No maps, the Twilight Zone, and yoga mats.

In retrospect, maybe I should have researched my route better. Did I bother to look at map of Bordeaux before I left the States? Oh nooooo. After an exhausting 24+ hour trip which took me from San Francisco to Chicago, Amsterdam, and London, I landed in a completely new city, with no concept whatsoever of the size or geography of the area. With no directions to the winery, I had to use a combination of gesticulating madly, pointing at maps, a lot of prayer, and garbled French, to find a bus that might possibly take me in the general direction I was going. I was essentially blind, and had assumed that through a lame attitude of "well I'll just figure it out as I go," and the power of the internet, I would get there all right.


However, unlike other cities like Tokyo or San Francisco or Prince Edward Island with its population of 142, nothing is marked clearly in Bordeaux. The taxi dropped me at the central area where there are a lot of busses, Quinconces. I moved from bus stop to bus stop ("ou est le gare?") looking at every schedule until I found one that sounded like the one where I was supposed to go. I wasn't sure, but I sat and waited. The sun set. It started raining. From my point of view, Bordeaux looked about how it did during the Black Plague. As sheer luck would have it, I did manage to find the right bus and reach a destination, but only by the very tolerant grace of people whose relatives probably harbored refugees during the war and were used to stinky travellers with a dazed, dislocated look.



The Medoc area of Bordeaux is very flat, and frankly, very drab. I'd like to say the villages on the way are "rustic," except the stone buildings and walls are crumbling, polluted, and pasted with tacky advertisements from the 70s. I reached the tiny town of Cussac-Fort Medoc around 7:30PM, wondering whether I'd stepped into the Twilight Zone. And if I had, if I'd stepped into the correct Twilight Zone. I don't think the town even shows up on the map, and all 2 stores I could see from the busstop were closed. A forlorn church with boarded-up windows stared at me through the rain. If you had asked me where the chateau was at that point, I would have started laughing hysterically. Yes, I was stranded in an unmapped town in France without a cell phone.


Of course, things could only get more surreal. After standing there about 10 minutes while the reality of my situation sunk in ("wow. I'm actually really lost,") 3 ladies with yoga mats walked by. After 5 minutes of a highly disjointed conversation, I finally understood that they were going to drive me in a miniscule vehicle which smelled like dog "around the corner" - which was actually a 2-km gravel driveway through the vineyard - to the chateau. So my grand entrance at the winery involved being belched out of a tiny, beat-up hatchback with my suitcase, duffelbag, laptop, and Kate Spade purse at the feet of some French cellar workers whose looks of horror indicated they thought the US was invading. I never said I travel gracefully.