Will Around the World

After barely missing my flight, I relaxed on the 90-minute plane ride to Christchurch. I arrived at 5PM. On the short bus ride from the airport to the center, I enjoyed the view. Tall deciduous trees, English country homes. They call Christchurch the Garden City for good reason. The glow from the evening sun finished this picturesque setting.

I got off the bus at Cathedral Square, the heart of the city. I already noticed an Asian presence. A big group of Chinese were playing soccer in the square.

I stayed at an immense hostel on the Square called Base Backpackers. After I got settled in I went down to the bar to check out happy hour. I thought there would be live music, but instead I got a drinking game version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Amazingly, no one left—I guess you can't argue with $2 drafts.

After a while I was joined by my bunkmate, David. This was a 30-year old Frenchman; he was quite short but possessed a pair of biceps that warned to mess with him if you dared. That is, until he flashed his wide smile. I liked him immediately. He spoke English haltingly but gesticulated like nobody's business. We talked about Italian soccer ("I hate Materazzi"), cultural misconceptions ("France doesn't really hate Americans") and being a smart traveler (he advised me to wear "kingdoms").

David was wrapping up a month-long tour by bus around the whole country. I asked him why he chose New Zealand. He explained that he recently broke up with his girlfriend (she is 29 and wanted a baby) and wanted to get away from home for a while, though not necessarily to "mess around". Back home, he lives in a banlieue outside Paris, which is the French equivalent of public housing. He drives a bus and makes 1250 Euro ($1700) a month. I wondered how he could survive on that but he assured me he can live comfortably on that wage. (If he can afford to even travel abroad once a year, I can't argue.) I asked him if he felt safe in the banlieue; he responded that if he doesn't mess with anyone and he doesn't take s*** from anyone, there won't be a problem. Except for once getting a knife pointed at his chest, this attitude has kept him safe. Moving on to the bigger picture, I asked David, who is white, what he thought about North Africans, the poorest people in France who comprise a large part of the banlieues. (They also sparked a wave of violence last summer that threatened to engulf the cities.) He responded with a determined voice: they should try harder to integrate into French society. When I suggested that they can't because the same society doesn't give them jobs, David retorted, "Look at Zidane": the beloved soccer player of Algerian descent. "That's proof they can get a job!"

I enjoyed talking with David more than anyone else on the trip so far. His life fascinated me and his eagerness to share it with a total stranger—especially contrasted with the reticence of most others I had met—touched me. Because of the language barrier, he hadn't had much conversation on this trip. There was one British girl on the bus that he sat with because she spoke French, but aside from translating she didn't speak to him. (And forget about Aussie women, David told me—they're too tall!) At the end of the night, David gave me a map of the bus he took so I could plan my travels. "France's gift to America," he called it.

# posted by billklee @ 22:05