LLWorldTour

Whatever you call it: café, coffee, espresso, café latte, or just a ‘cup of joe,’ coffee has been drunk for centuries and varies depending on the species of coffee plant the bean comes from - a misnomer for seed (arabica, robusta, etc.) - and the type of roast (Italian, French, American, etc.). It was discovered originally in Ethiopia, spread through Arabia into Turkey and eventually to the thriving trade port in Venice. Today coffee drinks are big business and, for better or worse, a cup of coffee has become part of the uniform of the American worker (and an eco-disaster). Noted as one of the world’s largest, most valuable, legally traded commodities after oil, coffee has become a vital cash crop for many Third World countries. Brazil is the world leader in production of green coffee, followed by Vietnam and Colombia. Of course with all this demand comes big ecological impacts as well. A major issue concerning coffee is its use of water. According to New Scientist, it takes about 140 liters of water to grow the coffee beans needed to produce one cup of coffee and coffee is often grown in countries where there is a water shortage.

The concept of fair trade labeling, which guarantees coffee growers a negotiated pre-harvest price, began in Europe in the ’60s.  Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. By requiring companies to pay sustainable prices (which must never fall below the market price), Fairtrade addresses the injustices of conventional trade, which traditionally discriminates against the poorest, weakest producers. It enables them to improve their position and have more control over their lives.

The production and consumption of “Fair Trade Coffee” has grown in recent years as some local and national coffee chains have started to offer fair trade alternatives. Starbucks, one of the largest buyers of Fair Trade Certified coffee, will double its purchases to 40 million pounds in 2009, making the company the largest purchaser of Fair Trade Certified coffee in the world.   A number of studies have shown that fair trade coffee has a positive impact on the communities that grow it by strengthening producer organizations, improving returns to small producers, and positively affecting their quality of life. The families of fair trade producers were also more stable than those who were not involved in fair trade, and their children had better access to education.

I used to never drink the stuff; all through high school, university, and through my twenties – not a drop. After the Starbucks craze (and, in case you don’t live in the US, there are also many independent cafes and coffee bars in the US) I was sucked in just a little and would maybe treat myself to a few coffees each month. And since I wasn’t a true coffee drinker, these were, of course, the frou frou coffee ‘concoctions’ of Starbucks – like a mocha (espresso with a shot of chocolate syrup…for me minus the whipped cream). Now as I’ve traveled around the world and through Europe, my coffee and thus caffeine intake has dramatically increased - for a few reasons. First, when you are walking around towns and cities for months…you simply need something to do when you ‘take a break.’ And, of course, there are all these inviting cafes lining the streets beckoning you in with happy patrons laughing while they sip a cappuccino. So it was nice for me to join in. Plus if I sat down and ate something every time I wanted to take a break, I’d be as big as a house. Next, I did actually start to appreciate the taste and differences of coffees around the world. From the surprising, yet good, café culture in Melbourne, Australia (where I worked as a barista) and the chains of Asia to the less-than-stellar instant coffee commonly served up in Eastern Europe and the pleasing café au lait of France and rich espressos in Italy. In fact, the more coffee I drink, the less milk I add. I’ve gone from a crazy Starbucks caramel macchiato (not the real macchiato—an espresso ‘stained’ with a drop of milk) to a simple, yet robust, real Italian espresso (in 3 sips you’re done). I used to never order an espresso thinking it was too strong and dark for me, but I have to tell you, these are delicious.

The one coffee I just could not force myself to like is Turkish. For me, it’s just too strong. The grounds are left in the cup which makes for a bit of a sludgy beverage. But the after show is nice…having someone read your fortune in the bottom of your cup. Maybe mine would say, ‘you are drinking too much coffee.’ Well, probably not since the fortuneteller probably gets kick backs from the establishment.

As I’ve written before, there are many stereotypes about Americans. Some people know us from living in or visiting the United States; others think they know us from the myriad of good quality, but often unrealistic American television shows and movies that make their way around the globe to a theater far from you. But, of course, in the same vein, we hear many misconceptions and stereotypes about other cultures, possibly none more so than the French.  We seem to dream and fantasize about Paris, but are supposed to hate the French.  We love French fries, French kissing, and French films, but are ‘told’ the French are rude and unfriendly. Just as so many foreigners believe untrue things about Americans as a whole without ever having visited the United States, many Americans (and others around the world) have cultivated a not-so-nice view of the French without ever having set foot in France.  Well, I am here to tell you that in my unscientific and simple personal experiences - ten years ago during my first trip to France and now - nearly all of the French people I have met have been nothing but cordial, friendly, and sweet. We all know that what you put ‘out there’ is a big determinant of what you get in return, and whether you’re in Chicago or Paris, a sincere smile and a ‘thank you’ or ‘merci’ goes a long way.

Here are just a few examples of the encounters I had with virtual strangers I met during my time in the home of “Marianne.”

My first day in Paris I was staying with Herbert, a friendly, hospitable couchsurfing host (who even picked me up at the airport…a rare treat) in the working class neighborhood around Montmartre. I left his apartment to go for a morning jog and bumped into a neighbor in the courtyard. “Bonjour!” he said with that lovely French ‘sing-songy’ lilt. He spoke some Spanish which was easier for both of us and we proceeded to walk together out of the courtyard to the street corner. Then he directed me to a canal which was a good place to go running - a run I was now more energized to do after this nice exchange.

Another fine afternoon in Paris I was at a supermarket buying some yummy fromage and charcuterie (ham, salami, etc.) with my new friend Audrey, for a nice picnic style dinner. The bubbly, rotund French woman who worked at the deli counter literally couldn’t stop saying how much she liked the United States. She goes on a trip there nearly every year and said she wished she was wearing one of her many American souvenir t-shirts (‘I Love NY’, etc.). She said this year she would be going on a trip to Chicago. The funny thing is she barely spoke any English (all this was translated to me by Audrey) and yet she still has a great time in the U.S., a fact that I find interesting considering the lack of French-speaking Americans I know - none. But, for a bit longer than we would have liked, she regaled us with tales of her former visits while continuing to stuff us full of free samples of rillettes du porc, saucisson, et fromage.

In the cute city of Nantes, another couchsurfing host, Maela invited me to join her at a friend’s birthday party. I was a total stranger who didn’t speak much French and yet her friends went out of their way to make me feel at home and were all open, friendly, and fun. They spoke their best English with me and by the end of the night I felt like one of the gang.

For nearly a week, I had the good fortune to leave my bag on the floor and relax in the tiny middle of nowhere town of Bias (it’s an hour and a half south of Bordeaux and hour and a half north of the Spanish border). My British friend Caroline was staying here pet sitting for her cousin who was off on holiday. We rode our bikes to the beach, cooked yummy meals, and relaxed in their cabin-like home in front of a toasty roaring fire - just 2 girls living the quiet countryside life. For me, it was great to relax, leave my bag unpacked, and stay stationary for a bit.  My first night there, we met the neighbors over the fence, with whom moments later, I was playing lawn tennis. Then they proceeded to invite us over for wine and nibbles. Keep in mind - they spoke zero English and yet we spent three nights out of six drinking, nibbling, and laughing with them. I will never forget their wonderful hospitality for the two ‘out of their element’ English girls next door.

I am on a shiny, fast train heading toward shiny, efficient Geneva.  As we ride the rails, we go through woods ablaze with fall colors-bright yellows, flaming reds, and pumpkin oranges. The undulating green French countryside has given way to granite rocky hills signaling we are entering Alp country. There is something about the Alpine country that I love - the crispness in the air, the clean oxygen in my lungs, and the cute flower-box adorned homes clinging to the green hillsides.

But what was I doing in Geneva? I hadn’t planned on a visit to Switzerland - one of the most expensive countries on the planet where a Starbucks cappuccino literally costs $7.  I was actually just here for a few hours to be picked up by new friends working at the UN Headquarters here. You may be sick of me talking about new friends, but I can not stress enough how this is the most amazing and wonderful part about travel. I met Leyla through my website when she emailed a comment about my post of the reverse culture shock some travelers feel when they return home after a long journey. She, too, has her own travel website, called Women on the Road and we kept in touch over the months through emails and she even interviewed me for her site.  She lives in France not too far from the Swiss border and told me if I ever was in France I should stop by. Well, you know me…so that’s just what I did.

Leyla and her partner, Anne, live in an amazing, renovated (work in progress) farmhouse near Seyssel, a small town about an hour southwest of Geneva. I was excited to meet them. And I had no idea how old they were or what they looked like. I kind of like that. It’s great developing relationships just through words/thoughts (in emails) and not having any preconceived notions or judgments because of how a person looks - their age, sex, race…whatever.

I spent a lovely week at their home. We drove around the beautiful surrounding areas all under surrounded by the amazing back drop of the Alps and Mont Blanc.

They took me to Chamonix where I ascended the incredible, Aiguille du Midi at 12,600 feet, The views were fantastic. Jagged snow-capped peaks pierce the cobalt sky and in wintertime the place is mobbed with skiers schussing down the mountain side.  After my short time at the frozen summit, my altitude-challenged lungs were ready for sea level and my stomach was ready for lunch.   Luckily back down in town Anne and Leyla were waiting to take me for the local specialty-raclette (from French: to scrape). You are basically served a mini charcoal grill sitting on its side like a birdcage of briquettes with a tasty hunk of cheese positioned in front of it. As it melts, you scrape the gooey goodness onto to the accompanying bread or potatoes. And enjoy with the plate of charcuterie of salamis and similar. Yummy.

We also took in Annecy, an absolutely charming medieval town (and one of the most appealing I’d been to in France)…with the quintessential cobblestone pedestrian lanes filled chock-a-block with shops, cafes, and strolling inhabitants.

Some other local musts I partook in: chowing down on garlic and butter soaked frogs legs and enjoying Seyssel’s annual town fair - with bric-a-brac to buy, foods to sample…and the odd cow or chicken for sale. Moo.

And to top it all off, Leyla took me to the local Sunday Bingo game. It doesn’t get less touristy than this. You can picture it - the local community center with a high pitched ceiling supported by sturdy wood beams, long tables at which random locals sat averaging the age of 75, and a table against a wall with locally baked goodies to buy - the proceeds going to some local charity.   After several hours, Leyla and her lucky cards brought her good fortune in the name of a frying pan, a gift basket filled with edible goodies, and even a vacuum cleaner. Like Charlie Brown, all I got was rocks.  I got nothing. Actually, I did benefit from the three-hour lesson of French numbers. Now I can count to 100 in French. Well, more accurately, 99-Bingo cards only have one or two digits.

As I made my way counterclockwise around the perimeter of France for a month and a half, I stayed in some towns that I only knew about through the artists that resided there. In the ancient Roman city of Rouen in Northern France, I strolled right by the stunning Gothic Cathedral at sunset in awe as if I’d seen it somewhere before. Maybe in my dreams? Nope. It was in the series paintings by Claude Monet who tried to capture the amazing light and colors that formed on the façade when the light of dusk meets the white stone. And now I was seeing exactly why he painted it - it was marvelous.

In Aix-en-Provence, I followed in the footsteps of Paul Cézanne. There are plaques on the ground all over town pointing out places where he lived, ate, drank, or painted.  Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence to a wealthy family who hopes of him becoming a banker and a lawyer. He fled to Paris to paint instead.

Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century’s new line of artistic form, Cubism.

In the charming winding medieval streets of the old town in Arles, one of my favorite stops in France, I was mesmerized by Vincent Van Gogh’s shadow. Although he painted more than 200 canvases here, not a single one remains today. But what does remain is the oh-so-familiar sight of the ‘café at night.’ Supposedly this is the café Van Gogh painted and the very one that hung in my mom’s house and above my own fireplace for many years. I always loved the feeling it captured of those old European streets with the echoes of conversation and clinking of glasses on balmy nights. It’s that sound I hear walking around old streets all over Europe-the one where you almost forget that you are outdoors. On a dark note, it was also here where Van Gogh lobbed off a part of his own ear after a spat with his housemate, Paul Gauguin. All around town, you can see points where Van Gogh set up his easel to paint famous works such as Starry night over the Rhone (the other, more famous ‘starry night’ he painted during his time in an asylum just down the road) and the Yellow House - which is unfortunately no longer there, as like much of France, it was obliterated during the bombings of World War II. Sadly, Van Gogh suffered from major mental illness and depression and shot himself to death at the young age of 37. At the time, he had only sold one painting (for about $70) and died penniless.

And finally, in Lyon it was where the motion picture was born. Auguste and Louis Lumiere both worked for their father’s photographic firm. The Lumiere brothers patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera - most notably the tiny top and bottom sprockets that are used as a means to advance the film through the camera and projector. Their ‘cinématographe’ itself was patented in 1895 and their first public screening with an admission charge was held in December, 1895, at Paris’s Salon Indien du Grand Café. In a historical district of Lyon, The Institut Lumière, is a must stop for film-buffs. This museum showcases cinema’s glorious beginnings and is devoted to the Lumieres. It prides itself in conservation and contains many historical films, books, photos, and pieces of cinematographic equipment.

Fin.

Do you speak French? You might think you don’t, but the English language is peppered with French words and phrases, many of which we hardly even realize are French anymore. Apparently around 30% of our English vocabulary is of French origin.  Most of the French vocabulary now appearing in English was imported over the centuries following the Norman Conquest of 1066, when England came under the control of Norman-speaking peoples.  It is also via French that many Latin words have come to the English language.

As I researched this, I found there are thousands of words, so I’ve listed just some here.

So whether you realize it or not you may already “speak French!” C’est la vie!

• à la carte
• à la mode
• abbreviation
• absurd
• access
• adolescence
• advertisement
• amateur
• ambience
• après-ski
• à propos
• art déco
• au contraire
• au gratin
• au jus
• au naturel
• au pair
• avant-garde
• bistro
• bizarre
• blasé
• blonde
• bon appétit
• bon vivant
• bon voyage good
• boulevard
• brunette
• c’est la vie
• chic
• connoisseur
• crème brûlée
• critique
• cuisine
• cul-de-sac
• debutante
• décolleté
• déjà vu
• de rigueur
• double entendre
• du Jour
• eau de toilette
• en route
• entrepreneur
• Fatigue
• faux
• faux pas
• femme fatale
• fiancé
• film noir
• fleur-de-lis
• garage
• gauche
• general
• generous
• gourmet
• gorgeous
• haute couture
• haute cuisine
• hors d’oeuvre
• ignorant
• imagine
• je ne sais quoi
• joie de vivre
• laissez-faire
• laundry
• liberty
• lieu
• machine
• maneuver
• mardi gras
• matinée
• melange
• ménage à trios
• moustache
• mousse
• number
• omelette
• option
• passion
• passport
• pen
• petite
• premiere
• president
• prêt-à-porter
• protégé
• rendezvous
• résumé
• remarkable
• repartee
• risqué
• rouge
• RSVP (répondez s’il vous plait)
• sans
• sex
• soirée
• souvenir
• stupid
• tête-à-tête
• touche
• vis-à-vis
• voilà !
• voyeur

There are so many…if you would like to see more just go here.

On a crisp fall day, you can walk around downtown Chicago and often catch a whiff of cocoa-scented air making the trek to work just a bit easier.  Unfortunately, large cities aren’t known for their sweet smells. Often pungent odors like trash, urine, and exhaust fumes come to mind when we think of the scents of a city. But oh no my friends, not Chicago. The Blommer Chocolate factory, which is not too far from the loop, has been manufacturing that rich, chocolaty goodness for 70 years. Within smelling range of the factory, it’s nearly impossible to find anyone who doesn’t enjoy the rich, brownie-like aroma as they trudge to the office.

And I’ve always been flummoxed as to why the Chicago Tourism Office does not incorporate this amazing fact into their marketing materials: ‘Chicago - it’s the city that smells like chocolate’ or ‘Chicago - a city dipped in chocolate’ or ‘Sweet Home Chicago - we mean that literally.’

There’s always been a buzz about Chicago with its sparkling downtown skyscrapers, the year-round flower-scaped shoppers’ paradise of Michigan Avenue and the tourist-drawing public art filled Millennium Park. But, now more than ever, the ‘city of big shoulders’ is a thriving, sophisticated, cosmopolitan metropolis filled with young urbanites proud of their town and ready to share why.

Why is Chicago American’s hottest city now? Besides rivaling New York and San Francisco for some of the world’s best restaurants and most diverse neighborhoods, there are some new reasons. The Chicago Cubs - okay, dare I say it… they almost went all the way…again.  They have not won a world series in exactly 100 years, were number one in the national league and consistently stayed on top all season. Well, until they lost. “There’s always next year.”

The home to the world’s first skyscraper is breaking new records again. Just as Donald Trump’s new tower is being completed on the riverfront as the second tallest building in Chicago and North America, the construction of another momentous building is underway. Designed by world renowned Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava, the new Chicago Spire, at 2000 feet and with 150 floors, will be the twelfth tallest freestanding structure in the world.  The Spire will surpass Chicago’s Sears Tower to become North America’s tallest tower.

Now that the Beijing Olympics are a thing of the past, all eyes are on Chicago as one of the final contenders for the 2016 Olympics-a campaign the city and mayor Daley are fighting hard.In the event of Chicago being selected by the IOC, the 2016 Games will be the first Summer Olympics held in the Americas since the 1996 Atlanta Games. The final selection will be made on October 2, 2009. Currently, Chicago’s rival cities for the hosting of the Games are Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo. It is expected that Chicago’s significant infrastructure and public transport system, world-class architecture, renowned skyline, multi-cultural, historical, and pop-cultural contributions will be positive factors as the Olympics bid is weighed.

And to top it all off, the Chicago’s home son, Barack Obama, will soon be sworn in as the 44^th president of the United States of America. No matter what your political affiliation or whom you voted for in the election, this is an exciting and momentous time in the U.S. and in Chicago in particular. Nearly 100,000 Chicagoans gathered in Grant Park on Chicago’s lakefront on election night in hopes of hearing a victory speech - and they were not disappointed. After 2 years of hard campaigning Barack Obama won the election by a wide margin gaining 364 electoral votes to John McCain’s 174.

The world was watching from Japan to Kenya and Iraq to Vancouver.  Now so many eyes are on Chicago and the Illinois Tourism Board is counting on it. In fact, the Chicago Tourism site offers visitors a glimpse of Obama’s Chicago. I was watching from an election party in France, where something like 95% of the population supported Obama. I was anxious and tired and the boring, very conservative CNN coverage (lest they fall into the premature projections like last time) was hard to keep the interest of my French friends. But then at 6am France time, we had a new president and history was made. The citizens of the United States had spoken and I felt such a pride that I have not felt in a very long time. The only thing missing was me…from Chicago.

I tailored the end of my France trip to coincide with the presidential election. In other words, I tried to be in a larger city so I could watch the results with other like minded people, expats and interested French folks (which was pretty much everyone).  I had sent my vote in weeks earlier by absentee ballot and now I was fortunate to join some fellow couchsurfers in Lyon, France at an all night election party. Since it’s a six hour time difference from here to New York…we knew we were in for a long night.  We were totally exhausted and the CNN International coverage didn’t help us stay awake - even with their odd ‘beam me up Scotty’ style of hologram journalism (a bit over the top for me) - but by 6am we were cheering and applauding with the crowds in Chicago’s Grant Park for a new United States and hopeful for a changing future.

I heard some great things from my friends back home in Chicago and wished I was there to bask in the positive energy of the city.

From an email of a friend:

“Yea, it is a little Obama crazy. It’s fun. It just really feels positive. When your walking down the street, and people pass you by, you can feel that positive energy coming off people. It’s like walking around on that first beautiful day of spring and everyone has this underlying sense of happiness. It is like we all did something REALLY, REALLY GOOD, that we weren’t supposed to do, and we got away with it. It’s a fun feeling.”

From another friend’s blog:

“I’m so proud of our country today. We might not have been in Grant Park, like many we knew were, but I think there was celebration no matter where you were in Chicago. At the bar people were cheering like crazy, cars were driving by blaring their horns. Everyone was so happy. The front door/windows were open because it was such a nice night and people were lined up on the sidewalk watching and listening to Obama’s acceptance speech. …I want to remember where I was and what it felt like when our country made history and finally made a positive decision for its future.”

Check out this amazing website with the headlines of newspapers from around the world on November 5^th.

It’s cold. It’s damp. It’s gray. I’m miserable and chilled to the bone here in southern France. But besides the unfortunate weather and my frozen toes I am still able to see that Aix-en-Provence is a beautiful and charming city.  If being cranky and wet still doesn’t manage to darken my view of this provincial town, then it must be something. I can only imagine how lovely it is here in the summertime; sitting outside in any of its numerous cafes, sipping a café au lait, watching all the chic locals  sashay by.

The town’s main corridor, the 17^th century Cours Mirabeau, is the closest thing to Barcelona’s La Rambla or Paris’ the Champs-Elysees. The broad boulevard is shaded by towering, sturdy plane trees and flanked by grand stone mansions, banks, and awning covered sidewalk cafes like Cezanne’s former haunt, Les Deux Garcons. And just north of this wide artery is the old town - all squirrely with narrow cobblestone pedestrian lanes bursting with flower markets, boulangeries, and trickling fountains at every turn. The sounds of the crowds echo and bounce off the centuries’ old stone apartment buildings adorned with fading multi colored wood shutters and thick wooden doors. It’s hard not to fall in love with this town’s medieval charm as have so many others.

Maybe I can live here?’ I think as I wander the corridors dazzled by the old-world feel around me. I guess I just have to add it to my list of ‘favorite small towns’ I’ve discovered while traversing the globe…it’s getting longer and longer and making it nearly impossible to figure out where to return.

I spent a few days in the French Countryside with my friend Caroline at her cousin’s house in the tiny, rural town of Bias (pronounced BEE-ah). It was just what I needed - a quiet place to relax, leave my bag on the floor for several days untouched, catch up on some much needed writing, and just hang out by the crackling fire. The house was warm and cozy with terracotta tiled floors and wood beamed ceilings overhead, and the aforementioned big stone fireplace.  We didn’t do a whole lot and I liked it. We cooked a little, sat by the fire, and met some of the sweet French neighbors who had us over for drinks our very first night. We couldn’t really speak much French, they spoke zero English and yet it was a blast.

One day we rode our bikes through the lush and tranquil (except for the random hunter’s gunshots echoing through the air) forest land that surrounds Bias to the beach - normally packed with oiled-up holiday makers in the summer months, now it was quiet and delightful. We had a wonderful lunch in the warm sun of an outdoor café as the waves of the Atlantic crashed up onto the beach down below.

Another day we took a day trip, two hours south to Spain. I love the fact that in Europe, crossing country borders is like crossing state borders in the US; except that here…everything changes-the people, the culture, (formerly the currency), the language. Well, I guess that’s true too if you are crossing into Texas.  It was a lovely day. In San Sebastian, we met up with a friend of mine that I met last year at Pueblo Ingles.  He gave us a great tour of the city - a place that has been compared to Rio since the city comes right down to the beach. It is also known for its amazing food. We went on a mini pintxos (tapas) and beer crawl-going bar to bar trying some of the local treats. Mmm. Good friends and good food - really a perfect day.

I’ve been traveling alone for nearly two years. And I love it. I can honestly say that I now prefer to travel alone than any other way (well how many ways are there really?). Of course, it’s always fun to meet up with a friend here and there, but going solo is, for me, the only way to go.

The funny thing is - by being alone you actually meet more people and in essence are never really even alone.

So the more I travel alone, the more people I meet. The more I travel with a friend, the less people I meet. It’s as simple as that. Many times I’ve been asked the question: “Aren’t you scared being a woman traveling alone?”

Not at all. Yes, being a woman can certainly sometimes bring on unwanted attention, but this is rare and usually not threatening. To me the benefits far outweigh the negatives. As a solo woman, if I need help anywhere, friendly locals will help me. On the few instances I’ve really needed help with my bag or couldn’t lift it over my head to shove it in an overhead bin on the train, there is always a nice strong Frenchman waiting in the wings to help a poor helpless girl. If I’m out eating or at a bar, I’m much more likely to be able to strike up a conversation with a stranger - man or woman. I’m a woman so as a stranger I don’t seem threatening or dangerous. But if I was a man and started talking to random people, they may worry that I was some kind of weirdo or looking for something besides just conversation.

In fact, I meet so many people while traveling that I’ve joked that I have to stop. I’ve seemed to reach capacity in my brain for all the new friends I’ve made in such a short time - names, interests, families - it’s a lot to remember. I mean when in my life (except for maybe just during university) in just 2 years have I ever made over a hundred new friends that I keep in touch with on a semi-regular basis. Perhaps it’s my fault and I shouldn’t be so good at keeping in touch. I do have a tendency to be a super-efficient emailer who never likes to not answer someone’s email within a few days of receiving it, but it’s usually more like a few hours. This is one of my pet peeves of the modern world - people that do not answer emails or do not answer questions posed in an email. To me this is like not calling someone back who has left you a message. In fact, since I’m traveling without a phone, this is exactly what this is like for me. Why would I write you if I didn’t want you to respond? Why would I type questions out if I wasn’t genuinely interested in the answers?

My good friend Marsha had gone on her own extended travels alone and said to me before I left Chicago two years ago, “I was never alone more than three days.” And she was exactly right. There are rare times when I don’t meet anyone, but it’s usually because I don’t want to. Most of the time I put myself in situations where meeting people is somewhat inevitable: hostels, couchsurfing, working, volunteering, taking the occasional tours, and just plain smiling.

Here is just a small example of one day in my life as a solo traveler recently. And this is not atypical. Most days I meet someone.

Caen to St. Malo:

20:00    Train Station in St. Malo-Helen: I arrived at 8pm in the small shuttered town of St. Malo. I left the modern train station and headed outside into the dark chilly night to search for a bus that could drop me off near my hostel.  Right in front were several shelters for bus stops. I studied the schedule and map posted and figured out which bus to take, but in this sleepy little off-season town, it seemed the buses were already done for the night. There was not a soul around except one girl standing on the curb, smoking a cigarette with a suitcase by her side. I approached her with a smile, “Bonsoir. Parlez vous Anglais?” Yes she did. In fact she worked in a hotel in Paris so her English was quite good. I asked her if she knew about the buses. She did not. But she was waiting for a friend to pick her up and offered within seconds to just drive me to wherever it was I needed to go. Shortly after, her two guy friends screeched up in their car and were happy to drop me off at my hostel. They were all complete strangers, but, unsurprisingly helpful.

21:00    Hostel-Amelie: When I arrived at my hostel in St. Malo I checked in to a shared room with 4 beds. There was only one other traveler using the room. Her name was Amelie and she was on holiday from Montreal. We proceeded to chat about our travels and then went down to the bar for a local Brittany beer and hang out like old friends. The beauty of meeting people when you travel is you are all in the ‘same boat.’ No one knows anyone so it’s almost like an unspoken rule that you will become friends faster and easier than in ‘real life.’ This is another reason I like travel so much. People are just friends. No questions. No rank. No status.

12:30    In town-NJ kids: The next day I was walking around town and passed two teenagers sitting on a stone wall. I overheard one finishing his sentence with “…the tri-state area, ya know, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.” I stopped in my tracks and said “I’m from New Jersey.” They were traveling with their folks through parts of France and visiting an uncle who lived here. We chatted a bit, swapped respective NJ hometown names and then I went on my way with a smile and warm feeling of familiarity.

13:00    In town-folks from Little Rock and Baltimore: I was waiting for the tourist office to open after it’s ‘lunch break’ as some American tourists walked up. I alerted them that the Tourist Information office was closed for lunch and we proceeded to chat about each others travels for the next 15 minutes.

16:00    Café-UK man who had a few too many beers: I ended up being the translator between a café owner and a slightly inebriated man who was trying to find his way back to his hotel.

16:20    Café owner: After previously mentioned drunk man left, the café owner thanked me and we proceeded to chat in broken English and French as she told me she was a big fan of the soap opera, “The Young and the Restless.”

The very next day, I took two buses to nearby Mont St. Michel-perhaps the most famous image of Northern France of the spectacular Abbey on the hill surrounded by water. During the tour, I met a lovely couple from NJ: Janet and Marvin. They offered to drive me back to St. Malo where they were also staying. For me a ride in the countryside was wonderful. I rarely, if ever, am in a car while I travel and it was great to take the scenic route along the ocean and chat with my fellow New Jerseyans along the way. The best part? We stopped in a fabulous little seaside town called Cancale-famous for its huge oyster beds that line the beach. We walked down the small boardwalk lined with cute colorful restaurants, shops, and stone buildings. We breathed in the salty sea air and couldn’t help craving the local ‘fruits of the sea.’ So we sat down at an outdoor café, as the late afternoon sun dipped into the Atlantic drank the local cider and slurped down the freshest (and almost still alive) and best tasting oysters I have ever had.