Travel-log: from the South of France to the English Midlands

Posted on June 1, 2009

 So maybe I haven’t been so good at keeping up with the English blogging for those of you who don’t understand French, or simply don’t understand what all of the poetic fuss is supposed to really mean. I think it’s been since one of my first days in France that I haven’t blogged anything straightforward.

To make a long story short, I stayed in Toulouse for a few days before heading to the Lot, the beautiful region of Cahors. It was there that I fell in love. Some of you may ask, “with a person or with the land”? The answer is a bit complicated, but for all intents and purposes, I will say that I fell in love with the Southwestern part of France. In all honesty, I’m ready to move there tomorrow, and I would if I didn’t have a few things to take care of in Montreal before I actually make my move. Whatever happens between now and September will determine the validity of that statement… so we’ll see.

What’s so great about it? Well the food for one. My body has never felt such extasy as it has while I was there. My stomach was happily digesting away all of the golden nourishment I was feeding it. My tastebuds finally understood what food was supposed to taste like. My brain didn’t understand why I haven’t been feeding myself this stuff for the past 25 years.

Thing is, I can hardly describe all of the wonderful stuff that I ingested over those 10 days. It’s all pretty simple really. Just quality quality quality. Most of the stuff people eat over there is produced within the region itself. In other words, the 100 mile diet is something that has always been part of these people’s lifestyles. They appear to be self sufficient and to live the lush life I always thought could never truly exist or really be that easy. Of course it has its downside… uh, yes…. hum. Ah, there we go: if you’re watching every calorie you eat, life would be impossible for you in the South of France. You would certainly pull all of your hair out trying to calculate the half bites allowed of each course. To have been there and tried it seriously for a week and a half, and I mean seriously… I had seconds and thirds sometimes and never skipped dessert, I didn’t really gain any weight to speak of. People appear to be generally healthy and you rarely see any overweight people in that part of the world, whereas in Brittain, it’s another story. The moral of this story is, indulge! There’s nothing bad about good quality products from the terroir. What we should really be scared of is the processed stuff slowly taking over everything we eat in the Americas.

Mis a part the food, I was lucky enough to have my very own travel guide show me around the region. I was visiting my best friend Alain, who lives in Cahors, and one of his good friends, Vincent, was kind enough to take me on daily adventures for 4 consecutive days. Vince grew up in the region and is a true lover of the Lot. To hear him talk about it, tell me stories, annecdotes and an impressively precise historical background of the things he brought me to see, was an experience I’ll never forget. I don’t think many travellers get so lucky as to have such a brilliant person motivate the discovery of such a magical place… I can’t even begin to say how truly blessed I feel to have had the opportunity to live the Southwest of France that way.

The lifestyle is also something that feels like something my body has been craving for a long time. They work, but not like we do in America or here in Brittain. They relax a lot… and they need to in order to allow their bodies to digest the intense quantities of food that they do. Of course there’s a lot of wine, and it is served with every meal. Yum. In the towns, the houses, the parks, there’s always loads of accomodations for sitting and taking a breather. People like to take it easy over there. Doesn’t matter which town you’re in, if there’s a terrace, it’s pretty much always full of people seeing la vie en rose.

People also seem to spend a lot of time in other people’s company… life is “communautaire”. They eat together, get together for drinks in the evening, have coffee with a family member, bref, people don’t appear to be so stuck in their own bubbles of individuality and stupor as we seem to have in the big cities. Maybe it’s just a factor that comes with being out in the country, but I felt that people easily said “hello”, even if you don’t know them. They welcome the Acadian girl as a cousin and try to make her taste as many local things as possible while she’s there. They always checked with one another to see “oh, have you gotten her try that yet?” or yet “have you taken her there?”. They are so proud of their region, of their culture, of their food and very eager to help a foreigner discover little oddities or specialties. That was quite special to tell you the truth. Some people may describe the French as slightly pompous, egoistical, or chauvinistic… but I get it now… it’s because these people are so deeply in love with where they live and their way of life, and with good reason. This also brings a pretty interesting perspective to some of the questions about culture that I’ve been pondering upon lately… but that’s another story.

Then, I headed over to Munich, with a heavy heart. I honestly never wanted to leave the Lot… EVER. But you know… life must go on. I was visiting a friend that I had met in Barcelona. Chris had a busy week, but I had a fun time in the Beer Gardens, walking around the city and taking pictures, figuring out how to get around by myself in a city where the language is so foreign that I can’t even pronounce things properly. It was a challenge, but I had a fun time. I spent a lot of time writing while I was there, which is something I haven’t done in a long long time. Funnest adventure was Tuesday, when we took a train out to Chiemsee. From there, we took a boat out to the islands on the lake, ran in fields, swam in the said lake… it was lovely.

Now I’m staying over at my friend Michael’s place in the English Midlands. I’m out in the coutry and life here is beautiful, nice, calm, though clearly not as lush and carefree as it was in France. The two cultures are of great contrast.

To have grown up as an Acadian who finished High School in an English institution, I had felt a strong connection to the anglophones over the past 10 years… much more so than to the country loving acadians, or the language fanatic quebecers. I appologize if this comes off as slightly harsh, but it’s just not something that I saw in myself… as part of my identity. I have always loved the country, but hated the way it seemed to imply a very limited perception of the world. I love languages and have always been proud of my French heritage, but I always felt that the Acadians don’t fit into the French Canadian identity since the complicated issues that Quebecers battled over the last few decades have been approached by them as a “separate” entity that is “non-Canadian-but-sovereignist”. It’s sort of a mess to try to explain this on a blog post about my travels, but let’s just agree to understand that the point I am trying to make is that I wasn’t exactly sure WHERE my roots were. I am Acadian… but what does that mean exactly? Well that’s one of the things that I have been finding out on this trip. How do people define themselves? How do they build their identities? Well, so far, I have found out that I am most definitely French because so many of the things that I lived over there felt more “spot on” than anything I have ever experienced. The only thing that ever felt like this has beed dipping my toes in the sand or in the sea…. whereas my French experience lasted for days. Everything I touched, tasted, saw, felt… pure joy and happiness.

In England, life is similar to many things and ways of living that we perpetuate in the Americas. I like a lot of it, but feels a little less like a discovery and more like something else, somewhere else… Anyway… enough blogging for today. I’ll try to update with more actual travel logs soonish.