![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Learning stuff
May. 23rd, 2009 09:47 pmThey say you learn as long as you live (though, I want to know who "they" are - "they" seem to know an awful lot, to say the least). Here are a few examples from the last few days here in Normandy:
¤ Farmers demonstrating can make you get lost in a big city. At least if they are French (I have yet to see a Swedish farmer do that). Their aim was higher pay for their milk, and the method was (apart from going on the free-way with their gigantic tractors which are fast compared to what I'm used to, but not THAT fast) to build road-blocks of manure and old tires. Preferably in the middle of the city - we had a horrible time in Cherbourgh, trying to find the way around, which was impossible when you couldn't go to the city centre. And now and then they put their road-blocks on fire. The smoke was fascinating. The smell somewhat less so...
¤ You can find the most amazing salmon at a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere, in the only restaurant the village had to offer (which says quite a lot, when French villages tend to have a restaurant at every corner).
¤ Frenchmen have a thing for baguettes.
¤ You can't enter Bayeux cathedral without interrupting some kind of service. At least this time it wasn't a funeral but a baptism. It is after all a more cheerful event, and the other plus is that it was quite all right to walk around the church while they were at it. (The kid did not seem to appreciate the drama all that much though, even though the priest did his best to sound cheerful and fun!)
¤ My understanding of French when written is about ten times better than I thought it would be. And you can actually have some use for a French-Swedish dictionary from 1915 (what can I say - it was cheap, and it is small enough to fit my handbag, even though it contains three times as much as a usual tourist-dictionary, thanks to its small print).
¤ Entering a real, small Romanesque church in the French countryside can actually make me feel all warm and happy inside.
¤ Farmers demonstrating can make you get lost in a big city. At least if they are French (I have yet to see a Swedish farmer do that). Their aim was higher pay for their milk, and the method was (apart from going on the free-way with their gigantic tractors which are fast compared to what I'm used to, but not THAT fast) to build road-blocks of manure and old tires. Preferably in the middle of the city - we had a horrible time in Cherbourgh, trying to find the way around, which was impossible when you couldn't go to the city centre. And now and then they put their road-blocks on fire. The smoke was fascinating. The smell somewhat less so...
¤ You can find the most amazing salmon at a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere, in the only restaurant the village had to offer (which says quite a lot, when French villages tend to have a restaurant at every corner).
¤ Frenchmen have a thing for baguettes.
¤ You can't enter Bayeux cathedral without interrupting some kind of service. At least this time it wasn't a funeral but a baptism. It is after all a more cheerful event, and the other plus is that it was quite all right to walk around the church while they were at it. (The kid did not seem to appreciate the drama all that much though, even though the priest did his best to sound cheerful and fun!)
¤ My understanding of French when written is about ten times better than I thought it would be. And you can actually have some use for a French-Swedish dictionary from 1915 (what can I say - it was cheap, and it is small enough to fit my handbag, even though it contains three times as much as a usual tourist-dictionary, thanks to its small print).
¤ Entering a real, small Romanesque church in the French countryside can actually make me feel all warm and happy inside.
