Carnet de voyage

After a month of complaining about European heat and the continent's philosophical objection to air conditioning, I came back to the United States and was immediately, comically, freezing by the indoor Alaskan wind. My body had spent five weeks adapting to Europe and had to be re-taught US in a single afternoon. I have always been fascinated by how quickly the brain adjusts, and by how often the anticipation of a thing turns out to be more thrilling than the thing itself. This month was mostly that: coming home, finding it briefly foreign, and slowly recognizing it again. Also a bike, some cheese, and a bear.

The elevator I never noticed

Here is something I did not expect to have adapted to: Parisian elevators. In Saint-Germain I stayed in a hotel where the elevator required advance decisions about which body parts to prioritize, and a bathroom of roughly the same ambition. Back in DC, I stepped into the elevator of my own building and was genuinely shocked. It is bigger than that hotel bathroom. It is about five times the size of that hotel's elevator. I have lived in this building for years and never once thought about it. Five weeks in Europe and my own elevator felt like a ballroom.

DC, or possibly Costa Rica

Something else surprised me on the way back in. One early morning, out on a walk, the air was thick enough that I had to genuinely check which country I was in. DC has always been humid, but this was something else. I half expected the cherry blossom trees to be quietly replaced by orchids, and small monkeys to begin dancing in the street. The orchids did not arrive, neither did the monkeys, those were the usual rats.

A bike, and the loss of the exit strategy

My other half gave me something I had been refusing to buy for years: a bike. I love cycling in the city, but I have always preferred the city rental ones, because a rental offers an exit: the option to abandon the entire project (at a station, of course) and find another way home if my spirit turns out less sporty than my morning intentions. Now there is no exit. We took the new engine around Rock Creek Park and stopped at a pastry shop, because let us be honest: baked goods remain the single most reliable reason to get me out of the house.

Montréal, and the strawberries

For that same reason, I went to Montreal. I had heard about the cheeses, and the cheeses did not disappoint. I would not call myself a cheese connoisseur, more of a cheese snob, which requires less knowledge and considerably more confidence. The real surprise was the strawberries: you smell them before you taste them, which is how you know you’re going for a treat. I felt at home almost immediately, which was disorienting. The Quebécois kindness nearly got a real smile out of me before I recovered and made a joke about Montréal being almost as nice as Brittany (the French region, not Britney Spears mispelled).

The bear cheat sheet, finally

I am, and will probably always be, a city person. Horror films have damaged me to the point that the phrase "a weekend in a cottage" makes me immediately calculate who dies first, whether I would have what it takes to survive, and whether surviving would be worth it given the current cost of therapy. Against my own judgment, I went to Lac Supérieur. I was frightened by several entirely harmless animals. I also finally made the bear cheat sheet. Some of you may remember I raised this exact question back in June and then did nothing about it. I had assumed you distract a bear by throwing food at it. It turns out that is the one thing you must never do, specifically so they do not learn to associate humans with food. My own survival instincts, meanwhile, have the reflexes of a sloth asleep in the middle of a highway.

Et voilà! If you saw something I missed, hit reply, I read all of them and answer most. Until next month,

Jacques

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