On the morning our propriétaires left, their SUV jam packed with their worldy belongings,  I heard them leave and couldn’t get back to sleep.  So, I padded downstairs and sat in the kitchen listening to the sounds of the house, trying to get a feel for it, for how it ticks and murmurs.  Such things take time.

Our agenda for the day was hugely ambitious:  unpack, buy groceries.  So up to the Super U in Thezans Les Beziers we went where it took us a good two hours to gather supplies.  It took so long partly because Tim drove like a granny (his words, not mine), partly because we floostered around eyeballing everything like starving piggies, and partly because it took a while to figure everything out – store aisles, box labels, bottle labels, metrics.  Also, certain things on our list just don’t translate to the standard lexicon of French grocery staples, like sour cream and Kosher salt.  We searched in vain, poring over every label that looked promising.  No dice.  Same goes for low-fat versions.

The Super U is a largish grocery store, a supermarché that sells electronics, clothes, bath towels, garden equipment, and – most importantly – a motherlode of plate-to-the-face good foodstuffs. Duck breast is as common as zucchini.  So is duck lard.  BTW, if you’re phobic about foodie addictions, do everything inhumanly possible to resist the temptations of any recipe that calls for duck lard.  Seriously, because once you start…well, a part of you will hate yourself for it, but it’s hard to go back to a life devoid of de canard au lard thereafter.  Verra hard.

At any rate, we would have taken home one of just about everything in the Super U, but the size of our buggy saved us from oursleves.  As did the size of the cupboard we have for storing groceries.  Did I mention we’ve downsized from a walk-in pantry to a single cupboard?  I’m not complaining, mind you, but those are the facts.  All it means is that as with so many aspects of our relo to a life in rural France, we have to plan and organize and coordinate much, much more.

On the train ride from Barcelona to Beziers, I had my first view of the Mediterranean.

Upon leaving the train in Beziers, I had my first sniff of French air. It smelled like diesel. (I was, after all,  standing on the train station platform.)

Tim has his first reunion in a few years with driving a stick shift, and thus we lurched out of the station, went the wrong way down a one-way street, and in so many ways being utterly conspicuous. C’est la vie. The GPS system took forever to locate the satellite, so we got lost in the interim and our first full glimpse of Beziers was of one of its slummier neighborhoods.

BUT, the weather was gorgeous. Sunny and warm, exactly what one expects from the south of France. So, our first views of the countryside leading to Roquebrun were spectacular. Fields and fields of vines. Medieval villages with the centuries old church at the center and the highest point. The GPS, however, kept getting confused and sent us down many a lanes that might have once been a road but had since been repurposed as bike paths. They were lovely bike paths, red poppies and other wildflowers thick alongside, but the cyclists weren’t too happy to see us…understandably.

Finally, we turned a bend and below we had our first glimpse of the river l’Orb and the village of Roquebrun rising above it’s banks, the ruins of something old and medieval behind it. My first thought, “It’s like something out of a fairy tale.” My second thought, “That’s all there is to it? WTF have we done.

(These aren’t the “money shots” of the village. Those are coming soon.)

John and Jules, the English couple from whom we’re renting, were home to greet us. They’re visiting family in Sussex right now but will soon be relocating to Sydney for three years, hence why they’re renting out their house. They made a point of staying in the village a couple of extra days so that they could meet us, introduce us to some of the neighbors and give us the scoop. Although we’d spoken with them via Skype on a view occasions, not long after meeting them face-to-face it felt like we’d known them for ages.

After a quick tour of the house, we walked through the village up to the church and near the Jardin de Mediteranée (a cactus garden) which is something of a tourist destination during the summer. The church bells ring on the hour and half hour, but masses are only held maybe once per week at best.  From what I’m told, even if wanted to attend mass I couldn’t within the church walls.  Apparently I’d have to stand outside because I’m an outsider, no offense intended.

The village streets are tiny and narrow with the walls of the houses rising high above them. The village dates back to the 1400-1500′s, but it’s not clear how many of the original buildings are actually left. Many of them were built in the 1700 and 1800′s, and they’re typical of the style in which village homes in this area were built, replete with red tiled roofs.

Long before we arrived, John and Jules had apprised their neighbors that we were coming. I think they wanted to reassure everyone that they hadn’t found renters who would be a pain in the ass to deal with. Hopefully we’ve proved them right so far. But, to help us feel more at home, they had invited their friends over for aperitifs that evening which gave me my first in-your-face introduction to what it’s like to be at a party when you don’t speak the language.

A few of their guests spoke some English, but French is the primary language in these parts, even for the people who relocated here from Denmark and Germany and Poland years ago. As the evening went on and the drinkies flowed, I could tell that some people knew a little more English than they cared to admit. The point was made — quite clearly — that we have to try to speak French or we’re going to be shit out of luck. I don’t have a problem with that. I didn’t expect any different. But, the exhaustion of not just that day but the go-go-go pace of the whole week prior to that day was creeping up and setting in, and I would have been very, very, very grateful for a little language coddling. All in all though, it was lovely to meet Jean-Noel and Martine who live straight across from us in a beautiful yellow house, Horst and Daria who live a few doors up Rue du Barry, Quentin and Ingrid who live in the apartment below Horst and Daria, and Marie-France and Jean-Claude who live catty corner. These are the people we will be living amongst for the next year, the people to whom we will say good morning and good evening at the very least.

For our first night in Roquebrun, we didn’t get to bed until well past one in the morning.

And while I know that no one wants to hear that my first thought upon waking up (way, way too early) the next morning was another of the HS/WTF-have-we-done kind, that’s how it was. Just being honest.

After a good night’s sleep, hot showers, and breakfast we took one of those double decker bus tours that offer a scan at the different parts of the city. It took about three hours, but was worth it especially since we sat on the upper level and had unobstructed views. Since the plan was to only be in Barcelona for the day and we were jet lagged, we didn’t do much of the usual sight seeing stuff, like hopping off the bus to visit various churches and monuments. At some point, we’ll go back to Barcelona and be tourists.

It was enough to just to sit at a cafe in the Gothic Quarter and people watch and try to guess the nationalities of the people around us.  At one table a trio of Russian women compared purchases and nursed their coffees and nibbled on the sandwiches they’d brought with them.  The waiters were a bit exasperated with them, but the ladies didn’t give a jot.

After refueling with some tapas we walked through what seemed to be more of an Arab neighborhood and in the direction of the zoo. Rufus got a little time off leash in one of the parks so that he could romp around with some other dogs. Later that evening, we dropped Rufus off at the hotel and went back out for dinner — more tapas but this time at one of the bars where you just grab what you want off the plates on the counter and you’re charged not by what you ate but by how many toothpicks on your plate.  Good system!  As with all of the meals we’d had so far, everything was lick-the-plate delicious, but particularly the ham/cheese croquettes — manna from heaven!

It was an early night for us. The Spanish, of course, we’re just getting started as we walked back to the hotel around 11 PM. But, we had to be up early to catch the train to France in the morning, so like fuddy-duds we called it quits for the day.

A few more photos are available on Flickr. We were a bit slow taking out the camera, so there aren’t nearly as many snaps as they’re ought to be.

Night flight from Atlanta to Barcelona.  None of us sleep much, except maybe Rufus (our dog) who was given a little something something to take the edge off while in his travel carrier.

Upon landing immigration and customs take no time at all to get through.  No one wants to see all the paperwork I compiled for getting Rufus into the country.  I could have been carting an ox through customs, and I don’t think anyone would blink.  It’s glorious.  And, I should add, the exact opposite of what the USDA forewarned might happen.  Those people put the fear of God into me.  (I was stressed for weeks wondering what the hell we would do if for some reason Rufus was not allowed into Spain.)

At any rate, all the dire warnings and worrying were for nought.  By noonish the three of us and all of our oversized, ridiculously heavy baggage are in a taxi and headed for our hotel, The Avenida Palace, located near La Ramblas.  It’s a beautiful day.  Sunny, mid-sixties, light breeze.

We give ourselves an hour to putter and freshen, and then we head out.  We’re not out the door more than 10 minutes, when Rufus says hello to Barcelona by pooping not once, not twice, but SIX times on the promenade. Lovely. We had taken only two doggy bags with us, thinking that would be plenty.  Luckily a nice lady offered us some newspaper that got us through pit stop number four.  After that we depended upon a bread bag found on the street.  Poor Rufus, digestive antics aside, he was a trooper throughout the process of traveling, even when we left him in the hotel room to go out in the evening.  He curled up, went to sleep, and didn’t make a peep.

I liked Barcelona.  There’s so much happening on the streets, especially in the evenings.  Even on a Sunday evening, the main promendade was hopping.  There are these performance artists who paint their bodies as part of their costume.  One guy, posing as Atlas shoulders, had slathered himself glittery gold to match his tunic and the “world” balancing on his shoulders.  Another woman had painted herself to look like a tree.  Don’t know how they did it.  Wish I had a photo of them, but we forgot to bring our camera with us that first day out…chalk it up to jet lag.

It’s been two weeks since we left Atlanta and landed in Barcelona but Tuesday will mark our two week anniversary of being in France.  It kind of feels like two years have passed, but no, merely 14 days.  By design I haven’t posted anything in the blog.  By design I’ve held back from describing the house, the village, the life.  It’s all so different, you see.  So different.  As different as you can get when you move from a metropolitan area of 5 million people to a rural village of maybe 800 people.  It’s a shock to the system, really, and I’ve wanted to be more settled internally before saying much.

Right now the church bells are ringing.  It’s 6 PM.  The sun won’t set for another 3 hours, but the village is winding down.  Roquebrun, is something of a seasonal place.  In the summer, there will be loads of tourists.  Right now most of the tourists and holiday home people come on weekends.  There are probably a handful of people still having drinkies on the patio of the village bar a few doors down, but by 7 PM it will probably be cleared out and shuttered up.  We have yet to sort out the bar’s hours of operation.  The times we would think it would be open, like a Saturday night, it’s not.  The times we would think it might be closed, like a Tuesday afternoon, it’s open.  So, we’ve kind of learned to just go with the flow.  If at the end of day out we see people on the patio as we drive past, we head down…like pub lemmings.

One thing I’d like to add before I go much further with doing all the catch-up posts, I definitely see this blog functioning differently in my life.  Going back to basics, and letting it be a plain old online journal.  None of the forays into the realm of advice or expertise that I may have dabbled with in the past.  Just life story telling.