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The French are quite formal at work, unless they really are with close workmates who they have worked with a long time or are super stressed.

Nous sommes obligés de reformer tout le monde” “We need to retrain everyone,” said one of the senior managers, conversationally as I arrived back at work, my first day after some holidays. Retrain everyone meant retrain 2000 people.

“Tu te fous de ma gueule?!” I blurted out without thinking.

He seemed a little taken aback. Rightly, as it turned out.

Je vois que tu as enrichi ton vocabulaire pendant tes congés” “I see you have enriched your vocabulary on your holidays.”

I quickly corrected myself. “Uhhhhh tu te fous de moi? Tu te moque de moi?”

Non. Je ne te moque pas.”

I’d just blurted out the equivalent of “Are you f***ing kidding me ?” To a senior manager. instead of the more sedate “Are you kidding me? You’re making fun of me?”

I got him back though. He went on leave for a while. We were working together on our laptops in a meeting room when he, speaking perfect English with his lovely French accent, stared at his screen and blurted out loudly:

“Ferking ‘ell!”

Quick as a flash I couldn’t help but jump in with “I see you have enriched your English vocabulary on your holidays.” Fortunately this didn’t turn out to be a career limiting move and he laughed.

Hard to believe it’s been nearly four months since COVID19 hit Europe but there it is. I’ve been enjoying the renewed sense of freedom that has come with, first, the opening of France to itself and then the opening of the Schengen borders as of 22 June. France opened its borders to 14 countries without the need for quarantine – including New Zealand. So guys, you can come visit me so long as you’re prepared to do two weeks’ quarantine back in NZ afterwards. I will need to accept that I’ll be taking an extra two week’s unpaid leave when I come to NZ to visit. If I can even get through any transit borders.

There’s been a flurry of annual leave requests for summer, boosted by the fact that it’s actually illegal not to take two weeks’ leave in one block if you have it, between 31 May and 31 October. Plus another two weeks to be taken in the same time period as you wish. Summer holidays are taken very seriously here.

They’ll be summer holidays with a difference. It’s my personal opinion that Covid is here to stay until there is a vaccine. It is simply something we live alongside now. Travel will look very different from now on. It’ll be more expensive for a while as transporters try to recover their costs and maintain distancing rules. Tourist attractions will be online booking only, with obligatory masks and hand sanitiser. In fact, masks and hand sanitiser will remain compulsory in any enclosed space, railway stations, airports, restaurants, and the like. There’ll be very little paper to touch (few restaurant menus) – good for the environment – and lots of social distancing at work. No handshakes, bisous (kisses), hugs (the french aren’t big huggers anyway, but I am) except with your “proches” – your friends and family. In some ways it is nice not to have my precious personal space invaded on public transport but I do miss touch.

We live in fear of the dreaded second wave which we see unfolding before us in some countries in the world. But it seems a second wave will be more like cluster management with targeted lockdowns to prevent the bigger second wave predicted for September/October.

Now it’s time to enjoy the first week of my summer holidays when I go exploring in Austria. It’s a great time to be exploring your own country/continent with no real crowds. I’ve washed plenty of masks to pack and have refilled my stock of hand sanitiser. This is the new normal.

So it’s time to sign off from these COVID updates and switch to what this blog really was about – the path that led an empty nester to pack up and move overseas to live the expat life. There’s the culture cock-ups made, the discoveries of unknown villages that turn out to be a complete delight, and of course the food.

You’ll meet various people along the way , some who I treasure, some I don’t. They all have a story, sometimes blessed, other times just plain hard and you can see the remnants of it in their eyes and in their beer glass at 10:30am on a Sunday morning. The online expat community – people you’ve never actually met but if you were having such a rough time that you needed to, the FB message tree would be working overtime and someone would come to you. That and all the hilarious memes they post that keep you sane.

It seems to others that this is a glamorous life and I know I won’t get any sympathy from NZers if I start complaining that the three hour journey between two European cities really is the pits. But it’s not all its cracked up to be. Things that were simple to do in NZ are twenty times harder because you are relearning how to do everything. Everything. Living with anxiety and perimenopausal hormones doesn’t help but it does make for some light entertainment every now and then.

You are torn in different directions mentally. On the one hand, there’s the reality slap of knowing your “home” country, beautiful though it is, isn’t really a place you enjoy living with its extreme weather, earthquakes, volcanoes, and quiet life. On the other, there’s the fact that you miss the familiarity of life there and your family and friends so much you are actually in physical and emotional pain on a fairly regular basis.

No, it is not for the faint-hearted (which I discovered I had – that’s a story for another time) but being a bit of a free spirit who loves adventures, opening up the world to others, meeting people of different cultures, and exploring – wanderlusting – for now this is the life I choose to lead. Future Me will thank me for it.

Curiosity, although often hailed as one of the more positive human traits, can be considered an unwise strategy. Particularly when there is a mob of several thousand gilets jaunes goading police in full riot gear bearing a striking resemblance to The Terminator. Well, multiple terminators. Terminators armed with tear gas and flashbols.

Tear gas stings like ten bees resting delicately on your eyeballs just after becoming significantly alarmed.  Think of red hot chilli peppers, the hottest you’ve ever eaten. You know how you like to chop them up and put them in a curry then you forget that you were chopping chillis and you rubbed your eyes before washing your hands? It’s like that.

I knew they’d be firing up. I was in Rennes for the amazing market and I had it in my head that I must get out before 2pm before the gilets jaunes started up. After spending several hours wandering around the market getting my fill, I noted there were a few gilets jaunes milling around the square around 1pm. I thought I’ll just have time to dash into Zara before heading back to the railway station. Aha aha ahahhah hah. Whooo.

“That’s funny, ” I thought to myself wondering why the doors had been pulled across in Zara. The security guard was on the inside. I made to go outside.

“No Madame” and he nodded to the outside. Well it was a sea of haze wasn’t it, with people in yellow high vis vests running on by. Oh goodie. So I waited with everyone else until the haze cleared and we were allowed outside.

I quickly got out of there and found a cafe, my eyes stinging ever so slightly. “Phew,” I said to myself, “that was a close one.” After downing a mulled wine (after all, it was nearly Christmas), I made my way to a nearby shopping centre where I ran into some friends and chatted about the experience. They were heading to another mall and said to meet me there and they’d give me a lift home.

I turned to see a massive throng of gilets jaunes heading up the street. “Interesting!” I thought. “What a fascinating sociological study of human behaviour!” “What an historical moment for this little kiwi!” I thought. “I’ll just duck in here beside the shopping centre and watch from this safe distance” I thought.

Did you know that tear gas canisters can travel a very very long way when fired out of a rocket launcher thingy? Even better, the police were firing them AHEAD of the Gilets Jaunes. Conveniently, right where a group of us curious people were standing. We ran. Fast. I took shelter in the alleyway of the shopping centre, thinking I’ll just run inside. Got to the doorway and of course the grill was shut. No way in.

I turned around to see thick clouds of tear gas at the end of the alleyway. No matter, I’ll just stay in here until it passes. There was an older woman with me panicking and talking on the phone to her husband. I tried to calm her down saying it will be ok, we’ll just wait for the cloud to pass then we’ll go out. This strategy worked for approximately 7 seconds until the tear gas started spreading down the alleyway. More and more canisters fired.

“Ok we’re going to make a run for it.” I said. I noted the right hand side wasn’t as gassy, so I grabbed the woman, still blubbering down the phone to her husband, wrapped my scarf around my face and we ran for it. Straight through clouds and clouds of it. That woman copped so many lungfuls of the stuff each time she cried down the phone. My eyes were burning, I wondered if I actually had eyeballs left or if they’d been melted away.

A gilet jaune handed us each a little saline solution tube to rinse our eyes once we got out of it. They were well-prepared. The woman said to me “I still need to do my shopping, do you think they’ll open the mall soon?”

“No Madame, I don’t. We need to get out of here.” She wouldn’t come and so I left her still talking to her husband.

I finally found a mall entrance with one door open with security guards pulling everyone through. We all rushed out the other side and up some steps. If I can just get to the train station, I’ll text my friends. I ran up the steps to find people running towards me, some with small children crying. I yelled at them “You don’t want to go that way, there’s gas” They yelled back. “There’s gas that way too!” Of course, pointing in the direction I was heading.

I chanced it. I got to the top of the stairs. The road was clear. All I could see were several police cars lined up as a barricade and police troops at the ready in a line across the street. “Good” I thought. I’ll just be able to nip past them and get to the station. It was so close, maybe 150m.

I turned to my left.

There’s something special about seeing an entire main street blocked with a mass of surging yellow. I made some quick calculations. They’re still far enough away. I think. The police haven’t moved. If I run for it….so I ran for it. One lone figure running down the street in boots, a scarf around her head, and shopping bags swinging wildly.

But I made it. I beat them. I could hear the throng getting louder behind me and by now the familiar sound of tear gas being fired as I turned a corner, straight into the entrance of a pub and directly across the road from the train station. One very large glass of red wine later, I text my friends. They had got caught in the gas too. They turned up at the pub and looked at me. “Let’s get out of here. Now.” We jumped in the car and headed back to Saint Malo.

Don’t do it. Don’t be curious. Be boring and keep your sticky beak to yourself.

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