L'habit ne fait pas le moine

Coucou! Hello! I know I only posted the other day but thought I'd post about my weekend before I forget the majority of it and end up ranting about things instead. But first I wanted to mention that one of my colleagues booked me and the other stagiare on a guided tour of Toulouse on day, which meant no work and that we got to learn loads of things about the town that we wouldn't have known otherwise. So that was nice and thought it deserved a mention. Also there’s a new chef at work and he’s giving smaller portions so I’m not feeling quite so bloated anymore, although it could just be that I’m getting used to it and not noticing that mountains of food we’re confronted with.

So I decided I wanted to get out of Toulouse for a little while, and as I have every other Monday off I decided to go for a long weekend in the Pyrenees, which aren't too far from Tolosa. My boss had recommended I do something called covoiturage, which is pretty big in France apparently. It's basically car sharing and it's a LOT cheaper than the SNCF trains. It's also really good for your French because you're cooped up with a random French person for a few hours. I would really recommend it to anyone going to France on their YA; the website is covoiturage.fr. And I know I said that the French are a bit chicken oriental on the roads but it seems that their motorway driving is a bit more civilised. So no worries!

The woman who took me to Lourdes was called Julie and she lived somewhere in the mountains. She was quite talkative and told me exactly how to get to the moutains from Lourdes and even dropped me off at my hotel, which was nice. Still a bit taken a back by all this "bise", French way of greeting business. It just seems really strange to kiss someone you don't know and have literally just met and I wonder if I come over a bit stand-offish sometimes when I'm caught off guard and don't expect it. Also what way are you supposed to go? Me and Julie had a bit of awkward moment when we chose different ways to go and nearly met in the middle. Bonjour random person I've just met! It's a lot easier to just say hello and that be enough. 

So I got to Lourdes and was dropped off at my hotel. It cost 25EUR a night and was actually quite nice for that price. It's owned by a family who lives in the hotel too and they were very friendly, even when I forgot the code to the door and had to ring the doorbell and be met by the owner in his dressing gown! I read somewhere that only Paris has more hotels than Lourdes in France, which gives you an idea that it is packed full of people. Catholics believe that Mary appeared to a girl called Bernadette there and told her to dig in the grotto and the water from where she dug has cured people. Apparently. So Lourdes has become a place of pilgrimage, which would be really nice, like it's all in the mountains and stuff I imagine it'd be quite peaceful, if it weren't absolutely rammed with shops selling all sorts of religious nonsense. Glow in the dark statues, singing replicas of the grotto, I love Mary wristbands, mints with Bernadette's face on it... for people who have such nicely decorated Churches it'd appear that most Catholics have no taste. But it's not what's sold in Lourdes that ruins it, it's simply the fact that it's so commercialised. Like people go there, many with a genuine belief that they're gonna be cured and then people are cashing in on what other people believe in. Whether it's true or not isn't important, it just feels a bit like exploitation of people's faith. But down by the grotto, which is out of town a bit it's quite cool. There's nothing else around, just the grotto and the church that Mary asked to be built. And the spring in the grotto is closed off now but it's pumped to some taps a bit further down, so after googling if it were drinkable I filled up a bottle, mainly because it was free to be honest and just to say I've drank Lourdes water. But I don't understand it at all, because Bernadette herself even said that it's not the water that cures it’s faith and prayers but whatever. One thing that was quite cool was the hill next to the basilica, where there are huge Stations of the Cross in life-size statues.

On Saturday evening I went to watch the candlelight procession around the basilica, which was cool because the only light was from the candles. There was a service going on at the same time and it was going on in French, English, Spanish, German, Italian and Dutch, I think. Linguist’s paradise! Was just standing there listening to all my languages, was surprised how much Italian I understood from not speaking it at all; I think that’ll be my next language to learn! Although the Italian people really annoyed me when I was in Lourdes, because they wouldn’t move out of the way. Ever. Like I know I said in my other blog that the French don’t move when I’m running but at least in a shop if you ask them to move they do, whereas in Lourdes it seemed that whenever there were Italians blocking  shop doorways they wouldn’t move, even when I asked. So then you have to barge them out the way and it looks like you’re the rude one, when you’re not. Probably a generalisation but it’s how they came across in Lourdes.

So after the procession I had a cheeky kebab and watched some of the Olympics. I saw parts of the opening ceremony and thought it looked really good. I watched French women’s handball and basketball, both of which France were winning in. The French are loving that they’re third (at the time of writing/last time I checked) and we’re nowhere near that. So taking the banter and waiting patiently for Team GB to start winning more.

Sunday I took a bus to a little town in the Pyrenees called Cauterets, which is a ski resort in the winter. I walked up and down a mountain next to the village, a height of 1330 meters (4363 feet) which is a little bit less than Ben Nevis and is higher than England’s highest mountain, Scaffel Pike, but I did start so much higher up too. I then took a bus to the Pont d’Espagne, which is a bridge in the middle of the mountains. There’s also a like a bit higher up, but I didn’t have the time to walk as far as that, and I don’t think I would have seen much as there were cable cars that you couldn’t even see more than three in a row, because the clouds were so low. But it was really nice to be in the countryside. Like I really like Toulouse but I can’t deny that I’m a country boy at heart and so it was really nice to be out of a city and in the fresh air, with barely any people around for a while. And I enjoyed a break from the heat as well; the heavens opened the second I got to Lourdes (pun intended) and then it didn’t really stop all weekend, but was like being at home and seen as I’ve been suffering with the incessant heat it was a lovely break! On the bus back I was so tired from the travelling, sightseeing and walking that I fell asleep! It was a miracle (pun intended) that I woke up just as we arrived in Lourdes because who knows where I would have ended up else!

The Sunday night I went to the cinema in Lourdes to watch Je m’appelle Bernadette, which basically retold the Lourdes story. The film was in French and then the people with the most requested subtitles got subtitles too. So the man asked what subtitles I wanted and I was like, none it’ll be okay. But he seemed a bit concerned that I wouldn’t understand so I assured him it’ll be fine I don’t need subtitles, so then he put Dutch ones anyway, so proved I was fine.

A woman called Maryem took me back to Toulouse by covoiturage; she comes from a town in the Pyrenees called Luz-St-Saveur, which is somewhere where I stayed on holiday with my family when we were camping in France once! So we had a nice talk about the Pyrenees and about England, because her sister is doing an ERASMUS in Sheffield, lucky her. Just as we were about to leave the motorway we drove past a three car pileup, and there was one girl lying on the ground and another lad with his head in hands and blood everywhere. 100 meters later there was a car in a ditch whose bonnet was completely crushed and the airbag was out. Never seen a car crash properly before, so shook me up a bit to see. I remember that in French translation we did a translation that said France has twice the amount of accidents on the roads than the UK, scary times!

So now I’m safe and sound in Toulouse after a weekend away from it all. On Friday I’m cooking a full English breakfast for guests, so fingers crossed that it goes well. Cooked some epic breakfasts when my mate Jim has come to visit me in Durham and we did a really good one round his a few months ago. Unfortunately there won’t be any Staffordshire Oatcakes to have with the breakfast, so it won’t be as good as our normal ones. Plus I’ve only ever done one for two people before. Ah well, impossible n’est pas français!

A plus!