France, 14-21 March, 2003

A Mother & Son Hiking Trip through the Vosges,

            or,

How Brendan & his mother, during the lowest point in

Franco-American relations since Spaghetti-O's were introduced,

went to France, ate snails and kidneys, saw many historic sights,

adapted themselves to rail strikes, and pretended to be Canadian*.

Shorty!

Brendan!

Sometime in Fall of 2002, my mom (Shorty) suggested that she and I should consider backpacking around England together during our Spring Break.  She teaches at North Carolina State University; I'm an MBA student at Indiana University.  We considered this for a while, and planned to do it, until my mother took note of the fact that a hiking trip across rural England would require eating rural English food, a prospect neither of us found appealing.  So Shorty decided on France.

The sole problem with France was that neither of us spoke French.  So Shorty made a deal with me: she would pay for the trip if I learned French and planned our route.  In mid-January, I took up French, and the rest is history.

(more to come! last updated January 1, 2004)

Travel

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* That part about pretending to be Canadian isn't true.  If we pretended to be anything, it was German, on account of Shorty carrying a shopping bag from KaDeWe every time we went to the grocery store.  Of course, neither of us can speak German, so it wasn't a credible disguise..  back to top