My interesting weekend with my girlfriend's relatives

This weekend, my girlfriend's ("Elena", 23) older sister ("Alessandra", 29) and her husband ("Christophe", 28) flew in from Paris to visit for the holiday. I had never met any of her family before, so meeting some of them was going to be a real treat, or so I thought.

Their flight landed at the Atlanta airport on Friday evening around 8:30pm, which I think would be a late flight flying west from Europe, but what do I know? Anyways, we make it to the airport just a few minutes before they arrive, and it was great seeing the joy in Elena's smile when she first saw her sister coming up the escalator from the tram to the baggage claim. Her husband was right behind her, and just by looking at him, I knew this was going to be a long weekend. He was dressed in what looked like very expensive clothes, dressed like a male model walking down a runway (isn't that what they're called?) at a fashion show. He had his sunglasses propped over his head, and his shirt collar popped.

Well, because Elena and her sister were busy hugging each other and going off in some Italian chit chat, I politely introduced myself to Christophe and shook his hand. He's about 4 inches taller than I am, and he looked down at me with a smug facial expression telling me that he thought I was a piece of trash. Of course my American tongue mispronounced his name, so he immediately corrected me with the most obscure pronunciation you could imagine for his name. I tried to carry on with the normal chit chat asking how their flight was, etc, and he just ignored me and said, "let's retrieve our bags and be on our way." Oh boy.

It was around 9:15 when we got in the car and on the interstate heading back towards town. Elena and I hadn't eaten, and her sister said she was hungry. Because we made reservations at a nice restaurant on Saturday night, we decided to go to a moderately-priced, nice little hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant in Buckhead that is one of our favorites. Dinner was excellent, just as it always is from this restaurant, and luckily Christophe and I didn't have to talk too much since Elena and her sister monopolized the conversation, catching up on old times. They were kind enough to speak in English so Christophe and I would have at least some sort of an idea of what they were talking about.

After dinner, Elena wanted to show them where she lived, so we drove up to her condo building in the heart of Buckhead. We parked and took the elevator down to the ground level, and spent about 20 minutes walking around the very-crowded Buckhead area, but didn't go into any of the establishments. We went back to her condo high up on the 17th floor, which has a great southern view of the distant Atlanta skyline. We sat down in her living room and talked for a few minutes, and then the girls got up and went into Elena's bedroom to get a few things and show her pictures. That left us guys all alone in the living room. Once we were alone, before I could speak a word, he said "there sure are a lot of black people in this city." I didn't really know how to respond, other than telling him that Atlanta's demographics were about 62% black, in addition to a very diverse population. I went on to tell him that MLK, Jr was born here, etc. He then asked me if I ever got tired of all of them, and I just sorta had a WTF response, questioning him why I would feel that way. He just sorta shrugged.

Anyways, we thankfully got off the topic of race, and asked him what he did back in France. I had a general idea, but didn't know all the details. He is finishing up his medical residency and is specializing to be a neurosurgeon. I found out that he liked talking about himself a lot, so I kept asking vague questions that he could go into great detail. This was a great time killer, and after about 20 minutes, the girls were ready to head on back to my place.

While Elena's condo has two bedrooms, it is a little cramped, so she asked if she and her guests could stay at my place, which is a little bigger with three bedrooms and a larger living area. Fortunately, I had a few days prior knowledge to the fact that they were going to stay at my place, so I was able to get my cleaning lady to come in, change the sheets on the guest bed, and clean up the place. So, we all pile back into my car and head back downtown to my place. I got the impression that Christophe comes from a well-to-do family, and lives a fairly nice life of luxury, and probably socializes with friends of the same social status, and also expects his wife's family and friends to be the same way as well. I've mentioned before that Elena drives a nice car, well I drive a Jeep. It's a nice Jeep, and I love it, but hey, it's no Mercedes or BMW on the "smugness" meter." He asked me if I chose to drive an American car or did it because of financial reasons. I explained how it was a gift from my parents, how I didn't really choose the car myself, and that I don't have a single problem driving an American car. He was just sorta like "OK."

I got the impression that Christophe likes to be impressed, and he obviously wasn't impressed with my car, so instead of parking the car myself, I decided to go to the valet station, let them take care of my car, and went in through the main entrance of my building which is a lot prettier than going up through the parking deck. When we get up to my condo on lucky floor #22, we get their luggage put into the guest bedroom, and his attitude changed completely. He actually came out and said "this place is nice," and couldn't stop looking out the windows of the night-time skyline. His apparent shallowness was satisfied by the fact that my ceiling fans had remote controls. He kept playing with them, saying how cool they were, and how he wants to get these for his place back in Paris.

Around 1am we went to bed, and finally the first night was over. Only 2.5 more days to go!

The following morning, slept a little late, and had a late breakfast/early lunch at my place. We watched a little TV until it was time to go to downtown to the new Georgia Aquarium. We ended up watching 2 episodes of the old Beverly Hillbillies, a surprisingly favorite show among Elena and her sister. Apparently when they were learning English at a young age, some of the American TV shows made their way over to Italy, and they would watch them in English with Italian subtitles. Another of their favorites was the Golden Girls, so my TiVo is almost filled up with episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies and Golden Girls.

We had a good time at the aquarium, even though I had been there before. Alessandra is really fascinated by marine life, so she was in heaven, which is why we stayed there for about 5 hours. We walked around the Centennial Olympic park, and showed them some of the places around there, like CNN, and we even tried to find the location of where the bomb went off :beatup: I don't think Christophe had a good time, and he kept commenting on how all the homeless people were black, and how dirty the city felt.

Back at my condo, we took showers and got dressed in our nice clothes (I bought a new tie for tonight :D ), and walked down the street to a restaurant called Park 75, in the Four Seasons Hotel. I hadn't ever been there before, but goddamn I had one of the best meals I had ever had. Elena and I both got the Surf and Turf, with bacon-wrapped bison and Maine lobster. Alessandra got a filet mignon and Christophe got a great-looking lasagna. He ordered a bottle of wine for the table, and of course he ordered a bottle of French wine, because he said that Americans just haven't figured out how to make a decent wine.

During dinner, he turned into a complete asshole. He started talking about George Bush, the UN, the war in Iraq, and how the US wants to run the world. And then he started talking in French, which conveniently I was the only one at the table who doesn't speak it, so I have no clue what he's talking about. All I know is that I picked up a few words like "Bush," "America," etc, and he had this smug smirk on his face. I asked Elena later that night what he said, and she said it would be better if she didn't say, for some of the comments were about me, and she didn't want me to be upset. Anyways, we decided to split the bill for dinner, and goddamn if that bottle of wine wasn't $107. In addition to our meals, I wasted close to $175 at dinner :mad:

After dinner, we walked up to the new Atlantic Station shopping center that they built a while back to see if there were any movies showing. We decided not to see anything, and walked back to my place. We looked through my DVDs, but couldn't decide on anything, so we just went to bed.

The following morning, we were invited to meet with Elena's good friend ("Jennifer", 22) and her family (the Bostwicks) up at the Country Club of the South in Duluth, GA for a nice Sunday brunch and to enjoy the activities up there. The Bostwicks were from London, and were very good friends with Elena's and Alessandra's father (who is also from London). I had some awesome eggs benedict, french toast, and unlimited prime rib. It was superb. After brunch, the men went out for a 12:30 tee time, while the women sat outside on the clubhouse patio, and enjoyed tea and lemonade. I didn't know to bring my golf clubs, so Christophe and I used an extra set that Dr. Bostwick had. We played the front nine, although I only played about 3 :beatup: before we went back to the clubhouse. Christophe was definitely much happier to be in a "white" part of town... On the way back down to Atlanta, I drove them around the area for a while, showing them various things around the Atlanta area that we hadn't gone to yet.

When we got back, Christophe got a little sick feeling in his head and stomach, so we decided we would rest for the remainder of the afternoon until it was time for dinner. While Christophe napped, Elena, Alessandra, and I went out to the pool and laid out/swam for a while. A few hours later, we went to a nice Italian restaurant called Villa Christina, and I had an awesome duck breast. Luckly, since Christophe was a little under the weather, he didn't get to talk too much about how much the US sucked compared to France. We went back to my place and went to bed.

On Monday morning, the last day of their trip, we met a bunch of Elena's friends from Emory at a nice little restaurant called the "R. Thomas Grille" in Midtown. It's another one of those good hole-in-the-wall restaurants that sits just inches away from the busy Peachtree street that specializes in organic foods. Poor Christophe was unfortunate enough to sit next to one of Elena's friends who was black, and you could totally tell that he was disgusted to be next to her. Fortunately for me, I wasn't anywhere near him and didn't have to listen to him complain.

After a great lunch, we went back to my place so they could start packing their stuff. Instead of driving them back down to the airport, we walked down to the MARTA station and put them on the train that would take them straight to the airport. It was one final "haha you're around black people" to the pretentious, racist French bastard. It was great to see him leave, and hopefully I won't have to see him when I go to Italy for Christmas this year.

Once they left and we got back to my place to clean up a little, Elena told me what Christophe was saying in French that night at the restaurant. It turns out that he was making fun of me about how I was cutting my steak, and how fucked up my left eye looked with no pupil. I was actually shocked that he made a non-racist comment! I also asked her why he was so racist. She didn't know, and she didn't like it, but said that there's a lot of people in Europe that are pretty racist. When I went there a few years ago, I didn't meet anyone that appeared to be racist in any way, even against America. Well, many didn't really approve of the American government, but they were smart enough to know that the American people are different than the government.

I can't really decide if my weekend sucked or if I actually enjoyed it somewhat. It was great meeting Elena's sister; she was just as nice as Elena, and it was cool getting to know her better. I don't know how someone as nice as her married such of a pretentious cocksucker like Christophe... I've never had any beef with the French before, but this dude totally lived up to the stereotypes.