The dream is dead, long live the dream

It's a bit like being witness to a horrible crime. You know some bad shit went down and that it wasn't pretty, but when it comes to being asked to recall the order in which things happened you find you can't. Your memory's just a blur of mangled flesh, bloodied machetes and wild grinning faces.

It's thus with the slow, final, horrible fall from grace of my dream of a new life in France. After around 6 months of continuously hearing the murderous footsteps coming up the stairs you'd think I'd be better prepared to recount the final blur of devastating blows that left me with the gory mess I stand surveying this sunny day in Strasbourg.

Yes friends, it's all over. I've finally had enough. I can no longer take the constant disappointment, lonliness, isolation, poor decision making and if-you-don't-laugh-you'll-puke-with-despair never-ending paperwork that have so neatly defined the last stage of my 'dream'.

My bank account in France currently reads -€88.65 and in England -£1,595 and that's it. I'm officially spent. I have not a penny to my name, owing as I do, €130 to my 'flatmates' for the 10 nights I spent sleeping on a matress in an empty room in a (usually) empty flat.

The news is so crushing I can hardly bear to write it, but entertainment is entertainment kids. The audience are baying for more and the show must go on: My mum is going to buy me a flight to London sometime in the coming few days and that's it. I'm out of here.

I feel like the end of Jurassic Park where Laura Dern and Sam Neil are airlifted to safety, leaving the snapping jaws of French unemployment and the tearing claws of French commercial immobility to devour eachother in a bloody but unwitnessed battle. As far as I'm concerned this whole country can (and almost certainly will) go to hell with the following exceptions:

• Sophie and Clair, my delightful ex-housemates from Toulouse
• Alisson, my delightful ex-girlfriend
• Sophie's dad who's unbelievable generosity actually made me feel uncomfortable to be a scrounger
• The pretty girl who lives opposite him who invited me into her flat to share a bottle of champagne with her and her friends.

That's it. That means that sixty million minus 5 can rap about their problems and sing tuneless melodies about acid rain accompanied only by a jingling guitar until they're red, white or blue in the face. I no longer care.

I'm not going to recount it here but for all those interested in knowing my French Social Security Beaurocray vs. Text-based adventure video game analogy, you can ask me in person when you buy me that pint of Carlsberg that from now on will represent the price of that trip to come and visit that you all owe me (H and C, you are discounted from this. We'll settle our scores face to face!).

Just a final word about how a decision is right until the instant you make it and can't change your mind.

Remember how the day I booked my flight to Hungary I got a phone call from a bar I'd applied to 2 months ago and McDonald's who I'd applied to 6 months ago asking if I wanted a job?

Well today, having told the boss of my school that I'd teach the rest of the lessons I have this week (2) and that's it, I got a phone call from the job agency asking me if I want to be a waiter in the European Parliament and another from a random bloke who'd seen my little advert stuck on a bar-room wall and was "definitely interested" in taking private lessons at €15 an hour.

What the fuck is going on here, I hear you ask? Well, I'd like to know too. It seems there is a god, and my twin habits of cigarette smoking and pork eating that I've taken up since being here in order to not be a total social reject (some good that did me!) have angered Him immensely. It is with this fact in mind that I solemnly swear that upon my return to England, I will watch more Woody Allen films and learn to insult the French goyim in Yiddish.

Until such time, here's an effort in French:
Vous êtes la foule des sales cons le plus grosse, le plus laide et le plus degueulasses que je n'ai jamais imaginer dans tous mes pires rêves. J'espère que vous allez vous faire enculer le plus tôt possible et que votre bordel d'un pays va créver d'un coeur pourri.

Lots of love and thanks to all who have followed this blog with varying levels of interest and interaction.

Your faithful soon-to-be-ex-traveller,
Rob

agony and ecstacy

jesus it's been a shitty few days.

Sorry to start in such a negative fashion... let me explain: the cash machine stopped giving me money two days before I moved into my new (and rather expensive) house-share. This means that in the last 4 days, I've lived on the 11 euro that was in my wallet at the fatal ATM visit. This doesn't sound so bad, but the problem with moving house is that you start from nothing.

My room is unfurnished (that's no joke. When I arrived there was literally nothing in it at all) and I had nothing to eat. 6 Euros bought me a box of cereal, some milk, bread, a packet of pasta and a jar of tomato sauce. I already had rice and some onions. For 4 days I've eaten nothing but these 6 ingredients for every meal but I simply couldn't afford to buy anything else. I've walked everywhere because I can't pay the €1.50 tram fare and I've suffered the humilitation of standing in a queue at the unemployment office to use their free internet.

To top it all, today I had the infuriating experience of having to turn down a job on principal. That is the principal that everyone working in the school were a total bunch of bastards and I refused to let myself be bullied (I'm a qualified english teacher. You can't treat me like this!). It's a long story and I can't be arsed to recount it here as the keyboard I'm using is fucked and in French which means the keys are all in different places. Suffice it to say that when I left I was fuming with rage and could only console myself with a meal of rice, tomato sauce and raw onions. Don't ask me why I didn't cook the onions. Sometimes when you're in a really filthy mood you'll do anything to make it worse. Self-flagellation they call it. I'm still suffering from the raw onions. It's not pretty.

But, to lighten the mood a little: I have temporarily escaped my no-money-expensive-rent-to-pay hell-hole by the fact that I have been paid for the first time in 3 months. Yes kids, and in cash too! I have right now in my pocket 6 hours worth of pure hard work to fritter away on overpriced internet costs and blogging...

So misery alleviated and I'm only left with the debilitating loneliness and the furniture-free bedroom to deal with (this is not quite as bad as it sounds. Betrand's son has lent me a z-bed and I have my trusty sleeping bag)

Joy!

See you next time fun-fans.

Rob

On the road (for the last time?)

Strasbourg's poorly named river Ill

To celebrate the nth anniversary where n is a number I'm no longer bothering to count, of my being on the road, so to speak, (by this I mean living out of a suitcase, not really having any friends, not knowing what I'm doing from one day to the next or where my next pay-check is coming from) I'm going to give myself the gift of a shot at stability.

This is to be my last weekend at Sophie's dad's house in a state of flux, temporariness and general disarray. Tomorrow I move to my new flat. And it's great!

Strasbourg in the Sunshine

It's going to be me, a 26-year-old Medical student and a 27-year-old Ethnology student (male and female respectively) and we're slap bang in the centre of town on the 4th floor.

The apartment itself is tout neuf meaning that the other two who have been living there for around 4 months were it's first ever occupants. It's relatively swish, full of great CDs and is west facing (read late afternoon sunshine streaming through living room windows. pure charm!) with a wild cat about 6 months of age stalking the corridors.

For all this fantastickness I have to pay of course. The rent is going to be around 1.7 times that which I was paying in Toulouse but now that I'm a working man (4 hours a week!) I feel I can justify it. Plus I'm in the process of applying for all sorts of state aid, which will start pouring into my bank account just as soon as the form that the British Department For Work & Pensions sent about 2 weeks ago arrives. Am I worried it's been lost in the post? A bit. Do I trust the French postal system? Not in the slightest, those work-shy, strike loving chair-warmers. But we'll see. Never say never.

I'm also in line to get my first real pay check sooner than I thought, as the month of February surprised me by only containing 28 days that sneaky beggar! So a bit of paperwork to do and (6 x €15 - scandalous french tax rates) euros will be winging their way to me via La Poste (uh oh!).

So, the next time I write I will be a man with a job and a home. A combination of things that has thus far eluded me in this difficult, inexplicable and (thus far) entirely pointless journey of mine.

Let's hope it sticks for a while.

Love
Rob

What awaited me on my bed when I got home from Hungary.
I personally found this very moving!