Toulouse, for some reason, reminds me of India...

It was very weird. I was in Toulouse for about two days (and three nights) and so much of the city reminded me of India: the gullies that were just large enough to let cars pass through, the open air staircases in apartment buildings, and so much more (i.e. I can't think of anything else for the moment, but take my word for it). But I'll be honest, from the beginning, Toulouse was a little difficult for me. I wasn't until the last few hours did I really get to enjoy it. I came to Toulouse purely on whim, like all the other cities I'm visiting. A classmate in my public space class mentioned that Toulouse was amazing in an offhand remark during class once and it stuck with me. So, I decided to see what was so awesome about it. I spent the day in the train from Strasbourg to Toulouse. I had lunch in Paris with Srilekha; Pavan & Harsha during my two hour stop over. The ride was really a tour de France: from Strasbourg to Paris to Toulouse on a train that went through Bordeaux. It was about a quarter to seven in the evening by the time I got to Toulouse. Then I realised that I didn't have the notebook where I noted my host's address. After fruitlessly trying to find an internet café, I phoned my friend Megan in London with my dying phone and asked her to get the details from my couchsurfing account. I suppose it was the difficulty of finding a couch in Toulouse that made the stay difficult to begin with: I sent out a lot of requests and got very few responses. Eventually, I did find someone, let's call him T, to host me for the last two nights in Toulouse, but the first night, Sunday night, was still couchless. Luckily, I got a few responses from the last minute request group and decided to stay with Stéphane for the one night. All was well - or so I thought. So I call Stéphane on my dying phone and he was sweet enough to come to the train station and pick me up. Stéphane's English wasn't very good at all, so I really got to practice my French. We got to his place, an awesome one bedroom apartment in the attic of a three story walk up, and went to a bar afterwards. After sleeping in the morning, Stéphane and I walked around the city and he showed me the sights. I was thoroughly shocked to see a peacock in Toulouse! I've only seen them once, in Delhi, but never elsewhere. We walked along the Garonne, the main river of Toulouse, the Capitole, and past the Arc-de-Triomphe equivalent of the city. It rained off and on and that was definitely a bummer because I totally didn't expect rain in any of the cities I planned to visit. A few hours later, Stéphane left me and I started to see the city on my own. I explored the southside of the Garonne. This part of Toulouse is a lot smaller and perhaps not as...fancy as the center city. I did find a used book market...unfortunately they were all in French. And then I realised that Toulouse does really have a lot of bookstores that are specialised and locally owned. It's a pleasant change from New York where bookstores are closing because of corporate giants like B&N. They had bookstores for just dance and music, history, literature - you name it! Anyway, it really started to pour in the afternoon and I got on the tram kinda randomly. I thought it would go to the city center, but it ended up going to the northern suburbs. After more wandering around, I got back to Stéphane's place and planned to shift to T's place. Incidentally, he only lived a few blocks away. But when I got there, no one answered the door or picked up the phone! Needless to say, I was pissed. I even tried calling him a few times. No success. So I killed some time in the internet café waiting for his call. Then at an Indian restaurant, Ganapathy, owned by a Tamil Sri Lankan. It felt so good to eat annam pappu again! And the waiter even recognised that I'm South Indian and brought out some achar! By the end of the meal, T still hadn't called, so I called up Stéphane and politely asked to stay at his place one more night. He was totally nice about it and let me, but it was still kinda awkward considering we said goodbye and all earlier in the evening. He told me that he wasn't staying at his place the following night, so I really had to find another host. Enter Javier. Javier offered to host me when I asked for an emergency couch but since Stéphane already offered, I politely declined. But I asked him after I got Stéphane's place and he was totally cool with it. So, the next morning, my mind cleared of couch worries, I left Stéphane's place super early (because he had to leave for work) and wandered around Toulouse. It didn't rain either! I found a small street with tons of great graffiti, walked by the St. Sernin Elgise, and had coffee at a crappy café. One of the things I really like about traveling is that I started reading...a lot. Because there's only so much walking and sightseeing and wandering you can do in a day before your feet give. So I made significant headway into Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Although I agree with most of his ideas, there were some faults with the presentation that I couldn't reconcile. After reading quite a bit, I met up with Javier at a metro station and he took me to his place to leave my stuff. Javier is from El Salvador and is doing a Masters in International Business in Toulouse. He is extremely very traveled and very laid back. When we got to his place, he made me arepas for lunch! I was so happy - I've always wanted to try some. After lunch, I headed back in the city and wandered around a bit more until Javier would be free in the evening. It was sunny for the rest of the day and I got to see a lot more of the city. During my wanderings, I saw two entreprising old Roma men making candle holders out of used soda and beer cans. It was brilliant! I bought three just to support them and later realised that I can give them to my next host as a gift. We tried talking, but the Roma men didn't seem to know much French or didn't understand me. But they did ask if I spoke Hindi or if I'm from Punjab. It was really cool interacting with them. I then remembered one of my goals for Europe: learning more and interacting with the Roma people. They are, after all, the oldest part of Indian diaspora and no matter what my advisor says, I still think diaspora studies are very interesting. I met up with Javier at his university and had a cheap lunch there. There I met his classmate whose name I simply cannot remember. She was an extremely sweet Chinese girl who did not want to speak French at all. We talked about Chinese people, Toulouse, summer work/internship plans and more. Javier then took me to the language café, a weekly meeting of people who want to practice different languages. I took this opportunity to practise my Spanish and see how good it is. To my disappointment, I could barely speak it. But the people at the table were very nice and understanding of this. My head started to hurt after about an hour of speaking Spanish, so Javier and I headed down to the weekly couchsurfing meeting at Café Flute. I met a lot of cool people there - including Laura, who was quite drunk by the time we got there. She was some zoologist or something at the university. But the really cool thing was (excluding the fact that she was a lot of fun) that she was wearing a Navdanya t-shirt! I was so so so excited and surprised to this. I asked if she met Vandana Shiva and more about her experience with the organisation. I honestly would apply for an internship with Navdanya for the summer if it was located in a Telugu speaking region of India. Anyway, after the meeting kinda dispersed, Javier and everyone went to a salsa bar across the street. I was such a pleasant change of scenary to finally see a lot of people of colour in France! All of us danced the night away and then Javier and I walked back to his place. And even though it was raining, I still had an excellent time just because Javier showed me a lot of fun things to do. The next morning, I woke up six minutes after my train to Nice had left.