This is how easily you can be accused of something you didn’t do. This is how easily you can end up making decisions uncharacteristic of you—come on, I’m 37, I can speak up and stand up for myself!
This is how easily you can be accused of something you didn’t do. This is how easily you can end up making decisions uncharacteristic of you—come on, I’m 37, I can speak up and stand up for myself!
I had a very strange and mildly disturbing experience this summer, the kind I’d normally write about.
Except this time, I didn’t.
I was embarrassed and I was worried no one would believe me.
This is what a French brings back from a trip to France. Yes, detergent and instant soup, why?
I folded and refolded then packed and repacked until 11 p.m., getting irrationally frustrated because edges still had wrinkles and my stack of clothes looked uneven. “Let me know if you need...
I mean, without people, there wouldn’t be a pandemic, right?
Still, I like seeing streets full of interesting strangers I’ll never see again.
Suddenly, just like that and just for us, the city puts on an amazing and unexpected show. Lights reflect on water, the moon shines, everything looks magically and disconcertingly different.
I’m exhausted (not a COVID symptom) and anxious (totally a pandemic side effect).
This year, I added a COVID-19 test to my "French chores" list. Hey, it’s a unique Pandemic YearTM opportunity after all!
Saint-Nazaire could have been my kind of place.
It’s the biggest harbour on the French Atlantic coast and a working-class city with a long tradition of fishing and shipbuilding.
One by one, French cities and towns have been making face masks mandatory outdoors for a couple of weeks now. Le Monde’s headlines were getting ridiculous—“masks mandatory outdoors in Lille! In Paris...
We followed a small river, la Sèvre nantaise, and stumbled upon a hamlet called Ville Bachelier—just four of five houses in the middle of nowhere. It felts like being in the 1930s.
The river and night sky never look the same. Yesterday night, for instance, it was perfectly still and the water offered stunning reflections. This is rare in Nantes—it’s close to the coast and it’s...
Later in the afternoon, we all went to the Hellfest “park.” Clisson hosts one of Europe’s biggest yearly metal festival and the site is open year-rond so you can take a stroll around the… ahem, metal...
Art does matter and speaks to us in mysterious ways. I have no explanation for the nude butt cheeks footage, though.
Like many French adventures, it started at the train station. Unlike many French adventures, it didn’t involve some weird train story—strike, ghost train, missed connection or other typical public...
France is a minefield this summer—there are no easy answers to Mark’s hundreds of not-so-innocuous questions.
I can’t take anything for granted anymore—school, work, the ability to move freely from place to place or to see loved ones whenever I want. Everyone around me feels the same.
French 17th-century apartments don’t come with air con and it gets really stuffy in Nantes, even on the Loire River shore.
Yes, all that for bread, "and you buy it every day and every city has it!" like Mark says. Welcome to France, where bread matters.
Canada is a good place to live and work. I like it too.
But deep down, I still feel safer in France.
Are we selfish, ignorant, arrogant, dumb or just realistic, practical and hedonistic human beings trying to handle the situation the best we can?
"Just between us, have you ever seen a fifty-something guy completely naked but with a face mask on?"
Sometimes, I wonder if 2020 is a marketing strategy that spiralled out of control, like some kind of viral campaign designed to make us rediscover and appreciate life’s little pleasures that went way...
“Why are you so stressed out? It’s just France!”
“And it’s just a pandemic, remember?”
“So what?”
So, this trip is complicated, Mark.
