And finally THE day had came and it was time to start our adventure! Mixed feelings full of joy, suspense, adrenaline and a little fear overwhelmed us when we headed towards the border of our home town Kaiserslautern. Eight months of unknown surprises, good ones, maybe bad ones, were ahead of us, like a huge number of Christmas packages that will be unpacked one after another...
We already have some experience to live in caravan and traveled three months last summer to start our project in Northern Europe. We aren't beginners any more and learned lots of things about life in caravan. But eight months is something else, 50.000 km ahead of us and around 20 countries to visit is still hard to imagine!
GHOST CITY?
The first "Christmas package" will be Toulouse! We will have our first concert there a few days after our departure and we had two days to drive the 1062 km to this famous city - known for its student life, sun, quality of life and international atmosphere!
Curious about all this, we visited
the city. But NOTHING of all these
promising clishes... It was SNOWING (which had never happened before in Toulouse, inhabitants told us), the streets were empty and it was the middle of the semester holidays, so the students were probably spread all over the world but not in Toulouse.
In outdoor equipment that we had prepared for our hiking on Mont Blanc, we visited the "ghost town" , fought against the cutting wind at minus 5 degrees and finally ended up in a cozy cafe decorated in aesthetic English style. It was full of people (so here were Toulouse inhabitants!) enjoying typical cakes of the region and the famous hot chocolate. That was the place to be for us and we spent a great time feeling the sweet taste of the South and savoring hot chocolate, warm and pleasant like the Toulouse sun in summer time...
Although it wasn't at all the "typical" Toulouse that we got to know, we fell in love with this so called "red city" of France because the buildings are built from red bricks. The small streets, charming buildings, the promenades on the river "Garonne" and endless numbers of colorful student bars create a charismatic atmosphere, we need to come back in the summer and even could imagine living here!
CONCERT IN A LIVING ROOM...
We had a living room concert in Toulouse which is our favourite type of concert because we always have great time after the show meeting people and having interesting discussions! Also, the hosts inviting us to play, always prepare great specialities of food and drinks typical for the country and it's a great way to enter for a moment in the mentality and lifestyle of the country!
Also, for our "home public" it seems to be very special observing the
hands and instruments from near and getting to know the artists in a after- show- party. We can say that we love the French society, they know how to enjoy life, the discussions are full of humour, sometimes dark humour... and not only they like to eat, but they like to talk about eating while they eat. And when they don't talk about French cuisine or French cheese, it's about wine...