srah blah blah

Money can so buy knives

Last night when we parted, Jennifer, Renata and I decided we should do "something" today - a "something" that might include travelling "somewhere".

When we met at the train station this morning, we deliberated on a destination and finally settled on Thiers, a 45-minute bus ride away in the Puy-de-Dôme department (63).

On a side note, I only just realized that the last two digits on French license plates refer to the department the car is from - thus cars from Vichy have a 03 for Allier. Now I like to look out for cars from other departments and am hunting for 38s (Isère, Grenoble's department). Now back to the topic at hand...

So we took the bus to Thiers. Along the way we saw corn, cows, and the cute little town of St-Yorre. We arrived at the bus/train station of Thiers, which seems to be famous for three things: being medieval, being built on a hill, and knives.

Being medieval was interesting because there were narrow streets and old buildings with big beams on the outside. Do not ask me what that architectural style is called - I am very likely to describe it as "old, with big beams on the outside." So I hope you can picture it. There were narrow streets with tall buildings on either side, little tunnels and staircases all over, and it was very old and quaint.

Being built on a hill meant that we did a lot of climbing and descending. Climbing sounded like this: ergh ugh hmph. Descending sounded like this: thump thump thump, as we stomped down the street. We went up and down and up and down, not only in the old medieval part of the city, but down to the river, across the bridge, and up the other side a few times. There were some lovely views to be seen and photographed.

Then we come to knives. Thiers' claim to fame is their knife factories, which all seem to be deserted. But there are still plenty of knives made somewhere around, because there are precisely one billion knife stores in Thiers. All of this made me think, all day long, of the great thespian Rob Schneider, when in that great dramatic work Surf Ninjas, he participated in the following exchange:

"We are looking for something money can't buy. The Knives of Kwan Su."

"Knives? Money can't buy knives? So, I walk into a knife store and I tell the clerk, 'Here's a million dollars, can I buy a knife?' and the clerk says, 'NO! Money can't buy knives.'"

Renata bought some knives (who says money can't buy knives) and the chatty knife-selling man talked to us and asked us what we were doing here and all. He thought I was French at first, but later precised that I had *presque* pas d'accent, accenting the presque. Oh well, it's a compliment anyway.

Perhaps more adventures in Auvergne shall follow later in the week.

srah - Sunday, 27 October 2002 - 7:42 PM
Tags: assistantship, quote

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.srah.net/mt421/mt-pings.cgi/1504

Comments (1)