L. Lee

Let’s play

Have I ever described Sylvie’s parents’ incredible home?  I have been meaning to, but I realized in that detailing it I would make it one of those locations that would come off sounding like one giant, hackneyed seaside cliche.  A house carved into a hill. Stunning views of Monaco and the Mediterranean Sea. Gardens. A hen house. Steps everywhere.

I can only describe my joy in being there, which multiplied each morning I woke up and walked outside. It was not only the house, of course, but when happy experiences coincide with a deep-rooted pleasure at simply being where you are, you end up with magic.  

We were coming home one evening around sunset when I noticed that a tree to my right had a staircase. I had somehow not seen it before, so when my eyes trailed up and saw this adorable little home, I squealed.  And 6-year-old Lilian is still alive and thriving in my soul, so the first thing I did the next morning was climb up.  

Ladies and Gents, this is Sylvie’s treehouse:

And this is the view from the treehouse:

Introducing my fabulous, wonderful, amazing couchsurfing hosts

I heard about CS in early 2008.  I joined CS on June 22, 2009.  I waited an entire year before becoming comfortable enough with the idea to actually try couchsurfing.  99% of the people I talked to about doing it pooh-poohed it, with the exception of Chuck.  Some of them explicitly tried to talk me out of it (citing safety reasons, offering to help pay for hotels, etc), and others just gave me this LOOK.  Like, it was nice knowing you!  if I don’t see you again, I’ll know why!  

I’m really very thankful that I didn’t listen to these people because I had one of the best experiences of my life.  I went in with no expectations, and from the very beginning, I was swept up by the kindness and trust of people with whom I had only ever talked to via the internet.  

Let’s start with Sylvie.

Sylvie loves organic stuff.  She’s an artist, a dancer, a musician (plays the djembe!), and works with troubled children as an educatrice spécialisée.  She stops to take a look at every jewelry stand at the markets in Antibes and Nice. She is the kind of girl who, when it gets insufferably hot, takes showers with her dress on at the public beach showers.  In short, she’s quite lovely.

While she is renovating her new apartment in Nice, I stayed at her little flat in Roquebrune.  Her parents built it right next to their house when she was 18.  I think I probably took over a hundred photos of their garden, terrace, and views.  Some afternoons I didn’t even want to go anywhere, so perfectly content was i just sitting on this bench table and reading and writing and taking photos. 

Of course, we still made it to the beach.  A note about this beach: It was the very same one CD and I went to in 2007 on our magical beach day so you can imagine how happy I was to rediscover it. 

Sylvie’s English is excellent, the kind of excellent you don’t expect from someone who hasn’t lived in an English-speaking country for a while.  I love polyglots, mainly because I am very jealous of them, and it turns out that Sylvie is Italian and speaks that language too.  Her father hails from northern Italy, and he kind of reminded me of Marcello Mastroianni.  Her mother comes from southern Italy, and I pretty much gobbled up everything she made for lunch one afternoon.  It included squash flower beignets and homemade melon sorbet. 

We spent so much time together talking, eating, swimming, walking that I felt like I was visiting an old friend instead of making a new one.  I knew she was my kind of person when we spent an hour grocery shopping at Carrefour (true fact: Carrefour is one of my favorite places in France).  I was sad to leave her at the end of our 4 days together, but very excited to mosey on over to Menton and meet my next host, Catherine.

Right off the bat, Catherine is super chatty and laughs a lot.  Plus she has great legs and is seemingly indefatigable.  I wanted to hug her for tolerating my French for two days and for teaching me a new way to say something sucks, “c’est de la daube!”

Catherine lives in a spic and span apartment in the very middle of Menton.  As with my previous host, I was in a superb location with her.  One morning, we took a walk to the food market and brought home an amazing assortment of treats for lunch, and I loved trying each and every single one of them: Socca, anchovy pizza, pichade (a french tomato tart and a specialty of Menton, acc. to wikipedia), Swiss chard beignets, and pissaladiere (a white pizza with caramelized onions).  Dessert was fresh figs. 

She also let me raid the olive collection in her refrigerator.  

We went to the Friday market in Ventimiglia, Italy, where I swore to buy nothing but ended up borrowing money from her to buy gloves!  She is like me in that we are not the kind of person you want to go shopping with when you’re on a budget.  However, they were very pretty brown leather gloves with rabbit fur lining inside.  I don’t feel so guilty about rabbit fur because I eat them too.  Mentally, I couldn’t handle fur from foxes, beavers, raccoons.

I am indebted to Catherine for taking me to a parapharmacie and going through each French beauty brand with me.  NO JOKE, I have been wanting to do that for the last two years.  I left with a Cattier toothpaste containing clay and propolis for my dad and plans to stock up on Nuxe products in Paris.

There is something about traveling that makes people sappy, and so here it goes: Sylvie and Catherine, thank you for your time and generosity.  Thank you to Heidi, for treating me to tea and fabulous views of London at the Tate; and Kelly, the stranger who gave me a ride at midnight on a creepy country road outside of London; and to you, the guy in Nice who bought my train ticket because my credit card wouldn’t work in the machine and let me pay pay you back in coins.**

It’s hard to muster the courage to travel alone without a purpose and to trust that good will come of it, but I think it always does.  

**But no thanks to you, the bus driver who left me on the road somewhere between Eze and Beaulieu because I only had 70 centimes instead of 1 Euro.

Couchsurfing

I’ve been itching to try couchsurfing since three years ago.  I happen to think it’s a brilliant, innovative idea that plays on the age-old theme of hospitality.  I created a profile some time ago, but only recently added a photo of me and information that I thought other people might want to know when they’re considering my request to stay with them.

Since I’ll be couchsurfing alone in the south of france, I’ve been trying to stick with females, but they are seriously outnumbered by males for that region.  I have no idea why, except to think that these men are really expectant of some action with their guests.  Some men write that they prefer girls.  Some men include the winking smiley face on their profiles.  Some men say that they live in a quiet (read: no one will come to help if i scream for some reason) neighborhood.  Besides simply being men, these are all automatic NOs.  But once, I admit, I really had be talked out of requesting a couchsurf with a guy who lives in the middle of a fabulous resort town, is a cook and a pastry chef, and writes on his profile that “cooking/eating will not be a problem. ;)”  I imagined all the good meals I would have with him.  Plus, his photo looked normal. 

I thought this guy could be the exception to my No Guys rule, until a male friend looked at me askance and said, “if i was a weird man who wanted to get girls in my home i would say that i was a cook and a pastry chef.”

A good cynical point there. 

Still, I really want to believe in the philosophy of couchsurfing, even if it does seem creepy and slightly suspicious the disproportionate number of males who are seeking to invite people into their homes.  Maybe it’s all those papers I wrote dissecting this very topic in medieval literature, but I am of the school of hospitality that places the guest/host relationship on a very high, almost sacred, level.  It’s no easy thing to invite a stranger into your home, and it goes against most people’s comfort zones to trust someone to provide shelter, no questions asked.  At the most fundamental level, the activity of couchsurfing requires all participants involved to suspend their distrust of others.

Not to say that everyone on Couchsurfing.org is normal or knows how to communicate.  Just look at this message I received yesterday from Perssy/perscy:

hi,
how are you doing, i hope you are fine,how is your family? how is in holly wood, i know you are doing good, i will love to come and pay you a visit and for you to show me round but the thing is that i am in africa, but i will like to be your friend for life , i know i will be there with time to hang around with you,
i am looking forward to hear from you
greetings

perscy