Holiday, 26 october 2004

It’s been more then a week now since we got back from our holiday in France and I already feel like going back there and stay there for good. More then a week without Internet, TV, computers and mobile phones, strange to see how much you get used to things but don’t miss them when you’re on holiday. Maybe from now on the Da Goose site and weblog will be handwritten to paper, copied and brought to you by old fashion mail, who needs internet these days?

After breakfast it was time for a shower while I played Rhythm=Rhythm and the original 1987 version of Strings of Life (transmat), one of my all time favorites which is now been “stolen” by someone who did a totally non funky, non soulful, non emotional remix which now gets a lot of airplay on id&t radio.. Fuckers.. I bought the original record back in 1987 when it just came out at Rhythm import, which at that time was situated at Singel 10 in Amsterdam. I was so thrilled with this record, before I bought Nudephoto with The Dance on the B-side and that was the first time I got in contact with house music. Now I realize that in 1987 I was 15 or 16 years old and that it’s now 17 years ago. A lot of dudes out there where born in 1987 and now start to DJ or are DJ’ing for some time now. Damn… I’m getting old… time to get married and settle.

Going on holiday by car is always something special; it already starts when you bring your suitcase to the car, fill up the cooling box with all kinds of things like Dragon Juice, broodjes omelet, broodjes hagelslag, pakjes roosvicee and of course Lessini but the bottle kept closed during the whole holiday. We were going to the Provence so we bought a little book about it as a good tourist does but when we looked at the map to find Barjac we found out it wasn’t in the Provence but in the Ardeche.. hmm.. what the hell.. We first made a stop after about 800 kilometers to spend the night in Chateau de Digoine near Couches, a Chateau owned by Matt and Jitt, 3 Kids, Vivaldi and Balou, the two BIG dogs, funnily Vivaldi was named Vivi most of the time which makes you think he was about the size of a Chihuahua and of course there was the one eyed cat. She’s sweet, almost as sweet as Illy and Sinas lying together in their little basket near the heater while writing this. It was like a little fairytale when we arrived, a chateau left behind about 60 years ago because the owner died and her family already had a chateau so they just didn’t want it. We passed a Maria statue, drove through a huge gate and entered Chateau de Digoine and were welcomed by Vivaldi and Balou jumping and humping around. After we rested a bit we were going to have diner at Matt and Jitt’s place with 9 other young people from Aalsmeer and after diner we were having an excursion in the chateau with just candles and Vivaldi running around, this is exciting! After a lot of wine, food, laughs and liquor it was bedtime and the next morning we had a perfect breakfast at our room, couldn’t be better! It took about 4 hours to drive to Barjac, a cute little village in the Ardeche and arrived in our apartment for about a week. We read books, ate, ate more, sat near the fire, drunk wine, slept and got lost in the woods.

Writing about everything is too much but I want to give you one good tip; DON’T EAT AT LE PARRISIENE IN AVIGNON!! (I hope they won’t sew me for this) We had some kind of fat rubber steak, black fried potatoes with living salad (worms), warm water, instant orange juice, black apple pie with cold coffee and a sweet hmm.. thing.. that tasted like eau de cologne (which is French indeed) brought to you by the most ugly and annoying waiter you’ve ever seen! We really had a good laugh about it, the only right thing to do and of course we didn’t tip the waiter.

We missed the Chateau so we decided to go back two day’s earlier and went back to Chateau de Digoine to relax, read a book, sleep, walk around in the woods, eat, drink, eat more, drink more, buy some stuff at Troc de l’ille and Emmaus which reminds me; we bought a big buffet closet which fit the car as if it was made for it. The only thing was, we also had to fit in the luggage.. no problem, everything fit in the closet and after we got drawings from the kids and pumped up one rear tire we said goodbye to everybody and it was time to go home again.. ;-(

On our way back we made a quick stop in Luxembourg to get something to eat but making a quick stop in Luxembourg is impossible because of all the bloody tourists are shopping for tons of cigarettes, gas and surpriseeieren. After we ate some Bifi worsten with cecemel we drove back to Holland and made a quick stop to have Erwtensoep met warm appelgebak and drove back to Den Haag to Klojo, Illy and Sinas.. Back home we instantly fell asleep and dreamed about a chateau in France with 2 Dogs, a one eyed cat playing with 3 other cats who looked pretty familiar, nice people, woods, wine and plenty of good food ..

Au revoir!

Jeffrey

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