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| What would be considered a beggar's footwear in Sêfrika was sold for E300 in France in 2002. |
By popular demand, what follows are the travel wisdoms I learned during my first trip overseas. (Or the second, if you count the ferry to Robbin Island as going over the sea.)
It was to France, back in 2002, when the Nokia 3310 was considered the best tech you could pack and digital cameras were still universally crap. I should have read George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris" before going, but I didn't, which is how I ended up teaching myself rule 3 in my rules of travel.
Back then I routinely drove 20,000 km a month and was no noob to living out of a backpack. As always when en route, I planned to combine business with pleasure. First the factory visit near Montpellier, then a weekend in Paris, followed by a road trip to friends in Dijon before a pilgrimage to the famous race track in Le Mans.
It was summer back home in the southern hemisphere, but deep winter in France and with day temperatures hovering at 5 degrees Celsius, I wore three layers while out in the open down in the picturesque south of France. Inside the bullet train to Gare du Nord in Paris the layers soon proved too warm and I was sweating like a pig on the packed subway to Renault’s factory, where a car awaited.
Swaying on a corner seat in the packed train, I decided to remove the middle layer. This required unhooking my small moon bag, which hung like a holster under my armpit between two pullovers. I pulled off the thick pullover, tucked the moon bag between my legs and as I pulled the second, thin fleece over my head, the train stopped just as someone behind me snatched the moon bag from between my legs!
At the small police station, a disinterested cop noted down the theft of my wallet and passport and in broken English told me some other African would soon be using both in London.
A recorded voice at my country's embassy informed me "we are closed for the weekend, please to call again on Monday".
"Fokof!" works in all languages
Now hyper paranoid of anyone approaching me, I sat down to take stock, my back to a wall. On the minus side: No way to prove my identity, draw cash or pay by card. On the positive side: I still had my GPRS phone and a car charger, my camera and lenses, my flight tickets home in their Air France folder, a day pass on Paris rail, and 35 Euro cents. And in a few days, I would have wheels.
Meanwhile, I had grown wise to the drop-dead gorgeous babes approaching with some question from the front while the pick-pocketing boyfriend sneaks up behind. Even sitting with my back to the wall I was approached by several the doe-eyed girls, all of whom were told in clear Afrikaans to fokk off, which seems to need no translation in Romanian.
So, as the French police officer said, "tant piss", all I needed to do was find a bed for three nights and then I’d be mobile. The flight ticket home being my most expensive items, I tucked it deep under my long johns. Not even the best pickpocket would peal that off my butt without me noticing!
I used my day pass to get as close to the car factory as possible. Many blocks later that icy night, a surly manager at a small pensione agreed to hold my camera and lenses in credit for his wildly overpriced room rates, until I could get my passport and cards replaced after the weekend.
The moans from the neighbouring rooms gave me a hint that perhaps this was not just a pensione. Or could it be that the French really do have better sex lives? I activated roaming on the GPRS phone, and for the next two days proceeded to ran up a phone bill that still makes my eyes water when I think of it.
My first call was to cancel and replace the stolen cards. A lady at Visa’s call centre in New Orleans explained that new cards would take a week, but for a small fee, emergency cash can be arranged on the spot. She assured me in a lovely Southern drawl that “Honey, the money would be at Western Union the next day”, which was a Saturday.
Only, it wasn’t.
“Come back maybe Monday,” was the advice of the laconic clerk at the WU branch.
Wandering the streets of the industrial suburbs of Paris, I listed all the food you can buy with 35 Euro cents. A sliver off a pizza slice. A sip of mineral water. A nibble of toast, sans butter. That night and the next, my empty stomach made louder noises than the patrons next door.
That Monday dawned grey and cold as I first collected my car with a blessedly full tank from the Renault factory to drive back to the embassy in central Paris to have the stolen passport replaced. Paper work completed, I was told to come back the next day for the emergency passport.
Still no money from Visa at the Western Union. “It sometimes take quattro, cinc days, you must wait. Next!”
I spend the night in the icy car, the gauge showing 2 degrees Celsius out. Not much warmer in. How to get food. Beg? Too proud. Busk? No talent. Pirate taxi? Didn’t know the city. Dumpster dive? Could not find any dumpsters with food in it. (I checked.)
Go back to my “pensione” to sell my body? This body? I'd probably have to pay the client.
So the next morning, I stole food. Three tiny croissants. I’m not proud of it, but even in memory they still taste fan-fucking-tastic.
Late Tuesday afternoon I finally had a passport and cash. Visa's “small fee” amounted to one South African Rand for each Rand they transferred, effectively halving my travel budget.
I estimated distances and fuel consumption. At a stretch, I could just about do the Le Mans trip. I cancelled the Dijon visit and set off to find first, a place serving cold beer and hot calzone and second, a cosy pensione that did not rent out rooms by the hour.
The dark beer was good and the Italian calzone did French cuisine proud. Stomach full for the first time in five nights and four days, I was a happy man as I set out to find a welcoming little house with a BnB sign on the back roads to Le Mans.
There weren't any.
I drove slowly through villages and hamlets, eventually even looking for a Formula 1 hotel, but the I learned that in rural France, the hamlets don't even have street lights. It was about this time that I decided to join the (then still new) web group of couchsurfers.
As I continued to drive into the night, looking for a door to knock on for a bed to rent, my stomach made its own knocks after the rich meal. Another hamlet, another total lack of doors to knock on, while my stomach was now using its fist on a figurative toilet door. "Open up!"
A third hamlet... a gaunt Gothic church! Surely it had a toilet, even a Moslem style hole in the ground?
Nope.
Small wonder my ancestors had become Protestants. As I passed a field of frozen cabbage under a crisp, full moon, my stomach stopped knocking and instead just kicked the door down, demanding a full evacuation, right now!
I braked to a stop, grabbed a pack of wet wipes with one hand and flung myself out of the car, grabbing hold of a field post as I dropped my denim and long johns to squat in one urgent move.
Blissful release -- until I remembered that air ticket in its little Air France folder.
Still hanging onto the pole, I studied the steaming pile below me. The folder had fluttered clear. Not so much the ticket. In the moonlight, a lone white corner glimmered.
I hung there a long moment, thinking what next. Then I cleaned up and got back in the car. The temperature gauge read -2 degrees Celsius. An hour or so and I should be able to, well, "de-ice" my flight ticket.
I spend that bitterly cold night using the fuel intended for Le Mans to run the heater, formulating my first three travel rules.
Later that week, at the security theatre called Paris De Gaulle, my ticket was demanded every few metres by some steely eyed twat confusing me with a terrorist. I made sure to hold onto the tiny white corner as I handed over the otherwise beige plane ticket for inspection.
I've not gone back to Paris, and still think my Protestant ancestors were right to leave. But I have made good use of the lessons that old tart of a city taught me in several other countries since. So I guess I have to say finally say it: "merci beaucoup, Paris".
