French Fried

France and Monaco

(Paris, Normandy, Monte Carlo and the French Riviera)

In this episode Ryan…

-enjoys traditional French hospitality in Nice

-gets told to put some pants on in a casino in Monte Carlo

-weaves through a maze of a million-rotten skeletons deep in the ancient underbelly of Paris

Nice

After leaving Rome, now I really needed to get back to Paris, but it was a bit far for a single stab on the train, and there just so happened to be on more tiny prinicipality, Monaco, halfway between he two, so well let’s just say it made sense.

With the exception of the Vatican, Monaco is the smallest state in Europe and is basically surrounded by France, except for a small coast on the Mediterranean, though its not far from Italy either. According to my research (ie according to Lonely Planet), the best place to base oneself for exploration of the region known as the Cote d’Azur (Azure coast referring, presumably to the colour of the water, which is a brilliant Mediterranean blue, yet you might be more familiar with the term “French Riviera” in regards to the region.)

Nice (pronounced neece) was one of the highlights of my sister’s jaunt through Europe a few years back, but I guess they are more welcoming of 3 pretty young girls than one gritty semi-cleaned male backpacker. Never in my travels have I found so many people unwilling to provide service or providing shoddy service at ridiculous prices. Basically, all I wanted to do in Nice was go to the beach, but I needed to buy new batteries, and D’Arty (think French Futureshop) the place that was recommended to me, sold me ones with no charge, so I had to start the day wasting a couple hours arguing that selling me a battery with no electricity was a bit of a scam, and finally convinced them into giving me batteries that actually worked.

The beach itself, which did have nice azure-blue water, was actually more pebbles than sand which made it difficult to walk on without banging up your feet. That and, because I couldn’t find a single place to leave my valuables and I definitely needed somewhere secure, as there were plenty of scam artists, including one guy who dropped a wedding ring in front of me and then starting yelling at me when I refused to stick around (apparently this is a typical scam on the Med, basically they get you to handle the ring which you give back like a good Samaritan, but then argue once you touch it that you’ve bought it and must pay for it). Normally, at every other beach in Europe, I could at least find a restaurant who would let me leave my valuables in exchange for the purchase of a beverage, but here no one would even deal with me unless I was wearing something with a designer label on it (or perhaps something clean), so I had to walk a couple kms back to the hostel and leave my valuables there…then walk back to the beach, and then walk back to the hostel after going for a dip. At dinnertime, my luck didn’t improve as my attempt at trying traditional Nicoise cuisine saw me being ignored for 30 minutes or more at least 5 different restaurants, or they tried to charge me for things I didn’t want to order. As a result, I ultimately gave up, broke down and got some reliable old American fast food, and went back to my hostel in a huff. Nice might be a popular resort town, and a symbol of luxury on the French Riviera, but its got a lot to learn about hospitality, as far as I’m concerned Nice ain’t so Nice after all.

On an ironic note, guess which hostel had the most roaches on all my travels? Slovakia? Not one. Italy. Nada. Poland? Okay, maybe 3. But do you know where I encountered the most roaches? The French Riviera! I probably saw at least 10 in the two nights I stayed in Nice, as the bathroom floor of the dorm room would just be swarming with them when you turned on the light at night. I guess some things money can’t buy eh? Like exterminators.

I mean, I prefer to look at the positive side of places, but sometimes enough is enough. Places like the French Riviera which sell themselves as being “playgrounds of the wealthy” or “playgrounds of the wealthy with too much access to their parents’ credit cards” tend not to be the place for me I guess.

Monaco

Monaco—and its biggest city, Monte Carlo—is no less elitist than Nice, but at least I seemed to fare better here. I guess it helped that the city was filled that day with Spanish and Italian soccer hooligans—so even if I didn’t smell any better than them, at least I wasn’t as raucous. As it turns out, the day I picked to venture into Monaco, was the day it played host to the Super Cup Final between Milan and Seville. (Now I know the Europeans get livid when I call it soccer—as if giving it a different name is somehow an act of blasphemy—but where I come from, football means CFL, and they can be just as passionate about that (no, I don’t mean in Toronto), so for my own sense of non-confusion I’m going to stick with my dialectical preference) That said I don’t really follow European soccer and I got some dirty looks when I asked people “So is this a big deal or something?” Needless to say though, the fans—particularly of Seville—basically occupied the country of Monaco, dressed in red and white uniforms, waving scarves, clapping, and giving the many security guards of Monaco endless headaches. Just out of curiosity I checked out the stadium—which unlike Canadian stadiums actually blended-in with its surroundings so I almost didn’t realize it was there—but I just got laughed at when I asked if there were any tickets still available.

Not that I minded really. Like I said, I don’t really follow soccer, and I know Europeans can’t understand this indifference, as they consider it such a “supremely action-packed game to watch” because as they say “so many people are running around.” (if they like running so much, why don’t they just watch Track and Field?). To them though, “American” football, with all its stoppage of plays and safety equipment, is agony to watch, which I could understand if you’re unfamiliar with the game, but then the same goes for any game, including hockey, curling (which a few other Europeans asked me about, as in “What the hell is this game with people sweeping?”), and yes even European soccer can be boring if you don’t know what’s going on and don’t have any specific attachment to the team. That said, it’s the cultural phenomena that surrounds soccer—here and elsewhere in the world, that I find most interesting… not necessarily the game itself.

At any rate, Monaco. Like most dinky little nation-states in Europe, Monaco has a highly defensible position and—by translation—dramatic and picturesque scenery. The whole nation seemed to be perched along a less than 2 km long stretch of Mediterranean cliffs. Indeed, traveling around Monaco, even short distances, you find yourself going up and down, and through tunnels and “public elevators (even the train station is rooted deeply underground in a rock cliff).” The Monagasque, though, can afford these giant leaps of infrastructure—this place has got to have more Mercedes-Benz, Armani Suits, and Diamond rings won in poker games per capita, than any nation on Earth. Only in Monte Carlo, will a downtown billboard read “Need Yacht Insurance?” Needless to say I felt a tad out of place—and got more than a few glares to remind of such--walking around in my stained old t-shirt, gritty shorts, and a plastic bag filled with my soggy towel and swimming trunks (I was determined to give the beach here a try, A) because I was not satisfied with my Mediterranean experience in Nice and B) because going to the beach is one of the cheaper things you can do in a place like Monaco).

First though, I hiked around the harbour—filled with enough private armadas to launch an invasion of Troy—then up the cliffs to the National Oceanic Aquarium (apparently one of the best in the world) and took note of the various sea creatures I should avoid stepping on while at the beach, like the fish that looks like a rock, has a poisonous sting that is fatal 25% of the time, and is considered the most dangerous fish in the ocean. Since it was there, and relatively cheap, I also checked out the Royal Apartments, the residence of the Monegasque royal family, which also had a rather kitchy museum of Napoleon.

Eventually I made it to the beach, but the beach was on the other side of the country (ie. Town) so I decided, instead of walking like I usually do, this was the lap of luxury, and it was time to ride in style. So I took the bus.

The beach was considerably sandier than its counterpart at Nice, so I had a good thrashing about in the water there, before trying—in vain—to see what was the deal with the casinos of Monte Carlo. Let’s just say the casino guards took one look at me and said “You ain’t getting in.” They apparently took offense to my wearing of shorts. Yes the Vatican and the Gambling houses of Monaco may not always be the best of buddies but they both can reach common ground in the strength of their desire not to be exposed to my naked knee-caps. Go figure.

Paris and Bayeux

Oh boy, after complaining about Nice, I was really hoping to have something really positive A) so I didn’t fall into that “French people are snobs” thing and B) so I didn’t look like a whiner about being in France while other poor people in the world are starting classes.

That said, there does seem to be some sort of prevailing attitude in France—or at least the parts of France I visited—that could be construed as a form of nationalist ethnocentrism combined with an obsession with quality, which in turn could be interpreted rightfully or wrongfully (and I must admit I’m leaning towards rightfully) as arrogance. Let me put it this way, when you find the friendliest people in the Algerian quarter—one of the poorest neighbourhoods, populated by North African immigrants of former French colonies, and also incidentally one of the key fire-points of the Paris riots of recent memory—it tells you something about atmosphere of intercultural relations (and possibly why the Algerian communities, in addition to others, felt the need to riot). Well I’m sure there are some unfriendly Algerians as well, the ones I met were extremely friendly (despite knowing full well I wasn’t from around there) and showed real excitement when I showed interest in trying their cultural cuisine.

Now, not every French person I met had issues with attitudes. A few I met on trains were very helpful with directions and what not and some even expressed dissatisfaction with their countrymen/women’s mainstream attitudes towards outsiders, so perhaps there’s some hope for France yet, but in a city like Paris—being at the crossroads of the British Isles, Spain and Portugal, Italy and Switzerland, Germany and the Low Countries—is a tourist mecca, and no doubt the locals have a certain distaste for the throngs that swarm them. Nevertheless, I still believe—perhaps being a “small towner”—that a certain level of tolerance must be maintained, and I caught few people being needlessly insulting and obnoxious to tourists—thinking I couldn’t understand French—who were just asking basic questions. I also made a few friends at the hostel from such far away lands as Brazil, Ukraine, Chile, and the United States. I guess I myself was a little on edge too as the hostel I was staying at had a ton of rules—like you couldn’t be home at certain times, breakfast was very early and consisted of baguettes with no plates and something my Brazillian friend called “baby food,’ they locked the elevator so you couldn’t use it and had to climb 4 flights with all your bags, and had only one key so if you reached the room and no one was in it, you had to climb back down to get the key. My “favourite” oddity was the electronic locker system, which you had to get a token to use (provided the token machine, itself conveniently located on another floor, was working) you could have your valuables stored for 2 Euros a day and if you didn’t come back at exactly 24 hours from that point, you’d have to pay another 2 euros to retrieve your bags. Also, presumably for legal reasons although it made the entire place seem that much more absurd, there were signs posted that read “Don’t leave your valuables in the security locker.” My questions were A) where else were you supposed to put them? and B) what’s the point of a security locker if its not secure?

Okay, so enough about that stuff. I did actually do stuff in Paris. The first night I checked out the Arc De Triumph (spelt wrong on my part) which I was surprised to find out is surrounded by a ginormous traffic circle (apparently the world’s biggest). So if you make it into the centre without getting smoked by a Parisian motorist you certainly feel triumphant. The arc was started by Napoleon but not finished until long after he’d had his pride drained at Waterloo. One of the most interesting aspects of the arc though has to be a wartime speech by Charles Du Galle, which I loosely translated as “Yes, we may have lost Alsace, we may have lost Normandy, we may have even lost Paris and the whole of France, but are we going to give up? Non! We still have Chad.” Ah that good ol French military.

At one point I did a tour of the D-Day beaches in Normandy (I was supposed to be going to Bayeux for the day to see the tapestry billed as “the world’s oldest and longest comic strip” which details the 1066 Norman conquest of England, but somehow I got roped into this instead), and the American on the tour was rather amused by the guides careful insertion of the role of the French resistance in the invasions (despite the fact they actually built the defenses for the Germans). At one point I asked the guide, “Where is Juno Beach?” (Juno Beach is the place where the Canadians landed). He said rather briefly “12 miles that way. Now we go [pointing the opposite direction] American Cemetery!” And slammed the bus door in my face, much to the American’s amusement. I laughed too, though (I didn’t actually expect the bus would go to Juno Beach, but I was just curious as to where it was), at least we could be amused by the absurdity of the curt response. As for the D-Day stuff itself, much of the area has reverted back to normal sandy beach (it has been 60 odd years), but there still are some impressive ruins of bunkers, bomb craters, and even the remains of a floating harbour. One cliff, which was surrounded by barbwire and would have been covered in snipers and mines and all that fun stuff, had a phallic shaped monument to the magnitude of balls the guys had who must’ve scaled it way back when.

Back in the City of Lights though, there was still much to see and do, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the palace of Versailles, and the Catacombs. The Eiffel Tower is a fairly no-brainer, and while it’s no CN tower, the age of the structure gives it a jolly good uncertain rickety-ness that makes ascending that much more fun—providing you don’t get lost in the hours long line (incidentally on the way down, people seem to forget about the bottom car on the elevator, so use that for a quicker descent). The Louvre I managed to hit on the first of the month (hello free admission) and though it’s bit hard to enjoy the Mona Lisa when you can’t get within 20 feet of her because of bulletproof glass and mobs of Japanese tourists (I swear when I first arrived, the line was long but moving fast, so it looked like someone had turned on a tap and a current of tourists was flowing out yet staying within the banks of the queue-ropes), there are plenty of other famous works in the Louvre that you’d still probably recognize though most folks just walk right by (in any other museum, they’d be a highlight, but in Louvre they’re just some painting on the walls). The former French Royal Palace of Versailles is a bastion of affluent exuberance in such a way only the French can—or would--muster, although the highlight is the extensive gardens around the palace, in particular the ponds on the horizon which are shaped in such a way that they look unreal as if they were painted. The highlight though, as far as I’m concerned, of Paris tourist sights—and luckily underrated as it wasn’t horrendously overrun with tourists—is the Parisian catacombs. Consisting of a network of tunnels reaching underneath all of old Paris, these former mines turned graveyards (or bone depository) are the stuff of legends, I think Neil Gaiman even referenced them in his book Neverwhere which explored the fantasy underworld of London and suggested others might exist in other major cities. I didn’t slip into a fantasy world—unfortunately—but the catacombs were definitely unlike anything I had experienced before. Picture if you will walking down a dank, short, rocky corridor, lit only by the occasional lamp and with water dripping the only sound, when you turn a corner and all of a sudden you turn a corner and come across skeletons—rows upon rows of skeletons all stacked as if they were on sale in a Wal-mart or perhaps a lumber yard, and extending endlessly through weaving and increasingly dark tunnels. There’s apparently millions of skeletons of dead Parisians down here, put here when the cemeteries became over-filed and dangerous causes of diseases in the 1800s. Weirder yet, you have to go down a really long spiral stair-case just to get to the catacombs and when you finally come out you pop out in a random part of Paris.

And speaking of randomness, I’m going to end my talk on Paris here.