A quieter day today, anchored at the house in Pezens. I had breakfast at 9am with Éliane on the porch, which transitioned seamlessly into a long conversational lesson. Around 11am we drove to the village of Castelnaudary to visit the market there for a vocabulary lesson. I spent most of the time naming things I saw and pointing out things I didn’t know the French words for. This probably puts too great an emphasis on nouns at the expense of verbs and adjectives, but what can you do?
There turns out to be no simple single word for “rack”, but rather a number of different words depending on what role it’s playing. A bike rack on the back of a car is a porte-vélo. The rack of propane cylinders at the gas station is an étalage. The rack that clothes hang from, either for sale or for drying, is an étendoir. The rack of metal-banded wrist watches arrayed against a velour backing is a présentoir. Similarly with wheeled apparatus for moving cargo by hand (un chariot de course vs un diablo vs un lève-charge vs un transpalette). Not sure how effective it was as a learning activity – will I really remember these things without reinforcement? – but it made for a change of scenery.
After lunch with Éliane and her household (husband Benjamin, brother-in-law William, and 18-month old daughter), I rested a bit and then walked into the village to explore for a bit. Pezens is a village of just 1800 people, and there’s not a lot of businesses there: a tabac (open), a superette (open), a pizza shop (take-out only), a bakery (closed Mondays), a wine shop (didn’t check if open) and a hotel/bar (closed permanently). I bought myself a snack at the superette and made a small picnic for myself at the table outside: an apricot, a nectarine, a crottin de chèvre (small, hard goat cheese), and a handful of fagot (long, thin dried sausages). Very tasty. Then I strolled around the rest of the village: a small church (closed), a small library (closed), the foyer municipal (closed), the post-office (closed), a small war memorial (open? It was outside).
When I returned I remarked to Éliane about how quiet it was. She informed me that in the south of France, a lot of businesses operate on Saturdays but take Sunday and Monday as their weekend. Even so, I was surprised by the paucity of shops compared with Roye, the place where Éliane lived 5 years ago. She pointed out that Roye was a small town with 6,000 people while Pezens is just a village of 1,800. “A village considers itself lucky if it has a bakery,” she said. I still haven’t been to the bakery, but I will try to get there tomorrow.
Éliane drove me into the city of Carcassonne in the evening so I could get some dinner. It was also very quiet, and I was tired. I spent a little time wandering the plaza just over the canal (same Canal du Midi) from the train station, then headed over to the Place Carnot a few blocks away. I had some nondescript vegetarian lasagna and a glass of unremarkable rosé and an anonymous outdoor café on the square, then walked back to the train station and took a taxi back to Éliane’s. Got to sleep at 10:30pm and slept through the night — a more normal schedule and a more tranquil one.