So this past weekend, I went and visited my friend Elliott in Lyon.
The last time we saw each other was at the airport in Rome in June, after galavanting around Italy for a week, so we were overdue for another adventure. We figured the best meeting point was Lyon, because it wasn’t not too far from Grenoble, where he’s studying, and it’s close to the family he worked for in the summer, who would surely take us in for a few nights.
We’d been planning to get together for a few weeks, but as much as we tried to finagle our schedules, there always seemed to be a conflict. However, I was in desperate need of a familiar face, so even though I was exhausted from my trip to Berlin the previous weekend and would have to find my way to London from Lyon on Sunday afternoon, I decided to go.
This weekend, like our adventures past, was to be a low budget trip. Elliot is, naturally, a broke college student studying abroad. Being the cost conscious guy that he is, he proposed that we find the cheapest alternative to housing, also known as “couch surfing.”
Now, I’m usually up for most things – sketchy hostels, finding hotels the day of arrival, sleeping in tents, etc – however, the idea of staying at a random persons house for free was disconcerting to me. He assured me that this was a legit program and we’d be fine. Not wanting to make the guy forfeit a week’s worth of groceries for my peace of mind, I agreed to couch surf for one night.
He told me that he had written to two different people who had offered up their “couches” in Lyon: an American student who lived with 9 other American study-abroaders and a French girl who lived with her boyfriend. The only decision now was to choose which couch to “surf” on.
If we stayed with the American students, I foresaw a night of obnoxious American college humor and binge drinking, the opposite of what I was looking for. However, I had no idea what to expect with a random couple. Fearing the unknown, and realizing that my tolerance for high risk situations had decreased since this summer, I told Elliott that the American couch would do for a night. Of course, Elliott had already told the French couple we’d crash with them. C’est la vie.
I met Elliot in the train station in Lyon on Friday night. It was such a good feeling to be reunited with a good friend, especially after a rough couple of weeks in Brussels. We chit-chatted as we found our way to the Lyon Metro. My initial thoughts of Lyon… nice! The square we walked through was busy, but not overwhelming. It had a nice buzz, something equivalent to downtown Boston.
Having never been to Lyon, I was completely disoriented when we resurfaced from the underground metro, so l’etudiant (the student) guided the way. Wanting to let the couple know we were close, he called the girl who was hosting us (who’s name completely escapes me). All of sudden, French words were coming out of Elliott and fast! When did he become fluent? While he rapidly conversed in French, I thought back at my 6 months in Brussels. In all that time there, how could my French be so pathetically poor? A ping of regret hit me for not spending my spring semester junior year in Paris. Meh, but one can’t go through life thinking like that, cause had I gone to France, then I wouldn’t have done ASB, and yadda yadda yadda. I just made a mental note that, in the future, I need to be much more proactive about my French, starting with this French couple that we were about to stay with.
Although we were staying for free, our “payment” would come in the form of an American dinner that we agreed we’d prepare. Elliott and I had discussed making a very classic dish for them, Mac n’ Cheese. I brought from Brussels a box of Kraft Mac n’ Cheese that Liz had sent me from the US. However, it wasn’t going to be enough for 4 people; so we decided to buy extra macaroni noodles and cheese and make some from scratch. To top the meal off, we obviously bought a bottle of French wine.
We managed to find the side street that these people lived on, but before we got to the door, they shouted down to us. ”Elliott? La port est ici!” … or something like that. From first glance, they looked like friends from college. The guy was wearing a regular t-shirt and the girl was wearing some hippy-esque print that was characteristic of the clothes my friend Marisa wears. For some reason, I was expecting older people, but out the window you could tell they were just in their middle to late 20s. We walked up two flights of stairs, before we were greeted, cheek to cheek, by the French guy and girl (again, their names escape me).
We entered their apartment and I had a flashback to Kelley’s apartment off Comm. Ave. From the couch to the the curtains, everything was earth tones. They had momentos from all over the world, from large Indian tapestries to cool African masks. It was fairly small but cozy. The laid back, college-like vibe was immediately comforting, in contrast to my sterile IKEA furnished apartment.
The guy, who was kind of short, was dressed in beige cargo pants and a gray shirt with some sort of band emblem that I didn’t recognize. He was very cordial but had a quiet demeaner to him. The girl was kind of shy too. Naturally beautiful (like most French women), her open, bohemian vibe put my anxieties about this situation to rest. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but I think my cynical side had prevented me from believing that people so open still existed. I welcomed this shock to my system.
They offered us the stools around their makeshift kitchen island. They said they spoke some English, but it wasn’t very good. A perfect opportunity to focus on my French! However, as we began to converse about the basics – home town, what we do, etc – I found that after having worked and traveled all day, my brain did not want to engage that way. I did my best.
By the time our introductory conversation was over, I was famished. They decided to let us cook for a while, as they finished up some household chores. The French guy turned on his itunes to fill the silence, and to our great surprise the songs that kept coming up were some of my favorites and Elliott’s too.
He had an amazing selection of jazz/r&b/reggae! When we got really excited about his music, you could tell it made him really happy by the grin on his face. I love when music transcends language barrier! We went over some our favorites, Ray Charles, BB King, and even some recent stuff out of Boston like Vampire Weekend! He also put on some of his favorite French bands and I was able to walk away with a couple of new names to look up! It was a perfect transition into dinner and I was thoroughly enjoying this cultural exchange.
The food, well, one can’t expect too much from Kraft Mac n’ Cheese. Not sure if they enjoyed the meal, but at least there was good French wine to help it go down. Also, their fascination with the condensed powdered cheddar cheese was priceless.
After dinner, we decided that to entertain ourselves by playing a card game, one I’d never seen before, it required a bit of hand-eye coordination, something I was lacking after a day of traveling. Either way it was good fun, supplemented by the absenth they poured for as a night cap. It felt good to be doing something random and IHP-like, away from the corporate 9-5.
Even though I slept on a couch in a sleeping bag, I felt pretty refreshed. I think being with a friend, away from Brussels allowed me to relax and slip back into my goofy free-spirited self again. It was a great feeling. Before touring Lyon, we decided to make them American style omlets as yet another token of our appreciation for their generous hospitality and their mental stability (verses the psychopaths I had envisioned).
We had a few hours before we needed to catch the bus to Beaujoulais, the region where Elliott’s friend Vincent makes his organic wine! It was a beautiful afternoon, the sun beamed through the scattered clouds, reflecting off the white stone in the city squares, giving Lyon even more life! 
God it felt good to be out of Brussels. So we walked from “place” to ”place,” eventually stopping at an outdoor market to buy food for dinner. Seeing as we were in the gastronomical capital of the world, we had to buy quintessential Lyonnaise food: sausage and cheese.
We hopped on the bus and after driving 45 minutes through the rolling hills of Lyon, we arrived in a small town in Beaujoulais.
Why were we going to this Vineyard? Well, last year, Elliott spent the summer WWOOF-ing. WWOOF being World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. He spent most of his summer working for Vincent on his vineyard. So he was returning to them for a few days to say hi, drink some wine and get away from Grenoble.
Vincent’s father, a very cute old man, picked us up in his olive green Peugeot. He was extremely friendly from the get-go. You could tell he was accustomed to having young non-fluent speakers come through, because he spoke to me slowly so that I could understand his French and respond.He gave me a mini tour, pointing out where town was and explaining why the rocks in the area were so yellow (due to the high doses of calcium in the soil, if I remember correctly).
A few minutes later, we arrived at the house. It was quaint and modest, nothing like the vineyard homes in Napa, CA, but it definitely fit the landscape.
Vincent’s mother came out to greet us. A warm and bubbly personality, she invited us into the home and immediately asked us what we wanted to drink – coffee, tea, hot chocolate. Unfortunately, Vincent was in London visiting his wife, since it was Valentines weekend and wouldn’t be back until the next day, but the grandparents were happy to take care of us anyway.
You could tell that they really cared about Elliott. He’d become a family friend, even a bit of a celebrity. While he was there over the summer, the French TV station did a special on WWOOFers and Elliott had a bit of a starring role. haha. It was an endearing atmosphere, something I was happy to watch, since my life in Brussels was quite void of familial sentiment.
After the delightful afternoon snack, we decided to stop by the guest house, where all WWOOFers and guests stay. The grandparents had warned us that the 2 WWOOFers currently staying with them had brought some of their friends in, so they weren’t sure what kind of space there’d be. We could hear them as we approached - Americans. We walk in and introduce ourselves to seven people hanging around the living. Realizing it would be a tight squeeze, we decided to we’d cook at the guest house but sleep at the neighbor’s house.
Before cooking dinner, Elliott took me on a tour of the vineyard. I was pumped, cause I’d never been on a French vineyard before. My day long wine tour in Argentina two years ago was more about the tasting than anything else, so that experience doesn’t really count. He showed me what he picked, what he planted and even the machine they used to bottle and cork the wine. The way he described how hard, but rewarding the manual labor was made the farming lifestyle sound really appealing. I mean, I guess it’s all relative, seeing as my perspective was/is one of complete dissatisfaction with “city” life in Brussels.
We walked around at sunset and the view was just magnificent. The rolling hills were a site for sour eyes and the silence was music to my ears!
Around dusk, we headed back to the guest house to cook our Lyonnaise food. Our compatriots were a few bottles in, so when we arrived it was non-stop talking. There were some real characters in the group. An American chef, a 24 year old who had served in Iraq and hated America, a really wide-eyed girl from Charlotte, and two … Missiourians – what are the odds? Naturally, we had friends in common.
I forgot how chatty American students are. I mean, I’m sure i was this way before Brussels made me jaded. Mind you, I hadn’t had contact with an America that I didn’t know in…I don’t know how long. I know 1 American in Brussels who, oddly enough, is from my hometown, so we have more common ground than most, high school and when I returned to the US, I only met up with friends and friends of friends, not complete strangers. I felt like I was at a college party or something. Of course, when I told them what I was doing they replied with crazy enthusiasm about my job, not understanding what life as an American expat really means or the frustrations that moving to a foreign country by yourself with no friends entails. It was then, when Elliott and I decided to remove ourselves from their conversation.
The toasty fire, the delicious wine and cheese, and a quality venting session were were juuuuust what I needed. Around 1am, we headed over to the neighbors “bungalow,” which really meant a half built extension to this man’s house. It was a perfectly clear night and the only sound was crackling gravel underneath our feet. I passed out, feeling more content and happy than I had felt in a long time.
Personally, I woke up not wanting to leave; however, hygenically, I was really excited I was going to be in London by night. Two days of not showering was not a fun feeling. Showers aside, I was ready to spend the rest of the afternoon frolicking in the fields, which is exactly what we did. After breakfast, and watching Elliott’s TV debut, we walked through the vineyards, to town, and back. At one point, we sat on a hill and just stared out once more at the stunning view.
My two day experience on the farm nearly converted me to the life of a farmer. By choosing to live away from cities, you don’t have to deal with people, and that was sounding pretty good; though, I’m quite sure the extrovert in me would go crazy after a while. I now understand the why city goers have farm houses.
London was a 7 hour journey, so I had to get going in the mid afternoon and my schedule left little room for error. I had to take the commuter rail to the Lyon Metro station, take the Lyon Metro to Lyon train station, find my TGV train to Paris. In Paris, I had to change train stations via the Paris Metro. At Gare du Nord, I picked up the Eurostar to London and then the Tube from St. Pancras to Clapham South. Thank god I knew Paris and London well and that love maps, because if I didn’t I would have been absolutely screwed.
After all of that, I made it to my friend Karla’s apartment! In a couple hours, I went from being in secluded vineyard to the heart of the biggest city in the world. And yet, even in the craziness of the tube, I still felt quite “zen,” perhaps its was the energy of the city or the remnants of my peaceful getaway, not sure. Either way, after taking a much needed shower, when I went to bed, I felt rejuvenated and ready to reengage with the world…
