Lost in Port du Orlean, France

“There will always be Paris!” said Humphrey Bogart. Memories formed in Paris are supposed to last forever in the movie Casablanca. Who wouldn’t be enthralled by Paris? The verdant green slopes of French Alps, the variation of ski slopes from low to the steepest ‘diamonds’, the small towns outside the cities that boast a hundreds years of history became the setting for our memories of the vacation Europe 2005.

After landing in Charles de Gaulle airport, we directly start towards a town outside Paris, Port du Orleans. Like every town a significant historical monument distinguishes it from the rest. Joan of Arc in 1400s after the Crusades fought a courageous war, which later become a story for legends, books and a very successful Hollywood movie.

France boasts of charming towns where masses walk to get their fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh baguettes from the small neighborhood bakeries, run by mom and pop style operation, every day and sometimes even more then once a day, or visit a church or cathedral then sit back in the cafes and over a strong espresso with a piece of bread on the side savor the history surrounding them. There is no mad rush to work as it is a Socialist government who is able to fulfill their basic needs and more, for example it pays 500 euros every month for every dependent, French work 35 hours a week the shortest work week in the whole Europe and perhaps all the world, and get six weeks of vacation per year. French stop, relax, ready to cooperate and help in their broken English whenever possible.

They always reply when asked, “Vous parlez Englaise?” A little bit” which means really nothing. It usually means that they know a few words jumbled up that make no sense. But at least they don’t ignore us as overgrown stubble that irritates unnecessarily every morning when you look into the mirror.The adage that “French knows English but they don’t seem to speak it. French pride stops them from doing it,” seems to reverberate its truth every time we hope to contradict it. Their pride sure choke them up or they just seem very narcissist and show that French love themselves so much that they put up an act that everyone else can see through. They never speak English because they don’t know it, they want us to believe that baloney, but the FM channel on our car’s radio every second played English songs.

With no legend pointing out to any directions, we stumble through the foreign land- mute and deaf. Not equipped with any lesson from Alliance French Institute, a favorite of upscale education institutions in Pakistan, which we resolve to sign up as soon we go home. Meanwhile, we are stuck with a major language complex. The few words and phrases like ‘Merci,’ Bon sieur’ Que est’ we are lost’ and reading off the French- English dictionary phrases become hard to pronounce let along understand, as the day progresses and my mental facilities begin to numb. Hanging onto the frayed lifeline of the short listed resources, we continue to be ineffective for most of the our stay in France, and southern half of Switzerland where our language is concerned.

No talk and all action. It seems like a scene out of an old silent movies or the latest Jackie Chen’s. Speeding our four doors blue Peugeot in circles, up the River Loire to the industrial area then back into the city for hours as if in a wild goose chase. There is a reason why the destination didn’t corroborate with the map downloaded from Internet a night before departing from Lahore.

The directions downloaded from the website for the Cheaphotel motel in Port du Orleans are written by someone quite illiterate in English and who we have a pleasure of meeting later. The language barrier creates a situation with lots of holes as the ‘lost in translation’ from French to English, meaning resulted in a ‘get lost. See the back alleys.’

The completely lost look perplexed the locals, no doubt. Stuck in a narrow street between the low-income apartment building where a group of latchkey kids show off their shiny new scooters doing wheelies. Ruefully we take our car, a usual practice and not an act of brave desperado, over the half foot high curb. Facing the teenagers ‘chillin’ in the balmy weather with a friendly smile and a pleading look we try to explain. With every moment it is getting harder to understand what they meant, it is not their fault for they tell us exactly where to go and how to go --but in French.

Frustrated with our tourist inclinations to become ‘dumb and dumber’ with every passing moment, the redhead with a bad case of acne, climbs up the snazzy red scooter and with the sweep of his arm asks us to tag along. Another young rider with a scooter also revs up like a kamakazi wind and aggressively sweeps the scooter 180 degree angle. We follow the leader. Nervous and feeling guilty, I wonder whether these young, high –spirited, youngsters are legally old enough to be on the roads and if not, then who will be responsible. I don’t like breaking laws especially in unfamiliar places where you don’t know which stoplight has a surveillance camera attached.

Pointing out at the turn where the motel is supposed to be, the chunky redhead sharply turns on one wheel and zooms back onto the main road. The motel is cheap, which explains why it is stuck in a hole behind a lumber store and a construction site for a new single unit homes. The Cheaphotel where we spent our first night in France, trust me is cheap, almost costing a fourth the price of the rest of the seven hotels that we stayed in the later part of the week.

The price excluded all the perks. The bare room with just the essential -beds and nothing else is comfortable after we recover from the initial shock of free falling from Business class treatment in Emirates airlines all the way from Lahore through Dubai to France and then to this cheapest hotel. The white heavy thread count sheets and fluffy beds with an extra bunk bed for a third person iscluttered by the small cubby smack- right- in- the middle, a bathroom that seems like something from a futuristic space travel, four feet by four, tiny and compact.

There are eighteen rooms and all of them cleaned, bed sheets changed and laundered, by a young woman who, also, ran the front office that rocks with English lyrics, and, I think she is also the culprit who wrote those very bad directions that made us run smoke circles for most of the day.

After, unpacking our belongings into the small congested and ‘no place to step’ place, we hit the road for groceries. The urgency is triggered by the fact that the supermarkets close sharp at 7 pm when the sun is still at its zenith. The sun sets at 9 pm.

We crossed bridge over the River Loire, which snakes through the industrial area then sways and coils around the soft curves of the green hills. A track for pedestrians and runners etches the edges of the river. The patches of white clouds soften the hard blue of the skies. Further the geometrical shapes of the new plazas and the hotels show the fast changing geography. The progress is happening at French pace, very slowly.

Somehow the progression into new millinium is always postmarked by the shortage of resources. The grocery store that we visited offers no grocery bags. While I carry the soft drinks and bread, balanced precariously in a pair of hands and glass milk bottles clutched tightly inside the crook of the arms, the rest of the family carry their favorites: chocolates, whole wheat crackers, cheese and healthy snacks for our one week of gypsy living. For the three weeks spent vacationing in Europe, we happily forgo curries with oils and spices. Nutritious and tasty snacks are available only in France, it seems, because of the simplicity of the food. No pretentious packaging-screaming flavor deceives the consumers. Nothing is contrived and artificial. The sober ‘take it in a stride’ modernity is very much unlike the loud gimmick filled, and ‘buy one get two free’ American marketing. The mass-produced, gooey corn syrup loaded candies and processed cheese made out of oil and everything with the longest shelf life is not French.

French past doesn’t have a shelf life and when preserved properly as they do, it doesn’t reek of decay. French are great keepers of their history unlike Americans who are young and brash go for the immediate kill with their usual militant spirit for capitalist gain like the Hearst castle in San Simeon where the heir of the Hearst publishing magnate created his own castle replete with all the accouterments a castle. But now the Hearst trust after only a few decades plans to change the castle, built on the thousand of acres, into a resort hotel. The pursuit of capital gains that translate into such a great economic super power for America, France brushes off without even giving it a second thought.

The national pride shows in the way the history is preserved in the hundred-year-old limestone buildings and how the new accommodations needed for growing population is delicately balanced on top of the existing ones. They scaffold and enhance and weld the old with the new, effectively. The cathedral where Joan of Arc got her sisterhood and the pews that she bent down for appeasement are open to the public and still honored by Christians and non Christians alike from all walks of life. We still go for their services in the impressive vaulted ceilings painted by some famous artist just as they did hundreds of years ago. The town centre with cobbled stones gray and immaculate is positioned in impressive precision. Not knowing what to stare at any more, the ground that our shoes touch or the soaring heights of the great buildings, we shorten our strides and savor the essence of our being in a time and space so pristine and mystical.

The tourist office 2 kilometer of walking to the middle of historical town center, very few cars venture. The crowds of pedestrians enjoy majestic buildings built by the once powerful Catholic Church, and click away pictures of the great sculptures erected in various human figure postures. We are able to engage the young woman on the counter to give us the map for the southeast France bordering Switzerland. The half a page small map that we get from the car rental shop, covers only the city of Paris and is useless right now but will come handy later. “No charge for the map downloaded from a site and printed,” said the madame. Very Cheap, in French, the book said is Pas Mal and I parrot the feedback with correct intonation. It brings genuine chuckles from behind the counter.

Nothing is ‘Pas mal’ at the Patisserie café at the corner of the several main junctions of the town center. Our first experience ordering café au lait follows help us make the observation later that Italians make good cappuccinos and French espressos. We order three cappuccinos and get instead Americano style coffee drinks with foamy cream spiraled from the can on the top. Fuming and feeling cheated, I refuse to acquiescence to this junk and then pay for it, too. After all growing up in the most militant of the countries, Pakistan and then America, I am not afraid to take up a challenge.

I go inside the café approach the mahogany wooden bar with sparkling wine bottles and caught the preppy who made my coffee. Creating indistinguishable noises, I air loudly with waving hands profusely, my discontent. I try to tell him that nobody in coffee drinking countries uses any cream in their coffee let alone a vintage canned cream. My lecture sounds like this, “non cream/Whippy in America , Italy, England,” and then touching my almost ‘no love handles’ waist trying to convince him that I am not the obese junk crazed Americano out binging. My better half sitting pleasantly skimming off the one third of the cream is not placid anymore, I notice. His face almost hidden inside the coffee cup is shaking. He might be choking with anger for all what I know, but he is not. He distracts me in the middle of my outburst.

Visualize this. Standing on the sidewalk café and showing off a body fit from running on treadmill for half an hour, lifting weights at Gymkhana and implementing a strict diet regimen of whole wheat bread, olive oil sprinkled salads, hummus and no oil curries and parathas ( a miracle) with only one exception walnut tarts from Masoom. I am an epitome of good health. Hammering it in with grinding teeth I show him what I actually want to tell him-you foolish French man this good health doesn’t come easy like ‘Whippy’ the brand of the canned whipping cream that you just served us!

A gurgle of laughter spits out in like geysers of Geneva as my husband unfolds out of his dreadful hiding position. Faster than breaking the sound barrier the drama of the situation unfolds to an amicable resolution when the manager replaces my coffee with un café au lait with milk on the side. The French specialty.

The first day in Port du Orlean is well spent and we plan to stay the half-day tomorrow before moving on. But it’s not the end but just the beginning as we spent the first seven days in seven different hotels. The rest of the stay will be in the upgraded hotels with French/Swiss style breakfast that will include muesli rich cereals, dried juicy plums, apricots, fresh yogurt in glass bowls and more. Until next time, Au revoir.