Friday, 17 March 2017 to Thursday, 23 March 2017
The clock ticked… ticked… ticked… oh so slowly… past midnight, it was Friday morning and we were still camped out in the departures hall at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. After trying different positions on different chairs in different areas of the airport we found an area with reasonably soft chairs. We soon enough however found out that these chairs were built to sit on, definitely not to sleep on, so we sat. But, more importantly, there were power points. We could now at least power up all our devices with Ipads and Iphones standing in line to get an electricity feed.

And so it was, with a powered up Ipad, that I started watching a movie called Patriot Games starring a young Harrison Ford. It was around 03:30 and halfway through the movie when my eyes popped a few wheelies and that’s when I decided to stop watching and try and get some shuteye. I managed to get a solid 53 minutes of sleep all night, Adri only managed about 51. By the time I woke up the airport was also starting to wake up, but only just.

There was a guy sitting opposite us, he kept on rummaging through his bag, again and again… he was clearly looking for something that wasn’t there. He then produced some gummy bears which he devoured in quick time. After this short but intense gelatin massacre the rummaging continued. Two dogs with their policemen walked past and this rummaging guy approached them. A heated debate ensued and they decided not to entertain him and walked off. He returned to his seat across the way from us in a huff. I could only imagine that this guy lost something, probably imagining it was stolen and wanted the policemen to help him find it, or his mind.

Eventually, what felt like a cluster of eternities, it was time to move into the departures hall proper, and yes, we had to go through security… again… this was pissing me off no end, or maybe I was just tired. Two laptops out, each on their own tray, two Ipads out, each on their own tray, another tray for my iphone, watch, belt and jacket, another one for my carryon bag whose contents were by now on display for everyone to see. Adri was lucky, she had only two trays… and so our train of trays chugged through the x-ray machine, fortunately without incident.

We passed by a perfumery, Adri made use of a tester and urged me to do the same. Was I smelling that bad, but no, it was only as a precautionary measure, she said. Adri queried why I never use after shave/au de cologne and prefer to use only antiperspirant, but the reason escaped me for the moment. I remember having probably 15 bottles of the stuff in my cupboard, mostly unused. It was 15 minutes later that I remembered the reason when I started sneezing uncontrollably… Oh yes, hay fever!

Coffee, we needed coffee, so we sat ourselves down at Bert’s. I could not help but wonder aloud as to what happened to the preceding “Jou”, but either way, I felt right at home. Adri got us two huge Americanos which shocked the system into something vaguely familiar… oh yes, consciousness. And this was when it pleasantly hit me, I had zipped up my boots and was finally back to my roots.

The flight on Air France to Montpellier was pleasant, but with no breakfast. Coffee and a puny little sweet cake measuring 5x3x2cm were served up, I kid you not. It’s not like I was hungry, I just expected maybe at least a mini baguette with fromage et jambon (cheese and ham). But no, rien (nothing).

Arriving at Montpelier airport we were rather delighted to be reunited with our luggage, we were not sure whether there was sufficient time to transfer those puppies at the Belgrade airport with our short transit time there. We needn’t have worried.

Karine, our new landlady, picked us up from the airport and dropped us off at the railway station. We had the option of taking the train to Séte or wait for her to pick us up after work to take us to our new home. We opted for the latter; we wanted to give Montpellier a cursory glance.

And by the way, how lucky could we get! We learnt that Karine is a teacher, and an English one at that, her English is near flawless! And

apart from her excellent English, she’s a really nice lass as well. She and her husband, who is an architect, have a son of 5 years who does Capoeira. Yea, me neither, but I subsequently found out that Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics and music. Check it out below.

From the train station we walked up to the square called Place de la Comédie and the adjacent Esplanade Charles de Gaulle Park. We then wandered up and down the lovely little streets and alleyways that Didier so enthusiastically told us about previously. We now understood his enthusiasm for Montpellier.

 

Adri was in dire need of a pain au chocolate and found one to her liking at one of the many boulangeries (bakeries) along our way.

 

 

 

 

It was a while later that we shared a steak Americain baguette. This essentially consists of a number of beef burger patties arranged along the length of a baguette’s spine with chips stuck in its belly, overflowing onto the tin foil it comes wrapped in. This was washed down with a Kronenbourg lager which made life even better.

We still had in excess of an hour to kill and we were now starting to feel the effects of the error in our ways, tiredness crept up on us like a thief in the darkest of nights. We went back to the park, claimed a piece of real estate and passed out on the grass like hobos. Many others were doing the same, yet others were having a picnic, some were reading and some were just sitting, enjoying the early summer sun. Anyways, I was uit soos ‘n kers (out like a candle) for at least 20 minutes, Adri managed about 30.

A hobo-like figure passed by, pissed as a coot, egging his supposed dog on to follow him. The dog did not look keen to and trotted far abreast or behind him, he was never with him. I think the dog was too embarrassed to be associated with his supposed boss.

On the way back to the train station there were a few unsavory characters on the sidewalk begging. The message on the cardboard card placed next to their begging bowl read “For weed”. At least they were honest.

At 14:45 Karine picked us up and delivered us to our new home in Séte about 25km away. The apartment is on the first floor of the building and consists of a kitchen, separate lounge area, small bedroom, small shower and a separate small toilet, all in all, a small but comfortable apartment.

We dumped everything, said our goodbyes to Karine and walked down to the Monoprix supermarket 10 minutes away. We already miss having a supermarket down below in the same building, as we had in Budva, how convenient was that. We got away with some startup stuff, and would you believe, I saw a tin of Quality Street chocolates! Will definitely spoil myself with a tin of that sometime!

At the cash-out counter we were waiting for the plastic bags to come out, there were none. We had to buy paper bags at €0.09 per bag, now this is environmentally friendly. You will still see some plastic bags around but those are good quality ones that people tend to reuse. But it begs the question, should all plastic bags not be banned everywhere? A while ago Sky News joined the fight against plastic bags when they launched their Sky Ocean Rescue initiative. Read more about it here and check the short video below to find out how scary plastic really is.

Supper was a small baguette, duck pâté, brie and a lovely little white wine. We have now been without sleep for 36 hours and there was no discussion, after supper we hit the deck.

We slept for 12 hours straight… we were exhausted. The mattress was not up to scratch, way too soft and one seems to slip and slide to the middle all time. During the day we turned that puppy over to check whether that would make a difference, I somehow doubt it, but we’ll see. And by the way, when we turned that mattress over we noticed that it was not at all old, probably just too soft a mattress.

There are a number of canals that crisscross Séte and we went for a walk along the main one, not too far from our new home. We checked out some restaurants and then found what we were actually looking for, a boulangerie (bakery), of which there are plenty around town. We bought a wheat type baguette which went so well with salami, fried eggs, Emmental cheese and fried onions for a late breakfast. Man, that was good.

Adri started rearranging the place to fit in with her liking while I started watching rugby. First up was Italy versus Scotland, a game Italy easily lost, no surprises there…

Then France, my cur

rent country of residence, was up against Wales. The game was mostly forgettable and on full-time Wales was leading 18-13 when France was awarded a penalty on the five metre line of Wales. And this is where the game turned bizarre. France chose a scrum. After Wales infringed in a few reset scrums a Wales player was yellow carded. The scrum continued in various guises and the game went on beyond the 90 minute mark, 10 minutes past normal time.

Then, one of the Wales players complained he was bitten. “94 Minutes and we’re looking for a bite…” the commentator said, it sounded like he was searching for a snack. The replay found no clear evidence of a bite, apparently it may have been self inflicted, so the game continued. Scrum upon scrum followed, each scrum, followed by yet another penalty upon penalty. Finally, on 99 minutes and 55 seconds, France scored their long awaited try. The score was now locked at 20-20 but after a successful conversion past the 100 minute mark, France finally won 20-18… what a finish!

Then it was Ireland against England and by now you would know that I would support Ireland in such a matchup. Ireland won a hard fought match, once again denying a team to get to 19 consecutive wins, as they did to New Zealand last year. The final score was 13-9.

I was not really planning on watching rugby today so obviously there was no beer in the house. Adri improvised, she brought me snackies made up of leftovers from our trip from Budva. There were chips, peanuts and also corn balls that looked like peanuts. This all was accompanied by a glass of white wine, a gift from Karine, which was topped up a number of times. This was the first time ever that I had wine with rugby, and it had nothing to do with the fact that we were now in France, it’s just that there was no damn beer around! You know what they say; desperate times call for desperate measures.

We’ve been in France now for two days and already we’ve leant not to come between a Frenchman and his store closing. When it’s time, it’s time, they get downright grumpy if you don’t hurry your ass and get the hell out of there when its closing time. On Thursday evening at the little Relay Supermarket at the airport I was made to understand that if I paid for what I had in my hands, that was okay, but no more, else I risked leaving empty-handed. Today we walked into a small supermarket and all of a sudden the owner wanted to close. He basically ushered us out of there as if we were a nuisance, those roller doors came down, nearly took the skin off my heel. Weird man, but I guess we’ll get used to it.

And speaking about closing time, take a listen to Leonard Cohen’s take on it. And by the way, don’t you just love that line “And the Johnny Walker wisdom’s running high”.

Sunday Adri got out of bed just after 07:00, she was awake and could not take this sliding lying down, she had to get to level ground. A short while later I received a coffee in the middle of that bed and soon afterwards another. Adri was trying to get me to wake up; she wanted to go for a walk.

But first, I fired off an email to Karine. I so do hate complaining but sometimes it is called for, and this time that mattress called out loud and clear.

We took a walk into town to the Halles, the fresh produce market a few hundred metres away. Adri’s mouth started watering and she fed that watering-can with all the samples that were on offer at the various stalls. Here one can buy fresh veggies, fresh meat, fresh bread, cheese, olives, wine, beer… and everything else. We bought a tielle – a specialty from Séte – which is essentially a squid pie. The tielle have much of a tomato sardine taste to it, pretty good, not crazy good, but pretty good.

We stopped at a boulangerie and I ordered “Une pain au chocolat, s’il vous plait” (One pain au chocolate, please). I somehow received what I ordered, and it was delicious.

We crossed the first canal and then a second, on our way to the flea market. Not that we were in the market for fleas or anything but it’s always interesting to see what people are selling. Now this was a real flea market. Back in SA flea markets have turned into markets that sell homemade stuff and cheap toys made in

China. This flea market was the real deal with mostly personal stuff that people were trying to hawk. As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. There were collections of unmatched knives and forks, old CDs, DVDs, paintings and books, well worn sneakers and general clothing, inline roller skates… the list goes on and on.

After shopping for greens, cheap merlot and Kronenbourg beer we got home to a welcome

email. Karine had agreed to replace the mattress on Wednesday, as that is her day off work, this was really great news!

We could not face that sloping bed for one more night; we opted for the sofa-bed in the lounge. There are a number of tricks to modify this sofa into a bed and I found many as well that did not work. After twisting that sofa-bed and my brain in directions never before explored, I got the gist of it and it was finally reminiscent of some form of a sleeping apparatus. We made our bed and we slept in it.

I slept like a babe, so did Adri. It’s not ideal but at least there was no sliding. I received my first and second coffee in that sofa-bed while doing my Duolingo French lessons, which I must admit, does not come easy. Some words you remember from previous lessons, most not, so it is slow going.

With a French television channel on in the background Adri was finalizing the unpacking while I did some blogging. Here and there one recognized a French word, a word learnt but mostly already forgotten. As I said, it is slow going.

Outside there was a commotion, we hurried to the balcony to be witness. A car had parked in a spot that was deemed out of bounds for the day, as workers had booked that specific spot for their truck. Seems like that kind of thing can be done around here. The cop called the tow truck and within 15 minutes the commotion was gone, the car as well.

 

“If you are going to travel in Europe you will need a car” Steve’s advice of last week in Montenegro still rang clear in my mind. “You can find a small second hand car cheaply”, he added. Makes perfect sense but… oh, there are so many buts…

And that was the reason why we walked into the Renault dealer yesterday; they were having an open-day. Much was laid on, red and white wine, samoosas, pâté, chips, nuts and plenty more, of which we were urged to partake of. Because they were about to close it was suggested we come back on Monday, the reason why we were now heading back in that direction at around 15:30. They were still busy with a meeting when we arrived so we explored the area along the marina where many a yacht had their owners onboard, hard at work readying their boats for the fast approaching summer season. Oh how I wished I was on one of those boats.

Back at the dealer the salesman with no English was joined by his counterpart from the Congo, whose first language is French and English, being a distant second, is still pretty good. And by the way, I was quite surprised that there were 26 French speaking countries in Africa, the French sure were busy in Africa. Our brother from Africa was translating the quick fire French from the salesman into a slower English for us mere mortals. I was not aware that a conversation of a few minutes in French could be condensed into one sentence in English; obviously we were not getting the full story. But, long story short, for a foreigner to buy a car here is not impossible, but c’est difficile (it’s difficult), we were assured. But then we knew that.

Tuesday morning, while we still had a car on the brain, Adri reminded me of the special lease option available from French car manufacturers such as Renault and Citroen. You can lease a brand new car for anywhere between one and six months and get a really good price, apparently cheaper than renting a car. I say apparently because when I did my calculations it was much of a muchness really. The reason these companies provide this option seems to be a way of getting around a VAT loophole. Once you’ve leased the car they sell the car as second hand on which no VAT is payable by the final buyer.

Truth be told, maybe it is just best to make use of public transport, but we’ll have to see how that all works out. Train travel is not cheap, bus travel can be reasonable, and flights, well, that’s a mixed bag at the best of times.

I was trying to remodel the sofa-bed from a bed into a sofa, but it was not in the mood, I was not either, so I gave it a hard shove and it shoved back. There was no physical sound, it was a mental one, when my lower back screamed at me to let go. The pain originally formed right in the middle of my lower back and seconds later I felt it run down to my bum bone and down the sides of both my upper legs. I sat down, I could no longer stand. I was about to pass out from the pain when I realized that Adri would be pissed, so decided not to.

Awhile later a reluctant body decided to test the waters and attempted to get up. I straightened and stiffened my back and like an old man, which I am not, I rose to my feet ever so gingerly. I then shuffled to the room next door and still pale in the face I notified Adri of the mishap. And then I had to sit down again, that fainting thing was approaching fast.

I took it easy for a few hours after taking an Ibuprofen and generally keeping a low profile. It was early afternoon when we took a slow stroll to the Volkswagen dealer we had seen yesterday on our way back from the Renault dealer, me stiff-backed and all.

A young man lured us into his office and so began the struggle, his French was excellent, mine was nonexistent. I offered a rhyme that I had memorised for just such an occasion. “Je suis désolé, je ne parlez pas Français. Parlez vous Anglais?” (I’m sorry, I do not speak French. Do you speak English?) I knew he understood me when he kept his right thumb and index finger about two millimetres apart, closed his left eye and tried to peek through those two fingers with his right. Even though he had only 2mm of English, he had at least 2mm on my French. He showed us a number of cars on his system and we left with a few printouts to consider.

From there we walked back to the Monoprix Supermarket for a few things. The lovely lass that served us previously had given us an application form for their loyalty card. We handed in the completed form and were now the proud owners of a Monoprix La Carte. This card gives you 10% discount on all purchased goods, I think, but also allows you to partake in their special deals. Some deals are buy one get one free, or buy one and get 50% discount on the second, and so on.

We were now ready to do some serious shopping. By the way, we noticed that Monoprix have some of its own branded products, slightly cheaper than the branded variety, much like Woollies etc. back in SA. We have tried some of them and were pleasantly surprised at the great quality thereof. Anyways, all kinds of everything were loaded up, and amongst that lot was pork mince. This mince was already spiced up and it was flying out from behind the butchers counter as people kept on ordering it. We gathered that this had to be good due to its popularity so when it was our turn we ordered the lot that was left. I think the people behind us were pissed at us for doing that.

And then… and then I saw something once again that resembled boerewors (farmer’s sausage), called Toulouse sausage. I meant to ask the butcher whether the sausage was made from beef but my French brain was not cooperating and out came “Viande?” He nodded and I was elated until I realized I asked whether it was meat, rather than asking “Le bœuf?” Anyways, it turned out that Toulouse sausage is made with porc (pork), and although not a boerie, it was great! The butcher probably though I was a dimwit, I could not think of a valid argument against it.

Karine, our landlady, true to her word arrived Wednesday with our new mattress just after 11:00. Man, this was great, a “Gel Visco Memoire”, or whatever. When Adri tested it out it got her immediate seal of approval. I will reserve my approval until I have had a good night’s sleep on it.

While chatting with Karine she informed us that she is off every Wednesday. The other days she starts work at 09:00, works until 11:00, then it’s off for lunch until 13:00 and she finishes at around 15:00. Wow, four hours of work a day, four days a week. If I could get a job like that, man, I’d be first in line. They don’t even have to pay me for such a job!

Because we will temporarily be resident in France we have to do our OFII (French Office of Immigration and Integration) reporting and I was hoping to do it tomorrow but on learning that Karine is off on Wednesdays we decided to leave it for next week. All the relevant documents need to be sent to the OFII offices by registered mail, and Karine kindly offered to assist us with this process.

We were still feeling slightly out of place this morning, even with the new mattress and all. One thing that was still missing was a bedside table on either side of the bed, there was only one. The room leading off from the lounge area is really small and the bed just fits into the corner with a walkway on the left leading to the bathroom. We manoeuvred the bed just a tad to the left and inserted a small little table on the right. Now we had a bedside table on either side and could get in and out of bed without having to roll over each other, or having to leopard crawl over the edge at the far end of the bed to get off… things were looking up.

Wednesdays are fresh produce market day in Séte. We were not sure where to find it but when we reached the daily market there were stalls all around and up and down the outside. Veggies and fruit and meat and allsorts were on offer. Moving a bit further away from the eating stuff there is a little square where the clothing market is. It was after noon when we browsed about but the stall owners were already starting to pack up, we need to get there earlier next week.

Anyways, arriving at this time of the day has its perks, as we found out. As we walked past the one stall that was selling seafood pasta the lady dished a plastic container and garbled some French at me. All I understood was that it was 5 Euro, purely because she held up five fingers. It was going for half the price because they had to pack up and she wanted to get rid of her stock. We decided this would be supper, it looked delicious.

After obtaining supper we walked down and around and ended up at Monoprix, we needed lait (milk), and of course many other things became “needed” while we were there. Just yesterday at the checkout counter we saw a lady buy herring which looked delicious… it was added to our basket. I must stop looking at what other people buy. Adri also always has a need for blue cheese… the bag home was heavier than anticipated.

I have taken notice before but today it dawned on me more clearly… there were probably more estate agents per capita in Séte than there are 7/11 and Family Mart mini supermarkets on Koh Samui… and there they are everywhere! Never in my life have I seen so many real estate shops in my life, it’s like a disease. According to our landlady the property in Montpellier is terribly expensive so many people are buying in Séte and commuting to Montpellier every day. Could this be the reason for the gluttony of estate agencies here?

Today was the day we finally got properly settled in Séte. We had a new mattress… bedside tables… walking lane on both sides of the bed… moved the TV to a more amenable and watchable position, everything now was just perfect… As Peyton on Koh Samui – at the ripe old age of two – would have softly sighed… Happy…!

Adri warmed our fish pasta supper in the microwave and the sea steamed from there as she took it out and placed it on the table. There were a few large mussels still in its armour, there were a number of prawns, truly the most delicious I have had in a long time, there were a number of pieces of unidentified fish, as well as a fishy stuffed squid, penne pasta drenched in a wonderful tomato based sauce. This… was truly delicious.

It was early evening when we got to bed, we could not wait to try it out. When we moved the TV today we moved it to where it can easily be swivelled on its trolley stand to end right in front of the bed. Now the smallish screen became a big screen TV, sort of. We started watching a new series called Iron Fist and the first episode seemed OK, or so I thought. Adri made it about halfway through and she was out for the count. I followed at 22:00. Was it the new mattress or the bad series that put us to sleep? I think a bit of both, that new mattress was really heavenly. And as for the TV series, it was really hellish.

Thursday morning I looked out the French doors and across the street and one level up where the old lady was doing the same; we acknowledged each other with a “Bonjour”. The wind was ruffling her gray hair too much so I went inside, she did too; the wind was rather cool-ish. The sky was overcast and there was evidence of a few drops of rain that had just fallen. This was bed weather. The coffee was ready by the time I closed the doors and Adri got her first cup of coffee in bed. It was 09:00, we slept for 11 hours straight thanks to our heavenly mattress. My second cup of coffee was delivered to me where I was still comfortably snuggled up.

Didier mentioned previously that the Montpellier rugby team contains many South African players. I surfed around and found that 13 of the 43 players contracted to Montpellier Rugby are from SA (19 from France, the remainder mostly from Georgia, Fiji etc.) Their coach is Jake White with technical assistants CJ van der Linde and Shaun Sowerby. Some of the players here that you would recognise from SA are brothers Jannie and Bismarck du Plessis, Pierre Spies, Francois Steyn, Demetri Catrakilis, Wiaan Liebenberg, Cameron Wright… this list goes on. There are home games within the next few weeks, maybe Adri and I will make the effort to attend one of their games.

Oh, and by the way, the region that we’re living in is called Languedoc-Roussillon. This area was combined with the Midi-Pyrénées region on 30 September 2016 to form the new Occitanie region. This though does not distract from the fact that the Montpellier rugby team are still cheekily referred to as the Langueboks, due to the number of SA players of course.

It was around 11:00 that the sun contemplated making an appearance but pulled back once it revealed just one eye, the sky was still mostly gray, but lightening. A cool-ish wind was still blowing when we left the apartment for a 2km walk along the sea to Cornice where they have a fresh produce market every Thursday.

We assumed that many of the stall owners did not bother to set up stall today due to the threatening weather, but there were still a number of diehards that did brisk business. We found these lovely pork chops sans bones, four of them hopped on board. We found butternuts and asparagus and with that bounty we took the road home.

The rest of the day we spent reading and relaxing …. and of course we did some French with Duolingo. This one question displayed a screen with four pictures and you had to identify “The boss”. There was no picture of Bruce Springsteen, the selection was between a policeman, a judge, a chef and a prince. And by the way, there was no picture of Prince either. I made a random choice and of course it was wrong, that dreaded red banner was displayed while one of my Duolingo “health bars” disappeared. The correct answer displayed was “Le chef”. This I thought was obviously wrong so I called up Google Translate, and would you believe, le chef translated to “the leader” which I guess is “the boss”. I then translated chef from English to French and you get… “chef”. Now you tell me French is not confusing?

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