At the end of the day I can say that it looks like the method is working well: not trying to fulfill all your touristy stereotypes does pay off. Going to Bordeaux today, we did not have anything in particular to expect from the city or from this day. Why rush off to see some sights if you have to trade it for a lazy morning chat with some nice people? We spent half the morning talking to our great Servas hosts – Edith and Bernard – over a traditional French breakfast (which consists of pretty much nothing: a cup of coffee, some bread with jam) and then eventually over some resemblance of a luncheon: a bit of cheese, a drop of wine. We talk of everything from organic food production to politics and from prices on property to Tour de France. Bernard is happy to tell us that our own Thor Hushovd is still in yellow, even after a mountain stage. We are very proud over “dyret fra Grimstad” – “the monster from Grimstad” – heja, Thor!
Well, the city is there, so we might as well have a look. Here I learn that some local governments don’t just make speeches about reducing traffic in cities. A tram zips you to the center of Bordeaux in fifteen minutes, and the trip costs us – pay attention now – together with car park for the entire day – 3 euros. That’s right, for five people. By-passers in the streets are helpful and friendly: the couple whom we asked something about the tram exhausted all their English vocabulary trying to help and even seemed to have a small argument amongst them about which stop we should get off at. Following the recipe obtained in Paris, we decided to wander about stopping at anything interesting. The modest loop which we walked around the city center first took us (obviously) to some ice-creams (surprisingly expensive, actually, both in Paris and Bordeaux), and then to the spacious Quai de Richelieu, with its “mirror of water” – a brilliant piece of city architecture which any southern town should have: basically, an enormous (football field?) paddle of water, some two centimeters deep, which at times is a quiet face of a mirror reflecting the limestone facades of the buildings of the embankment, or suddenly covers the pavement with a mystical mist spraying water from hundreds of sprinkles underneath the granite. The kids did not exactly roll in water like some people, but were soaking wet, anyway. Not a reason to despair in this climate. We sat down to watch skaters who have their own little community exchanging handshakes and “hello” kisses – on both cheeks – France, eh? Somebody shook my hand and said bon jeur, which I returned, happy not to be kissed by a stranger.
A couple of green and cheerfully clean streets took us to the Public Garden, circling which we realized it was time to eat and headed back closer to where life was supposed to boil and spill over the top – which it did, too – Rue Sainte Catrine is a busy shopping street, where we were taken full care of: fed, bumped into, asked for 50 cents to buy food, seduced by colorful shop windows promising deals of the lifetime and finally spat back to the embankment where the hunt for the correct tram claimed a little bit of time, but none of our dignity and none of our good and relaxed state of minds.
I do not dare imagine if there is one literate person on the face of the planet who does not know that Bordeaux is the major among major wine producing regions. I am shamefully ignorant of wines and would not know a chateau from a decanter, but even I know to buy Saint-Émilion when I have to choose – and that is just around the corner here. Our host Bernard is a connoisseur of the proper kind: he knows all there is to know about wine, how it is grown, made, stored, selected and tasted, but first of all, how it is to be enjoyed – and according to him it is the primary question: whether you like it or not. Something that I support heartily: at the moment I am typing this I am still a tad hazy after sampling a couple of good vintages. Well, I am on vacation in France, what did you expect.