Tuesday, September 7th -- Nice, France

I awoke to a view of the ocean out my compartment window. It was so great to see the ocean again -- I hadn't really seen the ocean since leaving the west coast of the US. I got into Nice early in the morning and was attacked by hawkers from a hostel. I went there and checked in. The place was quite run down but it was cheap and located conveniently close to the train station and the beach. I met a strange guy named Gino in the hostel. He was French, but pretended to be Italian and was generally very annoying. I spent the afternoon and evening exploring the city. It was great being at the beach again, even if it was made up of stones and not sand. The stones aren't very comfortable, but at least you don't get all of your stuff permeated with sand. 

  The next day I spent the hours reading on the beach amongst a plentiful supply of bare-breasted women. It was a little bit distracting at first, but I soon got used to it. That evening, the majority of the people staying at the hostel all went out to a bar called Tapas. We went to a club afterward, but didn't stay long. 

The next day I went to the beach with a bunch of people from the hostel. People just seem to get stuck at this hostel, staying for weeks at a time. Everyone gets to know each other, making for a very welcoming atmosphere. It was a very lazy day. I found it very strange to be having idle conversations with bare-breasted women who I'd met clothed earlier. That night we all got intoxicated at the hostel and wandered down to the beach. I talked and sang everything from Bing Crosby to the Cuckaburra song with a crazy guy named Warren from Australia. I'd brought a harmonica with me and jammed for a while with another Australian who'd brought his guitar. 

We smoked some hashish on the beach and had a stone throwing competition that I was crowned champion of. We ended up at a club called "Le Booster". The smoke was so thick that every breath was like taking a drag on a bad cigarette. Smoking is pretty common all throughout Europe, but in France it seems that absolutely everybody smokes. Foreigners who have ever smoked in their lives usually start again while in France. 

We danced for a while until around 2:00, when they stopped the music and everyone sat down around the dance floor. Confused, we did the same. Then the most bizarre show I've ever witnessed began. First, a guy in drag came out and lipsynched a song using a big dildo for a microphone. Very scary. The next performer was a normal woman singing a song -- very star-search. Up next was "Sexy Joan", who turned out to be a stripper. Then Coocoo (the transvestite's name) did another number. Sexy Joan finished out the show. The girls were upset that we got Sexy Joan, while all they got was Coocoo. Oh well. 

 The next day I spent on the beach much like I had the previous days. That night a bunch of us cooked a great vegetable curry for dinner, and afterward I hopped a train a bit down the coast to Monte Carlo. The amount of wealth in Monte Carlo hits you in the face everywhere you look. I wandered along the harbor past many huge boats -- some with parties going on on board. I saw the famous casino, but the price of entry was pretty steep. I went into another casino that had free entry instead. I wanted to play a few hands of blackjack, but the minimum bet at the cheaper tables was 100 franks -- to rich for my blood. The money was being thrown around left and right. People were playing multiple hands of blackjack at a time and betting 1000 franks on a single hand -- enough money for me to live on for a week. Depressing, really. 

  I walked down streets on which it seemed every other car was a Ferrari and found my way into a less affluent section of town. I found a cool pub with people playing guitar and a dog behind the bar and had a beer before hopping my train back to Nice. The next day I spent in Cannes. It struck me as being not that much different that Nice (although the beaches were sand instead of rocks). I stopped at a park for a while and watched some older men play the French version of bocce. 

When I returned to the hostel I met two guys and two girls (Kelly, Jay, Jill, and Brenna) from Seattle. I was born in Seattle, and it turned out that Jay was born just a few days before me. The hostel crowd spent the early evening playing a drinking game called "up the river, down the river" where you flipped cards over and had to guess whether the next one would be higher, lower, red, or black. After getting one right, you could pass to the next person. Whenever somebody guessed wrong, they had to take as many drinks as there were cards. If you said higher/lower and the same card came up, you had to take twice as many drinks as there were cards. One guy was most unfortunate. When an ace came up, he confidently said "lower" (when he could have passed), and had the bad luck to draw another ace. There were currently 16 cards lined up... 

 Later, we all stumbled down to the beach. It had been beautiful weather for the past few days, but it started raining on us. I'm convinced that it was the Seattle folks bringing bad weather with them. We went to Tapas and closed it down. The next morning was still cloudy and drippy and the hostel was full of hungover people. I hung out for the day with the Seattle people. Brenna was in a bad way and her friends heartlessly made fun of her condition. They caught an early evening train to Rome, and I'm taking a train to Barcelona later tonight. I've said goodbye to my friends back at the hostel and am heading for the station. 

Copyright (c) 1995, Mike Oliphant