Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?

A week ago, at this time of night, I was eating a quintessentially French dish in the dining room of a 200 year old estate house in Auvergne, France. Classical music on the record player, a fire roaring in an immense fireplace, and three old friends completed a fabulous evening.

France! What fun! I thought I was going to Dijon last week when I boarded the Thalys train in Rotterdam, and indeed, that's where the trains eventually ended. The trip actually covered much more distance - but by car, a mode of transportation which has somehow become foreign to me!

I was met at the station by my old roommates Amie, Steve and Mathilde, and Mathilde's very sweet beau, Julien. Mathilde et Julien do live in Dijon, but shortly after I arived, we headed out to her parents' farm in Montceaux l'Etoiles (sp?), a village about 2 hours south of Dijon. We were very well hosted from sunday night to Tuesday morning by Mathilde's family, and since they don't speak much English, I was doing my best to dredge up my high school French. Although I still couldn't have a conversation, by the end of the visit I was pleased I could come up with the odd sentence which actually made some sense. Mathilde's mom obviously had more confidence in my French than I, and kept trying to engage me in conversation, but alas, I stared at her in rapt incomprehension more often than I replied coherently.

While at Montceaux l'Etoiles, we went to an outside market. Though I've become accustomed to such markets here, this one had a novel feature: live animals. Turkeys, ducks, chickens, bunnies, various furry rodents, colourful squaucky birds and even goats were carried off by a variety of customers. Steve took a picture of a fellow holding a toddler with one hand and the legs of a flapping turkey in the other. I hope he didn't have far to go!

The other highlight of our time in Montceaux l'Etoiles was a bike ride. When Mathilde mentioned bike rides, I thought "great! I like bike rides!" When she said "16 km", I thought "heck! I can do 60km easy!" When she said "forest", I thought "Oho! Paths through the forest! How lovely!"

Right. Except for a couple things. First, I neglected to remember that the landscape was hilly. Very hilly. Everywhere. Second, I forget that I was going with Amie and Steve, the two most athletic and energetic people I know. (Mathilde's no slouch, either!) Amie was a national-winning skier. Steve is one of the top amateur soccer players in Edmonton. Mathilde is very fit and grew up biking in this area.

I, on the other hand, am me. At my best level of fitness (which is not now!) I can't even begin to rival this crew at their worst. It's a good thing they were patient.

This 16km ride was tough. I've never biked a hill in my life, prairie girl that I am. Going uphill was painful, and though we had geared mountain bikes, I never did quite figure out which settings were which - and I realized afterwards that my setting was not the right one. Ooops. After about 4 pedal strokes, I ended up walking up every single hill. The rest of them did a lot of waiting.

You'd think going downhill would be great in comparison. But instead of being tough on my legs and lungs, it was tough on my arms and heart. Either we were whizzing down a reasonably smooth road at uncomfortably (for me) high speeds, or we were hurtling down a very rutted and rather steep mountain path which required a whole lot of evasive steering and plenty of braking. Oh, and did I mention we didn't have helmets? Yikes.

At one point, we crossed a little creek on a footbridge and were riding on a stone wall maybe two feet wide and three feet tall - essentially an overgrown ramp for the bridge. There was brush on one side and either water or a couple feet of grassy bank on the other. For some reason, Mathilde stopped suddenly, and Amie stopped suddenly, and I followed suit by falling over. Into the bush, fortunately. Further on there was barbed wire to land on, and earlier there had been nettles, so I picked a good location. The lack of helmet turned out to be okay in this instance as I landed on my well-padded rear end - it's still bruised, but no other damage, happily. So there I was: sprawled in the brush, bicycle on top, laughing so hysterically I was crying. Yes, this is how I keep up with athletic types. I got Amie and Steve to take a picture for posterity and when they return from Europe in a month or so I'll try to remember to post it.

Still, we did survive, and the country was gorgeous, when I remembered to look at it. We also drove around a fair amount and wandered around parklands and churches and monasteries and lots of pretty places.

Tuesday morning we piled into the car and headed out to Mathilde's grandparents' aforementioned summer house outside of St. Flour, another 3 hours southwest-ish in Auvergne. More incredibly beautiful territory! It was pretty cold that day so we wandered around St. Flour and area for a while and then retired to the house to make a roaring fire and hot supper. It was a tremendously neat experience staying at that place - I'm regretting not taking more pictures of the inside. Maybe we'll get to go back and I'll take the opportunity then. The house was full of incredible old furniture and the whole place would be a museum if it were in Canada, but to Mathilde's family, it's just the place they go in the summer.

We spent a few hours on Wednesday climbing one of the volcanos in Auvergne. Very old and or course dormant, they provided some pretty striking views. Mathilde figured the one we climbed was around 1900m and that we'd started at 1200 or 1300m. I've been living at sea level for the last year and a half - and I did notice the difference. We ate lunch halfway back down the mountain in the shelter of some rocks: baguette and cheese, tomatoes and salami with fresh strawberries, pears and chocolate. Yummy. We ate a lot of cheese on this trip. A lot.

Wednesday afternoon we dropped Amie and Steve off at a rental car in Clermont-Ferrand and headed back to Dijon with a stop off at Mathilde's parents' for supper. I knew I'd been living in the Netherlands too long when I commented to my mom that we drove a long long way and she laughed at the distance.

Thursday morning I wandered around Dijon's old town and hopped on my first train home at noon. Three trains, a subway ride and a short walk later and I was home after one truly awesome trip. I loved the French countryside - thank you Mathilde for showing it to me!