We had emptied the refrigerator, packed our bags, hugged all our friends, said our good-byes. I had announced to my blog readers that I was taking a hiatus. We were more than ready to get on the plane to Paris, grab a car and drive south in the direction of Provence. You see, before we’d ever met each other, Mark and I had separately had intense relationships with France. I had spent years helping defend France’s honor against Amoco in the legal aftermath of the AMOCO CADIZ oil spill disaster. Mark worked in Paris for a French publisher. We were determined to see if France was still France, and if there was anything for us there anymore.
Then the French air traffic controllers went on strike to protest EU plans to create a single, unified European air space. Our Tuesday late evening flight was canceled, but, given the option between full refund and rescheduling for Sunday, we took Sunday. Actually, we got off easy. We had not been on our way to a congress or a seminar that was not going to wait for us. We were not on our way to a wedding or a funeral that was also not going to wait for us. We were not stuck in a city we barely knew with nothing but the dirty clothes accumulated in the course of a lengthy trip and no prospects except to mark time for days in a hotel that the airline might pay for and then again might not. We were comfortably at home. We spent a few hours rearranging car rentals and hotel reservations. (Thank goodness for the Internet . . . how did we ever manage before?) But then the clock started ticking more sluggishly than usual. Nothing on the calendar. Nothing on the agenda.
Françoise Forton and Aloísio de Abreu
But again we were lucky. Wednesday, the day after we were to leave, was Santo Antônio, the Dia dos Namorados, the Brazilian equivalent of the American St. Valentine’s Day, and Búzios’s tourism department had organized a first-time-ever four-day series of events called (most unfortunately) Búzios Love. Thursday’s schedule promised a show that has been playing in Rio for eight months called Nós Sempre Teremos París (you got it: We’ll Always Have Paris). Was someone telling us something? What an incredible thing to pop up in Búzios, just when we were supposed to be in the Lubéron!
"We'll always have Paris . . ."
The show, a typical boy-meets/loses/finds-girl musical, was actually much more than that. It was the story of a Brazilian Boy who breaks away from his tour group to go sit in a café in Montparnasse on his last night in Paris. At the next table is a Brazilian Girl who is spending her last night in Paris as well. Their eyes meet, they recognize that they’re both Brazilians in love with Paris, and in a flash they fall in love with each other. Paris will do that to you. But they each go their separate ways until twenty years later, when . . . well, you can write the rest. The story unfolded through the lyrics of all the great French classic songs, from Jean Sablon to Charles Trenet to Edith Piaf to Charles Aznavour to Yves Montand — all those songs I learned by heart when I was a kid, because back then I wanted like crazy to be French myself. Here in Búzios we were being reminded of the universal nostalgia for France. We were completely charmed. We sang along, we laughed, we choked up. So did everyone else. It was one of those magical evenings that don’t come around that often anymore, and it reminded us of what we love about France, and what we love about Brazil. Rick and Ilsa might think that they’ll always have Paris, but the truth is that we all will and we all do. And with any luck, Mark and I should be in la douce France as you read this . . . so now I’m really going on a hiatus. À bientôt!
On my very first trip to Brazil, in June of 1992, I picked up a Brazilian newspaper in the plane, even though to the best of my knowledge I couldn't read a word of Portuguese. But it turned out that with my background in French and the Esperanto-y-ness of Portuguese, I could read a good many words. But mainly I was just glancing at the ads, which were easy to figure out given the visual aids. And it was there I learned that Mark and I were arriving in Brazil on June 12th, the Dia dos Namorados, Brazil's St. Valentine's Day. Most countries around the world celebrate St. Valentine's Day on February 14th. There's a partial exception in some double-dosing Asian countries, where the women give gifts to the men on February 14th but the men don't return the favor until March 14th. As for Brazil, Brazil adopted June 12th for two reasons. First, February 14th is way too close to Carnaval, a time during which people have other things on their minds. Second, June 12th is one day before Santo Antônio's Day, and Santo Antônio is the casamenteiro saint, the matchmaker. Traditionally, many single women pray to Santo Antônio and perform a variety of rituals, or simpatias do amor, in order to find a good husband or boyfriend.
So there we were, arriving in Rio amidst all the same St. Valentine's Day hype we get in the States. The airport stores were piled high with boxes of chocolates, bouquets of flowers were set out for sale everywhere, there were jewelry promotions, perfume promotions, and plastered on the walls were ads for all the "special packages" being offered in hotels around Brazil. Though I would have liked to have stayed in Rio for a few days, Mark was in Brazil to write a series of articles for the tourism promotion people from the State of Bahia. We were not our own masters. From Rio we immediately caught a connecting flight to Salvador, and from there the fine people of Bahiatursa swept us away to a resort hotel they wanted us to know in Praia do Forte about an hour up the coast to the north. Mark didn't particularly mind being whisked away right off the plane to an isolated resort hotel. He'd been in Brazil a good many times previously. But for me it was a strange first entry into the country. I'd caught a teasing glimpse of Guanabara Bay as we landed at Rio International Airport, but next thing I knew I was plopped down in a place I'd never heard of in the middle of nowhere. A resort hotel on the weekend of the Dia dos Namorados, mind you, full to the brim with young couples in the flush of new love and out for a romantic weekend.
Romantic, did I say? Back then, my idea of Valentine's Day, whatever name it happened to be masquerading under and whatever the date, ran kind of along the lines of a white tablecloth, a candlelight dinner and then maybe a hand-in-hand stroll along the Brooklyn Heights esplanade with the lights of Manhattan twinkling off in the distance. The Dia dos Namorados weekend at the Praia do Forte Resort Hotel turned out to be more like a trip back in time to summer camp. Brazilians, at least some of them, have a very eco-outdoorsy, pathfinder side, and, reluctant good sports that we were, we valiantly joined the young folks on the first of their two days of vigorous nature walks. We admired views and listened to the guide's blahblahblah. (Mark listened, I nursed my various insect bites.) We trudged through (probably snake-infested) forest. We waded through streams over slippery rocks. Returning to the hotel in the van, I complained to Mark about what all this forced activity was doing to my back. Well, surprise surprise, these "kids" we were out with all understood my English, many of them owned up to being medical students, they had all kinds of advice for me. Back at the hotel two of the girls insisted on giving me a rubdown, and how do you refuse Brazilians when they're so Brazilian-ly outgoing and accommodating and nice?
Nowadays, Mark and I have gone back to observing the Dia dos Namorados in a more conventional way. This is Búzios, after all. We have restaurants with white tablecloths here. Lots of them. For after-dinner strolling purposes we have our glorious Orla Bardot, bobbing fishing boats on moonlit water and — in the distance — the lights of Barra de São João, the town across the bay. No way the Dia dos Namorados ever passes, though, but that I remember my first peculiar one in Brazil with all those energetic medical students. By now, they must all be in mid-career.
We had emptied the refrigerator, packed our bags, hugged all our friends, said our good-byes. I had announced to my blog readers that I was taking a hiatus. We were more than ready to get on the plane to Paris, grab a car and drive south in the direction of Provence. You see, before we’d ever met each other, Mark and I had separately had intense relationships with France. I had spent years helping defend France’s honor against Amoco in the legal aftermath of the AMOCO CADIZ oil spill disaster. Mark worked in Paris for a French publisher. We were determined to see if France was still France, and if there was anything for us there anymore.
Then the French air traffic controllers went on strike to protest EU plans to create a single, unified European air space. Our Tuesday late evening flight was canceled, but, given the option between full refund and rescheduling for Sunday, we took Sunday. Actually, we got off easy. We had not been on our way to a congress or a seminar that was not going to wait for us. We were not on our way to a wedding or a funeral that was also not going to wait for us. We were not stuck in a city we barely knew with nothing but the dirty clothes accumulated in the course of a lengthy trip and no prospects except to mark time for days in a hotel that the airline might pay for and then again might not. We were comfortably at home. We spent a few hours rearranging car rentals and hotel reservations. (Thank goodness for the Internet . . . how did we ever manage before?) But then the clock started ticking more sluggishly than usual. Nothing on the calendar. Nothing on the agenda. 
