My life has ceased to be fabulous. Hello, America.

Hhhhhhh.

Ah, America. Land of toilet seat covers and foofy coffees and fat people. How I missed you. It is good to be home, in a way. I’ve decided that America is the only country where you can actually get anything done. Sure, in Europe you can savor the texture and richness of a gourmet lunch over your leisurely two-hour lunch break and have a drinkable coffee and appreciate Culture and Art and History—but there’s no place like America for getting shit accomplished. I bought auto insurance for Arizona in a twenty-minute phone conversation today, while in Minnesota. In France I would have to physically be at the auto insurance office before twelve or after two (but not earlier than nine or later than five), in the state where I was purchasing insurance, and not before January 20^th (when Christmas vacation is over). On the other hand, wouldn’t it be nice to work in a country that doesn’t plunk out vacation time like a constipated camel? Tradeoffs, tradeoffs.

Not to say that I’m home, exactly. Now that I’ve mastered French (ha. ha.), I’m moving on to Russian. It’s really true what they say about learning my repetition. These are the things I’ve learned from being around my boyfriend’s family:

• Yaz NAI-oo, mama! (“I know, mom!”)

• SHTOAH? (“WHAT?”)

This conversation typically takes place when the interlocutors are at least two rooms apart, if not two levels. Actually, it turns out that everything I used to think was a personality flaw in my boyfriend I realized is actually just his culture. (Oops.) The yelling from three rooms away instead of walking into the same room where I am? Standard. The always winning the argument and never being wrong? Russian. The always pointing out that I paid three times too much and knowing where I could have got a better deal with Sasha’s cousin? All adorably, adorably Russian. ADORABLY.

As a result, I now yell across the house, am always right, can find a better deal than your better deal, and never shut the door when I pee.

Oh wait, that wasn’t Russian. But I did learn that from the Bee Eff. Is that an accomplishment?

What, Eastern Europe cold in December? Pish.

Ok, maybe just a little bit.

Ok, maybe so cold you have to keep your eyes half closed so your eyeballs don't freeze out of their sockets and every time you walk outside you want to either hibernate or SHOOT yourself rather than prolong the misery of walking down the street.

I used to think that I was somewhat good at dealing with pain. The only kind of pain I couldn't deal with, I said to myself, was itchy pain. The kind that worms its way inside your brain and makes you scratch until it's too painful to scratch anymore and you contemplate inflicting some other type of pain on yourself just as a form of distraction. But then to that, I added pain when you don't know when it will end. It's hard to deal with pain if you can't fixate on a moment when it will be alleviated. To that, I have added the pain of extreme cold.

Yes, I am coming to grips with the fact that when it comes to stoic resolve in the face of adversity, I am a wet noodle.

More on Hungary later. Once my fingers thaw.

Anyway, I’m going to Hungary, so you can say what you want.

Also, the Cutest Pregnant Person on the Planet has not yet had her baby.

But Julia Roberts has, two of them. A boy and a girl. Can you believe I had to read about it in the Supermarché U crappy “Soaps Daily”-type magazine ? I feel like I should have known. It was like that when Britney and Justin called it quits too (not that I follow such things). I think I was in Panama at the time and I found out like five days later. That’s like finding out about the Berlin wall five days too late – you feel like you should have been overcome by some presentiment of cosmic change, but instead you find out you’re like the most ignorant pea on the planet. Yay for us peas! I’m always the last to know. Anyway, what do I care? I’m going to Hungary.

Also, I am officially a kick-ass snowboarder. Yee-haw and stay the hell out of my way or I might run you over because I have absolutely no control over my board!

So that’s the news for now. Except my friend from Expensive IV League College (she just happened to be in Geneva) who replaced me in the social circle I had formed among my boyfriend’s friends at school is now madly in love with one of his friends, respective boyfriend and girlfriend notwithstanding. But hell, I don’t mind. It makes life more interesting for the middle-aged.

I thought of a few more reasons why I am middle-aged:

*Gray hairs. Yep. I may even reach 45 before I reach 25.

*Alzheimer’s. Wait, what was I talking about? (More on this later – I read a great article that completely freaked me out about my incipient memory loss. But it did give me strong hopes about Ritalin.)

*Parkinson’s. When I tilt my hand at an odd angle, between flat and perpendicular to my arm, my wrist starts shaking uncontrollably. What’s that? Carpal tunnel you say? Well, I’ll have you know that I hardly sit at a computer long enough to acquire CT and that all that muscular overexertion while I was pushing myself up off my ass (after laying sick lines on my snowboard), that has nothing to do with…wait, what were we talking about again? I’ll think of it in a sec.

Also, the desire to have kids, settle down, reach my peak in earning power – all these things point strongly towards my having reached middle-ageiturdinality.

Not that I care. I’m going to Hungary. All I know is that they have hot baths. Sounds like a good place to sooth my aching, middle-aged bones.

The best birth control in the world: listening to women talk about giving birth.

Seriously. Have you ever done it? I have (listened, that is). I just about passed TF out. It makes you want to go out and grab some guy’s nuts and squeeze them really, really hard every minute for fifteen hours, just to even things out. Not that I think it’s a cosmic injustice that we have to have the kids or anything.

It’s kind of weird, but lately I’ve really been wanting to be pregnant. Maybe it’s all the Mormons living on our hall. Or maybe it’s the grey hairs sprouting out of my scalp, announcing to the world that I, at 24, am officially middle-aged.

I mean, it’s not like I really want to have kids (especially after hearing about the epidural), but I seem to be catching myself thinking frighteningly often: gee, that would be nice.

And then devil-child runs down the hall with a fork and asks me if I need him to kill anyone for me, and I return to sanity. But my kids won’t be like that, right? They’ll be adorable and thoughtful little bookworms, just like me! (But hopefully their precociousness won’t lead them to date 27-year-olds when they’re still in high school.)

Well, maybe I think this because to me being pregnant is a socially sanctioned excuse for eating a lot and sleeping all the time.

Fortunately, not being pregnant hasn’t stopped me. From talking with officially the Cutest Pregnant Lady on the Planet tonight, my life is pretty much like hers. She goes to bed at two and gets up at noon. Check. She eats snacks all day. Check. And she takes three-hour naps during the afternoon. Check. …Now if only I can get all the women on the hall to cook me dinner and do my dishes…

By the way, V-Dog would be about to freak out if he heard me say this. The other day he said to me: “I really like that you’re not all domestic and maternally inclined like all the other women around here.” Which is great, because I love being awkward around children too. Lately kids have been taking a liking to me though, strangely enough. Devil-child invites me on all his ventures of death and destruction.

It just kind of pisses me off that my mom had me so late. I feel all pressured to have kids asap—if I wait any longer, she won’t be around to take care of my kids!

On another note, you know what really, really sucks? Browsers that automatically offer you all the most recent places you’ve visited as you’re typing in www.pa... when you’re looking for your friend’s blog www.paralyzzed.blogspot.com but you just happen to notice in the list of visited websites www.pantywash.com and you just happen to wonder what that site is all about and you find that it’s a photo gallery of Amateur cum guzzlers at Cum Fiesta! “OVER TWO HUNDRED GIRLS TOOK OUR JIZZ TORPEDOS ON THEIR SWEET FACES” and you wonder who could have possibly BORROWED your boyfriend’s computer to view such icky pornographic ickiness (not to sound like an overprotective mommy!) because he certainly couldn’t be interested in viewing such icky pornographic ickiness and it’s not like it bothers you because it shouldn’t bother you right? boys will be boys and all that, except it does, really bother you perhaps because suddenly your boyfriend feels like a bit of a stranger, because surely only a stranger would look at strange girls’ body parts, and even though he has told you that any boy who says he doesn’t look at porn is lying you refuse to believe him. Until now. Well, it’s not like he lied about it. I just refused to believe him.

Hhhhhhhhh. Why are boys so gross???

It really bothers me that my boyfriend’s ass is softer than mine. It really shouldn’t. But it does. Not only softer, but smoother, as well.

…

Ok, there were more important things that happened in my day.

But I just happened to be thinking about this. So I don’t go out and strangle the morons who thought they’d take a gander to the other side of the street just as I was driving by, frantically trying to keep my vehicle mobile (yes, more travails of the non-stick-driver).

The universe conspired to make driving difficult today. More than difficult: almost impossible. But I prevailed again! (I mean, how much can it really hurt to kill the motor, like, a few times. A minute. ?) I got home safe – that’s the important thing, right? RIGHT?

Some factors that impeded my normally impeccable driving prowess:

• The little rubber thingy that’s missing from the motor of the Clio (meaning that I had to borrow someone else’s car to drive the five endless kilometers into Geneva, causing me to discover that not only is stick difficult to learn, but every goddamn one is different! Why are they so damn sensitive and peculiar and picky? They’re like…well, me. But I don’t endanger the lives of hapless drivers when I get in a funk! …well, not most of the time.)

• The traffic lights that are placed in weird places, so that when you roll up to a perfect stop at the crosswalk they’re about five feet behind you and ten feet below where they should be. Dammit, they should do it the right way! (Like we do it in America!)

• The orbit of the planet. Hey god, are you listening? It’s hard to drive when it’s dark.

• Goddamn mo-fo-ing bicyclers who toodle along at a snail’s pace taking up far more than their share of the road (aka, the sidewalk, thank you very much), causing me to DOWNSHIFT. Inconsiderate wretches.

• People that are looking for parking spots, going all slow, and then stopping abruptly and jamming into reverse – like hello, I haven’t learned reverse yet. (Just kidding PJ. I would never borrow your car if I didn’t know how to drive it!! ...)

• The incredible disappearing Swiss traffic signs. Man, you think the Swiss are all precise and sh*t? Wait til you try to drive from Plainpalais to Archamps and then tell me if you still think that’s true. I have two (TWO!) problems with Swiss traffic signs. My first problem is that they’re incredibly unreliable, seeming to appear and disappear at will, in different colors and at different heights and (Problem No. Two) pointing in unfathomable directions. NOTE TO SWISS TRAFFIC OFFICIALS: If I am trying to go from point A to point B, and point B is straight ahead of point A, but I don’t know that point B is straight ahead of point A, having a traffic sign pointing to point B that is completely parallel to the road I am on will make it invisible until I’ve already passed it. Right? They also do this other reverse Mona Lisa trick where you think it’s pointing one way so you get into the turn lane but once you’ve changed your viewing angle you see that it’s actually pointed the other way (at which point you’re screwed if you don’t know how to reverse. …I said if!)

Anyway, thank goodness for roundabouts, huh? What would I do without endless opportunities to confront the same decisions? My life could use more roundabouts, now that I think about it.

Also in the mix today: addlebrain titling an article in the upcoming issue (which will have the blessing of an, I dare say, charming travel piece written by yours truly) “Wet Weekend Dreams.”

Now, addlebrain is from Oz, so I ask him:

“Hey, ad, is it possible that ‘wet dreams’ doesn’t have the same meaning as it has in the States?”

No, no, he assures me. Same meaning.

“Well, do you perhaps, er, uh, consider it a bit, er, uh, inappropriate to use that title?”

This title is for an article about museums, mind you. Perhaps you’re wondering what museums have to do with water? Or dreams? So was I. I read the article: nothing.

“Oh yeh, yeh. I’ll get to it,” addlebrain promises me. (Not a typo! ‘yeh’ is my perceptive rendering of his Australian accent.)

Then the Scottish/Irish? girl suggested we just title it “Wet Weekend Wank.” HA. HA. I love working there.

And I have no doubt he’ll get to it. Just like he’ll get to fixing the misspelling of my name in my Only Published Clip in the Entire World. I have faith in you, ad!

By the way, I worked FIVE WHOLE HOURS today. Man, am I beat.

OK, I know this might be semi-annoying in a bloggerly, I-have-nothing-better-to-do-in-my-life-than-blog-and-read-other-people’s-blogs-and-then!-write-about-reading!-other-people’s-blogs sort of way, but I have to say it:

I have a blog-twin.

I know, I know. What are the chances. You’re thinking, how could anyone be anything but a blobby, amorphous shadow of your verbal dexterity and mordant wit—and while I agree, I have to say, this girl had a damn lot in common with me.

The similarity first struck me when I noticed that her job sounded remarkably similarly to my mind-numblingly not-really-awful-but-sucky-anyway tenure in corporate America in which I rendered impossibly soporific jargon into clear, lucid prose (rather excellently I might add). So it seems she is similarly employed (but sounds like she makes a lot more $$ than I did: hm). Also, she likes to shut the door of her office—another favorite pastime of mine (that is, before I shed the chains of cubicle-dom and paycheck for la France). Which brings me to another similarity: Her writing is absolutely (one might even say irritatingly; fortunately, I am similarly conversant in the international language of sophistication, le français) littered with little French words, the kind you would feel dumb for not knowing, but probably wouldn’t be entirely comfortable with unless you were conversant in the international language of sophistication, le français—like moi and my blog-twin.

That’s not enough? Well try this on for size: We are both Gemini. We are So Alike! Additionally, she has vegetarian tendencies. Hey! I have vegetarian tendencies (although, I think she actually is a vegetarian. But come on, I’m in France, land of delicious saucisson (and Mad Cow, but we’re not talking about that), and it would be a crime not to experience every aspect of French cuisine in all its carnivorous yumminess). And it’s the thought that counts, right? Rack up one more point for our twin-ness. Also: she is Jewish, and modest, and thoughtful, and ravishingly gorgeous (at least in self-descriptions)—all of which are hallmark qualities of yours truly. And she lives on the West Coast. I used to live on the West Coast!

Could we possibly have anything more in common?

The one minute difference being her imminent published author-ness, and my imminent return to U.S. and search for low-paying, mind-numbing corporate job whose only benefit will be, if I’m lucky, an office door I can shut and free Internet access-ness. So I can look up more facts about my blog-twin!

Other minute difference being her Carrie Bradshaw-ness of bloggerdom and my prolonged attachment to V-Dog, my darling boyfriend who calls me “Poopstain” as an endearment (just like Britney used to call Justin “Stinky”, not that I keep up with such things) and tells groups of people I “like the lively sausage” and “have no gag reflex.” (The latter is true!) ...His new thing is telling people I’m waiting for marriage.

But, we both have oodles of time to blog! One more thing we share, my blog-twin and I. (Or at least, we did before she got that book deal. Not that I mind! Au contraire, it makes me even more confident that blogging is a sure path to fame, success, and a disgustingly fulfilling and wonderful life.)

ALSO, some of her ex-boyfriends sound like this stubby little Jewish guy who taught yoga at the studio I used to go to (and who definitely had a crush on me, and whom, who knows, I might have deigned to date, had I not been raking my heart over the coals of a long distance relationship)!

ALSO! She likes climbing and outdoorsy stuff. I like climbing and outdoorsy stuff! (Actually I’ve only gone climbing once, a week ago, and I didn’t really “climb,” per se, at least not any higher than I safely could have climbed without being strapped into that god of bulgification, the climbing belt. But hey, my hands got cold. It was cold, I tell you! And we were climbing up between two vertical rock faces—a fissure in the rock, really—which would have definitely meant that had I gone any higher, I definitely would have ripped a hole in the crotch of my jeans and several people would have definitely seen something I’d definitely prefer they not see. I’ve also been known to say that climbing is the art of taking the least likely, convenient, or common-sensical route from one point to another. …Am I wrong??)

Here’s the best part though: She’s at least 10 years older than me! I can tell by how inadequate I bet I’d feel if I were her reading me that I must be really up to snuff! (Other than the book deal, of course.) Or maybe I’m just insecure.

…Naw.

By the way, for all you etymology dorks out there, I bet you wanted to know where the phrase “up to snuff” came from! I am only too happy to feed your addiction.

Anyway, the whole point of my bringing up my blog-twin, even though, mind you, I already have a twin (yes, a real twin, who is probably a hell of a lot more like me than my blog-twin, but humor me), was to say, O cosmically paired blog-twin: You have inspired me to mine my life ever deeper for odd ducks and interesting situations and to update my adoring public of every notable instance of my existence (of which there are many), especially those involving cute boys (of which there are also many, as is prone to occur in the case of ravishingly gorgeous gals like myself) even though I have a boyfriend, which will not in any way impair my having intriguing, innuendo-laden interactions with said cuties.

Ah! I feel so inspired.

Ex-boyfriends of the world: STOP E-MAILING US, y’hear?

Has anybody else noticed that the age in which one could lose touch with exes is over? I still remember the e-mail address of my very first boyfriend. I could e-mail him right now and tell him how I feel, all the thoughts I’ve had about him and us, my various developments and revelations and hang-ups, along with any accusations or unresolved complaints I happen to have thought of over the years. Yes, bnawolf@aol.com, I could interrupt you and your life and your ridiculous e-mail address (and your wife) right this very second if I felt like it. And yet, I would never do that. Unfortunately, others among us would. I have received e-mails from no less than three exes (two of mine, one of my sister’s), who somehow feel they have been granted cosmic permission to drop me a line and tell me how they’re doing, whether I want to know or not. And as is usually the case with exes, I don’t. But of course I do, and then I have to open the e-mail and read the whole darn lot of it. Which is why I said in the first place: Ex-boyfriends of the world: STOP E-MAILING US, y’hear? What makes you think you can just barge into my life and tell me you were in love with me and that my personality disgusts you and is fatally flawed or that you have gone nowhere since I’ve gone but are nevertheless content and think it’s time to say “hi” or that you’re still pursuing your fabulously bohemian adventures, having returned from Honduras (though you sometimes wish you were back) in one piece and that you just “thought I should know”? HUH? Did it ever occur to you that I might be happily ignorant of your doings, merrily making my way through a life that is no longer, in any way, connected to yours, other than by one unfortunately remembered e-mail address??

Seriously.

Anyway, I was supposed to tell you about France, right? Here is something lovely about France. I found it rather disconcerting at first. I would be standing in line at the bread store (there’s always a line for the 6 p.m. baguette) and some old man would walk in and give a grand ol’ BONJOUR to everyone and no one in particular, nearly causing me to jump out of my skin, and another general AU REVOIR upon leaving. I discovered, however, that far from being the verbal tic of a few senile old men, this custom is in fact a peculiarity of French culture. And I find it rather charming. Imagine walking into McDonalds. You see four or five lines of people transfixed by the glowing script of the menu, discussing the merits of Happy Meals and McNuggets, the workers in their McDonalds visors scooping up crispy, glistening fries while taking orders from the drive-thru and in you walk, and give everybody a hearty HI! …Can you imagine? They’d probably think you were insane (or French)! But here, there is a recognition that people, be it insurance agents or bank tellers or bakers, are people worthy of acknowledgement—that purchasing insurance, depositing a paycheck, or buying bread are not just anonymous transactions in which money changes hands, but rather interactions in which words are exchanged, and glances, and pleasantries.

All I have to say it, thank god some people still haven’t learned to do it the right way (like we do it in America).

I meant to tell you about this before:

I was lost in the Alps by my boyfriend several weekends ago.

I’ll admit that it wasn’t entirely his fault. I had an inkling—ok let’s just say a really bad feeling—that splitting up so he and his friend could take the bad-ass mountain biker path while I took the road (a relatively mild series of blind corners on a perpendicular road through sheer alpine precipices) was not a good idea. “We’ll meet you at the next house over there,” he said, gesturing vaguely at a hillside dotted with houses, and off he went. And so did I, grasping the breaks like they were hands outstretched over the abyss, which is pretty much what mountain biking in the Alps feels like when you can barely ride a bike across a parking lot.

It’s kind of exhilarating, I have to admit. Death-defying sports tend to be. I was getting the hang of it by the time I rolled up to what I thought was the patch of houses he had waved toward. The place was cold, deserted, and silent except for the forlorn dribbling of water into an overflowing trough. Was this the place I was supposed to stop? I couldn’t tell. Had they gone on without me? I had certainly taken long enough, inching down the hill. Perhaps it was the next group of buildings. Looking ahead, I suddenly saw two bikers making their way up the next hill—the bastards had gone on without me! Just like them! I cursed to myself as I peddled after them.

But by the time I reached the top of the hill—huffing and puffing and dragging my bike like an oversized purse—the pair was nowhere to be seen. Huh, I thought, not yet panicking. Must be the next one. The next hill—now 90 degrees straight up instead of straight down—took some getting up to. And the only thing that greeted me at the top was a crossroads marked by signs written only in German.

Now, I am one of those Americans who is not blissfully lodged in the untroubled world of the monolinguist. But I do not speak German. In fact, I usually try to stay out of countries whose languages I do not speak as much as possible, but this weekend had been and exception. I like the continual ego-boosting of being conversant in a foreign language. I like to know what’s going on. At that moment, I realized, I did not know what was going on. Neither did I know the name of the town I had come from, and to which I now had to forge ahead on my own.

I knew it wasn’t Furst. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I remembered something about my boyfriend’s friend Rolf saying that we shouldn’t go there because you had to take the expert trail down from there. I remembered glancing at the map, seeing the curlicued trail, thanking god we weren’t going that way, and shifting my attention elsewhere. But still. It nagged me. Like a trick answer on a standardized test. I wanted to pick it. It sounded familiar.

Instead, I rode down towards a ski lodge. There will at least be people there, I thought. People who will speak English and offer me hot chocolate and perhaps a ride back down in the tram when they see how lost I am! After I skidded and lurched down to the lodge—the road had devolved into gravel—I realized that the tram was closed, and nobody was there, least of all Rolf or boyfriend.

Dammit, I must have picked the wrong one, I realized. So I turned around and wheezed my way back up the hill, past the sign, all the way up to the next crossroads. My lungs were burning. You know that deep, cold burn in the bottom of your lungs that can only be occasioned by having rapidly ascended several thousand kilometers? It took a few moments to recover. I stopped and looked around. I stood all alone at a six-way crossroads above the tree line in a foreign country whose language I didn’t speak on a bike I could barely ride, and there was absolutely no one around. As I scanned the hills in all directions for signs of life, the fog started to sweep up, making the day about as bright and scenic as the inside of a washcloth.

Goddammit!!! I thought to myself, throwing my bike on the ground (clearly, it was the bike’s fault). I felt like an abandoned belonging, left behind because it was too cumbersome to bring along. This was just like my boyfriend and his “you’ll be fine” optimism to abandon me to the elements while he rushed off in the adrenaline haze of the inveterate thrill-seeker, leaving me to toddle along behind as best I could. Just like him!

Of course my mounting panic was in no way helping. Fighting the urge to imagine any number of grizzly events that could preclude a happy ending to my adventure, I suddenly spied someone making their way down the hill. When the woman approached I flagged her down and asked if she spoke English. The odd thing is that I can’t remember the last time I asked someone to speak English—that is the extent to which I have avoided countries whose languages I don’t know—and yet at the moment I most needed it, of course, there was no English to be found. But I had no time to worry that I was coming off as an ugly American tourist demanding the world in translation. Fortunately she spoke a bit of French and offered to accompany me down.

I.e., whiz on down the increasingly steep and increasingly gravely road while I skidded after her. In a sense I felt bad. I’m sure it’s not every day she gets to mountain bike in the Alps. But then again, it’s not every day I get lost in them.

In any event, I soon lost her as well. But I did come upon a ski lodge. Finally I would be able to find some help! As I made it up the short hill to the lodge, I realized it was the same place I had come down to half an hour ago. Well. At least I knew my boyfriend had not taken either of the roads, and thus I was clearly on entirely the wrong route, if not the wrong mountain by now.

The restaurant there showed signs of life, however. I walked in to five people sitting around a table chatting. “Bonjour,” I said. “Est-ce que vous savez quelle est la meilleure route pour descendre à la ville?” This was met with blank stares. Was my French that bad? “…Vous parler français?” I asked. Nothing. “Anglais? English?” my panic rising so that I was barely able to articulate words in any language. “A little bit,” one of them said hesitantly. Hallelujah, I thought. I found the last corner on earth that the English language has failed to penetrate. And that corner is Switzerland.

Thanking them, I left the restaurant and quietly had a little panic attack outside. Fortunately, there’s nothing like being lost outdoors in a foreign country as it’s getting dark to render plainly the futility of having a panic attack. I grudgingly mounted my bike once again. By this time my right calf muscle was throbbing from staying in position so long—you have to keep the pedals even so that you don’t get tripped up on any rocks—and my arms were shaking from holding onto the handlebars so tightly. But there was nowhere to go but down.

This part was so steep I felt like I was about to fall off the top of my bike, but breaking only made it worse because then I would skid, and to make matters worse about every 15 feet there was a drainage ditch—none too shallow—across the entire road. I tried not to hurtle down too fast but hurtle I did, all the while having visions of my breaks bursting into flames from so much wear.

Eventually I heard the most beautiful sound in the world swirling up invisibly out of the dense fog—cow bells. I was returning to society. There would be people, even if they did not speak any of my languages. Soon enough there was even pavement, although it was hard to imagine any vehicle actually ascending the nearly vertical slope. I began to enjoy riding, now that my journey seemed near enough to an end. I’m sure I was traveling at an octogenarian pace, but I enjoyed it. The hills were beautiful, steep and green and blotched with placid, bovine forms. As I passed one house, a couple was outside sitting on their porch, looking off into the glancing white peaks of the mountains opposite us. I, of course, was looking at the road and clutching my breaks for dear life.

But I needn’t have panicked. Just a few moments later I saw Rolf’s black Audi sweeping up the hill towards me. “Oh, hey. There you are,” I said when they pulled up, feeling equally inclined to strangle and embrace them. “Where have you been?” my boyfriend asked. ...Where hadI been?—well, I’ll spare you the details of that conversation. Suffice to say that I ended the day with a big fat pot of fondue, no cheese ball (of which more later), and copious amounts of chocolate. Don’t you just love Switzerland?

You know what bothers me about Michael Cunningham? He’s too good-looking to be a writer. (He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hours, also that movie with Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman.) He looks like he should be an actor, some outgoing bloke who only took up writing on a whim and happened to be fantastically, irritatingly good at it. It makes me suspicious, begrudging of his talent. Writers should be solitary souls, the kind of people who spent time alone reading as kids when everyone else was having snowball fights and building forts and therefore never acquired the overdeveloped social skills of good-looking people, people who look like Michael Cunningham. Writers should be loners—they have to be. People who are dead center in the happening of things can’t be writing about them. They’re too energetic, they lack the taste for solitude and morose tendencies that are the sustenance of good writers. My only hope is that he was a late-bloomer, the kind that only came into his distinguished good looks after passing through a shy, awkward adolescence; otherwise I shall have no respect for him at all. Just looking at his genial, handsome Irish face disquiets me. Good-looking writers can only be shams, more suited to adorn a book jacket than to write one. It just doesn’t seem fair that someone should be brilliantly social and brilliantly bookish. And you notice that every article about him is accompanied by that same picture, in which he looks irresistibly wise and witty, the kind of guy who would tell the funniest jokes at the party, delivered with mischievous, hearty complicity. Well, my only hope is that he’s an incurable dork in person.

See? Just like Disneyland!

This was the view from our hotel, by the way. Right to the left of there is where I was frivolously endangering life and limb while looking extremely cool on my snowboard.

I can’t stand those out-of-control newbie snowboarders who wobble down the hill half on their ass and only stop when they hit a snow bank—if I hadn’t been the only one in Zermatt I might have seriously been in danger of getting run over! Fortunately it seems that all Europeans were born with little skis attached to their feet and an innate ability to gracefully glide around inexperts such as myself as we are lying like upended turtles waiting for someone to turn us over. Pathetic.

Snowboarding is such an utterly frustrating sport. I become a two-year-old the minute my feet are strapped onto a board. Suddenly the mountain is at fault for my falling, the snow at fault for being so damn hard, the skiers at fault for making me feel inadequate. You know how you can just sense the nascent tears that are about to burst forth from some snotty little kid when mom tells him he can’t have the gummy worms he really really wanted? I’m pretty sure that’s the expression I had for most of my time on the mountain (except when I had that sour scowl). I mean, it’s HARD to spend a long weekend skiing in the Alps with good friends. You have no idea.

FYI, you know that ride at Disneyland that’s called the Matterhorn? That mottled, hooked peak that has a snow monster inside that growls at you as you’re whisked by on the roller coaster? Well, there’s another Matterhorn in Zermatt (Switzerland), I discovered. It’s pretty much the same as Walt’s version, only a little pointier and thousands of meters high and you can see Italy on the other side instead of Santa Ana.

It’s hard to find the road less traveled in Europe, man. You think you’ve secreted yourself away in a tiny, remote mountain village and then you discover that it’s only the most famous ski resort, like, ever. But I don’t mind. It’s not like the place is crawling with Americans who flew over in droves for Thanksgiving despite the devalued dollar that was sposed to keep them where they belong thereby preserving my illusion of having an adventure, or anything.

Then again, being in Europe is enough to convert a healthy cynicism towards America into flag-waving nationalism. I can’t decide whether Puma sneakers or dissing America is more popular here—they both seem to be ubiquitous. I do concede that the majority of Americans are loud-mouthed frat boys and their hoey girlfriends (or perhaps the only ones I notice), but dammit, give us some credit. Don’t hate us because we’re efficient and enterprising and have showers in which you can bathe without freezing or spraying the entire bathroom with water while you try to rinse your armpit!

Speaking of: how is this for surreal? I was sitting at the ski bar at the bottom of the slope, lying face down in the snow after a kick-ass run (that is, my ass was kicked). They’re always playing some upbeat song for all the skiers (fresh off the slopes and radiating athletic good health as they do) to listen to while they’re smoking their cigarettes and drinking their beer. They happened to be playing a German song called Amerika (heard “Du Hast”? Same group.) Now, I had just happened to have seen the video to the song the night before. It’s not exactly a paean to American culture. In fact, denunciation might be a better word. It’s your garden variety scorn for the Americanization of the world, painfully naïve Vietnamese peasants eating Big Macs and the like, We're all living in America, Coca-Cola, Wonderbra, We're all living in Amerika, Amerika, Amerika. It’s kind of catchy though. I even think there were some dumb Americans singing along, in between making plans for Mackenzie to attend afternoon ski school while Marnie and Joe check out the hotel spa. But I could hear a lot of people humming along as they sipped their hot cider and chatted about their various exploits on the slopes. You have to understand the truly international context to understand the strangeness of being an American among Europeans and Americans visiting Europe while Europeans and Americans sing along to a song written by Europeans condemning Americans. You know what I mean?

Anyway, did you know that in Europe snowboarding is called surfing? There’s a bar called The Pipe for skiers and surfers in Zermatt. I was pretty damn confused until I realized the connection. Yeah, I guess hurtling down glaciers at bone-pulverizing speeds in sub-zero weather is a little bit like sitting in a swimsuit in warm tropical water getting a suntan. Ok fine, I guess you are on a board in both situations. But still. I refuse to rewire my version of the word “surf” just to accommodate some landlocked Europeans who probably think the Mediterranean has surfable waves. They should do it the right way, like we do it in America!

But all in all, board sports are cool. And so am I. I bet that’s what every one of the riders who sprays me with ice particles thinks as they whiz past me in their trendy little beanies.

Actually, I can think of one board sport that is not cool. The other day we were in Annecy, an impossibly darling little French town near the border with Switzerland (narrow cobblestone streets, 15th century stone buildings, yadda yadda). It was a windy day. We were walking off some lasagna at the park by the lake on whose edge the town is perched (crystal clear, impossibly scenic, yadda yadda), when we discovered kite-boarding. In fact, I’m not really sure that’s the real name. It’s like a parachute and a skateboard got drunk one night, and, well, now there’s… we’re not really sure what to call it. …Picture a skateboard with big, grippy wheels attached to a flying sleeping bag (ok, parachute), and you’ll have an idea of what I’m talking about. I mean, initially it sounds kind of cool, right? Cuz you think of all the grimy little skaters who have to push themselves around town on their wimpy little boards, and you know one of them suddenly had the brainstorm that if you attached a sail to the board it would go a lot faster. Good in theory, right? As they say en France, en théorie, oui…mais en pratique…You get the picture. Anyway, we spent 10 whole minutes waiting for this guy to get his flying sleeping bag attached to his board, and all we saw was him running around trying to leverage the bag over to the board, and when the wind finally blew his way and he managed to get on the board, he only skidded like a few feet before the wind blew the other direction and he fell off. It had such a fantastic setup for such minimal results. We were pretty disappointed. I was rooting for the wind to blow him into the lake, but we got too bored to stick around and see if it happened.