clabbermouth

After a few days of Parisian adventures, Dad plugged his pre-programmed GPS into a French rental car and a motley crew piled on in: Mom, the official critic of driving style and automated directions, sat shotgun. Stephen, my friend from England, hopped on the Eurostar just in time to join us for the trip, and he quickly fell into his role as the group photographer. He sat in the back seat, except when he was disappearing to take pictures and collect strange rocks, which was usually. I sat next to him, translating and troubleshooting linguistic and cultural dilemmas. Aunt Eileen was in the other corner, observing and chuckling at the chaos.

Despite (because of?) this insanity, it was awesome. Three hours of driving took us straight into the heart of the Loire Valley, a land known mostly for its castles and (at least in my circles) its goats.

Our first touristy stop was at Chateau Villandry.

Yes, that is cabbage that you see. In the early 20^th century, an insanely rich American expat and her Spanish husband bought this castle and started landscaping with vegetables.

If Bill Gates designed a formal garden out of pumpkins on his personal estate, let’s be honest, we’d probably hate his guts for it. But in France? This is culture! Beauty! History!

We then followed my father on a quest to discover an enigma translated by Lonely Planet as “smashed apples.” “It’s a thing…” he told us, “a product…they eat it in the military, they make it in caves!” They turned out to be apples dried for several days at the age of a massive wood-fired stove. In a cave. And then they were smashed.

I got my fill of goats on this trip, and my family got to experience a little bit of my usual daily life.

They paid for it. By which I mean they literally paid money to stay at a goat farm overnight. Sometimes people do that.

And when my parents got back on that transatlantic flight, saying goodbye was kind of like saying goodbye after Thanksgiving weekend when I would soon be home for Winter Break. My journey was officially almost over.

When I said goodbye to Shelly, I got back on the train for a long trip to Paris. I have an aunt and uncle who are spending a few years living there, and my parents flew in to visit a few days after I arrived. On the train, I befriended the frazzled Mexican couple next to me by helping them communicate with the train conductor. Then I explained how I had been biking around, eating oatmeal and sleeping in ditches, and I was about to meet up with my family. The man nodded sagely. “When you get off this train,” he said, “your life will change immediately.”

That it did. There were restaurants involved. Hotels. Guided tours. Castles. And, you know, I got to see my parents for the first time in nine months.

In Paris, we perused the markets.

We helped my dad succeed in what I thought was one of his most futile missions: he had read somewhere on the world wide web that there were beehives at the Luxembourg Gardens, but the Parisians and local scholars we talked to all denied it. They’re not on any signs or maps, but the bees are there and we found them.

We took a tour of the King’s Kitchen Garden at Versailles. In 1678, Louis XIV’s head gardener, La Quintinye, began working these nine hectares to supply year-round produce to the royal kitchen. He tried out new varieties and new-to-France vegetables, and pioneered season-extension techniques. Today, the garden showcases some of these historical varieties and techniques, and also serves as an experimental playground for the students of the school of horticulture next door.

Does this raspberry bush look angry that it’s being forced to grow in an unnatural shape for the aesthetic pleasure of aristocrats, or am I projecting?

Three trains, one national border and a twenty-mile bike ride later, I was trying hard to remember my Spanish in the beautiful coastal city of San Sebastian. I arrived the night  before Shelly would be there. We had hostel reservations for our time together, but I spent my first night with a warmshowers host. He was a German man who had been living in Spain for twelve years, which gave him a unique perspective on the city. Despite my fatigue, he convinced me to come out to a concert in his neighborhood that night. And the next day, after I met up with Shelly, he took us on a bike ride up a giant hill where we could see everything.

San Sebastian is a beautiful, small, incredibly bike friendly city. It was just a little bit too cold for me to want to jump in the ocean while I was there, but we saw plenty of surfers in wetsuits enjoying the waves.

It’s also famous for its food. There is a large Basque population in San Sebastian, and they get a lot of delicious food coming in from the mountains. I tasted Basque cider, which was completely different from anything I’ve tried in the UK or at home. Some people don’t like it, or can’t tell what it is, but I thought it was excellent. It’s made out of mostly sour apples and it’s not very highly carbonated. It’s dry, tart, refreshing. And San Sebastian is a great place to try the regional cured meats,  cheese, even raw milk. One day, when Shelly and I were out walking in a residential area, we came across a raw milk vending machine. It’s the first one I’ve ever seen. My camera was broken at this point, but there are some photos around the internet.

San Sebastian is also home to lots of innovative chefs develeloping interesting gourmet cuisine. This wouldn’t normally matter to me since I can’t afford to eat at any of these restaurants. But the Basque tradition of pintxos made some of these dishes accessible. Pintxos are like tapas but they’re even smaller. The fancy ones were extremely expensive for what they were – we’re talking like five euros for five bites – but I appreciated having the opportunity to taste some of these creations, and I liked pintxo culture. Shelly and I would have a small meal at home before heading out around eight to check out a few different pintxo bars. Then, sometime before midnight, we would head home. The locals skipped the pre-game meal, went out for pintxos, went home and ate dinner afterwards, then went out again to the discotequas. Sometimes cultural immersion can only go so far.

When I emerged from the pine barrens of France’s western coast, I turned left and found myself in the Pyrenees without any real plan. I decided to ride around in the foothills and see what I could find. At this point, I associated the Pyrenees with idyllic lifestyles, spectacular wilderness, and delicious farmstead sheep’s cheese. I did eat some great cheese. Mostly, I tasted different versions of Ossau-Iraty. It’s a medium-soft pressed cheese meant to sustain shepherds in the mountains through the winter. It’s nutty and sheepy and a little bit grainy and it holds quite well in a hot pannier in the mountain sun.

I also ate the AOC hot pepper of Espelette. I listened to people speaking Basque. I got some amazing views. But mostly, I rode my bike up and down mountains. It was hard. I was starting to feel a little directionless. A little too late, I decided that although the idea of actually cycling over the Pyrenees sounded intimidating, it would have been more rewarding than what I was doing. And then my friend Shelly, who had recently moved to Madrid, offered to meet up with me somewhere. Yes! A destination and a friend – everything I needed. We made plans: Toulouse, over the weekend. I could get there by bike. Shelly would take the bus.

But then something strange happened. Shelly accidentally bought a ticket to Tolosa, Spain instead of Toulouse, France. Oops.

Shelly, of course, had a job and a schedule and responsibilities and she wasn’t going to be able to make it to Toulouse. I had none of the above. So, with the help of some very patient train station employees, I concocted a plan. I would arrive in Toulouse as scheduled, hop on three different trains to the very southwestern tip of France, and ride my bike across the border. Shelly would get a four-euro extension on her bus ticket and meet me in the city of San Sebastian. It sounded like a better city than Toulouse anyway!

For most of my life, I will have responsibilities that prevent me from making such spontaneous decisions. That’s ok. I know that there is value in stability and commitment. But for now, it really doesn’t matter what I do. I can be flexible enough to just ride my bike to a different country. I might as well exercise that freedom while I have it.