Days off in the Camargue

Turned out that an old friend from Primary school and I had some time off (not as if one of us had a job, so it was more of a self-proclaimed vacation) in October. We decided to go somewhere, very fast, it was clear were.

You must now, both of us were freaks in all matters horse-related when we were little, we used to obsess about this magazine called Lizzy, and dream about spending our time taming wild horses when we grow up. Lizzy often mentioned the Camargue to be home to very fierce wild horses.

It was clear that we had to go see them.

In 30 minutes we had booked our Interrail and a place to stay.

We left after my friend had written her last exam, direction Montpellier. It felt like summer, without the herds of tourists though.

In Montpellier, we had a crepe, then we had drinks with a friend I knew from working at the “Fouer”, then we had a pizza.

Crazy, how good weather can change a whole city, it's like you live your life, on vacation.

For good conscience’s sake, we decided to visit the Musée Fabre, where the life work of a guy called Vincent Bioulès was shown, considering that I know little to niente about art, I thought he was dope cause he could paint in so many different styles. Here's my favourite piece:

Someone, (maybe Van Gogh) once wrote about how hard it was to paint water or the sky, no matter how precise you try to be, it never feels like it’s moving, the colours never seem real. To me it seems like that Bioulès dude kind of understood that, but still went ahead to draw how he remembered the water and the sky to be in that moment.

The next day we arrived in Arles, a nice small town which has an amphitheatre,an obelisk, a colosseum, and all that roman flex’

Walking through Arles

Me, heading straight for that dress shop

It also had some dresses that we couldn’t resist, so we did the only sensible thing and convinced each other how much we actually needed them, and then, bought them.

We also bought all other essentials, meaning ovomaltine crunch, Apérol and Linguine Pesto, before heading for the station without really knowing where we were supposed to go from there. Upon arrival, we found out that our place was in the middle of nowhere, buuuuttttt, there was a bus (like 2 times a day).

For us that was a huge triumph, so we were happy to spent the hour we had to wait, talking about how glad we were that we had found that bus.

The next day, we launched for what would become a 4 hour hike to the beach.See, I find that after 1 hour, your legs fall into an automatism, and you feel like you could go on like that the whole day.

We arrived in Saintes-Marie-de-la-mer, where we got icecream at the first opportunity. The place is quite a tourist trap, plus they're still super into bull fighting, which kind of sucks. But you can go on the roof of the church, which in return, is cool. The best, always, is the beach, I like the boats on the horizon, I like diving under waves, I like looking for these grey fish underwater.

In the days after, we rented bikes and visited a lighthouse, we contemplated kidnapping a nice dog, and talked about what we think will happen in the year to come.

When we were walking around, I imagined buying every second old farmhouse we passed by

Taking a break from our hike through the reserve.

Unsurprisingly, the riding was the best thing ever. We went with this ranger how probably knew every stone by name, we went through the reserve, through forests and rivers, even through a herd of Taureaus.

On our last night, we wore the dresses, and went not to the wedding in the castle that they were probably meant for, but to the village pub. I almost wanted to eat my pizza with a fork and knive, I didn’t though, cause my fanciness has a limit too.

Needless to say, we were sad to leave, it had been on of the first times since forever where I could read as much as I wanted too ( fuck wifi).

We were cheered up though, because when the bus back to Arles came, the bus driver, who knew us as the happiest passengers to ever catch his bus, gave us the ride for free.

We caught the train to Marseille, where the good old SNCF told us, that our next train was late. We watched Harry potter while waiting, so we weren’t too pissed off that we would miss our next train.

Arriving in Paris we had 17 minutes, before heading home.

About those kind of trips, I always hope to be writing more than I actually do in the end. I’m not going to complain now about how fast time flies, cause that phrase is so terribly overused that I am annoyed by it even though I think it’s true. Time will always be too fast for us, we will never get rid of the feeling that memories are slipping through our fingers like water. We’ll forget most of what we deemed worth of remembering. We’ll also waste a lot of time while complaining about this.

It’s time we trust that we’ll remember only the essential, and become fine with letting what is lost be lost.

"The irony of life,

is our greatest fear is to forget,

yet it is the only certain fate,

that anything has ever met.

We know one day our earth,

will find itself victim of time,

that nothing will be left,

to tell of your story, or mine,

and still through life we rush

scrabbling for somethin to remember,

perish the thought that ash be ash,

and not the memory of an ember."

- e.h

In Friendship,

Teddy Smile