July 17, 2013
Returning to Caunes last night, the evening was taken up with packing Jazmin for her flight to Paris this morning. With only two days in Paris, time was of the essence, so the relaxing ride on the TGV from Carcassonne I had foreseen for her was not on the agenda --thanks to Ryanair.
Ryanair, an Irish company, is the leader in no-frills short-haul flights in Europe. Everything has its price; indeed the website is user-unfriendly, dragging the consumer through multiple iterations of its extras before concluding a ticket purchase. A glass of water, for instance, will cost you.
Ryanair shrewdly identifies underutilized local airports in Europe, then approaches the management and offers to fly there in return for landing privileges at below-market rates, if not for free. Ryanair's argument is that it creates new tourist destinations by doing so, bringing money into the local economy that would otherwise not benefit.
The cheapest way to go Ryanair is with one carry-on, which has to weigh 10 kilos or less; anything more, gets pricey. Checking one bag in the hold is 35 Euros; a flight from Carcassonne to Paris is about 30 Euros: much cheaper than the TGV, although you arrive at Beauvais airport, some miles outside of Paris and have to take an inter-city train (at nominal cost) into Paris and take a taxi from there.
Ryanair put Carcassonne on the map twenty-two years ago. Judging from the number of tourists that now visit there from all around the world, let alone the English who have bought homes in l'Aude since the flights began, the argument, in that town's case, is proven.
***
Unlike people who live in apartment buildings in major American cities, where the staff takes recycled garbage out onto the street for pick-up, in Caunes-Minervois, you drive to the déchetterie, the recyling center a few kilometers outside the village. You take a left and drive up the slope to the top, stop, and a uniformed worker walks over and asks what village you are from. Only people from Caunes and the vicinity can use this déchetterie, which like the rest of Caunes, closes for lunch from 12:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
The workers wear citrus green pants and vests and include a young woman. There are giant bins for cardboard, for cans, for plastic, and a giant square-shaped module with portholes on all four sides to dump glass. I love the crashing sound bottles make when they hit --it is one of the chief pleasures of going to the déchetterie. I park at the far end, in the direction of the exit and start to remove items from the blue plastic container in which I place cans and plastic bottles. Usually, someone comes over and picks up the cube for me, throwing things out as we talk. Task accomplished, I put the blue container back in the trunk of the car and drive slowly down the exit slope.
Except last week, when three employees from Meubles Negre (Black's Furniture) in Peyriac, alerted me to damage to my tires, tiny strips of rubber that scraped off when I got too close to a curb driving through one of the villages. For an experienced driver, the narrow village roads, dropped in between high curbs on both sides of the road to slow drivers down, present no problem. Having only had to drive since getting here (I have driven only rarely since obtaining my license at the age of thirty-two), my learning curve has been high.
The guys from Meubles Negre were very excited about the state of my tires.
"You must go to a tire shop and have them looked at. At any moment, a tire could burst! No, no! --You have to have them looked at before you have an accident. You probably have to have the tires replaced."
I asked where I could find a tire dealer.
"Go to the Spar in Peyriac--"
The Spar there is where I fill the car with gas, and not far.
"There's Monsieuir Pneu there, he has lots of types of tires, he probably has them for your car." ("Pneu" is the French word for "tire".)
The guys find my predicament worth talking about, even as I am departing the déchetterie for Peyriac.
"--By the way, you also have liquid dripping from the bottom of your car. You'd better hope it's not oil!"
I find Monsieur Pneu without difficulty; park and walk into the office, where a fit-looking young man with a shaved head, tanned face and arms is looking at paperwork behind the counter.
I explain my dilemma and say that perhaps I will have to buy new tires.
"Well, let's have a look", he says, rising from quickly his chair.
Driving is one of those skills that many believe a measure of general competence. By those measures, I am an abject failure. I am maladroit behind the wheel, although I have been told that driving is one of the few things one gets better at simply by doing more. The GPS and I have still not made friends, although I am getting a better sense of how to read the screen while moving. Yet I still lose time, making a wrong turn in a roundabout and having to turn around, when I am not driving completely off-course. All that is excusable as the growing pains of a new driver. Destroying the tires on a new car, however, represents another level of error, a costly one. What else could go wrong?
The young man and I walk out to the car. He circles around it, taking in the four tires.
"No, you have no problem with the tires. They are completely road-worthy. You have a few strips of loose rubber--"
And he kneels down and slices them off with an Exacto knife.
"Well, I was told that I also have some liquid dripping from the bottom of the car--"
"Let's have a look--"
And the young man flops down on the asphalt and slides his body under the chassis of the car. He lies there a few seconds, then slides out from under and gets to his feet.
"No, nothing to worry about. It's just condensation from the air-conditioner."
"What do I owe you?"
"Rien" (Nothing), he says with a cheerful smile.
"Well, wait--" I say, as he starts to walk away, handing him a 5 Euro note. "At least you can have a glass of wine on me."
"C'est gentil!" (That's nice!"), he replies before bidding me good day.
I now think "Grease Monkey" are two of the most beautiful words in the English language. In French, the term is a literal translation, singe de graisse.
"Vive le singe de graisse!"
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