I cannot believe it was the 2nd time I had forgotten to bring my 12-25 discount card! I walked slowly to the bus stop, feeling relax. At the bus stop, I was early and had to wait for the bus. But it is always better to be early and wait awhile then to be late and have to rush. While waiting, I thought of those times when I had to rush about; to catch train, catch bus, etc. Then I suddenly remembered that there was one time when I forgot to bring my discount card and only realised that at the train station. Not going to happen again, I thought. Shit! It did happen again today! I ran back to my room, got the card and ran back to the bus stop. The bus was long gone. The next one would come 10 min after, at 0956am. I had to reach the train station at 1015am in order to collect my booking.
Luckily the bus came 2 min early, but still it didn’t buy me much time. I said “luckily” because on Sundays, the bus might be late. When I reached the destination stop, I heard “psst” kind of sound and thought someone must be pissing at some corner again. Here in France, people just urinate when they like, where they like; at the corner of the building, under the castle, under the ramparts, under the tree (like dogs), or beside the bus stop. Yes! Just beside the bus stop in public. And the one I witnessed today was just next to the bus stop. And it was a unique case. The culprit wasn’t standing and pissing. She was squatting. Did I mention “she”? Fucking hell I did. A middle age woman just squatted there and urinated! I was completely disgusted to the ultimate maximum by this act and turned away. In fact I was sort of freaked out a bit. Culture shock.
I ran and brisk walked a bit and reached the train station before 1015am. The queue was short but it wasn’t moving at all. There were only 2 counters opened. One counter was functioning normally, the other was kind of stuck. A couple had problems with their tickets and the lady at the counter kept shaking her head and saying “no”. However, the couple refused to give in and just wouldn’t go away. Everyone waiting in the queue was impatient. There was this lady who just joined the queue behind me. She said “excuzay-moi” and moved forward and became the first in the queue. This made everyone behind her, including me moved forward because we didn’t want her to cut our queue. So we were all standing right at the front and the queue line disappeared. It wasn’t the lady’s intention to cut the queue because she still let everyone went before her. I think she did that because she wanted to put pressure on the couple. I think she failed because after I got my tickets, the couple was still at the counter. My booking was canceled automatically because it was past 1015am. Luckily the lady allowed me to buy on the spot because for TGV trains, you have to make a reservation beforehand.
The train came awhile later and it was half full because it came from Paris and made a temporary stop in Rennes. I found my seat which was the window seat. Some else’s bag and sweater were on the seat next to mine. I sat down and began to read the guidebook on Vannes. A sweet looking girl came and sat beside me. However, she was stained with cigarette smell. The car I was in was a non-smoking one. She must have taken that 3 min temporary stop to have a smoking break. While traveling on the train, I looked out of the window and the sky was overcast. But I thought the weather would turn fine again in Vannes as it is near the coast.
When I reached Vannes, the sky was still overcast. It greatly dampened my mood. I walked to the city centre following the signs as I did not have the map. Somehow I still managed to overshoot despite the clear direction given by the signs. But eventually I made it to the city centre. I came to this canal where there were lots of yachts docked there. Beside it was a carpark and there was a mobile foodstall. That kind of van converted to a foodstall. I went and bought a crepe with chocolate. It was a pancake with lots of Nutella wrapped in it. I saw him poured the Nutella on the pancake. He must have melted it beforehand. This kind of mobile foodstall is very common here and next time I would try other flavours. I chose chocolate because I felt that it would be “safe” and it was the only word that I could pronounce properly in French on the menu. I took the crepe and sat on a bench along the canal. The canal was not those smelly type of course; if not I wouldn’t have sat near it. It was windy and while eating, I watched the owners of the yachts preparing their crafts. Adjusting the sail, washing the yacht, untying the ropes, etc. It was very relaxing but too bad there was no sun. In fact, it began to rain and I had to gobble up my crepe. The crepe is only tasty when it is hot from the plate, with the hot chocolate melted inside the pancake. A man who looked like those homeless wanderers came up to me and said “excuzay-moi, monsieur”. I guessed he was going to ask for money. He asked if I speak French and I said “non, desolee”. He looked puzzled because I just spoke French to him and understood what he asked. Anyway, I just didn’t want him to pester me and so walked away.
I went to the office of tourism and it was closed for lunch. Hence, I decided to walk to the Park of Gulf and visit the Butterfly Garden there. I walked along the promenade beside the canal. The canal leads out to the sea, to the Gulf of Morbihan (Morbihan is a sub-region of Brittany, in the south). Finally after 15min of walking I reached the Park. Inside the Park there were Maritime Museum, Aquarium, Butterfly Park, Gymnasium and a hotel. I went straight to the Butterfly Park but was disappointed to find out that it was closed for lunch. But it was too expensive a visit anyway, 7 euros for an adult and there was no reduction for student. The park was really very small. Then I went to the Aquarium just to check out the price. I wasn’t going to visit it because I had already been to the Oceanopolis, the biggest one in Brittany. The price was 8.5 euros without reduction. And the place was not even a quarter of the size of Oceanopolis. I paid 10.5 euros last time which was the reduced price. So it was a wasted trip down to the park.
MS Office crashed (always does) while I was typing but luckily it had the recovery function and hence only one paragraph was lost. I decided to do a disk cleanup and a defragmentation to my harddisk. Also a virus scan because I have been downloading stuffs from the web into my thumbdrive and transferring them to the laptop. Not wanting to repeat that paragraph, I would speed up a bit here. I went back to the Tourism Office but it was too crowded and there were no postcards on sale. Hence I headed to the Cathedral of St Peter. It had begun to rain by then. I was surprised to see quite a number of people inside the cathedral because previously, the cathedrals that I visited were almost empty. I guess it was because of the rain. The church has always been a sanctuary for people in the past as well as the present. Still the presence of the people didn’t diminish the serenity of the place. In fact, there was this chapel which was dedicated strictly to silent praying. No one was allowed to enter unless you made a reservation before hand.
I left the cathedral and climbed the ramparts. From the wall, I saw a beautiful garden with many different kinds of flower in it. Very vibrant colored garden. Too bad the sky was gloomy and it was raining quite heavily. I went back to the old town and window-shopped a bit. There were no shelters at all and so I was walking in the rain constantly. There were many different shops selling weird and unique items. By then my hair was all wet and clammy and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Hence, I went back to the cathedral again. A second visit of the cathedral allowed me to discover the 12 carvings on the wall. They started from the south transept in an anticlockwise direction. First carving was about Jesus being sentenced guilty and taken away by Roman guards. The subsequent ones talked about him carrying the cross and what happened on the way. In the end he was crucified and the series ended with him being taken down. However, there was no carving on him being speared which was unusual as I thought the spearing part was an important event. While going through the carvings, I couldn’t help but think of the movie “The Gathering”. A group of people came to see Jesus being crucified not to mourn but out of curiosity. They came with lust. And as such they were cursed. I wasn’t being disrespectful nor had any evil thoughts while looking at the carvings. I was just interested and treated it as a historical event. Again I wouldn’t go into religious issues here.
As the rain turned into a drizzle, I stepped out of the cathedral. At the front porch, a big dog came toward me but it wasn’t interested in me. It was trying to molest the small little dog behind me. In the end, the owner had to pull that big dog away before it committed any crime. It was sort of funny because the small dog looked very haughty and indifferent to the courtship from the big dog. The big dog on the other hand was whining because it was very horny but couldn’t get the small dog laid. I walked around the town a second time and with the sky clearing up, the atmosphere was much better. Although I had seen a lot of timbered houses by now, Vannes had the most number of them and all at close proximity. These 16C to 18C houses had colorful stripes on them, but I guess the colors were added in modern times. I was walking around in search of 2 tiny carvings embedded on the wall of one of the timber houses. The carvings were the heads of Mr. Vannes and his wife and were the symbols of this town. Eventually I found them on the wall of a shop and actually I had passed by that shop a number of times.
There was nothing much to see by then and I decided to head back to the train station. However, I wasn’t sure of the way because I was going back from another route which I thought would be faster. I overshot the town when I first came in the morning and hence didn’t want to take the same route back. But this new route was completely unfamiliar to me and there were no signs giving directions to the station. In the end I just walked blindly and was lost. But I had plenty of time and so I went back to last point which I thought I was still on track. In the end after spending half an hour wandering around, I decided it was time to ask people again. I saw this young couple (the girl was cute) loading their stuffs into their car and asked for direction. They told me to go straight and then turn right. My level of French only allowed me to understand “par la” (that way) and “en droit/gauche” (right or left). That’s all. Any subsequent instructions would only confuse me further. Seeing that I still looked like a blur fuck, they asked me to hop on and said they would drive me there. Wow. Great. I was lucky to meet them because from where I was then, it would probably take me another 20min of walking to the station as the route was quite complicated. I reached the station after 5min and thanked the couple. Once again this incident has proven that not all French are proud. They are very friendly and helpful too. But not sure if this applies to all parts of France as well.
Luckily the bus came 2 min early, but still it didn’t buy me much time. I said “luckily” because on Sundays, the bus might be late. When I reached the destination stop, I heard “psst” kind of sound and thought someone must be pissing at some corner again. Here in France, people just urinate when they like, where they like; at the corner of the building, under the castle, under the ramparts, under the tree (like dogs), or beside the bus stop. Yes! Just beside the bus stop in public. And the one I witnessed today was just next to the bus stop. And it was a unique case. The culprit wasn’t standing and pissing. She was squatting. Did I mention “she”? Fucking hell I did. A middle age woman just squatted there and urinated! I was completely disgusted to the ultimate maximum by this act and turned away. In fact I was sort of freaked out a bit. Culture shock.
I ran and brisk walked a bit and reached the train station before 1015am. The queue was short but it wasn’t moving at all. There were only 2 counters opened. One counter was functioning normally, the other was kind of stuck. A couple had problems with their tickets and the lady at the counter kept shaking her head and saying “no”. However, the couple refused to give in and just wouldn’t go away. Everyone waiting in the queue was impatient. There was this lady who just joined the queue behind me. She said “excuzay-moi” and moved forward and became the first in the queue. This made everyone behind her, including me moved forward because we didn’t want her to cut our queue. So we were all standing right at the front and the queue line disappeared. It wasn’t the lady’s intention to cut the queue because she still let everyone went before her. I think she did that because she wanted to put pressure on the couple. I think she failed because after I got my tickets, the couple was still at the counter. My booking was canceled automatically because it was past 1015am. Luckily the lady allowed me to buy on the spot because for TGV trains, you have to make a reservation beforehand.
The train came awhile later and it was half full because it came from Paris and made a temporary stop in Rennes. I found my seat which was the window seat. Some else’s bag and sweater were on the seat next to mine. I sat down and began to read the guidebook on Vannes. A sweet looking girl came and sat beside me. However, she was stained with cigarette smell. The car I was in was a non-smoking one. She must have taken that 3 min temporary stop to have a smoking break. While traveling on the train, I looked out of the window and the sky was overcast. But I thought the weather would turn fine again in Vannes as it is near the coast.
When I reached Vannes, the sky was still overcast. It greatly dampened my mood. I walked to the city centre following the signs as I did not have the map. Somehow I still managed to overshoot despite the clear direction given by the signs. But eventually I made it to the city centre. I came to this canal where there were lots of yachts docked there. Beside it was a carpark and there was a mobile foodstall. That kind of van converted to a foodstall. I went and bought a crepe with chocolate. It was a pancake with lots of Nutella wrapped in it. I saw him poured the Nutella on the pancake. He must have melted it beforehand. This kind of mobile foodstall is very common here and next time I would try other flavours. I chose chocolate because I felt that it would be “safe” and it was the only word that I could pronounce properly in French on the menu. I took the crepe and sat on a bench along the canal. The canal was not those smelly type of course; if not I wouldn’t have sat near it. It was windy and while eating, I watched the owners of the yachts preparing their crafts. Adjusting the sail, washing the yacht, untying the ropes, etc. It was very relaxing but too bad there was no sun. In fact, it began to rain and I had to gobble up my crepe. The crepe is only tasty when it is hot from the plate, with the hot chocolate melted inside the pancake. A man who looked like those homeless wanderers came up to me and said “excuzay-moi, monsieur”. I guessed he was going to ask for money. He asked if I speak French and I said “non, desolee”. He looked puzzled because I just spoke French to him and understood what he asked. Anyway, I just didn’t want him to pester me and so walked away.
I went to the office of tourism and it was closed for lunch. Hence, I decided to walk to the Park of Gulf and visit the Butterfly Garden there. I walked along the promenade beside the canal. The canal leads out to the sea, to the Gulf of Morbihan (Morbihan is a sub-region of Brittany, in the south). Finally after 15min of walking I reached the Park. Inside the Park there were Maritime Museum, Aquarium, Butterfly Park, Gymnasium and a hotel. I went straight to the Butterfly Park but was disappointed to find out that it was closed for lunch. But it was too expensive a visit anyway, 7 euros for an adult and there was no reduction for student. The park was really very small. Then I went to the Aquarium just to check out the price. I wasn’t going to visit it because I had already been to the Oceanopolis, the biggest one in Brittany. The price was 8.5 euros without reduction. And the place was not even a quarter of the size of Oceanopolis. I paid 10.5 euros last time which was the reduced price. So it was a wasted trip down to the park.
MS Office crashed (always does) while I was typing but luckily it had the recovery function and hence only one paragraph was lost. I decided to do a disk cleanup and a defragmentation to my harddisk. Also a virus scan because I have been downloading stuffs from the web into my thumbdrive and transferring them to the laptop. Not wanting to repeat that paragraph, I would speed up a bit here. I went back to the Tourism Office but it was too crowded and there were no postcards on sale. Hence I headed to the Cathedral of St Peter. It had begun to rain by then. I was surprised to see quite a number of people inside the cathedral because previously, the cathedrals that I visited were almost empty. I guess it was because of the rain. The church has always been a sanctuary for people in the past as well as the present. Still the presence of the people didn’t diminish the serenity of the place. In fact, there was this chapel which was dedicated strictly to silent praying. No one was allowed to enter unless you made a reservation before hand.
I left the cathedral and climbed the ramparts. From the wall, I saw a beautiful garden with many different kinds of flower in it. Very vibrant colored garden. Too bad the sky was gloomy and it was raining quite heavily. I went back to the old town and window-shopped a bit. There were no shelters at all and so I was walking in the rain constantly. There were many different shops selling weird and unique items. By then my hair was all wet and clammy and I just couldn’t take it anymore. Hence, I went back to the cathedral again. A second visit of the cathedral allowed me to discover the 12 carvings on the wall. They started from the south transept in an anticlockwise direction. First carving was about Jesus being sentenced guilty and taken away by Roman guards. The subsequent ones talked about him carrying the cross and what happened on the way. In the end he was crucified and the series ended with him being taken down. However, there was no carving on him being speared which was unusual as I thought the spearing part was an important event. While going through the carvings, I couldn’t help but think of the movie “The Gathering”. A group of people came to see Jesus being crucified not to mourn but out of curiosity. They came with lust. And as such they were cursed. I wasn’t being disrespectful nor had any evil thoughts while looking at the carvings. I was just interested and treated it as a historical event. Again I wouldn’t go into religious issues here.
As the rain turned into a drizzle, I stepped out of the cathedral. At the front porch, a big dog came toward me but it wasn’t interested in me. It was trying to molest the small little dog behind me. In the end, the owner had to pull that big dog away before it committed any crime. It was sort of funny because the small dog looked very haughty and indifferent to the courtship from the big dog. The big dog on the other hand was whining because it was very horny but couldn’t get the small dog laid. I walked around the town a second time and with the sky clearing up, the atmosphere was much better. Although I had seen a lot of timbered houses by now, Vannes had the most number of them and all at close proximity. These 16C to 18C houses had colorful stripes on them, but I guess the colors were added in modern times. I was walking around in search of 2 tiny carvings embedded on the wall of one of the timber houses. The carvings were the heads of Mr. Vannes and his wife and were the symbols of this town. Eventually I found them on the wall of a shop and actually I had passed by that shop a number of times.
There was nothing much to see by then and I decided to head back to the train station. However, I wasn’t sure of the way because I was going back from another route which I thought would be faster. I overshot the town when I first came in the morning and hence didn’t want to take the same route back. But this new route was completely unfamiliar to me and there were no signs giving directions to the station. In the end I just walked blindly and was lost. But I had plenty of time and so I went back to last point which I thought I was still on track. In the end after spending half an hour wandering around, I decided it was time to ask people again. I saw this young couple (the girl was cute) loading their stuffs into their car and asked for direction. They told me to go straight and then turn right. My level of French only allowed me to understand “par la” (that way) and “en droit/gauche” (right or left). That’s all. Any subsequent instructions would only confuse me further. Seeing that I still looked like a blur fuck, they asked me to hop on and said they would drive me there. Wow. Great. I was lucky to meet them because from where I was then, it would probably take me another 20min of walking to the station as the route was quite complicated. I reached the station after 5min and thanked the couple. Once again this incident has proven that not all French are proud. They are very friendly and helpful too. But not sure if this applies to all parts of France as well.
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