When you meet people while travelling, it’s almost a whirlwind romance. From early on there is very little establishment of who we are as people, our histories or what made us the way we are. We meet for fifteen minutes, we have conversations about what’s happening now, the strangers make us smile and often laugh but mostly reaffirm our belief in the human race that people are good. Every now and then we meet people when we travel that do more than that. We are lucky enough to spend more than an hour in their company because something happens when we meet. We click, we speak, we share more than a common interest – there’s something a little more than with the random strangers we’ve met so far.
This week has been a doozy. It did not start well and for those of you who don’t need the details, I will try to be succinct. My trip into New Orleans began on the aeroplane. Hardly surprising. But halfway through my flight, the transit became very long. Every traveller’s nightmare is food poisoning in transit. With my head in the sink of the plane and my arse on it’s other relevant half, I made my way into New Orleans. I was that person that people look at funny on planes when they’ve been in the toilet too long. I had to ask the boys sitting next to me to trade places so that I could be in the aisle. I stopped in every bathroom in New Orleans airport and the lady running the cab queue took one look at me and jumped the 100m line to put me in a cab immediately. There is absolutely no doubt that Wednesday night, I thought I was going to die. Ask my mum. (I facebooked her at an ungodly Australian hour, making her give me advice. What the hell she was going to do from half way across the world, I have no idea.)
By Thursday morning, my fever had passed and I had four days of Jazz Fest to get through. After a concoction of pills and 18 hours sleep, I did awake from the coma I was in and head to Jazz Fest. With a fragile head, stomach and still broken ego (I clogged the sink on the aeroplane and was having a hard time adjusting to the shame – even though the flight attendants were lovely about it…) I took my ticket and headed to one of the biggest festivals in the world. And in all true form, it was raining. I met random people all day. Sitting in large tents, hiding from the rain, over the four days I met a couple from Austria, a couple from New York moving to Port Douglas in December, a trio from New Orelans who told me what I should be eating at Jazz Fest, a hippie from New Orleans who was missing his teeth and wanted to teach me to hula hoop, the list is endless. But as with all festival meetings, time with them was limited. And probably as it should be. It was after the festival on night time excursions when I met the real humans of the world.
Friday night I made my way to Frenchman’s street. I am in the Jazz capital of the world and Frenchman’s street is apparently where the locals go to hear it. What a load of crap. It turns out that after watching two and a half seasons of HBO’s Treme, the rest of the world also knows that Frenchmen’s street is the secret street. I paid $5 to get into a club called The Spotted Cat, fought my way to the bar, found a spot in the back corner and waited for the band to start. I made myself wait fifteen minutes. If being in a crowded bar on my own was still weird after that, I could at least say I’d been and head home with a tick in the right box. A lady and her husband were standing in front of me. When I say in front, if I took my finger off my beer and extended it to full length, I could touch them. We were a fire hazard. When he went to bathroom, (look at me I said bathroom, I may as well be American) she turned to me and asked if I could see anything. In typical Anna style, I was quick with a witty comeback and we were soon chatting. Her husband returned and the chatting continued. It turns out they were from Philadelphia, had two beautiful daughters, 5 and 2, and were away for the weekend. Five hours later, a walk, and another piano bar on Bourbon street, I’d made new friends. Staggering home at 2am was not a bad effort for the girl who had only given herself 15mins.
Saturday night I went on a ghost tour of the French Quarter. I was the only loser within a mile who had joined the group on her own. I spent the start of the tour trying to work out if the tubby red head who kept looking at me was in fact staring at something I’d spilled on myself or mildly distracted by my accent. Turns out it was neither, he was trying to hide from his somewhat needy girlfriend. At the halfway beer stop, I offered to take a photo for a group of four people travelling together. In less than two and a half minutes, these people had made me laugh. Genuinely laugh and feel like I’d known them forever. They were friendly, outgoing, inclusive, genuine, honest, funny, heartfelt and Texan. As the tour moved on, I’d found friends. It was almost like being home and almost like having my people (yes you!!) with me in New Orleans. They invited me to dinner, we drank from turtles, talked, laughed a lot more, visited a card reader in a back street and became face book friends in a few hours. I think I love them.
Tonight I sat in the breakfast room to finish editing a story for Little Raven. I’d only been there ten minutes when a rather large family of Floridians asked me where I was from. In less than ten minutes after that, I was dressed and invited to spend the evening with them at a jazz club to see one of New Orleans Jazz Queen’s. They bought me a drink, paid for my dinner and refused to accept my money. For a few hours I was part of their family. They taught me the finer parts of scat (or tried to … still not sure I get it, but I definitely appreciate it more) and let me in on their family jokes and secrets. We walked home with Hurricane’s down Bourbon street and stepped aside as the devil tied his shoelaces. Andy, Marie and Karen and their family treated me as one of their own and they known me ten minutes.
Sometimes it feels like a long time between conversations and sometimes I miss the fact that there isn’t someone to nudge and say “Check that out!” But I have learned, that facebook helps. Today I could message Bec instantaneously and tell her about the midget with the wig, and the lady with no teeth and while she wasn’t there to laugh about it with me, I could still share it. But I still get the benefit of meeting these amazing people who are willing to share their lives with me if even only for an evening. I know there will be times when I don’t meet people for a while, but I also know that the ones that start off as five minute chats and turn into all night jaunts will not only be faces and names remembered but shared. And I can only hope that they feel the same. I can’t help but think that New Orleans has a special sort of magic during festival time. They have holidays here for everything and what’s not to love about a city founded on criminals, booze, sex and piracy. When it boils down to it, they might as well be Australian.
life in big frilly knickers 