The cheese in France, and 5 other things I couldn’t stand about Europe

by Christopher Pilny

1. They still haven’t figured out breakfast

The first time I went to Europe I was 12 years old, and I traveled from France, to Switzerland, to Austria, and then to Italy with what was called “a student ambassador group”. This was at least how the brochure described it: a non-profit organization that allowed students to explore an area of the world for three weeks and broaden their horizons. I was thrilled. I’d traveled a lot as a child, spending weeks of my summer out west with my grandmother, eating Choco-Tacos and watching A Goofy Movie — so I figured Europe wouldn’t be much different, just further away.

But if France, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy did anything to broaden my horizons, it vastly expanded the amount of things I could complain about. I hated Paris, as I wrote several times in my journal, and lumped the rest of France with that emotion. They didn’t have breakfast, or at least what I considered to be breakfast. Instead they had bread. Bread and butter and maybe some jam. So the first four entries from my journal go like this:

June 28, 1999. Paris.

Today we ate breakfast at our hotel. I was hoping for Belgian waffles, but all they had was bread. I hate Paris.

June 29, 1999. Paris.

Today we ate bread again. Then we went to the Eiffel Tower. Right after that we went to the Chateau de Versailles. I only liked the gardens. Then we had an American dinner at Hard Rock Cafe.

June 30, 1999. Zurich.

Today we arrived at our hotel in Zurich, Switzerland. I almost fainted. It had everything. There was a pool, a hot tub, a cool staircase, phones that work, nice rooms and a gift shop.

July 1, 1999. Salzburg.

Today we arrived in Austria. We ate lunch at a town nestled in a little valley. For lunch we had soup, fried chicken, French fries and ice cream. After all this I have a couple words to say: I LOVE AUSTRIA!!!!!!

Eight out of 19 journal entries I mention, in some form or another, that I ate bread and butter for breakfast. In almost every entry I at least mention the act of eating breakfast. What those consisted of, I’m not sure, but my guess it was the same thing and I was simply too defeated to mention it again.

What’s clear to me, though, is that the person I was at the age of 12 is still the person I am today. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, and when I don’t get a good one, I feel like a person who’s gotten out of bed and discovered they only have one leg. “Well…this is going to be difficult.”

Paris started out on the right foot this time, as on our first day we stopped at a more touristy restaurant and I had a delicious omelette with cheese and ham. But that was essentially the last time I saw my old friend, breakfast, until we got back to Nashville. Our hotel attempted to make us scramble eggs the next morning, but it was more like a yellow, slightly clumpy soup. And after that I all but resigned and skipped straight to lunch, which, thankfully, Europeans do pretty well.

2. They had the nerve to use the word “no” when I asked for something

The first time this happened we were in Paris and I needed another towel from our hotel. This, because Lauren uses 14 towels when she showers, and because the cleaning staff only left us with two. It was about seven o’clock at night, a reasonable hour, and I knew there was a nice clerk manning the desk.

CALLS DOWN TO DESK

Me: Uh, yes, can you have one of the maids bring us an extra towel?

Desk Clerk: Er, a tow-EL?

Me: Yes, a towel.

Desk Clerk: Er, I’m zorry, no. The cleaning staff has gone now and I don’t have, er, access to their cabinet.

Me: You don’t have access to their cabinet.

Desk Clerk: Er, no. I’m zorry, sir. [Hangs up]

The second time this happened was in Barcelona, again, at our hotel, but this time we needed an extra pillow because, well, Lauren sleeps with 14 pillows.

CALLS DOWN TO DESK

Me: Puedo tener otra almohada?

While I don’t know French, nor try to know French, I did take four years of Spanish in high school, and two semesters of it in college. This has left me feeling pretty confident when speaking to people in Spain, Central America, South America, and California — at least in the present tense, where verbs don’t do weird things. In this case, though, I still had to Google the exact way to ask for another pillow, because I couldn’t remember the word for “pillow”, and I wasn’t sure if saying, “I WANT ANOTHER PILLOW” was the correct way of going about it. So I typed in “Can I have another pillow?”, practiced the pronunciation a few times, then proudly moved forward.

Me: Puedo tener otra almohada?

Desk Clerk: (In perfect English) You want another pillow?

Me: (Clearly hurt) Yes, another pillow, please.

Desk Clerk: No, I’m sorry. The cleaning staff has gone for the day.

Me: The cleaning staff has gone for the day.

Desk Clerk: Yes. [Hangs up]

If I had been my father, I would have done the masculine thing and marched down to the front desk and stood in front of it ranting and raving about Lauren’s invented neck condition that REQUIRES…REQUIRES DAMN IT another pillow, and if they couldn’t get it for me, I’d be glad to go to the American Embassy and report them for…something. My dad always seems to get what he wants from the service industry, a trait that I failed to inherit. So instead of doing this, I hung up the phone, cursed an inordinate amount of times, and said to Lauren, “Sorry, babe. You’re just gonna have one pillow tonight.”

3. The cheese in France

On our way from the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, we hailed an Uber, which is really the only way to get around the city if you’re only going to be in 2–3 spots throughout the day and you don’t mind walking. Uber is phenomenal in France because instead of Toyotas, Fords, Hyundais, etc. that you get in the states with UberX, you get Mercedes and BMWs, and drivers that get out and open the door for you, leave you water bottles, and sometimes delicious little candies. They also don’t know English that well, so you’re granted silence, something that most American Uber drivers don’t understand the concept of.

Our Uber driver this time was named Marcel, and he was an older gentleman, probably in his 60s, a little heavy, but still elegant in a black suit. This is another trademark of French Uber drivers: Crisp, black suits, black ties, and sometimes driving caps. It’s all very luxurious, making you feel, even when you’re on a budget, way out of your tax bracket.

Marcel welcomed us into our car with a stately “Bonjour”, which Lauren and I gladly repeated back to him, as it was pouring and cold outside, and the interior of his car was so cozy and warm.

Until we noticed one thing: The smell.

To this day, we still argue over what it was like. “He was clearly suffering from halitosis,” I’ll tell Lauren. To which she’ll say, “No, it smelled like feet.” To which I’ll say, “No, he just had bad breath.” To which she’ll say, “Yeah, and it smelled like feet.” And I’ll say, “No, it was just bad breath.” Which only became amplified later that night when we went to dinner at the Terrass Hotel in Montmartre.

Offering spectacular views of the entire city, it made up for their food which was just…ok. But as we sat down and looked over the menu, we didn’t yet know this. Instead we were hopeful, looking at a cheese we wanted to have as a starter. This was kind of risky business, having already been burned twice by cheese plates at other restaurants, which either didn’t taste good or looked as if it’d come from a grocery store. This was our last night in town and we wanted to end it well. We also wanted to have the French cheese experience that everyone raves about after going to Paris. So we took it to the expert, our waiter.

WAITER WALKS UP

Waiter: So, what will we be ‘aving?

Lauren: We’re interested in starting with the — (pauses, trying to pronounce).

Waiter: Ah, ze Camembert.

Lauren: Yeah, the cheese. Is it strong?

(A beat)

Waiter: No, it is a very soft cheese.

With this, Lauren looked at me as if to say, “What the hell is he talking about?” I shrugged.

Lauren: (Turning back to the waiter) Ok, that sounds good. Thank you.

She smiled big at him.

“That’s not what I meant when I asked if it was strong,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“ ‘No, it is a soft cheese.’ ”

“I know.”

“I just hope it’s good.”

Long story short, it wasn’t. And if I hadn’t had the context of that previous afternoon, riding with Marcel through the streets of Paris, subtly covering our noses and gasping for breath, I would have no way to describe the flavor of Camembert. But that’s exactly what it smelled like, our driver’s breath.

“No it doesn’t,” said Lauren, wincing. “It tastes exactly like feet.”

4. Idiots selling selfie sticks

My mom once told me a story about a man who wandered off somewhere in the Canadian wilderness and promptly disappeared. I don’t remember the exact details, but she went on to say how an expert was interviewed on what possibly happened to him: Was he eaten by bears? Attacked by wolves? What?

“No, none of them,” he said, turning gravely to the interviewer. “It was probably mosquitoes.”

Apparently mosquitoes are terrible in northern climes, and the only way natives survived them was by rolling in the mud so they couldn’t penetrate the skin.

Again, this is all according to my mother, but whether or not it’s true, I’m not concerned. All that matters is that it’s an accurate representation of what you have to do to survive the 80 million hawkers selling selfie sticks in Europe.

To describe them another way, you might say they’re like Starbucks in New York City: If you tripped and fell while passing one, you’d simply land on another.

“Selfie stick? Hey man, selfie stick!”

By our third day in Paris, I was considering buying a selfie stick just so I could use it to beat the bastards trying to sell me a selfie stick. I just don’t understand it. How do any of them make a profit? Why would you sell something when you can clearly see, in a 30-foot radius, 45 other guys selling the exact same thing? Do they not understand basic economics?

In the end, I did not buy a selfie stick and beat selfie stick hawkers with it. I wanted to. Desperately. But we had other things to do instead of trying to get me out of Italian prison.

5. Random men in Barcelona who walked up to us in alleys at night and whispered, “Weed?”

It starts sometime after sunset.

Our hotel was located in the Gothic District, just off Las Ramblas, and surrounded by an intricate maze of narrow, winding alleys, lined with shops and various Catalans smoking and talking and sometimes drinking beer. It was romantic during the day. The buildings are old here, hundreds of years old, and they tower above you like tall trees whose canopies blot out the sun and leave you with a feeling of repose.

At night, it’s pretty romantic, too. But you tend to walk a little faster, then, partially because, if you’re like me in a foreign city, everyone is out to steal your wallet; and partially because of the tapas, which are delicious and cheap, and can fill you up for less than $20. I loved Barcelona.

The only thing that bothered us about the alleys, though, were the random men who walked up to us and whispered, “Hey…you wanna buy some weed?” I get the drug dealing thing; this is a pretty regular occurrence in Cancun, as well, where hawkers will walk up to you on the beach, even, and ask, while you’re rubbing in sunscreen around your speedo, “Hey man…weed?”

But those guys aren’t coming out of dark corners in alleys, or appear every 20 steps you take. They also don’t whisper. They just ask you in a normal voice, like the assholes trying to sell you a selfie stick. And that was what really weirded us out. The whispering.

“Why do they always whisper?” Lauren whispered to me, as we headed for drinks one night. Right behind our hotel was a public square called the Placa Reial, which featured some of our favorite dining from the trip.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess because it’s illegal?”

At the moment, another guy stepped out from seemingly nowhere. “Weed?” he whispered.

And because I never know how to respond in this situations, and I was still used to speaking French from Paris, I responded, “No, monsieur. Merci.”

6. The lack of toilet seats in Rome

Unlike Paris, I loved Rome the first time I went to it. It was the Colosseum, the Forum, the Trevi Fountain, the food: things I’d never imagined I’d see, and things I was so thrilled to see on a menu that I nearly wept. My dad grew up in Rome — Rome, NY — and I grew up with Italians in Rhode Island, so the city, though I’d never been, carried with it an almost familiar aspect.

I felt this way, too, as I read through Eat, Pray, Love a few years ago. Gilbert is a fantastic writer; I’ve read her extensively the past two years as I’ve tried to figure out how the hell to write a book, and she always leaves me feeling intimidated. Her ability to give you everything you need for a story, in a single paragraph, and not seem like she’s trying at all is intimidating. Then there’s her ability at pacing, and her voice, and you start to wonder why you even sit down at a computer.

I loved how she described Rome; it was exactly how I remembered it.

But some things are only in Rome. Like the sandwich counterman so comfortably calling me “beautiful” every time we speak. You want this panini grilled or cold, bella?…And then there are the fountains. Pliny the Elder wrote once: “If anyone will consider the abundance of Rome’s public supply of water, for baths, cisterns, ditches, houses, gardens, villas; and take into account the distance over which it travels, the arches reared, the mountains pierced, the valleys spanning — he will admit that there never was anything more marvelous in the whole world.”

No, there is not.

Yet, in all of her writing, in all of her accounts of speaking with beautiful, dark-eyed Italian men, of eating delicious, decadent gelato, of blissfully gaining weight while downing pizza after pizza, never does she mention running to the bathroom to take a leak and finding, no matter where she looked, that none of the toilets had seats.

Because this is what Rome basically became to me. In a city of treasures, the greatest was the toilet in our hotel room, which had a lovely, glistening seat, comfortable enough to sit on for hours. I dreamed of that thing: in cafes, over pizzas, while sitting with my cappuccino. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how in a city so dedicated to coffee, they seemed to forget the second most important facet of this obsession: A bathroom to sit down in.

The first time I discovered this, I left the restroom white as a ghost. I haven’t had to squat since Boy Scout camp in 2003, and this time left me feeling the way you do after getting sick when you’re hungover: shaky, sweaty, and slightly feverish.

Lauren looked at me and said, “Oh my god. Are you ok?” And all I asked for was water. “Can I please have some water?”

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to read Eat, Pray, Love the same way again. I used to love her descriptions: the romance, the beauty, the quirky interactions she had with the Italians. But now all I can think about is how, upon eating pizza after pizza, or scoop after scoop of gelato, she might later be at the panini grill, feeling the charm of being called “beautiful,” only to be distracted by the low, rumbling gurgle coming from her digestive track. She might apologize and ask the sandwich counterman for it cold, before asking where the bathroom is, walking at breakneck pace, and finding, much to her horror, there’s a toilet, no seat, and the sinking feeling of something like the truth.