Perpignan, France (July 18, 2009) Travel taught me yet something else about myself this morning.
Some French people stole my iPod on the train this morning when I got up to buy a bottle of water. No offense French friends, but you all sure have some sticky fingers. It must be from all that hash. Just joking. Not really.
The iPod theft was mainly my fault, but still. For real? It was like five in the morning and I thought everyone was asleep, but I was wrong. This is second iPod I have had stolen in France. The other was at the gym. So excuse me if I am a little bitter.
Anyway, I was mad of course at first. But then I started thinking about how it could have been worse. I could have lost my passport or the expensive and very nice camera that my friend let me use to shoot pictures on the dark disco train. (Merci, Vero!) So I'm pretty much delusionally optimistic. That's what I learned.
The train ride down, by the way, was pretty darn wild. They had bodypainting as well as a DJ and one employee was giving out glow in the dark bracelets of various colors so that you could tell if someone was up for a chat. A green bracelet signified Game On.
And I think the article will be much better for the exhausting effort it has taken to ride down last night, arrive this morning and then turn around and take the train back to Paris tonight. I didn't get a hotel, so basically I've been trying to kill the time I've been in this fairly small town without getting completely hammered out of boredom. I just went to see a movie, and I had a long lunch, visited the castle, browsed an antique market where I bought some old stuff, and walked all over rest of the town.
And writing this rambling email will also kill at least two hours thanks to the strangest keyboard I've used since Turkey.
Not judging a town too early was also something I learned today. When I began walking into town from the train station I was convinced this was going to be a nasty town since the buildings seemed to be close to falling down and the sidewalks were cracked. But then I crossed an intersection and it soon bloomed into one of the neatest and coolest small French towns I've been to.
Why most European towns are really nasty around the train stations doesn't make any sense at all. A lot of people use trains here on the Continent. That's the first impression. Do you really want fear to be the first emotion?
But 10 minutes from the station into this town and it's like the city of Nice just down the coast. And, since I've been on the streets pretty much all day, I've watched the town go from being completely dead this morning to the current state, bustling with shoppers and tourists. Plus it is nice for a Kentucky boy to be able to say the occasional Bonjour to people on the street in the morning and not be seen as completely crazy.
Anyway, it's off to watch the British Open.
Take care,
