We're having such a good time!

The MacDonalds was a confusing one. Some signs were in Spanish, some in French. Which language do I speak here?! Even the guy at the counter spoke to me in both languages, whilst I spoke to him in just French.

The plan for the day was to visit Andorra. The night before we’d driven along lots of b-roads to get to the MacDonalds (well, and to the campsite – the campsite where we drove around and then left again. I’m letting it go. Slowly. Promise!). Anyway, we couldn’t see all that much at night so it was pretty awesome to wake up in the light of day smack bang in the middle of the Pyrenees. Snow-capped mountains all around (that’s how the feeling goes). <3

We climbed the mountain, driving through valleys with trickly streams cutting down through them, across boulders and rocks. There was a mix of evergreens and leafless trees, with little clumps of fluff on the ends of their branches (maybe insect nests?) and it was quite remarkable how each of these mountain valleys seemed to be stuck in autumn, with browns, oranges, reds and dark greens.

We drove up very hairpinny, winding roads, up through the clouds and into pure, undisturbed snow. Just beautiful. Every now and again you’d see the tracks of a small lone animal and when I looked up the side of the mountain, pretty much adjacent to me, almost perpendicular to the van, I could see wispy little drifts of snow tickling the side of the mountain as it fell down along the glistening ground.

We stopped as we climbed and took a few photos every now and again, stopping for a longer moment to watch the cable cars and skiers when we found ourselves cutting through the middle of a ski resort.

Anf offered to drive us into the town of Andorra (Andorra la Vella - what is this language?!) but I suggested we get on our way (at this point, we knew we’d be going to stop off at my friend’s who lives in the middle of France, and I was eager to catch up with her and her family). We had places to go, people to see.

 

Getting snowier...!

Going up...

Brrrr!

Snowman!

Andorra is a principality, like Liechtenstein. I’ve been enjoying the smaller things as we’ve gone through each country, like the number plates. Melilla’s number plates are the same as Spanish ones (or they seem it from the outside, without me understanding the composition to indicate the year/location). Gibraltar’s numberplates are similar to the UK ones, but have a different composition from those on the mainland, with all of them starting with G and then a few numbers. OK. So they’re not the same as the UK ones really then. They’re just yellow on the back and white on the front like UK ones, and the font is the same. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that Andorra’s number plates have a regal-looking red and yellow badge on them. Yeah. OK. That’s great, Stace. Move on.

 

Little countries/exclaves/enclaves are also quite interesting from a border perspective (what?! What do you mean the numberplates thing wasn’t interesting?!). When we tried to get into Kaliningrad, we had to leave Lithuania, enter no-people’s land (ahuh!) and then cross another border with passports n ting to get into Russia. When we went to Gibraltar, it was the same story: we had to leave Spain with passports (stampy mcstampy here), enter no-people’s metre (it was so small it doesn’t merit a “land”) and then cross another border (showing passports again) to get into UK territory. Liechtenstein had nothing like this – there was no customs/border force space. And many  of the European countries we’ve crossed haven’t had that (I gather from Tone that it used to exist, pre-EU). Getting into Andorra was fine, but as we left, there were border police.

The gates were open, with the barriers up so we proceeded. There was a line of officials all gassing away, slightly behind these barriers, as the road opened up again and they were gesturing with their arms as they were animatedly talking to one another. We looked to see if they were gesturing to us and I think Anf understood they were waving us on. The lady at the end, however, was not gassing away and told us to stop. At the eleventh hour.

Smiley doesn’t stop in a hurry and when I alerted to Anf that the lady wanted us to stop, it took a while for us to come to a halt. In that time, the lady had come running after us shouting “woah, Woah, WOAH!”. She was not a happy bunny.

Up until this point, it wasn’t clear to me what language they spoke in Andorra. There were “cedez le passage” signs that you’d find in France, but other signs that weren’t quite French. I’d seen lots of things about the Cerdanya region and perhaps this is kind of like Catalunia, or maybe even part of Catalunia and the signs that weren’t wholly French were in Catalan (which I don’t speak). In any case, when the lady chased us, I didn’t know in which language to charm her.

“J’ai dit STOP.”, she says, quite grumpily.

“Yes, yes. Stop”, defends Tone.

“Oui mais stop là quoi. Pas labas.”, she says, thrusting her finger in the air back towards where we’ve come, bringing it round quickly to point at the ground in front of her, then throwing her hands up in the air. (I explain to Tone she’s saying she said to stop back there, not here. He agrees and said he was trying to but she shouted too late and her colleagues were waving us on.)

Tensions are high.

“Ouvrez.”, she barks. (Being grumpy has to be part of the training, I’m sure of it.)

We open the van and I chat, chat, chat away to her in French.

She kept asking what we’ve bought, why we’ve come to Andorra, where we’ve come from, do we have cigarettes, alcohol, etc. I explained we just came to have a look and we were meant to go to Japan. We came from Spain and are now going to Spain, we went to Africa, chat, chat, chat. I unveil the whole story, Russia, war, ruble, chat, chat, chat. She seems bothered by my chat, chat, chat. I continue.

“Vous ne fumez pas ?”., she interrupts my chat, chat, chat.  Don’t you smoke? Lol. I explain our Anf has got a little bit of a poorly lung. Smoking ain’t too much his fing no more, nor mine.

“Allez.”, she says, flicking her wrist as she waves her arm away from her, shooing us in a gesture. Anf ant barely ‘ad time to climb down from his seat before the whole chaotic incident is over.

Crikey. That was all rarther pissy, rushed and unnecessarily stressful.

We come down the mountain coolly, and head to France. Direction: Toulouse.

Today's theme tune for those enjoying the thematic post soundtracks!

We advance towards Toulouse in good time and agree we’ll continue up on towards Bourges, where my mate lives, in central France. I let her know we’ll get there about midnight and she explains she’ll leave the door open for us to let ourselves in when she goes to bed.