Vacations 2010, part 5

Some more remarks on the workcamp:

• Hiking two times (etang de Garbet; Pujad de Salau - this was a meeting between Occitans and Catalonians on the French-Spanish border)
• The Pyrenees mountains seem like one of possible places to find an ideal life (there is a lot of people coming there after their retirement) in the sense "no stress, enjoy the life". Still, it will not become the paradise for the people used to a quick life pace (unless they can slow down).
• Visits: St. Lizier, Foix, St. Girons
• village festivals - a nice custom. Every village has its festival (during the summer, usually 2 or 3 days). There is food (in Seix it was a free buffet - quiches, saucissons, wine), drink, sometimes music, sometimes fireworks, sometimes something else.
• barbecue with "a guy from the mountains" (actually, he has travelled a lot in the past; the house was full of travel guides; seemed like a very interesting person) - I could have visited his wooden house, his little garden (with a plenty of various herbs, apparently also a good source of revenue - it was enough to choose the right herbs) ; so strange to see someone live like this.
  

Hitchhiking back (6.8 .- 8.8.; it took 2 days and 3 hours):
Main points: Seix ->Foix -> Carcassonne -> Montpellier -> Lyon (stopped there) -> Besancon (sleeping) -> Strassbourg -> Ludwigshafen -> Nurnberg (sleeping near a petrol station 50 km before the city) -> Prague

• Visited a Muslim marriage
• Met a Tai Chi teacher
• Met a former Matfyz student, a master from LSE, now going to start a PhD on Cambridge
• Hitchhiking paradoxes (?) - a French driver complaining that the future of France is doomed because of immigrants; the next driver was an immigrant from Morocco
• hitchhiked a caravan for the first time - almost like a little house
  
• by the way, it seems to me hitchhiking on a petrol station (i.e. directly asking the drivers) is much more quicker than the "normal one" (provided that there are drivers going in your direction); also perhaps safer