We took the handy #200 bus from the stop just down the road from the new apartment toward Cannes. It only takes about 20 minutes to get there and the roads are nice. We had no plan, no map, and very little money, so it was very much a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants kind of thing. Everything turned out pretty well. We didn't get lost and we even found some fun shops we will definitely return to when we both have some spending money to get fun gifts for our family members and a few things we saw for ourselves too (aka beautiful cloth napkins made from Provecal fabrics, etc).
One thing happened on the way there that was a little bit disturbing. Southern France has a large North African population and not all white French people are happy about that. I knew this before I got here and have noticed some negative attitudes going both ways in the past 2 months, but what I saw today was beyond any of that. Leigh and I had front seats on the bus to Cannes and our driver was a Black guy, presumably of North African descent. He stopped for some new passengers about halfway to Cannes and these two guys got on the bus. I assumed they were Russian or something because they both had shaved heads and that seems to be fashionable for Russian men these days, plus they spoke French a bit strangely so I thought maybe it was their accent.
Turns out I couldn't understand their French because they were using words that are not taught in textbooks! The two men started giving the bus driver trouble and repeated a word that sounded like the French for "Canadian," which was confusing at the time. After a very, very short Google search I found that the word is used as a thinly veiled replacement for the English term "N****r." After about 2 minutes of being taunted by this word, the bus driver told them to get off the bus then hit the buzzer on his dashboard to call back to the station. The guys got off the bus, but before the door closed one of the called back in English, "White Power!"
This was horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. I grew up in the south and, while I heard the "N word" dropped fairly often, I never heard a person ever say "White Power" in any way other than to discuss white supremacy in an abstract sense. As Leigh said after the incident was over, this is the last place in the world I would have expected to witness this kind of thing. I have to hand it to the bus driver: throughout the entire ordeal he kept his cool and after the guys got off the bus he just went back to his job as if nothing had ever happened. That's both gutsy and professional.
Our trip to Cannes was overall pretty fun, though I was fighting a feeling of funk all day. For some reason I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and then I got pissed off because I found out I wouldn't be able to access my bank account via debit or ATM for at least 5 days while my new PIN was ordered. I need a new PIN because I'm an idiot, but that's another story. My point is that it sucks that basic things take so long in France and that my life status here as an alien resident is such that when any little thing goes wrong it throws me for a loop big time. My whole schedule gets screwed up and little things that were finally getting easy for me (like running to the grocery store) suddenly become a hassle all over again.
Anyway, this post is starting to sound really negative and I don't mean for it to be. Today was mostly great, complete with beautiful weather and a stroll along a rather ritzy shopping area. I am sure I will be returning to Cannes more than once before I leave France. Tomorrow is Sunday so I will probably hang out at home or maybe go for a walk because everything is closed on Sundays. This week is going to be an odd one because I don't work again until Thursday morning due to my mandatory medical appointment in Nice on Tuesday. Hopefully the weather will be nice so Leigh and I can make it a fun day too.
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