Günter took the pole-position in the morning and some time later Florent left, too.
When I was ready to go, Christian was having breakfast and I joined him for a cup of coffee and some bread with jam.
During our short photo-session on my departure, I also met some friends of Christian, going on a short cycling tour along the canal.
But they didn’t come very far before one of their bikes had its first flat tire.
I offered to help, because fixing a wheel is to me like taking a breathe by now
And I got a nice present for my effort: some salted nuts in a small plastic-box.
I enjoyed to ride in the shadow of the huge oaks and plane-trees along the canal until the sun started to burn me from the south west and the trees disappeared after Buzet-sur-Baise nearly completely.
And the last ten kilometers were excruciating and seemed to me like twenty.
So when I made it to Serignac in the end I was exhausted and well-done.
After I put up my tent and had taken shower, I found enough energy to introduce myself to my neighbors on the camping.
They looked weird (very interesting) to me – definitely no tourists, but also far from Hobo-style, very much like myself.
I offered some whiskey and got a cigarette and some beer in return.
Sylvain, a cook from Corsica invited me to dinner, while Vincent, a baker of the Alsace, quietly enjoyed his beer and cigarettes – it didn’t take me long to figure out he liked it that way, quietly.
The next day I decided to stay a day longer to recover a little bit and to improve my French by talking with Sylvain whenever I could.
He really liked to cook and was very patient in correcting my poor French.
I also tried to have some conversations with Vincent but due to his accent, the mumbling that usually accompanies quiet characters and my gigantic lack of vocabulary weren’t we able to leave the small-talk level of good weather and food.
Nevertheless I enjoyed this leassureay in their company so much, that I decided to stay a day more.
Thanks to some electric-boxes I found on the boule-court, I wrote the last (too diary-like) articles for the blog.
Sylvain told me that they went dumpster-diving where- and whenever possible and that the best day was Monday, so I chose to stay until Tuesday and help them with my trailer on their big heist.
With Vincent I started to play Rumis, which he seemed to like, and so we spend the day feasting, playing and following the shadow of the only tree on the camping.
The days went on like that and nobody in the village seemed to mind us, hanging around for free.
One day the mayor came to the camping to warn us of some tempest in the evening and some teenagers really loved keeping us company.
We also got offered some jobs picking fruits, but that never left the stage of wishful thinking – the boy whose brother worked on the plantation obviously just wanted to impress us with some of his “connections”.
The hikers kept passing through, some interesting some not.
There was this German couple, with whom I spoke a little bit, happy to be able to use a language well known to me, but several times I caught myself in search for the right words in my own mother-language. Interesting.
On the big day Vincent and I took our bikes in the afternoon to arrive just in time for the LIDL to close.
By the way, I was told that in France right now, it’s forbidden to through food into the trash, but that there is some fee to pay yourself out of this – LIDL of course pays money to discard food in France.
I asked Vincent only a few questions to find some shortcuts on my map, though I knew that the language-barrier was still so strong, that I could only understand fragments.
So we went to Saint-Laurent, Clermont-Dessous(20km northwest of Agen) and when I realized that he lost the way, I did what I should have done in the first place.
I gave him my phone to show me where to go and he came up with Boé(5km south of Agen).
Since Serignac is ten kilometers west of Agen, we enjoyed quite a trip and I can tell you the landscape is this part of France is more the agricultural type.
Now we had to hurry to get to the supermarché before anybody else did, neither of us was willing to return with nothing but a sad story.
I think that was when Vincent’s bike broke – when it rains, it pours.
We managed to fix the minor problem with the chain and hurried on.
In Agen Vincent again chose the scenic route as I started to doubt after three kilometers along the canal and told him, that I’d take the lead on our way back – enough joy-ride for one day.
We finally got to the LIDL at exactly the second when the last employees left – I don’t know how we did this, but that was perfect timing.
When the trailer was fully-packed with about seven kilograms of meat, one and a half liter of shandy, several kinds of fruits and vegetables and a-hell-of-a-lot cakes, les ragondins arrived at the scene.
Actually Ragondin is not quite fitting to the filthy behavior of the people pulling the trash out of the bins right onto the floor, causing a big mess.
First I thought about offering them some of the cake, but as fast as they covered two square-meters with garbage of all kind, I reconsidered.
On our way back we stopped at a bio-supermarché and were granted more vegetables – the trailer was at its limit.
So were we. It took us nearly the same time to go back on the twenty kilometers shorter route, but we had lots of food to eat and stories to tell.
I didn’t leave on Tuesday, I was to exhausted and my ass hurt as hell, but on that evening I started the running-gag of Serignac: “Demain je departe!”
Sylvain told me that as for them I could stay a bit longer and about the easy life at the camping and the next morning I thought the same – so I stayed on more day.
Also I had to help them to get rid of all the food we found, none of us wanted to throw it away again and maybe I could write some more. “Mais, demain je departe!”
I think by then I was already the only one to believe it and the next morning I didn’t.
The life in serignac was really easy, calm and simple and I was so close to get the blog up-to-date.
Only a few days missing, I was sure I could find some time on my further journey to finish them and told the others: “Demain je departe!”
Sylvain was smiling and I’m sure Vincent understood perfectly but didn’t react at all.
Even I had some doubts about this plan, so I was not really surprised when I left my prepared trailer where it was the, next morning.
I started to write about how I got to Serignac that day, but I couldn’t finish.
I wanted to enjoy the last day with my friends instead of writing about a boring tour along the canal, because this time: “Demain je departe!”
The sentence had become some kind of joke for all of us and I made it sound hilarious – I think that’s why everyone of us was sure that I’d definitely leave the next day.
It took me quite a while to say goodbye, but I hit the road again before noon.
Whenever you’d like to go a little bit further than the Venekotensee give me a call
until then send greetings to your son and his mother
your leisurely friend
Michael