An Eventful Day

Do I have a story to tell? A Canadian, an Australian and an American went to Bourges. Okay, I better start at the beginning. Two of the friends I’ve made at school and I decided to go to Bourges on Saturday. Bourges is a larger town than Sancerre. Bourges has 69,000 people and Sancerre less than 2,000. Bourge is 35 miles from Sancerre. We picked Bourges as it had a cathedral, a palace and some museums. Equally important it is one of the few places you can get to from Sancerre via public transportation. (Or so we thought.) In any case, one bus a day goes to Bourges at noon and returns to Sancerre at 6:20pm. It is about a 90 minute ride each way.

A very generous friend who had a car offered to drive us to Bourges so we could get an earlier start. We thought this was great and departed a little after 10:00am. The ride there was nice and the four of us chatted away mostly in French. I mostly proudly pointed out items when I knew the word in French. The most incredible thing on the ride there was sunflower fields. It is incredible row after row of sunflowers. It is past the season so most had few if any actual flowers left but it was still an impressive sight. I wish I could have got a good picture. But while moving in a car, this is the best that I could do.

After a quick visit to the cathedral (completed in 1324) and a nice lunch, our friend with the auto departed. After finding the bus stop to return home, the three of us visited the Palace de Jacques Coeur, which was built between 1443-1451. The tour was in French and I didn’t understand much. Never did figure out why this large rabbit was in one room; two other rooms had large items—a plane and a stack of bones. We climbed to the top of the cathedral’s tower – 396 steps. We also toured the cathedral’s crypt, which consists of the remains of a roman church that was on the same site. So we literally went from top to bottom. Then the adventure started. We had 20 minutes to catch the bus (the only one) back to Sancerre and we needed to use the toilet. The public one near cathedral was closed. After much looking, we discovered a public one at the bus stop. Whew! My feet were really tired and I was looking forward to a relaxing bus ride back to Sancerre. This was not to be. We got nervous that we were at the wrong bus stop because none of the signs mentioned our bus. Finally, the Canadian asked a bus driver if this was the right place to catch the bus to Sancerre. He said no, but he would take us to the correct stop. It was now past 6:15pm but there was no choice either we get to the right stop and catch the bus or we would have to take a very expensive cab back to Sancerre. Amazingly, he did not even charge us to ride his bus.

The correct stop was only a couple of minutes and we got there exactly at 6:20pm. I still did not see a schedule with our bus, but there were ones with the correct bus company so this was somewhat reassuring. Immediately, a small bus pulls up and we ask if it is going to Sancerre? She responds “Sancerre?” At least that’s what we think she says. We reply yes, pay two euros, which equals $2.86 and relax on the bus. We enjoy beautiful scenery as we drive through small villages. About 25 minutes later we finally identify the town of one of the stops and it is Sennecay, which apparently sounds a lot like Sancerre with an Australian and Canadian accent. (I did not ask if the bus went to Sancerre so I get no blame for this one.)

The bus driver stops completely, turns around and says something to us, which makes us think we are supposed to get off but we are clearly not in the right place. It is also clear that there are no taxis here or restaurants or anything that would help us. (I now know that Sennecay has less than 400 people living in it and about 12 miles from Bourges. It is 38 miles from Sancerre if one could go directly.) The member of our group who speaks the best French goes up and talks to driver. They go back and forth. I have no idea what they are saying but it doesn’t seem to be good. When our friend returns, she reports to us that she thinks this is the last stop for this bus and the bus driver is now to get her car and go home. But our companion thinks she said that she will drive us to Sancerre, at least we hope that is what she has said.

Twenty minutes later we are at a bus garage and she stops the bus and opens the door for us to get off. We are still not sure what is happening, but stand and wait. We decide that if she is in fact driving us to Sancerre we need to pay her generously for not leaving us stranded.

The driver returns with her car and we all jump in. It was nearly an additional 50 minutes to Sancerre! And this poor bus driver still had to drive home, possibly another 50 minutes or more. She received a call from her home on the way and it appeared that her family did not appreciate her generosity to crazy tourists who don’t know the difference between Sennecay and Sancerre.

But our adventure was not over. There are two apartments in my building and one of my Bourges companions lives in the upstairs one and I live in the downstairs one. We arrive home and are concerned that the light on the stairs is burned out, but no we have no power whatsoever.

The restaurant downstairs has power but we can’t find a fuse box or circuit breaker anywhere. I go down to the restaurant and ask if he knows anything about building power. He does not and says we should call the landlord. Unfortunately neither of us have a phone. He volunteers to call for us as soon as he finishes making a pizza. So we sit down for dinner at the restaurant and decide this is defiantly a drinking night. We have a kir au Sancerre (not sure how this is different than any other kir).

 When we’re informed the landlord can’t be reached, we order dinner and a bottle of wine. As we are eating we get another updated from the restaurant owner. The number we had for the landlord was not for weekends but he had the landlord’s mobile number, called and still didn’t reach him. We are tired and frustrated, although the wine helped to calm us. The owner offers us a torch (flashlight) so we can at least see. A little later we get back and he has tried to go look for us but we’ve locked all the doors. As we pay, Robert the butcher, who recognizes me from my shopping at the butcher store, and his friend arrive. The restaurant owner tells us they are going to go with us and see if they can help us.

They were so nice. We have very narrow winding stairs from the street to the first floor of our apartment and they didn’t want us to come up until they got light. When they could not find box outside of apartment, they came back and brought us up stairs. We then found the box, Robert flipped the switch and we had electricity. What a relief!

Our day certainly had its challenges, but due to five French people who went out of their way to help us our day turned out to be a great adventure.