Six Degrees of Separation

While waiting in line to board my flight from Paris to Frankfurt, a mother explained to her child that, unlike their trip out to Europe, in their trip back to the States they would do the short flight first and the long flight second.

“Oh,” her daughter thought about it for a moment. “So it’s like the same thing, but backwards,” she concluded.

“Yes. The same thing, but backwards,” her mother affirmed.

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On my last day in Paris, my sister and I went to Sunday Brunch at the Charbon. We had been to the restaurant once before for dinner at the beginning of my trip and I had liked it. If the city of Berkeley was ever personified, it might travel to Paris and eat here.

At one point, my enjoyment of croissants and confiture was interrupted by my sister, who asked, “Dude, is that dude from Amelie?”

“Which dude? I asked. She pointed towards the sidewalk. I looked and recognized him immediately.

The dude in question was Dominique Pinon: the actor who plays the jealous ex-boyfriend of the waitress who works with Amelie at Le Deux Moulin. As soon as I caught sight of him, I realized how stupid I must have seemed to my sister for having to ask for clarification after she pointed him out to me. Because the thing about Dominique Pinon, is that he looks like only one person and that person is himself. That is to say, no one else looks like him and so the question “Is that the dude from Amelie” is actually rhetorical, for the answer is undeniably yes. Spotting him in a restaurant setting helped confirm his identity to us, as he looked exactly as he does seated at the café in the film.

My sister and I share a mutual appreciation for the actor Alan Rickman. Thus, our natural response to the celebrity sighting was to try to connect Pinon to Rickman. This task was particularly difficult because we were moving from a French actor to a British one.
We tried to venture forth from Pinon through Jean Reno, a famous French actor who has done some crossover films with American actors such as the recent Pink Panther remake. This path would open up the plethora of connections offered by Steve Martin and Kevin Kline.
“Kevin Kline was in Dave with Sigourney Weaver, who was in the fourth Alien movie with…!” exclaimed Emily, cutting herself off when she realized that the trail was leading back to Pinon.

The disappointment that followed was matched by our discouraging discovery that we could actually only name about four movies starring Steve Martin. Though Father of the Bride would figure prominently in our connection of Beyonce and Janeane Garofalo, it was not going to help us reach our current goal.

We made a few more circles back to Pinon before Audrey Tatou showed us a way out. Tatou was in The Da Vinci Code with Tom Hanks—finally, justification for the making of the movie. Tom Hanks was in Forrest Gump with Sally Fields, who was in Ms. Doubtfire with Robin Williams. Robin Williams was in Hook with Maggie Smith, who played Professor Mc Gonagal in Harry Potter with Alan Rickman. Mission accomplished—and in six degrees.

I have never been very good at playing six degrees of separation and found myself in a state of disbelief that we had actually done it. It was actually a very heightened emotional state as there had been several ups and downs on our way to victory. I was surprised by how easy it is to make a loop and wind up back at the same actor you started with. I thought of this the next day, when I overheard the little girl talking to her mother in line at the airport. You can always find your way back to the place that you started, but you may take a different way to get there.

Frisbee Shots: can you find the frisbee in front of these Paris monuments?

Tagh, l'explorateur

At a special hour of the day in Paris—in the late spring it comes when barefoot people in parks are enjoying sunlight that wasn’t there a month ago and the warm feeling against the arms of city walkers is still a surprise—those who have made it to the Place Contrascarpe for an evening glass of Voignier witness something special. This is the hour that Tagh, the explorer, arrives at the place on his camouflaged scooter to put on a show before them.

As his epithet suggests, Tagh is an urban explorer. Though the dried palm branches adorning his yellow scooter lend the vehicle a disguise more appropriate for a desert safari, Tagh continually returns to Place Contrascarpe to pursue his explorations. The steady flow of patrons in and out of the busy cafes provides Tagh with a constant influx of new species to discover. Tagh slowly approaches the seated guests, holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes with one hand and a notebook in the other—Tagh takes copious notes on his surroundings. Occasionally Tagh returns to his scooter, steps up onto the seat and peering off into the horizon through a telescope, surveys the terrain ahead.

Tagh, the explorer, is more than the average street performer. Unlike the accordion player in the metro performing next to an upturned hat that passively awaits loose change, Tagh holds a fake pistol to the backs of the café customers, demanding his payment. Those who comply toss their coins into a cigar box in Tagh’s outstretched hand.

Still, there is something other than the audacity to hold a crowded café at gunpoint that makes Tagh remarkable. Tagh’s service to the city of Paris extends beyond the careful gathering of foreign specimens; he instructs those who visit its sights in the art of observation.

Observation can be easily dismissed as the default activity following the opening of the eyes. Sitting by the fountain at Luxembourg Gardens, however, I realized that to refine the skills of observation actually takes a great deal of discipline and practice. I watched the children playing with their boats in the water and watched the parents that watched over them. (Or, to revise, I’ll say I looked at them, because for some reason the word “look,” to me, implies that the action begins at me and moves toward the subjects of my gaze, whereas “watch” begins with them and approaches me. I make this distinction because, from my seat in the garden with my journal propped open over my knee, I caught myself trying to project my interpretation of what was going on before me with the aim of pulling together some touchingly meaningful piece of writing like Adam Gopnick does so beautifully in Paris to the Moon.) The nascent journalist in me, concerned with writing the truth, quickly put an end to my temptation to jump to meaningful, yet false, conclusions.

Instead, I set out to describe the scenes as they were actually playing out in front of me. My journal from this read something like “little girl in a yellow dress prods at red and white boat with a stick” or “priest walks with a young girl wearing translucent black plants.” I tried to be as objective as possible, omitting that I thought the girl with the priest was quite attractive—it is a fact that one could see through her pants. As a constant seeker of the significance of things—one who interprets a cold as not just a lapse in the immune system, but also the shifting of fate and a haircut as a metaphor for personal evolution—it is hard for me to extract pure reality from my interpretation of it. After a few rounds of jotting down verbs and nouns accompanied by only the most necessary adjective, observations came more easily. And, at risk of making my experiment sound more important that it really was, other things came more easily as well.

The moment in which you dismiss yourself from the task of evaluating another culture and allow yourself to just look at it—no, watch it—is itself a special hour of the day. It results in a kind of openness that is at first as uncomfortable as having your mouth propped open at the dentist. You fight it at first but then submit, discovering that it requires almost no effort at all to stay open and allow the necessary improvements to transpire.

At no point in his show does Tagh present a hypothesis or draw a conclusion. He is forever operating in the data-gathering phase of the scientific method. And he does this so skillfully as to almost slip under the radar of the audience, who are lost in their own observations of him. “I didn’t realize until later,” my sister, Emily, said during a conversation we were having about our mutual appreciation for Tagh and his performance. “I’m not watching Tagh,” she announced. “Tagh is watching me.”

Bathroom Humor

There is a little game I play with myself every time I am confronted with a new bathroom in Paris. It is not a game I have elected to play, rather one that I have been enlisted in against my will like a captive babysitter. I call this game “Find the light switch” and its objective should be easily deduced. “Find the light switch” is a game of few rules. In fact, there are only two: be alert and don’t panic.

It is in strategy where the intricacies and complications of the game lie. When approaching a foreign bathroom, one must always have a plan. (A spontaneous descent upon the bathroom will surely result in failure or, even worse, embarrassment.) I have found that it is best to feign confidence when making my initial approach, so as to discourage rubbernecking. “There is nothing to see here,” says my casual gait.

When greeted by a dark interior, anticipation is key. I am ready for any possible incarnation of the idea of “light switch.” It may be something that I flip, turn, pull or step on. (The same is true for the door latch, the toilet flush and the water faucet, but I don’t even want to go there.)
Opening the door to an already lit bathroom does not relieve you from the responsibility of ascertaining the whereabouts of the light switch. It was not the act of a well-wishing do-gooder that has left the bathroom is this brilliant state, but a mechanism of deceit. In this case, the light switch probably operates on a timer and if you let it go undiscovered, moments later you may find yourself beneath the shadow of an ignorant darkness in a most vulnerable position. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I begin my quest for light switch by checking all the places where one would traditionally find a light switch in a bathroom in the States. This is purely a formality just to get the ball rolling. I look to the wall adjacent to the door, for example. If my search ends here I call it a “freebie.”
In most cases the light switch will be too elusive to occupy such an obvious location beside the door and I turn my gaze elsewhere. I look to the ceiling and then to the floor. I scan all exposed surfaces. It is not a bad idea to check the wall outside the bathroom, but this should be done using the peripheral vision with limited body movement so as not to call attention to the farce I am carrying on.

If by this point, I still haven’t managed to illuminate the bathroom I examine the light fixture itself, hoping to find a chain to pull or a something to toggle. The most important thing is to observe the second rule of the game and stay calm.

Following these steps has helped me find even the most nefarious of light switches—the ones disguised beneath mirrors or behind soap dispensers. When the light goes on, I have beaten the game and like a video game addict who has just liberated the princess from the castle, I revel in my victory in solitary relief.

It's the end of the week as we know it

Just before the dawn of the millennium, Americans prepared themselves for the end of the world that would surely accompany the crash of the almighty computer. The most paranoid of Americans hoarded precious resources into makeshift shelters in anticipation of the post-Y2K apocalypse they were certain would strike.

I’m not sure what the French were doing at this time--at worst they probably feared their systems would become more efficient. What I do know is that the temporary pandemonium Americans endured in the months before everyone partied like it was 1999 for the last time was like an exaggerated version of what the French have traditionally experienced every Saturday. I say this because every Sunday something unheard of in America happens here in France; stores close. The fear of total deprivation of resources that never materialized in America is, in fact, and institutionalized reality in France.

This reality requires constant vigilance. By Saturday night, if you haven’t already shopped for your Sunday rations, then you’d better get over to the Monoprix before closing time. Easter added an extra challenge to last weekend's shopping because the French observe the holiday on Monday as well.

Jean Philippe and I found ourselves in the precarious position of having put off shopping until the last minute on the Saturday before Easter. There is always the temptation to assume (wrongfully) that you can make it through Sunday on the food already in the house. This is a decision most come to regret when they are spreading butter on the boiled remnants of two different kinds of pasta or tossing a salad of wilted lettuce and cocktail olives.

“Do you think we should maybe go grocery shopping and get some things?” Jean Philippe directed the question to me, laying down on my bed with my head propped on my elbow , reading my book. I was tired and didn’t feel like getting up, not to mention my long-harbored aversion to grocery shopping.
“I don’t know, should we?” I asked, my tone suggesting that I had already thought of my answer.
“Well, we have to be prepared to get through tomorrow.”

Then a look spread across Jean Philippe's face that I recognized from the many other times he had acted as voice of reason for me. A light had gone on somewhere in his mind and he remembered the Easter holiday. The situation quickly escalated to an emergency when we realized that it was 8:40 in the evening and the Monoprix would close in twenty minutes, leaving us bereft of groceries for the next two days. Both simultaneously sensing the urgency of the situation, Jean Philippe and I swung into action, grabbing tote bags and rushing out the door.

We managed to slip into the store with time to spare. The Monoprix was crowded with people on similar missions. We traversed the aisles, grabbing at random like contestants on Supermarket Sweep. We filled an entire basket with vegetables, cheese, milk and potato chips. We carried wine and beer in our arms. When we left the Monoprix 20 minutes later, our shoulders slung down from the weight of grocery bags, it was clear we had made the right decision in coming shopping.

The fact that in France, I can’t walk out the door and buy what I need at any hour of the day is not a concept that I have grown up with. As an American, I beleive that anything is possible. Behind every need is an inherent optimism leading me to instinctively pick up my keys, get into my car and drive to the place that will satisfy my need--and quickly. To not be able to go to the grocery store and buy toilet paper on a Sunday afternoon would be greeted by an American with sheer incredulity.

In the many discussions about Europe that I held in the months leading up to my trip, hours of operation always made it into the conversation. "What if American stores closed earlier?" is always a hot topic, often followed by an exultation of the 24-hour convenience store.

To inculcate a shop culture equal to that of France in the States would require much more than adjusting our hours of operation. The 24-hour culture is uncompromising. The French have never been introduced to the philosophy that convenience should reign supreme. The American who finds comfort knowing that the nearly-empty roll of TP on Saturday will no doubt be replaced tomorrow, maybe by hitting the store on the way home from church and picking up a 24 pack. The Frenchman finds comfort in a tradition of mutually assured inconvenience. Or at least, that tradition has taught him to be prepared; to stock his home for the day of rest and remain home on Sunday with no reason to go out.

I still don't know how to settle the debate between the 24-hour establishment and French business hours. It is easy to idealize France, when the reality is that there are some people who would prefer to be able to open their stores on Sunday and make more business. It's also hard to keep up a cynical view of American efficiency when it really is quite nice to be able to complete a successful beer run after midnight. Sitting in the Champs du Mars on a sunny Sunday afternoon drinking wine in the grass while families picnic together does sway my mind in one direction, though.

Joke

The following is a joke that my sister told me:

Q: How many French people does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One. One to hold the light bulb and then wait for the world to revolve around him.

Update

I am trying to avoid this kind of "Today I did... It was so amazing" style. But some times you just have to. So here are some of the things I've been up to that have kept me from posting.

Jean Philippe helped me buy month pass for the Metro. I was going to try to do it myself, but he volunteered to come with me. If I had gone by myself, I’m sure I would have gotten the pass, but it would not have gone nearly as smoothly. After helping me buy the pass and take my picture for it, Jean Philippe even got scissors from the guy so that I could cut my photo out and put it on the pass. There’s no way I would have gotten that kind of treatment on my own. Turns out the French are really nice…to each other.

Emily and I went to the Cimitaire Pere Lechaise. It’s the cemetery where you can find the graves of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Moliere, and Parmentier (he brought the potato to France—see photo). It’s the cemetery where you can’t find Gertrude Stein’s grave (or at least we couldn’t), but supposedly she’s there.

Emily and I went to the Grande Epicerie at the Bon Marche. It’s a fancy, expensive international food market. The French label anything that comes from the States as “Tex Mex.” It’s awesome. We found wine in juice boxes, good pastries, and water for 30 Euros. Great!







Yesterday, Emily and I went to the Centre Pompidou. It’s the modern art museum people often refer to as being turned inside out.

(I think some people also refer to it as an eyesore, but I don’t agree. I think it’s pretty rad. See above.) The museum hosts the most bizarre collection of modern art that I have ever seen. I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. It’s just true. Most of it was really awesome. Em and I got sucked into a crazy marionette film I can’t even begin to describe. We also liked the work of a Californian artist who had taken a series of about 50 black and white post cards of 100 black boots doing different things (like climbing the hills or crossing the street) in Southern California. There were two exhibitions going on. One featured different artists who specialized in cartoons/sketches who had created travel journals that were more like comic strips. There was also an exhibition about Samuel Beckett. I felt lame for having never read Waiting for Godot, but now it’s on my imaginary list of things to read. Original manuscripts and video recordings of original performances of the plays were on display. I think some Notre Dame Alumni Alan Rickman fan club members will be pleased to hear that Alan Rickman played a role in the exhibit. (Am I still in the club even though I deleted my Myspace account?)

Beckett exhibit...

Before the museum, Em and I bought ourselves vintage dresses. After, we bought ourselves Margaritas and nachos.

Today Em and I had a picnic in Luxembourg Gardens. It was really warm today and the French responded by dressing as they normally do, completely covered up by many layers. The picnic was awesome because the grass finally woke up. During the off-season, they fence off the grass so that no one will rest themselves on it while the grass itself is resting.

The Metro

In a station at the Metro
"The apparition of these faces in the crowd
Petals on a wet, black bough.”
--Ezra Pound

No matter how pretentious this may sound, this poem really does keep popping into my head when I step onto the platform of the Metro. I have read this poem in at least two English classes. Each time the professors introduced the poem in the same way, by reading the two lines aloud over and over again to the class.

I remember one evening when my sister and I still shared a bedroom. We stayed awake picking different words to say over and over again until they were no longer recognizable as English words. It wasn’t really that the words lost their meaning; we had just never examined the words in that way or been so forced to think about their meanings—to convince ourselves that what sounded like gibberish truly had meaning.

“In a station at the metro” requires the same thing of its reader and this is what my professors were trying to teach us. I think the point of the poem that we were supposed to question, as its meaning grew cloudier with each reading, was the “wet, black bough.” It took a few times through the poem to realize that my mind didn’t want to allow the word “black” entrance into what I wanted to be a poem about petals and light. It was even hard for me to accept that “wet” wasn’t “white.” Sparing the English lesson, my class eventually arrived at something that we thought was close to the intended meaning of the poem. We got there by straying as far as possible from one meaning to allow space for new ones to creep in.

In Paris, if I want to get anywhere, I take the Metro. I can’t help but love it. This romance, I imagine, eventually fades with time. My sister affirmed that at first she loved the Metro, too. Sometimes she still does. I would guess that many Parisians have conflicted feelings about the Metro. Sometimes you just want to get home and you don’t want to nudge your way through a crowd of shopping bags and big coats. Other times, you meander casually through an empty tunnel, down some stairs, onto a train and sit passively as the train whizzes through magic darkness.

The Metro operates like Pound’s poem. It seems to mean one thing at first, but standing in a station staring at the faces plastered against the walls, the “petals on a wet, black bough,” one starts to understand that ineffable, dynamic element of life that Pound captured somewhere in between two lines of verse. Some of the petals are weary. Some of them are lively. Some are laughing. Some are talking on the phone. Some are checking their watches, scrutinizing their route, strategically planning which car to board. Some are running to catch the train that emerges from the dark tunnel to carry them away.

Ernest Hemingway

Yesterday I went on a walking tour that took me to important historical sites pertaining to Ernest Hemingway. I followed this walk outlined in a guidebook (something I’m kind of embarrassed about). I had the whole day to myself, though, and wanted to give it some kind of structure. As it turns out, the map in this book kind of sucked. Though it told me which Metro stop to start at, it didn’t really tell me how to get from the stop to the first point of interest. I think I made about three circles around the Metro stop before finding Marche Mouffetard, an open-air street market Hemingway described in his autobiography.

The best part of the tour was seeing the different apartments that Hemingway lived in during his times of expatriation. Standing in the rainy street, I could only see the windows of the upper-floor apartments, but still I imagined the great American writer coming in and out of the building. Ernest Hemingway had to eat somewhere. Ernest Hemingway had to hang his clothes somewhere. The cuffs of Ernest Hemingway’s pants soaked up rain just as mine were doing then.

Random thoughts and facts about Hemingway made their way to the front of my mind. In a Farewell to Arms, Catherine hates the rain because she sees herself dead in it. When writing, Hemingway would be sure not to exhaust an idea; he would stop work with a few things left to say so that he would be guaranteed to have material to start with in the morning. When explaining how he began work on a new story, Hemingway said, “I try to write one true sentence.”

I walked along in the rain following roughly the path laid out for me for the rest of the afternoon. I wished that I could transport myself to that time when so many American writers came to Paris. I wanted to see what they saw and feel that same feeling, but I didn’t really know where to begin imagining.

The Louvre

Every Friday evening after six the museum is free to patrons under twenty-six. I am determined to conquer the Louvre over the course of several Friday evenings. Last Friday I made my first attempt.

The museum was busy at first, but by around seven people started to clear out, leaving behind them a totally chill atmosphere in which I would observe famous works of art.

My favorite section of the museum is the Greek Antiquities floor. Here you find Classical and Hellenistic sculpture and some of my favorite statues. What I appreciate most about these sculptures (aside from the things that anyone who’s taken basic art history can tell you about the idealization of the human form and depictions of mythological tales, etc.) is a quality of newness I can’t help but feel is being expressed in spite of their ancient origins. My imagination is directed to the time when Aristotle was first defining drama, Plato was creating democracy and Socrates was designing education.

My favorite sculpture of all is the Victory of Samothrace. I think it’s everyone’s favorite statue, but I don’t care. The statue is not with the rest of Greek sculpture; it’s displayed by itself at the top of a long stairway. There is no way to do it justice in words.

The Italian paintings floor inevitably leads you to the Mona Lisa. The problem with the Mona Lisa is not that bit about her mouth; it’s that it’s really hard to have an original thought while looking at the Mona Lisa. I found myself thinking things like, “Wow, that painting is really…famous.” I mean, what are you supposed to think?

I felt a great deal of pressure to have the proper reaction to the famous works of art in the Louvre. The only solution that I could find to this problem was to stand and stare at them until my mind went completely blank. At that point I could begin to see the piece for what it was then and what it was when it was first created. Then I thought about how amazing it was that someone could make a thing so unique and that over hundreds of years that thing can inspire people to make pilgrimages just to stand before it and take it in. Then I thought about how happy I was to be one of those pilgrims.

After the Italian paintings, I explored the French floor. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m in France, but the French paintings were incredibly intriguing. It’s like the guilty pleasure of looking at a map and seeing where you are in relationship to everything else, but with history instead of a map.

Then I went for something completely different, the really old stuff on the bottom floor of the museum.

I’m not going to lie—the Egyptians really freak me out. If I stumbled into ancient Greece, I could see myself hanging out and throwing a Frisbee and drinking some wine. Or if I landed in Mesopotamia I think it’d be chill to garden for a while with those people. But Egyptians are like the hipsters of the ancient world—not even just the fashionable ones, but the hard-core, coke-snorting ones. If an Egyptian came my way, I’d probably stay quiet and look at my feet. When the Egyptian spoke, I’d pretend I knew what the Egyptian was talking about. I’d act like I was so over the Pyramids. Egyptians probably didn’t dance at shows, they just stood they’re really stiff like the statues of the Pharoahs suggest. After standing in awe of the Sphinx and statues of Ramses II, there really wasn’t any where for me to go. Also, the museum was closing.

Departure

I. Terminal D

Terminal D at the Portland airport lends itself to the suspicion that someone took the word “terminal” too seriously. It is here that the shops end, the patterns in the carpet end and white courtesy phones end. Someone began the project of installing self-flushing toilets in the bathrooms of the Portland airport, but that project ended before it reached Terminal D. Terminal D ends bluntly where a flat, beige wall divides the ceiling and floor. Embedded in the wall are gates D14 and D15.

Light shines through the translucent skylights of Terminal D, suggesting to those gathered beneath them the world just behind them. The light is like the fake, green cartoon hills that line the perimeter of Disneynland’s Toon Town. The hills suggest an extension of the world found within. They represent a place that the children who visit the park will never see and a place that adults know is Los Angeles.

Unlike these children dreaming of the land behind the hills, the ticketed passengers of Lufthansa flight 469 will penetrate Gate D14 and see the world beyond.

II. Rolf

Sitting next to me on my flight to Frankfurt was a German student named Rolf. No, I shouldn’t start that way because that is not where the story begins.

“It’s the funniest thing,” the European-looking boy said to me with a slightly panicked tone of voice. One hand was digging deeply in the pocket of his denim jacket, while the other was grabbing at his hair. “Have you seen an iPod Shuffle? It’s the funniest thing. I just had it.” He kept saying that. It’s the funniest thing.

I leapt up to help him look for it, checking the same seats over and over again. Where on a plane is there to lose something? Eventually, Rolf found it and an air of calm settled over him as we each settled into our neighboring seats.

“What are you doing in Frankfurt?” Rolf asked.
“Well, I’m transferring to my flight to Paris,” I said. “So, not much.” We both laughed.

You are taking a risk when you forge a relationship with the person sitting next to you on a plane. The risk is not that you will be rejected, rather that you will be accepted and be that person’s conversation buddy for the duration of the flight. Thus, I was wary of Rolf’s friendly advances, answering his questions without asking any of my own.

My reticence did not discourage Rolf from divulging information about himself. I learned that he had taken an internship in aerodynamic design and had been living in Southeast Portland for the last six months. During that time he had fixed up an old Audi with some friends. During that time he had also fallen in love with the Seattle Seahawks. (Later, when he showed me pictures of the car on his computer, he made sure to point out the Seahawks decal that spanned the hood.) Rolf had taken a road trip throughout the West coast in his fixed-up car. He loved San Francisco. I told him that I was from San Jose and that it was near San Francisco. Because of his penchant for aerodynamics, I asked if he had been through Sunnyvalve to visit NASA. He said no and that he was sorry he missed it. “It’s not really the type of place that you miss," I thought.

In addition to picture of his car, Rolf showed me photo documentation of an evening in which a friend who was a plane mechanic took him on along while he opened up and fixed planes. He showed me the mechanism responsible for the brakes on the landing gear, the cargo hold, the cockpit. One picture was of bundles and bundles of wires. “Just one broken wire and you have to undo all of these,” Rolf said, as if to convince me of the importance and intricacy of a plane's interior. As a current passenger, I needed no convincing.

Rolf spoke English fluently, but his accent bore the cadences of his native German. Everything seemed to pour out as one word. He tried to teach me some German expressions and laughed as what came out sounded more like a cough than a language.

Frankfort was not Rolf's final destination either. He was to transfer to a different flight to Stutgart. When he asked me what time my flight to Paris departed was when I realized that I would have only twenty minutes between landing and boarding. He looked at me and said plainly, “You’re fucked.”

The plane's landing marked the ostensible end of our brief friendship. We joined the rest of the passengers in the frenzy to gather carry on luggage. I realized that I was at the point that most discourages me from reaching out to strangers. How, when it comes time, do you take that reach back? At the time I needed not have an answer because soon as Rolf pointed out that the way to the back exit was all clear, I dashed out without so much as a goodbye..

III. First Law of Travel

You will either have an excess of time to endure before boarding your flight, watching others with less time panic, or you will be the one panicking.

I disembarked from the plane to discover that I wouldn’t just have to find my way through the foreign airport to my next flight in twenty minutes. First, I would have to take a bus there. The bus took me to the labyrinth that is the Frankfurt airport. As soon as my feet hit the ground, they were running. They carried me past the first row of ticket counters, up stairs, through a crowd. I ran on one of those moving, flat escalator platforms that I had until recently thought to be useless technology. I ran down more stairs to find myself at the end of a security line. As I caught my breath in line a feeling of helplessness descended upon me. After five or ten minutes in line my bags came out of the X-ray and tears poured down my face unselfconsciously. A guard asked me about something in my bag and I showed her my water bottle. “Ok?” I asked. Before she nodded I was already running again. I followed the signs to A-24 through a hallway and around a corner. A 1-42 this way. Is 24 between 1 and 42? I asked myself. I ran down five flights of stairs only to come to a landing where I would have to take an elevator up two levels. Then came the long black-lit tunnel. By the time I got to then end of the tunnel I wasn’t running anymore. I was sprinting. I went past A 30, A 28, A 26, to get to A 24 where I was the last passenger to board the flight.

By the time I got aboard the flight I was exhausted and breathing heavily. The other passengers on the flight were German businessmen in crisp suits. I was sweaty and wrinkled in comparison and also pissed. I felt like I should have gotten better service. I felt American.