Toulouse

I stopped in Toulouse on the way to the farm.  (Yes, I am going to volunteer on a farm outside of Mazamet for a week through wwoof.  I fervently hope they will speak French to me there instead of English.)

But the night before going to Mazamet, I visited Toulouse.  I didn't arrive until almost 10:00 but it was a Saturday night so there were people everywhere.  Because of it's southern European locale, the night was just beginning at this hour.

It has been well over a decade since I've walked around the city where I spent almost year of my life.  Time has changed some things a lot, and other things not at all.  The metro that was under construction while I was a student is now complete.  Window shopping indicates that the world is getting smaller every day.  The Place du Capitole looks very different because there is a marathon scheduled for the next morning and tents are everywhere.  But I had dinner at the Maison du Cassoulet (a specialty of the region) whose house wine is better than most good wine I can buy back home.  That has not changed.  And my feet found the way to the Garonne river, which has not changed a bit.  Chez Tonton was the Erasmus bar where we spent most weekends that were not spent traveling somewhere else.  (It was so recognizable that somebody later chased me down in Prague at 2:00 in the morning because I was wearing a Chez TonTon T-shirt).  It is still crowded with students drinking Pastis.  People from all walks of life still wander up and down the wide, rose-colored cobblestone streets all around the Capitole.  It's still a very diverse city, but I see the skin colors mixing more now than I did as a student.  It's good to see.  Life is still on display in a way the more reserved Germanic countries can never comprehend.

I woke the next morning to catch the train to Mazamet.