Signs

We’ve seen quite a few interesting signs here and some we yet have to figure out. There are the animal signs, which seem to be a favourite: leaping deer (which I’ve already mentioned), sheep, cows, children, elderly people, but none for boars, snakes, birds and other wildlife.

The parking in the street changes every couple of weeks to prevent long-term parking. You have to find the sign for your area to know when you must change over. We were told it happens around 9.30pm, but as we saw today, people already start getting twitchy about 6pm. Suddenly you find that half the cars have been moved and don’t see anyone actually doing it! So, you move your car to avoid missing out on a place... quite funny.

Moving the car gives us an opportunity to clean it out, as it is now on our side of the road. The other day we bought a small vacuum cleaner, which is great to do the car, but as it has a cord we couldn’t run it to the other side of the street.

Other road signs are interesting and we’re slowly getting the hang of them, as well as other road rules which are quite different to NZ. Cars coming from the right out of a street with no intersection signs have right of way, and you can see they have no intention of slowing down. It’s not a problem when you’re in a town where you know the traffic, but I can see it would cause confusion in new places. However, Wouter thinks that the roads signs are mainly clear enough and it comes down to knowing where you have to go.

Last night there was a party down the road and this morning we saw a real estate sign on the house across the road “sold” (vendu). Guess it’s a prank as it wasn’t even for sale yesterday. Talking of Real Estate, they are very reluctant here to tell you anything more about a property unless they are taking you to see it. That’s because the owner always retains the right to sell even if one or more agents are dealing with the property. So the only way you can find out more is to go and see it. We notice the French take house descriptions as seriously as their food as we find properties with descriptions of ‘central eating’ and ‘exposed beans’.