“Don’t let your dick touch the sink.”

Fitzy acquired a job back in September at a winery in southern France, about 25 minutes outside of the town of Narbonne. He’s really just a laborer from what i could gather, but technically an intern i think. Either way, he’s got a place on the winery grounds to sleep, and even had a mattress for me.

Even in the dark, his place looked sweet. The building he lived in was something like 300 years old, made out of stone. His room was a bit sketchy to get up to, as i had to climb a very narrow ladder, then make a step up three feet, with only the ground i started at to my one side. Heights are not my most favorite thing, so that made things interesting, especially after 24+ hours of pretty much no sleep.

Fitzy’s first rule was not to let my dick touch the sink. I was a bit puzzled, but he showed me his bathroom, and seeing no toilet, he said the 2am piss wasn’t worth killing yourself on the ladder for, so he just used the sink. I made sure not to drop my toothbrush or contacts in the sink, and had no problems.

My one full day with Fitzy was definitely a good time. We sampled wine straight from the barrel, had lunch over a bottle of wine, went to the beach to see the mighty Mediterranean, cracked open a couple of beers in Narbonne, and then hit the wine again during dinner. Needless to say, it was pretty much a steady drip from noon until 11pm, when we finally left dinner to go to bed.

The winery was very beautiful. Stone buildings, pretty grounds, even a small grotto near a creek that we went to see. The beach was cool, but very windy and not exactly warm enough to be very busy. In fact, it was pretty much empty, and the resort town seemed instead a ghost town. We stayed long enough to get a mouthful of sand from gaping at the enormous waves in the Mediterranean caused by very high winds, and headed back to Narbonne.

Narbonne is bigger than i expected, but nothing huge. There was of course, like most all towns in Europe, a very old, very big church, which really was pretty impressive. I think it dated back to like the 13^th century. We had a couple beers in town, had some crepes, then headed home for dinner.

Both lunch and dinner were shared with Fitzy’s boss, who is also the owner of the winery. Her name is Marie, and she was very kind to me. We communicated through her broken English and Fitzy’s broken French, but both meals were quite the experience. Apparently, i’m the biggest human being they’ve seen in the area, as they commented more than once on how big i was and how big of an appetite i must have. It was a nice ego boost, but also came with the price tag of moving a bunch of tables around for her.

I seemed to have left my impression on the French, though. It’s always funny what foreigners pick up on when you talk with them, and what Marie and her friend picked up from me at dinner was the word “cool.” I apparently say it quite a bit, and they repeated it after i did all the time, then laughed. Eventually they got to using it themselves, and laughing. Poor Fitzy will probably deal with that for a while.

I said bye to France on Friday, and, after a relatively difficult day at the Toulouse airport and through Belgium which cost me my water bottle (an empty plastic water bottle can be such a vicious weapon!) and 180 Euros in excess baggage charges, i finally made it to Prague.