Homeless in Ohio

Cincinnati

Toledo

I spent about a week catching up with people in Cincinnati and wondering why I came back to Cincinnati at all. Seeing friends was obviously great, but it certainly isn't easy to leave the beauty of France to return to the butt ass ugly of Ohio. I also got the good old Subaru checked out to make sure nothing too major was wrong for the return to Seattle. I replaced something small, but the rest of the stuff that could have used fixing could wait (according to the car guy). The day came that it was time to make the drive to Toledo to stay with my sister. I wasn't sure if my boxes would fit in my car and it definitely looked like it would be a close call. The last thing that I needed to happen was to have things not fit. Luckily, I don't own much and I managed to squeeze every last thing that I own into my car and I was off! The scenery didn't exactly improve though by heading to Toledo. If you can imagine, I think it got worse. Yes, there is worse than brown murky water and flat land. Of course, my car was acting a little weird on the drive so I figured a second look couldn't hurt. And it's not like I had much to do for two weeks anyway without a job and all. I headed to Chicago Tuesday and my car went in Wednesday. I needed to get some city time since the suburban life was causing hives and anxiety. Well, maybe not the hives but I am pretty sure the anxiety was actually starting to kick in. On my last day in Chicago, I found out that those problems I was told I didn't need to fix, I should in fact fix. The Subaru has put up a good fight, but putting more money in it and driving it back to Seattle didn't make sense anymore.  Luckily, the car guy knew a guy with a used car lot, he drove my car for ten minutes and wrote me a check. Well, that was sure easy. I guess everything really does work out. Now that I don't have a home, job or car...I am officially homeless.

Ooops! Forgot to Say I'm HOME!

After my escape from the "scary ass Russian guy" I got to spend a few days back with Brigitte and Philippe. I think that was the best way to conclude my trip. I brought back tons of wine and chocolate for us to devour along with all of the fantastic food that I had missed. I had almost forgotten how hard it is to get motivated when you have eaten your weight in duck and deliciousness cooked in duck fat. Good thing the pool was opened while I was gone so that I could just move a few feet with my wine and relax somewhere new. Leaving was still sad this time but it was easier than the first. I spent my last two days in Paris. I figured since I had come all this way I should probably see the Eiffel Tower or whatever.

Right across the street from my "hotel"

Getting Caught Up

I have been terribly lazy about blogging lately, but for good reasons. First, Brittany, Zane and I had a little adventure to the south coast. We stopped in Avignon first to see Pont Du Gard, visit the city and we found an awesome guy to couchsurf with. Next, we took a short train ride to Arles to see some more Roman ruins and just visit. We found a pretty cheap hostel to stay in but it was for sure low budget. I was all for it of course and did most of the convincing that we didn't need anything nicer. We had a fabulous view of a Chinese restaurant and after Zane and I stared at all the people and watched all of the delicious food come out, we quickly arrived at the Chinese restaurant. Come morning, we headed off to Cassis, which was my favorite by far. It's on the water and not too big of a city so it's not terribly touristy. I could tell that there were less tourists when we arrived at the beach and I was greeted by topless old ladies with boobs to their knees. These people were definitely regulars since their skin was like jerky. Besides seeing too much of too many people, the city was beautiful and the gelato was fabulous. We had trouble finding somewhere to stay and ended up spending too much to stay at a Best Western where we had to sneak Zane out of the window in the morning in order to avoid anymore fees. The old woman at the front desk was onto us, but she had no proof of our plan. We successfully only paid for two people but had to sleep three in one bed. If there is ever a time that people need matching pajamas, it was this night. We returned to the castle the next day but not without too many train rides and a failure to catch the last bus by 10 minutes. I tried to rally the team to hitch hike our way home, but to my dismay, we ended up paying out the ass for a taxi that drove twice the speed limit and chose to drive in the middle of the road even around blind turns. We managed to make it home safely and greet two new workaways. I absolutely loved our new workaways, they let me show them around the city and ventured with me on the bus. We got super lucky and found an amazing cherry tree while killing time for the bus, bought goat cheese at the local shop and held a newborn baby goat at the fromagerie. This was all before we found a Burgundy wine tasting that cost 5 euro to try too many wines to count. The next day we found yet another place to try more wine, dried our bucket of cherries and drank and ate our way through the days. I was sad to leave, but we made a pretty good run of the few days I was still there.

Scary Ass Russian Guy

Okay, so I am alive. I got back from Geneva, worked a few days and headed right back off again to the south of France. I'm an asshole, I know. Anyway, first thing is first....the Russian guy. He has a name but I just call him Porn Stache Guy. He speaks extremely little English so I can say this all I want without him knowing. He arrived about a couple weeks ago and seemed friendly enough, but my creepdar went raging wild when I met him also. I figured it was nothing and went about my business being nice. That was a mistake. I started seeing him looking out windows in my direction and once he realized I was staring back at him he would either dart away, wave or give a thumbs up. I think the thumbs up was the weirdest for sure. Anyway, I got over it. Maybe he was looking at something else. Then, I'm out weeding in the yard...I see him, with hand on his cheek, head tilted to the side, looking in my direction. Oye vey! This gets worse every day. Then, he manages to ask me my name. I realize now I should have said Winston Churchill or Paris Hilton. Anything besides my real name. Because now, he sees me and says my name like 5 times and it would be way more entertaining to hear him call me something else and I would order him to say the first and last name. I always have good ideas after the fact. The worst was right before we left for the south of France....I am sitting alone at the table and he looks at me and says "I love you." I think to myself, wait a minute, that can't be right. I say, WHAT?" And he says it again. It goes like this about 5 times because I could not believe my ears. He then asks if I am from America and when I say "yes," he makes motions and says a few words about him coming to America and then holds him arm out like we are arm in arm and walking. My first assumption is that he wants his green card and wants to get married to an American girl. Again, I realize later that I should have punched him in his 13 year old style mustache and kicked him in the dick. That would have made my point VERY clear. Needless to say, I locked my bedroom door before heading south to keep my shit locked up. Now that I'm back, I am pretty much a bitch and I pretend like he doesn't exist. It seems to be working. I alerted everyone that if I scream in the middle of the night, to grab sharp/blunt objects and come running.

If Death by Cheese is Possible, I Nearly Died

I got up stupid early on Friday to catch the first bus out of Chenoves headed towards the train thinking that my couchsurf plan was, for the most part, figured out. I arrived in Geneva at about 12:30 in the afternoon and after a text and phone call, I still had no response from my first couchsurf buddy. Granted, it hadn’t been officially confirmed, but I hadn’t heard a no either and I guess assuming was probably a bad idea. Seeing as how it was early, I decided to cruise around Geneva and await a call or text. I didn’t get a map or anything, just went down streets that looked important and found my way to the waterfront, passed hundreds of Rolex signs and important business meetings in a different language each time. I had a nice little day on my own but come dinner time, I still hadn’t heard anything. I start coming up with a “plan B.” “B” consists of either a hostel (but I heard that they sell out quick in Geneva since everything costs your soul and and first born), sleeping in the train station, wandering around all night surviving on coffee or looking sad at the bar and hoping someone takes me home. Obviously, the safest is a hostel and probably the most realistic.                                        My CS buddy texts and it looks like the car is full going to Lausanne and the floor is packed with people that plan further head than myself. I start looking for hostels/cheap hotels and keep getting shot down. I prepare myself to spend an ass load on a room and perhaps pretend I’m on a luxurious vacation. The last place I try had an opening! It was in the “hooker district,” but hey, I couldn’t exactly be picky at this point and hookers are usually friendly people. In the elevator I could tell the girl next to me was American also and we end up in the same room. We start talking and Kaitlin and Mandi are both from California but studying abroad in London and Sweden. In our room is also an older Moroccan woman, a woman from Zimbabwe and lastly a super cool woman from Texas who is dating an Eritrean refugee and had some amazing stories (she might be my new idol). The Moroccan woman only slept and ironed so staying in the room to hang out wasn’t too appealing. We went to get dinner and to our dismay, drinks were around 15CHF, so a little over $15. Balls. Looks like a drink is out of the question, especially when we saw that they weren’t the size of our heads (which would be the only way to make that price justifiable). We head back to the room to plan the night and Morocco is STILL sleeping. As I have said before, my ideas are usually similar to those of homeless people. We have a bottle of rum but there is “no drinking” in the room and an old Moroccan woman sprawled out in the bed. Homeless style, we take our booze to the bathroom and drink next to showers and toilets. Then we head out on the town and approach what we are 50% sure is a strip club, but it’s so close to the hostel that we have to check. It’s not a strip club and we meet the manager instead and ask where to just get a drink and relax. He takes us to a different bar he manages, buys us what I am pretty sure was a “Washington Apple,” not sure if that was on purpose, but I appreciated the west coast friendly choice either way. All night they play rap from only west coast artists and we are loving a taste of home. We stay awhile and decide to head home to sleep for our big day of exploring the next day. I climbed into my top bunk and fell asleep to the crunching of Mandi snacking on Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a good end to a good evening. Thank you lord everything works itself out. We planned on riding bikes around all day and sightseeing, but the rain ruined that real quick and we resorted to the bus.

The highlight of the day was also the same thing that nearly caused me to burn a restaurant down. Seeing as how all 3 of us get a traditional dish when we go somewhere, we decided to do it up fondue style. Now the fondue was amazing and I felt like I was 8 months pregnant with triplets by the end (not to be included with the good part), however the service was horrendous. Not sure if it was because we were American or if these old Swiss men were just straight up dicks. We almost had to start breaking shit to get attention and nothing happened in a timely matter once we did manage to pull them away from shining something to come to our table. We made eye contact with numerous waiters but they would just look at us and then clean something that didn’t need cleaning. The time was good for digestion but it was starting to get ridiculous. I have never thought about dining and dashing but out of pure anger, I tried to rally the troops to peace out, clearly they wouldn’t have noticed since they avoided our area completely. I paid reluctantly, but thought about using the fondue machinery to burn the place down. With clogged arteries and 3 cheese babies, I went off for more exploring while the other girls went back to nap. In flip flops and rain, I still managed to cover a lot of ground and get my chocolate. I had made contact with tonight’s CS plan and said my goodbyes and hopped on a bus to Gex, France. I had some time to kill in Gex, so I hit up a kebab place and watched the futbol game with drunk Frenchmen. As they were closing, Hayley and her friends arrived and we were all dead tired. They had gone to Germany all day to a theme park, so we hung out for a bit but then all passed out on the couch. Now, after an early morning bus ride and train ride, I am awaiting my next bus ride back home. All I want is a shower, nap and a talllllll glass of wine that doesn’t make me go broke. It was a great trip, I wish I could have seen more of Switzerland though! Now time to get to planning the next trip.


Switzerland Pictures:
http://www2.snapfish.fr/snapfishfr/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3392855022/a=159385193_159385193/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/