A passionate weekend with Doris

It's taken me 50 years to do it but I can now say I am a true kiwi traveler! I've always wondered what it would be like to just park up by the side of the river/sea in your little kombi van, open up a bottle of wine and be completely self sufficient. Well over the last weekend I fulfilled this joint dream with a fellow 50 celebrant and long time ami anglais Phil.I wont bore you with all the details of perfect camping spots, victorious backgammon championships and international 'baby-foot'(table football) tournaments (the local joint french/irish team punished us in the final, must have been the 4 guinness beforehand that cramped our style). All need to say is you really must do it before you say 'ah I'm too old for all that!'. We shared 3 great nights with Lilly (aka Doris) a rather sexy French conversion, who purred along at 80km without even a hint of trouble. Thanks for this great weekend go to Phil and Heather at Sunflower Campers www.sunflowercampers.com who bent over backwards to help fulfill our dream. I think the photos speak louder than words.

beer o'clock

The one thing about traveling is that it is always beer o'clock. 9 in the morning in France is 7pm in New Zealand ...so it's beer o'clock eh?

It has taken us 2 weeks of intense Language School to establish our position in the main square and call it our own. As true students we are making sure our beer intake more than matches our knowledge intake.

parking, canoeing and people watching!

Basically the French cannot park! Where we live in Tours we watch from our balcony with amusement as every evening the French hustle and bustle and try and fit their 'petite' cars into spaces designed for trucks! The record stands at 8 movements to turn into a simple angle park. Why can't the french park? Because the french enjoy doing everything the hard way and then when it's really too hard because they have slotted their car in way over to the drivers side and realised they can't actually get out of the car, they simply shrug their little french shoulders, sigh a little 'merde' back out and drive away!

Two of our fav things so far? Sitting in Le Place Plumereau drinking a couple of 'cold' beers with a name that sounds like 'phlegm' and watching the monde go round! And; taking a canoe down Le Cher, paddling under a chateau and catching the train back home just in time to sit in Le Place Plumereau to drink phlegm and watch etc etc....

Je suis tres fatigue mais...

I'm sure French wasn't this hard at school...oh that's right I was always asleep in class!
There are only 3 students in our class, one is Japanese, says nothing and one is Judi so I have to stay alert all the time!
I discovered a new tense today that I didn't even know existed...Conditionnel! It's for when you want to be nice to someone, so that's where I've been going wrong.
Oh well I could always have another small French meringue!

Looking out the window

My lasting words as I walked out the gates of Esher College in England for the last time some 33 years ago were...'well that's it, I will never do another exam ever again in my life'. Never say never. Tomorrow I embark upon a new educational foray and this time specialising in a subject that I was quite frankly, hopeless in at school...French.

We arrived at the language school in Tours on Friday after dropping off the trusty Peugeot that has been our traveling companion for the last month or so. There's a real sense of freedom now not being bound by the restraints of french car parking regulations, GPS commands (or lack of them at vital times) and relationship straining trips around the Arc de Triomphe (twice in one go).

I've attached the view from our apartment window which I hope will be as inspirational as the following story.

There was an employee who was always gazing out the window. When the boss was questioned by the other disgruntled workers why this guy got paid the same wage as them but didn't do anything, he replied; "One day that guy came up with an idea when he was looking out that window that made this company millions of dollars. What's your idea then?"

Creative people are invariably critised by the paper shufflers and report writers for being lazy and unproductive when in fact they need the time to think and the environment to be inspired. This place is pretty inspiring and hopefully will make up for my lack of skill at my chosen subject or I could simply carry on looking out the window.

Mr Bean

So here we are after 4 weeks in France and I am finally adding my experiences! So the first restaurant we went to – in Vichy I think – having trudged all over town looking for the perfect place to eat by a river, we finally found it and starving from all the trudging I was delighted to see steak on the menu! Having proudly ordered using my ‘broken french’ I settled back content in the knowledge I’d be eating well tonight. Ok so if you have seen Mr Bean www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qcs0tnx9ik – it totally gives you a picture of what happened next!!!

Out came my much-desired steak and to my horror I was presented with a plate of pasty, cold and absolutely raw mince with a raw egg on top to boot!!! My face was a reflection of Mr Bean’s when he realised what he had ordered and he stuffed his into every container on the table and even in someone’s handbag – but that option wasn’t open to me. I just had to grimace, suck it in and stuff it in my mouth. I am not one to enjoy a steak that runs around the plate on it’s own oozing red fluids so eating raw cow was going to be a real deal effort! However with much snapping of the camera from Rick I managed that first mouthful and to my surprise it was actually not bad!! Tepid, not cold, no oozing of fluids and the raw runny egg yolk gave it a bearable flavour. My welcome to France!