Lourd!

Travels With My Giant Suitcase

Beloved readers: It’s been a month since I’ve made a post! I was walloped by airborne allergies shortly after arriving here in Angers, and that took me out for over a week. And, unsurprisingly, given how taxing it is on a nervous system to be continually in unfamiliar territory where people speak in an unfamiliar tongue, my energy has been lower than my already low baseline, so I’ve been doing a lot of resting. Here is the piece I’ve been working on in fits and starts for the past three weeks. I hope the next one will be close on its heels.

Springtime in the courtyard of my Airbnb in Angers.

***

The Facebook group for expats in France overwhelmingly recommended traveling light. The space to store luggage is small and the overhead shelf is narrow, they said. The elevators are often out, no one will help you with your luggage, the conductors will reprimand you.

I did my best to heed the advisors. Although at home I keep thirty pairs of underwear so I only have to do laundry once a month, for this trip I packed just seven. I packed only three long-sleeved shirts, one hoodie, a thick turtleneck, a silk undershirt for the extra cold days, two pairs of comfortable pants, one pair of dressy pants, a pair of slip-on shoes, and my favorite slippers. I packed four pairs of wool socks and, since I was packing for four seasons, four pairs of summer socks, and also two t-shirts and a pair of light pants. I packed my bathing suit, bathing cap, goggles, and the padlock I bought in high school and still use in the locker rooms of public pools, at least in the US. (Turns out this heavy item is unnecessary in France, as every pool locker appears to use either a code or key system.)

It was December when I left, wearing my fall teal swing jacket, a pashmina scarf, and the beloved teal knit cap that I would lose in my first weeks in France. Fortunately, I had packed a backup hat—maroon velvet—that I’ve been wearing on cold days ever since. I also packed a rain hat that doubles as a sunhat, a collapsible umbrella, and a small, light rain poncho.

I packed a canvas courier bag for those days I might want to carry my laptop and a magazine to a cafe. This turned out to be a good move, because the clasp on my purse broke on the train from Besançon to Metz, and I have yet to find someone who can fix it. So now my courier bag is my purse, and now I carry my purse in my suitcase instead.

I also packed a very light, very thin, quick-dry towel. (They’re a thing!) And of course, the standard toiletries.

Those were the basics.

Nonetheless, it soon became clear I was going to need a very large suitcase.

***

On the platform to catch my train from Metz to Angers, the woman in line behind me saw that I was about to haul my giant suitcase over the gap between platform and train and offered to help. I accepted, warning her in English and some quickly improvised body language that it was heavy, and she picked up part of it and we wrangled it over the gap.

Inside, there were two descending stairs and I balanced my suitcase crookedly at the top to thank the woman, who exclaimed Lourd!, a word I’d never heard before, but from her big eyes and the ‘O’ of her mouth I knew exactly what it meant. Heavy. Heavy! (Not to mention, Lord! That’s heavy!)

Strangers marvel at the size and weight of my suitcase.¹ None have conveyed judgment—at least, not to my face—but still, I feel guilty, as though I am overindulgent.

***

I bought my small roller bag just days before I departed America, so I didn’t have a chance to try it out, but I loved it immediately. It’s plum in color, boxy in shape, perfect for packing all my magazines, papers, books, and both laptops (the primary and the backup). It has a multitude of pockets for pens and sticky notes, my e-reader, noise-canceling headphones, and other such paraphernalia.

Too late, I learned that this roller bag—which should be pleasingly wieldy compared to the giant suitcase—rocks to and fro when I roll it behind me. I don’t understand the physics of it.

But this is how things go when you travel. You can carefully curate your packing, plan an itinerary and prepare for all the things that can go wrong, but in the end you can’t fully orchestrate a life on the move.

***

By the time I boarded, there wasn’t room in the baggage compartment for my suitcase. I needed to move a piece of luggage and put my suitcase in its place, and hope I could find another spot for the stranger’s bag. On my first train back in December, from Paris to Dole, I hesitated to touch anyone’s belongings, uncertain of the cultural protocol, but I asked a Frenchwoman what to do, and she waved away my concerns, saying people move each other’s luggage all the time.

Now, on this train that would take me to another train that would take me to Angers, I could feel I was holding up the line behind me. My suitcase was a little over 50 pounds, and I was struggling to get it where it needed to go. The man behind me graciously offered to help, and took over. The owner of the other bag came over, looking a little aggrieved, and I said pardon because on the spot I couldn’t remember désolé, a better word for such circumstances. I love that the French word for “sorry” sounds like the English word “desolate”.

The man who was helping me spoke amiably to the man whose bag I had moved, while I pulled ahead with my little plum rolling bag and my backpack and my courier bag to get out of the way and locate my seat.

I find in the solo seats that I can straddle my small rolling bag and pile my cPap machine bag and my courier bag and my water bottle against the wall, and then put the backpack on my lap, and it all works quite fine.

***

Here are the luxuries I packed.

One hundred bags of my favorite jasmine tea (very light!), plus my beloved purply sheened insulated travel mug and two ice cube trays, so I can start my days with the same comforting routine I did in the US: iced tea.

One plastic container of Trader Joe’s Sea Salt & Turbinado Sugar Dark Chocolate Almonds to savor in my early days in France, as I will probably never taste those tiny delights again.

A dish towel and cloth napkin because I take my meals in bed, and these prevent the staining of the chest area of my shirt.

Every packet of tissues I had in the house. They’re light, and they tide me over till I can find a whole box of them when I land in a new city.

My favorite feather pillow.

***

When I travel, I bring my illness with me. I have a neuroimmune disease called myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS, and that means my energy is low and my nervous system tends toward high alert. And then there are the co-occurring conditions. The luxuries I brought were few and light compared to the items necessary to meet my body’s health needs.

My cPap machine is too big to fit in my suitcase, so I hang it from the telescopic handle of the plum rolling bag. I packed two extra plastic masks in the suitcase, however, and an extra tube, not knowing when or how I’d be able to find the right ones for my machine in France, only that the country sells my brand, which bodes well for someday being able to get what I need.

I packed my compact travel lightbox, a life-changer for seasonal affective disorder.

And my small portable white noise machine to help with the insomnia.

And my KN-95 masks in a selection of purple, green, or turquoise, because I am at higher risk of long Covid and if I have to protect myself from Covid-19 every time I’m in public spaces, I can at least do so in color.

I packed my knee brace, in case my knee goes off-track again, and two wrist braces, which I need for my right wrist when typing on my laptop.

Unfortunately, I didn’t pack my ankle brace, ignorant as I was of the fact that I would sprain my ankle in Metz. That I bought at a pharmacie, and now wear any time I leave the apartment.

In my backpack, which is capacious and also multi-pocketed, I stuffed into one compartment a plastic bag with a three-month supply of meds in it, and into the other another plastic bag with a three-month supply of supplements.

I have a French doctor now, but still, with France’s unfamiliar pharmaceutical distribution system and all this traveling around, I continue to carry three months’ worth of meds.

***

I had to change stations in Paris, and though there is a bus that ferries passengers from one to the other, with all my luggage and my flagging body I chose not to risk it and took a cab, where I sat in comfort and watched the scenes of Paris pass by my window. It was lunch hour, a warm spring day, and people packed the sidewalk cafés, zoomed by on their electric bicycles, or sat on benches soaking up the sun. We passed the Louvre Pyramid, its glass and steel jutting out of the earth like a diamond.

The driver had no choice but to let me off in a construction area. I asked if the ascenseur, elevator, was nearby, and he pointed to where I could see a short escalator to the first floor. I trundled doubtfully in that direction, where I found only the escalator. It seems dangerous to balance all my luggage on an escalator, but it appeared I had no choice. I stood for a moment at the bottom, devising my plan, recalling the last time I was in France, when I’d foolishly placed a different giant suitcase in front of me on a descending escalator—then tripped over it, Jerry Lewis style, somehow managing not to fall—and a Frenchman asked me if I was okay, which I was.

Adjusting my courier bag and backpack for maximum balance, I rolled the small plum roller bag onto the first step, which rose up, and then I stepped onto the next, and balanced my giant suitcase on the one behind me. I felt sturdier than expected, and before I knew it the short ride was over and I rolled my luggage out of the way like a boss.

***

The Airbnb’s webpage prepared me for a self check-in, but when the cabbie dropped me off, Antoine, the host, was standing at the door to greet me. He had a warm, friendly face, and, blessedly, took the giant suitcase and carried it over the cobblestone walkway, over the threshold, and up, up the stairs.

The view from within the courtyard of my Airbnb in Angers.

***

I am now ensconced in my garret, sheltered under slanted walls that are framed by wooden beams hoisted into place almost 400 years ago. Its floor is of square brick tiles—so solid under my feet, so abiding—each crafted from clay dug out of the earth somewhere not far from here, each its own wonder of ding, splotch, and hue.

My body feels calm in Angers. The centre ville is old and walkable, even if I can’t walk as far as I’d like. There’s a patisserie around the corner from my lodging, and a grocery store just beyond that. A 10-minute walk in the direction of the river will land me on the doorstep of the anglophone library.

My suitcase is tucked away in a closet. I’ll have to pack it again. At least once.

If you’d like to follow my travels, please subscribe. It’s free! If you’d like to support my work and can afford it, please consider a paid subscription.

Thanks for reading! This post is public, so please share far and wide. It’s easy to do with this button:

And if you like this post, please click the little heart. It’ll make me feel good, and it probably has other benefits I’m not even aware of yet. So glad you’re with me.

1. Back in January, before leaving Dole, the first city on my itinerary, I looked into SendMyBag, a company that ships suitcases, but delivery takes one to three days, which is a long time to go without a fresh outfit. Mes Bagages, through SNCF, France’s state-owned national railway company, delivers the next day, but even this felt too long to go without the treasured contents of my giant suitcase.