Two Loose in Toulouse

My craving for travel began modestly.  As a child family vacations in Florida were a yearly event.  We always went during the summer because my father was a thrifty man and trading brutal heat and humidity for the sake of the budget seemed reasonable.  One winter we took a two week car trip to Monterrey, Mexico.  I was seven and remember little other than the Alamo was cool and poverty south of the border was depressing.  My grandparents began taking me to northwest Ontario on annual fishing trips when I was six.   My love for that area still exists, but monetary restraints and professional commitments have made those remarkable family experiences less frequent.  Our last visit was two years ago.  However, this July all the kids, spouses and grandkids are committed to a week in the wild.

Our family has scattered.  Jason, his wife and the grandkids reside in Omaha.  Marie and her husband spent five years in Georgia and South Carolina but now live in Michigan with their 3 year old twins.  Christopher was stationed in Norfolk, but visited such scenic outposts as Afghanistan and Africa. He now lives in Iowa. My youngest was in Pennsylvania, but recently moved with her husband further north.  My sister and her family live in Missouri.  All seemed to be a twelve hour drive from our home in Michigan.  We made visits often, but the destinations were less than exotic.  So we moved to France.

I never gave much thought to traveling internationally (Canada and Mexico don’t count) until my job as a college athletic director became more struggle with the administration than fulfilling challenge.  I studied French in high school and college (even read Sartre in his native language) and my aspiration was to some day visit Paris, but that was always somewhere in the very distant future.  However, when an opportunity to coach a club basketball team in the United Arab Emirates was offered, I ventured into the unknown.  In 1994, information other than the basic history of the country was very difficult to find, and when in early August I boarded a plane at O’Hare bound for Dubai, I knew little about what awaited.  Would we (my family was to arrive four weeks later) live in a tent or were there modern buildings?  Was lamb and rice to be the staple meal?  Would I share the road with camels and herds of goats?  Would I be expected to speak Arabic?  Would my team play on a sand court?  Had my previous travels prepared me for what lay ahead?

Twenty four hours later (nineteen in the air) I stepped from the plane on the tarmac. It was nine thirty at night and I was nearly knocked to my knees.  Even for someone raised in the Midwest, 107 degrees with 90 % humidity is oppressive.  For the next few months each passage from either air conditioned building to air conditioned car or the reverse caused me to pause.  Glasses fog up so completely that waiting in the soggy atmosphere for shapes to become distinct was a necessity.  I remember only three days in which the sun didn’t burn down from morning to night.  Dust storms accounted for two of them and a rare morning thunderstorm which caused flooding was the other.  Flooding in the desert?  Apparently sand does hold water.  Streets were covered and the watering systems for the gardens which separated the boulevards and surrounded the villas were turned off.  By noon the desert had reclaimed the landscape.

Though only a little more than a generation removed from a simpler existence, Dubai was a spectacular modern city.  The airport was remarkable.  Six lane thoroughfares were surrounded by idyllic gardens.  High rise structures reached proudly toward the sky.  Casually dressed expatriates intermingled with traditionally attired Arabs in modern three story malls and traditional souks.  Beaches were crowded.  Restaurants served international fare while open stands concentrated on the local favorites, shwarmas and roasted chicken.  Most everyone spoke English.  This stop did little for my coaching career, but dramatically intensified our dreams of travel.  Sports Illustrated was replaced by a variety of magazines aimed at those with visions of far away places.  My wife and I became infatuated with exposing ourselves and our kids to cultures other than the McDonalds and Coca Cola world in which most Americans thrive.  The infectious bug took root and far away places no longer seemed as remote.

I turned down a coaching job in Qatar the following summer.  Bombers had just blown up the compound in Saudi Arabia and travel to that part of the world was less than attractive.  For a few years longer our thirst for travel would have to be slaked by less exotic destinations.  Friends had a cottage in Michigan on Lake Huron, and summer visits had led to positive impressions.  When I was offered a position coaching and teaching at a high school in a university town, there was little hesitation.  We made our way north, unaware of the long months of cold darkness and waist deep snow that winters there bring.  Natives love it; we learned to cope.

As our third winter as Michiganders wound down and spring break approached, my wife and I spoke longingly about Paris and the French lifestyle portrayed in movies.  When Chocolat hit the theaters, we were hooked.  Basketball was over and in rare free moments I covertly got on the rudiments which were to become the internet, booked flights from Detroit to Paris and Lyon to Detroit through Amsterdam.  By dredging up 30 year old college French (thank you Dr. Elkins), I got reservations at hotels in Paris, Burgundy and Lyon and arranged train tickets and car rental in Burgundy.  When my wife Julie came home from work in an especially good mood, I lit a fire in the fireplace, put the kids to bed early (the most difficult part of the plan), opened a bottle of cheap French wine and confessed (the second most difficult part of the plan).  After a few minutes of ranting, she settled down enough to listen to the itinerary.  She was thoroughly convinced that I was nuts and the trip would be a fiasco, but I plied her with chocolates and all the lascivious French phrases that I could conger, and soon she softened.  I spent the next three weeks reading Fodor to finalize the details.  She practiced bonjour, s’il vous plait and merci.

I’d like to think it was genius, but I must attribute it to luck.  Our first night in the Bastille area (I taught English Lit and Tale of Two Cities was part of the curriculum, therefore the destination) we stumbled onto a Moroccan restaurant which might have been the only one open at 6:00.  (Yes, it is always an adjustment to reset appetite clocks from American time.)  The waiter was very helpful, the food was wonderful and two hours later we walked arm in arm through the Paris spring.  Trading snow banks for daffodils, tulips, and forsythia in bloom made the eight hour flight a distant memory.  I was a hero.

The next morning elevated my status.  We stepped from the hotel right into the center of the Sunday market on Rue Richard Le Noire.  The farmer’s market in our small city was pleasant, and the Souks in Dubai were interesting, but the vibrant life of a large French market was a revelation.  The merchants called out their wares to passing citizens who accepted samples, sniffed produce, squeezed melons, sifted through piles of shoes or sorted through racks of clothing and engaged in lively banter.  Sitting on a park bench amid the chaos we sipped the strong coffee, munched on croissants and peeled oranges.  The sun peered over the Opera House (the only link to the prison and the terrors which were perpetrated there) and Julie leaned her head against my shoulder and proclaimed me king.

For the next fifteen years we managed to find the time and money to explore the Alpine region, the Loire Valley, the Gers, the Midi-Pyrenees and Aude Valley.  The cities are exciting.  Paris is wonderful, but we prefer Toulouse and Lyon. They are worth days of exploration. But the villages in which we occasionally stayed fascinated us. Finally we revisited Quillan, a village of 3500 in the Haute Valley of the Aude River.  We were hooked.  The village was scenic, vibrant, friendly and above all affordable.  We discovered later that over 300 other English speakers had come to the same conclusion.

My vision is to provide a different look at life as an ex-patriot. So often travel articles focus on the spectacular elements, the commercial activities to pursue or the trite offerings of an area. Guidebooks (Fodors, Frommers, etc) are invaluable to the novice wishing to catch the highlights and travel magazines are reliable, but often the pulse of an area is ignored. Living within the historic venue allows for greater understanding and appreciation. The Haute Valley of the Aude department of the Languedoc has much to offer. The people are genuinely interesting, the history of the area is intriguing, the scenery is beautiful, the festivals are exciting and the local food and wine is highly underrated. Let’s dig deeper into the village and beyond. And yes I am a late in life writer so I get a platform to expose you to some GREAT literature.