Bordeaux, Limousin and adieu to France

Bordeaux

Accommodation

I stayed in a modern hostel in Bordeaux that had excellent facilities and all of the character of a dentist's waiting room. Established as part of a government-sponsored initiative it had the dead hand of Stalinist design and governance. No access to the dorms between 10:00am and 4:00pm - ie one must be out of bed at a sensible hour. And a curfew after 2:00am to prevent the kiddies from getting into too much trouble. Trouble or fun - depending on your outlook - was close at hand. The hostel with the most good intentions is located next to Bordeaux's small red-light district. Inside, the youths (of youth hostel fame) are carefully and ethically governed. Across the road, "Live girls strip naked", "Hot ladies waiting for you" and "Pierre's Peep-show" are available all the way up to the curfew time of 2:00am and beyond.

On check-in the pleasant lady at the desk explained that breakfast commenced at 7:30am and ended at 9:30am. Seeing he changing contours of my face she enquired if 7:30am was too late and suggested they could perhaps organise an earlier breakfast. Quite unnecessary i assured her. I figured enquiring after a later breakfast would be fruitless.

I never met my room companion the first nite as he arrived in after i had dozed off. No doubt he was enjoying the pre-curfew pleasures of Saucy Sue across the street. The second evening i arrived apres-midnite to discover that my dorm had been changed during the day. So i had to pack all my stuff in dorm 301 and move it two doors down to dorm 303 where two guys were already sleeping. The reason for the move was obscure, particularly as dorm 301 had three empty beds after i moved out. In moving i endeavoured not to wake the two sleepers in dorm 303. This courtesy was not reciprocated at 6:30 am by said sleepers. Having arisen at an ungodly hour - that even preceded breakfast - they clattered around the dorm for an hour thereafter, killing time until said brekkie commenced. In those sixty minutes each of them left and re-entered the dorm on a dozen occasions. Seeing as the shower and toilet were en suite this love me/love me not relationship with the dorm was inexplicable. Its fair to say that if two whippets and a badger had awakened to find each other in the dorm they would have caused less commotion.

Sights and Activities

During my stay I went to see the Musee D´Aquitaine which has excellent displays on life in Acquitaine and the Dordogne region from prehistoric times to modern days. Numerous remains of Cromagnon and Neanderthal men were displayed as well as reproductions of cave paintings which are not on view to the public due to their delicate nature. I also tripped to the Cathedral St Andree where Eleanor of Acquitaine married Louis VII of France. Following an annulment she married Henry Plantagenet who later became Henry II of England, thereby giving rise to the Anglo-Norman claim to Acquitaine. Bordeaux's status as a territory of the English crown continued until the end of the Hundred Years War in the fifteenth century. Although given the number of English ex-pats settled in Acquitaine, Limousin and the Dordogne one could be forgiven for thinking a more peaceful reversal of said conflict is well under way.

On day two i visited a food market in Bordeaux. The market had numerous speciality stalls with top class produce - butchers, fishmongers, cheesemakers, boulangeries, fruit and vegetable stands. Many of the butchers were in the process of skinning rabbits or plucking chickens as they awaited their next customer. On many butcher's stands the still-furry rabbits sit next to unplucked pigeons. Skinned rabbits are generally sold with livers and kidneys intact, and the pigeons and chickens often come with heads still attached. There was a primary school outing to the market with teachers instructing the kids on the various produce. A number of the kids were blindfolded and entreated to identify foods by smell. Not much fun to be had at the stalls where the rabbits were being gutted.

Limousin

Limousin is small-town, rural France. I was visiting friends from home who had moved there last year. At this time of year Limousin is drenched in colour - green pastures and woodlands of golden yellows and flaming reds. It is dotted with tiny man-made lakes - virtually every farm in the area i visited has one. A legacy of the post-WWII years when the government provided grants to restore decimated water supplies. The countryside bears fruits of all sorts - apples, plums, peaches, cherries, grapes etc. On suitable days the locals forage in the woods with buckets for wild ceps (mushrooms).

My hosts reside on a small patch of farmland in the countryside. It supports two horses - but only just! There is marginally enough grazing - however, this razor-thin margin gives rise to difficulty due to a fact that had hitherto evaded my knowledge: a horse will not eat grass that lies within a yard (or more) from where it or another horse recently - how shall i put this delicately - took a crap. Hats off to the fine culinary instincts of the horse - no doubt you agree that it is a rather discerning and sanitary beast. On any sizeable piece of ground this equine eccentricity would be an irrelevance. When dealing with razor-thin grazing margins this sensibility presents a serious difficulty. The more the horses crap, the less they have to eat. So each morning, to the amusement (and bemusement) of the local farmers, my friend can be seen heading down to the fields with a wheelbarrow and spade to collect the horses' crap. On the upside, said crap is put to good use and he assures me that he had a most excellent crop of tomatoes this year. Mmmmmmm.

On the final afternoon of my stay we took out my friend´s horse and cart for a jaunt through the surrounding countryside - no doubt he was hoping that Primrose would discharge its bowel movements far from home. I proved myself to be a most excellent horseman (an assertion my friend is unable to challenge in this forum!). While out and about we encountered "1922", an elderly lady in ancient clothing and a tea-cosy hat. Of slight stature, hunched and sporting a walking-stick, she is known locally for rambling the by-roads. A doctor once informed her that she should get more exercise and so, taking his advice to heart, she has been walking ten miles of countryside everyday since. One day while driving home from the village my friend encountered 1922 walking in the rain so he kindly offered her a lift home. This was the first and last occasion of such an offer. What appears to be less well known locally is that 1922 smells worse than the horses' manure.

The hospitality provided by my hosts was exemplary and I was never once asked to visit the fields with the wheelbarrow and spade. Unlike my unfortunate host the only thing i collected from the fields was some chestnuts we roasted to accompany the beer, which was generously free-flowing. Excellent food was also provided, even to the extent of a much-appreciated box of sandwiches and biscuits when i finally left for the train. It was a change of pace from the larger towns and a relaxing few days for which i am most grateful.

On my final nite in Limousin we had a few beers with my friends' Dutch neighbours. After they departed we continued with a few more. Apres-midnite as we prepared to retire my friend reminded me that i had to be out of bed at 8:30am in the morning and he promised helpfully to intervene if i failed to appear at the appointed hour. Intervention was deemed necessary due to my habit of first emerging from my room each day for lunch. At 8:30am the following morning my alarm bell rang. I neutralised it, soaked up the painful brightness through my cobwebbed eyes and rolled over for a moment to contemplate the unbearable lightness of being. At 8:31am my host briefly opened the bedroom door and released an excessively energetic German Hunting Dog into my room. The ferocious little beastie had me licked and pawed to a screaming, fully awakened state in 30 seconds.

Onward to Spain

The trip from my little part of Limousin to San Sebastian in the Basque Country would take eight and a half hours by train. Much of this time was soaked up waiting for connectioning trains. Arrival at the border-crossing at Irun necessitated yet another change of train. Having finally begun to acclimatise to the regular use of pigeon French i had utterly forgotten to prepare my brain for Spanish immersion. So on my first encounter with a Spanish official-type person - at the ticket desk at Irun - i ended up using a melange of French, Spanish, English and gestures to get by:

Me: Bon Soiree Monsieur. Oh.. em...i mean Hola. Avez-vous une... Damn. I mean Hablo Anglais Senor?

Humourless ticket official: No.

Me: Non? Marvellous.

The language difficulty was exacerbated on arrival in San Sebastian. My minuscule Spanish vocabularly- Hola, Hablo Anglais and uno cerveza por favora- stood as a giant monument to the unfathomed depths of my ignorance of the Basque language. Suffice it to say, Ez dakit euskaraz ondo hitz egitea. Gero.

Paris

Paris

Accommodation

My final task in Bruges was to arrange accommodation for Paris. Having left this to the morning of departure the budget options were slim. It was a straight choice between some down-at-heel "hotels" or the Peace & Love Hostel. Peace & Love is described in my guide book as a "modern day hippy hangout" which is "rather chaotically run." The Hostel's own blurb on hostelworld.com reads "Peace & Love is a hostel you'll want to stay at, if you are the kind of person who wants to party, drink and be merry!! DO NOT COME HERE IF YOU ARE A SLEEPER!!" Its fair to say that i enjoy a jar and a few tunes, but i am also somewhat fond of my sleep. In view of the alternatives i booked in for three nites.

On arrival at Peace & Love i was informed they had no bed for the first nite, but could offer a mattress on the floor and a bed for the following two nites. As my options were slimmer than a model in a vomitarium i accepted. My mattress was partly tucked under a double bunk in a small room. My room-mates were an Aussie girl and a Canuck. The Canuck had got the same spiel re overbooking the previous evening and had just been promoted from mattress to bed. Coincidentally, when i was promoted to bed the following day, a Costa Rican fellow was told that they had in error overbooked that nite and would he be happy on the mattress?!

Peace & Love Bar

The first evening i headed to the Eiffel Tower, L'Arc De Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees. Circa 10:15 i headed to the Peace & Love bar for a nitecap. Happily for a destitute backpacker, it was Happy Hour. Sitting at the counter i fell into conversation with a fellow in a leather jacket and jeans - clearly not backpacker. He was an American living in Paris and the Peace & Love apparently has the best Happy Hour in town. Le American worked in website design and did some lecturing. However his true interest was "free energy". An intriguing prospect, so i quizzed him a little. Apparently, if you place one magnet inside a larger one it will spin continuously, propelled by the electromagnetic fields. The small magnet can act as a sort of turbine and generate "free energy". Le American is not powering his house on this basis nor has he developed a prototype but is certain that "free energy" is the next big thing. It seemed a little wacky but he was enthusiastic and engaging. We moved on briefly to my travel plans, which he informed me were pointless - as neither the Middle East nor Iran will be there six months from now. World War III will have kicked off long before then, its advent brought closer by the Republicans losing the elections the nite before. Okey-dokey then. Time to move the conversation on a little i thought.

A passing reference to 9/11 led to Le American asking if i believed all that "horsehit". Quelle manure du cheval is this i wondered. That "19 Arabs" could organise all of that? No, no, no my friends. Never happened. Stay with me here. The Twin Towers fell to the ground in 8 point something seconds. This apparently would contravene the law of gravity. Unless. Unless there was a bomb on the fifty-sixth storey of each building. Did you know that George Bush's brother - not Jeb mind, but another one - was in charge of security at the Twin Towers on 9/11. Yep. And Dick Cheney ordered the US Air Force to stand down over NY and Washington the day before the attack. The Pentagon? No plane. There never was. It was a bomb. And so it continued engagingly and interestingly ever deeper into the world of conspiracy, paranoia and the Bilderberg Group.

The Peace & Love bar closes at 2:00am each evening - so it says in the Guide Book, on the website and on the sign behind the bar. Circa 2:15 i was nursing the end of a pint, chatting to the barmaid who had made a feeble - by Irish standards - suggestion that i finish up and clear off. Then the fuzz pulled up outside. "Quick, you, into the kitchen." In time honoured tradition i grabbed my pint and pegged it down stairs where one or two others were in late nite chat mode. A very unamused barmaid emerged from upstairs shortly after. Les gendarmes were unimpressed. Particularly unimpressed with the one who they had seen grabbing his drink and pegging it. This time i was ordered to rooms in a more robust fashion. Fair enuff.

Modern Art

The following morning i headed to the Pompidou Centre of Modern Art. I can never quite settle my attitude to modern art. Just as i begin to find it interesting, interactive and thought provoking i come across a load of tosh that puts my line of thought into reverse. Mostly so it went at the Pompidou Centre. Having strolled around the exhibits for a couple of hours i returned to one near the entrance. It is an installation designed to allow you observe the other visitors as they view the exhibits. It is comprised of a number of strategically placed, rudimentary couches. You are invited to sit and watch. I was nursing a slightly sore head - asking for "whatever is the cheapest thing you have on tap" the nite before probably contributed - and was feeling quite tired after my exertions. So i went to the couch at the rear and lay down for a moment. And passed out. Two hours later i awoke, refreshed and ready for a spot of late lunch. And so i made my first profound contribution to the arts. With modern art everyone can have a go.

Food

On day three i visited Versailles. All very lavish and beautiful. Afterwards i decided to budget-bust and get some reasonably decent grub and vino. My most used implement so far has been my spork. That's a red, plastic implement with a spoon at one end and a fork at the other. The fork end has a serrated edge for cutting. It is fantastic for anything that costs less than a couple of euro and which can be eaten on a park bench - yoghurt, kiwis etc. But now for a restaurant. Le Chartier has been in business since 1905. It specialises in collective seating and mismatched furniture. The Maitre D's would not look out of place doing door at Buskers - shaven heads, beefy and dark suits. I ended up sitting opposite a Japanese gent from Nagoya and next to two Parisian dames in their sixties. The waiter was satisfyingly surly. Apparently the flash fried steak is a house speciality. It must really be flash-fried as Surly delivered it less than 120 seconds later. The atmosphere was rare and price was low. The two Parisian dames were friends who met there once every couple of months. They had very little English and no Gaelige. But we mustered an amusing conversation. They proposed that French girls were n0t really that attractive and that American girls are much better looking. I was appalled and rallied to the flag of French femaledom. We managed eventually to overcome our linguistic differences and arrive at a point of agreement - Swedish birds are stunning.

Hostel Bar - Take 2

On return to Peace & Love, a lovely warm half-bottle of Bordeaux inside, i found the Canuck, la Aussie and Msr Costa Rican in situ. La Aussie proposed a jar and we headed to the bar. We fell into conversation with some Latvians and a game of Jenga broke out. I decided to the leave the field and headed to the bar where i met a Latvian-American, former pro ice-hockey player. He was cycling from Madrid to Riga, camping in fields along the way. The first the farmers knew of his stay was on discovery of a flattened square of grass in the morning - no word on the Europe-wide surge in crop circles (or squares). The nite before he had slept on a bench by the canal as there was no where else - within budget - to be had. An interesting fellow. There was a different barmaid on duty - she was from Pennsylvania. We chatted until 1:20 when she set about clearing the bar. I thought she taking the Michael but became apparent she was intent on having us out by 1:30. So i pointed to the sign that said 2:00am and to the guide book and appealed for reason. New rules. Apparently some Irish guy got caught on premises after hours by les gendarmes a few nites before and the owners of Peace & Love had decreed that in future everyone should be out by 1:30. I scuttled off quietly to my room.

Accomodation - Take 2
I had only booked the Peace & Love for three nites and they had no further availability at short notice - not even on the ever popular emergency mattress. One English lad had slept on the kitchen floor the nite before. Mercifully i was not offered the kitchen floor. So i ended up moving to the rather joyless Hotel San Sebastian. On arrival i went to drop my bag in the room before heading off to see more sights. The room was one which in most hotels would host a single bed. There were four beds crammed together - literally together - in this space. Only one bed seemed to be occupied. On the locker alongside was a half-full can of Kronenberg, a brimming over ashtray and an empty packet of Marlboro. Auspicious totems i figured. I ended up sharing the room with an Indonesian girl, a bloke from El Salvador and an Aussie girl. All proved rather agreeable company and the totems turned out to be the legacy of previous incumbents. Nice! However, clean sheets in Paris for €16 has to be a bargain, albeit a dreary bargain.

Food - Take 2

I spent the penultimate evening in Montmartre. Having seen the Basilica i wandered down through the warren of side streets and wandered into a local brasserie. There were mismatched tables, menus en Francais, old-school jazz music and a dense cloud of blue smoke. I said Bon Soiree to my waitress. She smiled, took it that i spoke French and ran me through the menu at light speed explaining each dish in seemingly intricate detail. Unable to stop her at the outset it seemed inappropriate to inform her half way through that i hadn't a rats what she was saying. So i nodded and proferred "Ah, qui" whenever her intonation suggested a question mark. And at the end i plumped for the Camette du Barbarie. In my mind the word Barbary (ie?) has a number of associations. I understand it has been prefixed to pirates of a certain origin and also that it describes a species of wild ape. Finally, and uncertainly i associate it with duck. So i sipped my vin rouge, settled into the blanket of blue haze and waited to discover if i was to be treated to pirate, ape or duck. Mercifully it was duck and it was fab. That and a demi bouteille of vin rouge for €16. Well outside my daily budget but a bargain nonetheless.

I am partial to the odd (borrowed) cigarette to accompany the odd jar. This foible i intended to relinquish on tour. France is not the place to quit smoking. It seems that everyone here smokes. Each and every restaurant and bar is bathed in a soft, blue fog. Coming from smokingbanland it takes time to adjust. In the restaurants i visited almost every patron chain-smoked up to the moment their green salad was placed under their nose. Having delivered the entree the waiter typically retires to the bar counter and fires up a cig with the other staff. On completion of the green salad further cigarettes will be burned through until arrival of the main course. On one occassion a couple about to sit next to me enquired through the haze whether i minded if they smoked. It seemed pointless to demur.

La Rochelle

I settled on stopping in this coastal town for a nite to break my progression Southward and to get some sea air. Principally i intended to visit Les Tours, three towers that had once protected the harbour from pirate or foreign attack and had close associations with Cardinal Richelieu. On arrival on Sunday evening i discovered that Les Tour were closed on Monday. Which is in keeping with the rest of my French experience: a torturous metro journey in Paris had led me to the closed Catacombs on Saturday. A couple of days later i arrived on a Tuesday at the closed Bell-tower in Bordeaux. The 35-hour working week has gone nuts. The rest of La Rochelle is pretty but - outside of the summer season - dull. Which is dangerously close to being pretty dull. The signal memory i will retain is the response of a French barman in an Irish bar when i enquired if he knew the result of the Liverpool - Arse game earlier in the day. "Le Arsenal gagner. Em... em ... how you say ... em... trois zero?" You said it all dude. Whiskey please.

On so its on to Bordeaux and Limousin .....

It begins...

Welcome all to the diary of a Langer on Tour. Hopefully, at some stage i will manage to get photos on here but for the moment you are stuck with my musings. Also, due to the infernal azerty keyboard in la Françe, you may have to overlook a number of spelling errors.

Please feel free to e-mail me at shanek25@eircom.net, its great to get the news from home. Please also feel free to pass this link on to anyone else who might be so mind-numbingly bored at work that they might also consider a read. If you have any tips on places i should visit or see in any of the areas i am visiting please do not be shy with the recommendations. The guide book i purchased last week covers the entire Medditeranean and is not very detailed.

And so to the blog....


The Dam

My first three days of freedom were spent along the canals of Amsterdam. You may or may not have visited. For those of you that have not, let me tell you that it is a city filled with danger. First there are the bicylcles. They obey no rules of road or footpath. A tinkle of a bell is apparently sufficient legal warning that you are about to be run over. Then there are the trams (or as one young lady with a Dublin accent shouted, "Look, they got a Luas too!") with their own distinctive "You are about to die" bell. Also watch out for scooters, buses, rickshaws and the regular traffic, which all meld into one melange of late nite terror. If the barges could leave the canals they too would be singularly bent on pedestrian destruction.

The first two nites in Amsterdam i spent in the company of a good friend. My final afternoon was intended for figuring out how and when i was going to get to Paris. Staying in mo leaba until circa 2:00pm did not assist. That Liverpool were playing Reading on the box at at 4:00pm that afternoon assured nothing useful would be accomplished. I took to a small bar not far from the hotel and settled in with a beer. It was soon apparent that there were 7-8 Northern lads sitting at a table overlooking mine. They were wataching the Scum (Man Yoo) game. They were talking loud - the bar was loud - and in strained, harsh Norn Iron tones. Midway through the first half one of them enquired loudly if the others remembered "that poor wee Catholic bastard" that got killed a few years back. A few nods of acknowledgement and some guffaws. The next snatched bit of conversation involved how one of the guys had been charged with possesion of a stanley knife, but not to worry as "the fuckers will never make it stick."

At that point i put my head down and noticed my People's Republic of Cork t-shirt. It was five minutes from half-time and as soon as that whistle blew, so did i. Who needs death by bicycle, scooter, tram, bus or car when Ryanair fly from Belfast.

Brugges

Having spent Saturday afternoon eluding the Shankhill Butchers, on Sunday i needed to figure out where to head next. A twenty minute google search at the train station threw up Brugges. Its a pretty wee place - cobbled streets, cathedrals and canals - and a great contrast from the Dam. All in all a good place to take the missus or the folks for a weekend. Not a great place for a party - the town does not posses a single niteclub. Not that i was bothered. Following the assault on the senses that is Amsterdam, Brugges was custom designed for my requirements.

Brugges may not have a nite-club but it does have numerous bars. The reputation of Belgian beer needs no embellishment. Suffice it to say that it is justified. My first nite was spent in a local bar drinking one or two very reasonably priced Hoegaarden (€1.20 for a half pint) and watching FC Brugges get spanked on the box by a team i have never heard of. The locals were unimpressed - with the football.

An interesting (perhaps) aside is that according to a local, Brugges is the most expensive place in Flanders to take a leak au natural. If you are caught peeing outside late at nite the fine is €152 (or approximately €750 per litre). Given the vast quantities of Belgian beer in continuous circulation and the fact that Brugges has only one public toilet, this could be considered steep. Please note that the aforementioned public toilet closes at 6:00pm as i discovered to my cost (not financial) after a long leg-crossed journey to find it.

The Bauhus Hostel in the Brugges was my first hostel experience on this trip. I opted for a single room to ease myself into a new lifestyle. There were a few notable adjustments from the four-star hotel in Amsterdam:

1. The walls were paper thin. I was treated to a late, loud, running conversation between at least two and perhaps three (hundered?!) Spanish girls in the room next door. This was topped by an even later, louder and longer conversation between three Italian lads in the room on the otherside.

2. Cold shower. Nuff said. It was cold. Freezing, ice cold.

3. There were holes in the floor, ceiling and skirting. Images of furry little rodents haunted my sleep.

The Holy Blood

One final note on Brugges for all you Da Vinci Code people. The Church of the Precious Blood in Brugges has the real thing. The Blood of Christ. No jokes. Every day for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening you are invited to "venerate" the Holy Blood (for a small donation). Apparently the drops of blood were brought back from the crusades by a local man. We are not told how he came by them. It might have been the black market in Danascus. The relic has been defended and promoted by the Bortherhood of the Precious Blood ever since (i have seen photos of them - its all very Monthy Python.

I went along. A small gold encrusted vial is placed on a red velvet cushion at a side alter of the church. A solemn looking priest prays over it for the entire time it is exhibited. I observed the multitude of signs in six languages (and recorded message on the church speaker system - again in six languages) to make a donation before "venerating" the relic. To be fair, and without wishing to offend any sensibilities, its a mouldy piece of cloth inside a gold encrusted glass vial. I hope the Brotherhood doesn't come to get me.

Onwards to Paris and the first nite in a shared hostel dorm. Woooo, exciting...