It has been good for me to return to Aix and spend some time with my French ‘family’ there. I lived in Aix for about five years both during and after my university days. Stephanie is my good friend from that time and we have remained close despite the distance. We saw Stephanie and her two children Dionys and Hermès (three and fifteen months) almost every day either at the campsite, Stephanie’s home or in Aix itself. We paid a couple of visits to Stephanie’s parents and also caught up with her brother Laurent and his girlfriend Sandrine when Stephanie cooked a wonderful quiche and Spanish omelette.
I took as much advantage as possible of the Olympic size pool while in Aix. It felt gorgeous to be back in this place I had spent so much time in all those years ago. Now about 10 years since I left Aix, I didn’t imagine I would ever get the chance return to one of the top pools I have ever swum in. It was a strange experience, like stepping back in time as nothing seemed to have changed. The changing rooms are still manned in the old fashioned way with baskets for your clothes to hand to the attendant.
I always enjoyed watching the top-flight synchronized swimmers rehearsing between my lengths. I felt warm inside as I recogn€ized what had become the familiar sound of the coaches tapping time on the metal bars with a coin. The next generation of svelte dolphins-girls were now faultlessly cork-screwing their way to the bottom of the pool tirelessly perfecting their idiosyncratic routines. I’ve always told Graham about Aix’s synchronized swimmers, so was happy he could finally witness their Olympic brilliance for himself as he and Krista watched from the stands.
Toying with the idea of some French lessons in this time Graham took a 90 minute trial in a language school that used a learning method pioneered by a Hungarian called Georgi Lozanov. The trial involved him sitting alone in a room in a comfortable chair wearing dark glasses and headphones. Music was played and blue lights flashed in front of his closed eyes. He had to listen to a piece of text and repeat phrases. After a short break he returned to the room without the glasses and listened to more music and then followed a written version of the text as he listened again. At the end the teacher came to him, re-read the text, and he finally had to read the text himself. Somehow with in all of this the level of his language knowledge was assessed to decide where he would begin his lessons. Graham immerged a little shell-shocked from this bizarre experience and over lunch with Stephanie and I decided the method was not for him. In his words ‘I’m not paying €50 Euros an hour for those bullocks and now I think I’ve got a migraine coming’. He remains faithful to his old friend Michel Thomas.
So having planned to stay in Aix for up to a month but took the decision to move sooner. Despite being in a beautiful campsite at the foot of Cezanne’s Sainte Victoire mountain, we were unable to go out without the car. Due to the mountainous terrain the area is not well adapted for those who want to walk with a pushchair as we discovered with Alison on a hike around the Barrage of Bimont. We began therefore to feel a little trapped. So after just over two weeks in Aix-en-Provence we have moved closer to the Cote d’Azur and found a perfect campsite in between Sainte Maxime and Port Grimaud. Our pitch is quite literally on the edge of the sea and we have cycle track and pavement that lead all the way into both towns for our daily walks and runs.
No comments:
Post a Comment