is in my mouth. mmmmmmm. I had a late-night chocolate crepe. all of europe has a sweet tooth but this really is ridiculous – a delicate crepe liberally sprinkled with sugar and then thick, melted chocolate poured warm into the folded nest and then you just can’t quite eat it fast enough and the chocolate goes all over the white plate and it really is divine…
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i am in Montpellier. It’s a great town, elegant and sincere, with a pedestrianised heart that keeps going and going. I’ve found it a bit hard to penetrate the nightlife, much as I found Toulouse by night somewhat impenetrable – both student towns, both very pleasant, but unless you want to stand and drink alone they can be difficult after sundown.
i spent a bunch of days in scenic Auch, west of Toulouse, before heading here. There I enjoyed the hospitality of my childhood friend Julian McKenzie, working in Auch as an English language assistant in the high schools. We’ve had a fine old time, and he’s taken me to a different bar each night, and introduced me to a pleasant bunch of fellow tutors. In Auch there is a cathedral and a statue of d’Artagnan, so I’ve seen both of those about a thousand times as well.
France is interesting. The suburbs look more like suburbs to me than elsewhere in Europe. The people I’ve found to be very pleasant indeed, even as I butcher their language and drop its twitching corpse in front of them and expect them to LIKE IT, okay??? Let’s just say I’m better at listening and reading French than speaking it.
(This is the perfect point to note that I had to jump through numerous hoops to study French in my sixth form year, leading to the pleasant solution of being sent to the girls school down the road for that class… it might even have helped my French a bit. More notably, it gave me a wonderful friend, hey Melissa!)
(okay, it also gave me a good story to wheel out when schooldays talk gets going, but thats by the by.)
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the place is about to close around me and I’ve barely begun to write! more will have to wait. I had a coffee in a cafe last night and filled 16 pages of notebook with furious scribble, so there are definitely things to be said.
in the meantime, I’ll just recommend those who have time to check out Krzystof-from-Barcelona’s webpage, its fascinating reading.
http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/journal/?pics=small&doc;_id=120
a bientot!
morgue