Living in the Vineyards: France

September 2018: We flew from Sri Lanka to France (Toulouse), caught the train from Toulouse to Agen, then a bus ride from Agen to our new home, a little village called Condom (yes, that is correct, and it’s pronounced the same but with a French accent).

We lived here until mid-November, with a quick week-long trip to Italy part way through (check out the blog post on our Italy trip).

We lived with the most wonderful family who moved from the Netherlands 12 years ago to start a slower pace of life in the French countryside (so they’re kids could have space to run around outside and so they could fulfill their dream of rescuing and fostering lots of dogs)….based on the pace of their life in France, I cannot even imagine how crazy busy they must have been in the Netherlands! We felt right at home from day one, and since then, the whole family have become an extended part of our family!

We organised this home-stay through http://www.workaway.info, where our hosts provided us with accommodation and food, in exchange for a few hours of work around the house Mon-Fri. It’s a brilliant way to experience ‘living’ another culture, fully immersing yourself in somebody else’s way of life and also helped save some dough!

We had our very own space, two caravans parked in an ‘L’ shape, one was the bedroom and the other was the lounge room and kitchenette. I often got up before Dan and took the six or so dogs for a walk, leash free. Taking a right on our walk took us through the cornfields and vineyards of red and white grapes, and taking a left took us through the soy bean fields. The Pyrenees mountains creating a hazy, romantic silhouette in the distance on a fine day. The only sounds were the birds, the dogs playing and the leaves rustling. This was my absolute favorite time of day.

After walking the dogs, we’d clean up after breakfast and bake a loaf of fresh bread everyday. This is something we will start doing when we get back to Aus. Making a delicious, healthy loaf of bread is much quicker and easier than you might think! Then we would clean the house and start prepping lunch.

The lunchtime meal took a bit of getting used to for us, as it felt like lunch and dinner had been reversed…hot meal for lunch, sandwiches for dinner. Our hosts would come home for a 2 hour lunch almost every day (very common in small French villages) and the kids would come home at lunchtime on a Wednesday, as school was only a half day. Dan and I would typically make pasta, pizza, vegetable bakes and soups. The veg garden was in the final flourish of produce before the winter months set in, so there was an abundance of juicy tomatoes, yellow capsicums, red peppers and pumpkins. Jerusalem artichokes were my new favorite veg and I was adding it to loads of our lunch dishes.

We spent time doing an array of other random things around the house but in our free time we had a little run around car that we could take exploring. We went on adventures to many of the surrounding villages in the south west of France and we got to taste many, many delicious foods and wines of the region. Bordeaux is only two hours away, one of the most renowned wine making regions in the world!

We witnessed the harvest of the corn fields, the soy bean fields and the vineyards. We learnt how to make Floc (a regional specialty made with local Armagnac and the first juice of the harvested grapes). We made tens of litres of pumpkin soup and tomato passata, green tomato chutney and baked goodies (my coconut and lime cake and brownies were the favorites).

We did improved our language skills (though living with a Dutch family in France meant that we learnt a bit of both instead of lots of one!) We visited the local markets and tried all the local cheeses, olives and breads. We did school drop-off and pick-ups, which is confusing when the teacher is asking you questions in French and you just smile and nod awkwardly until the child you are picking up from school points at you and explains that they don’t speak french very well! We played football matches in the backyard, put on dance ‘spectacos’ and in general just had the most wonderful time!

We spent a few weekends in Bordeaux where we got to experience French city life. The weather was amazing and we did wine tastings and visited some amazing art galleries. What an amazing country!

When it was time to leave, there were lots of tears. We had grown extremely attached to the family and also all of the dogs (who all sat out the front of our caravan every morning waiting for us to get up…and they all sat there for two full weeks after we left too…this broke my heart when I heard it). We have some amazing stories and adventures that we now all share together and I really can’t wait to go back and visit again. Condom will always have a very special place in my heart.