Formula Fun

Last weekend was our much-awaited pilgrimage to one of the temples of Formula One, the Spa Francorchamps circuit and, more specifically, the famous Eau Rouge corner.

A rather moody shot of a GP2 car going up Eau Rouge

"Pilgrimage" is an appropriate word, because it's a bit of a mission to get there and back. The journey started midday Thursday, when I managed to haul my hungover self (one quiet drink at the guinguette having turned into out-all-night with the girls) out of the house in time for my train/metro/train trip to Brussels, where I was reunited with my parents for the first time in a year and my sister.

We had time to settle into our lovely, central apartment and head out for a delicious dinner somewhere that the owner informed us was off the tourist trail. I was pleasantly surprised by the scrummy fish soup I had as an entree (Mum and I both headed into that one without high hopes, just picking the thing that seemed least bad on the fixed menu, but were agreeably surprised). I also made a total dick of myself and lost all pretensions I might have had about knowing anything about wine. We ordered a Sancerre rosé, the waiter duly brought it, presented it to us - I thought it strange that it was in a green bottle, but didn't actually click and I couldn't read the label. He poured it for me, the supposed Loire Valley expert. I held it up to the light, thinking it looked VERY pale, but my sister chipped in to say it was definitely pink. I smelled it, very floral and tasted it, likewise, but nodded approval since as we know, the point of tasting is to check it's not corked, not whether we like it or not... And perhaps also to check that it's actually a rosé. Because yeah, it was a white. Quelle embarassement! When he moved on to pour my sister's glass, she who had reassured me that it was pink piped up to ask the waiter if it was really a rosé. Nope! He fairly graciously brought us the correct wine (which was unmistakeably pink), but I think my face was quite red. I'm taking comfort in those wine studies that show that even experts can't tell the difference between a red and a white if they're dyed the same colour... d'oh!

Anyhow, after dinner it was time for bed, since I was understandably pretty tired and I needed to set the alarm for 5.45 am the next morning in order to get up and at 'em to cover the c. 150 km between Brussels and the Spa circuit. Mum and Jess stayed behind in Brussels, while Dad and I took a train to Verviers, followed by a bus to the circuit. Things were somewhat disorganised across the whole weekend, but I'm giving us props for our logistical skills. After the first day, when we had a nightmare hot, crowded bus ride back to Verviers despite crowd numbers for Friday practice being much lower than for Saturday and Sunday, we planned our movements with all the cunning of a whole bag full of weasels. From strategically sitting at the front of the train to Verviers in order to dash out first to the bus line (leading to us both being comfortably seated for the ride to the track on Saturday and Sunday) to investigating where the bus came from before it got to the main entrance for the trip home (again, meaning we got a seat for the Saturday trip), we executed our trips with panache. This didn't mean that we had late starts on Saturday and Sunday though - even with the race starting at 2 pm on Sunday and despite us staying Friday and Saturday night much closer to the track near Liège, we were up at 6.30 to make sure that the day went off without a hitch.

Here follows the boring F1 bit...

The first day (Friday), we arrived at the circuit conveniently right next to the pit-lane exit as free practice 1 began, and were able to hear the cars firing up and glimpse them heading out on to track. I've said it before and I'll say it again, there's nothing quite like the noise and speed of an F1 car in the "flesh" - orders of magnitude greater than they seem on TV. We headed into the stands, where the rain poncho I'd borrowed for the weekend came in handy for the first session, while it turned pretty hot and sunny for the afternoon session.

Probably the highlight of the weekend was Saturday's qualifying session. Light rain showers were passing throughout the qualifying, which is always a magic formula for exciting racing. While it looked like Paul di Resta (one of my least favourite drivers) was going to take a surprise pole, the track dried up in the closing stages of qualifying and lovely Lewis Hamilton crossed the line to start his pole lap with 2 seconds to spare. Trackside, however, it's a bit hard to follow the action, and I didn't actually know he was still out on track, because the big screen was only showing Webber and Vettel's times, who were slightly on front of him on track (in that order). So it was a pretty magic moment when first Webber crossed the line to take pole position, drawing a small cheer from the crowd around us, then Vettel took pole off him a few seconds later (cue a much smaller cheer), and then, unexpectedly, Hamilton popped over the line out of nowhere, the final car to complete the lap and take pole position. Cue massive cheer from at least 80% of the crowd! While I didn't see a lot of Mercedes merch (and it seems very much the done thing to kit yourself out with as much merchandise as possible when attending a GP), it was very obvious who the crowd was getting behind, at least in a three-way Webber/Vettel/Hamilton battle.

Unfortunately, the race didn't quite go the same way. Vettel got ahead on the first lap, just after passing us at Eau Rouge, and he built a lead very quickly and just dominated from the front, as (if I'm being bitter) is the only way he knows how to win. It was a bit depressing seeing him flash by lap after lap, with the gap growing ever wider to the following car. Plus some guy behind me felt the need to clap every time Vettel went by, getting on my nerves hugely. To add insult to injury, Alonso got past Hamilton before too long as well, and from there on in the lead group of drivers didn't really change. I was sitting there hoping for rain or a safety car, but unusually for Spa, neither turned up during the race. That said, we got to see a couple of overtakes down the bottom of the hill, particularly Sutil overtaking (I think) Gutierrez, and it's still a great experience seeing the cars (and hearing those engines for the last time, since they're changing next year), checking out the famous circuit and witnessing the ambience and camaraderie in between the fans. It would have been great to see Hamilton win, of course, but we still got to see him put it on pole at least.

Moi with Eau Rouge in the background

In the stands on Friday

All my photos were pretty terrible, so I put my camera down during the race and just watched it. Here's a Toro Rosso climbing Eau Rouge - it does at least show the gradient a bit

I had to find a much better photo online to confirm this was Mark Webber in the drivers' parade

On the third attempt, I managed to get a shot of this shop advising you to "drink drive in Tiège"

Our trip back to Brussels went pretty smoothly and we arrived in time for a yummy dinner cooked by Jess and the chance to demolish a few of the bottles of wine I'd brought over from France. After Mum and Dad went to bed, Jess and I "snuck" out to see a little of what Brussels nightlife had to offer on a Sunday. We ended up in a small bar which was playing (mostly) classic 80s and 90s tunes and videos, condensed to about 90 seconds each, so we had great fun doing our own little karaoke session. It did ensure I bookended both sides of our Belgium trip with a bit of a hangover though...

On our last day, we mostly just wandered around a bit to see the Grand Place and stock up on Belgian chocolate, eat fries and waffles, etc. We did make a detour to the Librarium museum which I'd tried to see on my last trip to Brussels. I would have liked it if there had been a few more really old and precious books, illluminated manuscripts, etc., but there was still some interesting stuff.

All in all, a nice long weekend en famille, and I'm counting down the last day and a half of work before it's off to England and Italy for more family fun!

Me, Dad and Jess in the Grand Place, Brussels. Both my parents are terrible photographers, hence you can't actually see anything of the background. For some reason Mum thought it more important to include our shoes in the photo.

Me, mum and Jess. In this version, you can't even really see us either!

This was my go...

International house hunting, part 2

I'm freshly back from my weekend trip to Metz/Luxembourg, pretty exhausted after a late train that meant I got 5 hours sleep before coming to work this morning (and this was after wandering around Metz for a solid 12 hours).

Things didn't get off to a stellar start. Over several days, I phoned, left messages, pushed buttons on websites asking for callbacks and sent emails, and only one rental agency actually bothered getting back to me to set up an appointment in Luxembourg. I know it's August, but you'd think for the amount of money they get for doing nothing, essentially, they would bother to phone and give you the address of somewhere you scouted out yourself on the internet anyway. So I headed off with three appointments for the Saturday - two flatshares (ugh) in Luxembourg and one furnished apartment in Metz.

I was up bright and early on Saturday morning, not really able to sleep in since I was worrying about what the weekend would bring. It was a gorgeous day without a cloud in the sky as I took the train to Lux and made my way to the first apartment, within walking distance of where I'll be working. It was a nice house, sharing with the owner, a woman in her 40s, one other tenant and two border collies. My warning spidey sense was triggered when she asked if I would be cooking and when I said yes, she replied "I don't mind you using my kitchen, but I expect it to be left in the state in which you found it". Which is reasonable, but when will people get it through their heads that once you rent a room to someone it's not "your" kitchen any more, and it's not a gracious act of generosity to "let" people use it. We are, after all, talking about a basic human need, not saying "oh, I don't mind you using my Playstation 3" or whatever (Playstation 3s are still the cool new thing, right?).

The other thing with this woman was that there were 800€ of agency fees to pay to move in. The idea of using an agency to rent a room in your own house is pretty bizarre to me anyway - surely you have to be closely involved in vetting the person you'll be living with, so what's the point of an agency? The agent wasn't even present for the visit! I told her of the troubles I'd had getting any agents to call me back and she positively encouraged me to go on and on about how slack they were and how ridiculous it was to pay hundreds of euros to visit somewhere when the agent neither helped you find the place nor turned up for the visit. Some time later, I asked what the woman did... Yep, she's an estate agent...

She took it pretty well, saying that she agreed and that's not how she operated, but I was at first mortified, and then, thinking it over later, pretty miffed that she let me talk and talk and made little leading comments, without letting me know I was in the middle of talking smack about her profession for 10 minutes. Not really the most forthright way of conducting a conversation.

So that was off the list - too expensive for a flatshare, especially with the agency fees, and I didn't really want to live with the woman.

The next place was advertised as being 5 minutes away from the central train station, and the owner had told me to phone when I was at the station. My cellphone used to be incapable of texting or calling overseas, or working in a different country, but since I can now make outbound international calls, I assumed it would work in Luxembourg. Nope. The station was generously furnished with payphones, but it took me an age to work out how to use them (figuring out how to change the language out of Luxembourgeois helped) and then how to dial the number. The phone number started with 0035262... and I tried seemingly every possible version before going to ask someone at the ticket desk how to make the call. Turns out you ignore everything before the second 2 and don't add a 0 in front. Bizarre.

Anyway, the woman dispatched someone to pick me up in a blue Mercedes (possibly only in Luxembourg would this result in me chasing after the wrong blue Mercedes in the space of a 10 minute wait) and he drove me off to the apartment "near the train station". There's no way to describe this other than a bare-faced lie, as witnessed by the map below showing the distance between the train station and the apartment...

I was a bit concerned the guy might have actually been dispatched to kidnap me and sell me into a Luxembourgish sex slavery ring, but although the flat he took me to see could definitely have served as a flophouse, this was not the case. Apparently, run-down Dickensian-style boarding houses still exist and are cunningly hidden by vague descriptions that pointedly don't tell you how many people you'll be sharing with (or where the house actually is). The rent was reasonable in Luxembourg terms (meaning still not particularly cheap), and in return you would have the pleasure of sharing a kitchen and two bathrooms between a minimum of 12 inhabitants coming and going without any input from yourself. Slum landlords: alive and well and driving Mercedes.

So that was strike two, with one to go. My last Saturday appointment was in Metz, to see a furnished studio supposedly 31 sq. m, although I have severe doubts about that. It seemed miles smaller than that, although perhaps that was just the awkward angles making it impossible to use whatever space there was. It was also described as an "F1 bis", which is normally one room with a separate kitchen, which was definitely not true. That said, I got on well with the owner - we chatted for an astonishing 1 3/4 hours - and I probably would have just taken it for the location and ease of moving in to a furnished place, except it wasn't free until the end of September. This would mean spending hundreds of euros on temporary accommodation and having all the hassle of moving twice while starting a new job. Sigh.

I was too exhausted to care on Saturday night, dead to the world by 10 pm, but woke up on Sunday feeling fairly discouraged. I went out before 9 am for a walk to see a little bit of the town and came back thinking that I would just try to call everyone I could and just see if anyone would take me as a tenant, despite the short-term contract. To my surprise, only one woman said over the phone that she wouldn't rent to me, so I suppose I should have tried that earlier. Anyway, I managed to line up 4 appointments (although one was later cancelled when the tenant rang up at the last minute to say he had an apéro - drinks - to go to and couldn't show me the place).

The first was in a great location, close to the train station for the commute, but also near the centre of town. On the other hand, it was a bit dear and on the 4th floor without a lift, so I couldn't imagine how I would manage to move my stuff in. The second was a pretty charmless one-bedroom box on the ground floor of a building that was a little further away from both the train station and the centre of town, but doable. The third was a massive, three-room 70 sq. m place on the 1st floor, really beautifully decorated and close to the train station although not very near the centre of town and the same price as the first place.

I was in love with the last place (and it had a bath and a cellar and lots of cupboards!)... but I slept on it, and I phoned this morning to say I'd take the second place. The rent is 140€ a month cheaper, and since I don't know whether my contract will be renewed, it's not really practical to commit to a pricier place when I might end up on the dole and be completely unable to pay for it. Plus it will be easy to move in and if I can persuade Bob not to be a total scaredy cat, I can even let him outside some of the time. It's definitely not the apartment of my dreams - and it's going to cost at least 600€ to hire a van to move my stuff over, but obviously that's money that would either be going on agency fees in Lux or on temporary accommodation or whatever anyway, and that way at least I don't have to figure out what to do with everything and worry about getting rid of it all and ending up in a few months with nothing. And even with the train fares to Luxembourg, it's still cheaper than the 12-bedroom shack...

So yeah, it's all a bit nightmarish for a job that, at the end of the day, might only last 14 weeks or so, but what else can you do? At least now I can try to arrange the move, figure out how to get the whiteware down three flights of narrow stairs into a van, persuade Liz to drive me 1200 kms there and back, arrange to change adress etc. etc. And cross my fingers that something won't go horribly wrong at the last minute - I want that contract signed before I can relax!

AND now I can get excited about my trips to Spa and Italy :)

International house hunting

How young is too young to have a stroke/heart attack? Cos I really think I might be about to. My sleep app recorded a miserable 36% sleep quality last night as I tossed and turned (and gave up altogether in favour of watching classic Father Ted), and today I feel like one giant ball of nervous energy.

My original plan for the new job was to base myself in Trier, Germany - easy(er) commute, cheap (normal-priced) housing and what fun to live in Germany for a few months! Once I started doing more research, however, it emerged that most German agents charge a standard 2.3 times the rent as their agency fees, and I can't/won't fork over 1000+€ plus bond for a 4-month lease. There are, of course, non-agency options, but it seems Germans aren't that keen to reply when you write to them in English.

So Plan B was to live over the French border in Metz, which seems a pleasant enough city although the commute is further and involves a train and a bus = multiple opportunities to run late. There's a lot of stuff going in my price range - this is very much the time of year to be looking, since there's a lot of movement with people changing jobs after the summer break or students coming to university, but that also means more competition. Hence I booked a trip to Metz this weekend to do some searching onsite. I don't really want to book something sight unseen, and there's not really any point emailing someone to say "hey, I'm hours away and can't visit and don't want the place until mid-September, but will you keep me in mind"? I've only enquired with one agency so far - who said they wouldn't rent anything to me. I have a sinking feeling this will be the case with anyone I ask, since I got rejected from every agency I tried except one back when I was looking here in Tours, and that was when I was only a couple of months into a (supposedly) renewable one-year contract. I understand I'm not a great prospect - only less a four-month contract and no French guarantor, but it still seems so harsh! Landlords aren't allowed to kick you out for not paying the rent in winter, so I suppose they don't want to take on someone whose income stream is forecast to dry up on the 1st of January and then is free to merrily squat there until April, or whenever winter is officially finished.

So, while I might try making some calls in Metz tomorrow (which is a public holiday here), it looks like it might be Plan C, live in Luxembourg itself. This obviously has the big advantage of not having several hours' worth of daily commuting, but the prices are insane. About 800€ seems average for a studio (or even worse, a flat-share, ugh), which is about twice the rent on my apartment here, which is a one-bedroom. Then there's the charges, bond and agency fees to think about...

I found one agency that is very flexible - leases start from 2 weeks, everything is set up for you and included in the rental price, but some of the properties they let seem the stuff of nightmares. Imagine sharing a house with 12 bedrooms in it but only one kitchen/living area/laundry, with people coming and going continually and no control over who you're sharing with, with the possibility that one week you could be sharing the space with 11 other tenants, and the next, with 22 (and still paying like 700€ for it)? I don't think I could stand it.

I feel like I'm going to take this job, and a few months later end up homeless with no money and no job. Something to look forward to then...

Villandry visit

As they say, you don't know what you've got till it's (almost) gone. Or, more accurately, you don't bother to get off your arse to see it until your time is running out. I have so much to do between now and mid-September that I won't have many opportunities to tick any last "must-see" sights off my Loire Valley checklist, but one thing I managed this Saturday was to finally get to the château of Villandry, just 20 minutes away from Tours and renowned for its lovely gardens.

I'm not especially in love with gardens, but the rumours are true, they are beautiful. Although much of the gardens tend towards the formal, geometric layouts, there are also sections of more "natural" (although no doubt carefully planned and tended) sections to enjoy. The château itself is not exceptional, but the entry ticket to the château and gardens is not much more expensive than the gardens alone, and probably worth it for no other reason than you get to climb up into the tower and get a c. 300° view of the gardens. The weather forecast said partly cloudy, which actually just meant scatterings of fluffy white clouds, all the better for pretty photographs, and temperatures which were nice and warm without being oppressive.

And, since it was so close and I was up and out bright and early, I was back in time for lunch, with plenty of time to clean my flat, make my famous potato salad, and head to Liz's new flat for a barbecue dinner!

I'd love to get to Chambord as well before I leave, but I'm not sure I'll have time to. But in any case, I'm sure Tours hasn't seen the last of me! The countdown to leaving is a good reminder to look about myself and appreciate where I am. I try not to forget that there are plenty of people who dream their whole lives of seeing the châteaux of the Loire Valley, and I've been very fortunate to live in such a lovely part of the world and visit many of them (although I sometimes have a sneaking suspicion that there are people out there who came for a week and managed to see more!)

Anyway, I'll leave you with a few of my photos... (PS which, looking back at them, are strangely empty of people. Some of the formal gardens are not open for walking about in, for the rest I suppose just luck. I definitely wasn't all alone there, although I suppose the size of the grounds and the fact that I was in and out before lunchtime cut down on the crowds!)

Can almost pretend I took a break in the lavender fields of Provence

The "cross"garden

The love gardens, representing the stages of love from passion, romance, flirting (?) to jealousy

Love hearts

A beautiful ceiling salvaged from a Spanish palace - there are three others like it scattered around the world

The kitchen gardens

Lux travel

Or, how I tried something new and it paid off.

Let's fill in the backstory. As you probably know, I got hired for my current job starting in April, until the end of August. At the time, whether they believed it or not, there were many positive words about how my contract would "probably" be renewed, the subcontractors I am working for just had to iron out the formalities of their contract, etc. etc. Fast-forward to the beginning of June. I have two months left on my contract, the subcontractors' contract runs out the end of July and hasn't yet been renewed, and the UK project I was hired to work on will probably not get off the ground until 2014. Plus I have gotten rid of the entire backlog of documents that, when I arrived, filled about 7 shelves (with more arriving every day), and there have been days where I've finished all my work by 11 am and literally played Candy Crush for the rest of the day. Which isn't as fun as it sounds.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that things were not looking rosy for a contract renewal. Now the last time this happened, it was a great shock to the system and I ended up depressed, on sick leave, and ultimately unemployed. This time, I was determined to be proactive and start lining up something else while I still had a day job. So I marched into my manager's office, asked him about my contract, got the response I was expecting ("I don't know, but things don't look good") and told him that, with the clock ticking and no offers on the table from their side, I had to start looking elsewhere.

Cards on the table, I started firing CVs off, deciding to be confident and just go for anything I saw that looked vaguely appropriate, unlike when I was depressed and kept telling myself "you can't apply for that, look, you're underqualified/overqualified/probably the right amount qualified, but they won't want you anyway because x, y, z". Almost straight away, my phone started ringing and recruiters started doing that horrible, horrible thing French people do of ringing you out of the blue and submitting you to a mini-interview over the phone. I had one complete disaster where there was a bad line, I couldn't hear a thing the woman said, had to ask her to repeat everything, and actually spent the whole phonecall thinking it was another job entirely that was ringing me. (By the way, I find it incredibly rude that, even after I sent an email to apologise and explain again that I just couldn't hear, this woman hasn't got back to me to at least say "sorry, we're not going forward with your candidature".) Several others went a lot better, but they told me to get back in touch closer to the end date of my contract.

The one that actually paid off, however, was what I would have thought of as the longest shot of all. For I think the first time in my life, I submitted a candidature spontanée - I even had to look the term up in the dictionary to find the English equivalent (they suggested "spontaneous" or "unsolicited" application, neither of which I think sounds all that great). That is, I found a company online that looked like they might regularly hire people a bit like me, and sent them my CV even though they weren't advertising any vacancies. I've been to the seminars before where they tell you to do this, but honestly, I'd never really believed it would work. Even when they called me, I half expected they would just say, "cool, we'll keep you on our books", but the next thing I knew, they were inviting me to Luxembourg for an interview.

So, after hastily wangling two days off work, booking (reimbursable, thankfully) last-minute train tickets, spending a weekend of debauchery in Toulouse then having two much-needed sleeps in my own bed, it was off early in the morning to take a train, metro, train, and two-bus journey, spanning three countries, to my interview. The bus, from Germany, arrived at the Luxembourg city train station as scheduled, two hours before my interview, and after changing into my interview clothes and touching up my makeup in the train station loos, I decided to head straight up to the vicinity of my interview location. Thankfully, since of course I took the wrong bus (it went to the right area, but by a different route that didn't go past the stop I needed). The bus driver told me to go round the corner to the main road and wait for a different bus back down the road, but when I got there and looked at the map, I decided that it was just one straight road, it didn't look far, and the next bus wasn't for 10 minutes, so I'd just walk.

This was a bit of an error in judgement. What looked not far on the map turned out to be, I later verified, a 2 mile walk (by the way, it annoys me no end that I can't figure out how to change from miles to kilometres on Apple Maps). 2 miles in the blazing c. 28°C, humid sunshine dressed in a wool suit (well, I took the jacket off of course) with a full knee-length slip underneath (cos otherwise that woollen waistband is itchy!) on one of those long, straight roads that just seems to go on and on without you ever getting any nearer to your unknown destination. Pulling a wheely suitcase. Altogether, it took 1 1/2 hours from my arrival at the train station to reaching my destination, so thank god I always leave myself a lot of time. I used the spare 20 minutes before heading inside to try to sit quietly and stop sweating. Always a good start.

After checking in to the front desk, I headed into my interview with a woman about my age who had not only been very friendly over the phone and by email (signing off, unusually, Bien cordialement instead of just Cordialement) but turned out to be gorgeous, and wearing a dress that was tight and low-cut even by general office standards, let alone French women's standards. (Yes, this was Luxembourg, but she and her company were French.) I swear I spent the start of the interview just staring at her thinking "please hire me and be my new best friend". (There was also a man and another woman there, who were not candidates to be my new best friend/girl crush.)

The interview started off on a bad/confusing note, when it emerged that they had decided I wasn't experienced enough for the position we had discussed on the telephone. The good news, however, was there was a more junior post, that they weren't interviewing anyone else for (yet). One of the bad things about living in France is it's really hard to get a job as a librarian, as my training, experience and inclinations would normally lead me to do. So I have to apply for jobs in records management, which in fairness, I am rather comically clueless about (despite actually working in a records management position right now, and having studied it a bit at uni).

Obviously, I'd tried to brush up before the interview, but things started off slightly dodgy when she asked if the term "classification code" meant anything to me. "Yeeeeeeees....", I replied, praying there wouldn't be any follow-up questions (in which case I would have gone for the obvious, but probably hopelessly undercooked reply of "a code for classifying stuff?"). Thankfully, probably sensing that I in fact didn't really know, she moved on. More horror to come, when she inquired about what I had studied relating to archives/records in my Masters degree. I just kept naming random concepts - "authority control!" "authenticity!" "records lifecycle!" "preservation!" "retention schedules!" - like a mad person who had swallowed a records management glossary until she finally interrupted me and said "so, those are things you covered in your course?" "Um, yep..." We did get back on to firmer ground when the other woman asked why I'd applied and I think I did a pretty good job of pointing out how the values espoused on their website matched my profile and how although I might not have a lot of experience in records/archives I've proven my adaptability and ability to learn quickly on the job, but it was still something of a surprise when, at the end of the interview Miss Franco-Luxembourgeoise said "okay, well take a few days to think it over, then if you want the job, let us know". A triumph for my personal skills over actual knowledge and experience, or a reflection of the fact that they weren't interviewing anyone else? Who can say?

They only told me AFTER I accepted the position (which only runs till the end of the year, boo, but it's a start) that it was subject to confirmation by the IO (international organisation, arguably not quite as important as the IIO), so it was a semi-nervous wait for a couple of weeks until the news came through that I officially got the job! So now I need to fit in the last month at my current job, a trip to Belgium for the Grand Prix (woohoo), a week and a half in England and Italy, and then move to somewhere in the vicinity of Luxembourg (still thinking that through) and start a new job, in the space of the next six weeks. Help!

As for the rest of my short time in Luxembourg, I just wandered around really. The weather was gorgeous (once I was out of the the wool suit), and it turns out Luxembourg is really pretty! I knew nothing about it, but it's set between a couple of plateaux and valleys, so there are amazing views everywhere (and some steep hiking up and down hills), and it is so so green. I swear, you're in the middle of the city and you'd think you were looking out on an alpine village. I think I read somewhere that there is 30% green space in the city, plus it is dotted with the picturesque remains of the old city walls and other fortifications.

The Luxembourg Philharmonic (right)

View of the city from Kirchberg. Yep, the old self-timer on a wall trick.

Fort Thungen with the Musée d'Art Moderne designed by I.M. Pei, he of the Louvre pyramids. (I suppose once you've hit on a winning theme, you may as well run with it, eh?)

The Adolphe bridge, whose central arch was the largest stone span in the world when it was built at the beginning of the 20th century

Tiny village nestled in the Swiss Alps? Nope, just the central valley between the city centre and Kirchberg (facing a completely different direction from the picture above, but just as green)

View of the Grund quarter from the Bock promontory

The Grund again

Looking from the Bock towards the Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge

The gorgeous Luxemboug Cathedral, a new favourite of mine

Valley with the (little) skyscrapers of Kirchberg in the background

Panoramic video from the Bock promontory, featuring the music of Elvis Costello (as in they were playing a gig, not as in I dubbed some in)! PS, if it is just looping at double-speed, it's not meant to do that...

War memorial

La ville en rose

Mes amis! I have so much to talk to you about! I know I have been sadly neglecting the blogosphere of late, due to having nothing interesting to say, but I should have quite a lot to get off my chest in the upcoming weeks.

Last Friday, we headed off on my very first Euro Roadtrip (can you believe it?) for a much-anticipated visit to our lovely friend Caro, who has been studying down in Toulouse for the last few months (and will soon head back to Tours, yay). In her absence, I managed to kill one of her plants and, I strongly suspect, knock the stuffing out of the other two, but in fairness, she was warned.

Due to the inconvenience of having a job and the selfishness of the French not moving Bastille Day to the Monday, it was a whirlwind trip. Six hours down in the car on Friday, leaving straight after I finished work at 4 (well, in theory - it was actually more like 4.45 before we properly hit the highway), and six hours back on Sunday. One mission: party hardy. Make that two missions: party hardy and eat cassoulet.

Philippa, Liz and I made a pact in the car down - Friday was going to be a quiet night, and above all, there were going to be *no shots*. We love Caro, but she is notorious trouble. Honest to god, I had grown out of the shots thing, but hang out with this girl for long enough and they mysteriously appear. The car was hot, the aircon was ineffectual, the weather was perfectly sunny and cloudless the whole drive down, and we finally rocked into Toulouse around 11 pm, planning for just a sneaky drink before resting up.

The next thing we know, Caro turns up at our hotel announcing that she had found a cute Kiwi bartender in the Irish pub across the road who was looking after her pint while she came and fetched us. It seemed a good idea to stay in the neighbourhood for our "quiet Friday drink", so we headed over, chatted with the bartender and caught up on each others' news.

A photo of Philippa and me and some randos in the background. (I'm kidding, but do check out the Vanilla Ice dude back left.)

Look look look! A kiwi! Called Sam, although I insisted on calling him Matt. Does that not look like a Matt to you?

Sure enough, a couple of quiet drinks in, suddenly a round of shots appeared at the table. Caro swears black and blue that she didn't order them, that the kiwi bartender just "sensed" we might like some. Shortly afterwards, we were up and dancing, but due to our late arrival it wasn't long before the bar closed.

However... for some reason, one of the other bartenders came up and asked us if we were keen for sticking around for a lock-in. This is where all thoughts of a quiet night started to go out the window. There was only us, about 4 bartenders, 3 girls and a couple of guys who stuck around for the lock-in. There's part of me that thinks, damn, why can't these things be happening in Tours? Over three years here, and no-one's asked us to a lock-in, whereas bam, first night in Toulouse and we're officially Friends of the Bar, even though this involved me (voluntarily) putting my arm around the world's sweatiest shirtless man.

So very sweaty. "Matt" the Kiwi bartender actually offered me a paper towel to mop the sweat off my arm.

Look sexy ladies

Sambucca, tequila and ??? shots followed one after another, and I somehow got involved in a pastis-off with one of the locals. For those unfamiliar, pastis is a not very pleasant aniseed-flavoured drink that's about 45% alcohol (although, as in this case, it's often mixed with water). Said local claimed that no-one who wasn't from the South of France could drink pastis without throwing up. I am nothing if not bullheaded, particularly after a series of shots, and loudly proclaimed that not only could I do so, but I'd also drink it in one go, faster than him. What can I say? I won. Of course I won. It's a fool who goes head to head with Gwan. What I should have done was left things there instead of, some time later, agreeing to a rematch (and paying for it this time). Oh Gwan, when will you learn? I won again, naturally, but it really wasn't the smartest move. Let's just say it's lucky the local wasn't around the following morning...

We left, basically, when we were kicked out. To the best of our calculations, we got back to the hotel across the street at around 6.30 (FYI, that meant I'd been up for 24 hours, worked a full day, had a 6 hour+ car trip and then partied all night) and managed to sleep until around 11 when it was time to get up and get ready to meet Caro for lunch at 2. I filled in the interval by taking about an hour-long bath, although by bath I mean I lay in the tub hosing myself down with the shower head, trying to get into the foetal position (not possible) and moaning like a mournful whale. 

After this shaky start, however, I managed to mount a Phoenix-like recovery thanks to some upbeat music, caffeine and a bit of lippy. Sad Face came out again when my lunchtime burger came out practically raw, but I sent it back and was soon soaking up the alcohol with some fatty goodness.

Then it was time for a bit of a wander around to see what Toulouse has to offer. It's called la ville rose (hence the blog title) due to the colour of many of its buildings, but I think it's more orangey than pink, really.

Not bad for 3 1/2 hours' sleep, if I do say so myself!

The Basilica of Saint Sernin, Europe's largest Romanesque church (supposedly)

Almost Native American-esque Romanesque bas relief. Esque.

The Garonne

We stopped at a café near the Garonne where I attempted a bit of a hair of the dog with a glass of rosé, but instead got served the world's most horrible, bitter rosé. Say what you will, Provence rosés aren't a patch on the Val de Loire (yep, them's fighting words). After a wee nap, it was back out for a late dinner, and I had only one thing on my mind: cassoulet.

Now, traditionally a dish made up of masses of beans, sausage and confit duck might not be your classic summertime meal, but it's one of my favourite things which I hardly ever get to eat, and I couldn't pass up the chance to have some in its South-West home. So I dragged everyone along with me for a meal that proved to be delicious but deadly.

Om nom nom, this is before I started dying

Looks kinda gross, but it's delish! Don't be fooled by the seeming small size of the dish, I swear to god this was some sort of never-ending Jesus cassoulet. The more you ate it, the more there was. I'm sure I'd already been eating it for about 20 minutes before taking this photo.

It didn't take too long before I was regretting the cassoulet goodness. Fragile, hungover stomach + 30+ heat +crowded club +huge bowl of beans and fat = unhappy Gwan. We went to a Latin American-themed bar where everyone just danced into me constantly and I sulked and clutched my stomach and fought back the urge to vomit. Then I actually did vomit, sad to say. We moved on to another bar where I was just about to call it quits and go home when the Spice Girls started up with Wannabe. Like magic, sulky Gwan and her stomach ache was gone, in the second magical resurrection of the day, and we danced the night away until a very respectable 3 in the morning, to a panoply of cheesy hits.

The only thing marring our enjoyment in this bar was the rudest bartender EVER. I'd started on vodka so I wanted to stick with that and I ordered something I normally get with gin instead - vodka, lime and tap water. Yes, I know it's not a classic cocktail, but seriously, it's three things. Three really cheap, easy things. The bartender had some kind of issue with it from the start, repeating it back to me in her most incredulous tones about three times. Yes, that's really what I want (NB her colleague had made me a perfectly fine version with zero fuss a little earlier on). As she was preparing all our drinks, Caro and I were joking that she hated me, thanks to her obvious death glares, but didn't think too much of it. The drink came, with the glass half full and very strongly limey. I took a sip and asked for more water. She put some ice in, and SLAM, down on the counter. "No, water". She put it for a second under one of the bar taps, then the other and SLAM on the counter again. She turned away as I sipped it. She'd clearly accidentally put some sparkling or soda water in, which I really don't like. I was just going to let it go though, but she turned back and asked "ça va?" and when I just shrugged she threw out her arms and goes "QUOI?"

So, of course I had to say something, and I asked if she'd put soda water in. Incredibly defensively, she goes "I did exactly what you asked, I made it right in front of you". I pointed out that the second time, she'd filled the glass from two different taps, and she goes "c'était de l'eau et de l'eau" (it was water and water) in a snarky tone (so why switch between the taps then?). So that was that, and I go "What's your problem?" and she did the biggest "Qui, moi?", as though she was being nothing but sunshine and light. Seriously, it wasn't just me, Caro was right there witnessing her being an utter bitch, and also tasted the drink and confirmed it definitely wasn't plain tap water. I think she'd have spit in it if I hadn't been watching what she was doing. Still no idea what got her back up so much. Someone should tell her that it's actually a bartender's job to mix drinks, and it wasn't even as though I asked for an exotic cocktail made out of stardust and unicorn wee.

Anyway, that didn't stop us enjoying the rest of the evening, and I got an almost respectable 5 hours' or so sleep before getting up again, wandering back into town for a last lunch with Caro, and hitting the road back to Tours. I've got to say, queasy stomach aside, I'm incredibly proud of our stamina (especially Liz who had to drive in, once again, crippling heat). Not bad for a bunch of 30-somethings! Back in Tours, I was tucked up in bed by about 9.30, and the closest I got to Bastille Day fireworks was being woken up by them...

I would normally crop out the ham-hock arm, but the whole point was showing off our glowstick accoutrements

Liz and I are blurry, but this is still a fun party shot and a great souvenir of an awesome Toulousain weekend!