Vive Le Long Weekend

Got back from spending a long weekend in France with a friend who's visiting from Australia last night. Really late last night, thanks to some shit going on at Gatwick and EasyJet being EasyJet. Subsequently have spent the day in a sleepy haze, well, almost a sleepy haze if it hadn't been for some chemical (all legal) help. Will be attempting an early night, but as most times when the sun goes down I'm actually not that tired anymore. I'm pretty sure I was meant to be a vampire.

So, weekend in France, you say? Mais oui. Which is about all the French I can still remember from back in school, I really should know more but for some reason it just never stuck. We caught a flight to Toulouse on Friday afternoon to spent the weekend at friends of my friend, who own a lovely little house about an hour away from the city. Once we were in town we did a bit of sightseeing, then drove out and got comfy. It was mainly meant to be a relaxed, catching-up kind of weekend, but we still got to see the Pyrenees (including snow), a bit of the village we stayed in (got massively rained on, though), the Space museum and Carcassonne. Lots of wine was drunk, quite a few pain au chocolat were eaten, we played games and had good food. I would've come back relaxed and rested if it hadn't been for the messed up flight home which had us getting back sometime beyond midnight. I'm still somewhat relaxed, but yeah, the whole rested affair kinda went out of the window when I crawled into bed around 2.30am only to get up at 6.50am again. Not fun!

I was a bit, but only a bit, surprised that the French grasp on vegetarianism is just as loose as the American one. I usually relax my dietary requirements when travelling, partly because I don't want to cause too much hassle and partly because I don't want to starve. The rules abroad usually are no meat, but fish is ok, and no milk/yoghurt/cream because that makes me ill, but cheese is acceptable. Eggs are tolerated as is questionable animal content in sauces and soups. I'm vegetarian (more or less strict) because it makes me feel better, the no-animal-cruelty aspect is a welcome bonus (and tends to cause quite a bit of smugness occasionally), but it's not the main reason.

Despite of that it's still surprisingly hard to find non-meat stuff that's not green salad or heavy on the dairy on the average menu. For some reason the fact that I don't want to substitute the lack of animal protein with dairy is a bit of a mystery to a lot of people. My friend's friends were lovely, we had yummy veggie stir-fries, but eating in restaurants was difficult, especially if you're hungry and want a main dish. And don't even try to find anything edible at Toulouse airport. In fact, you're lucky if you find anything to eat there if you arrive after 8pm...

But yeah, I didn't starve, my stomach didn't get too upset about the amount of cheese on everything and I hope I didn't stress people out too much.

Got a few nice things lined up for the rest of the week, too. There's a birthday dinner with Babs tomorrow, who always insists on taking me out for dinner when it's her birthday (it's a German thing). I'll probably try to hit the Bikram on Thursday as I haven't been for a while (since last Monday, to be precise), there's the going-away party for my Australian friend on Friday, a possible clothes-swap on Saturday (I'm assuming we're bringing the clothes in bags, not swap the ones we're actually wearing, but you never know with my friends) and a catch-up session with a friend that I haven't seen for bloody ages on Sunday.

I'll better get into a severely sociable mood and some sleep fast, otherwise the next few days will be a tad difficult.