Listening to Stuart MacLean's Vinyl Café from Canada by podcast recently, his reader's story of two young kayakers meeting kindness and generosity wherever they travelled transported me back to the myriad people who helped me a little or a lot as I travelled round Europe on a bike and a shoestring.
Monsieur and Madame Pavard, who welcomed me to their farm on the strength of friends they'd met on a NZ farming exchange, took one look at me and sent me to the bath and my clothes to their laundry, then spent next morning wandering the town market choosing the best salmon savouries and cheeses of the region to regale me with a fine meal, not to mention a night or two in a real bed with crisp white sheets.
And Harald and Tut, older Danish farmers, who plied my friend and I with traditional Christmas cookies and local beer on the train over the water from Hamburg to Copenhagen, then found us on their doorstep later that night as we took them at their word - "come to us if you have any trouble!" - we knew you usually didn't have to book youth hostels, and we weren't fussy - but we hadn't banked on them ALL being closed for the Christmas break, and we couldn't afford even the cheapest hotel. Over four days with the Hansens, they showed us round city and countryside, driving us to the Viking museum at Roskilde, complete with (very short) royal tombs - where I promptly fell into the sea through a coating of ice and snow and had to be dragged out and fed hot cocoa. We saw a changing of the guard similar to that of London, complete with Busbys (Busbies?), danced the night away at their young neighbour's New Year's party, and Harald even drove out on icy roads at 5am to deliver us to the railway station after the ride they had arranged for us - a nurse who had to be at work early - had crashed us into a power pole on the refrozen snow.
One man ran a hundred metres down the street in his white socks to correct some wrong directions he'd just given me on the map - one family fed me up despite my protests that I'd had breakfast - I hadn't, and I had a hundred kilometres to cycle before the next ATM and no money left. A friend had given me an ankh to wear as a necklace just before my departure solo with bike and pup tent through France, Italy and Greece at the end of my year's teaching in France, and it really seemed to attract good people and good luck. Like my mouth organ, also a gift from a friend, which was grabbed off me in a back street in my earliest days exploring France, I swear by a witch - she looked like the cat lady on the Simpsons - "C'est un harmonica?" she screeched, grinned, played it a little, spat in it, and handed it back, grinning. I'm sure she blessed it in some weird way. Too many to mention - some deserve a chapter each in the eventual book.
Like the Norman farming family who arrived in my life via a flat tyre before I had my own puncture repair kit - 16km away from town, bike shops shut and garages not able or willing to help (and probably no money on me or food - I would have just headed off into the countryside for half an hour or so on a sunny Sunday and got carried away ...). I leaned over the farm gate and asked if anyone could help me - figured someone on a farm would have the requisite mechanical know-how and equipment - and was met with one of those linguistic oddities that you don't learn all at once in class, and then remember forever afterwards because of the circumstances involved - "Mademoiselle has died?" That's what he said - I thought it must be metaphorical, something like "dying of heat" - thought he might be offering me a drink - so I tried to explain that no, it wasn't that, it was a flat tyre. Turned out "crevé" (died) wasn't quite the same as "crevé un pneu" (or "crevé" for short) - got a flat tyre. We sorted that out, and while he fixed it kindly for me his wife gave me cold drinks and spent literally about ten minutes finding out where I came from. My French was good so when I said I wasn't from near here she thought I must be from some far-off region of France, and when I said New Zealand she actually went off and came back with a map of France for me to show her where! I said no, no, it was overseas, and she came back with a map of Europe. Next to Australia! I said, and there she was with one that extended as far as Turkey! We got it straightened out eventually (reminding me of the young lass in a class I taught - about 12 years old - after I'd talked for about ten minutes about NZ and life there and the southern hemisphere and Australia, and a single NZ farmer having as many as 300 cows to milk before breakfast (except I said "breastfeed" them instead of milk them!), millions of sheep and so forth, she put her hand up: "Madame! Madame! Did you come on a boat or on a train?) Anyway, this lovely farming family invited me back the following week to their first grand-daughter's second birthday, picked me up, put me up for the night, and the meal was the most extravagant of my life! I swear, 7 or 8 courses, each with its own alcoholic drink, and the meal lasted (only the actual food-eating part of it, at table, en famille, 2-year-old and all) four hours, not counting pre-dinner nibblies or after-dinner coffee. Delicious, and great company, and with that I will have to end this very décousue pseudo-column as I fear the timer I set to circumscribe it was not set correctly and I have run over madly.
Let's all hope the next one will be better written and closer to a week away than a year away!
And has everyone caught up with Stephen Fry's new documentary series on language called Planet Word? There are whole episodes on youtube, including one with Brian Blessed doing a lot of swearing. It's BBC2, I think they're up to Episode 3, so presumably it should be available by some sort of podcast if it disappears off Youtube.
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