Around Toulouse

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Monday 11th May - Friday 15th May

It is now Friday afternoon, and sadly my time in France has just about come to an end. Tomorrow I go to Vienna, via London. This last week has had some good and some bad happenings.

Back to class Monday, with the buses on strike again. They were either on strike or “fort perturbé” (strongly disrupted) for the first three days of the week – then it was another public holiday on Thursday (Feast of the Assumption). Usually it meant that there were few or no buses in the morning, but in the afternoon there were usually some, though on Tuesday afternoon I waited 45 minutes for one. We had classes Thursday despite the holiday, just in the morning.

I ate lunch a couple of times through the week sitting overlooking the river, which was very pleasant, but at times very windy. The first half of the week was very warm, but with a pleasant breeze. Thursday and Friday were extremely windy, and Friday (today) it is quite cold.

After classes this week I spent some time walking around in parts of the city which I had not yet explored. Amongst the little narrow side streets in the pedestrianised zone, I found a little shop called ‘Espace Tintin’, and pretty well every item inside was either Tintin memorabilia or Tintin books – heaps of stuff. I managed to get out spending only 10 euros, for a book!

I spent a couple of hours Thursday and Friday exploring the parks and gardens, such as le Jardin des Plantes (Botannical Gardens) and the Japanese garden. Thursday afternoon I also went to a café named Amorino, for one of their famous icecreams/sorbets. There is no limit to the number of the available flavours one can choose, they just adjust for the size of the cone/cup. For a cone, they make it look like a flower, with the petals all the different flavours. I had a cup, and it looked a bit like an orange, with every segment a different flavour.

Waiting at the bus stop in the city for the bus to come back to the house, I was very nearly the victim of a pair of thieves, with one of their tricks to distract the victim and steal from him. Waiting under the trees, I was moving a bit and detected on the back of my shirt what I thought to be some bird droppings. Some got on my hand and in wiping it off I thought it looked more like a skin product or something – I smelt it and thought it was hand cream or something. I thought that my sunscreen may have burst in my bag, so I took the bag off and put in down in front of me to check – that wasn’t it. I remembered I had some wet wipes in my bag so took them out. Just then a man came up and offered to help me clean up, because the stuff was hard to reach. Alarms bells ringing for you yet, as you read this? For anyone who has had this kind of thing happen, you will know that after the event it is so obvious, but at the time one is focused on solving the problem, not on the behaviour of the people. It was probably the wet wipes that saved me. The guy had offered to use a towel he ‘happened to have’ in his bag (ring, ring), but because I had wet wipes I told him to use those. I was holding the packet in front of me, so my attention was just as much to the front as to the back. Probably also lucky I had a longish shirt on, which covered my pockets, or wallet and phone might have been lifted. Anyhow, I was turning around to see the back, then back to the front, repeatedly. After a few turns, I turned back to the front to see the other guy lifting my camera bag out of my backpack. Caught him red-handed and he gave it back. I turned and the other guy was gone, turned back and the thief was gone too. Happens quickly. If the guy had just lifted my whole bag and run off he would probably have escaped. Sure enough, after the event one can figure it all out. The guy had splashed me with hand cream or some such, then offered to help me in order to distract. It also explains how the 'bird droppings' could have been on my shirt and pants below my backpack.

Thinking it all through later that evening, I recalled a second incident a little earlier. When I was sitting outside Amorino, at the table eating my sorbet, a guy had come up and asked me for the time. I did think this pretty bizarre at the time, because who doesn’t have a watch or mobile phone these days? Again, I didn’t get fully distracted, just held up my watch to him (easier than trying to tell him the time in French!). And again, I am now sure it was a distraction trick, and I was probably lucky my bag wasn’t snatched then – it was just at my feet under the table. Maybe too many onlookers around, it was busy. Probably a group of thieves, some of whom then followed me to the bus stop. Yes, after the event it seems so obvious, but at the time... Unlucky to be targeted? Hard not to look like a tourist when you are one! Lucky that they didn’t get anything. They seemed a bit amateurish really, perhaps new to the game. Well, if that ends up being the worst event of the whole trip, it’s not too bad.

My next posting should be from Vienna, should arrive there tomorrow evening. Tuesday afternoon I am going to a Eurovision semi-final – maybe I’ll get to meet Julia Zamira.

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