Sometimes, I have moments here when I think "yeah, that's exactly what I imagined France to be like."
Eg: when I first found the market in Saint Gaudens. It takes over the whole town on Thursdays!
Most recent example, was a lunch in the back yard at the Atelier des Cultures. Have been doing a language exchange with the French lady who runs it; that is to say that we meet each week and spend an hour speaking French, and an hour speaking English.
She invited me to come along to a workshop at the Atelier and, at midday, we had a shared lunch in the back yard. We had amazing luck, because it was a beautiful day, and quite warm. A week later, it was about 1.6 degrees outside, so clearly we picked the right one. ;p
There were many countries represented here: France, Spain, Argentina, Britain, America, Holland, Germany, New Zealand. Everyone brought something typical of their country and, as you may have seen in the photo, I introduced these poor, unsuspecting people to
Marmite.
The British lady insisted that British Marmite was better. One French guy was like "that stuff's disgusting" and told me about how someone had told him it was like Nutella, and given him a spoonfull. If that's not cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is!
I forget that people don't have any concept of what Marmite is like, so it was the Brtish lady and French guy who were giving the "no, that's too much" instructions.
It seemed that, in general, people thought it was pretty yuck. Oh well. All the more for me.
The place where this was happening, Café d'Anères, is apparently quite well-known in the area, as they have an association which organises some kind of party/event on the 22nd of every month. This all started because of a comedy sketch by Fernand Raynaud, called « Le 22 à Asnières »... close enough to Anères to warrant a party every 22nd? I think so.
