Talking France

“No, here we say ‘bonjour’.”

I failed dismally in my first French interaction.  Worse, I didn’t even try. I went to the counter of the little ‘supermarche’ with some cheese, bread and a carton of I-hope-this-is-milk, smiled at the cashier, and witnessed my regular lessons, constant practice and good intentions pile up in a messy, self-conscious heap the moment I opened my mouth:
“Hullo!”

Dammit. Supermarche Guy told me how to say hello, followed with “We say ‘ca va’ here,” and proceeded to talk loudly, slowly and with gestures to drag me through the remainder of my linguistic disappointment. I gathered my cheese, bread and <sigh> lactose-free and scurried out, cursing myself in French. Which, since my iPad app didn’t cover swearing, was the same as English cursing, but with ‘le’ before each word.

Le bugger

Everyone in Paris speaks English. EVERYONE. There was one blip at the post office where the old girl replied to my ‘Parlez vous Anglais?’ with ‘A leetle’, but everyone else spoke my native tongue better than many of the natives I know.  And even she knew enough to get stamps on my postcards and direct me to the box to put them in without resorting to charades. My hotel booking was conducted entirely in slightly patronising English, my questions in le Musee du Militaire were answered in accented but word-perfect English, and waiters seemed to have agreed beforehand to answer my attempts at French with polite English that made it clear they weren’t interested in advancing my polylingual ambitions. I persisted nonetheless, simply because…well, I went to all that effort. I’d even rehearsed my little speech explaining myself, along the lines of “I’m from Australia, I only speak a little French. Dishwasher.” But the worst Parisian’s English was better than my petit Francais, so I was wondering why I bothered.

Things changed when I headed for Caen.

Now, Caen is a big town. It falls into that hundred-thousand size you don’t get much in Australia, most of us clumping in groups of three hundred, ten thousand or two million. Distance-wise, going there was like going from Perth to Collie, or perhaps Sydney to Newcastle and a bit. Culture-wise, it’s a bit more of a leap. There are the same cafes, the same quirky shops, the same little supermarches (I only saw one Australia-sized supermarket in Paris. Not as in ‘As big as Australia', but…ahh, you know). Traffic’s the same; fast, wide cars on slow, narrow streets made for a donkey pulling a cart made of haybales or whatever. The cathedral-to-human ratio is far higher (srsly, four cathedrals in sight of each other), but there were more tourists than worshippers in every one I visited. Anyway, smaller than Paris, but still pretty big.

One of Caen's fine cathedrals. Possibly not the straightest one.

First stop after I’d settled in was back to the train station to get tickets for my next leg. No different from a travel bureau elsewhere really; a queue, some counters, a bunch of timetable racks in no discernible order and a teeny bent old babushka in the queue who you KNOW is going to pay in coins. But one of the counters had a little Union Jack over it. The thought they were showing solidarity with their English neighbours didn’t cross my mind. The idea I was about to hit a linguistic hurdle did.

I make the front of the queue. ‘Ding’, friendly wave from old mate at one of the not-Union Jack counters. Making the leap, I call out, ‘Anglais?’ Well, I called out ‘OngLAY?’, because yeah, I am ALL about the accent here. And yes, it was gratifying that he understood my one-word sentence, smiled and gestured to Union Jack counter. She had just finished counting the copper from octogenarian shuffle-granny, so I stepped up and made with the ‘Bonjour!’

“’Ello sir, ‘ow can I yelp?’

Heh. Claire had an accent. And I had a plan. Wary of accidentally booking myself a train ride to Madagascar, I had written down the places, dates and directions of travel on my never-go-to-France-without-it leather-bound A5 notebook.

“I would like to do this please!”

Claire nodded. “Okey, we can do this.” The weird random typing that seems to comprise long-distance travel booking began. But only briefly; it seemed I’d posted her a challenge. My first leg to Thionville was easy, but I then wanted to go from there to Amsterdam. A distance of only four hundred or so kilometres north, but the direct route involved crossing three borders more often crossed by artillery fire than late-travelling Aussies. Claire tapped and frowned, then summoned a higher power.

“Henri? Moment?”

I missed the rapid-fire questions she launched at senior guy when he came to her aid, but I recognised the words ‘How’, ‘ Never booked this’ and ‘baba ganoush.’ The last one seemed unlikely, but I was still trying to mentally translate her ‘bonjour’ by the time she got there so I dunno, they might’ve been talking about lunch by then.

They conversed, in French. I heard some recognisable words, like ‘d’accord (DACK-ore)’, ‘deux billets (duh BEE-ay)’ and ‘Vienna (VEEwaitwhat?)’ There  were pauses to…not translate, but explain (“It is a tricky journey, we are looking for the best way”), then back to a private conversation I was twenty lessons away from understanding.

But they figured it out. And by the time we got there I’d learned how to properly pronounce ‘Caen’ (‘Caw’, but cut the ‘w’ sound real short), ‘Thionville’ (roughly how it looks, but they do this wonderful thing to the double ‘L’ that makes it sound like “teeON-vee-yuh’) and ‘Premiere classe’ (like it looks. Who cares; for some reason first class was cheaper than second, and I wanted to share my leg room bonanza.)

So it wasn’t really a French interaction. But it felt better than when I squibbed at the supermarche.

Caen and the greater Normandy region provided a few more language giggles. The guy leading a tour at Pointe du Hoc artillery battery going a mile a minute, calling the personnel bunkers ‘personal bankers’, and shells fired at it ‘artillery booms’. Old mate at Maisy battery (yes I went to a lot of batteries) launching into a French intro when I came in, then lapsing back to English with a broad Manchester accent when I went “Dawk?” Oh, and a real challenge at the next post office. Seems mail clerks aren’t hired for linguistic prowess (eh, I’m sure they’re amazing stamp lickers), and this time my “Parlay-voo?” was greeted with a sad shake and a “Non.” Naturally this wasn’t the ‘two postcards’ occasion, but the ‘three international parcels with things inside’ trip. Somehow we made our way through mail class, customs forms, sealing the parcels (a success here; I knew what ‘ferme’ meant! It’s the little wins) and paying (“DEEZ sank, CATruh vah euros.” Which I immediately interpreted as ‘Just use your credit card’). She had enough English words and I had enough French charades for us to get there in the end. As to whether I sent three parcels Australia-wards or delivered a random selection of gifts to needy families in Burkina Faso, only time will tell.

"So the Americans are artillery booming very much, but the Germans build bunkers very strengthly. They are deep inside, not dying, so the Americans are coming up the cliffs to stop them not dying in person!"

In any case, by the time I jumped the train to Thionville I felt like I was making progress.

You might have guessed what’s coming here. Paris is big, and everyone speaks English. Caen is a reasonable size, and most folks speak a little. Thionville? Eight hundred year old farming-town surrounded by cornfields. I was wondering if I should learn what “We don’ take KINDLY to strangers in these here parts” sounded like in French.

“Australia?” Hotel reception guy’s eyes went big. He did this double-hand wave-at-the-distance gesture. “So FAR!” Nobody else had batted an eye at my antipodean provenance, so I’m guessing they don’t get too many of us way out in Alsace-Lorraine. Not since the Kaiser came knocking a while back at least. Frankly I didn’t care; I was there to see rusty guns and decaying concrete, and I was willing to charade from one end of the Maginot Line to the other if that’s what it took. Hotel guy was easily amazed but hard to fault; he had me checked in before I had time to mentally rehearse my “Ou est le Ligne Maginot?” spiel. But I knew I had interesting times ahead.

A shop window in Thionville. No, it doesn't fit the narrative, but...look at those donuts. LOOK at them.

And it started early. Bike hire tent down at the river fair was staffed by one comfortable old girl who might have been there to give Rommel a wave as he came through. So I’m thinking “Parlez-non” before I ask the question

Sure enough, a sad smile and a shake of the head. No problem, I’m prepared. Here goes:

“Je voudrais louer un velo pour un jour, s’il vous plaiz.”

Enthusiastic nod. “Ah, oui!”

Whoa. Did that just work?

“D’accord,” <drops paperwork in front of me>, “Allez,” <points at boxes to fill in>, “C’est sa!” <watching me fill them in>. Suddenly she’s unchained a bike, she’s pointing and “Allez”-ing and “D’accord”-ing and nodding and smiling at my encouraging “Ah, oui!” responses. One more challenge: “Uh, anti-vol?” I say, doing a sort-of two-handed putting-a-chain-round-a-thing gesture.

“Oui, voila!” she says, demonstrating the bike’s inbuilt anti-theft dinger. Step back, nod, hold out hand. “Quatre euros s’il vous plaiz.’

I’m a mile down the road when I realise that’s my first no-English exchange. And given there’s a bike underneath me when I click, I’m figuring that it went pretty well. Still, given the only thing she sold was bike hire, I probably could have pointed and said “Ug” and been sufficiently understood.

The best the only bike hire place in Thionville had to offer. Lights, honky horn, mudguards, gross weight around fifty kilos. And yes, that's a basket on the front. I rode forty kilometres on this torture rack, including a brief toodle down what turned out to be a freeway onramp. Followed by a terrified scramble back up said onramp.

On to fortress Hackenberg. The tour itself was no language challenge (the bigger tourism sites know which side their baguette is buttered on, and always have English guides), but before I got there I stopped off in the village of Veckring.

If you're thinking that sounds a bit German, you might be right. I’m in Alsace-Lorraine here, which was ceded to the Prussians (who were sort of Germans, but in the Jurassic) after the disastrous war of 1870 (disastrous for the French that is. And no, there wasn’t much about that one in the museums). It, uh, receded to the French after World War 1, and naturally brought nearly fifty years of German-ness with it. Place names, street signs and a disappointing lack of croissants was just the start of it.

Now, Veckring is literally a village. Houses, fields, other houses. No shops. Like, none. Not even a service station. It was 35 degrees, I’d been riding that basketed battlewagon for two hours and my half-litre water bottle was just about spent, so I was keen to find a waiter to patronise my attempts to order petit dejeuneur. A lap of the place showed nothing, so I resorted to pulling up next to leather-skinned old mate creaking up the road.

“Excuzes moi? Ou est un café, s’il vous plaiz?”

“Eh? Uh?”

Hm. Maybe he’s not from round here. Maybe slower and loude…no, not doing that. Try again.

“Ou est un café, s’il vous plaiz? Café?”

“Ah!” <points> “Tout droit <unintelligible>. Eh la. Eh gauche?”

“Oui, merci! Au revoir!”

<nod, smile> “’Voir!”

I learned ‘gauche’ from Asterix books. ‘Tout droit’ I learned more recently, and from the most charming of teachers. Regardless, I figured out what he meant and went straight on, eyes to the left.

Cafes were not to be seen. But a big gate with ‘PAINTBALL!’ written above it held promise. Paintballing is thirsty work, and I’m thinking someone in there is going to be gouging paint-blasted Alsatians (yes it’s the right term) six euros for fifty centilitres of tepid water. And while I had to tootle my girl-bike through about six glowering packs of compressed-air commandos to find it, I did indeed bumble across the café.

A grill, a fridge, a row of sauce bottles lined up like cannon shells. Two wiry shaved-head  attendants, looking like they either wanted to sell me something or drown me in yellow dye and pain. There were paintball guns lined up near the sauce, so I decided to force the issue.

“Bonjour! Got food? Uh, what’s food…um…”

My external monologue was interrupted by an enthusiastic reply. “Ja! Wurst? Hamburg? Fritten?”

“Ah, sehr gut! Ein wurst bitte, mit…”

Whoa.

German??

I lapsed suddenly and abruptly back to English, trailing off into “…mit, uh, tomato sauce. And a bottle of water, si’l vous…please.”

Blurry off-hand photo of two very quick and extremely friendly fry cooks. Note ducks and numerous trophies for 'fastest delivery of wurst to an Australian..'

I was pretty confused by now, and my suddenly rampant high-school German logjammed with my thoroughly confused two-weeks-earlier French. By the time I’d got round to remembering I was within paintball range of the German border I had a baguette full of wurst in my hand and a bottle of water in my pocket. I spent the time it took to munch through my multicultural hot dog reflecting on the barracks once built to defend France from Germans being used to host paintball contests between them. It was probably ironic or something, but I was so busy drooling over smoky meaty goodness that I didn’t really care.

That brief pause in Veckring was something of a high-water mark. In journeying from Paris to Caen to Thionville to Veckring in pursuit of my pure French language experience, it looked like I’d gone so far I came out the other side. I wasn’t too worried; most of my interactions had been of the form “Bonjour! Deux euros? Merci, au revoir!”, so one less retail conversation was no loss. And my unexpected recourse to a language I ‘learned’ for exactly one year (1980 to be precise) made me realise just how deep such lessons sink their roots. It was enough to persuade me to whip out the iPad that night for a little more “L’homme achetes la repas.”

There was another fusty old fortress tour soon after, and a very entertaining tour led by a French volunteer with a sketchy grasp of English. Our little group of five included me, a local, and three old Italians, none of whom spoke French but one of whom spoke English. So our guide would go once in French for local lad, then again in English for me and Italian English-speaker, who would then translate into Italian for her companions. Their questions came back in Italian, were rendered into her broken English, I would reinterpret some of her trickier words and our guide would do his best to answer. Exactly what blopped out the far end of that particular linguistic sausage machine I’ll never know, but bumbling our way to a trilingually-comprehensible way to say things like “personnel schedule”, “water storage capacity” and “downrange correction of howitzer fire” made for a bloody entertaining day. And with our guide uttering sentences like “The dirty hairs go into filters, clean hairs come out for the mens to breathe”, and “double gun machines reticulating fire on the offensive Germans,” I definitely got my six euros worth.

"...so the Germans are trying to...how is it in English...embrace the fort on all sides. But the neighbouring forts, they are...complimenting them with gunfire..."

My travel rubber band was at full stretch when I peered into the darkness of the lower gallery in Fortress Galgenberg. From there it exerted a steady pull back towards the centre, through parochial Thionville, through urbane Metz and back into barely-accented Paris. There were other occasions when a conversation made me smile; a little girl whose only English was “Hello!” but who made an entire conversation of it, a waitress who mistook my halting utterances for fluency and went full Parisian on me, and a fry cook at a burger stand who corrected my timid pronunciation of a menu item with a bellowed “NOUNOURS!” (Google translate that to see why I was confused). It made me glad I'd learned what I had, that I tried when I did, and that it was as tricky as it occasionally was. Not once did the language barrier keep me from what I wanted, and every time I made myself understood it felt like winning a Scrabble game against an entire country. I’m learning more, I’m practising more and I’m loving the occasions when my not-quite-rights are gently corrected (thanks T!), and my completely-wrongs are roundly mocked (um, thanks T!)

I’ll be back, France. Tell your waiters I’ll be ready this time.

"Okay fellas, here he comes. Remember, like we rehearsed: 'Non! Pas Anglais! Rien!'"

One more.

Some time during the trip I arbitrarily decided that the acid test of my nascent knowledge would be to give someone directions in French. By that time I’d already been asked twice, both times in French, but my translation brain lagged behind my social autopilot, and I told them I only spoke English. Curiously they replied with “Oh sorry, never mind” on both occasions, but the outcome was the same: I didn’t get to do my “Gauche, droite, tout droit.” And by the time I was half a mile from Gare du Nord and that last train to the airport I realised I wasn’t likely to get another chance.

“Excusez moi?”

Turn, look. Backpacker with a map and a quizzical expression. “Ou est la Gare du Nord, s’il vous plais?”

I managed not to laugh disbelievingly. But I may have stared in incredulous delight. Six months of French lessons leaped from long-term storage and crammed themselves simultaneously into RAM.

“Uhhh THAT w…I mean, tout droit, uh, droite, and voila!”

Big eyes. A gradual fade to an expression between incredulity and pity. Then, slowly and loudly, “Do-you-know-where-is-train-station-north? Please?”

Dammit.

“Ah, sure. It’s that way, then right at the end and straight on. It’ll be in front of you.”

Nod, smile. “Thank you! Au rev...goodbye!”

Viola!

Ah well. Maybe next trip. Venir avec?