4/10/09
The past couple of days have been pretty low-key around here. Yesterday, Rosa, Caesar, and I went to the city of Montflanquin which is about a half-hour’s drive from Fumel. If I have not mentioned this before, the region in which I’m living was for a period of time controlled by the English, who built many Bastide style cities…Montflanquin is one such city still very strongly tied to its medieval origins. Unfortunately, the activity of the Middle Ages did not stand the test of time as well as its buildings. The town was literally empty. We arrived at about 12:30, so of course everything was closed (keep in mind that all of France shuts down between 12 and 2). Being that it was impossible to get lost in a city as small as Montflanquin, we just wandered around for a while. We decided to kill some time on the terrace of a boulangerie where we made the unfortunate aquiantance of a very unsavory character. Now, I’ve been in France long enough to not adhere to generalized judgements about the French being a rude culture. In fact, I’ve found that by and large they are very accomodating as long as you express humility in being a foreigner who doesn’t speak the language perfectly. The man that we encountered on Saturday, however, had the gall to tell me that I spoke French like a pig and that I should just stop talking (this was after he tried to tell me, with horrendous grammar, that he spoke English). Once he found out that Rosa and Caesar spoke Spanish he started jabbering in Spanish. Meanwhile, I just sat there. I can pick up bits of Spanish but I have no desire to speak it, so I don’t try to learn it. I don’t like being the only person not in on the conversation though, so I found myself becoming more and more agitated. We were informed by the owner of the boulangerie that the man was squatting in the building next door and that he had become a neighborhood nuisance. We tried to make a very quick exit after the man invited Rosa and Caesar (at this point, I felt like a plate of chopped liver) to come to his house for the weekend. They declined, obviously, and we said we had a train to catch…. As we walked/ran away we heard the Boulanger, his wife, and the rude-ass man quarreling. Then CRASH - broken glass - - - we walked faster…..
When the tourist office opened at 2, we were given a walking tour map of the city. Although we had already walked the entire city, we walked it again….boredom is the mother of invention, folks. not necessity, boredom. We thought that the town shops would open at 2, but they remained closed so after walking around for another hour and seeing a dozen identical medieval roads and alleys, we cut our losses and left. Don’t get me wrong, Montflanquin was beautiful, but honestly, you can only see so many picturesque cobblestone streets before they lose their novelty. Maybe if there had be more people or at least more little shops open, it would’ve been different…who knows.
The lady in the tourist office had told us about a Chateau not far from Montflanquin called Gavandun. So we drove there. Guess what? It was closed. Defeated, we drove back to the apartment where I made Indian food for dinner. Lovely comforting dahl…nothing better!
Sophie had invited us to go to a Disco show at the Fumel performing arts center. The curtains opened to show a guy in skintight lyrca pants and a billowing red satin shirt holding a disco ball as smoke and lights went crazy around him. INCREDIBLE. The cast performed hits by Abba, the Village People (the costumes for which were incredible), Donna Summer, The Bee Gees, Rod Stewart, Madonna, Gloria Gaynor……o my goodness….I felt like I was in highschool watching a talent show, but the dancing, costumes, and music were just mind-blowing. Wow, blame it on the boogey! (Oh, did I mention that we all got to see the lead dancer strut his stuff in only gold lame boxer briefs and body glitter? O yea, baby.)
Sunday followed with nothing really happening. Nope, nothing to report. Tomorrow, Rosa and I (and maybe Caesar) are going to explore Agen.