“Yes. Fish. Vegetarian.”

by Matthew Kirsch (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown France

You could say I escaped Paris. New Year’s Eve 2019 and nothing is going right. The metro is on strike, the friend I made in Switzerland who lives in Paris and was to be my tour guide bailed last minute, it’s bitterly cold, my phone is about to die, and where am I in Paris? Instead of the Eiffel Tower and fireworks I end back in my hotel room with the “Fast & the Furious,” and I’m furious with myself that this became my New Year’s Eve, and I need a new plan fast. Originally the plan was follow the chocolate. I’m very serious. I know myself and I have my priorities. Chocolate in Paris, head north to Belgium for obviously Belgium chocolate, and I haven’t heard much about Amsterdam’s chocolates but let’s make sure they have some. But I am done with cold, pull up the maps, and see Marseille listed as “the sunniest place in France.” New plan and I catch a $56 euro train to Marseille. Marseille is sweet. It has that cozy, homey, small town vibe where people of all relations -couples, friends, parents and grown children - walk arm in arm with each other. On my way to Calanques National Park just 30 minutes outside of city center, I stop in a cafe and I see “chocolate intense,” or sipping chocolate and oooooo that banana bread looks amazing. My insides warm up as I sip on the most decadent chocolate and savor the best banana bread I ever had (do NOT let my mom read this! Love you Mom!). Calanques National Park is beautiful, and let me tell you about my bathroom story another day when we know each other a little better; it’ll still be TMI but you and I will be friends by then. On the way back I stop at Glacier chocolate and get a cafe and several chocolate pieces and my soul is becoming whole again. My last evening before catching a 9:50 night bus to Barcelona, I decide I want to splurge and have the experience of fine dining French cuisine. Yet I am also a vegetarian. I choose a place close to my hostel so I can grab my pack afterwards and head to the bus. I see soup and salad on the menu outside, and some ingredients I recognize but others I simply don’t know what they are in French. I enter and ask the woman who approaches as respectfully as I can if the soups and salads are vegetarian. She assures me so, so I am led to my seat, and they bring me a menu in English. Perfect. Except one thing. It’s fish soup and fish salads and in fact there isn’t one vegetarian option on this menu. Also the restaurant just opened and they sat me uncomfortably close to the only couple in the restaurant, and while i don’t know the language, I know she began to complain about it to her boyfriend. I grab my coat and the menu and walk to the woman and again as respectfully as possible say all these soups and salads are fish based. She responds, “Yes. Fish. Vegetarian.” It was like a memory bubble popped to the right side of my head and 21 years of a certain chain restaurant where they serve lobster that is red, with my mom and grandma asking every . . . single . . . time . . . “Do you eat fish? You don’t eat any fish either? Want some shrimp? How’s some lobster?” No, fish is not vegetarian! That is why I am getting the side of broccoli as my dinner (every single time)!!! My insides are stirring, “I could’ve just gone to Long Island for this fish interlude! I thanked the woman and left and I’m a real life SMH emoji. I did find a restaurant that evening where I enjoyed a hearty lentil soup and homemade bread. I made my bus on time. And the last day of my trip I did make it to Eiffel Tower, felt the majesty it is to stand in person beside a place so iconic, and ate all the chocolate within a three block radius. As for that bathroom story . . .