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12 July 2025 - St. Genix
As I write this it's 9PM, the sun has just set, I've just finished a double cheeseburger (off menu), I'm waiting for my sundae fraise, there are dozens of children running amok, the pool is closed but not, the restaurant is closed but not, the campsite entrance is closed but not, the old man across from me has a cutoff shirt and his wife has dyed her grey hair pink. C'est la vive en France. Today was a long one. I started in Yenne waiting until 8:30 for the grocery store to open according to Google, but not correspondent to the actual stores with bread, wine, fromage, etc. much earlier. Today was about scaling Mont Tournier, a 700m climb sometimes on cliff's edge above the Rhône with my 50 lb pack including far too many books. Along the way I lunched with a lovely pair of women from Vienna who'd started several weeks ago Lausanne. They're doing the Camino piecewise like me. And Hochdeutsch is soooo much easier to speak than Schwyzerdeutsch. Of course I'm here to practice my French, but it's still fun to be able to fall in with whatever people want to talk. Last weekend I even got to speak a bit of Japanese to a native speaker at the Mikeller run. So, today was up Mont Tournier and down again. I still don't know why the French thought it was okay to put the Chemin on a cliff for 2 km, but I got some nice pictures. Maybe I'll defeat the acrophobia eventually through shock therapy as my uncle Bob recommended. Kazbegi will certainly be a challenge in 50 days at the end of August. 50 days.
What I love/hate about the French is that they're a mess. So many rules; so many many rules completely ignored as needs be. There's all this structure that my Germanic mind adheres to, but then it just doesn't matter. Rules are suggestions. The bar closed two hours ago, but I just ordered another drink. If there weren't a dozen other patrons drinking would what I wanted matter? No. The French has a flexibility that is ... je ne sais quoi.
