Another travel’s eve
Hey Folks,
I wish I could start a blog without being obliged to say I’m sorry for the silence of late. Here at Le Petit Chateau life has been a whirlwind of preparation to get the place ready for the tourist season which starts in less than three weeks. Mike and Petra are spending every waking moment either working or thinking about/streesing over the amount of work that’s left. I’m on a daily schedule of working from 9 til 6ish with a short lunch break, then showering, helping with dinner and playing dice or cribbage over red wine and rolled cigarretes until we are all too tired to think and trickle upstairs to our respective beds, usually around 11.
I did get a break from the routine this past weekend when Geoffrey and I took a warm-up trip for our grand adventure. On Thursday we went to Lourdes, a famous pilgrimage spot in the Pyrenees north of here where his girlfriend lives. It was pretty cool. Her family was kind and her sister was cute, but not single, but I still helped her write a homestay letter in English so she can come to the States this summer. Her step dad got Geoffrey and I drunk off this local alcohol made with sugar and a specific mountain flower. On Friday morning we went into town and checked out the church. It was truly disgusting. Thousands of people coming from everywhere in the world (they brought flags and signs to proudly prove the extent of their voyage) to wait in line outside the massive church to have a candle lit or to fill up an authorized container with holy water that flows from spouts out of the wall of the church. I got a little container of it, just in case.
From Lourdes we went to Toulouse to hang out with Geoffrey’s sister, Sarah, and her boyfriend, Torston - he’s of Viking decendence and his brother is an NFL back-up in Cincinatti - who’d flown in from Germany for the weekend (he has a job he can’t leave up there). I don’t remember much of Friday night, on account of the empty vodka bottle, but apparently I spent most of it planted on a curb outside the club thinking about vomiting, then maybe I vomited, nobody actually knows. Saturday was spent walking around in the sun. We went to the park and Mirtza, Sarah’s black lab mutt puppy ran herself ragged with the other dogs. We ate popsickles in the grass. That night Sarah had to work at the mexican restaurant called La Sandilla (‘The Watermelon’) so the three of us ate there. I haven’t had authentic Mexican food in a long time and it was delightful. Except no free chips. SBut I did drink Negra Modela and we got the entire meal for half. At night we drank beer and listened to hip hop in the apartment, we were all too tired to go out, although we entertained the idea for a little while.
On Sunday Geoffrey and I took the train to Lannemezan and then hitchhiked home, which was only slightly successful as it was a Sunday evening and no one was on the road. Mike and Petra had been able to go camping for a night and got back later.
Since then we’ve all been hard at work and Geoffrey and I have been planning our trip that starts tomorrow (Toulouse for a couple hours then overnighter to Nice is the plan). Petra and Mike know all the hip spots in Greece (that’s where the met 25 years ago, while they were both traveling) and we hope to make it to Istanbul from which Geoffrey will be headed to Charlotte to live at my house for the summer (IF ANYONE HAS A JOB FOR A CAPABLE AND TRI-LINGUAL NICE GUY, LET ME KNOW!) and I’m planning to head to Delhi where the 5-week SIT summer program in Buddhist Art and Architecture starts. I hope I can get a visa to do this. If I do, I’ll be coming home around July 20th, mark your calendars ladies, and you fellas too.
I’ve been writing songs a bit this week, too. I’ll post one up here if I can figure out the video thingy on the computer. Check back. Also, photos comin’.
I really hope you all are doing well and listening to good music and eating great food and spending time by a fire and in the sun and thinking nice thoughts and such. I miss you, I love you. More soon.
Love, life, etc.
MBG on his final night at Le Petit Chateau in Laborde, Midi-Pyrenees, France, Europe, the world, the universe, in a flake of white paint on my thumbnail.
PS. EVERYBODY COME WITH ME AND MY DAD TO THE AVETT BROTHERS’ CD RELEASE SHOW AT BOJANGLES COLESSIUM IN CHARLOTTE ON AUG. 8TH!
