Making a Life

I found a coffee shop up the street about half a block, where I walk most mornings to have a cafe' au lait. Saturday was an exception as I was in bed, curled in the fetal position, crying over my hair. The coffee is served in a squat cup like those cappucinos are served in and the milk comes separately in a tiny, silver pitcher. A nice, dark-haired, young lady works during the week, and a middle-aged man, who could be the owner or manager, often works with her and alone on the weekends.

After coffee I walk up the street toward to cathedral and stop at the boulanger for two small rolls, sometimes with poppy seeds and sometimes without, "natur". If I need to access cash from an ATM machine, I walk further up the street to an HSBC bank. Unfortunately, here I am charged both an ATM fee of $2 and also a 1% foreign transaction fee, which I wasn't charged in Germany or Italy as long as the bank was on the same network as my home bank. Here it doesn't seem to matter. The money I save becuase the dollar has strengthened against the euro, I spend on transaction fees. I have changed a fair amount of money recently as I have to pay Maria when I arrive in Italy and I suspect the dollar will weaken significantly today due to Hurricane Ike and what I suspect will be the higher cost of crude oil.

If I have cash on hand I return home to drop if off before I do my grocery shopping. There are four stores nearby and I visit all four of them for different things: Norma for toilet paper; Spar for a certain kind of yogurt; Simply for fresh salmon and ham; and Coop for most other things. I tend to run back home with purchased items before heading to the next store which gives me an extra bit of exercise.

I am lucky to receive the BBC Prime channel featuring British shows in English. I enjoy watching "Holby City", a medical soap opera I used to watch in Ireland, each evening and I really enjoyed a show called "Speed" last night.

I try to walk a great deal each day around the "island" on which I live. I tend not to wear my mp3 while walking as I have to listen for bikes, strollers, pedestrians, dogs, delivery vehicles, and the many trams, one of which came too close for comfort the other day. I am losing the sense of "Where-the-hell-am-I?" which filled my early days here and it's being rapidly replaced with "What-the-hell-did-he/she-just-say-and-how-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-respond?". I remember my dad telling me that he got along just fine speaking German while traveling in this region. To quote a man I used to work with, "What was he smoking?" As I mentioned previously, people here speak French and usually nothing else. Maybe Dad just thought he was being understood. I don't know. I try to get by the best I can without hiding in my apartment all the time.