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This is an account of my 1997 backpacking trip through Europe. I left Washington on Friday, June 13 to board Air France to Paris. I was a bit disappointed at first, because all the passengers seemed to be English speakers!! And here I was, armed with "A Traveller's Guide to French", dying to inflict my newborn knowledge (only a week old) of the French language on some cool Parisians. But I bore this immediate setback with fortitude, and thrust back the "Bonjour"s and the "s'il vous plait"s that were jostling one another to get out of my mouth. I got on the plane, and sure enough, a friendly American couple bound for Vienna sat beside me. To my delight, they more than made up for not speaking a more exotic tongue. They had all these interesting stories to tell me, and time just flew by. Some of these stories, especially the later ones, are a bit hazy in my head, but that's probably the effect of all that champagne they served on the flight. Real champagne from Reims, for a change. Incidentally, I saw more air hosts than hostesses, and they all spoke delightful French. At this late stage, I realized that I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying. In my excitement at the prospect of conversing in French, I had forgotten to account for the rate at which real French people speak French. Very sheepishly, I had to ask them, "Parlez vous Anglais??" The very phrase I had vowed not to use. But it served to get me some delicious vegetarian quiche and some coffee which was actually espresso. This was the first of the several French espressos I would have all through my trip. I discovered later that all coffee in France is espresso. Not a bad thing at all as far as I'm concerned. An hour before landing, I was frantically poring over my books on Paris and on French, rehearsing my conversations aimed at finding my way to the Place de la Concorde. After a while, I decided that my best bet would be to point at the map, and say, "Me here. Me there. How??" in French. My plan was to try this tactic on various people, and buttonhole the first person who didn't: (a) die of laughter; or (b) hurry away thinking I was an imbecile. At the airport, I muddled my way through the currency exchange, paid an impatient bus driver 55 francs, and found myself on a bus to the Arc de Triomphe. Not my original plan, but it was the best I could manage with what I was now realizing to be my terribly inadequate knowledge of French. On the bus, I noticed some rash driving, a man in a little car which had a little flower vase with a rose in it, and a garden with an astounding array of flowers. Based on these solitary points of data, I will now pronounce that: (1) the French drive dangerously; (2) French men are very romantic; and (3) Paris is a city of gardens. I am probably completely wrong, but hey, I have to give my views of two entire countries based on the nine days I spent in them!! The bus dropped me off at the Arc de Triomphe, and I made my way down the Champs-Elysees, towards the Place de la Concorde. It was almost a two-mile walk, and I had to make it before noon if I was to meet Anand there according to Plan A. If I failed, we had Plans B, C and D to fall back on, of course. I was very pleased with this planning. Very professional, I thought. If all four plans failed, we would just go our separate ways in Europe. All along the Champs-Elysees, I saw tourists, tons of little pet dogs, and artists sketching and painting. I can't resist making some more observations now: (1) Paris is a city of artists; and (2) Parisians love little dogs. I should point out that the second theory can be extended to all of France and Italy. More than half the people I saw in the course of my Europe trip had a little dog accompanying them. I ran the last 5 minutes, and made it to the Place de la Concorde just in time. I spotted Anand immediately, and we set out to find the Auberge du Jeunesse (youth hostel) at Jules Ferry. An exhausting one-and-a-half-hour walk with heavy backpacks took us there, and what do we find!! The hostel was full, and the Clichy hostel was the only one that had free rooms in it. This could mean only one thing: the Paris Metro. Here came the first of the many hilarious conversations in French that Anand initiated. We couldn't understand the boards at the Metro station that described the different zones and the different rates, and had to ask the ticket-seller. The tricky part was to get this information without holding up and annoying the steady stream of ticket-buyers. I must say Anand excelled himself in this matter. It was a treat to see him dart in and out of the queue, getting a tiny bit of information every time he went in. His tactic was simple but effective. He'd formulate a question in French in his head, let two buyers get their tickets, jump in, ask the ticket-seller his question, listen to the answer, pick out the two or three words he understood, repeat them to the ticket-seller to make sure, and jump out to ponder on this new fact and to formulate the next question. He repeated this sequence some half a dozen times, and finally got the tickets we needed. An operation par excellence, if I may say so. At the youth hostel, I got a room with two girls from the U.K., and Anand got a room with a German guy and an American guy. I was thrilled at fulfilling my lifelong ambition of getting to sleep in a bunk bed. We left our bags in our rooms and set out to explore Paris. We first got some food at a cafe in the sixth arrondisement. I had to eat a sandwich with cheese and a half-cooked egg in it, as I would have to, in most cafes throughout France. The French are not big on vegetarian food. But they are big on jambon (ham). Nevertheless, I was pleased to sit at a table and "watch life go by", which is the popular thing to do, according to my book on Paris. In all the European cities I went to, the tables are set so that everyone faces the street. We spent a rainy hour at the Jardin du Luxembourg and watched some French men play boule. The touristy things - the Notre Dame, the Seine and the outside of the Louvre - followed. We met an old French gentleman who expressed some strong sentiments concerning the glass pyramid outside the Louvre. He thought the new pyramid was a disgrace to the old buildings that make up the three wings of the Louvre. We added salt to his wounds by making him take a photograph of us with the pyramid as the background. I have a feeling he went away muttering to himself in French. It was dark now, and we went back to the hostel extremely tired, after having an apple tart on the Champs-Elysees. I chatted with the British girls for a while, and they told me their story of how the Exit sign (Sortie) at the Metro stations completely flummoxed them for a long time. Apparently, one of them thought Sortie meant southbound, and the other insisted that it meant northbound. So they kept getting lost until the realization hit them that it was the French word for Exit. These two girls were running out of money fast, and were planning to go to Zurich!! Hope they made it. Sunday morning, and even the shower is an adventure for me!! I came out of the shower with water in the shoes I'd left outside. I discovered later that the trick was to capture the one shower room which had the shower fixed in the correct position relative to the walls, so it wouldn't spill water all over the place. We were ravenous when we got to the breakfast room, and to our dismay, we found a feast of cold rubbery bread and butter awaiting us. After this, it was time for the humongous Louvre. After several hours of trying to see every room in the Louvre, we decided to spend the last couple of hours seeing the famous stuff: the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, Napoleon's Apartments and the Crown Jewels. The Louvre had many impressive sculptures, and tons of paintings, many of them mediocre and repetitive, I thought. There I go again, pronouncing judgement on everything, as my friend Srikanth tells me I always do. Anand and I waited outside the Notre Dame for a Vietnamese friend Pham and his French girlfriend Valerie. Here, we witnessed the Waiters' Run, which is a race among waiters carrying a tray with glasses and a bottle on it. Lots of Parisians stood along the road and cheered for a whole hour!! Pham and Valerie took us to the Beauborg which, as my book says, is "a controversial ugly building that has become the highest ranked sight in Paris". We went up the escalator on the outside of this building to the very top, and got a great view of Paris through the binoculars that Pham had so thoughtfully brought along. They then showed us the quaint cobblestone road lined with cafes that is Rue St. Michel, and Mouffetard Street in the Latin Quarter (the fifth arrondisement) which was a quiet part of Paris. All we could afford was a relatively inexpensive restaurant, since Parisian restaurants are much more expensive than the ones in the U.S. My appetizer (a legume mousse) was a work of art, but the rest of the food was poor both in quality and in quantity. We went back via the Metro, and this is where Anand coined his catchy phrase. Not a Sortie sign would go by without Anand's exhortation to me to "Sortie on, baby!!" Monday morning was spent at the visa office and le Jardin du Tuilleries, where there were people feeding potato chips to the fish. We visited the seedy Bastille area, and came back to Rue St. Michel for some delicious crepes and some heavily smoking patrons. The waitress here seemed to find Anand's French absolutely hilarious (and who can blame her??), and she gave us our two cappucinos for free. We did the Tour d'Eiffel next, and did some grocery shopping. We bought an Alsatian Riesling, bread and cheese, and dined in the light of candles. We had a bit of a scare on Tuesday morning when Anand and I lost each other, but we finally found our way, and took a luxurious French train (the TGV) to Nice, which is in the Riviera region, the famous "south of France". We saw the beautiful Provencal landscape unfold outside our window during the very pleasant journey. Once in Nice, I called the youth hostel and got rooms for us, and also helped two clueless American girls find rooms in the same hostel. This was a smaller and cheaper hostel, and was set on the topmost part of the city. Pedestrians could take several flights of stairs to get further and further down into the actual city. The hostel was too far from any restaurant, and it was already dark; so we had to go to bed hungry. I was kept awake by two snoring women for a long time. We took a bus to the centre of the city early on Wednesday morning, and paid to leave our bags at a hotel opposite the station. We figured out how to mail postcards internationally at the Post Office by observing the manouevres of experienced French hands first. Nice was wonderfully sunny and warm after cold and rainy Paris. We walked to the beach and were spellbound by the incredibly blue Mediterranean. Lazed around for a while amongst the several topless women on the beach, much to Anand's delight. We then explored old town Nice, saw gardens with sculptures in them, and had lunch. It was back to the beach after that, where we spent several hours sunbathing. No touristy pressure here. Bought dinner at a supermarche (supermarket), and found that plastic forks and paper napkins don't come with the food!! We had to buy a dozen forks. Other inconveniences in Europe were: having to pay for restrooms and for water. That night, we took a train to Venice. This was an Italian train - a far cry from the TGV, and ticket-checkers kept waking us up all night. We arrived in Venice on a cold and rainy Thursday morning, and I got information and currency while Anand watched the bags. The minimum amount I could withdraw from an ATM machine was 100,000 lira, which is more than $60; so we had to be careful about withdrawing too much cash and losing money. Venice looked very quaint with its confusing network of narrow cobblestone alleys, canals and bridges. Not only were there no cars (of course!!), but there were also no bicycles. There were different kinds of boats, ranging from the small gondolas to the huge motorboats. The heavenly smell of baked goods pervaded the air almost everywhere. We found this little pastry shop which had an incredibly delicious array of inexpensive pastries. The pastries looked almost too good to be eaten. We ate at that shop twice everyday. Unfortunately, everything else about Venice was a big scam. Things were inordinately expensive, all the merchants seemed to want to rip us off, the costlier-than-Paris hostel we stayed at was incredibly dirty and had ice-cold showers, and there was little sign of Italian culture, just tourists. Language was a bigger problem here than in France. The famous San Marco square was infested with hordes of dangerous low-flying pigeons. Another myth uncovered: the gondola rides aren't romantic at all. We stood over the bridge and watched half a dozen gondolas (each with several couples) dodging one another down the canal, while a fat Italian guy stood in one of the gondolas with a mike in his hand and sang a loud song. Romantic? I think not!! Expensive?? You bet! We saved ourselves $80 to $100 by not taking the 30-minute ride. Almost nobody in Venice would accept credit cards, and shops would close down by 7:30 p.m. sigh We spent Friday exploring the alleys of Venice. The open-air food markets were quaint, and I ate some pesto pasta which was completely different from the stuff you get in the U.S. We gazed at the murky waters of the Adriatic Sea for a while, and went back to our hostel and drank some Italian wine. On Saturday morning, I was at the station seeing Anand off to Vienna. My train to Paris wasn't until evening. I suddenly noticed that there was a train to Firenze (Florence) in 15 minutes. Time for an adventure! I bade farewell to Anand and hopped on this train. I immediately got ripped off by an Italian guy who demanded a "special charge" of 19500 lira. That was the end of my Italian currency, and I didn't eat anything until my flight on the next day. Thankfully, all the sights in Florence were within walking distance of the train station. I saw all the monuments from the outside to save time and money. The architecture was beautiful! I saw the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, the Piazza San Giovanni, the Duomo (of course!!), the Basilica, the Piazza Repubblico, the Piazza Della Signoria, the Uffizi and the Arno River. The intricate Renaissance carving on the Duomo was impressive, and I saw a copy of Michelangelo's David. The original used to be kept outdoors, but it had to be moved into a museum because of vandalism. There were tons of tourists here, and huge portions of the roads were marked pedestrian-only. I met a friendly Sicilian professor who teaches linguistics in Florence. He very kindly offered to show me around, but I had only an hour left in the city. I had to pay $20 on the train to Paris even though I had a ticket, but there was nothing I could do about it. I met two Canadian guys on this train and chatted with them for a while. They'd been backpacking through Europe for a long time now, and their views were understandably jaundiced after a few showerless days. They told me about their adventures in the different countries they'd been to. One of their friends had had to go back because all his belongings were stolen from him on an Italian train, and these guys had stout chains with them. They weren't taking any chances. I was terribly exhausted, and fell asleep on the clean sheets and pillow they gave me. This time, taking the Paris Metro to get to the airport was child's play for me. I got on the plane and pounced on the orange juice and biscuits they gave me. I hadn't eaten in 30 hours, and orange juice has never tasted so good before or since!! I got back to Washington where Javier was waiting to pick me up, and I already missed Europe. But I must admit that it felt good to be back in the U.S., in familiar surroundings. A hot bath and shower awaited me in the privacy of my home. Not to mention the taste of familiar home-cooked food. Mmmm.... So what did I like about Europe? The language, the pleasant people, the sun-soaked beaches, the sculptures and paintings.... I do wish I'd seen the vineyards and the smaller towns with more locals, though. And I also wish I'd spoken more French and Italian. The French use the word Voila to mean "Here. Take this." This always cracked me up, because to me, you say Voila when you pull a rabbit out of a hat. When they asked me for my passport in Paris, I was sorely tempted to pull it triumphantly out of my bag, flourish it before their eyes and shout Voila!! But I desisted, much to Anand's relief. I didn't get a good taste of proper Italy, though. I would love to go to little towns and sample true Italian culture next time. My friend Rob tells me of these five remote fishing villages called Cinque Terre.... I do miss the wonderful-smelling streets of Venice, though. All in all, it was the best vacation of my life. Well, so far. Oh, and here's how much my vacation cost me in 1997. PhD Student Dept of Computer Science Univ of Virginia Charlottesville rashmi@virginia.edu