After a nice full day in Barcelona, I took the metro back to the train station, where I retrieved my bag from the locker, bought yet another bocadillo, then boarded the train northward along the Mediterranean coast.
The train was jammed with passengers. By the early evening we'd crossed the frontier into France, and a half hour later the train arrived in Perpignan, which according to the words painted onto the train platform, is the "Centre du Monde." Who knew?
After buying a seven euro phone card, and having to have someone instruct me how to use it, I made a brief phone call to my old friend Jean, who came to the train station to pick me up. We had a beer at an outdoor cafe, caught up on old times, picked up a few other passengers for the big party, then headed out into the countryside to Vero's place.
On the way there in the car, I joked with Jean that we should speak Provencal now. But he corrected me. I turns out that Perpignan is not in Provence, but rather in Catalunya, which extends northward across the French border. So the local language is actually still Catalan. At that point I figured it was necessary to start learning a little bit of it during my stay here.
Vero's place was already crammed full of guests, with more arriving by the hour. She gave me a great big hug when she saw me, as it had been fifteen years since I was last in France. She introduced me to her friends and family, including several sons which were born since I last saw her and who are now teenagers.
She also gave me a tour of the massive hotel she runs, which was financed by fellow go players in France, and which she maintains partly as a retreat for them. It turns out that I got to stay in the Mongolian yurt, which I recognized from her web site. It smelled of yak, which was actually quite nice and relaxing. I felt lucky.
Jean counseled me that I would have to meet many people, so I made a point of trying to remember all the names of the people I met, repeating them over and over. But at some point, the number of guests arriving overwhelmed me and I more or less gave up.
The next night, Saturday night, was the big party. I hadn't even known the purpose when I arrived, but it turned out to be a double 50th birthday party for two of Vero's female friends, one of whom recognized me from my last visit in 1994. Time sure flies.
On Saturday night, the party went to past dawn, although I had long since conked out from exhaustion in the yurt. Most folk hung around an extra day, and then started trickling away by Sunday evening---back to Marseilles, Lyon, Amsterdam, Paris, and the other places from which they'd arrived.
For me, however, it was just the beginning of the visit. Vero was delighted that I was going to stay a while. For some reason, she likes me a lot. I'm not accustomed to being liked so much, so it's almost a little awkward. But I like it.
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