Monday, September 24, 2012

Kidnapped by Nice People

Today I woke up and said, "I feel like having a baguette for breakfast."  So I got dressed and took a leisurely stroll to the corner bakery and bought one that was still warm for 80 cents.


And then I ate some of it with jam and tea outside while reading a book.  Basically, it was the perfect French morning.  I did whatever until the afternoon, and which point, a series of strange events took place.

I heard the door open and someone called, "Lindsey?"  It was a woman and a man who looked like Mr. Sir from "Holes" with Elvis hair.  I did not know who they were, but they beckoned for me to come with them.  I grabbed my purse and followed them to the car and got in.  It's easy to kidnap me, I guess.  We drove for about half an hour and passed a castle.


I really want to go in at some point.  But anyway, we eventually pull up to this little building, and I follow the woman inside.  The place was obviously a veterinarian's office, and I sat down, puzzled.      These people spoke absolutely no English, and even though she tried to explain stuff to me, I just couldn't understand her for the life of me.  We waited for twenty minutes, and at some point, a llama walked through.  Yes.  Llama.  But eventually someone brought a mangy little dog out, and it was apparently the one we were waiting for.  We took it to the car.  It was a very bitey dog.  

We eventually came to a neighborhood with very narrow, cobbled streets and parked the car.  I followed the couple and the bitey old dog to the door of an apartment, and we went in.  There were two elderly people in there who were pretty out of it.  The woman set the dog down and we went into the tiny kitchen.  She gave me a lemonade flavored beer, and considering it was pretty late in the game to be suspicious of her motives, I drank it.  We sat at the kitchen table, and she showed me how to roll cigarettes.  As we sat rolling these things, I briefly wondered if perhaps I'd been sold into some kind of nursing home drug ring as a slave or something, but I was pretty sure they were just tobacco cigarettes.  

After another half hour, we left and went to someone else's house.  It was flat out gorgeous, and I snapped a picture when no one was looking.


There, I watched French game shows for twenty minutes with Mr. Sir Elvis while the lady did something upstairs.  Then they whisked me off to the grocery store and then back to the first house with the bitey dog.  They asked me what kind of pizza I like (literally the only thing I understood all day), and we walked down to a pizza fan parked on the side of the road to go get some.  While we stood waiting for the pizza to be ready, Edith and Nico inexplicably appear.  I was too embarrassed to ask Edith who these strange people were after spending the last three hours with them, but eventually ascertained that they are Nico's parents.  Glad they weren't serial murderers.  

Perhaps I ought to be more suspicious, but everyone is so nice here that going along for the ride always turns out to be interesting and ultimately, safe.

One last thing.
After pizza, Nico took me up three floors to the roof of the building, and the stars and view were absolutely amazing.  There isn't so much light here, so I could see triple the number of stars that are visible back home, and all the buildings in that neighborhood are close together and uniquely shaped, so it just created the most magical, lantern-lit rooftop view I've ever beheld.

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