A Terribly Unhealthy Diet

     Page One Hundred-Fourteen.
     What's the most unhealthy series of things you've ever eaten during a short period? I mean, have you ever had a day or two when, for some reason, you ate only trash? Think Holden Caulfield. In Catcher In The Rye, there's a period of days when Holden basically lives on cigarettes and coffee. That simply isn't as healthy as eating your daily vegetables.
    In the autumn of 2007 I went to Europe for a short vacation. One of my former roommates was German and I visited him, plus I stopped in to see Paris and Barcelona. Well, while I was in Paris, the entire country was undergoing a transit strike, so getting around was no small endeavor. (Thankfully, I'm a walker. On my first day I walked from my hostel to the Eiffel Thing and then all over the city: about ten miles.)
     I'd arranged to be in Paris for two nights, three days, but the strike started on my second day there. So my plan to take the train to Barcelona on day three ended up being a problem. Being the eternal optimist, I officially postponed my train ride twenty-four hours and extended my hostel one night. Thankfully, they were able to put me up that extra night, but I had to switch rooms. Was I surprised when my new bunk mate was an older American lady? No more surprised than she. But we agreed that Paris loves to inflict it's moral code on others. If adult male and female strangers sharing bunk beds in a small, single hostel room was no big deal to Parisians, then, by golly, it would be no big deal to us. (And, in fact, she gave me some wonderful suggestions concerning my eventual days in Barcelona.)
     So on day four, when I went to the train station and they said, "nope!", I promptly got miffed. They explained that those strikes, though usually quite short, can sometimes linger and this one was clearly going to be the latter. So, I was stranded in Paris, literally. Lemme tell ya, it isn't quite as happy as you'd think. I was really beginning to get pissed actually.
     There were buses and trains running, barely. A skeleton crew drove when they could and after waiting an hour for a train to Orly airport, it finally showed up. It was packed and people were angry at me for taking up extra space with my backpack. After arriving at Orly, I investigated and discovered that I could get to Barcelona in only one hour if I paid one billion dollars or I could purchase a ticket for the next day at a substantially less fare. So I opted for the next day. Problem was, I was terrified to leave the airport for fear of not being able to get back again the next day. The situation really was that desperate in Paris. So... I spent twenty-four hours in Orly airport, starting at about noon. Incidentally, taxis were so busy, you absolutely couldn't get one, so that wasn't an option.
     I had books and puzzles. I had my Walkman. I had no food. They sold food there, of course, but it was those same roast beef, turkey or chicken on baguettes that I'd grown sick of by that point. Really sick of. Those baguettes look so glamorous and romantic in the shop windows when you walk the Parisian streets on your first evening. But four days later,while stranded in the airport, they loose their luster. So for dinner that night I had the French version of a Dove Bar. And for breakfast the next morning: another Dove Bar. That's all I ate for twenty-four hours. And, when I landed in Barcelona and took the bus into the city I promptly walked into a Burger King and got two Whoppers and two orders of fries. (You see, I was hungry.)
     So, I didn't really eat healthfully for that couple of days. However, I survived. I certainly wouldn't encourage anybody else to do it. Nor do I condone that type of behavior at all. But, it gave me the energy I needed to survive the next few hours when my hostel told me that they never received my reservations and had no room at the inn. But that's a separate story.
     (For more on the German leg of this trip see page Forty-Two of this blog: My Most Memorable Meal.)