The space looked just on the large side of three quarters of a car. With enough Vaseline and a giant shoehorn, it might just be possible to squeeze my Honda Civic hatchback in there. Then again, it might not.

It was 1.30am in the Castro, and I had been circling the area around my house for 20 minutes. The search yielded two options: a space six blocks away with 8am street cleaning, and this tantalizing gap mere yards from my home, sandwiched between a maroon Lexus and a battle-weary Chrysler Jeep.

Checking for spectators to what might become a very embarrassing parking incident, I unbuckled my seat belt and lined up next to the Jeep. I waited for a goateed leather daddy to disappear around the corner with his white standard poodle, then bumper-nudged my way into the space, inch by inch. Faulty power steering made my car about as maneuverable as a ferry, and I had to straighten up eight or nine times before I was finally parallel with the curb.

Sweaty but triumphant, I stood alone on the sidewalk in the chilly night and stared at my parked car. That was the moment I realized I stood a chance of one day becoming a San Franciscan. An insider. A member of the tribe.

The rites of passage in this city are all about parking. I’ve been driving cars, my own and other people’s, for a long time and in different countries around the world. London, for one, is a parking challenge. So is Copenhagen and, God knows, Rome. But nothing had prepared me for San Francisco.

When I moved here many years ago, a new world opened up to me; a universe with a parking scarcity so acute in certain parts of the city that it turned people into predators. To begin with, it was a little scary. I was ill equipped for the job at hand, a virgin to weekly street-cleaning regimes and rules about parking only in the direction of the traffic. The tickets came at me hard and fast those first difficult months.

To make things worse, my parallel parking skills were sub-par in a city where you parallel park or perish. Once, shortly after my arrival in the Bay Area, I got stuck in a badly planned and worse executed effort: I’d gotten halfway into a space but couldn’t get out except by savaging the paint-job of the car in front of me. In the end, I had to reverse onto the sidewalk and exit from a driveway down the street, a maneuver I completed while pretending not to see the looks of eye-rolling pedestrians.

Many a night I arrived late at restaurants because I had driven around in patient circles, beaten to every spot by someone more aggressive, more savvy, more San Franciscan.

But then I figured out that pouncing is the strategy of choice for a Friday night in the Mission with its high car rotation frequency. Choose a street off the Valencia corridor and sit in a driveway with your blinkers on for a while, and likelihood is a spot will open up within 15 minutes. Try that in Noe Valley, however, and you’ll be waiting all night. In neighborhoods with lots of families and two-car households, you have to rely on the old, trusted, ever-widening circle search.

I learned that the point of having a car in San Francisco isn’t to drive it. The point is to occupy the best parking spots for as long as you can. Never mind that you pay dearly to own and insure your car; you do whatever it takes not to use it. Walk for miles, ride Muni or BART, bum lifts off your friends. Hell, pay for a taxi rather than move your car if it’s in a juicy spot.

Also, you must try not to succumb to jealousy. Yes, they have so much parking in Marin and San Mateo and Redwood City. Yes, there are naked streets everywhere. No, people don’t appreciate this embarrassment of riches. Let it go.

Over time, I became a finely calibrated parking detector. It made no difference that I eventually entered into the holy state of garage occupancy. I sense parking. I smell it. I’m especially attuned to open, unmetered spots on the cross-streets of thoroughfares.

There’s a rush to it, seeing a wide-open space in a prime area. Whether you need to park is irrelevant. It’s simply a beautiful sight. Have you ever admired a parking spot? Felt giddy at its ample proportions and perfect restaurant proximity? Considered parking there despite being due at the other end of town, because it’s so pretty?

Then chances are, you have gone native too.

Playing Chicken with Australia’s Fierce Feathered Wildlife

Three huge feathered creatures stare me down, unafraid. Blue-black and barrel-shaped with incandescently red heads, they look me in the eye from ten feet ahead on the trail. I can only spot three, but I hear others fussing in the waist-high clutter of ferns and see the undergrowth shiver when they move.

“Beware,” reads a sign on a tree trunk. “You are entering the breeding area of the Southern Cassowary. This large, flightless bird defends itself aggressively by kicking with powerful legs, and can disembowel attackers with the dagger-like claws on its toes. The Cassowary is an endangered species and must not be interfered with or harmed, under penalty of law.”

Caught on the narrow trail, I am struck by the unfairness of it all. These birds might gut me like a freshly caught halibut for coming too close, and what can I do? Take their picture. Even if I resolve to break the law in the name of self-defense, I can’t very well fight my way through using my water bottle. I consider luring them off the trail with my peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches and then legging it, but reject that plan as hopelessly lame.

I have no idea what to do next. I’ve never before encountered life-threatening poultry.

In my native Denmark, the most dangerous animal you’d meet in the woods was a squirrel in a foul mood. But here in Australia, every creeper, swimmer, crawler, or slitherer is potentially lethal. Weeks earlier, I had abandoned my safe and secure existence to travel to the Southern Hemisphere and be among wild things. I wanted to pit myself against nature, to see if a different person would emerge: a stalwart alter ego that could never be born out of conference rooms and supermarkets and libraries.

I never expected to become someone terrified of overgrown hens. But finding yourself in a strange, unknown world is a potent trigger of fear and an easy way to lose perspective — you’re right back in your childhood room with the lights off, the monsters under the bed drooling for your blood. Given enough time and leeway, fear will turn your brain to mush.

I knew I lacked outback courage, so before taking on miles of remote Australian rain-forest trail with no ranger on hand to administer antivenin, I made sure I was well informed. In my wildlife guide I acquainted myself with red-bellied black snakes and brown tree snakes, the large, craggy wolf spiders and the elegant golden orb-weavers. My body sticky with DEET, I hoped to repel not just insects, but venomous snakes and, if necessary, estuarine crocodiles.

Thus prepared, I reveled in the adventure as I set out alone to hike Daintree’s tropical wilderness. I imagined that nobody had walked this route before me, at least not without machetes, an Aboriginal guide and a pack mule hauling fresh water. For the first mile or so, the hike was a Discovery Channel dream. The path zigzagged between giant, primeval trees with trunks like the legs of old elephants, deeply cracked and gray. Electric-green frogs sang from mossy tumbledown rocks. Hand-sized yellow butterflies flitted drunkenly, inches from my face.

But as I labored deeper into the jungle, the set changed from charming and surreal to menacing. In a dim, silvery half-light I strained to check the ground in front of me for snakes. I saw fewer emerald bromeliads; brushwood the blackish green color of old bruises dominated the view. I thought about graves and maggots.

With only a weak bit of sunlight penetrating the opaque canopy, the steamy heat was intense and claustrophobic. This was not a forest; this was the belly of a large beast. If I paused to listen, I could hear its wet, gurgling breath.

My hands traveled around my body, brushing off real and imagined bugs. I walked into a spider’s web. Feeling the invisible silky strands tickle my face and neck, I flew into a windmilling panic, hysterically swatting myself. After that, I held a defensive branch in front of me as I walked.

Every few minutes, a parrot’s scream or the quick swish of a lizard scurrying across the path would make me jump. Even the flowers seemed alive with intelligent, carnivorous intent. Pink orchids the shape of rigid, fleshy lips shuddered as I went by. Clusters of flowers that hung from the canopy, tubular and open-mouthed, drew me in with a sweet smell, then, when I leaned close, assaulted my nostrils with the stink of five-day-old meat.

The path went from slender to anorexic, forcing me onto my back to squeeze under dense wait-a-while vines, a climbing palm bristling with spines that will cut through leather.

Now, after five hours’ struggle through this pungent sauna, three hungry-looking birds are eyeing me maliciously and I don’t know what to do. The decision makes itself when one bird struts forward with regal composure. After a deep breath and a quick brow swipe to get the drenched hair out of my eyes, both halves of the adrenal ‘fight or flight’ reaction kicks in. I run and yell. Making noise, I hope, will both confuse the enemy and propel my escape velocity, so I howl like a dog with his tail caught in the door and gallop toward the birds. One quickly retreats into the brush, but two hold their ground, seemingly taken aback by the development of events. Before they have a chance to kill me, I sprint between them. My arms brush against feathers and I catch a whiff of their sharp, foreign bird-smell, then I am gone, gasping toward safety.

I undertake the last mile in triumph. I throw away the branch, daring spiders to do their worst. The thought of danger faced and dodged fills me with pride. I finish my water, certain that I will soon burst out of the eternal dusk into a world of brilliant sun and paved roads. Nature did its worst and I lived to tell the tale.

Much later, sipping peach iced tea in my hotel room in Port Douglas, I look up the Cassowary in the wildlife guide. Apparently, this bird — a short-tempered cousin of the emu, capable of mauling grown men — stands six feet tall and has a bright blue head with a horny outgrowth. It is very rare, and more to the point, looks nothing like the birds that accosted me on the trail.

A few pages later, I come across a picture of my redheaded tormentors. The caption reads: “The common brush turkey is a friendly and curious bird that often approaches humans to beg for food. Please do not feed it.”

A Taste of France

“There’s a pubic hair in my pasta,” I said calmly, with as much dignity as I could muster. Across the table from me, Karen paused in mid-chew and put down the utensils, her eyes quickly scanning the surrounding diners for any undue attention. Perhaps they heard me say “pubic.” We were in Grenoble, and people understood English very well. She moved the silver pot of flowering lavender out of the way, leaned over the white-draped table and inspected the black, curly hair, complete with a white bulbous follicle, sitting on a freshly made goat cheese and spinach ravioli like an innocent bit of extra garnish.

“Could be a chest hair,” she said.

Karen is English and will suffer almost any humiliation quietly rather than make a fuss.

“It’s too curly for a chest hair. Could be from an arm pit, I’ll give you that,” I said, raising a hand to get the waiter’s attention. “Pit or crotch, I’m not going to eat it.”

“You could just put it to one side,” Karen suggested. The fingers of her right hand smoothed the napkin, ironed it against the table. “I mean, what are you hoping to achieve?”

English or not, in this instance she wasn’t merely adhering to a genetic and cultural disposition for confrontation avoidance. Having lived in Grenoble for years, she had reason to question what greater good complaining would serve. In England or the US, apologies would have been forthcoming, as would a fresh portion or a different dish at no charge. But this was France and we both knew better.

Only three days earlier, on a cobblestone square in Aix-en-Provence, I had been served a salad with Lollo Rosso lettuce, artichoke hearts, pine nuts, and dirt. Not a modest little dusting of dirt crunching between my teeth, evidence of a somewhat superficial rinsing, but a hearty clump of good, French soil. I could have grown cress in it. I alerted the waitress, expecting a modicum of remorse and a new salad. Instead I got an overbearing smile and “C’est un peu de terre…” It’s a bit of dirt. What’s all the to-do about? I insisted the dirt should not be in my salad. She looked at me as you look at a chihuahua having a yapping fit, scooped up the ruffled lettuce leaf with the dirt, and threw it on the ground. “Voilà!”

I generally prefer my salads without compost, and any type of hair in my food dramatically reduces a restaurant’s chances of repeat business from me. But I admit to harboring a secret admiration for the lack of humility the average French service provider displays. Though occasionally counterproductive in the business sense of the word, it is at the very least honest. At best, it is what France is all about: a sense of equality and pride, a refusal to ingratiate. Compare this with the American cashier squeezing out a “Thank you for shopping at Walmart,” when really he just wants you to pick up your change and exit his personal planet. American service is second to none when it comes to free water expediently delivered at the table, Disney smiles, and verbal smoothies, but forced pleasantries often leave you feeling more resented than do the irreverent French.

Service is considered an unnecessary extra in France — a luxury reserved for the staggeringly rich and powerful. Ordinary people should not expect to be pampered, life is not for the cossetted or the easily deterred. Casual disdain is part of the experience. An enthusiastically served meal belongs in Greece or Italy, not France. The liquid mix of charm and superiority that characterizes the hotel receptionist, the boutique owner, the greengrocer, is a language of its own: of sighs, pregnant pauses, slow feline gestures, and shamelessly verbose eyebrows.

Familiar with this language, I did not expect heartfelt apologies or faces burning with humiliation even in the relatively expensive restaurant where Karen and I were dining that night in Grenoble. A realistic goal, I thought, was a replacement portion, sans pubes. When I managed to attract the attention of our whiskered headwaiter, he floated over and asked what he could do for me. I pointed out the curled-up evidence. “Mais non!” He tut-tutted copiously. The look on his face betrayed heartfelt empathy and a great deal of frustration, even anger, at being unable to help. He bent a little closer and and said, in a just-between-us tone of voice, “It is not mine…”

A Taste of France was originally published in Personal Growth on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.