When I end up at the airport, Isabelle is not there. (We've agreed to call her Isabelle, since she is not the French Republic, and in retrospect, that pseudonym was just so she could sing for Luxembourg with everyone still knowing where she is actually from.) I keep trying to call her, but get no response. Thus, I disdainfully type her number, but something completely unrelated shows up. It is a text message from some number (I can tell it's American because it begins with a +1), saying "Hey Bissness Man (aka Violey), where ar you?"
Of course, I know immediately that whoever typed this is even more pretentious than I am. Not only does he- er, do they know that I am Violet and that I will be at the other end of this message, there is also the second part, which is them assuming something completely impossible; that two people could have swapped bodies via, don't say it, "magic", and as far as I know, this world is built upon science (except for Wonka's factory).
Therefore, I type back this message, with as much thought as I could bother putting in a text message: "What is actually going on there?" I presume the insane person at the other end is thinking about his doom or something (get it), and soon enough, the reply appears: "its in your vidoes =P anyways answer ma quesshun". I begin typing something just as cryptic, but then lose the message as Isabelle calls me.
"Derrière toi." [Behind you.] She says as if she were two people, but then I realize that it's simply her playing her tricks. She then giggles, and I think that she has laughed more during the short time we had together than I have during my entire life. I hang up the call and proceed to turn off my phone, because I know that we'll be boarding a flight soon, and it's not like I will have the need to communicate with anyone. Famous people aren't on Facebook all the time, folks.
There is about as much history in Naples as there is in Paris; i.e. the whole city is basically all about history. I don't get it, and I never will. At least for Paris, there are things everyone knows about, like the Eiffel Tower and... that church, but here, all you know is that the city exists. Also, they speak Italian, and I am one to always pick up subtle differences between the Romance languages. It is the one thing that irritates me in general, and in specific since I am on this particular trip.
And yet, Isabelle doesn't mind. She seems to have her own set of memories associated with the place, and they're probably not happy ones, since she has stopped laughing for some reason. Of course, when I say this, someone adapting this story into a movie would probably add a laugh track, but no one cares, as real life just so happens to be more boring than movies.
Isabelle thus takes me to a studio for some television or something, because apparently Eurovision was built upon television companies that had formed an union. She speaks stuff in Italian which I don't quite understand, since this isn't France, but as I expect, the people working at the studio are amazed that "France Gall still remembers us after fifty years!" and show us around.
They even have the old scoreboard back from 1965. Everything is written in this weird pseudo-French language which actually is Italian, but still readable, and I find that indeed, "Lussemburgo (L)" has scored most points. Before I can find the Soviet Union, though, Isabelle tackles me and sends me crashing to the board. The board doesn't break, but is close to breaking, and I remind her to not goof around that much.
According to Isabelle's plan that she formulated literally during the flight, we are to record the song that she sang back then, but with my methods of making song parodies. Each of us is thus handed a paper that the people at the studio printed, containing the exact lyrics to the song. A bit of the problem, though, is that the lyrics don't literally mean what they mean, and that was the deal breaker that separated Isabelle and her songwriter, someone named Gainsbourg, apparently.
The next few hours thus are just us, memorizing the song lyrics, trying not to shock her. It is easy to not shock me, since there are no mentions of blueberries or chocolate in the song, and even if the people at the studio were laughing behind our back about the giant blueberry girl, I don't recognize the Italian words for "blueberry" or "chocolate" or "Wonka" and therefore am unable to get mad at them. As far as I care, they are going to help me with another song parody.
Eventually, though, the studio closes up, and I and Isabelle continue chatting. It turns out that my French was much worse than I thought, and everything else is just us laughing about how I messed something up and it ended up being a sexual reference. Luckily, when I look at the lyrics, none of those sexual references are in there, and after singing the song, my reputation is probably going to be clean.
I certainly hope that will turn out to be this way, because if Wonka is going to get on my case, he will learn that he picked on the wrong girl.