Trois Mariages et un Serpent

The last 3 weekends in Limoux we’ve experienced some things we don’t normally see in NZ. For example, the first Saturday in our flat, we heard several vehicles passing – like rush hour traffic – all sounding their horns. We couldn’t figure out what was going on and thought it must be some sort of protest or strike.

I decided to check it out from our balcony as it kept going for ages, then I saw the cars – all decorated with bits of fluffy netting (you know the sort of thing you can use in the shower with gel as a scrubbing aid) which were tied on to the aerial and the wing mirrors, and in some cases the windscreen wipers.

It was a wedding. Of course – we’re not sure at what stage they were, but I guess they were off to the reception. Apparently there are 3 stages of marriage (and, in France there are 6 different types of marriage, we found out recently!) – first a visit to the notary to establish division of property (in case you divorce etc), the second is to the local Maire to provide official representation of the state over the marriage, the third to the church or other venue.

In a seemingly unrelated story, we found a prospective home a couple of weeks ago – an abandoned house we thought, complete with a couple of beehives. I joked with Wouter as I suggested we could call it “the Beehive” (this is a joke for kiwis) – I won’t repeat his answer as I could get expelled from the blog site.

So we decided to be brave and email the Maire of this village, as we couldn’t think of another way to find out if the house was for sale or not. I’ve mentioned before that it can be hard to tell if a place is for sale as they don’t always use signs. In our hopefully polite French we asked what we thought were the right questions. No reply. After almost a week and its status has changed from prospective to ‘dream home’. What to do next. It’s August, everyone is on holiday, also the Maire, we imagine.

Decide to take a trip to the village, walk around and then approach the office to see when Mr Le Maire might be available. We see the door open even though the notice tells us he is away until 20^th August, and hesitate slightly, then encourage each other to go up the steps to the office. Mr Le Maire is in, complete with sash of the republic. Impressive, smart and friendly. Suddenly we are overwhelmed by a large group of people from the village who are attending a wedding (ahh! The sash now makes sense). So after saying 'Bonjour' to 50 people, and they are all safely huddled in the chamber, we retreat downstairs to wait (at the invitation of Mr Le Maire) until the service is over to return to discuss our business.

Lots of cheering and a few minutes later, the party descends and heads to the waiting vicar at the local church.

We go up again to the chamber and explain in our politest way and best French (somehow we managed to rehearse a couple of phrases on the waiting steps). Mr Le Maire tells us, yes, the house was for sale, BUT it has been sold – elle est vendue! There was a dispute, but indeed, now sold. Bubble pops, back to the drawing board and a feeling that we lost something which could have been our dream.

Today, another wedding party passed through the street complete with sounding horns and fluffy netting and lots of cheering, while we were searching galore on the net to try and find a replacement dream home, when came a knock on our door from our neighbour, Irene. She had a snake in her house and she absolutely does not like snakes.

Wouter and me to the rescue. With the aid of a large cardboard box, Wouter shuffled the small box (which Irene had put over the snake) into the larger one, without lifting it off the ground. Then we took a walk to the far end of the river where there is a bit of scrub and released it – it was an adder, about 45cm (1½ feet), was quite a small one and very thin. Wouter put it safely out of the way under some scrubby leaves. Hopefully Irene’s cats don’t bring in another one to play with!

The last couple of days we have walked almost every street in Limoux - one below - (at least, we think so, but we keep finding more and more streets we have not yet walked!) to try and find a property which is advertised which caught our fancy.

Tonight we finally found it (below) but may rethink if we still fancy it after seeing it and checking out the site on Google Earth. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but there’s no chance of a garden or pool and it looks out directly onto another building, so no view either. Luckily I’m married to a shoe repairer who can replace my worn out soles....

Place de la Republique at night: