Yep. I think I've got it. I've been talking about how the French are generally not too keen on helping out somebody that doesn't speak French. That parlez-vous Anglais doesn't go down too well. It seems to be true, but I've found a way around it. Humiliate yourself.

It only makes sense now that I think about it. They, understandably, don't speak English nearly as well as I do. So if I just walk up and get out a well-practiced French sentence asking if they speak English, they'll say no. Or non. They don't wanna be the only person in the room speaking in the wrong tense and putting adjecives in the wrong place. Enter self-humiliation.

"Once you've started floundering in their fair language..."
So you give it a try. Take a few French words and put them together. After nearly a week in France I can generally get through a couple of sentences before becoming completely unintelligible. Once you've started floundering in their fair language, it's pity more than pride that governs their response.

When you've hit the wall and they're no longer understanding a word you say... then, and only then, you may ask if they speak English. Or, even better, ask if they speak Spanish (or any other European language you may be familiar with). They'll most likely say no, but when you then ask about English they'll suspect you might not speak English very well either. If you were a native speaker you'd've aksed about English first, right? They'll be less worried about embarrassing themselves. Truth be told, once you get them going most of the French I've run into speak more than enough to be understood.

"Sunday nights aren't big eat-out nights in Bordeaux."
This worked on the girls who run the restaurant where I ate last night. Sunday nights aren't big eat-out nights in Bordeaux, so we had time to chat a bit. Once we went throught the humiliation formalities I got one of them to start speaking English. It worked so well, in fact, that while I was still slowly coming up with reasonably understandable French she said "Just speak in English."

"My idea exactly," I wanted to say.

They were stunned when they finally asked where I was from. Etats-Unis, I said. It was repeated, shouted across the restaurant to the girl arranging tables at the back. Surprised but still smiling faces looked at me in a moment of amazement. There were still enough language problems that I never figured out exactly why they were taken aback. My initial guess was that they hadn't gotten the message that not every American bought into the "France is Evil" message that was pushed on us in the last couple of years.

"The Axis of Weasels"
I suppose the ceremonious dumping of French wine, boycotting of French companies, general bad-mouthing and... my personal favorite... the invention of "Freedom" fries, they'd somehow gotten the impression that we don't like them very much anymore. That a red-blooded, flag-waving American might visit the "Axis of Weasels" was a shocker to them. I suppose that's still the best explanation. I'll save the diatribe on this subject for the end so you can just move on if you please.

I said I'm in Bordeaux. I have a bottle of wine here in the room and I'm not afraid to use it. I'm off on a tour of the vineyards tomorrow. Yes, it's that Bordeaux. I'm trying to remember my Shriaz's from my Syriah's and my tannins from my tintos. In the winter there are wine tours only on Satudays and Wednesdays so I'm gonna hang around for a couple of days and go Wendesday. The alternative is to rent a car, which would be way more expensive. I don't need to be in Paris for a few days anyway so it works out well.

I have to be in Holland by the end of the month, or a week from Friday, for a road trip with a good friend I met in South America. This'll give me a few days in Paris, a couple of days to see the D-Day beaches and cemetery in the north, and catch some kind of transport to windmill land.

"The tables were turned not so long ago."
And speaking of D-Day. When we had to go help the French out of a situation that wasn't going so well for them. This gets brought up a lot by the Francophobes who like sentences than end in, "you'd be eating sauerkraut and speaking German." But aren't we forgetting that the tables were turned not so long ago? I don't know nearly as much about history as I should, but wasn't it bascially because of the French that the United States exists at all? Without their desire to help anybody who hated the British as much as they did, the colonies would've been crushed. The French aren't just a close ally; they were our first ally.

Oh, and just one interesting thing and I'll drop it. Jacques Shirac didn't come out of the whole mess looking too good, either. It's pretty clear that he was protecting business interests in opposing the war just as much as Bush was advancing business interests by persuing it. But did you know that a bunch of decades ago a young Jacques Shirac hitchhiked across the United States? Even worked several months as a forklift operator in St. Louis? Just when ya think ya know somebody...