Language barriers suck.

"He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him."

This quote has been stuck in my head for two days.  Maybe it will unstick itself now. 

So, I was going to write a blog post yesterday afternoon, to save myself from staying up super late writing it last night, but it never happened last night either, as I did not get to sleep until 1am as it was.  WHY do the French stay up so late?  We were having dinner last night at a time I normally consider bedtime.  So I am writing it now, at 8am, and I'm still incredibly tired, but hopefully I will wake up as I write this.  I'm contemplating getting clothes on, and heading downstairs with my laptop for tea.     

    

Yesterday was good.  I promised myself one night where I wouldn't set my alarm, so that I could catch up on all the hours of nonexistent sleep I've had so far...and ended up sleeping until 10AM yesterday morning.  I woke up feeling much better, but horrible at the same time, as I had planned on getting up early, going for a walk in Silke's garden (which is ridiculously narrow but long, by the way - I haven't even found the end of it yet), breaking my fast at a local patisserie, and then coming back to grab a bicycle and go for a ride.

Well...I woke up at 10.  So scratch all that.  I got up, got ready, and left right away with the bicycle...which turned out to have a flat tire.  WHY couldn't I have been informed what a bike shop was called before I left the house?  I walked the bike into town, and once there, I tried looking for a bike shop, thinking 'oh, there are bikes everywhere, this shouldn't be hard' - yeah.  An interesting caveat I wasn't quite expecting...nobody speaks English.  One very frustrating hour of asking random people "Je cherche la place au réparations du bicyclette"  because it's the only thing I could think to say in that regard, and I finally found it.  WHO puts a bike shop under a building in an alleyway, and then doesn't put signs out for it?  I walked past it a million times before I found it.  It's called a vélo-service, it turns out.  And what I was asking for (which I learned later in the day from Silke's daughter, Carine is "Gonflez le pneu")

It was nearly noon by then, and I was famished.  Across from le vélo-service was a patisserie, so I went in and got a petit baguette and un grillé aux pommes (like a little sticky apple tart) ...and then it started to rain.  Nay, pour.  Hard.

I was wet several times yesterday.

With my newly pumped up pneu (what a strange word - that p is not silent, by the way) - oh, I guess I should mention, Silke lent me her bike for the day, but if I wanted to ride it, I needed to pump the tires.  tires = pneu.  I just realized I never said WHERE I got the bike from.  I somewhat had to swallow my cycling pride to use it - a frame size too small for me, the seat was too low, and it's, uhm...well, fuschia.  aka pink, bleh.  But I clocked over 10km on it yesterday, just cycling about.  Actually, I probably did closer to 20km throughout the whole day.

But I digress.

With my newly pumped up tires, I took the pink beast down the main shopping strip in town, rue trois du callioux, and cycled past the cathedral (one of the reasons I came to Amiens - I went to it later in the day, I'll get to that) and after getting lost a few times because the streets are a little confusing, and so was my map, I found a bike path along the Somme.

THE SOMME!

It was 7km allez-retour (return) and it was beautiful, so beautiful.  Flat wide track, partially paved in sections, along the Somme and what they call the 'petit Somme' through an area of town called Les Hortillionages" - aka water gardens - and I saw a swan, and a blue-heron, and some baby ducks, and other birds that I can't identify.  And there were little houses lining this path, that apparently it's totally kosher for cars to drive on too, even though it didn't really look big enough for it...and the little houses had little bridges to their gardens overtop of the little canals.  It was really, really amazing.  I'm glad I came across it.

I took shelter along the way underneath a big willow tree, because the weather yesterday was on and off sunny-pouring, and I did something stupid.  I was trying to take a self photo with my timer, and I had my camera sitting on top of my bike seat, and a particularly strong gust of wind came by, knocked it to the ground, and now I have dirt in the zoom feature of my lens.  I cleaned the lens the best I could, and that's OK again, but when I zoom in and out, it makes nasty gritty camera sounds.  I'm going to have to take it in and get it serviced when I get home.  Oh, and replace the little soft piece that surrounds the view finder.  I kinda broke that.  Lesson learned, I guess.  Bike seats are bad for SLR cameras on self-timer.   

After the trail, I biked back into town, thoroughly soaked now, and took shelter under an awning waiting for the super-marché and the banque-postale to open.  Apparently, the French close down for three hours in the afternoon for lunch.  THREE HOURS, what the hell.  So I waited, and then when they opened, I very clumsily got stamps for my postcards and bought some fresh fruit at the market.  Oh, and a pack of what is very likely HORRIBLE for me, but awesomely delicious - it's a pack of these little belgian waffles with giant sugar crystals baked inside them so they are kinda crunchy, and they are coated in dark chocolate.  I don't know what they're called, but they are amazing.  My breakfast this morning will be the rest of my fruit and the rest of the pack of sugar waffles.

Finally full (for the first time in a few days) - I carried the bike up a huge set of stairs and headed into the cathedral.  I saw this graffiti on the way up the stairs - I love it when I see signs of anarchy in other countries.  I don't really know why - but there is this small, punk part of my brain that was just THRILLED to see it.

I just love cathedrals.  You don't need to be religious to appreciate the time and energy and sheer skill that went into making a cathedral.  Or the dedication of the people who created it to make something which they felt brought them closer to god, towering up towards the heavens.  Anyhow - I saw it in the daytime and it was pretty spectacular, I even put up a candle at one of those - forgive my ignorance - places where people pay a euro to light a candle (altar?)  ...I don't know what to call it.  My favourite picture in the whole place is this one, here - a lone woman praying in the sacrament.

After this, I was beat.  So I cycled home and stayed at Silke's for a couple hours, until I was supposed to meet her for dinner.  Well, meeting her for dinner was apparently untrue - I was meeting her, her daughter, and their French-German friendship/fellowship/something - after the war, French and German cities started befriending one another as a sign of good faith, and today is the 50th anniversary of this for the towns of Amiens and Dormagen and they were all gathered in Amiens to meet...and I can't speak either language.  I was quite uncomfortable for most of it, though it got better once we sat down to eat, and I got some wine in me.  Wine apparently makes everything better.  I sat at the end of a long table with Silke and some gentleman whose name I never learned, and his English was poor, but between my french and his english, we made it work.  Dinner was delicious, flamiche au poireaux - aka leek tart ...the french really, really don't understand lactose intolerance.  My poor stomach was privy to several delicious items last night, the each of which contained brie, and goats cheese, and dairy, and yeah.  I feel a little out of sorts this morning. 

Since it was well past 10pm at this point, you'd think my day is nearly over, but I didn't come back home until 1am.  Every year since 2000, for three months in the summer, they light the cathedral up, and it was shockingly stunning.  I guess after some reparations on the cathedral, they discovered some of the original paint from the 13th century, and they've devised a brilliant light system to overlay what they thought were the original colours onto the front face of the cathedral, and they give a speech about the history of the painting and the art.  Silke was kind enough to translate for me.  It really was beautiful - I stayed watching it until it ended at midnight, and then I cycled home.

I WANTED to go cycling again this morning, but it turns out I have to catch the morning train to Paris rather than an evening one because my next couchsurfer, Romain - isn't home for most of the day, and if I'm not in Paris before 2pm, I won't have a place to stay until after midnight tonight.  Which means I should go shower and get packed - it's half nine and I'm not dressed (though sitting in the dining hall, enjoying a delicious german tea and croissant!)

Oh, one more thing:  unless I want to hire a taxi out to the WWI memorials, it's not happening.  They're too far away, apparently.  Boo. =(