Master Planner from France

It's 9:01 pm or so that's what time this computer thinks it might be. I have on a wool sweater, wool socks, fleece pants and I am thinking about crawling across this bed to find my gloves. I pause, realizing that would require me to pull out of my sleeping bag.

I have my 2 spare computer batteries crammed into my sleeping bag so they will recover from being in the car and from getting a tad bit wet when I stepped on them with wet snowy boots. My computer makes some real strange noise, which worries me greatly until I rationalize it's just from being cold. Maybe it's like the chattering noise I make when my internal body temperature drops a bit too fast.

I am somewhere in the Alps, in this area that merges Switzerland, Italy, and France. In a place with steep mountains that go from 3k to 15k in just one quick, head spinning tram ride. I think the French Master Planner was running out of room .... he added in Paris, tossed in the great wine regions, planned in all the farming communities, created the great beaches ... he then decided on these mountains. He couldn't possibly have thought of turning them into foothills; the Germans have foothills. And so he crammed them all together, with a valley just wide enough for tiny towns with a train station, a few hotels, a central river, and a ski resort.

The planner so delicately placed Mount Blanc, the highest peak in Europe, as the border between Italy and France ... but well within the likes of France. He must of thought this would keep these boundaries so distinct, and would discourage wars with the hot-headed Italians. ("We should kill those bastards on the other side of the mountain," the soldier thinks as he sucks on the cigarette, "but let us wait until summer when this snow will be melted. And then, well, I am not so sure we should waste good holiday time on a war.")

As some sort of work around from the strategy of the French Master Planner, a tunnel runs trucks through the mountain like a stream runs schools of salmon back to their breeding grounds. I am not sure why there are so many trucks, maybe it's only export businesses that can afford the charge to cross the tunnel. Maybe the Master Planner did plan for the tunnel after all ... recognizing that the French do not build good cars, that olives would have to be imported somehow.

The language skills of the people who live here are amazing. Would you like to speak in English? In French? In German? How about Italian? Nobody pauses when they switch languages. It's just unconscious. Even the dogs, big mountain dogs, seem to understand when I say, "Come here puppy."

The locals just sort of grin when you order things in French. Many of them will say, in the most perfect English, "Would you like to speak English?"

I want to respond,

"No really, I would like to continue this conversation with my 12 words of French. I am trying to learn French, an impossible task for anybody over the age of 12, anybody with reason, or anybody who is simply beyond a 2nd generation American. But we don't have all day for me to order these rental skis which will require well beyond my 12 words so go ahead. Let's hear your perfect English.

But before we proceed, just to see if you REALLY know Americans, can you tell me all the states that border Iowa?"

I pause, wonder if I can name these states myself. But nonetheless, Europeans are always confused with the mid-west. Those vast states that separate the east coast and California.

I believe it's well after 9 pm now. I am sure my computer could tell me but I will keep on typing; it keeps my fingers warm. We are staying in a "Gites Etape" or a "Place of Stop". I think they are something like a youth hostel only in Europe only they are not really for the youth. They are for people like me who don't care if I share a bathroom or a shower ... who just want a room for the night with a kitchen and maybe a fireplace. (This one doesn't have a fireplace or it might be a tad warmer.) I think it's one step above sleeping in an ice cave, but I find it charming.

The best part about a Gite Etape is all the people who go to them. Cooking dinner, I meet a guy from Scotland who is here for parachuting and skiing and three guys from Berlin who are into skiing. At breakfast I meet a French girl who borrows my coffee and tells me it's going to be a sunny day because she read the weather in the newspaper. There's also another French couple who bring their dog, a small dog that rivals the local dogs.

The better part about the Gite Etape is when you are out and about and you see these new strange people that you now live with ... and that awkward moment where you can't decide if that was the guy who boiled your hot tea for breakfast or not, the one who looks so funny with this hair all standing up wearing those purple socks and brown wool pants... and then you sort of smile and wave and hope it was really him.

So this is a Gite Itape... and this is the lost corner of Switzerland, Italy, and France, the center of the Alps.

It's late and I must get my beauty rest, now that I am comfortably half asleep. After all, you don't want me to look like the guy with the purple socks in the morning. Well, I hope I don't develop that much of a beard in just one night.

Maybe tomorrow I will meet the retired master planner ... who is out skiing on a beautiful day ... and I will get to tell him what a great job he did with planning Paris. I suppose the mountains could be a tad bit closer to Paris (5 hours of driving) but it keeps the Parisians in Paris and not in this mixed up corner of the countries.