With a little help from our friends

Saturday September 6, 2008 

Letter to our landlady who picked us up at the train station in Montpellier and had a bottle of wine sitting on the kitchen counter to warm our space.

Dear Gill, 

"You have a lot of courage traveling with all that luggage."  Gille said.

I tried not be be defensive remembering that  at the Seattle airport, the checker was surprised that we were taking so little for a year. On the other hand,  unlike you, the checker had not been driving around for 45 minutes in the hot Montpellier sun looking for parking.  

Didn't Bob do a good job jerry rigging a dolly for the bikes? With a smile on his face, Bob pushed two bikes across uneven stones the mile to our apartment with nary a tipsy turvy .

“Why didn’t you buy bikes here?” Gille queried a little abruptly.

It is a cost of going to new places, I would have responded if I had known sufficient French to do so. Bob had searched the net for hours for beater bikes and bike prices. Who knew the local store sold bikes for less than the price of $150 for  air transport and our $114 Kryptonite locks? Since we knew you loved to bike, why hadn't we written to you for advice?

Simply because we have never done this before. These costs are a form of "on the ground" tuition associated with a junior year abroad.

Luggage carts tell their own story. In Seattle, $6 for two. At the Copenhagen and Paris airports, free. In the US money reigns. In the EU the community still creates a safety net for the whole. Why were there then no carts or porters in the densely packed Montpellier train station? It is our guess that we will find no free carts in any busy train station. Why? It is too easy to roll your luggage out of the station and to your home. Good thing we had designed carefully how two people could handle all nine pieces of luggage, bag clipped carefully to bag.