A French hospital visit

Moissac (France) - August

         So, where was I? Oh, yes, I'd just arrived at a factory in France to start work packing plums. The boss led me through vast room after room until we came to the one I was to be stationed in for the next month. In the middle, stood a long line of machinery surrounded at various intervals by about ten workers.

Encounter with a stapler

           I was put on the final section where workers were stapling cellophane wrappers onto plum-filled crates and loading them onto trolleys. For the first couple of hours, everything went fine. I was getting into a rhythm. Whack, whack, whack; three staples to secure the cellophane wrapper onto one side of the crate. Whack, whack, whack; three staples on the other side. Whack, whack, whack. Whack, whack, whack. And it was then that the unfortunate incident occurred. I was in the act of swinging my arm strongly downwards to hit a staple into the box when the lady behind me knocked my elbow. So, instead of hitting the crate, I hit my forefinger that was holding down the cellophane. I examined my finger in shock. There, embedded in the fleshy part of my nail, was a perfectly positioned staple. I could not have done it more neatly if I had tried. Pain surged through my finger; I had not only injected a staple into my nail, I had also hit it extremely forcefully with a heavy metal object.

            At that moment, the supervisor walked past and I had no option but to hold out my finger. I tried to explain that the woman behind me had bumped into me at the crucial moment. However, in my distress, i was lost for words and could not remember the French for either ‘knock’ or ‘elbow’. So I was left to say “she…” and wave in the direction of the woman. To my great annoyance, the culprit remained silent. If it had been me, I would have been greatly apologetic. As it were, I was left looking extremely stupid; the ‘anglaise’ who, on her very first day, had managed to staple her own finger. Oh, the humiliation.

A French hospital visit

            The supervisor walked me back through vast room after room until we reached the office of the boss, the last person I wished to see right then. (See previous blog post Manual labour and French forms )
           She took the news with a weary air; I had no doubt lived up to her expectations. I was driven to a local nearby hospital by another employee. Healthcare in France is to a degree private. And it is thus a rather different experience than a trip to the NHS. I sat in a small comfortable waiting room which was empty apart from myself. After only ten minutes, I was shown into a consulting room. Well, that was certainly better than the typical four hour wait in the NHS! There are, however, disadvantages of a private health system, namely it isn’t free. With this in mind, I was concerned that, since I had no social security number, I would not be covered by the factory’s insurance. To whom would the bill then fall? To the factory? To me? Either way, it was clear that I was not going to be invited back to work there. Sacked on my first day, that was a record for me.

            “Oh, the new fashion!” remarked a doctor jovially as he entered the room and saw my stapled nail. I forced a smile for his sake but I was feeling far from cheerful. He injected a local anaesthetic into my finger. I am sure that I later benefited from the pain relief it brought. However, in that moment, the extra pain brought from sticking a needle into a place which has little flesh really did not seem worth it. After deftly removing the staple, he proceeded to wrap my finger in copious amounts of sticking plaster, wrapping each layer over the previous one in a crisscross pattern at the front. At the end, I looked like I had a small banana protruding from my hand. I had not had an x-ray. Yet I wondered if the doctor perhaps suspected my finger was fractured since this is the way my thumb was bandaged when I broke it aged twelve. I say when I broke it but it would be more accurate to say when my friend broke it. We were in a hockey lesson at school when the ball came whizzing toward us. My friend took a whack at it with her hockey stick, missed and hit me on the thumb instead.

          My host, Dominique, came to pick me up having received a phone call from the factory. More humiliation and explanation. To my great surprise, however, apparently I had worked hard and the factory would have me back the following day. I had been my usual diligent self. Still, I can only imagine that they were mightily low on staff. And even more fortunately, I never received a bill for my visit to the hospital, phew.

A scary boss in France

Moissac (France) - August

        The main aim of my trip, as with all my European travels during my time at University, was to improve my language speaking skills. To this end, my host, Dominique, had found me a job. So the Monday morning, my first full day in Moissac, she drove me to my place of work. I had envisaged something on the cushy side, helping in a library perhaps, a job in which I could practice talking French with colleagues and customers. Therefore, when we drove up to an industrial estate and parked by an enormous building, my heart sank. It turned out I was to work in a factory packing plums.

Newspaper delivery girl          

        Don’t get me wrong, I am no stranger to hard work. When I was fourteen I had a weekly newspaper round in the UK. For those who have never tried it, delivering papers door to door takes a surprisingly long time. It took me six hours to deliver three hundred and fifty papers. And for this I received the princely sum of six pounds. For every additional leaflet I delivered I received an extra one pound fifty. Happy days. Letterboxes became my worst enemy. My fingers took many a battering from lethal letterboxes just lying in wait for their next unsuspecting victim. By the end of my round, my hands would be covered in black print and several small cuts. Dogs became something to fear. A house which always had an Alsatian lying in wait in the front garden never received a newspaper from me. At another house, a savage dog would hurl itself at the door and start to shred the paper (and my fingers if I wasn’t careful) as soon as I began to push it through the letterbox. I lasted a year until I decided it was time to move further up the professional ladder.

Shop assistant

            I started working every Saturday in a small food shop in my local town. Most of my time was spent on the delicatessen counter, serving fresh meats, cheeses and pies. I worked from nine in the morning till half past six in the evening with only half an hour break for lunch. When the shop closed at half past five, I would go and sit on the toilet just to give my legs a rest. For the following hour, I would clean the deli and sweep and mop the whole of the shop floor. At £1.80 an hour, it paid better than my newspaper round but it was still a measly amount even for 1997/8.

French forms

            So, when Dominique parked by a factory in Moissac, it was not the thought of manual labour that bothered me. What did concern me was how much French I was going to get to speak against the backdrop of whirring noisy machinery. I mean, that was the whole reason I was putting myself through this in the first place! My host left me with the boss, a tallish middle-aged slim woman with short brown hair and a no-nonense look about her. We sat down in her office and she pulled out a form.

            “Name?” she enquired briskly.

            “Clare”, I replied.

            “That’s your name?” she asked harshly.

            “Yes,” I replied slightly confused. 
             She wrote it on the form.

            “Forename?” she then asked.

            Ah. I had completely forgotten that in France, when filling in forms, and on envelopes for example, surname usually comes first. In my defence, surname in French is normally “nom de famille” but she had used only the abbreviated term of “nom”. I explained my mistake.

            “I hope you’re going to understand what work you have to do here!” she barked.

          I had clearly not got off to the best of starts. We finished the form with a few more hiccups – I didn’t know the full address of where I was staying, I did not have a French social security number and I did not have a French bank account. It was clear to see the boss was thinking I was more trouble than I was worth. Still, she led me through vast room after room until we came to the one I was to work in...

Greeting the French way

Moissac (France) - August  

            In August, I travelled to France where I would be staying for a month with a friend of my aunt’s. Dominique lived in a quaint village about an hour from Toulouse.

            The first evening, my host told her son Luc to let me accompany him to his friend’s house. He was a good-looking 21 year old with dark hair and an extremely sullen demeanour. He didn’t seem overly enamoured with his mother’s suggestion (or rather order), although it was difficult to judge; he didn’t seem particularly enamoured with anything. I had the impression he was still going through the grunting adolescent phase, although the grunt is more of a ‘bah’ in French. The short car journey to his friend’s house was undertaken in complete silence. I found it difficult to strike up a conversation in a foreign language and Luc didn't say a word.


The kissing rigmarole

When we arrived at his friend’s one bedroom flat, there were about ten people already there ranging from 16 to 22 years old. Then began the palaver of having to kiss every person there on each cheek. This can be an excruciatingly embarrassing ritual, particularly when the people you are greeting are strangers. Firstly, it is quite possible that you both turn your heads the same way and thus risk bumping noses or, worse, kissing on the lips. Perhaps there is a set way you should turn? I’m not sure. Secondly, as I discovered during my travels in France, the number of kisses varies between two and four according to the region. So once again you can end up bumping heads if you pull away at the wrong time.

After this rigmarole was over, we all sat down in a circle on the floor in the small lounge.  For the rest of the evening I sat on the floor bored out of my brain. Not once did anybody make any attempt to talk to me. In fact, the whole atmosphere felt rather hostile. 


An unexpected discovery

After about two hours, out of sheer boredom, I asked if I could use the bathroom. Everyone shot each other furtive glances and I wondered if I had made some dreadful faux pas. Should you not use the toilet in somebody’s house in France? Nevertheless, the host directed me to the bathroom. I walked in and it was then that things began to become a little clearer. There, sitting next to the toilet, was a plant under a bright fluorescent light. I am no expert in such matters but I had a pretty good guess of what it was. I found it rather amusing now I understood the group’s horror at my request to use the bathroom. Did this also explain their unfriendly nature towards me? Was my presence preventing them from spending the evening how they had intended? Taking my place once more on the lounge floor, I decided it was easiest not to mention my discovery. Every pair of eyes was on me but when it became clear that I wasn’t going to say anything, I could see them all visibly relax. Still, the atmosphere remained cold and I was relieved when Luc finally drove me home and I could escape.

The strangest thing I ate in Germany

Aachen (Germany) - July (continued)

         

  On my second weekend in Germany, Silke and I went to stay with her parents near Frankfurt. On the Saturday afternoon, I joined Silke’s mother and their gorgeous border collie on a walk.The path led directly from their house past fields and meadows bathed in warm sun. After about half an hour, we came to a sparkling lake where a fisherman sat.

“Found anything?” Silke’s mum asked brightly.

“I just caught this actually,” replied the fisherman holding up a foot long eel. “Do you want it?”

I was slightly horrified but Silke’s mum appeared delighted. The fisherman slit the eel’s throat and placed it in a plastic bag. I spent the rest of the walk next to a woman gaily swinging an eel-filled plastic bag which was slowly filling up with blood.

I sat at dinner that evening valiantly working my way through a rather unusual tasting pie when Silke’s mother said, “you know that eel we were given today?...”

“Uh oh!” I thought as it dawned on me what I was eating. The adventurers amongst you, I’m sure, relish the prospect of trying new exciting foods. This stick-in-the-mud, however, is much happier keeping to what she knows and likes. I’m only glad that I discovered the contents of the pie when I had almost finished eating my slice. And no, I didn't want any more thank you!

A Long Way From Home

German false friends

Aachen (Germany) - July (continued)

On the Saturday afternoon of my first weekend in Aachen, we were sitting in the garden of one of Silke’s friends. Suddenly, her friend exclaimed, “Look! There’s an ‘Igel’” (pronounced ‘egel’).

          “An eagle?!” I thought. “Wow!” 

          "Ein Igel!" I cried."That's unbelievable!" My eyes scanned the sky but I couldn't see any birds at all. Then I realised that the friend was pointing at the hedge.

          "An eagle in the hedge?! That's even more amazing!" Silke and her friends gazed at me with baffled expressions.

          It turned out that the German word ‘Igel’ actually means hedgehog. Oops!

          There are several words like this in both French and German. They are often called ‘false friends’. That is to say, they bear strong resemblance to English words thus leading you to believe they have the same meaning whereas actually they have totally different translations. The German word ‘Chef’, for example, actually means boss in English. The German ‘Fabrik’ translates as factory. And one you really don’t want to get wrong, if anybody ever offers you ‘Gift’ in Germany, do not accept it!! It is not a present but poison!  

The wrong side of a locked door

          So there I was; standing on the wrong side of a locked door. My first solo trip abroad and, after having barely arrived in the country, my misfortunes had already begun. I had two options; to sit on the outside step for a few hours till my host returned at midnight or to seek help from an unknown passer-by. Both of which would cause a certain amount of cringing and painful embarrassment.

            Little did I realise that this was just the start of my misadventures on foreign land. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I had to spend time in France and Germany for my languages degree I would have given up long before I did.

British stick-in-the-mud

There are those kind of people that love travelling. Off they gaily set alone for months on end, revelling in living life from a backpack, experiencing different foods and customs and exploring pastures new.

            And then there is me. Now give me some credit at least. It’s not as if I can’t be away from home. After all, I eagerly flew the nest to start life at University. And it’s not as if I haven’t tried travelling. It’s just that the travel bug never caught me. It seems that I can only be at my happiest when rooted firmly in English soil. “England?!” I hear you cry. ”What’s so great about that?” Well, I quite agree. I am no big lover of rain or overcrowded roads or a high cost of living. I am, however, apparently only content when immersed in what I know. Where I don’t walk around feeling apologetic for being a foreigner. Where my family and friends are not separated by water. And where, as clichéd as it sounds, I can drink a proper cup of English tea (milk, one sugar please). As my husband once aptly put it; I like what I know and I know what I like.

            Maybe I am not the only unadventurous adventurer out there. Perhaps there are others who need to know they are on home ground to be content. And there is, of course, the possibility that people’s travels are not as exotic or perfect as they would have you believe. Returning to University from my year abroad, my fellow course-mates regaled me with stories of the fantastic times they had had. Stories, which, as I later discovered, glossed over the less than happy moments.

University travels

            Still there is no getting away from the fact that travelling and I just do not mix.  It’s ironic really, considering I have such a love for languages. Although, as I embarked upon my University degree, I was unaware of my aversion to living abroad. The idea of spending a whole year in foreign parts certainly sounded daunting but I assumed that by the time I entered the third year I would be ready for such an experience. As it turned out, my foreign travel began even earlier than expected. With the advice of the University lecturers, that it was best to spend as much time as possible in the countries of our chosen languages, echoing in my ears, I found myself on my way to Germany at the end of my first year.

Aachen (Germany) - July

I was due to stay with a teacher, a friend of a friend of my father’s, and help out at her school for the duration of my trip, a mere two weeks. I was easing myself in gently to living abroad and after all, what could go wrong in two weeks?

On my first evening in Aachen, Silke invited me to join her at her weekly choir practice. Since I am pretty much tone deaf (my childhood violin teacher called me cloth ears on a regular basis), I decided I better decline. However, as it was a lovely July evening, I accompanied Silke on her walk there. Arriving back at her block of flats, I let myself in the main communal door. I then inserted the second key into her flat door. Nothing happened. No matter which way I turned the key, however much I yanked the handle up and down and round, the door showed not even the slightest intent of opening. And it was thus that I could be found staring at a locked door wondering what on earth to do.


The wrong side of a locked door 

        I sat down on the bottom step of the communal stairs and took in a few deep breaths whilst considering my options. I could seek help from another resident or I could wait until Silke arrived home at eleven pm. I didn’t really fancy waiting on this concrete step for two hours. Plus, if I embarrassed myself in front a neighbour, it was quite likely I would never see them again whereas I had to spend the next two weeks with Silke. Decision made.

Silke’s flat was on the ground floor of a small block with four storeys and only one flat on each. I tentatively crept up the stairs to the first floor and knocked on the door. 

          "I'm in the bath!” came the voice of a middle-aged woman. “If it’s…, can you… If it’s…, can you…” 

        I had an urge to giggle. Obviously there was only a limited number of people who could be knocking on her door since you needed a key to gain access through the main door. Saying nothing, I continued up the stairs to the second floor and knocked once again.  

“Hallo?” came a timid voice.

“I need help!” I replied sounding much more dramatic then I had intended. The door flew open to reveal a Turkish lady.

        “I’m really sorry to disturb you,” I said. “I’m staying with the lady downstairs. I can’t open her door. I have the key (I waved it at her) but I can’t get in.”

The woman gave me a strange look but took the key and trotted downstairs with me following meekly. She inserted the key in to Silke’s door, opened it without difficulty and then, without saying a word, shot back upstairs. 

         Oh the embarrassment! I told myself there must clearly be a knack to opening the door to which I was not privy. I hastened inside and shut the door firmly behind me, trying to leave the humiliation outside. At any rate, I was very pleased to now be on the much more comfortable side of the door. I snuggled on the sofa for an hour in front of the television before getting an early night in preparation for the early school start the following morning.

      To my great relief, I didn't meet the Turkish lady again during my stay. I never mentioned the incident to Silke and it became apparent that she was not on close speaking terms with her neighbours. My secret (and dignity) were safe.