Augan
After a gig in Rennes, France we caravaned to a tiny town about 50km away. Macario's friend Mikael had a farm house, and he was willing to put up 15 smelly people there for the evening. Completely exhausted, upon arriving I hurried inside. A sea of air mattresses filled the giant living room. Fuck that. I claimed the only couch, onto which I plopped down immediately and crashed to sleep. Somebody covered me with a blanket.
Rough night. The couch ended up being a poor choice - beneath the unsupportive cushions metal bars dug into my ribs. After about six hours of snoozing in fits and starts I gave up. I rose, found the bathroom, peed, and left the snoring chorus behind. I went for a quiet, pensive walk on this sunny French morning.
A sign revealed my current location on earth: Augan. I pretty much saw this entire town in about forty minutes of random strolling. Nice old church, farms, a cemetery, a horse. Oddly here while walking along a side road was where I got my first bars since yesterday afternoon, so I texted Jenya.
I returned to the house and found only French speakers awake: Macario, Mikael, Stefan, Christine. They gabbed and gabbed in the kitchen. I don't speak the language but from the tones and melodies of the words I could safely guess the discussion involved the difficulties of this current tour. I just sat there, quiet, hungry but still quite groggy, and almost falling asleep again in my chair.
Then one of them said "café" and I perked up. Those syllables mean coffee! And soon Mikael assembled his various espresso making devices and fired them up on the stove. Yes! And then in the jumble of nonsense I heard some more syllables that caught my attention: "petit-déjeuner." I know what that means! That means breakfast! Food is coming!!
The French gibberish continued around me. I laughed to myself about how I responded to those foreign words somewhat reflexively. It felt primal. Like I am a dog, who doesn't know human language for shit, but when upon hearing somebody mouth the sounds "walk" or "outside" is struck with a bolt of excitement.
My metaphorical tail wagged increasingly faster as breads and cheeses and jams appeared on the table. I tucked in. Merci! Woof!