Vive la France, part 2

First of all, I owe an apology to all English-speaking French people. For example, the very pleasant girl who served us at Le Comptoir de l’Horte in Revel; and the lovely lady at the Domaine Laubarel winery ; and Vincent, a young man from Toulouse with whom we shared the dining table here at Chris and Donna’s place. 

Lovely lady at Laubarel winery

 We’ve been here nearly a week, but after the first 24 hours or so, the place felt like home, as if we were staying with long-time friends rather than at a B&B booked over the Internet. It’s called Le Moulin Pastelier, and is located the tiny village of Belesta en Lauragais, which I suspect none of you has ever heard of, and which took me forever to commit to memory. All the names of the little towns and villages here are beyond me. Long and awkward or short and awkward, I can't pronounce them. They seem to have too many vowels in unwieldy combinations. 

Unassuming facade of Le Moulin Pastelier

I was half looking forward to, half dreading, the prospect of airing my highschool French. All the way from Toulouse airport I mentally practiced a few choice phrases…

After leaving the highway and driving through narrow country lanes, feeling certain that we’ve gone astray, we found ourselves at the right spot. Parked the Meriva and rang the doorbell. A pleasant-looking blonde opened the door, and I braced myself and said “Bonjour!”, followed by a quiet Hello just to be on the safe side.

Imagine my relief when it turned out that Donna and Chris, our hosts, are British…  So obviously, I have a good excuse for not having practiced my French this past week.

Our first destination, on Sunday, not-so-bright and not-so-early, was Carcassonne, a pretty tourist trap in the shape of a Middle-Ages walled city. Michael had fond memories of the place from his previous visit there, some 50 years ago, on a school trip… I’d bet anything that it didn’t have as many trinket shops and restaurants fifty years ago…

Nina (with purple backpack) taking pics of the entrance to Old City of Carcassonne

Monday’s destination was Albi, a prettier city with a civilized old section, a grand cathedral, and a Toulouse Lautrec museum. 

Palais de la Berbie, Albi, now the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum

But the French being awkward, everything closes down between 12 noon and 2 pm; and lots of places don't even bother to open on Mondays. The owners are probably still tired from Sunday. Besides, Tuesday was All Saints’ Day; no point in opening shop on Monday just to close it again on Tuesday… But the weather was perfect for roaming the streets and trying to capture the falling leaves of autumn. While tourists like me can’t get enough of the beautiful tall plane trees* along the roadsides, I can understand how the locals might feel differently. Taking photos of them and sighing at their beauty is a far cry from dealing with the mounds and mounds of drifting leaves everywhere. Though leaves are probably the least of the problem, judging from the copious mention of those trees on the Internet. See, for example, what The New Yorker has to say, in this charming article. 

Autumn leaves (of the plane tree)

Finding your way around Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées  easy once you’ve done it for a week or so… But initially, what with crazy French drivers, fast roads, unintelligible names on signs, and winding country lanes  with absolutely no lights and no landmarks… it’s, well, tricky. So the GPS that our hosts kindly lent us was a blessing, when it wasn’t driving us crazy. To an extent, it was our fault, we hadn't configured it properly. You have to be very specific in choosing certain options, such as whether you want to go the fastest way, or the scenic route, or avoid toll roads, etc. But some of it is, I think, the fault of the developers who wrote rather annoying texts for the various announcements... When we didn't do what the program instructed us to do, it responded in a very insulting way, just short of calling the driver a bloody idiot. But most of the time we didn't switch it off, because it does have its advantages. Like when you’re driving in thick fog, or it pitch black, and can’t see where the next bend in the road is.

Back home, I didn't think much of GPS devices, having seen more than once how they led drivers astray. This particular one was a TomTom, a name I can't help but finding amusing. Yes, the logo is very cute; but I can't help imagining an Israeli agent trying to promote a GPS device called TomTom, which, when written in Hebrew, would probably be mispronounced as Toumtoum, meaning "idiot". 

That was around 700 words, very briefly covering our first 3 days in France...

Stay tuned for the rest of our adventures.

Vive la France

Okay, so we took a BA flight from LHR to Toulouse.

The first thing you might notice about France is that they speak French. Even when you clearly have Ignorant Tourist emblazoned on your forehead. They just roll their eyes at you, managing to convey a French accent without uttering a word, and re-phrase in French.

The second thing you might notice is that it’s not England. Funny how you just cross an itsy-bitsy [unless you are swimming it] channel, et voila! Tout le monde parle Francais, et, autour de toi, tout semble different.

Once you’re away from Paris – the average tourist’s comfort zone – the names of the towns and villages become unpronounceable. Especially when the signs whizz by as you’re driving. Which reminds me. The car Avis gave us is an Opel Meriva, which I’d never heard of, mainly because it isn’t imported to Israel. Over to you, Hebrew speakers: Can you imagine an importer promoting a car model called Meriva?*

We took the A61 going south.

You know you’re in a European-Mediterranean region when…

-        The farm houses have solid wood, low-tech shutters; none of your flimsy white (lace optional) things and/or heavy drapes of British homes.

-        Some of said shutters are painted warm brown hues; others in a wide range of blues, greens and violet.

-        The public toilets are – unless you’re very lucky – squat toilets, which I strongly feel should have been phased out at the turn of the century. That’s the 20^th, not the 21^st, century.

-        The distances are in km, not miles (when they are displayed at all); fruit and veg are sold by the kilo, not the pound.

-        Pizza rules. McDonald, though present, is way behind.

Shutters on the houses in Foix

And so we reached the godforsaken little village of Belesta en Lauragais. Which doesn't even appear on most maps. And this is where the story of our south-of-France vacation begins. Stay tuned!

* “meriva” in Hebrew means a quarrel, a row.

Your Basic London Shopping Rules

(Substitute name of other major city as applicable)

-        You will always find the perfect T-shirt/leggings/ODIC (Other Desirable item of Clothing) in the last shop you go into, after you’ve already bought the okay-but-not-quite-what-you-wanted one in the previous shop.

-        You will always find your favorite perfume/moisturizer/ODIS (Other Desirable Item of Skincare) for a better price after you’ve already bought it elsewhere for what seemed, but no longer seems, like a reasonable price.

-        However, if you refrain from buying that item of clothing or skincare, on the assumption that it’s bound to be cheaper at the airport Duty Free shop, the airport shop will surely be out of it. Better luck next time, honey.

-        If you buy that expensive glossy mag, you’ll be seated on the plane next to the most amusing and friendly traveler you’ve ever met, and time will simply fly. Need I spell out what happens if you don’t buy the mag and have mistakenly packed your book in with the checked-in luggage?...     

It's the little differences - Take 2

Take 1 was in May 2010 – see http://nina-makes-tracks.blogspot.com/2010/05/its-little-differences.html. But each time I go to the UK, other things catch my eye.

You don’t have to be told that English homes are different than, say, Israeli ones. It’s obvious. One thing that always strikes me is the doors. All rooms have doors, and these doors are actually put to use! On a regular basis! You go into the lounge and shut the door behind you. You move to the dining room, and – unless you’re in and out setting the table or bringing in food – you shut the door. In Israel, only bedrooms and bathrooms have doors. And possibly the door leading to the small porch you use for storage, where  you keep that old gizmo that you can’t quite bring yourself to throw out. I assume all this door-shutting is very logical – to keep the warmth from escaping. But it‘s part of a different life style. Also, many doors still have knobs rather than handles. I’m sure handles are easier to handle than round, slippery knobs. But there you have it. Tradition.

Bedroom door with knob. Ignore mess inside :-)

 Dryers

You’d think, with English weather being so predictably unpredictable though strongly leaning towards the wet side, that dryers would be a staple. But not so. Apparently, dryers are a relatively modern invention; more modern than the washing machine, to be sure. And it hasn’t quite been accepted as the norm. I bet more families have dryers in sun-drenched Israel and Nevada than in Britain. Here, you hang up the laundry outside, weather and blackbirds permitting (you know, like the maid in Sing a Song of Sixpence), or else you drape it over anything drapable like the laundry horse and the radiators.  Then there’s always the hand-held hair-dryer to finish of the job, if push comes to shove. Which it often does.

Laundry drying on the radiator