Champagne, Sex and The Will to Move

To spend days picking meunier, pinot noir and chardonay grapes to make champagne, with people coming as if from a Fellini movie, and together with good wine and sex...  seriously, I miss it.

Frenchmen from there start early, in the bar, and they drink something made of anise, or maybe some Calvados. At 8 we are already at the vineyard, no breakfast. Its quite fresh - around 10 to 15 Celsius. Grapes grow low, to benefit from the heat coming off the hard calcareous ground. So, the whole day is spent working on a bent position, or else squatting. A real physiotherapist's heaven (or hell)! All is done in a rush, because the bureaucrats from Paris define when it is time to produce that nectar, and that is to be followed with rigor. At ten we have a break at the vineyards and suddenly, we find wine (coffee? tea? give me a break!) and some patisseries, bread, and fruit. Working continues until midday, when we return home, starving, as we are really well served with starters, meat, vegetables, cheese and desert, all well dressed with champagne. At the end, we're left with the difficult task of having a nap. I love the sign of civilization contained in a two-hour lunch break.

Is there a better job in the whole wide world?
And in the afternoon it all starts over again.

All kinds of people came for the picking: humble French and Italian people, eastern block people, even Brazilians. One of these groups was unforgettable - the Polish. Last time I saw them they had arrived in an orange BMW and they had many liters of vodka and pickles, and also marble tombstones and a stuffed head of a moose for sale. Most amazing thing is, they managed to sell it all! Their genetic combination included the huge albino father, the supposedly French mother, the spoiled-brat son, and the really tinny daughter who was married to this rude guy - his is the recipe below. All stayed in the same room and they never seemed to sleep or stop drinking.
And on the next day, they worked the hardest and were the fastest. 

But all good things must come to an end - autumn and the vindange, too. So we went to Brussels and to Holand, from there... and flew to the Canary Islands.

As we say in Portuguese: "navigation is definite, but living is not".