Couchsurfing in Toulouse

I ended up leaving the Chateau in Lautrec a few days earlier than planned to couchsurf in Toulouse for the weekend. It was the only day Liz's friends could drive me to the Vielmur sur Agout train station and there wasn't much work for me to do anyway, so off I went! I'm very good at straying from my itinerary. Thus, a few days before I arrived a post was made to the Toulouse Emergency Couch group and that's how Thibault came to be my host! After hoisting my over-sized suitcase up to the flat he shares with his two friends, also students, he took me on a tour of the city. The picture above is of Place du Capitole, the main town square.

The sky looked really cool.

Thibault took me to a really cool and quaint tea place with old school decor. I then proceeded to get delicious rose tea and spill a large portion of it all over the table, but it's okay because...

I invoked the powers of camouflage with my green cardigan against the green wall. The white cup may have given it away, though.

Thibault had better tea etiquette than me.

He also had mice! I decided they were my new friends even if they were just snake food.

We drank a lot of wine at their flat with his friends, during which point I quizzed them on French curse words and music. Just in case you were wondering, if you want to piss off a French person you can tell them "Va niquer ta mère!" (Go fuck your mother), "Enculé" (Asshole), "Batard" (Bastard), "Salope" (Bitch), "Pute" (Whore), "Espèce de comnard de mes couilles" (I was told this meant something like 'asshole from my bollocks", okay!) or "Sac à merde" (shit-bag).

I'm not sure why they had these giant face cut-outs of this famous French rapper, but they did!

I went for a walk by myself on Sunday because it was so sunny and wonderful out . I found the water and it was pretty! Unfortunately, everything in existence was closed. I hate Sunday, but I liked Toulouse! Once again, couchsurfing did not let me down! I mean, how else would I ended up in the flat of some French boys who listen to awesome music and also program in Processing? Small world.

Lautrec, Part II: Welcome to the Country.

The closest town to Chateau Brametourte was Lautrec, which was an hour walk away. One weekend Tom, Danel and I decided to venture out in search of some bread and a self-guided tour of the area.

It was really windy.

When we got there, we climbed a big hill to see the famous Moulin (windmill)!

The view from the top. Look at those clouds looming.

Lautrec is pretty old. Look at those medieval walls.

I don't know where ANY of those places are. Welcome to the middle of nowhere, kids.

View of Lautrec behind me when the wind isn't actively attacking my face, for once.

It translates to "one of the most beautiful villages in France" or something like that. I was excited. I think we walked 309438490 kilometers that day.

Town. No...really. The main shopping strip left a bit to be desired if you wanted variety and even less if you wanted your variety to be open, but it was pretty!

On the way home, there was some weird sun/stormy cloud combination happening.

The road leading from the Chateau. Small.

I braved the hour walk into town by myself my last day to get wine for the people who offered to drive me to the train station and cigarettes for Liz. On my way home I saw the BIGGEST CATERPILLAR EVER! But it really turned out to be many caterpillars traveling in a row...like ducks! Did you know that caterpillars do that? Me either. I definitely spent at least 5 minutes staring at these caterpillars like a freak and took about 10 pictures. Anyone watching probably just assumed I was observing the pavement for an inordinate amount of time and must have thought I had at least one screw loose. Oh well. Nature is CRAZY.

Lautrec, Part I: How I Came to Live in A Chateau

Welcome to Chateau Brametourte. For my second HelpX job as a helper, I ended up in Lautrec, a beautiful small village in the south of France, about an hour from Toulouse. If the weather was right, you could see the Pyrenees from their property (though if you could see them it meant it would rain in a couple days!), but we'll get to that later. It was a pretty laid back week and a half as the two owners left for England and Singapore the day after I got there, and the nearest hint of civilization was an hours walk away, but life doesn't always have to be 24/7 go-go-go, does it? My tasks were mostly cleaning, vacuuming, dusting, mopping, putting things in their rightful places, some weeding, sifting dirt, raking leaves and more tidying of the property. Most of the time it was just me and the volunteer coordinator, Liz, who was from Brighton, but for the first week there were two other helpers from South Africa named Tom and Danel and they were awesome!:

Danel and Tom!

A closer look at the Chateau where I lived while I worked there, it apparently dates back to the 12oos, whoa.

The view from their yard, this picture doesn't really do it justice.

A short walk from their property and you get here, where they grow most of their vegetables. You can even see it in the picture above! On a couple occasions we got to pull leeks right out of the ground for dinner and it was pretty neat. I should mention the weather was absolutely fabulous, most of the time all I needed to wear outside was a sweatshirt! Good bye, winter! And good riddance.

So the chateau dates to the 1200s, but this fountain, which, you guessed it, is a giant stone vagina, apparently dates back to the times before Christ to pagan times. That's BC, folks. It sort of astounded me to be standing in front of something so old in it's natural habitat, that is, not in a museum.


The really old pagan vagina rock was enclosed in here, below that little dark square where the water/well was. Apparently people used to go on pilgrimages here in the past, crazy.

The courtyard of the Chateau, where lots of tidying was done.

Another part of the property where some tomatoes and peppers were grown. My job here was to pull out the old, dead plants and turn over the soil.

The Renaissance Room, which we also spent lots of time tidying. They were doing some work, so a lot of my tasks were just cleaning up everything and making it presentable again. They want to rent this room out for meetings and such.

I think this room was called the Salle de Sejour. It was very pretty and bright, but there were a LOT of really expensive antiques, so mostly I didn't trust myself in there lest I broke something.

And what is a castle without a set of spiral stone stairs?

That's all I have of the property, but tune in next time for pictures of the surrounding area and Lautrec itself!

Je suis allé à Paris pour une journée

So here's the thing. I was supposed to go to Paris for a weekend to stay with two couchsurfers, but when I got to Frankfurt to change trains every single one going to Paris was booked until the next day, thus I ended up in Berlin instead. However, as my next HelpX was in southern France and I didn't want to be on the train for 16 hours, it made sense to stay the night so I posted on couchsurfing the night before I was to be in Paris and scored a place to sleep. You see, couchsurfing has an "emergency" forum for each major city where you post "omgzzzz I'm going to be here tomorrow and I have nowhere to sleeeeep!!!" and then mostly creepy people answer and some not creepy people as well. Luckily, I found the latter when Alix offered to host me for one night (on a Monday, too!). It was the first time I was actually hosted by anyone, and it was a great experience!

Alix lives in Montmartre, which is a cool little area that is basically a giant hill, so I got a lot of exercise lugging my suitcase that day. Right down the road from her flat is Sacré-Coeur, pictured above.

You can even see the Eiffel Tower from the hill!

Apparently these Space Invaders are all over Paris and they get points based on how big they are and where they're located. Pretty neat!

I've been to Paris once before two years ago, but it was with my parents and maybe one of the more stressful times of my life. Needless to say, we didn't go to Moulin Rouge, which is the red light district of Paris. Now I've seen it!

Alix cooked us an amazing dinner of Ratatouille with mashed potatoes, red wine and a pear pie for dessert. Mmmmmm. Best host ever.

The next morning before I caught my train to Toulouse, we literally walked across the entirety of Paris. No joke, we walked the equivalent of 15 metro stops or something. It was good though as I was only there about 24 hours. In any case, Paris wins for coolest metro entrance decorations.

Louvre Pyramid. I forgot to increase the shutter speed on my camera, also. It was very sunny that day, but not THAT sunny. Oops.

Paris really reminds me of Prague. I heard someone say that Prague is the Paris of Central Europe in terms of big, romantic cities. I agree.

And that, my friends, was my brief foray back to Paris! I'm sad I don't have any pictures of Alix, but it was a mad rush my last day as I almost missed my train (again). My last hour was spent rushing on the metro, running up steps and trying not to keel over due to the ridiculous weight of my suitcase as we attempted to get from Paris Montparnasse, to Montmartre and across to Paris Austeritz in one hour. Somehow, we made it!