Englishmen Abroad
English people always make a good impression abroad. If we’re not stubborn old men sitting in French restaurants demanding ‘cod and chips’ in English, then we seem to be a bunch of stupid drunk clubbers intent on turning pretty Greek islands into Essex and starting fights. No really, other countries must be simply in awe of us. Of course, it doesn’t help that we’re not encouraged to learn other languages properly at school, and it also doesn’t help when, despite my criticisms, I act like a total dick when I go abroad as well.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to go on a day trip to Normandy, because I wanted to go to Bayeux to see the tapestry, and look at the beaches and tanks and things. However, at this point I should point out that this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to get to Bayeux. Last year I crossed over to St Malo from Guernsey after a little two-week jaunt round the Channel Islands, and thought I’d simply get a train to Bayeux from there.
It was all fine in theory - it didn’t look that far on the map, I knew where the train station was and I knew how to say ‘Je voudrais un billet pour Bayeux allez retour s’il vous plait’. What GCSE French doesn’t teach you, though, is how to understand what the person behind the desk tells you after you’ve spouted your shameful attempt at French at them. And, after a few minutes of the lady behind the counter patiently explaining something to me in really fast words that I didn’t understand, and me looking at her with an expression suggesting I’d had some kind of lobotomy, I figured that getting to Bayeux wasn’t that simple, and ended up going back to Guernsey instead.
This was pretty embarrassing, so I was determined not to screw it up this time, and after asking the Internet how to get to Bayeux, I was pretty much sorted. I get the ferry from Portsmouth to Ouistreham, get the No. 1 bus from Ouistreham to Caen and then get the train from Caen to Bayeux.
It all looked simple enough, I got on the overnight ferry, found the No. 1 bus stop in Ouistreham and waited. Then, sure enough, up came the No. 1 bus. I hopped on, said my bit in French and the driver printed me a ticket, and it all looked good. Then, when I sat down, the driver turned round and started hurling confusing French words at me again. I assumed he was making pleasantries, so just smiled at him, then he kept talking, and shrugging, and I kept smiling.
Then a big group of school kids got on, and started running up and down the bus screaming in French, the driver once again looked round at me and shrugged, started the engine and we were off. At last I could relax, I watched the French countryside roll past, watched the sea disappear into the distance and then the bus pulled up in front of a school.
The kids got off, and I stayed in my seat waiting for the bus to move off again. But it didn’t, and the driver once again turned round and started saying strange things to me and gesticulating towards the door. I got off, looked at the sign on the bus and it clicked. I’d got on the school bus. What the driver had actually been telling me was probably something along the lines of ‘look, you stupid foreigner, this is the school bus, I’ll take you to the school if you want, but I’m guessing you want to go somewhere else. You really want to go to the school? Okay, if I don’t get a response I’m going to assume that stupid smile means ‘yes I want to go to the school’. I’m waiting. Right, that’s it, you’ve had your last chance, we’re going to the school.’
And he was right. Now I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, and, it being the school bus, there wasn’t another one going back to Ouistreham until the end of school. Maybe I could ask for help, I thought, but then I looked in my French phrasebook, and it didn’t have the French for ‘sorry, but I’m a stupid foreign bell end who got on the school bus by accident and needs to find the grown up buses now’.
This time I was lucky though, I walked half an hour down the road, found another bus stop and got on the right bus that took me to Caen. But if I’d walked in the wrong direction I’d have got lost in France and would have no idea how to find my way to Bayeux, or even back home again. It’s all a bit scary really, and the next time I go somewhere I don’t speak the language, I’m going to make an effort to learn a lot more of the language first, or maybe take someone else with me who does.
Oh, and the Bayeux Tapestry? It’s a big long piece of cloth with rubbish drawings all over it. Seriously, I reckon this is one of those rare occasions where I could have drawn a more accurate depiction of the horrors of medieval warfare. I must have been born in the wrong time.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to go on a day trip to Normandy, because I wanted to go to Bayeux to see the tapestry, and look at the beaches and tanks and things. However, at this point I should point out that this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to get to Bayeux. Last year I crossed over to St Malo from Guernsey after a little two-week jaunt round the Channel Islands, and thought I’d simply get a train to Bayeux from there.
It was all fine in theory - it didn’t look that far on the map, I knew where the train station was and I knew how to say ‘Je voudrais un billet pour Bayeux allez retour s’il vous plait’. What GCSE French doesn’t teach you, though, is how to understand what the person behind the desk tells you after you’ve spouted your shameful attempt at French at them. And, after a few minutes of the lady behind the counter patiently explaining something to me in really fast words that I didn’t understand, and me looking at her with an expression suggesting I’d had some kind of lobotomy, I figured that getting to Bayeux wasn’t that simple, and ended up going back to Guernsey instead.
This was pretty embarrassing, so I was determined not to screw it up this time, and after asking the Internet how to get to Bayeux, I was pretty much sorted. I get the ferry from Portsmouth to Ouistreham, get the No. 1 bus from Ouistreham to Caen and then get the train from Caen to Bayeux.
It all looked simple enough, I got on the overnight ferry, found the No. 1 bus stop in Ouistreham and waited. Then, sure enough, up came the No. 1 bus. I hopped on, said my bit in French and the driver printed me a ticket, and it all looked good. Then, when I sat down, the driver turned round and started hurling confusing French words at me again. I assumed he was making pleasantries, so just smiled at him, then he kept talking, and shrugging, and I kept smiling.
Then a big group of school kids got on, and started running up and down the bus screaming in French, the driver once again looked round at me and shrugged, started the engine and we were off. At last I could relax, I watched the French countryside roll past, watched the sea disappear into the distance and then the bus pulled up in front of a school.
The kids got off, and I stayed in my seat waiting for the bus to move off again. But it didn’t, and the driver once again turned round and started saying strange things to me and gesticulating towards the door. I got off, looked at the sign on the bus and it clicked. I’d got on the school bus. What the driver had actually been telling me was probably something along the lines of ‘look, you stupid foreigner, this is the school bus, I’ll take you to the school if you want, but I’m guessing you want to go somewhere else. You really want to go to the school? Okay, if I don’t get a response I’m going to assume that stupid smile means ‘yes I want to go to the school’. I’m waiting. Right, that’s it, you’ve had your last chance, we’re going to the school.’
And he was right. Now I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, and, it being the school bus, there wasn’t another one going back to Ouistreham until the end of school. Maybe I could ask for help, I thought, but then I looked in my French phrasebook, and it didn’t have the French for ‘sorry, but I’m a stupid foreign bell end who got on the school bus by accident and needs to find the grown up buses now’.
This time I was lucky though, I walked half an hour down the road, found another bus stop and got on the right bus that took me to Caen. But if I’d walked in the wrong direction I’d have got lost in France and would have no idea how to find my way to Bayeux, or even back home again. It’s all a bit scary really, and the next time I go somewhere I don’t speak the language, I’m going to make an effort to learn a lot more of the language first, or maybe take someone else with me who does.
Oh, and the Bayeux Tapestry? It’s a big long piece of cloth with rubbish drawings all over it. Seriously, I reckon this is one of those rare occasions where I could have drawn a more accurate depiction of the horrors of medieval warfare. I must have been born in the wrong time.