On the road again

LT 26 June, 9.30pm (7.30am Mum’s birthday)


Happy birthday Mum! We are currently internet-less (2 whole days!) so having to resort to old-fashioned texting to communicate. I’ll try to call her when I find out where she is. 


Monday was a travel day – somewhere near 500km from our apartment in Nesslau Switzerland to the medieval village of St-Gengoux-le-National in Burgundy, France. We had to dismantle the bungy jumping apparatus we’d set up for Katriel’s soft toys off our 3rd floor balcony, plus switch off the dubbed German TV and endless coverage of the Euro2012 football. 


We were organised reasonably early and efficiently and with a quick adieu to the neighbours we were off – on a mission to find somewhere for Caelan to buy a Swiss Army knife in Switzerland. We’d looked up a few addresses on the internet that looked sort of en route, so we programmed them into the GPS and headed off. Unfortunately the first address turned out to be a private right-of-way down a very residential street (no knife shop in sight) and the local hardware shop didn’t sell them either, so we decided to stop in at Zurich. Zurich could possibly be the most expensive place to do any sort of shopping, particularly of the lunch variety. But Caelan did manage to find a knife, and by about 1.30pm we were off – and still with about 400km to go. However the miles get chewed up pretty quickly on the motorways, no stops or traffic lights, and travelling at 130km/hr. We made a short stop at one of the many rest/shopping areas at the side of the motorway for some terrible coffee and our first attempt at speaking French, then finally arrived in our village around 7pm. 


St-Gengoux is a tiny village (about 1000 inhabitants) in Burgundy, feels like the middle of nowhere but only really 20 minutes from the nearest motorway, and there are other villages dotted all around. It dates back to medieval times, and part of the town actually used to be a fortified village. Most of the wall is gone now, apart from a few towers, but a few key buildings, eg church, entrance tower and town hall, still exist, and the housing and little cobbled streets etc are still in place, fixed up to varying degrees. Heading to our accommodation first, our GPS advisor took us a very roundabout way through the old village, driving down some streets that maybe weren’t exactly meant to be streets for cars, and we found our ‘home’ for the next 6 days. Just on the edge of the old village, it’s a three-bedroom cottage, nicely fitted out and plenty of space for us, but on entry it had a very dank musty cave-like atmosphere and smell. Promising ourselves we’d light the fire and air it out properly in the morning, we decided to go and find some dinner, and hopefully a bottle of milk for a cup of tea. Unfortunately the supermarket we had passed on our way in closed at 7pm so we were too late for that. Unfortunately also, pretty much all the shops and cafes and restaurants in St-Gengoux (and everywhere else in rural France) are closed on Monday…. Pizza shop down the road, check; restaurant on the main street, check… Mentally making a list of what we had in the car (couple of bars of chocolate, half a packet of biscuits, dry cereal) we were beginning to wonder how this was all going to work out. We finally found someone on the main street (who didn’t speak English – no-one really does here) who told us that a village nearby had an open restaurant, and he proceeded to give me directions, in French. Luckily they were not that difficult, and I was able to guide a dubious Peter and increasingly hungry and tired children to an open restaurant. It was a little flasher than we had hoped, and we weren’t exactly dressed for it, but they were offering dinner. We ended up having a very lovely dinner –girls had “noo-getts” (chicken nuggets), brave Caelan tried rabbit (the texture of steak but the flavour of chicken), and my non-startling French managed to order us dinner, drinks and dessert, plus a bottle of water later on. It was really really nice in the end, and infinitely better than chocolate and biscuits! 


After a big sleep-in this morning, we walked down to the ‘boulangerie’ to buy croissants and other yummy things for breakfast. Very French, we told ourselves, just very decadent actually! We had a quick look in the tourist office and came away with lots of brochures and ideas then headed home for lunch (via the bakery again, for baguettes this time). The shops and businesses here close at lunchtime, from about 12 until 2.30pm – so they can all go and have an enormous lunch. Apparently you can get a three course lunch plus coffee and wine at the café in town… how could you go back to work after that?? 


The afternoon was very restful and quiet apart from a quick trip to the supermarket for supplies. We tried to organise ourselves a sim card and internet access but with no success. Quite frustrating, and although there is a service number you can ring, you can’t get through to a person without going through the menu of options, which are, of course, all in French (and my French is too limited to navigate it successfully). So our plan for tomorrow is to go to a bigger town nearby and get it sorted out.


(Wed 27th update: Internet and even phone reception is a little complicated and unreliable here... so will update and add pics whenever we can)