Lost in the City
Hello, Canada! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? For the last two weeks or so, we’ve been settling in, buying beds, getting used to the rhythms of daily life, exploring the city. We have our own internet service now, so I can get a stable connection in my bedroom. We have almost everything I’m used to having around me. More and more, I feel like Toulouse is my home. I can’t describe how much I love the place. I just wish everyone could be here to see it with me.
We’ve had a few guests over – friends of my dad’s, mostly. His old thesis supervisor, his wife, and their son are here on a half-year sabbatical, too, and they’re just around the corner, about a hundred metres from our house. We’ll be seeing a lot of them for the next five months, I’m sure.
Almost every day, someone goes out to buy bread. We eat bakery-fresh loaves with most of our dinners, and always have some left over for breakfast if we want it. There are about seven bakeries in the two or three blocks around our house. There are also loads of little groceries all over the place; sometimes mom sends me out with a few euros to pick up one or two ingredients for supper when she realizes we’re missing something. And there’s the big fruit and vegetable market, the Marché du Cristal, only a ten minute’s walk from here. The best part about that market is that the prices drop exponentially right around the time that everyone is packing up to go. Funny story…
Mom, dad, and Tristan went out a week or so ago to get some fruit. They were browsing as everything was closing, and a man was calling to them that they could buy one cardboard flat of twenty peaches for two euros. They debated, then he said they could get two for three euros. That, they decided, was too much, so they offered two euros for one flat – and were told, on no uncertain terms, that two euros would get them both flats, and to get them off his hands. They complied. We ate a lot of peaches for the next few days.
Peach smoothies are delicious, and I love peaches.
As well as that market, there’s also the Marché du Capitole, every Wednesday, where they sell clothes and used books and movies and jewellery and statues and sunglasses and shoes and makeup and anything else you could think of. I’ve bought some nail polish and eyeshadow, a few rings, and an awesome new watch. There’s also the Marché de Carmes, which is in the square a block or two from our house, and which is apparently something of a flea market. That one is on Sundays, and I haven’t checked it out yet.
The whole city seems constantly bustling with life. Even in the wee hours of the morning, I hear cars driving past on the main road just down the street, people walking, even the fountain in the square. Today two firetrucks stopped in front of my apartment and the firemen started bustling around on a building across the road; people leaned out of their windows to look, and gathered on the street a few dozen metres down. There are people everywhere, and everyone is going somewhere; everyone is laughing and talking and living. There are hundreds of restaurants just spilling onto the streets, and thousands of pedestrians anywhere.
Yesterday Tristan and I went for a walk. We ambled through one of the big gardens for a while, and were then shooed out by park staff, who said it was closing. We went wandering off towards the west, took a street that angled south, and got ourselves totally lost before finding our way back home. Those who know me well know there’s nothing I love more about going for walks than getting myself lost.
Maybe that’s why I love the city so much. Thousands of streets to explore, discover, and get lost on, surrounded by things that interest me. I am an outsider, learning about the city as only an outsider can. Lost, but not lonely.