Vacations 2010, part 3

After returning from Belgium, the idea of staying in Prague, having little to do for 3 weeks, frightened me. Quickly brainstorming, I started to think about friends, who could be willing to do something together, about possible job offers, also about possibilities to again go somewhere abroad.
I stumbled upon a "last minute workcamp" from INEX, it was Wednesday, the workcamp (JR10/309 - Seix) was going to start on Sunday. I made a call there, after a few formalities, I was confirmed by the French side and could have set off on Thursday afternoon. I get to the place (somewhere in Pyrenees) on Sunday morning. It's going to be my third workcamp...
Hitchiking (just mentioning the major sites; starting 15/7 in the afternoon, ending 18/7 in the morning): Prague -> near St Gallen (sleeping) -> ... -> near Lausanne -> Grenoble -> Valence -> near Orange (sleeping) -> Montpellier -> Carcassone -> Fanjeaux -> Foix (sleeping) -> Seix
I decided to go to the workcamp in a lot of hurry, hopefully, I won't regret it (spending 3 weeks somewhere in the mountains...). Our goal here: cleaning an old garden, then preparing it for some other works there, it seems, we'll be able to get some other work in the village. The countries' composition: 3xFrance (counting in two "animators"), 4xSouth Korea, 2xLithuania, 1xRussia and me (Lithuanians and Koreans don't speak French). Just three boys.
This time, it seems the work could be quite useful - we are mostly paid by the local council money, so the mayor is pretty interested in that we actually do something, also she is interested in that we are known by the rest of the village (less than 1000 inhabitants).
The village is mostly touristic (mostly people from France, also from Netherlands, UK, Germany), deep in the mountains. I am surprised by the number of 'associatons' here (correlating to NGOs) When saying I am a East European and there are not so many 'associations' in the Czech Republic, everyone is willing to tell me or even show me, how it works - they are very nice. I am also surprised by the complexity of governmental organizations here and by the number of their employees. On the other hand, it seems they do what they are expected to do pretty well (though perhaps not in the most efficient matter). People here seem to be somewhat proud of not working too hard...
They told me, it was possible to become an 'animator' in France, even as a foreigner, even though I don't speak French too well. Might be interesting one day...
New 'skill': cutting grass with a hand grass cutter.
There is a lot of tourists, also quite some touristic 'attractions'. One thing that I also saw in Paris (generalizable to whole France???): they use a lot of modern technologies at the tourist venues, and, I would say, quite nicely.