Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Opportunities

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Saturday, 4 February 2012

6:53 PM

Snowing. The talkative French woman with the big hair is gone... one or two of the teenage guys are still there, so's that girl with the headphones in.

"There aren't any buses."

Shit.

2:26 PM

Okay, tickets to Grenoble, now how much for Lyon - oh, wait, I need to go back and trim the scene where Murphy persuades Kyle - ...Gah, I need to take advantage of the opportunites. Been in this apartment all week. "Opportunities" - hate it when Mom and Dad use that word... Ahh, they're right - I go to new places, but I just do the same old tourist thing, while - oh, look - Ellen just added more photos to that skydiving album -

Gah! Forget it. Where are the movie listings? 'The Artist', 3:30 in Mouans-Sartoux, take the bus at 2:50. Yup. Done.

6:20 PM

"Bonsoir, monsieur."

"Bonsoir - do you have a room for tonight? One person?"

"One person?"

"What a day for the trains to be on strike, right?"

"Alors, une personne... Sixty-five euros."

"Sixty-five..."

"Oui. Shall I book it, monsieur?"

"Euh... I'll be back. Merci!"

Sixty-five... do I have a choice?

4:00 PM

Student discount with my old ID on the last ticket - YEUSS! I don't care if this is the worst seat in the house - this is a cool movie! Nice visual storytelling, good music - actually, this may be the first silent movie to have the same soundtrack everywhere it's distributed... Yeah, I guess back in the silent era it was all whoever played piano in the individual theater- Ba ha ha! That dog playing dead...!

5:34 PM

Look, just because the big-haired French lady said the buses are cancelled doesn't mean she knows what she's talking about - I mean, her husband pulls up in their car, blasts the horn, and she turns to us wondering what that wacko in the red Renault is going on about.

Who else we got here... girl with the headphones, teenage boys huddling together but still trying to look cool - it is freaking cold in the Riviera this week and I don't know why.

I tell you, if they cancelled the buses for this, I am gonna' be pissed. It's flurrying! We're talking less moisture than a light rain. The question is, can I walk back to Grasse?

*Sigh*

If it were lighter out, maybe... and if I had a water bottle. But it's only gonna' get colder...

...Is that a bus?

5:35 PM

No. It's not a bus.

11:15 PM

"Mmm ! Tug ['Toog'], this is delicious! Thanks again for inviting me over, you two!"

And I'm not usually this big a fan of beef bourgignon.

"Oh, pas de problème ! It's nice - we don't know anyone in Grasse..."

Nice couple, these two. She looks different without the headphones.

"...And, after all that," she continues, "it's good that we had an opportunity to talk!"

Amen, Louise.

6:52 PM

Of course the trains are on strike today. Don't even have the number for a taxi, which I didn't think I'd need, 'cause no sane organization shuts down a bus over a few flakes of snow! Yet, here I am standing in the bus lane watching the oncoming traffic for something tall with scrolling text in its windshield -

"Excusez-moi, monsieur?"

- and I'm this close to paying 65 euro for a hotel room, more for dinner, and the bus tomorr- oh, it's the girl with the headphones.

"There aren't any buses."

Shit.

"Ah, OK. Merci, madame. So, how are you getting home?"

"Euh, my boyfriend looked on the internet, and he saw there are no buses..."

Yeah - great day to 'take advantage of the opportunities'...

"...and he called me a taxi to go back up to Grasse, but it's going to be very expensive."

"Ah, I see... How much, if I can ask?"

"About forty euro, I think."

...

Well, it's not skydiving, but...

"Interested in splitting it?"

1 comment:

  1. love it. before i moved to nice, i once considered walking from chateauneuf grasse to the mouans sartoux train station at 5 in the morning.

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