Below are my final notes from the trip. Most were written soon after the event, but I wasn’t able to post until now, so the time frame may seem a little weird. I could go through and re-edit, but I want to keep this instant/initial impressions without overanalyzing too much. So, live with it… 😉

Cheek Kissing
I have come to the conclusion that I really like the French/European custom of cheek kissing—between men and women anyway. At first I was sort of holding back, a little uncomfortable with it and I could tell a couple of the French women found it a little awkward that I wasn’t doing it. So, I told myself when in France…by the time I left, it was totally natural. Definitely a custom I could get used to.

Closing ceremony
Last night was the closing ceremony of the Bordeaux film festival. They recognized each of the participants, including me, with flowers, a certificate and a bottle of wine to recognize the event. All in all, the event was a great success and a lot of fun. The owners of L’oenolimit (where my exhibit was displayed) told me that often when they have a opening for a new exhibit, there is a good crowd on opening day, but then no one comes in after that. Except with my exhibit. They said they had good traffic each day by people coming by to see my photos. I was very pleased with that.

Following the presentations, they showed a film, followed by a buffet and party. You can see some of the pictures from the party, including lots of Russian and French faces of the volunteers and helpers who took very good care of all the participants. It was their night to let their hair down and they did just that.

Two final notes on my apprehension about traveling in France. For various reasons, I ended up taking the tram to the closing ceremony by myself. I knew the way because I had taken the tram with a friend earlier in the week. But, I still thought it was an interesting progression for me to have gone from being spooked about traveling their at all to getting on the tram by myself and moving around the town. And, at rush hour no less, so the trains were crowded. Sort of proud of myself for that one.

After the party, as we were chatting before heading back home or to the hotel, one of the French girls asked me my impressions of France. I told her of my initial concerns and she said she had heard that before, but hoped I would tell all my friends that all French people are not like that. I have to agree. While it is possible to meet someone on the street who is arrogant or impatient, the French certainly don’t have a monopoly on that feeling. You can just as easily find that in America. Every person I met was open, warm and friendly. I look forward to going back someday. Truly.

Addendum
In the airport in Amsterdam. Delayed for who knows what reason, but no way to shift flights because my baggage is already in the process. It would have been nice if someone had mentioned that during check in. So, I sit and I wait, knowing full well I am missing my connection to home. I hope there is a late connection of I will be stuck in New York overnight. At this point, I am at the mercy of the airlines. Nothing to do but wait.

Further update:
Made it to NY 6 hours later than expected. But, for once, everything worked out and Delta rebooked me on an American flight to home. I’ll get in around midnight (6 am France time) which is nearly 26 hours after I began this odyssey.

New experience for me, coming through Passport Control here in New York. I got pulled aside and had notes scribbled on my declaration form. Not a comfortable feeling. Ultimately, it was all nothing. They had flagged my name looking for another Eric Douglas, but it did make me start wondering…and I might just have an extra bottle of French wine in my checked luggage. So….

Today has been all over the map. I’ll do my best to give you a recap.

We began the day with a Russian Orthodox church service held in a Catholic church. The Russian orthodox community here is too small to have their own church in Bordeaux, so they have come to an agreement with the St. Peter (Saint Pierre) catholic church in the city to use a small chapel off the side of the main cathedral. What makes that interesting, the two faiths split hundreds of years ago, but obviously they local communities have opted to work together.

Even more interesting, the orthodox priest is French and doesn’t speak Russian, but he still conducts each mass in Russian. The group of parishioners is small but dedicated. After the ceremony, they invited us to have tea and coffee with them.

From there, we joined the participants in the film festival for lunch at a local restaurant. We ended up having a table full of Americans, a table of French people and a table full of Russians. We toasted to Mother’s Day.

Then we all got together for a trip to a local winery. After a beautiful tour, we got to sample a couple of their wines, as introduced by the owner herself. She was a lovely lady and very friendly, but you could also tell she was an aristocrat in her world. We checked into bottles of the wine she gave us on the tour but they were 45 and 52 Euros per bottle. I passed.

May 9 is also the end of hostilities for World War II in Russia. This is a major event in Russia as approximately 20 million people died during the war. It was a terrible time and deeply ingrained in the Russian psyche. We joined a group of Russians and French out for dinner and Russian style drinking (vodka and toasting) to remember the evening. It started out a little rough as tensions were high for some reason, but things quickly relaxed as people got a drink or two in them. I gave a couple toasts over the course of the evening.

All in all, a pretty amazing day.

But, now we are looking at our flights leaving here and things are getting a little tense. It looks like everything will be fine, but I’m not 100 percent sure. The latest eruption of the volcano is jostling flights again. We’ll see how it goes..

…on the way to Bordeaux

This morning we set off for the coast. It isn’t like any of us were strangers to the beach, but we wanted to see the French side of the Atlantic. We never actually got to the true Atlantic, but we got close enough.

We visited the city of Arcachon. Beautiful little sea-side resort town with some fantastic architecture and a great, flat wide-open beach. I’m sure in season, it would be packed with people, but today it was still pretty empty. I did see one woman sunbathing topless on the beach, even though it was windy and in the 70s today. But, have you ever noticed how its never the people sunbathing topless that you want to see topless?

To get all of us down to the beach, half of our group had ridden with a friend of our translator’s family. This woman was headed to the beach anyway for a few hours and we could tag along. After we all got there, we went out separate ways. We were going to meet up to go home. But, she was ready to leave before we were so, we decided part of the group would take the train back to Bordeaux. Unfortunately, when we got to the train station, the last train for the evening left 10 minutes earlier.

No choices at this point, but Lorissa’s husband drove half the group home and was going to return for me, Lorissa and their son. Lorissa called some friends in the town who immediately came and got us to take us to their home for dinner. Walter, who described himself as an Italian/Frenchman cooked dinner while the family and the rest of their guests chatted. As I understood it, there was an Orthodox priest, his wife and a couple neighbors there. While dinner was cooking Walter took me into his wine cellar (he said wine was his passion) and showed me a bottle of wine from one of the best wineries in the area that was bottled in 1913. He told me it would still be drinkable, but was more of a collector’s item than anything else. Walter’s wife is Russian as well, so the orthodox priest led the assembled group in a blessing of the meal. I stayed respectfully quiet.

As we finished up dinner, Lorissa’s husband returned to pick us up. But, the evening wasn’t over yet. About halfway home, the engine in their car died. Fortunately, they had roadside assistance insurance (which reminds me, I need to call AAA when I get home) and a tow truck came, followed by a cab to get us all, about two hours later than expected, back safely to Bordeaux. Just one more little adventure in the game of life..

Day 2 ended up being tour-the-town day. We ended up taking a tourist train with recorded tour information in several languages. It makes it much easier to get the lay of the land that way.

I’m always amazed when tours mention dates, referring to still standing structures, from 500 to 1000 years ago and include names like Charlemagne. I’m also blown away when I hear names or places mentioned in history like Aquitaine and Richelieu (extra points for the first person to give me the literary reference to Richelieu.)

Probably more interesting about Bordeaux is what happened here in 1995, though. The city had been known as a jewel in France. It was said to be a glorious beauty in its day rivaling all but Paris. But, that beauty had fallen into disrepair. So, in 1995, the mayor launched a revitalization plan. He built a very nice, very efficient tram system to move the people around and began cleaning the facades on all the buildings. With that work and those efforts, the city was also named a UNESCO World Heritage site giving it protection and recognition. It’s a really beautiful city with fantastic architecture, all made from stone.

On an unrelated note, my concern about language has been mitigated because we’ve had a translator hanging around with us the last couple days. She is a young Russian girl living here with her French husband and 4 year old son. She’s been great helping us out. I’m not sure if she was assigned to us, or just attached herself to us, but she’s been there. But, the cool thing is we helped her get a job. All right, not really, but she just interviewed for a job with a company that would rely on her language abilities. During the interview, she said she stumbled a bit with her English. So, she’s been practicing with us the last few days, and when they called her yesterday about the job, she made sure to tell them she had been with us and practicing her English. We all got a good laugh out of it.

Last night we went to the opening of the film festival, complete with local sparkling wine, snacks (the French don’t really call them hors d’ oeuvres), talks, more food and vodka) Nice evening and my friends and I all got to set down front in the VIP section since I am an official participant in the festival. Very cool and a lot of fun.

Last few days, the weather has been pleasant and mild, but they keep saying we are supposed to get rain..

Yesterday was a full-on success. And I had a blast.

The opening for my photo exhibit here in Bordeaux was held at a wine shop/gallery that uses their space to exhibit art. The space itself is only about 6 meters wide, but 60 meters deep. The back two-thirds are used for gatherings, tasting and art. Very, very cool place.

When I arrived in Bordeaux after the typical overnight flight, I was pretty shell-shocked. (Have I mentioned my general inability to sleep on planes?) A very tight connection in Paris had gotten my blood pressure up, but it all went well and I made it here without a hitch. I was fortunate enough to get picked up at the airport by some associates of the group putting on the film festival. It’s mildly amusing that I will just get in a car with anyone standing in an airport with my name on a sign…

From the airport, we went straight to the exhibit because I was bringing my photographs with me. We quickly got things sorted out and hung on the walls. The first three or four sets were in an around the wine racks, but then the rest of the images took over the rest of the facility. When I first looked at the walls, I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. They had had local artists paint murals on the walls and I was a little concerned it would distract from the images. But it really seemed to work and the murals just became background. The name of the gallery is L’oenolimit—emphasis on the No Limit. Great place and two new friends (the owners) as well.

After we got the done, it was to the hotel for a couple hours to rest and change clothes and then back to the opening. There were about 40 people there for the opening, which was a little smaller than in Russia, but there were a great crowd, very interested and asked a lot of questions. We were even able to take a walking tour of the photos with me explaining the groups and the situation. It was a lot of fun. And, of course, the owners of L’oenolimit had set out wines for tasting and one of the sponsors of the film festival had set out a selection of snack. All in all, a great day.

Today will be some sightseeing for the afternoon and then to the opening of the film festival itself. We had dinner with an Academy Award winning director last night who created some new animation technique. Should be an interesting evening.

I posted some first day images on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=223280&id=839029017&l=1bef4ccd31.