Auswanderer Quatsch

I have rarely seen a population so happy to party. Music come out of every window (sometimes very loud music even). People parc litterally meters away from the sea, open their doors and let the radio scream whatever zouk, reggae or mix of both currently runs on it (which leads to obvious music contests).Today was the national day on StLucia. At 6:00 am, a truck loaded with loud speakers parked at one end of the town and turned the music ON (and damn loud), only to turn it OFF late in the afternoon.

Whatever the time of the day, people are sitting in the streets, listening to the music, singing along while smoking (including marijuana), drinking ; simply having fun. Of course they will not miss any opportunity to whistle when you walk by and engage the conversation ; either to inquire how your trip is doing and if you need anything… or to offer to sell you the “best ganja in the world that if you don’t smoke any, that simply means you don’t like life because ganja is what will unite all nations someday”… Somehow – to make a parallel with my previous post – I dreaded those encounters at first… but soon realized there is nothing to be afraid of ; those big muscular guys really just want to talk :] and love to tell you all about their Rasta way of life.

At night, beside the dozens of people packing up the streets, enjoying the BBQs set up at every corner, you need to add up the cars cruising around. Cars are obviously a social status symbol. They are completely cleaned up, nicely polished, with shiny tires, often have smoked windows and in place of the rear bank you’ll find a wall of loudspeakers (again playinf music LOUD). Those monsters (oh I forgot to mention that those cars are either 4×4 SUVs or Toyota busses) are so present that at some point we wondered if people were walking around at all or only driving from A to B.

Tonight (every wednesday) is a special BBQ evening planned in town. Fish and scampi are on the menu… I’m looking forward to it, while at the same time wondering how it could be any different than all the BBQs we’ve seen sofar.

That said, off we go to the marketplace!

72 hours after landing in Fort-de-France (Martinique) and taking a boat to St Lucia where we currently are, I’m slowly getting used to the heat and already astonished at how much I learned about myself.

If Martinique looks a lot like “France in the Caribeans” (same stores, same roadsigns, same apparent way of life), StLucia is another planet. Gros-Islet (the town we stay in) is built as a melting pot of “full accomodations houses”, barracks and slams-like-tents all looking like they reached their breaking point half a century ago already. And to be honest, I had not pictured it this way. 

I already mentioned it when writing about my trip to Ohrid in Macedonia, I have not been in many countries where the level of life is so different from ours in Western Europe. So it is with my “beware”, “stay alert” and “WTF does this guy want” mindsets that I approached the people here.

As I said, the city does not look like much. But the patchwork of people that live there really make up for it. I must admit I have rarely seen so many people just happy to say “hello” or simply wishing to know where you’re from and how you find the island. With my initial mindsets on, I had the tendency to try to avoid any conversation… which was really sad now that I came to realize all this.

This said, I am now talking to people… and that’s truely the best part…

After the few bumpy days around our wedding where I missed taking pictures, we left to relax in the south of France: Collioure, Cadaques (Spain), Cucugnan, Carcassonne, Omps, Gruissan & La Grande Motte. Here’s that 365 part of the trip!

It’s been a while since I posted any picture for my 365 isn’t it? Well, I must admit that the summer was a bit more bumpy than expected. With my own wedding – in the middle of nowhere – end of august, I assumed there would be a few days were I would forget to take pictures. But I hadn’t planned on forgetting my camera in a friend’s car and thus miss a full week of pictures. I asked him for the pictures, but it’s been some time and I slowly start to feel that if I don’t renew with the habit of posting everyday I will start missing some days again. So I filled up the missing days (this post only) with pictures that others took on those days and we’ll go on like that. You’ll have to believe me that I really took some pictures everyday ;]

In my previous posts I was talking about my trip to Ohrid and the lectures at the UIST, but not about the city itself.
After one night of good sleep (I slept like a stone I can assure you), and the surprise of the snow-covered-rooftops in the morning, we were ready for the lecture. The lecture went fine but you know it already. Exhausted but happy (me), we finally got a chance the nice weather to visit the castle, Samuil’s Fortress. Perched high up over the city with its 360° view, its yellowish stones and emptiness, the view from there is at least gorgeous, at most breathtaking. Lake view bordered with snowy mountains, red colored rooftops all around and green wherever you look… this is just a surrealistic scene.

On the left hand side below – looking south-east – you can see the city of Ohrid itself and on the right side – lookin north-east – you can see the Albanian side of the lake.

The south view revealed a little church (Saint Panteleimon) for which I had to get a closer view later on. Completely rebuilt again, this church stands on an excavation ground which revealed – if I understood well what a local “philosopher” (speaking pretty good French) and the big information boards told me – one of the first university in Europe and a few other churches.

From there on, another – even smaller – church emerged, the Church of St.John at Kaneo. And here’s another gorgeousness-hit in my teeth! I must admit, with a bit more time, a tripod and a bit more luck (to get rid of the evening cloudy weather) one could make astonishing sunrise/sunset picture (@Rolyat you know what you have to do now :] ).

Of course the crumbling houses I described in my previous post were never that far…