Lost in Nice

Just visited the lovely Rosanna’s blog and was reminded of a time I got lost while on holiday in France and had a bit of a freak-out. You know those moments - they normally occur late at night - when you actually begin to question whether you’ll ever find your way home, or will be forced to spend the rest of your life on the streets reminiscing about the life you used to have.

I was 20, on holiday in Nice with two student friends. They were a couple, so one night I suggested they might want to spend some time together as boyfriend and girlfriend without me in the way. Despite being English, they agreed, so off I went on my own, for a wander down the wonderful Nice beachfront.

Just to digress for a moment: this really was a lame holiday. Upon arriving in Nice, I realized that a) it was a rocking town; b) it was the most expensive place I’d ever been to, heard of, even dreamed of; and c) as students, we clearly weren’t going to be able to do anything that wasn’t free. Furthermore, d) we were staying in Western Europe’s skankiest hotel, located on the main road from the airport to the city. I forget the name. It was something darkly ironic like ‘Hotel Splendide’ – if I remember it I’ll be sure to update this post to name and shame. The ground floor was actually a car showroom or something, so you had to go up a lift to get to Reception on the first floor, where the sulky receptionist would welcome you and wish you an unpleasant stay. At around 7:30 every morning there was a loud hammering on the bedroom door, the scary Bulgarian maids’ way of letting us know that they expected us to leave the room so they could ‘clean’. These hags would not be put off! At night, the highway that was our hotel forecourt was patrolled by the shadowy figures of Eastern European prostitutes. The cars would slow down as they passed our hotel, sometimes stopping to make a transaction with one of the ho’s, the exact same harridans who threw us bodily from our beds each morning, or so we believed. And finally, e) my friends, sweet though they were, were beginning to irritate the hell out of me.

So anyway, here I was alone one night walking along the promenade, taunted by the sounds of sweet jazz that spilling out of the side street bars, where people sat sipping 10 Euro glasses of beer and having a lovely time, so I did the only thing I could do; my anorexic wallet and I went for a walk.

Pretty soon I was hopelessly lost. It was getting late, definitely time for a girl on her own to go home. Every other day, my friends and I had walked the journey between our hotel and the town, as it wasn’t far, and it would have been fine except that I had no bloody clue as to where I was and I suddenly remembered the dark highway and the hookers. There was no question of me getting in a taxi, even if I could have found one. I mean, if beer was 10 Euros a go then I clearly couldn’t afford a taxi, and anyway I was pretty sure a French taxi driver would rather kill and butcher a foreigner than drive one somewhere.

Anyway, to cut a long story of psychological torment short, a middle aged man in shorts (I don’t remember much about him, so your getting everything I do) saw me faltering, asked me if was ok, and in the end he drove me home. How unbelievably nice was that?! He didn’t speak a word of English so we had a nice conversation in French. I understood about 1% of what he said, but my knowledge of grammar got me through so I was able to guess at which point in the conversation I was required to respond ‘non’ or ‘oui’. In other words, I got the framework of what he was saying, but not the content. I did manage to figure out that he worked for the tax office, though. That's one of the few things I understood.

So that’s the unbelievably suspenseful story of how I got lost in France. Sorry folks. Next time I’ll try and get lost in Tangiers and there’ll be some sex and violence for you. Urrrrrrr…Tangiers….*shudder*