What's new: I still don't know if I will make it.
Soundtrack of the day: Limp Bizkit- Keep rollin. Thanks for this song and thank you for your friendship, Maggie. Ich glaub an dich!
Heros of the day: The 84- year old Pepette, Antony and Susi.
Here is the story of how Pepette was right where I had expected her to be - although she didn't know I would need her to help me find Susi.
 |
| Selfie with Pepette and Susi, the next morning before I got back on the road. |
Imagine this:
Antony, who you have never met but only e-mailed, is so kind to find you a host for the night: Susi. You don't know anything, but only that she wouldn't be home until 9 pm. "That's okay", you say to Antony, "I'll find a place to wait. Like a restaurant".
He gives you her number, but it doesn''t work, and there is also no way to reach him anymore. Also, you call the only restaurant in the village and you hear it's closed that night. It will be dark soon, you don't have an address nor a place to wait and you are still ten kilometers away from the village.
What do you do?
a) You hope the village will be very, very, very small, like two houses, so you find Susis house right away, and you can wait for her in the other house.
b) You hope that the little village will be way bigger than it looked like online so you can find something else in case you can't find them - like 10 bars, 17 restaurants and 9 cheap hotels.
c) You pray that there will be someone to help you right when you arrive.
I did all of the above, but mostly - c).
Cycling towards Meilhards, I became really worried, but suddenly thought of the Bible story (Mark 11,2) where Jesus tells his apostels: "Go on your way. There will be a donkey waiting for you in the next village."
For some reason, I decided, that my donkey needed to be an elderly lady waiting for me to help me (proabaly because she couldn't do me any harm). So I prayed for one that will be right there when I arrive. I couldn't think of anything else but hoping that even though it was already becoming dark, she would be outside of her house when I arrive and that she would know Susi and that she would let me stay with her until it's 9 pm.
And when I came over the last little hill towards beautiful Meilhards - there sat Pepette, outside on the bench of the first house. Of course.
After Pepette called around and even one of her friends came to help, we reached Susi. I waited in Pepettes little kitchen and had a sandwich and I learnt that Susi was a young German woman from Thüringen, married to a French famrer.
When I left Pepette, she said: "Je t'ai sauvée. Maintenant, les loups ne peuvent pas te prendre!" ("I saved you, now the wolves can't come get you anymore").
Susi and her husband are tremendously generous, supportive and fun! After some wine and choclate, I got to sleep in the cutest guest room over their bakery. When Susi brought me to the little house the bakery is in, she said: "Oh, by the way, we have two donkeies, they are right here on the paddock next to the bakery."
---------------------------------
I want to say this: Meilhards is absolutely awesome! It's the cutest little village, the area is b-e-a-utiful and the people are obviously really lovely. Je vais retourner - in the summer, when Francois, his brother and Susi have bakery parties on Friday nights (pictures on their Facebook-pages) :) And then, in the morning, I will bring Pepette her baguette and sit on the bench with her and listen to old Meilhards stories (she's lived there her whole life). - Definitely worth a visit!
No comments:
Post a Comment