Living Without the Bunnies

Friday

Met with John Mandereau (who I'd met on Thurs) and Valentin Villenave, whose name is pronounced "Val-en-ton". Not that anybody from the UK can justifiably complain about spelling vs. pronounciation of names.

We had lunch at the conference caferia: chicken (I didn't take), rice, brocolli, mixed salad thing, and some raspberry pudding-thing. The mixed salad thing and raspberry pudding-thing were fancier than I'd expect from an English university cafeteria; the rice and brocolli were about the same.

In the afternoon, I gave my talk. More details about that later.

After the talk, we went to the casino (un supermaché, remember, not a den of dubious mathematical ability) for some drinks. That sounds way classier than "we went to the grocery store to get some bottles of warm coke, because they were out of cold coke". We then went downtown, and I saw some of the major sights (and sites) of the city -- the cathedral, the grand theatre, and the longest pedestrian-only road in France or Europe or something like that.

Of course, we also did something else. What do three guys in their late 20s / early 30s do when they're on vacation in a foreign city, far away from anybody who might recognize them...? Yep, that's right -- we went clothes shopping!

I had previously gone to two Primark stores (seems like the UK version of Zellars, Walmart, etc) and been unable to find men's shorts without hawaiian patterns on them. And I didn't look at the weather forcast for Bordeaux until a day before I left... if I'd realized that it would be 35 C, I'd have made more of a priority for finding shorts, and maybe even sandals. But I hadn't, so I didn't.

We found a mall and then checked out three different clothing stores, and I tried on four pairs of shorts, before I found something semi-decent. They were 25 € , which seemed like a complete rip-off (for reference, my pants... err, "trousers"... were £6, and my t-shirts were £2 each, and the exchange rate is less than 1.2 € per £1). But I was too miserable in my long pants (err, trousers) to quibble.

To complete our de-male-ification, John bought a pair of shoes as well. So in our first few hours of vacation in Bordeaux, we did everything girly apart from ogling hot guys. If girls do that? I certainly know that I was ogling hot girls... and in the entire time I was there, I only saw 2 or 3 girls under the age of 40 who weren't "hot" by Glasgow standards. French girls are really, really hot.

We then went to a pizzeria for dinner. Apparently ham and pineapple is an "exotique" pizza. The discussion rapidly became an examination of modern community political parties. Dinner was followed by "a political film", although we thought it was clumsily done. I don't mind films with a Message (with a capital 'M'), but only as long as the Message is delivered well. This one wasn't. It felt like the film was preaching to the choir, and tried to throw in a few questionable things to make the whole thing "edgy". Oh, but I discovered that French cinemas have really comfortable chairs. Padded red velvet things... way better than Canadian cinemas.

The film was supposed to be followed by a "discussion", but we left as soon as it was over. We then spent an hour walking around in a circle (not in the mathematical "an infinite series of points which are equidistant from one central point", but in an "we returned to the starting point") looking for a bar. At that point, John declared himself in charge, and found a bar which was 30 seconds away from our starting/ending point (which was a tram station).

Oh yeah, the main transport (at least for us) were trams. These travel at something like 20 km/h... faster than I could run, but nowhere near the speed of subway trains.

Saturday

Went to "grande public" version of the conference: a few large tents by the river, filled with booths. Nothing that I hadn't seen at the main "technical" conference. But there we met up with Nicolas Sceaux, scheme programmer extrodinaire.

Ate a on a cafe terrace; we all had le plat du jour. The first course was a seafood pastry; the main course was pork, vegetables, and rice; the dessert was chocolat mousse; the meal also included some after-dinner coffee. But this description completely misses the elegance of the presentation, the style of cooking (no clue), the spices used (dunno), the types of vegetables (don't even know that), the reason why the rice was yellow (herbs?), etc. Basically: it was a real French meal at a real French cafe in a real French trendy district of a real French city.

I expected to feel completely awkward and out of place, but it was actually ok.

We were waiting for a friend to finish meeting with his grandparents, so we went to a bookstore so that I could look at French bande dessinée (graphic novels) -- I knew that they had a tradition of such things, and I was curious as to whether there was any simularity to Japanese manga. (there wasn't)

We then gave up on the friend and tried to drive to the beach, but encountered some insane traffic jams and turned back. While we were returning to town, the friend phone up, so we met for pre-dinner drinks at another outdoor cafe. More politics was discussed.

The evening meal was crépes, which were fantastic. These are thin pancakes, folded to make a vaguely envelope-shaped thing, with some kind of filling inside -- ham and cheese, salmon, vegetarian paté, etc. I had the vegetarian one for the main course, and a caramel crépe for dessert. It was incredibly good.

Sunday

We saw John off to the train station, then Valentin and I went to the botanical gardens. That was followed by boxed sandwiches from a supermarket, eaten in the park next to the gardens. Academic politics was discussed.

After lunch, we rented some bikes, which was a fantastic idea. Bordeaux (and, according to Valentin, most major French cities) have rental bikes along the side of the road. You use a credit card (or maybe debit card?) to put down a deposit, then rent the bike for 1 or 2 Euro an hour. We zoomed along the riverside, then went up to the lake. After we arrived at the lake beach, I remembered that French beaches were (in)famous for certain things. We didn't stay long, though, and went back to the city.

Saw some tower/arch thing (famous gate to the city, lookout point, or something), saw some archeological dig of Christian graves from the 1st to 7th centuries (fun fact: the French word for "Christianity" is "Chretien", which is the name of one of the Canadian prime ministers... every time the tour guide said that word, I thought about politics), saw a church that was every bit as fancy as a cathedral (albeit not as large).

We wandered around for an hour looking for a good place for dinner that wasn't too expensive without finding anything (my friend: "it's Bordeaux! They don't know about `not expensive'" -- although since he was from Paris, I'm not certain that he actually knows about living cheaply). Inspired by a desire to be horrible, we ended up having dinner at a Subway.

It wasn't great. They didn't have the selection of bread that UK Subways have, they didn't have as many sauces (although I did discover that southwest sauce is pretty good on an Italian BMT), and the lettuce looked a bit suspect (the store was quite warm). However, it did provide nourishment, and it wasn't expensive. Also, it's certain to horrify anybody who reads this blog post. :)

Monday

We went to see a mall, since they were all closed on Sunday. I was curious about daily life, and I'd already seen the streets and transport.

It was pretty much the same as malls in Canada, the UK, and Singapore. Maybe slightly more perfume stores and chocolate/sweet stores than in the other countries, but I wouldn't immediately say that it was a statistically significant difference. We went to a large department store as well... it had much more bande designée than I was expecting, but other than that it was pretty much like such stores in Canada and Singapore. (I haven't been to such a store in the UK)

Got a city bus to the airport; that was fine. Bordeaux Airport doesn't have quick check-in machines... at every other airport I've been to, if you only have hand baggage, you can use a computer to check in and get your boarding pass. But over here, I had to line up with all the people putting baggage in the cargo bay. Ick. :(

I did sudoku puzzles for all the flight.

Back in London Gatwick, I kept on getting thrown by people speaking English. I mean, I'd gotten used to rehearsing a sentence a few times and having difficulty understanding what people were saying... but now suddenly, I speak the native language!

There was yet another switch coming in the departure lounge at Gatwick airpot -- the serving staff at the restaurant I stopped at (to get a burger; this wasn't a fancy French restaurant) spoke French between themselves, so I found myself ordering and asking for the bill in French. So much for the "back in Britain" bit!

I really regret not doing any language preparation... even something as basic as listening to half a dozen podcasts would have done a lot to re-tune my mind for the language and remind myself of some vocabulary. Oh well; next time!

And now for the two questions you've all been waiting for. Was I scared of people thinking that I was an American and wimped out by carring a Canadian flag around with me? Yes; it took me less than 6 hours. I had a luggage tag with a big Canadian flag; I removed that from my suitcase and attached it to my handbag.

And the second question: do I have the most incredible tan lines that I've ever had in my life? Yes. The difference between my lower arms and upper arms (much less my stomach) is unbelievable. I didn't deliberately seek out the sun, of course... but apparently if you're walking around in a sunny city all day, you still get sunburned. Huh.

(I'm happy to report that my £1 sunglasses and £2 sun-hat did an excellent job of protecting my eyes and face.)