Escaping Le Disco

Another 2 weeks have flown by in Aix. We’ve finished our 4 week language course and we move on to Spain in a couple of days. We’ve continued to have a great time here and like the town more with each passing day.

Back on the 13th of May we went with Manuela to a concert performance by one of her favourite singers, Ana Moura. She sings Portuguese folk songs called Fados. We had a wonderful time and really enjoyed listening to her amazing voice. She was accompanied by 3 guitarists, one of whom played a traditional Portuguese guitar that sounded like a bouzouki and gave a magnificent solo performance. She sang in Portuguese so I have no idea what the lyrics were but she did give brief explanations in English and they were generally loves songs. Some were joyous and some were sad. There were some reflective songs but many were upbeat and made you want to happily tap your feet. French audiences seem even more reserved than those in Melbourne. It was very difficult to get them to sing along although they did give a standing ovation.

Perhaps what really made the night special were the Bellinis1 we had later at Cafe L'Unic, which has become our favourite cafe. It’s in beautiful Place Richelme right next to the gay cafe called Happy Days. Cafe Unic has better service and a better drinks list than Happy Days and you can still watch everything that’s going on at Happy Days.

The weekend before last we borrowed Manuela’s car for the weekend and drove down to a little town on the coast called La Madrague for the weekend to escape the pounding Disco Mistral for a couple of nights. La Madrague is close to Bandol, which I now know is also a famous wine region.

La Madrague - incl Harbour and beach

Drinks on our balcony at La Madrague with a lovely view of the harbour

We made it down to Bandol on Friday afternoon and immediately headed to the Maison des Vins that represents the 50 wine producers in the region. We had a lovely time tasting wines and discussing the wines and the region with one of the staff, who had worked at Brown Brothers for a few months and then lived in Melbourne for a year. We were blown away by the fact that there are 50 independent producers in this small region each making their own wines (some as few as 8,000 bottles a year). Apparently most of the wineries have been in family hands for generations and it is very rare for them to change hands. All very different from the new world.

Gorgeous yacht in Bandol harbour

And... have I commented yet about how cheap wine is here? From the 3 -5 Euros for quaffing wine in the super marches, to the 10-15 Euros for premium wine, it is all good value. Of course this is all partly due to French arrogance in insisting on maintaining outrageous agricultural subsidies. On the other hand you could argue that these subsidies aren’t that outrageous because the French wine industry isn’t dominated by Fosters and Southcorp. Naturally we bought a few bottles in Bandol.

We also had a lovely dinner at a Lebanese restaurant in Bandol where once again there was an Australian connection. Our waitress wanted to know where we were from – we haven’t quite got those accents as authentic as we’d like – and she then explained that she has family in Sydney and Canberra.

On the subject of Australia, I’m going to indulge myself in a rant. Can someone please explain why so many Australians appear to wear T-shirts with the word Australia, and/or the Australian flag, on them? Now I must admit that I had an Americas Cup T-shirt in 1983 that I blame Bob Hawke for - aaaaargh. So I’m prepared to excuse youthful ignorance and exuberance but I’m talking about adults. This is not cultural cringe because people from other countries just don’t seem to wear this sort of clothing. Fair dinkum - every time we are somewhere that is remotely touristy, I see a bloody Australia T-shirt coming towards me and I don’t see Canada, US, England, Germany, Japan or Ireland T-shirts. I do concede that when we were hiking yesterday a teenage girl was wearing the Swiss flag as a T-shirt but this is the only other nationalistic T-shirt I’ve seen so far.

Do we think that we’re special, are we really insecure or have we really developed an American style patriotism that has even out done them? It could be that the people wearing these clothes are not Australian but you then need to ask why we are the only country that manufactures them. I will say that so far I haven’t seen any T-shirts that are replicas of our national sporting team so that is a positive. I have seen some soccer T-shirts for other countries although I’m convinced that at least some of these are not worn by people from those countries.

Anyway back to the travelogue.

On the Saturday, after our lovely Friday afternoon and evening drinking and eating in Bandol, we walked from La Madrague to Bandol. It is a spectacular 12km walk along the Cote d’Azur that is reasonably hard going because you ascend and descend quite steeply and walk over some quite rocky ground. When we got to Bandol we found the best value cafe so far for cafe au lait (for me) and chocolat chaud (for Dale). For about 7 Euros in total we got enough for 3 cups each. I just loved Bandol.

Old Fort outside La Madrague

Poppies provide unexpected flashes of colour throughout Provence

Stunning inlets along the coast to Bandol

When we returned to La Madrague (by bus) we went for our first swim in the Mediterranean but it only lasted 5 minutes because it was so cold. While we were at the beach there were presentations for a beach soccer match that had just finished. It was quite amusing. There was a lot of incomprehensible chanting by the victors and what I shall euphemistically describe as male bonding. One particular chappy kept getting hold of the microphone and leading a couple of rousing choruses before being mobbed and having the microphone snatched away for a few seconds.

On the Sunday we drove home via a number of little villages. We particularly liked a hill top village called La Cadiere d’Azure. We found a nice craft shop where we bought some presents for the future. We naturally took time out for a chocolat chaud and a cafe au lait and to watch the local goings on. There were hi jinx in main street when some bloke jumped out of his car to place a bet at the PMU (French TAB, not the soup manufacturer) and left the engine running. As soon as he disappeared into the cafe a woman sitting at the next table jumped up and grabbed the keys from the car. Much hilarity ensued. From eavesdropping on conversations – my French is sometimes getting good enough to pick up a few tit bits and then I extrapolate like crazy – I deduced that the prankster was likely the local hairdresser or beautician as I could understand that 2 women had stopped to make appointments with her for the following week. As the extrapolation really got going I suggested to Dale that she might also provide bikini waxes but at that point I was told that I was just being stupid. Malhereusement, je pense qu’il est vrais.

La Cadiere d'Azure (in distance) as seen from nearby village

La Cadiere d'Azure and the scene of hijinx french style

Next week we discuss the verb ‘doing the monokini’.

Footnotes

1 Bellini – Strawberry juice, peach juice and champagne – yum.