Goodbye to the oldest daughter, off to spend a week with younger, more interesting people. Unfortunately she ended up having rather a fraught day, struggling with French trains. It’s funny, the SNCF website will happily sell you tickets for a quite complicated journey with some really quite tight connections, even though the chances of you making every train are probably no better than 50/50. So, her first connection of 18 minutes was looking quite comfortable until the 12:27 inexplicably became the 12:43, and she had to run like a madman to make her next train. No chance with the next one, though, which had left the station even before she got there. By the end of the day, the French railway network, and, indeed, French people themselves had begun to lose their appeal for her. I have a series of 36 texts over the course of the day becoming more and more irate, and with some quite forceful language that I’m certain she didn’t get from me. However, everything ended up happily, although several hours later than it should have in a well regulated world.
With some time to kill in Avignon, I went to see the much vaunted bridge. Well, what a swizz! It’s not even finished yet.
Rendezvoused (that word looks wrong) with my friends and then took the train down to Perpignan. There was a very friendly chap on the train, who looked somewhat the worse for wear for drink, and possibly something stronger, who took quite a liking to us. Not sure of everything he was saying but he seemed very happy, as were we when he got off after the first few stops. The train passed through Montpellier at 5pm, and loads of people got on, obviously anxious to get out of the place as soon as possible. A lovely young lady joined us at our table for four, and we had a long chat. She was an English teacher, originally from the Alsace region, who spoke fluent German as well as French. As a trainee teacher, she had been forced to come south to poorer areas to teach troubled youth. She showed us some of the homework she had to mark, with a shake of her head. Their English seemed better than our French, to be honest, but she still wasn’t happy. She is looking forward to marrying her Californian fiance (she met him at the Air Force base in Germany, where he was stationed, a couple of years ago. “Like Elvis!” I said. She looked blankly at me.) and teaching French in the US to adults who want to learn. And so it goes for the troubled yoof of the world. She was confused when I tried to explain I’d be coming back to Montpellier in a couple of weeks for my sabbatical. “Oh no” she said “you don’t want to do that”. Not encouraging.
Eventually we arrived at Perpignan late in the evening. Checked into our Airbnb and then spent some time trying to find the charming quaint heart of the city. Giving up after an hour, we went into the first restaurant we got to which turned out to be a great find. The waitress was a class above other French waitresses we’ve met. Whereas the others have been proud only to speak French, she could also speak Spanish and Catalan, as well as no English. Luckily there was another customer there, obviously a regular, who helped translate the French/African/Spanish/Asian fusion menu to our satisfaction, and we had a lovely meal.
Even better was that, though my meal contained significant amounts of The Devil’s Vegetable (celery), it was conveniently placed on the side of the bowl, so easily avoided. The cooking pot is called marmite, and that white stuff in the middle is tofu.