I started writing a letter to Nina while I was in Edinburgh. I described what I was seeing, of course, but it was mostly about her. I told her how wonderful she was, and how much I had enjoyed our time together. Somehow, I wanted her to understand that the past few days had been magical - out of the ordinary.
I felt a very strong connection.
( I wrote)
It's a friendship I would like to maintain, despite the distance. Writing this letter feels, in a way, like talking to you - and I'd like to continue our conversation.
OK, a bit sappy. But it felt good. The letter would probably be waiting for her when she got home. I wrote to Steve, as well, and zipped off a few postcards.
After Scotland, I went to Amsterdam, and then Belgium. The battlefields and First World War cemeteries around Ypres were a bit of a pilgrimage for me, as they are for many Canadians. It was at St Julien, in 1915, that Canadian soldiers were caught in the first poison gas attack. Incredibly, they didn't run - they stayed to fight, and prevented a German breakthrough. Some of these incredibly brave, incredibly foolish men placed handkerchiefs, soaked in urine, over their mouths, as rudimentary gas masks.
Paris was a bit intimidating. It's a big city, and my schoolboy French wasn't quite up to the challenge. I understood very well, but getting complicated ideas across was much more difficult. I saw some of the Louvre, Les Invalides, the Eiffel Tower and the Champs Elysees.
Then it was off to Normandy, on another pilgrimage - to the D-Day beaches. My grandfather had landed on Juno Beach.
But the highlight of this part of my trip was when I followed a fellow traveller's advice, and went to Mont St Michel. It's one of the top three tourist destinations in France, and it was easy to figure out why.
I got that magical, other-worldly feeling again, so I wrote another letter to Nina. I wasn't sure if she would be home before this one arrived. I described what I had seen and done, but mainly I just let her know that I was thinking of her.
Chateaux on the Loire, and a quick swing through Burgundy ... I promised myself that next time I travelled to France - and there
was
going to be a next time - I would rent a car. Some places were just too hard, or too time-consuming to reach, on foot, or by bus and train.
I wondered what it would be like to travel with Nina. I'll admit that I was mostly thinking about the evenings, when we would return to our hotel, or Bed & Breakfast. I dreamed of making love with her, all the way, imagining all of the positions we could have tried, if only I had had condoms.
The next day, I bought some condoms. You never know.
Carcassonne was everything I thought it would be. I started another letter to Nina there. One of the advantages of letter-writing is that you can stop anywhere, and then resume your letter later, when you have more to say. I know: you can save a draft of an email - but who does that?
My next destination was Barcelona. It was raining lightly, so I put on a shell jacket. I started with the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished basilica. It's certainly unique - there's nothing like it. Opinions are pretty evenly divided, between those who hate it, and those who love it. I spent an hour trying to decide which group I belonged to.
Then I walked down the Rambla. It was still drizzling a bit, but not enough to discourage the tourists or the locals. The Rambla was a wide, tree-lined avenue, where you could watch people strolling about, out to see and be seen. There were a few cafes, but it wasn't totally commercialized - at least, not back then. But it was always crowded.
I found a huge, colourful indoor market, with some exotic spices that I had never seen before. The lady who worked there struck up a conversation with me. She quickly exhausted my inadequate Spanish, and switched into French, which I could handle. I was asking about the saffron, when she glanced over my shoulder. She asked me to turn around.
- "That man - in blue. You see?" she said. "And the lady in the coat?"
I saw exactly what she meant. The guy wasn't wearing a raincoat, or a jacket. His clothing was worn - almost shabby. A local, then - definitely not a tourist. But he was looking up, to right and left, as if he was seeing the market for the first time.
He was keeping pace with a black woman in a long coat. When she stopped, to browse at one of the stalls, he stopped, too, and started looking around as if he was a fan of the architecture. Very suspicious.
The woman had a small purse on her hip. It was open, because she had just bought something - or was going to. The man stepped a little closer to her.
I moved into the middle of the aisle. When he closed in on her, I was sure that he was going to reach into her purse. Two quick steps, and I was next to the guy. I just shoved him, with two arms.
He staggered, and regained his balance a few feet away. Now, an innocent person would have been shocked, and would have come out with something along the lines of 'What the hell?' This guy saw me glaring at him, and just slunk away.
The woman in the coat had turned around, and was looking at me, bewildered. She was black, young, and strikingly pretty. And confused.
It was the lady at the spice stall who saved me. She called the black girl over, and explained everything. After a false start in Spanish, they spoke French. The fellow behind her was a well-known pickpocket, who had been in and out of jail. The police knew him, but they couldn't follow him around all day. She had pointed him out to me ... and I had saved the young lady. The spice woman made it sound a lot more heroic than it actually was. I'm pretty sure that I blushed.
But the black girl was suitably impressed. She held out her hand - palm down, limp wristed. "Celine." she said. "Merci, Monsieur...?"
- "Chris." I took her hand, and held it for a moment. "Enchante." I said.
- "Oh, you speak French?" she said, pleasantly surprised.
I apologized, in advance, for my Canadian accent. Some French people can be very fussy about language. Celine wasn't one of those. She was delighted to learn that I was Canadian, and that it was my first day in Barcelona.
- "You must let me show you the city, then." she said. "Have you seen the Sagrada Familia?"
- "Ahh ... I was on my way there." I fibbed.
- "Then we shall see it together. I insist. It is the least I can do, after you saved me."
- "It was nothing." I said.
- "Not for me." she said.
God bless my parents, for sticking me in that French immersion school. I could understand 90 to 95% of what Celine said. I spoke slowly, frequently hesitating as I searched for the right word. She was very patient.
- "I understand English, too." she said. "But your French is so charmant, so genial ... it is a pleasure to hear."
Well, 'charmant' is good, and so is 'genial' (nothing to do with genius, in case you're wondering).
Celine was well-educated, and surprisingly knowledgeable about Canada. She was curious, and asked me quite a few questions. I answered in French, as often as I could, but she understood me very well if I switched to English.
She was French-born, but her family hailed from Senegal - except for her paternal grandfather, a white Frenchman. "He gave me this." she said, tapping her aquiline nose. Now that I looked more closely, I realized that it did set her apart. She had dark brown skin, full lips, and big brown eyes, but with that nose, she looked very exotic.
- "Oh, the rest is all African. Well - mostly." she laughed, running her hands down her flanks and hips. Her long coat was particularly tight across her full chest. I looked, of course. She wanted me to look, and smiled when my eyes finally returned to her face.
