17 nov

Toulouse is a large city. The largest city Merlin had to tackle yet, because she didn’t go have to go into Barcelona. It happened to be a sunday so we thought it would be nice and quiet in the city centre, because France, just like Spain, hasn’t given up the sunday rest for stores.
Stores were closed, but Toulouse has its market on sunday, which made the city centre into a mess. We were directed into small streets – this is a medieval city – that are just not made for a campervan. And surely not for a campervan without power steering. Because of this enormous and very popular market there also was no parking spot available anywhere close to St Sernin church we wanted to see.
I especially was anxious to see the church. After the demolition of Cluny it is the largest Romanesq structure in France. But more than that, it was an important stop on the way to Santiago and best of all it had the relics of two of the about nine body’s of St Jacques available in the world. Without heads these ones, but they luckily also had one skull that they didn’t want to account to one of the bodies, probably because it would invaluable the other body.
I was dying to hear the explanation for this ‘conception miraculeuse’. I didn’t get it. At the end we decided we had to wait too long for the tour that could have explained everything But then, one should not want to know everything, definitely not when the only thing one wants to prove is one’s own superior way of thinking.
But St. Sernin was magnificent. Too large by far to become one of my favourites, but beautiful still. If I only could own a brick factory in 11th century Toulouse, all the generations after me would not have had to worry about money anymore. Instead of natural stone, they mainly used bricks to build this church. My goodness, they must have used millions for the meters thick walls and huge columns that carry this mighty structure.
Toulouse these days is not about pilgrims or about bricks, it is about airplanes. The whole city works for Airbus, a nice guy told us in the bus that we finally took up to the city centre. He was from Benin, one of the former French colonies in France, had studied Computer science in Toulouse – just like Frederic, the guy we met at Padres – and was working now for Airbus. The good fortune of this company brightens up the city. The streets in the city centre are paved with beautiful natural stones. There are pleasant little squares everywhere. St Sernin is recently renovated again in which some of the interpretations of the famous 19th century renovator Violet-le-Duc have been interpreted as a little bit too wild. The city has a quite splendid metro system. But best of all, this city breaths freshness, which on this sunday was most clearly visible in the sweet and amorous embraces of the hundreds of young and good looking couples that we saw walking through the town, looking for a place where to stay away from the gloomy, rainy weather that has been torturing us now for days.