This is Certainly NOT St Michel

I am now a black man.

If you couldn’t tell, I was crazy spoiled by Brigitte and Philippe. I always had more wine and food than I could handle. Brigitte warned me of American and English hosts being shitty about the food situation and she was totally right. My diet went from fine cheeses, fresh bread, duck and wine to cereal, sandwiches and more sandwiches and still some wine of course. I am now buying my own food and cooking it myself (or combining items on two pieces of bread). Life is not easy anymore. I figure this way at least, I can lose all that duck fat I was storing up! The French grocery stores are totally fun to explore at least. I bought some sort of nutella with cookie bits in it! Totally delicious and no help for losing duck fat, I realize this. And I have been buying random meats to try (probably as bad of an idea as it sounds). Ken and Lilli have also headed back to London so it feels like mom and dad left and now we have this castle to ourselves and the Romanian/French workers too, but oh well, it’s awesome. I found a brochure for wineries in the area, so Brittany came with me to explore. We saw some sketchy looking signs, but no front door and no one around. I managed to bust out a little French and ask a neighbor for directions. We ended up right back where we started and wandered into a tiny little winery room, but again, no one. We still remained trespassing and looked around for a minute anyway and I of course took some pictures. Then we see another man (with terrible teeth, this is how you know you are in the country). I work my French ways and we end up following him to his basement wine room. Brittany hung back since it looked sketchy, but where there is wine, I will be (even if it means possibly being attacked first). At least being attacked would have given me a reason to steal lots of wine and run I figure. It would have been a win/win either way really. It turned out totally safe and awesome though, no reason to steal. There were trophies and wine everywhere, so I knew it would be good. Unfortunately, I couldn’t talk too much with the guy, but the wine was delicious so I bought some and will be back to buy more for sure. There should be more wine the next village over also, which I plan on venturing to as well. I think about every village has some sort of hidden wine cave and I will find them all. I have said it once and I will say it again…I LOVE WINE.

Lake Geneva!

PS – I am working my couchsurfing ways into Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland this weekend so I will be out of touch for the most part. Hopefully I will return with some amazing stories. Friday sounds like I will be touring Geneva, then off to Lausanne (on the lake) for a concert/festival, supposedly the biggest student festival in Europe. Then the next day will be more Geneva and a poker night across the border in Gex, France. I am totally stoked. I will be eating my weight in chocolate I am sure.

Sketchy Turin and Delicious Bologna

Smashed my head real good for this one

Monday morning we all woke up bright and early to get on the way to run errands and head off to Turin. Ken and Lilli tell us it’s about a 4 hour drive but with the errands it will be a little extra, so leaving at 9am we assume we should hit Turin by about 4pm or so. Obviously nothing ever happens as planned. We took Lilli’s mom to the airport, stopped to make some orders for the castle and then we thought we were on our way. I let Brittany take the mom’s spot in the front and Zane and I held down the fort in the back of the van like we were being smuggled into Italy. After ‘no more errands’ turned into ‘more errands,’ we get out of Grenoble by about 2pm (Grenoble is certainly not far from home). With numb asses from riding on the back floor of a Hyundai van, we were off. The drive was absolutely beautiful at least. We drove through the beginning of the Alps and lots of foothills. While the scenery was great, attempting to see it was like an obstacle course. I would scoot to one side of the van for a picture just in time to hit a switch back and get shot right back to where I came from. I did multiple somersaults in the back of the van that day. I have bruises and a sore back to prove it. But I got some awesome pictures, it was totally worth it. There were multiple times that I thought the van wasn’t going to make it up the hills. The hills were so steep and the turns so sharp, it sounded like we were going to lose something out of the bottom and go flying off the cliff. Obviously that didn’t happen, but I am pretty sure it was close. After god only knows how many hours of driving, we hit Turin at 8:45pm. Almost a full 12 hour day in the back of a van…sweet mother mary, that was terrible. And this table that we drove to pick up turned out to be a tiny table that could be found at any thrift store and the guys that were waiting for us were in a back alley and it looked like we interrupted their drug deal. Turin looked totally sketchy at night. What a great time to be dropped off in a new country where we know nothing of the language. We manage to find a hostel, say goodbye and head straight for beer and pizza. The guy making the pizza had a gigantic gut, 2 inch thick glass on his glasses and looked like his name was Mario. Clearly the pizza would be good, and it was. Thank you Italy for my pizza overload the last few days. We bought tickets to Bologna for the next day and headed to bed. In the morning we got an early start and figured we would pick up our tickets before some exploring. Long story, but we got hardcore taken advantage of by both France and Italy in about an hour. Our tickets could only be picked up back in France or by going to Milan (which would require more tickets) so we had to buy the exact same ticket again. Bad start to the day. After that we wanted the hell out of Turin and to go straight for Bologna. The train ride was one of my favorite parts. I made friends with the girl next to me (Marianna) and had a little Italian lesson, which made a HUGE difference. I was actually able to make sense to people when we got to Bologna. Not much, but some. And Alberto (another guy in our car) decided to be a part of this lesson. Marianna and Alberto both did not speak too much English, so lots of hand gestures were used. It all worked out well enough. By the end of the train ride, Alberto had shared pizza and a sandwich and Marianna had given us nearly a full bag of crackers. I love Italians! Even strangers just want to feed me. We part ways and start looking for hostels again. We find a super cute 1 star spot (I know 1 star and cute don’t match up, but having our own bathroom/shower was amazing), drop our stuff off and get to exploring. Most of the exploring was of bars and a few clothing stores. After a few hours of walking, we grab a nice bottle of wine and head to the roof of our hostel to celebrate our first night in Bologna. In the morning we buy tickets for an overnight ride home leaving at 11pm. Since it would be an 8.5 hour train ride, we might as well be asleep for it. With it being 9:30am now, we have lots of time to see the city. We walked for a solid 9 hours that day with backpacks on. Luckily, it was mainly underwear and my toothbrush in my bag, but it was still extra weight. We drank lots of amazing coffee, ate too much gelato and saved some appetite for our fancy Italian dinner that night. No menu that we looked at had good old spaghetti bolognaise though…we were in Bologna right? I ended up with tagliatelle, Brittany got tortellini and Zane got cotoletta and of course we got wine and tiramisu to close out the night. I don’t think I could say it was better than my fancy French meal but it was delicious. After something classy, I was forced to trash us back down. I bought a bottle of wine to drink in the park at night. I have way too many homeless person ideas that go through my head. I figured it would help with sleeping on a pullout train bed and that it did. 

I Live in a Castle.

It was incredibly hard to leave Brigitte at the train station. She told me that I could always call the next family and tell them there was an emergency and that I could not make it and just stay in St Michel for another month. I think if I had done that, I never would have left St Michel though. I was texting with both Brigitte and her son as my train pulled away and part of me almost jumped off and hitchhiked back, but I stayed strong and continued on my way. I had to stop in Lyon, which was just as busy and crazy as Paris. I was so glad to get the hell out of there. Now, I had emailed a reminder to my new hosts that I was coming, but heard no response. I was a bit nervous that no one would show up for me and that I would have to sleep at the train station or find somewhere else less homeless style to stay. I was actually 99% prepared for that. I thought for sure I would be on my own. Luckily, I wander off the train and look around for someone looking confused also and I instantly find Ken and Lilli. Ken is from the US and Lilli is from Romania. They are an absolute awesome couple. I love them already and am also very intrigued by them. They seem mysterious besides the fact that they live in London and bought a gigantic chateau in France. There is another couple here, which is awesome also, and we get along great and are trying to figure out as much as we can about our hosts. We know that they are stupid rich, own tons of properties and cars, Ken is like some super genius that finished school as a surgeon but now is a CEO of some company and could have retired years ago but didn’t. They are completely normal people though, extremely social, love the outdoors and have an English bulldog named Winchel. I want to know all about them but I know I never will. The internet has been out for like a month here so that’s probably why I never heard back from them. I guess being in an 18^th century castle has its downfalls! It is crazy beautiful here though. I go for walks and runs through vineyards and plan on drinking from every winery I can find. I am in the Bourgogne region now, no longer Bergerac. I am in awe at how many different wine regions there are. France is my favorite. Oh ya, the castle….OUTRAGEOUS. The two towers connected to it are from like the 13^th century and they look just like out of a story book. There is a chapel, huge barn, caretaker house, a couple random houses and a vineyard all on their land. This place is so big that Ken didn’t even know he owned the vineyard on his land until the mayor told him. Who accidentally owns a vineyard?! I think I will have a lot of good adventures staying here. Tomorrow Ken and Lilli are heading to Turin, Italy to pick up a couch, so Zane and Brittany (the other 2 workawayers) and myself asked if we could hitch a ride into Italy. We figure if they are going, we had better take advantage of it. I think we will be hitting up Turin, then to Genoa and maybe Bologna before coming back. We can only be gone a few days so we don’t want to spend our whole time on the train OR all our money. Who knows how this will work since we have had no way to plan besides looking at a map, but we figure if we can’t catch a train or bus, at least we have our thumbs and hopefully can look pitiful enough to catch a ride on the back of a hay truck. 

Housewife In Training: Complete

Tonight is my last night here in St Michel and I realized my transformation into a housewife yesterday. As I have said before, here at St Michel, the women do the "women's work" and the men do the "men's work." After 2 months I am STILL yet to see Philippe do a single dish. Even if he needs something that's dirty, he seems to find something else that is already clean and will work well enough. So yesterday, after I went to the bakery for bread, went on a walk with Brigitte, did some laundry and grocery shopping...I decided to go back to the spot where I had seen cherries growing during our walk. A weird urge came over me to bake a cherry pie. This has never happened before. You are probably imagining me skipping down the street in a sun dress with sunflowers, rainbows and hearts on it and carrying a perfect little basket with a small dog running behind me, but I actually looked quite the opposite. Now I say, "housewife in training" because I still had not completed my certification as of yesterday. When I went to pick these cherries, I was still dressed in my walking clothes (nothing pretty) and I was jogging to the cherry tree with a plastic bag from the hardware store. When I got there, the tree was very much taller than I remembered when we had passed it earlier. I had made the trek though, so some cherries were comin' down. I climbed up a ways and found myself surrounded by sticker bushes that stuck me all over real good. I nearly fell and rolled down the hill through them trying to reach a high branch, that was just one of the close calls I had from going cherry pickin'. I managed to get some cherries into my plastic bag after lots of jumping, getting cherry juice all over me and being bitten by plenty of weird things lurking in the grass around me. Not enough for a pie though. Fail. Once I make it semi-safely back to the road I narrowly avoided being shit on by a gigantic bird. It would have taken a looooong shower to clean off after one of those. That was the second close call. Then as I am heading back, I feel rain drops and lately when it has rained, it has POURED. I get nervous and start sprinting back to St Michel. It's up hill, so I get tired quickly. Luckily though, the rain stops and the sky breaks out into sun. That would be close call  the third. It feels like a pretty good day after I realize I have at least, some cherries, did not fall into sticker bushes, wasn't shit on by an over-sized flying animal and then rained down upon as I trudged uphill home. Anyway, I am now an expert gardener, painter, bed-maker, dish do-er, table setter, grocery getter and who knows what else. But with having a cherry pie making urge and completing my last full day at St Michel, I would say I am housewife ready...if that type of crap were anything I was interested in. NOT (please see the above picture...not the one with Jessica Simpson).

French Bikers, Death Rap and Ping Pong...? Ya, That's Right.

Sorry this week has been so busy! I ended up at a "Garden of Imaginery(translates something like that)" Then we went to a 14th century city and off to an awesome old castle. I need to get pictures up soon! So the last few days have been busy with work, checking out the surrounding areas and the usual drinking.

This weekend was the busiest I have seen it yet at St Michel. Brigitte overbooked us, so I was sleeping at the neighbor's place with her daughter and Brigitte ended up sleeping  in her office last night. It's a bit hectic at night to say the least. On Friday night 6 French bikers pulled up and parked their shiny new rides in the barn. I think if there was a way to sleep on their bikes they would have, or maybe even just lay the bikes down and spoon them in a circle. This morning Philippe said he saw them shaving outside next to their bikes. Oh Putain! Friday night though, Jean, Andrew and I went to the bar/barn to play some ping pong and relax and then once dinner was totally over, all the bikers came to check on their bikes (as if they would go anywhere). Andrew had his I-Pod on random, so we would go from a random funk song to death rap, I don't know if the French speakers understood much of the music either way. So we started getting into some ping pong with the bikers and this lone French couple that looked very proper, I have no idea how they came along for the party, but they arrived and were ready to hang. The woman kicked ass at ping pong. It was a pretty funny sight to see this woman with orthopedic looking shoes and an ankle length dress owning at ping pong. The badass guy with the huge biker jacket wasn't so badass anymore. That is most likely why he gave up and went back to stroke his motorcycle and talk about how fast it can go. We went to get another couple of bottles of wine to keep the party going since the bikers were about ready to make their own with whatever they could find around the barn. As usual, I wished that I could understand them, but I'm sure I would have been just as confused listening to them talk about motorcycles. The next day I woke up pretty sick and not with a hangover. I think that's what a few people thought, but it was more of me not being able to breath all night with congestion. It was awesome. I could hardly move in the morning so I slept most of the day. Last night I put together an "Irish Cure" as I called it and got some odd looks yesterday, as well as, today. It started out with some white wine (Philippe told me it would work), then I added a shot of whiskey (the real Irish part) and then red wine and then Brigitte helped me out with another special mix to cure my cold. Altogether, I woke up this morning feeling much better. I have a new recipe to cure any cold now. Yet another thing I learned in France. I am always staying educated.