I've been taking my lunches and dinners at either of the two eateries along the main square, L'Esplanade, but it's difficult to make contact when absofuckinlutely no one seems to speak any English. The waiters and waitresses are all very nice, but try and address them in English and they get this panicky deer-in-headlights look. Two waiters seem to speak a little English, but apart from the names of various foodstuff they don't have much to contribute either.
Fortunately, today I was introduced by a neighbor (and the designed "fixer" of all things pertaining to the house) to a couple of people who spoke some English; a German guy who's been living in France for 12 years, and a French lady who'd visited West Virginia for a couple of weeks when she was 18... both nice people, and all three seemed to understand that it was difficult to cope when you didn't have family or friends around and didn't speak French. I hope this initial meeting will turn into something more, though, and that I can gather around me a small crowd of English-speaking frogs (and krauts).
A couple of other, random observations...
- The French seem to love children. No matter how rough and rowdy they may look on the outside, they seem to brighten up and go into immediate goo-goo mode when presented with a drooling little sack of poop, aka a child. Naturally, this only heightens my suspicions about the intelligence and moral fibre of the French.
- As mentioned here a couple of times, the square tends to fill up with small dogs. All the dogs in town seem to know each other, so there's never any fighting, but every so often some switch will turn on in the minuscule brain of one of them and they will go off on an extended howling session, soon joined by all the other dogs in town. This usually lasts for around 30 seconds, and the French seem impervious to it, but it's bloody annoying.
- I've taken to noticing a lot of regulars who will come to one or the other of the two places on the esplanade and drink their fill in a night's course. I've deliberately tried to alternate between the two, and I've been tipped about two other eateries as well, slightly more upscale from what I've heard.
I'll leave you with a couple of pics:
This little fella is the dog of the cook at the smallest of the places on the esplanade. He's ten years old and we became bestestestest buddies when I shared my ham sandwhich with him.
This little guy got a piece of my omelette later tonight. He thanked me by setting off a choir of frantic barking a couple of minutes later.
The moon over the square.
This picture is just wrong in so, so many ways. Condoms and nutella... *head in hands*
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