The French Business Man

After a few nights in Bordeaux, we decided to hitch hike to Toulouse. Observers of our previous efforts might be surprised to find that we were so keen to recreate the situation. After all, we had been far from successful.

But, we decided that we had to learn from our mistakes. Streamline our method, concentrate our efforts, focus on our objective.

And stand on the right f***ing side of the road.

We got the free bus (not actually free, but European buses are funny like that) to the outskirts of the city and started thumbing. The first chap drove us to the motorway junction, but only after scaring us s***less by saying things like "Oh, I pick up hitch hikers all the time".

Then, some guy drove us about 20KM to one of the toll stations. This was pretty much the point of no return. We were still 260KM from Toulouse, but now had no way of getting back to the safety of the train station. No matter - we were going to succeed this time.

The toll station led to two lanes, one of which was going to Toulouse. The other was going to Bordeaux. It was late, and it was dark. There were about ten cars an hour, and of those ten, ten of them were going to Bordeaux. Toulouse seemed to be an extremely unpopular destination.

We ate dinner, which was a wonderful meal of "Bean Surprise" - the 'surprise' was that we could happily eat an entire can of cold baked beans each, and not complain once. Then as the rate of cars started to drop we decided that we were going to be there for the night. We wondered around for a while and then found a leisure centre, conveniently left laying around. We found a wonderful spot under a tree, and slept for the night. It was remarkably comfortable; the only slight complaint was that it was on a bit of a hill, so we kept waking up in the night to find we had slid down in our sleeping bags.

No matter. The next morning we struck gold! Some white van man was going about 80KM towards Toulouse. Better than nothing, we thought. We piled in, and set off. Five minutes later he got a call on his mobile - it was his boss. He had to turn around. b*****. He dropped us off at the next exit. It was even more quiet than the last one. Spirits were low.

For the first twenty minutes we didn't even see a single car. And then, the first one we saw stopped! And he was going all the way to Toulouse! Fantastic!!! He was a student at Toulouse university. I've always loved students.

So we got chauffeur driven all the way there. He had to drop us off about 9KM from the city centre, because he wasn't actually going into the city itself, but it turned out all right. Just as we were trying to find out exactly where we were and thumb another ride, we checked the guidebook and it told us the camp site we were going to was 9KM north of the city. We were 9KM north of the city. It couldn't be that easy, surely?

A twenty minute walk later and we were there.

Toulouse is called the Pink City, or the Red City, or some other such thing, on account of the fact that most of the buildings are made from red brick. Do you see what they did there? To be fair, it was quite pretty. And it is home to perhaps the only McDonalds in the world to have an all-gold sign. In the main square, all buildings had to have gold signs. I have no idea why that piece of trivia would be interesting to anyone, but there you go.

One of the first things we did was go to the laundrette. Our clothes were well past due for a clean. It was a rather odd place (laundrettes are, don't you know?), but we managed. One particularly hairy moment came when I dropped a Euro coin and it rolled under the washing powder dispensing machine. Not giving up, I grabbed a sign from the top of one of the washing machines and tried to poke it out. No luck. Gutted.

We left our clothes and went for a bit of a wonder. When we returned, the odd man that was there earlier had left, and had been replaced by a good looking girl and a French Business Man.

The French Business man seemed to be having some trouble with his machine. I sat down and watched him, while Karim loaded the drier. The Suit's washing machine wasn't really working properly. He opened the door and a torrent of soapy water washed over his extremely expensive looking shoes. "Zut Alors!" He declared. Then he looked at me and made some random exclamations in French. Not wanting him to think I wasn't sympathetic, I just nodded and went "Mmmm". He tried again, but was met with yet more water over his trousers. Poor guy. Then he dialled the number on the wall on his mobile and started swearing.

I sat back, happy that I wasn't involved in the unpleasantness. Then I noticed that I'd left the bit of paper under the Powder Machine. Then I remembered which machine I had taken it from. Then I remembered what it had said on it. Hors Service. We'd seen a lot of buses with Hors Service on them - we had just assumed it was a friendly bus that took businessmen to brothels on their lunch hour. But of course we really new it meant 'out of service'.

I started to run the events through my head. I had removed the out of order sign, left it on the floor, and then this French Business Man just happened to use that machine at random. And now he was complaining loudly. And there were cameras in the laundrette.

We left. Our clothes were still damp.

The weather was s*** in Toulouse. A kind of half-hearted drizzle, that made up for in persistence what it lacked in severity. We probably wouldn't have stayed the five nights that we did if it wasn't for the camp site guy confusing himself into undercharging us. The camp site had a high fence all around, with a key-code security door. All very posh. But, we realised, they had obviously spent their hygiene budget on security. The toilet facilities were such that if you had a shower, you were in real danger of coming out more dirty than you were to begin with.

With this in mind, when got away without paying for three of the five nights, we felt kind of validated.