Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Places’ Category

We’re at one of the crossroads of Europe so find that people are stopping here enroute for another major tourist site somewhere in Europe.

It’s very common for people to be coming from Paris enroute to somewhere in the Valencia or Alicante area as we’re pretty much at the half-way point and quite convenient for the motorway exit.

Going the other way, it’s almost always Avignon that people are heading for. OK, Avignon is nice but there seems to be more to see in Nimes, there’s the Pont du Gard, Arles and, for the nature lovers, the Camarge, all around two to three hours drive from here. And those are just the highlights because there are lots of other places to see in that area.

So why’s it always Avignon that they go to?

Simple. It’s got the biggest “name”. It’s why people go to Paris or to Rome or London. They usually start off with places that they’ve heard other people talk about or have seen in films or on TV.

Those coming the longest distances are the worst for this. Both Australians and Americans will almost always start with the “big sights” and, in many cases, only ever go to those “big sights” and thereby miss out on the real culture of the countries that they visit. Visiting in this way means that they are constantly surrounded by their fellow tourists hitting the “big sights”.

I’m not saying that they shouldn’t visit the big sights, but that needs to be balanced by visits to other places around the country. It’s much better to spend a few hours going round a small museum exhibiting a broad range of art than try to get round the Louvre over a day and thereby find that you get to the point of thinking “oh hum, another Matisse”. For that matter, probably the best place to see as Monet did doesn’t have any of his paintings at all!

We figured that when the guy said that it would be here in October, that would really mean early November at best but he’s just called to say that it’s arrived which has thrown us a little.

For a start, we need to get the money organised to pay for it which’ll take us at least a day to do.

Then we need to sort out the insurance. Well, we’ve started on that already in that we got an online quote from MAAF which was getting on for EUR 200 cheaper than the renewal for the Alto insurance was from GAN. Yeah, I know, we don’t have the Alto any more but they still sent out the insurance renewal anyway.

Finally, for a change, I’d actually renewed the car rental early so I’d to cancel that as the new rental period kicks in tomorrow.

We’ve just received the bill for the health insurance for the coming year…. EUR 10,047!!

Yes, ten thousand euros.

As with all French administrative organisations, the health insurance people take an incredibly optimistic view of the income that a business is receiving when they make their estimates. Start-up business are assumed to make tens of thousands of euros even after all their start-up expenses have been taken into account.

By year three we are apparently supposed to be making around EUR 155,000 before expenses are deducted, hence the somewhat ridiculous figure of EUR 10,000 that they want us to pay at this point.

Why the estimate though? Well, our accountant still hasn’t gotten around to doing the books for 2005 and recently announced that they need more information for 2006 despite assuring us nearly six months ago that they definitely had everything that was required.

Now that we’re into the lull in bookings characteristic of weeks 2 & 3 of September every year, we’re resuming our weekend daytrips aimed at seeing the region properly and adding to our stock of photos for the guide.

Why the lull? Well, the French stop taking their holidays at the end of the third week of August more or less en mass which gives us a drop in bookings in the fourth week. That changes dramatically in the first week of September when Visa pour l’Image (the photojournalism festival) is on in Perpignan as it pulls in vast numbers of both tourists and photojournalists from around the world. For the 2nd and 3rd week of September most of the hotels around the beaches are still open but there aren’t so many tourists about so occupancy drops. By the end of the 3rd week they’ve pretty much all closed but the number of tourists hasn’t dropped much so we usually get a fair jump in bookings from then.

But what about the daytrips? Well, yesterday we were off to see Lastours which is a Cathar castle that you rarely hear about. It’s quite unique too as it’s the only one where construction was started by the Cathars and finished by the French (three of the four towers are Cathar). Along the way we managed to call in at Aquilar (the smallest of the Cathar castles), the abbey of Lagrasse and even Carcassonne not to mention fitting in a brief stop along the Canal du Midi. Quite a full day for sure but one which has let me add articles on Carcassonne and the Canal du Midi to Whole Earth Guide this morning.

We’re hoping to get to the other end of the Languedoc in the coming week to see the Pont du Gard, Aigues Mort and one or two other things around the Nimes area.

It used to be pretty handy living here and learning Spanish. After all, we’re just 30 miles or so from Spain and we get a lot of guests from Barcelona so it’s obviously easy to get a lot of practice in, isn’t it?

Well, no actually, it isn’t. Up until about 18 months ago it certainly used to be but the Catalans have become a whole lot more militant about their language since then. The immediately obvious impact of that was that since around then brochures in shops are only available in Catalan instead of being in Spanish too as they were previously. Similarly all signs are only in Catalan these days.

In the last 12 months we’ve found that the Catalans quite simply refuse to serve us in shops if we speak Spanish. I think that’s because we come across as residents of the area and therefore they expect us to speak Catalan. However, that’s not possible for us because even though we live in French Catalonia the French have all but stamped out that language.

Recently we even had a Catalan guest who insisted on speaking in very bad English rather than Spanish so we expect that it will get worse in the coming years.

It’s getting quite difficult for us because although we get a lot of guests from Barcelona, not all of them are Catalan and neither do all of them speak or read English yet all of them speak and read Spanish (or Castillian as the Catalans call it). Therefore we acknowledge reservations from Spain in Spanish.

Will they eventually become as militant as the Basques? Who knows, but it certainly seems to be heading that way.