When Swans Attack - Lucerne, Switzerland

Surrounded by the crystal clear waters of Lake Luzerne, I was about to meet my demise at the beak of a swan. Or at least part with my foot.  

My desire to see the small, sleepy town from the photos of my parents’ 1980 trip brought us to what turned out to bustling Lucerne as a day trip from Zurich. Technologically resourceful travel companion, E, found an app full of walking tours which guided us to all the major sites of interest. We had seen it all in a short amount of it: bridge with flowers, fancy shopping area, large wall with great view of the Alps, dead lion monument, massive church…we covered our bases. Finally, we ended up at the edge of the lake with the town behind us and the mountains and water ahead. When E suggested we take a paddle boat out into the sparkling Lake, I jumped at the idea. A beautiful snow melt-fed lake, surrounded by mountains and the town we were just exploring by foot, littered by flocks of swans. What could possibly go wrong? 

We rented a blue plastic boat and paddled out as far as we could go into the middle of the lake. It was a bright, sunny day and the light caused the surface of the clear blue-green water to sparkle with every ripple. In the distance the Alps stood tall. Suddenly, E looked beyond herself with excitement and pointed gleefully in my direction. 

“Why are you pointing at me?”

“Look! Look!”

I looked. A swan had appeared by my foot; it seemed to be sniffing it. 

“It thinks you have food,” E said.

“It’s about to peck at me. Paddle faster!”

“No, it’s cute. Why is it going to you and not coming to me?”

“I don’t care, lets get away from it! It’s going to eat my foot!”

“It’s just hungry and wants food. It won’t hurt you.”

I tried to convince myself that E’s logic was right. Perhaps the pungent cheesy smell of the fondue had permeated the blue canvas of my shoes and the swan was drawn to the smell of the cheese. Perhaps it wanted to talk about what tastes better with the cheese, the potatoes or the bread. Then I remembered my previous and first ever encounter with a swan on the distant shores of Lake Ronkonkoma in New York. The images flashed through my mind: a bird nearly my height hissed and raced towards me in attack mode, I hobbled away from it as fast as my sprained and swollen ankle would allow me to move on pebbles, the shame as others watched the spectacle. At that point, I reverted to my original idea that the swan wanted to kill me.  

“IT THINKS MY FOOT IS FOOD!”

Swan and I looked each other in the eye before the dance began. I moved my foot closer to the center of the boat. It extended its beak inwards. We steered right. It came with us, closely following. We paddled ahead and steered left. It followed. There was no shaking it off. A boat full of men, for lack of a better word, resembling the cast of Jersey Shore passed by in a boat and threw a can of beer towards a flock of swans which immediately dispersed. I needed to throw something at it! 

What could I possibly throw? The contents of my bag were very scant: iPhone which I carried at the insistence of E, wallet, passport. None of these were items I wanted to watch fall to the bottom of the lake. Also, as an environmentalist, I wouldn’t want to throw anything into these pristine waters. And perhaps most of all, I didn’t want to put myself into the same boat, no pun intended, as those guido-looking imbeciles with no respect for animals. 

Out of sheer desperation, I decided to talk to it, in German. My German being limited to two years of highschool study and phrases picked up from watching numerous World War II films, I like the American tourist I was tried to avoid being. Then again, I was on a paddle boat. Who was I kidding?

“Halt!,” I yelled hoping it would stop its advance. “Snell,” I shouted while pointing at another swan hoping it would understand that I thought it should quickly join its friend before he or she got lonely. When none of that worked, I said, “Sie gehen weg. Bitte.” 

That seemed to do the trick. It went away. So all I needed to say was please? We watched it join its fellow swan friends. 

“Why did it only go to you?” E asked, her tone badly masked disappointment at not also being attacked by a swan.

“Who knows. It’s gone now. Lets look at the mountains.”

While we did stare at the mountains, we still looked around at the flocks of swans and watched them dip their long necks into the waters looking for food. We tried to pick out the one that was following us before, but they all looked too similar. The momentarily converging paths between human and bird had diverged once again, probably (hopefully) never to meet in this lifetime. 

It has been a few months from that encounter, and to this day I believe I could’ve lost a foot and E sticks to her idea that I’m insane.

Midday in Paris - Paris, France

Was it rude to take up so much space on the RER? After weeks of researching Parisian etiquette, I didn’t want to commit a faux pas within an hour of being in the country. The rest of the month would be a disaster if I couldn’t survive two hours without being a typical, too-much-luggage-carrying American tourist. I moved my suitcase aside to make room for the old man’s legs. “Ca va,” he said.

I thought that meant “it’s alright,” at least that is what I had learned from the subtitles in Romain Duris movies. I nodded. My suitcase looked big on the narrow train. I hoped it would remain relatively empty and I wouldn’t attract much attention. Wishful thinking indeed.  

A surge of people flowed onto the train at Gare du Nord, and then at Les Halles, so that when I reached my stop at St. Michel-Notre Dame, I had to squeeze my way through hundreds of people to get to the door, apologizing to strangers for having the audacity to carry a suitcase, handbag, laptop, and unfashionable pink hoodie.

I exited the train, narrowly preventing the spectacle of my suitcase and I being parted. Would it have reached out dramatically with a hurt look on its face, mouthed through the glass what had it done for me to allow the doors to shut between us? Luckily, I never found out whether it had such human capabilities.  A few paces later, I met them: stairs, there to make my life difficult. One step, two steps, twenty more to go with my sack of stones, muscles protesting. Suddenly, he appeared: my savior. A gorgeous young man, the type seen in French movies, asked if I needed help. Help! Yes! Chivalry was still alive! I walked behind this tall, dark and handsome, his broad shoulders carried the weight of my load with strength. My arms rested as he carried my suitcase up the flight of stairs. At the top, he turned around and put my suitcase down with a goodbye. Just as I started thinking how beautiful the world can be when strangers show each other kindness, another flight of stairs instantly wiped the smile off my face as I turned a corner. This man’s brand of chivalry clearly wasn’t a burning flame, it was just the little spark that happens when a lighter is almost out of gas, spitting out bits of fire before it dies. He must have known those stairs were there. My pink hoodie probably scared him away.

I dragged my luggage up, one step at a time, strangers watching me struggle. Why did I not use my gym membership more often? Eventually winning the battle against gravity, I reached street-level. Though I knew all along where I was going, as soon I saw what was around me, I was star-struck. Notre Dame demanded my attention, declared that, yes, I was actually in Paris. Behind a wall, the Seine was hiding. The fountain majestically spouting water was none other than the fountain of Saint-Michel. I wanted to run into the car-filled street, skip along the Seine and wave my arms around from the sheer joy of being in Paris. Simply breathing would not be enough here, I needed to inhale as much of this beautiful city as possible, but to do that I needed to find my apartment.

My suitcase remained a massive burden as the wheels caught the cobblestones, rendering themselves useless. Google maps printout in hand, I followed the route down Place St. Michel as closely as possible, but soon there was no denying it: I was lost. As a pair of women walked by, I showed them my map and asked if they could offer some guidance. To my surprise, they started to argue with each other in French. Already the language barrier was a problem. I wanted to asked them to return my map so I could ask someone else, but I didn’t know how to say that. Finally, they stopped arguing and the younger-looking one spoke.

 “You see, the place is near the Odeon metro station. It’s right over there. We’ll walk together,” she said. The older lady, whom I guessed was her mother, smiled and nodded even though she did not seem to understand what the daughter was saying. I thanked both of them and followed their lead towards Odeon station. Every few steps, they would turn back, as if to check if I was still there. I was informed that “Café Procope” was a very famous restaurant and it should be easy enough to find. My apartment was right next to it. As I was about to thank them for their help and attempt to find this restaurant, the mother had started speaking to a waiter in the restaurant five feet away, possibly asking how to get to Procope. The waiter shook his head. She moved on to the restaurant beside it, the daughter following, while I pretended not to be useless.  A waiter in the second restaurant was shown my map by the duo and pointed in the direction of an archway.

Procope was hard to miss, with portraits of Benjamin Franklin and Robespierre plastered on the windows but we were no closer to finding house number two. The daughter asked a Procope waiter for help, leaving me with her mother, who then decided to start a conversation with me. In French. Words flew at me as she pointed at things and smiled.

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak French. I don’t understand what you’re saying. I’m sorry.  Parle vouz Anglais?”

“Anglais? Non non,” she said and continued to speak in French. The daughter returned and rescued me from the mother. She claimed to have found the house and led me to it.

 “What is the apartment number,” she asked.

“I don’t know actually.” I looked at the faded names on the buttons next to the door, pressed one at random, and then looked through the glass door at the mailboxes. Relief drowned me when I saw my landlord’s name on a mail box. “Carolyn Bear.” My apartment was not a scam! I would not be wandering the streets of Paris with my suitcase anymore! I could finally get away from these women who were now driving my jetlagged self crazy by being too nice! I just needed to get inside. A man answered the door. More French - the language barrier was becoming a problem already.  The daughter answered for me, had a short conversation, and informed me that we needed to find a door around the corner. She relayed the message to her mother and they walked ahead again. Suddenly, she stopped. “When she opens the door, you need to ask her if she is Carolyn Bear.”

“Yes, I will.” Why did she feel the need to tell me something so obvious?

“You have to say ‘etes vous Carolyn Bear?’”

“Alright.”

“Practice saying it.”

Seriously? “Et vooh Carolyn Bear,” I said. What sounded like French to me did not to her. She hesitated for a moment and studied me.

“It’s ok, I’ll help you,” she said.

We rounded the corner and saw a similar glass door and more doorbells. I pressed all of them in desperation. A young girl opened the door. My prospective roommate had sent me a copy of her passport, which I had spent time studying, staring at the picture hoping to decipher her personality and habits from it. I recognized the face at the door from this activity. Before I could say anything, the daughter asked if she was Carolyn Bear. The girl said she wasn’t.

 “You must be Penny!” I exclaimed. “Oh thank goodness! I’m Pratima, your roommate.”

I turned to the ladies who led me. “Thank you so much for your help. Merci.”

“Au revoir.” They waved and walked away smiling, glad to have deposited their non-French speaking clinger into safe hands.

 “I’m glad you got here alright. How did you find those French people?” Penny asked.

“I asked for directions and they walked me here.”

“Do you need some help with your suitcase?” Before I could answer, she reached for it and dragged it inside. As I stepped through the doorway into our small St. Germain duplex and dropped my laptop and pink hoodie onto a chair, I looked around the living room, expecting another bizarre encounter to jump out at me from behind the curtains. But for the first time since landing, I didn’t feel lost.