À la récherche du temps perdu, òu à la récherce du temps trouvé?

So. It's been an awesome summer, but that is coming to an end. You wouldn't know that summer is ending by the heat in the South of France, but it's true. For pictures of climbing and summer adventures, I would refer you to Facebook. But I'm in France now, and the time has come to talk about that. Below I present you with some of what I have written. I talked to my parents today, as well as Kassy and Sierra. If you're reading this and I haven't talked to you, send me an email, because I would like to hear from you.

You would think that loneliness would come slowly, a gradual realization that creeps up like an incoming tide. You wouldn't think that the intensity would commence within hours of the realization that this is it: just you, by yourself with no means of communication save old-fashioned "talking", and that only to unwilling strangers who may speak your language but are much more wiling to listen to you struggle through theirs. It would also seem that a sudden, insense and disheartening loneliness would occur most plausibly in the complete absence of people; that simply the proximity of other breathing, loving bodies would somehow dampen the discomfort of your own inability to connect.

This is not true. I have felt most loneley in the midst of my struggling interactions. My bag was lost in the process of my travels to Montpellier, and I tried desperately to find it that first night, speaking French. I failed.

But the next day I found my bag. It was lost, of course; my plane out of illings was delayed, causing me to miss my short connection in Minneapolis. The speech-impeded woman at the Minneapolis ticket counter was apologetic; she put me up for the night at the Day's Inn (Bloomington, close to the airport) and gave me some food vouchers for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I ate at Chili's that night, on account of it being close to the hotel, and talked to Kassy and Sierra.

I drank with Stu the next day, my 21st birthday, at a classy joint called the C C Club. I was carded, which was gratifying, and we drank draft Schlitz (the beer that made Milwaukee famous). Stu is a hell of a man, bursting with life. He is from Milwaukee, and looks it. Although he wears a moustache now, I always think of him as a bearded man, because he was such when I first met him and it (his beard) made such an impression on me that I subconsciously marked it as his distinguising feature. We only had two beers each, but in such a hurry that honesty erupted from our mouths. We talked about music, about Bozeman, and aout the remarkable circumstances of our meeting (The french word, "réconnaissance" seems most appropriate here). My flight left at 5:30, and after a delayed departure from the bar and hellish (Midwestern deluge) driving conditions, I made it to the airport (aeroport) one hour after I had hoped to be there. I made my flight, however, and my bag made it to Paris.

That was it. The original plan, before my flight was delayed out of Billings, was that I would pick up my bag in Charles De Gaule, take it to Paris-Orly, and then check it to Montpellier. What actually happened was tedious and stressful, but the simple conclusion was that I ended up in Montpellier with my carry-on and a baggage claim that simply said "Il doit nous téléphoner".

I make an unconscious point of getting lost on the bus system in every new city I visit. I did it in San Francisco, I did it in Minneapolis, and I did it in Montpellier. After a couple round-trip rides to and from "Place de l'Europe" (where the airport shuttle dropped me off) I discovered that the blue line on my map was for the tram, not the bus. I made my way to the central train station and after three attempts found a place to sleep in "Hôtel Nova".

One learns a lote from being in a place where he knows little. I learned that "complet" means "no vacancy", and in my desperate search for food that night learned that "Thom avec colignons" means tuna with pickles.

The next day I bought a phone, some nice beer, and a baguette. I also needed a power adapter (adapteur universal pour la France) and fingernail clippers, but I forgot about the latter and Carrefour did not have the former. I went to a "parc" (also known here as an "espace verte") to drink my "bière" and call "service baggage" and after a few moments the woman on the phone told me that my bag was at the airport.

Now I had a problem: namely, a huge, mostly full bottle of great "bière". I approached a likely candidate.

"Bonjour. Je dois partir, voulliez-vous le reste de ma biére?"
"Non, merci. Proposez-ça à la groupe-la."

"La groupe-la" gave me similar response. Apparently beer is not that big of a deal in France, or maybe drinking after a stranger is. Whatever the case, I threw away the rest of my beer (a horrible waste) and hoofed it to the tram and the the bus station for the airport. The shuttle did not leave for another two hours, so I went to a local "Bar-tabac" (a fantastic French concept, the tobacco shop with beer on tap) and drank and read Edward Abbey.

I retrieved my bag from the airport, and with my large "sac-à-dos" I began the search for a place to sleep, beginning around the train station where I had found lodging the previous night. All of the hotels in the immediate vicinity were "complet". The night before I had found lodging in the third place I looked, this time it would take seven tries. But armed with a map I went down the list of the lowest-rated hotels, and armed with a phone I learned one by one that my chances on a Feriday night were looking slim. I trieds Hotels Majestic, des Étuves, Nova, Abysse (Hotel of the Abyss, I couldn't make this shit up), des Alizes, the "Auberge de jeunesses" (youth hostel), and finally found a bet at "Hôtel les fauvettes", which I think means "Hotel of the wild ones." It's a nice place. My room is across a courtyard from the receptions on the third floor, just off of a glass-walled corridor. It was hot last night, and will be tonight, but quiet and the couryard is great. This is where I now sit, eating my dinner of a baguette, some camembert (du Normandie) and a large bottle of Belgium's best distributed "premium" beer called Goudale (bière blonde à l'ancienne).

I chat with the staff here. The assistant was born in Paris and tells me about the wonders that lie beneath the Louvre. The owner is from Strausbourg, on the German border, and speaks casual (but very good) French and excellent German, the assistant tells me.

"Tu écrires touts les jours?" the owner asks me.
"Non. J'essaye, mais..." I reply.

I write, however, primarily because I want to, and secondarily because I fear that if I don't write frequently I will lose my comfortable fluency in English. I already fin myself thinking in French, which is good for living in France, but I also find myself desperately searching for words in English that only a week ago would have come to me like an obedient dog.

The owner has a dog, a small, black, curly-haired monster, and it is not obedient. It barks at every visitor (probably not a desireable trait for a dog that lives at a hotel) and doesn't stop.

"Tiens-toi!" The clerks yell, but the dog doesn't listen.
"Il n'écoute pas, hien?" I remark.

"Hien" is a conjunction rarely seen in textbooks, sometimes recorded in written diologue, but used frequently and indiscriminately by all but the classiest "Français". Its pronunciation is somewhere between "eh" (Canadian) and "uh" (Midwestern), but nasal and fluid. And I find myself using it.

"C'est tout, hien?"