Bizarre Occurences

This is just a list of the bizarre things that happened to me yesterday:

One- I was on the train from Carcassonne to Marseille when a quite smelly man with a dog stopped by my seat asking for money. As I am basically broke, I said no. He moved on. Then he spotted my cookies in a ziplock bag I had brought along for a snack. He got excited. He asked if I was planning to throw it away even as he reached for it. I said there was one left and he could have it if he wanted. So he took the bag and proceeded to dump all of its crumbly contents onto the seat across from me. He tried to feed half a cookie to the dog who didn't want it. Then he left with only the ziplock bag. Bizarre. And embarrassing as I now had a cookie's worth of chocolate crumbs completely covering the seat across from me.

Two- I was riding the escalator in the metro in Marseille last night heading out to eat dinner (at a really fantastic Chinese restaurant by the way. It was kind of nostalgic since it seems that all Chinese restaurants smell the same and therefore I remembered Red Palace and eating there with my family, etc... I ate duck. It was good. Back to the point.) I came across another smelly man. This one was right behind me on the escalator and he was talking to himself. He felt really quite close and I was getting uncomfortable. I was ready to wallop him if he tried anything. And then he touched my hair. I pretended it didn't happen and then booked it off the escalator once we reached the top. I was later informed that he also appeared to be smelling my hair. I think the best I can do in this situation is take it as a compliment. Even though it was freaky, and bizarre.

Three- Then, minutes later, we ran into three American guys who were visiting Marseille. They were excited to run across people speaking English. They stopped us to chat. Now, I'm not going to lie, when I first saw them, just glancing in passing, I was pretty sure they were mentally incompetent and I was looking around to see if they had someone nearby who was helping them. This turned out not to be the case, they were just typical Americans walking around with stupid looks on their faces. It's amazing how easy it is to pick out an American by their glazed, stupified expressions. Really it's embarrassing. Anyway, they wanted to hang out with us and we brushed it off politely. We said we had to hurry and eat so we could catch the last train back home (although in the end our train had been cancelled and we had to run frantically to catch a bus.) They "generously" offered to let us stay and party at their hotel. "We have like, a huge room." "Yeah man, like, eight beds or somethin'." I wish we'd had a picture of our faces at that moment. Really? That's the best you've got? Idiotic and bizarre.

Four- Then we watched rugby in an Irish pub. I found I actually kind of like rugby. And not just because many of the players are incredibly good looking. It's like football but without the wussy pads and helmets. I mean, they really tackle each other and it's pretty funny. So yeah, interesting and bizarre.

Five- A French man told me I looked French. I said thank you. He said it wasn't a compliment. Oh. Maybe I'll just pass that one off as a communication error because in all other ways he was quite kind. So that was kind of bizarre.

Six- I saw a LOT of really, really nice looking men. Nice and bizarre.