Eating a nice unusual breakfast-lunch of pasta with duck liver and mushrooms, I left Arnaud's great place to meet the next host, Gabin.He was waiting me near the church in his car.Gabin seemed to be a cool,sober 21 year old young man. stuff to do at the university, so we went to the campus.What a giant complex it is! 6 giant modern universities around a big park, flooded with students from every nationality.
When we got home we were recieved my a delicious dinner made by his mother.I said I had vendangues tomorrow at 7 and a half and Gabin said he could take me by car.
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We slowly woke up to the irritating sound of the alarm and zombie marched downstairs to eat breakfast--Ffsh!woking up at this our for 4 more days is going to be hard.If i remember, this is the earliest time I woke up in a day to work,ever.If I had school, I would wake up at 8 to have the first class at 8:15.
Leaving the house, quickly going to the car.Warming up the car, termometer on the 9°, french hip-hop sounds coming from the radio and Gabin started driving me to the village where I had my contact.It's a great insightful scene to see , alongside the road as we walk by, the people doing the vendangues, the vendangueurs going to work on the vineyards, crossing the paralel linepaths between the fruitfull plants,each one in his path,taking his own time but in simtony with the others, with their conical backpacks to carry the grapes,in the orange mist sky of a morning of october.
Driving me to the center of Morey Saint Denis I said goodbye to gabin.The village was small ,traditional and surrounded by vineyards.Sandrine's place was just a traditional house arround the corner.She said to me that her cousin had work in her domain, so here I was to fuck my back!I signed the contract and They gave me rubber boots and waterproof pants and jacket for the hard work in the Vine plains.
I looked like I was going skiying with all that gear.I meet some of the vendangueurs and got got in a white van with more 12 people, the other ones comming by cars.They didn't drove much and we got to a plain with a vineyard, with paralel lines for us to go in and cut the grapes.We took a bucket(paniée) and a secateur .Each working team usually has 12 members inbetween 11 linepaths of the vineyard.In the line in the midle there is a man collecting the grapes from the lines on the left and on the right.He already has boxes on the floor droped along his line to fill the with the "raw gold".We have to begin to cut the clusters of grapes,nealing or squatting, bending the back searching and lifting the leaves of the vines for finding the grapes, then take of the leaves and efficiently cut the grapes.Sometime I efficiently cut my finger also, which is a pain in the ass when after you have to use you hand again, and the harsh vines and rusted metal strings really irritate the wound.If the grapes are dry or they have a fungust on some part of them , and we have to do a sellection and take out the bad ones. choosed a line of vineplants and workeon it, à droit or à gauche.It started to rain, and the feeling of it is not so bad, I though on the first day(On the other days, the floor became so wet I felt like a peligrim worm,crawling the muddy floor cutting the grapes with cold water pouring down to my hands and tool from the leaves.)."Paniée à droit!"Said the collector, and all the vendanguers to the right would pass they're buckets to eachother, till they arrive to the collector that droped the bunches on the boxes and stacked them up, while offering empty buckets which were being delivered to the further lines.When you had recieved your paniée you could start cutting again.
It's a tiring job, but at the midle of the morning and afternoon we stop for 15 minutes to drink le l'eau and have a chocolate bar inside a slice of bread from a baguette.
On the first day, after this break it was raining a lot, and i had dificuly advancing in the line, nealed, so the 12th element, the helper, went to my line and cut 2 paniées of grapes before moving to the other line to help others.If you're the helper, you have to check if someone is late and help him in his line.If somebody gets behind and its far away from the collector when he shouts,he won't hear it and even if he hears it he would have to spend much time delivering his bucket, and he is harming the others further away from him and breaking the line of giving full buckets, taking empty ones, passing them to the other and recieving another.It's an individual game and a collective game at the same time.
Hoh!Lunch hour at midi!Every people is tired from 4 hours of working in the morning, and now all of them gets in the van, with muddy boots and clothing and dry sugared slinky hands from the grapes.When we arrive, we take off our working suit ,and at the dinning room, a table awaits us with delicious french food - from mustard sauced salad, to all kinds of cooked meat, with mashed potatos,every kind of vegetables including tomatos, deserts that explode, melted in your mouth.
Good drinks to, from red burgundy wine, to champangne from Bourdeaux,to beautifuly varied species of fromage.at the table I ask "what is this?" to the portuguese, speak english with William and Morize,french and moldavian friends, also speak spanish with veronica, my personal french translatror.
After eating like a pig and talked like a parrot and laughed like a hyena,At 2 pm its time for the dress up ,gear up and fight in the front grape lines-With a cloudy dark wheather, sounds of heavy motors and shouts and people stepping in the bud, squatted, cutting and slashing and ripping, once in a while the vine tractor passes right above you, a deafening sound , big wheels and a huge plataform above you is all you see apart from your traditional infinite vineyard line ,the rain gets stronger and its harder to advance in the mud,sqatted and nealed to prevent a detection from the enemy.You feel afraid and opressed, your body starts crambling,you have lots of wounds that slow your fighting,you can't see the end of this war,but you cannot give yourself the luxury of falling behind, of letting your comrades down.Sometimes it really looks like a batterfield.
The tractor to carry the grape boxes has a weird form, with no axis and very high distance from the wheels to the chassis,to be able to pass through the lines in the vineyard.
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