#16 France in the Middle Ages

November 8, 2021: Pérouges

J. Monday morning was similar to Friday morning: we spent the night in some parking lot close to the workshop, woke up early, had a quick breakfast, packed our backpack with everything we needed for a whole day at the shopping center, and wove our way through the rush hour traffic to the car workshop. Shortly after eight, we lined up in front of the boss's counter at the car dealership. Since I understand and speak more French than I often think, I noticed that the boss was already explaining to a mechanic what he should do to our car before we were even greeted. He had obviously recognized us and the parts for our car had arrived. We cheered. The waiting was over and we could forget about our fears and half-hearted plans in case the parts still had not arrived. Since the repair was only supposed to take an hour and not the whole day as one of the English-speaking colleagues claimed, we did not have to sit in the waiting area of the next shopping center, but could wait directly at the car dealership and look forward to the south.

With new hoses, we hit the road again an hour later. At noon, we drove through a town where a huge market was taking place, Louhans. We decided to stop and wandered through the huge market, which was held in all the streets of the entire city center. We recognized some market stalls from the market in Beaune on Saturday, but there was a lot more here: an entire street was occupied by clothing stalls, baskets, soap, jewelry, various regional and non-regional food, different cooked dishes, and even live animals could be bought. So we discovered chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, turkeys, and other birds, as well as a sheep in a car and a goat on a truck bed.

After making some purchases and having lunch, we continued. Our actual destination was Pérouges, a small town recommended to me by Maj-Britt, who used to live in Lyon for a while. Pérouges was supposed to be a quite old town. We parked nearby and hiked up the hill. When we arrived at the tourist information and a slightly older house, Florian was already a bit disappointed, as we had seen similar places recently. But then we turned the corner and a medieval town, like something out of a movie, lay before us. The city walls were still completely intact and we entered the town through one of the two city gates. Nothing seemed to have been renovated inside the city walls since the Middle Ages. Small, sometimes slightly crooked, gray, old houses lined the cobblestone streets. Small alleys opened up to squares with a thick ancient tree in the middle. Every now and then, we caught a glimpse of the breathtaking view of the surrounding countryside. We walked back and forth through the village and constantly discovered new, or rather very old, things. What amazed me the most was that many of the houses were inhabited, I imagined it would be very interesting to live in such a medieval village. Just before we wanted to leave the town through the city gate again, we discovered the school. In the former guardhouse, there was an elementary school class on the ground floor, writing texts. The house, the windows, and the classroom all looked like they were from a different time. However, I imagine it would be slightly annoying to teach there with a tourist looking through the window every 5 minutes.

Day 24 - Total tour 2,147 km

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