Visted Condom!

I finished my ground school on Friday and start Simulator today. The weather has cleared up some here and the days have blue skies and temperatures are going up to about 10C/50F. I switched hotels and now have wireless internet (but signal strength low in my room so I drop off line a lot), a kitchen and a bit more space. The area of town that I am in is not the best… the streets are full of dog poo (they love their dogs here but do not bother picking up the poo) and men think any building is their urinal… needless to say you would not walk barefoot around here! I have found the wine very cheap with bottles in stores ranging from about US$2 up. I have bought several bottles in the US$5-6 range and am very impressed. The French love their bread, cheese, salami and wine but I do not see very many fat French people…wonder why? If I ate a diet like that all the time I’d be a Pilsbary dough boy!
I went on an Airbus provided tour on Sunday to Auch (the capitol of the Gasconge region and the home of Dartagnan- one of the 4 Musketeers). We stopped at a farm where they produced “Foie Gras Conserverie” which means fat liver. They force feed geese (by sticking a metal tube down there throats) 2 times a day for 15 days (a total of about 11kg/22lbs of corn) to fatten their livers then make a pâté. It was ok…but I wouldn’t buy it at about US$60/lbs ((US$150/kg). Auch was a beautiful city with an amazing church that took about 300 years to build! We had a walk around and lunch then off to a city called Condom (really!).
Condom was a very beautiful little town where we visited “Ryst-Dupeyron” a famous sellar that produces Armagnac (a liquor made from distilled white wine). After a tasting and look around we returned to Toulouse.
On Wednesday I am taking a tour of the A330/A340 production line…should be very interesting.