No Time, Toulouse

With the effects of events in Sarlat, I was going to have only part of one afternoon in Toulouse. Fate, however, wasn’t finished with me. A few miles outside the city, our TGV train slowed (I assumed to enter the station, but we were actually still in the countryside) and then stopped. Very puzzled, if not yet perplexed and annoyed, we were soon informed by the driver that we’d stopped for “security reasons.” Over three hours later, we finally resumed our journey (he’d come on intermittently to pretty much repeat the first scant information, as far as I could tell, his delivery being far too fast for me to fully follow, much less its being further garbled by irritated passengers talking throughout (obviously, people missed connections due to whatever it was)). I never learned what had happened.

So, with the cold in full swing, the sleepless preceding night, and the very early departure from Sarlat, I essentially missed Toulouse. There might have been a time I would have dashed out and still tried to cover a little ground, but I was dead. Cabbies outside the large station (not as large as Bordeaux’s) declined to take me to my hotel because it was too close. This was literally true, but dragging a bag at rush hour while deciphering a map took a while and a couple of course corrections. Both a young man in a mob of recently freed lycéestudents (who called my attention to the fact that one of my bag’s side pockets wasn’t fully closed, with a manila folder exposed), and a young couple with a baby in a stroller who actually, unsolicited, offered me help, certainly cheered my corpse up and gave me a good impression. The hotel is functional, the room tiny, but there are tasteful touches like designer black and white tiles of women’s faces among the plain white ones in the shower, the breakfast is good, and—best of all—when I hauled myself up and out and requested a suggestion for a quick, simple supper, one of the young desk guys directed me to a new vegan street food/tapas café right across the street (actually, he was astonished at my eager response to his tentative “would you be interested in vegan?”).

This turned out to be a huge mood booster: packed, live music, delicious food (I had a great bruschetta, really a Caprese salad with vegan mozzarella on crusty bread, and a small basket of mixed white and sweet potato fries, with a garlicky dip), and featuring as well a coaster that said “How to talk to the police: Don’t,” with suitable black and white graphics, and a fridge covered with words and slogans (like “Sex, Drugs & Guacamole”). I took their card—it’s called L’Embargo—and posted photos to Instagram.

And then, after said good breakfast, am on the road, tracks, again. Maybe I’ll make it back to Toulouse someday.