When anticipating a vacation, I am always completely delusional about what it will be like. I imagine myself with no time constraints, able to endlessly blog and sleep and explore, without ever having to choose between different activities. The reality, of course, is not that. There is always more to do than there is time, and vacations eventually end, thus tonight is my last night in Paris and I haven't blogged in two weeks. I assure anyone who hasn't been following me on Twitter that yes, I have been having a fabulous time, and yes, I have been eating ridiculous numbers of pastries.
This has been a really, really good trip. There have been moments when I have felt lonely, and more than once I have seriously considered going to a cat cafe for some feline attention, but overall it has been good to travel alone. The introvert in me had been craving silence, long stretches of time without having to answer to anyone, and the past three weeks have been exactly that. My mind has been able to wander wherever it wants, and I have had time to think and think and think about all the big questions in my life. It has been good.
And of course, I have seen things! So, so many things. On my last day in Caen, I took a tour of the Canadian D-Day beaches, and then I went to Dijon, where I slept a lot and drank wine on the couch and did a bit of wandering through the historic city. In Paris I have been all over the place: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Shakespeare and Co, the Musée d'Orsay, the Natural History Museum, Sacre-Coeur, Montmartre, the Curie Museum, and the Army Museum. It has been delightfully nerdy, in both a scientific and a historical way, which suits me perfectly.
I haven't done as well with my French as I had hopped. I struggle a lot with verbal comprehension, and the accents are different from the ones that I am used to, so I have said "Désolé, je ne comprends pas" and "Pouvez-vous repétér ça, s'il vous plaît?" more times than I can count. (Actually, I have mostly just contorted my face painfully and made awkward sounds, which is the introvert's way of saying "I don't understand".) But I have learned new words, thanks to reading every street sign and countless museum displays, and my ability to understand written French is getting better quickly.
(Yesterday's word of the day was "ruche", as in hive, which I learned from this beehive at the Natural History Museum. Yup...I am a nerd.*)
There have been moments on the trip when I have considered giving up on learning French, as it is frustrating to see how far I still have to go before I will be functionally fluent. But then, I wander into a bookstore and walk out with The Handmaid's Tail in French (La servante écarlate), and I think that the learning will continue. I dream of living in Europe for at least a year in retirement, and if I continue to plug at it for the next 7+ years, I can hopefully be functional by then.
(Also, there is a cute lesbian in my conversational French group. Not that that's a reason to learn a language...)
So...that is my trip in a very small nutshell. I will try to post some more pictures, although I dread the volume of work that awaits my return to work, so I make no promises. There is part of me that is resentful of the fact that I need to go back to work, but mostly right now I am incredibly grateful to have been able to do this. I know how fortunate I am that this is my life.
*When I was a kid, my Dad used to play a silly game in which he would ask what letter a word started with, and when I would reply "B" he would scream "A bee! Bzzzzzzzzz!" and pretend that his hand was a buzzing bee. Since studying French, whenever I try to remember the word for bee, I will scream "Une abeille! Bzzzzzzzzzz!". Thankfully I have learned to scream this in my head when I am in public.
This trip continues to whirl by. As mentioned in my previous post, I had terrible internet access in Caen, so I basically gave up on posting to my blog or even Facebook for the entire time I was there (I did manage to post a few photos of the tasty food to Twitter). I am now in Dijon, and I have internet access again, so I will make more of an effort to post. But there is so much to do, it's hard to tear myself away from the doing!
Caen was not an intentional destination for me. While searching through places to visit in France, I fell in love with the tiny seaside town of Honfleur, and decided to use Caen as a home base for visiting Honfleur, which is accessible only by a very long bus ride*. When I arrived in Caen, I actually wondered if there would be enough for me to do there. And yes, there was more than enough. I needn't have worried.
Caen's main draw is as a site for World War II history. Almost 80% of the city was destroyed by Allied bombings around the time of D-Day, so it contains a lot of buildings that were rebuilt after the war, as well as many that still show major signs of damage.
(A photo of the church down the street from my apartment (Église Saint-Jean) following the bombing.)
(Although most of the church has been rebuilt, this tower still shows evidence of the damage.)
(Another church in Caen that was so badly damaged that they didn't even try to rebuild it.)
It was surreal to see partial remains of churches and to walk through the Abbaye-aux-Hommes (Men's Abbey), which is the burial site of William the Conquerer ("Guillaume le Conquérant") and also a place where the citizens of Caen took refuge during weeks of bombings.
For me, the best but also most difficult part of the visit was going to the Memorial de Caen, which is an amazing WWII museum. It covers the history of Europe post-WWI, the rise of fascism**, the German military campaigns, the concentration camps, and the eventual liberation of Europe starting with D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. It was amongst the best museums I've ever visited.
Reading about the concentration camps, seeing the photos and records of what people did to other people, breaks me a bit every time.
But when I see what physicians did? That's when I ugly cry in the corner.
*In the end, I didn't even go to Honfleur, as I decided that I didn't want to spend 5 hours on a bus when I could instead use the time to see more of Caen. Je ne regrette rien.
**The parallels between the rise of fascism and what's happening in the US right now are terrifying.
I thought that the jet lag was bad for the first two days, but really it wasn't. I had lots of adrenaline and a desire to see everything in Lyon, which kept me excited in spite of the overwhelming urge to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon.
My jet lag really kicked in during my five-hour train ride from Lyon to Caen today. Oh my goodness, it felt like I was post-overnight call for the first time in five years. No amount of reading or internetting or listening to good music could keep me from dozing off and leaning precariously into the middle aisle of the train. (Over and over. I think my neck is going to be sore from snapping backwards every time I dozed off.)
I almost didn't make it to Caen. I left myself lots of time to get to my first train*, but I hadn't realized that the receipt I had printed out was not an actual ticket, so at the last minute I was scrambling to download an e-ticket on my phone. And then I had an hour to switch trains in Paris, which would have been fine except that I had to take the metro between stations, which got me to the second station less than 30 minutes before my train. And then I couldn't download my next e-ticket. So I stood in a very long ticket line, watching the time until my train departed disappear and panicking, until I got so nervous that I asked the person in front of me if I could cut ahead**. Unfortunately, seemingly everyone was trying to get on the same train, so no, I couldn't cut ahead of anyone. Thankfully, about 5 minutes before the train, my phone suddenly cooperated, and I was able to access my ticket. If it hadn't, I might still be in Paris trying to get a later train out.
But anyway....after a lot of head bobbing and drooling on my fleece, I arrived in Caen, where pretty much everything is closed for Easter Monday. I really didn't want to eat more cheese and bread for supper***, so I was quite happy to discover an open Vietnamese restaurant around the corner from my B and B. Not what I was expecting to have for supper on my third day in France, but it was surprisingly tasty.
So that was my day....I didn't blog about yesterday, as I got home from supper very late, but here are some photos to hopefully make up for it.
The meeting place for my morning walking tour (walking tour #2 and pain au chocolat #2):
One of the two open-air markets we saw on the tour:
A view of the Basilique Notre-Dame de Fourvière, as well as part of the city:
The Hotel de Ville (City Hall) on the walking tour, complete with participants in the race that was run roughly along the route of our walking tour.
After the walking tour, I visited some Roman ruins. But no photos of them for you, as my B and B has no internet (how is this a thing?), and my phone internet can only handle uploading so many photos.
After the ruins, I took a long walk up the hill to the Basilica. A view from the outside:
(The views from the inside are also being held captive on my computer.)
I ended my day at the Museum of the Resistance and Deportation. A photo of WWII refugees from Paris, who had been relocated to Lyon:
Hmmm....maybe I'm actually tired because I'm trying to do so much every day? I'm sure I'll do better tomorrow. During my one day in Caen. Cause there isn't much to do here...
*I also had lots of time to eat anglais abricots, a pastry that I might like better than
pain au chocolat...I'll let you know after a few more comparisons.
**This is unusual for me, as I don't generally like talking to strangers, and I find it extra hard to do in French.
***Yes, I have already reached the point of my trip at which I'm whining about having to eat the same thing two meals in a row. I blame the jet lag.
Although I did a tremendous amount of thinking about my trip before leaving Canada, I had made almost no firm commitments* prior to the trip. I know myself, and I know that my energy level and interests vary widely from day to day, so I tend to build a lot of flexibility into my travel schedule whenever possible. Yesterday, however, I realized that I was going to need something to motivate me to get my jet lagged ass out of bed this morning, so I wisely booked myself for a 10 am walking tour.
After forcing my sleepy body to stay awake until 10:30 last night, I was wide awake at 3 am this morning. It took me almost 2 hours of thinking about Twitter, blog posts, my travel plans, and all the ills in the world before I finally fell back asleep, but by the time my alarm went off at 7:45 am, I had reentered a sleep so deep that I felt ill on waking. If I hadn't booked the tour and made plans for breakfast, I don't know when I would've dragged myself out of bed.
But drag myself out I did, and I was early enough for my tour to be able to start my day with the best pain au chocolat I've ever eaten**. Followed by an awesome café (French for coffee...not the whole café). And then at 10 am, I went on a tour of Le Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon) with a group of about 20 other people.
We saw the cathedral, les traboules
(pass-throughs), lots of old buildings, and one of the rivers. (Either
le Rhône or le Saône. I am incapable of reading maps. But it was a
really pretty river.)
I learned that Marie Antoinette actually said "Let them eat brioche" (or more accurately, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche") and not "Let them eat cake". I also learned that many of the Catholic monuments of Lyon were damaged by Protestants after the Reformation, like this random statue in one of the streets.
And I learned that the word fascism comes from the word fascio, meaning a bundle of rods. Fascio were originally a symbol of the strength that comes from unity, as a single rod is easily broken, while a bundle of rods is not. Sadly, this beautiful imagery was co-opted by Mussolini, and now depictions of fascio are frowned on. Bloody fascists ruin everything.
After the really good walking tour ended, I went to a bouchon that was recommended by the tour guide, where I ate the best piece of lamb I have ever eaten. Followed by a pretty amazing dessert. It was so much food that I literally didn't feel the slightest bit hungry for another six and a half hours. I had planned to have a nice dinner out, including 2 Euro crèpes from a nearby crèpe stand, but I barely managed to eat a bit of cheese and bread. I probably would have skipped dinner entirely if I hadn't been afraid of waking up ravenous at 3 am.
In the afternoon, I continued to nerd by going to the city's historical museum. It was interesting to see the local perspective on major events from France's history, but I timed my visit very poorly. I spent hours photographing the remains of old churches and scales from the city's history as a trading post, such that by the time I hit the really interesting World War I and II sections, all I wanted to do was lie down. But with a few long sits in the museum's chairs (and possibly an upright nap), I made it to the end.
I even had enough energy for a quick visit to the adjacent puppet (marionette) museum, which is included in the ticket price.
The original Mr. Rogers.
By the end of the second museum, I was done for the day. Thanks to the city's efficient Metro system, I was back in my apartment by 7 PM, where I have been internetting and rubbing my feet ever since.
It was a really, really lovely day.
And tomorrow, there is more! I am going on another walking tour, because I enjoyed today's so much. I'm not entirely sure what I am going to do after...I want to visit the cathedral again, as well as go to the Basilica de Notre Dame, the prison museum, the science museum, and the resistance museum. And I can't. But I leave Lyon on Monday, so I will have to make choices.
Come back tomorrow night (maybe) to see what I pick!
*This is perhaps a stretch. I booked all my Airbnbs and train tickets in advance. But the only actual activity I had booked was a tour of the Canadian D-day beaches, because they are extremely hard to find.
**Most of my food photos are being taken on my iPhone and tweeted in real time, so if you want to see pictures of food (yes, you do), follow me on Twitter (Frugalish Physician@FrugalishMD). I'm not being a savvy blogger in forcing you to look at Twitter for food photos; I actually have no idea how to transfer photos from my iPhone to my computer. Yeah.
The first time I ever traveled overseas, I was 22 years old, and I had just graduated from university. Using my parents' travel miles, I flew to Europe with my good friend N, whom I'd known since I was five. We had six weeks, ridiculously heavy backpacks, Eurail passes, and very little money. It was going to be amazing.
Except, it kind of wasn't. I mean...there were moments that were amazing. Like the first day in London, when I walked around the city with my mouth hanging open saying things like "OMG...Alfred Russel Wallace lived here*. OMG...MAHATMA GANDHI LIVED HERE!!!" Or the beautiful day we spent on a boat on Loch Ness, before I discovered how badly I had burned my legs because I had decided to "let them tan". But there was also a lot of hard stuff.
The biggest problem was that N and I wanted to have completely different trips. I had planned for the trip obsessively, reading Let's Go Europe from cover to cover and marking things as "Must-See" or "Would-Like-To-See-If-We-Have-Time". I had practiced saying Hello/Goodbye/Please/Thank You/I desperately need a bathroom now in the languages of every country we would visit. And I had dreamed of all the nerdy historical places we would visit: Westminster Abbey, Edinburgh Castle, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Roman Forum.
N had packed her party clothes. Unbeknownst to me, this trip for her represented an opportunity to escape from her somewhat overprotective parents and just have fun. She had almost no desire to buy the discount passes that let you see all the historical sites in a city, but every desire to meet people at hostels and go dancing. So for six weeks, we cramped each other's style, arguing constantly about whether to spend our time in a museum or a bar. By the time we flew home, we were barely talking to each other.
I realized on that trip that I have some pretty specific desires when I travel, and they aren't necessarily the desires of others. Which is completely okay. I in no way judge the crazy people who want to be social and spend times in crowded spaces. I simply don't want to travel with them.
Over the years, I have been very fortunate to have lots of opportunities to travel. And with each trip, I've gotten even better at knowing what I will or will not enjoy. Which is particularly relevant to me right now, as I just bought tickets for a conference and vacation in France this Spring. FRANCE! If you follow me on Twitter, you will know that I have been posting there frequently about my excitement about learning to speak French and planning my trip. And to build on that excitement, I've decided to post about some of the things that make a great trip for me.
Really Nerdy Activities:
I love nerdy things, and the more I embrace this fact, the happier I become. When traveling, I have no interest at all in the popular shopping district, but I absolutely do want to see the collection of 18th century dioramas/the site where a famous scientist was born/Galileo's middle finger.
When traveling, I seek out the oddities. I look on Atlas Obscura to find places to visit (Oradour-Sur-Glane is high on my list for France). I allocate entire days to medical and natural history museums. And I love every minute of it.
Traveling Alone:
Shockingly there are few people in this world who want to spend hours with me in a natural history museum photographing a dodo bird (A DODO BIRD!) from every angle. When I travel with another person, it is inevitable that at some point the other person will become impatient and/or I will feel rushed. Which is quite easily overcome by me simply traveling alone.
While traveling with someone else isn't entirely negative (eating in restaurants tends to be better with another person), I do tend to prefer traveling on my own. I like having complete control over where I go and what I see. I like being able to commit a day of travel and four hours on a bus to visiting the seaside town from which the French explorers departed for Canada. And I like never being dragged out in the evening to socialize with people I don't know.
Flexible Schedule:
Whenever I travel, I tend to alternate between days of "OMG I'm so excitied! I'm going to see three museums and take a walking tour and take hundreds of photos!" and days of "Cobblestone hurts my feet and I don't like the food here and I want to stay in bed and Internet". This pattern repeats itself on every trip I go on, and if I ignore my need for downtime and try to push on with the sightseeing, I will inevitably become miserable. I've learned to build flexibility and extra time into my schedule so that, when needed, I can spend a day on the couch with a block of cheese and a good book and recharge my traveling energy.
Small Cities and Towns:
When N and I went to Europe, we gave ourselves four full days in Rome, recognizing that there was a lot to see. And for four days we rode on the crowded subways and got catcalled by Roman men and saw site after site of broken columns. For me, I was overwhelmed by the number of people and by the sense that no matter how much we rushed, we would never see everything. I learned from my visit to Rome that I prefer the small places to the big. Small places may not have as many things to see, but I enjoy the sense of being able to see everything, even when I go at a leisurely pace. And I love the oddities that turn up in small places, which would never attract tourists in a big city, like the preserved two-headed pig in the farming town where my grandparents lived.
Packing Light:
On my first trip, I bought the biggest backpack I could find, and I filled it with everything that would fit in it. And then I packed a second smaller backpack as a day pack. Even though I was only 22 years old, I felt like an old woman thanks to the constant back and shoulder pain from carrying my things around. When I watched the movie Wild, I couldn't stop laughing in recognition at Cheryl Strayed's pack (although, for the record, I did not pack 12 condoms for my trip to Europe).
Every time I travel, my suitcase gets lighter. I simply don't need much stuff, and I hate hauling a heavy bag into airport bathrooms and onto trains. On my most recent trip, which was to Quebec City, I took only my camera bag and a carry-on suitcase, and it was still more stuff than I needed. I will probably need to take a larger bag to France, as I need to bring work-appropriate clothes with me, but you can bet that it will be packed as lightly as possible. (Leaving room to bring home wine.)
So this is how I travel. A solitary introvert with a tiny bag and a big camera, visiting the nerdiest places I can find. My idea of a fun vacation would probably be a nightmare to a more outgoing person, but it works perfectly for me. Which I think is a good guiding principle for life: do what works perfectly for you.
*You know you're a nerd when you not only know who Alfred Russel Wallace was but also still feel angry that he didn't get the recognition he deserved for the theory of evolution.
A few months ago, I was faced with the decision between going to a scientific conference in Boston this Fall or one in Paris in the Spring. I have been to Boston before, and I didn't really love it, so I was slightly underwhelmed by the thought of going back. And then there's the fact that the US is currently being led by a misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, fascist twat, which really makes me want to avoid the country altogether.
Mais Paris? Les boulangeries et les cafés et les beaux musées? Bien sur!
So I booked three weeks off in the Spring, bought myself a travel guide to France, and committed myself to becoming fluent-ish in French before I go. That's why I am here in Quebec City, speaking French poorly and savouring every last minute before le taxi whisks me away to the airport and back to my real life.
Going home feels really hard. This morning I wandered along la rue Cartier, which is only minutes from my Airbnb, and I saw so many places I had wanted to visit but couldn't because of lack of time. So many pain au chocolats that I didn't get to eat. As I sat in a café drinking the best coffee I've ever had in my life, I wanted desperately to be able to stay.
As much as I love my home city and all of the people there, I am realizing that I really want to live elsewhere. Not only for a week, but for long enough to really know a place. To try every restaurant and wander every street and speak the language so much that I start to think in it. I want to immerse myself in newness and difference long enough for it to become familiar.
Unfortunately, I haven't exactly chosen a career that makes this possible. I am very subspecialized, making my job market very small. There is no mid-sized town in France that is looking for one of me, and even Paris would be a hard place to find a job. Not to mention the fact that communication is a rather essential part of being a physician, and I know almost no medical terms in French. And I can't understand 90% of what people say to me in French.
Yet.
More than that is the fact that I am not a brave person. While some people have the personality that allows them to quit their job and move to a different country with only a backpack of stuff, I am not one of those people. I crave savings and an emergency fund* and insurance of every kind**. As much as I long for difference, I am also most comfortable with the familiar. The reality for me is that I will likely keep working at the same job until I have enough money saved up to retire early, because I can't imagine leaving the security and the great pay any earlier.
So I guess I have to go home. But I am going to remember this trip and how being surrounded by the sound of people speaking another language feeds some part of my soul that is hungry. I'm going to keep taking French lessons, and I'm going to read every single page of my travel guide as I plan my next adventure. And I'm going to dream of the day when I reach my FIRE number and can choose to never return from my vacation.
*I don't actually have an emergency fund, but I do have money set aside for a down payment on a home that I may never buy. This could be its own post.
**Sort of. I would never insure an electronic gadget or a trip, because I hate throwing money away. This could also be its own post.
My ex-partner was the antithesis of a minimalist. Any time I would clear out a space, it would almost instantaneously be filled with something of hers. Living with her was like the principle of nature abhors a vacuum manifested hoarder-style.
Since she moved out, I have been slowly returning to my preferred state of being a semi-minimalist. I've taken four large bags of books to my Little Free Library; I've thrown out the three-year-old bottles of condiments that we never used; and I've even gone through my memory box and gotten rid of the awards and report cards that dated back to elementary school. In this new stage of life, I am focusing on being lighter.
In the spirit of minimalism, when I started packing for my current trip, I decided to limit myself to one carry on bag and one camera bag (which has some extra space for books/a jacket/a water bottle). I didn't need to do this, as I could have easily brought one of my larger suitcases, but I wanted to see whether I could fit my life into a small space for a week.
It was a lot easier than I thought. My suitcase easily held two pairs of jeans, a warm sweater, two pairs of pajamas, and more than enough socks, underwear, and t-shirts. There was room for five books, my french workbooks*, and a notebook. My computer, my cell phone, and my camera with an extra lens. Everything I will need.
But the constraints of space did force me to leave a few things behind, like my ex's long-sleeved t-shirt. The cozy one that I bought her while at a conference in Boston, which was always a favourite of mine, and which she returned to me after the breakup. The one I've been putting on every evening when I arrive home from work. The most tangible reminder I have of what we were, and what was lost. I am not usually one to assign emotions to physical things, but somehow lately it has felt as if all of my grief is contained within this piece of cotton.
So I left it at home.
*I'm going to Quebec to practice my French for a week! Je pense que ce sera plus dur que je pensais.
By the time I left on my recent trip, I was in desperate need of a break. I needed to not have to make life or death decisions and to not carry a pager and to not have to be witness to the inevitable human suffering that accompanies medicine. I was spent.
Unfortunately, the Middle East is not the most relaxing place to visit*, and traveling with one's soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend and her family does not make the experience any easier. At the end of my trip, I felt just as stressed as I had been at the beginning, and things have only gotten worse as a result of 1) the subsequent breakup and 2) a very long and busy week on call.
Thankfully, I'm spending this upcoming weekend in Chicago. My Mom turned 65 last December, and my brother and I decided to mark the occasion with a family getaway**. We leave at 8:30 tomorrow morning, and I can't wait to be away. I am ready to see beautiful architecture and eat tasty Top Chef winner cooking and not worry about anything. All of the problems of the real world are just going to have to wait until Monday.
*Particularly as an LGBTTQ person.
**We deferred the trip until the weather was likely to be good and until my brother's and my call schedules aligned. Bloody call.
