The times they are a changin’

I remember clearly a very hot summer day almost a year ago. It was the kind of day when you feel as though all of your energy is being sucked from you as you walk alongside the black shimmering road. When you feel like you want to crawl into the refrigerator as soon as you get home just to get away from the heat. I was standing at a crowded tram stop on St. Kilda road, trying to block out the tormenting squeal of Formula 1 cars buzzing around Albert Park Lake. I looked down the street and saw a gust of wind, stirring red dust and leaves in its wake, approaching rapidly; the cool change had arrived, bringing instant relief from the draining heat. This memory sticks in my mind because it is the only time I have actually been able to see and feel a cool change arrive. Normally I’m only semi-aware that the cool change has come at some point well after it has happened.

Sometimes change is obvious and distinct, but most of the time it creeps up on you and you don’t even realise until you reflect on your life years down the track. Despite this, people often like to separate their lives into different periods. A classic example of this is New Years Eve; somehow we like to think that 2009 is completely different from 2008, but does anything really change once the clock ticks over past midnight? In most cases – no. Sometimes, people can be even more superficial and link change to a material object, “My life will be different now that I have this new sofa.”

Right at the moment, I’m semi-aware that change is coming; I feel its presence, but have no idea if it has come already or even if it will come at all. Recently I heard the fantastic news that I’d passed my final actuarial exam, which means no more study; no more stressing before exams and then stressing some more afterwards whilst waiting for the results. Fortunately I managed to get through it all without failing a subject, which to non-actuaries probably means absolutely nothing, but is a pretty special thing to actuaries. I’m not really fussed about that though, I’m just glad I didn’t have to go through anything twice; I don’t think I would have been able to handle it. Anyway, the point is that my education has finally finished, and now my learning begins. That’s why I feel that change is coming.

To be honest I’m a little bit scared really. When I was studying, at least I had a constant source of focus and motivation; I had little time to dwell on my thoughts. Now that I have free time, I reflect and I think about things a lot. I realise that I have a lot to work on until I am the person that I want to be.

I doubt I’ll be content just working during the day and then going home afterwards and doing nothing. So, my plan is to do something. I want to learn a language, get some new hobbies, write a book, work on my weaknesses and last but not least, get back in touch with the social side of my life, which I’ve neglected for so long. I need to spend more time with my friends, my girlfriend and my family. I need to set aside more time to have fun and live life.

Gee, I just noticed that this is starting to sound like a New Year’s resolution, but that’s not my intention at all. It’s a plan really; a plan to have a full happy post-study life. O brave new world.

And yes, I will try and write on my blog more; I’ve neglected that a bit too.

First things first though. I’ll get back to finishing logging my European holiday. Last time I left off, I was leaving Paris for Nice.

Nice – a town that is a catalyst for bad jokes

Yes, Nice was…pleasant. Now let’s just move on.

It was a little bit sad having to leave Paris so soon, but the rest of France beckoned. We checked out of our grimy youth hostel and made our way to ‘Gare de Nord’ to get two tickets for Nice. After waiting around the station for a bit, we crossed town to ‘Gare de Lyon’ and hopped on board a shiny TGV – the French equivalent of a Japanese bullet train – bound for Marseille. With efficiency uncharacteristic of the French, we departed on time and sped through rolling green pastures towards the port city of Marseille.

We had the unfortunate displeasure of sitting near an arrogant man who decided to watch a bad French comedy on his laptop, without earphones, for the entire length of the trip. Police sirens, corny romantic music and canned laughter, which was followed by the inconsiderate man’s laughter, was the soundtrack to what would have otherwise been a pleasant journey through the French countryside.

We changed to a comparatively dilapidated and slow train at Marseille. It snaked its way along the scenic coast towards Nice, that is until it stopped due to a ‘strike’, which lasted for half an hour. I’m convinced it was just an excuse for the driver to go and sit by the beach and smoke, drink wine and eat cheese. Still, we weren’t exactly in a hurry, so it was no skin off my back.

I felt a tingle of excitement when I caught a glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea and also when we stopped at famous towns like Cannes. The trip got a little bit boring after a while though. Europe looks tiny on the map in comparison to Australia, yet it takes a surprisingly long time to negotiate.

Nice didn’t exactly put on its pretty face to greet us. We pushed our way past bus loads (or boat loads?) of American tourists, to the main street, which happened to be the perimeter of the red light district. Perhaps people who frequent these areas don’t like to walk very far? I can’t think of any other reason why it would be right next to the train station. In any case, nothing says welcome quite like a neon sign blinking “Sex, sex, sex.”

It turned out that our hotel wasn’t very far from all of these shenanigans either. The hotel was a cheap pokey one-star affair, whose main boasting point was their participation in the annual Nice Carnival. As a result of this, several paper maché Carnival costumes, which looked like they were straight out of that James Bond film with ‘jaws’ in Rio, were dotted along the flights of stairs to our room. They scared the heck out of me; their eyes stared blankly and they grinned inanely; I swear they moved when I wasn’t looking. Shudder. Chris seemed to love them though – always one to be mesmerised by truly evil things.

Scary carnival costume - photo courtesy of Chris

We were a bit peckish after all of the travelling, so we wandered out to grab a bite to eat. After getting out of our creepy hotel and walking past the red light district, Nice turned out to be quite… err… good. It reminded me of Melbourne actually, complete with trams and all. I almost felt as though I were walking down Bourke Street in certain parts.

We were a bit too hungry to explore the city for too long, so we settled for an Italian restaurant (of all places), decked out with tables with the stereotypical red and white check tablecloths and a with a plump old Italian waiter, with black hair slicked back with greasy Bryll Cream, but who spoke French. Italy isn’t that far from Nice… so it was ok. The wood fired pizza I ordered turned out to be rather tasty in any case.

The next day we decided to go to Monaco. We decided to pick up some breakfast and lunch from a either a boulangerie or a patisserie. By now we’d learnt that your money lasts a lot longer if you don’t eat lunch at overpriced cafés each day.

Ah breakfast in France, the best meal of the day. There is no better start to the day than munching on a crisp freshly made French pastry. I became quite a pastry addict whilst in France and developed a particular fondness for ‘Pain aux Raisin’ – sweet pastry with custard and sultanas shaped in a spiral.

We managed to find a truly amazing place to get our breakfast and lunch. To this day I still think about it. Their pastries and their baguettes were beyond delicious. Their ‘Pain aux Raisin’ was a work of art: glazed with sugar, plump juicy raisins, creamy custard, finished off with orange rind and crisp pieces of malt. Oh yeah. The only problem was that nothing else since has matched that first pastry ‘hit’.

We made our way to the station to get a train to Monaco. Something seemed to be wrong though. The station was packed with confused American tourists and none of the trains on the departures board seemed to be going to Monaco. Still, Chris and I thought we’d be savvy and try and use the ticket machines to avoid queuing with the Americans.

We got the tickets with no dramas, but then we didn’t know what to do with them. We walked around looking as confused as the Americans. Chris went over to ask a station attendant what was going on. I asked Chris what was happening when he got back, “Umm, I don’t know man, he just mumbled a string of French at me. I think I caught ‘left’ something.”

Now it was my turn to try and find out what was going on. I lined up at the information counter, running a line from my phrasebook over and over in my head: “Which platform does the train to Monaco go from?” The Americans ahead of me were all asking in English and I felt immensely superior to them, right up until the point where I got to the counter, spoke my badly pronounced ‘phrasebook French’ and received a rapid response – in French. Damn, I have no idea what he just said, I thought. I stepped aside feeling a bit silly.

The French weren’t getting it. The way it was supposed to work was that I would speak my bad French, they’d be surprised and impressed and then respond happily in fluent English. As I spent more and more time in France, I realised the best approach was to ask, “Parlez-vous Anglais?” or “Do you speak English” in French. That way it looked like you were making an effort, but you didn’t actually have to know any French at all. Brilliant.

Anyway, we ended up having to ask some Americans and realised that there was a rail strike – lazy French – and that no trains were going to Monaco. Try again tomorrow.

Our plans weren’t set in concrete, so we just switched things around a bit and decided to spend the day exploring Nice instead.

It was a wet and gloomy day. We spent most of our time dodging the rain because we were too cheap/lazy/proud to buy umbrellas. That’s how we ended up in the Matisse gallery – to get out of the rain.

Now, Matisse is supposedly a famous artist from Nice, but we didn’t find his work at all appealing; Chris especially. We killed a few hours walking around making snide and sarcastic comments before deciding that standing in the rain had to be better than spending another minute in that place. From then on Matisse became a synonym for bad/rubbish/lame.

We dodged the rain some more before searching the city to try and find a ‘Carrefour’ store that we saw advertised on a billboard on the side of the road. Carrefour is a massive ‘department-grocery-everything-you-could-every-need-under-one-roof’ type store. Best of all though, they have an excellent selection of chocolate.

We walked down the street before being asked for a light by some youths. Ah France, so many smokers, but cigarette lighters seemingly in such short supply. It is great not speaking the language, you can just say ‘I don’t understand’ and move on without feeling the slightest bit of guilt.

Although later on, saying ‘I don’t understand’ didn’t seem to work. We walked down the street for a bit longer before three young ladies standing in front of a small garage stopped us. They couldn’t speak English, we couldn’t speak French; it was a communication breakdown. After a few minutes of their frantic gesturing, we still couldn’t work out they wanted. They sighed and tried a new approach. The girl with copper coloured hair and a black leather jacket pointed at her Vespa, which seemed to be stuck. Ahh, it finally clicked, she wanted help lifting her Vespa out onto the street, so I did, and then we were all on our way.

We eventually found Carrefour in a smallish shopping centre and I almost gave in and bought an umbrella at a ‘low low price’, but decided against it. We’d already managed to dodge the rain for this long, why give in now? I did stock up on chocolate though.

Eventually after some more general wandering, we decided to try and find some dinner. I was on the hunt for ‘Socca’ which is apparently a pizza/crepe, of sorts, made from chick pea flour and is a speciality of the region, but it turns out it is more of a market dish rather than a restaurant dish. Still, the search for Socca took us to the waterfront and down an alley to an out-of-the-way restaurant serving local specialities.

The restaurant turned out to be one of the best during the trip. A likeable waiter with flared grey hair, a cheerful voice and a carefree demeanour showed us to a table. The menu was scrawled in white chalk on a small blackboard on the table. The walls were thick and the place was dim and had dark tones, almost like a cellar, but much cosier.

Our waiter realised that we were struggling with the menu, so he brought over a young waiter who, not only translated the menu for us, but also gave us a story about the origin of each dish. After she had finished her spiel, I wanted to order about five different dishes, but settled for a traditional slow cooked hearty stew called ‘daube’. We ordered a demi-bottle of local wine and began our meal. The place started filling up with locals who were starting their weekend celebrations. It became quite lively, as the place also doubled as a bar.

The food was excellent, the ambiance great and the cheerful waiter topped it all off by offering us free shots from the bar after our meal. While Nice may be a little dull sometimes, the food and the waterfront area makes it a truly special place. Well worth a visit.

We called it a night and decided that we’d renew our quest to get to Monaco the following day.