Okay, so now we have eaten, drank and pre-chatted our way through our trip. It is now time to dole out the sleeping accomodations. Since there are 3 boys and one girl, the girl gets the privacy of the bedroom and the double bed. JoHakim gets the honor of pumping up an air matress for himself, while Frederick and I each get foam matresses, which incidentally is my preffered means of slumber. In the 15 minutes when everyone (except me, the slowpoke) is preparing for sleep festivities, JoHakim is continually pumping air ‘into’ the air matress. One would suspect he is inflating the goodyear blimp, but alas there is no visible sign of growth in his mattress.
We mildly overlook his predicament and continue our preparations. 5 more minutes later, an exhausted J. stops pumping to catch his breath, and I volunteer to help. In my reign as the futile air displacer, I deduce that there is some fault in the mattress, as it is not holding air. So J suggests trying out the second one. In the midst of the switch, he comes across what we repeatedly had illuded to before, namely a second intake valve, wide open. So, for the past half an hour, he had been shuffling air THROUGH and not into his mattress, and in fact you could hear the pssssst if you paid attention. He receives the evening’s Golden-Undie Award for his air-transport efforts, and for the rest of the trip, whenever we thought to get a jab in, we would make the ‘psssssst’ sound.
Before sleeping Fred and I chat in detail about life and subtopics thereof, and thus fall behind the snoring J, and the sprawling Annalinda, by about 2 hours of slumber. This means of course, that we both ignore the alarm clock in the morning. This, however, turns out to be an egregious mistake, as consequently we are subjected to repeated peace shattering voice of Barbara Streisand singing "We’re not making love....anymore". We sure aren’t and thank heavens for that!
The doorbell rings which means that our freshly energized hosts have arrived with freshly baked bread. In the 34 seconds it takes them to climb the stairs to the 4th floor where we are, I manage to get into my pants, change my shirt, and shove my matress and sheets under the sofa, and sit and pretend I have been awake for a while (forgetting the pillow sized bags under my eyes, and a most haenous porcupine style hair formation). F is still horizontal and blocking any access from the living room to the kitchen, but the 341st time Barbara claims abstenance gets him hurling out of bed to destroy the cd player.
Breakfast includes baguettes, butter, juice, Bon Mamman apricot jam and coffee. I partake of all but the bitter brown sludge that has managed to work itself into the minds of people as something tasty and aromatic. It takes little cafeinated jolt for all others to kick into a higher gear of awakeness, while I am still trying to get of the blocks directly in 4th gear.
After the typical ’15 minutes’ it takes us to get ready to go out (which is about 73 minutes), we venture out into Aix, fully geared with a full armament of icons of turism; cameras, rubbery necks, fanny packs, hicking boots, Dockers pants, just to name a few. The hosts try to distinguish themselves by wearing sunglasses, leather jackets and the shopping baskets locals seem to all have.
The daily market is in full action by the time we get there around noon. We buy some fresh Asparagus, after chatting with the seller about everything including the politics of Vietnam. Analinda buys a small ‘antique’ trincket for her daughter, and I think I purchase some fresh fruit. The market’s atmosphere is typically mediteranean, with a cumulative energy which propels you through and makes you want to try the vegetables, barter with the sellers, and in general INTERACT. For the most part, I observe, and occasionally endeavor to construct a sentence or two, and mostly pretend to comprehend the locals’ responses, while in reality not having a clue.
For lunch we get sandwiches and sprawl in front of the city’s cathedral, chomping feverishly on our food. The sun is out to complement our lunchtime laze with tantalizingly warm and shiny rays, bouncing off our nordic-winter battered pale skin. This serves to fog up my comprehension of the rest of the afternoon. Like a tired turtle in search of nothing in particular, I follow the clan as we weave through the windy streets of downtown, past the now closing fish market and the clothes shops and make our way back to the nest.
In the late afternoon Yves, having picked up our rent-a-minivan, takes us all on a ride to a village nearby where the Picasso family mansion dots the sleepy hills accross the valley. This is our first trip with the Renault Espace, and we each try to come to terms with the handling of the vehicle, the placement of the seats, the visibility, and in my case, the unhappy reality of motion sickness. Amidst the haze of my existense I pick up bits of the conversation, as Yve seems to be talking about a friend of theirs from Africa, this man who likes to talk politics, and apparently has a deep voice which matches his size. My concentration wanes away from the conversation, and when I return to the universe I hear them talking about stopping in the village to pay a visit to their friend Mandy. At this point I believe Mandy is a large African man. Well, Mandy is not home and we will have to wait until the following days when we will all be spending a night at an vinyard-inn in the middle of Provence.
(And Mandy is NOT a large man from Africa).
The following morning we begin by driving towards the golden coast (Côte d’azur) and our mission seems to be to cover as many towns and cities as possible. This causes me to blend together all the little cities we visit into a semi-awake dream sequence of dream boats, dream cars, not so dreamy cars, and carsickness. It might have been Saint Tropez where everyone begins fingerpointing at the big yachts and big villas, while I am concentrating on my hunger and my sole banana.
We continue to the next neighborhood, which has its own name and it is famous, but I remember it as the French answer to venice. Our visit there is cursory and nearly unmemorable; a raised bridge, wind and drizzle, boats, women with big...hair, shops, water canals, smell of fish, raised bridge. On our way back to the van it begins to rain, and it is this rain that determines the fate of our lunch locale.
After driving towards the next town, where more yachts and fancy people and cars are housed, we find ourselves amidst a herd of caravans and mobile homes, all looking for a parking place. In a typical approach to parking (i.e. ignoring all regulations regarding parking), Yves finds a spot between two caravans, which happens to be open only because it was a pathway to the water for boat-trailers. At this point the rain has been upgraded to a mini-monsoon, and the hunger level inside the car has reached near canibalistic level. It is so decided that instead of partaking in the miserable task of walking hungry and indicisive in the rain for hours un-end in search of a nice place to eat (which by the end of the trip will be our twice-daily routine), we will eat our lunch in the car.
Lunch consists of Tabuli (or tabulé, as insisted by the francophones), which seems to be a novelty for most my travel companions, as each, with their patented swedish hesitation to try new food , look aloof and unimpressed, then poke at it with their plastic forks to see if it is dead or not, and finally begin inhaling the food with all their might. It is food after all, and we are all starving.
Having feasted on tabuli, and of course coffee and pastry(a seemingly undetachble part of lunch if you are from the land of the vikings), we wipe the steam from the windows of the car. It is (partly) sunny now, and the rain has subsided. On we go towards that town we have overshot by some 800 meters, and after searching in futility for an open post office, we stroll down the harbor street and I enjoy J and F’s drooling looks at the passing/parked cars, and others being awed by the rich and famous and their yachts. As for me, I have seen all the episodes of the rich and famous.
By the time we reach the end of this fashion gauntlet, I am quite excited to see winding alleys shooting up from the harbour, and try to steer the group into a promenade adventure. At precisely the same time the F claims that now it is time to sit at a café and sunbathe and people watch. This divergence of opinion (of what is fun in a trip and what is more tastelessly boring than to lick a plastic lollypop for an hour) hints at a tiny dissention among the ranks.
We find a cafe at the edge of the harbor, order some soft drinks and peoplewatch for an hour. Of course, Yves finds a newspaper to hide himself inside of, and I play my game of purification through sheer boredom. A and S are conversing at their normal hyperspeed, and J and F sun their cheeks and knuckles and whatever else is showing from behind their raincoats.
A year later, we walk back to the car.