Sleep

This week’s Mustard Seed continues with my European wanderings. Since we bought a van in England, an island, the next leg of our journey involved a ferry crossing to continental Europe. British Columbia has a wealth of traditional ferries, so that made the hovercraft our obvious choice.
1978 was pre-GPS so we navigated via an atlas of Europe my friend Greg gave me as a bon voyage gift. There are no search or zoom feature in paper atlases so we supplemented the maps with brochures gleaned from tourism kiosks — always quite local and never highly detailed. Once headed in our chosen general direction we followed highway signs.
     Since Paris, obligatory for our grand European tour, lay to our west on an east-bound journey, it became our next destination. Yves and Solange, who we met on the Lermontov, lived in Paris. We drove well into the city and picked a random exit. My sister noticed that all the bus shelters had maps so we parked by the next stop to peruse the map. Purely by God’s grace, we were one block away from Yves and Solange's apartment.
     They lived in a five story building. The ground floor had a foyer and two suites. Each other floor had four suites. We climbed the steep and narrow stairway all the way to the top floor to announce ourselves. Yves apologized that he and Solange were leaving the next day for a little holiday of their own and needed to prepare. He did, however, invite us for breakfast and a shower the next morning.
     Their building predated indoor plumbing and one shared washroom per floor had been jammed into the end of the corridor during a renovation decades earlier. Although probably a luxury at the time, these washrooms were not like the ones we’re accustomed to in North America. They consist of a squat toilet (two lumps to stand on and a hole to aim for), a hose leading from the wall, and a showerhead over the toilet; efficient use of a very limited space. A waste bin sat in the corner for tissue. We were warned that hosing tissue down the toilet would certainly clog the drain. To shower, one stood in the toilet and turned on the almost-warm water overhead.
    Upon finishing our breakfast and lavabo, we bid adieu to our friends and headed for the Eiffel tower. We found several vans parked beneath the tower. We pulled ours in beside the others. This was our campsite for the duration of our stay in Paris. We ventured out on foot in different directions each day. By the third day we were finding our sponge-baths somewhat inadequate. I noticed an icon of a person swimming labelled piscine publique on our tour map. After that, public swimming pools became a standard destination in each city we visited.
    With so many sights to see, we remained in Paris for a full week. We returned to our van planning to get a good sleep and an early start. The side door wide open. Our passports were gone. This was the first time my sister asked, “What are we going to do now?”
    I came up with a very practical answer. “Sleep.” It was late. Our situation wouldn’t be any worse in the morning and our minds would be fresher. Also, the Canadian embassy would be open.
    We made our way to the embassy and, after two hours in line, applied for an emergency passport. The clerk gave us a number to phone in a week to check on progress. We saw many sights we would otherwise have missed and my sister enjoyed our daily visits to the piscine publique. On the fifth morning I caved to her daily demands to phone the embassy despite it not being a week. The passports had just arrived; we could pick them up after three o’clock. I wanted to stay one more night and leave the next morning but my sister insisted we leave immediately.
    Next week: “Sleep” again.
                                                                 God bless.

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