not soon forget the desperation of people jumping from the higher floors of the World Trade Center. Detente. I described an emerging concept of America as the reluctant World Empire, that ought to outsource her burden by promoting the growth of regional powers, that can ensure a self-interested stability in remote parts of the world. But today we retain the bloody corpse of Iraq, to keep Iran at bay.

America has an abundance of everything it needs to enjoy its tendancy for isolationism. An abundance of everything except oil. I believe the practical course is to promote democracy in the Middle East. If Iran lets the people vote, let them have some influence in the region. It is in the self-interest of a stable regional power to ensure the steady flow of cash-producing exports.

Another problem is the rising abundance of young people who lack opportunity. The paradox is that as we make it harder for Arabs to pursue opportunities in America, we leave more frustrated young men amenable to the poison of fundamentalist reactionaries. It was heartening that here we were, two such young people, with the opportunity to travel, encounter, and better understand each other.

And all that was expressed somewhere between my limited French vocabulary, and his limited English vocabulary, with the occasional Spanish. Wow. Un jour de tranquiller.

After reading about Normandy, tomorrow I am off to Bayeaux.

Our body is a complex ecosystem comprised of specialized organs that behave according to their own advantage, with no greater concern for the whole. White blood cells have no opinion about disease, except that it is good to eat.

Human organization, like ecosystems, is an amalgamation of seperate entities with differing agendae. Governments, corporations, and other organizations, like brains, attempt to organize the free agents towards a conscious goal.

It would be interesting, for modern fiction, to see a world in which at the levels of body, human world, and natural ecosystem, are played out at each level, as something for the protagonist to deal with. Douglas Adams’ work comes to mind, or perhaps William Gibson’s _Neuromancer_, where the protagonist must work against other consciousnesses, some of which have set up his own body against him.

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When I can think of nothing else to do,
I will be that old man,
only I will set my hat out,
So that amused tourists can
donate a bit for bird food.

After the Orsay, I wandered towards a bridge over the Seine, where I saw sunlight to warm me on a cool day. From there, I was heading back towards the Louvre, near which I saw an old guy sitting on a bench, surrounded by birds. The chickadees sat in neat little rows on either side of him, waiting their turn to join the party in his cupped hands, where he had bread. Occasionally he would toss a handful to either side of the bench to appease his avian congregants. At his feet, pigeons scrounged for leftovers, and tourists like me took pictures.

I sat a little while and admired the scene. A lady approached and lamented that it was a pity that she had no camera, for this was worth photography! I explained that I’d already snapped several pictures. Being, as she was, an Argentine, our conversation took place in a mixture of French, Spanish, and English. She explained that since the devaluation, Argentina was a splendidly inexpensive tourist destination, and that it should be my next place for vacation, where I could also find work in computers, or teaching English. We exchanged contact information, so I could share my bird man pictures with her, or find help exploring Argentina.

Since the Orsay took so much time, it was now afternoon. All things considered, I was sufficiently satisfied with MIJE, who locked our luggage away by keeping the rooms closed all day, that I decided to add a day to my stay in Paris. I decided on a liesurely stroll back towards the hostel, where I could then proceed to while away many hours in transcribing the past weeks’ journal entries into a digital format, and thence upload them at the nice little Internet place nearby.

I stumbled in to this gargantuan shopping complex, which seems to stretch underground forever, broken up by fountains and arching white support beams that hold glass for the sun to shine through. I bought a tart, and a €15 bath towel as I’d left my other towel at the Fouconnier. I sat down in a sunny spot, next to a Chinese university student who is apparently on exchange. We exchanged a few words in our common foreign language, which she was studying, as I ate my tart, and wrote more in the paper journal.

I got back to MIJE, pulled out the laptop, and began transcribing the paper journal. Time-consuming. I got a few entries down, leaving the electronic version five days behind the paper, and went and sat in a smoky French bar, surrounded by Backgammon players. I downed an expensive €5 ham and cheese (jambon et fromage) baguette, and spent another €9 for some time hitting the Internet from the comfort of my very own workstation with its sober, American keyboard.

Tomorrow, the Science and Industry museum, perhaps the Belgian gardens, and maybe some more Information Technology work, off to Normandy on Thurday.

On my way to bed, I had a conversation, in Spanish, with a young Japanese girl, Naomi, who is studying Spanish in Spain. Crazy crazy girl, crazy crazy fun. Dig!