speaking

Before I went back to Croatia, Ivana, Pia, Tina and I made our perennial visit to the Prince Charles Pub (picture on the right).

This time around it was particularly interesting to be there. I got to talk to a woman from France and bombarded her with questions about the French as I'm currently reading "A Year in Provence" by Peter Mayle.

The questions were all about the way French kiss when they greet each other and the French obsession with food. She said that kissing realy is a true ritual among the French and although she has been living there almost since her born days, she still doesn't know how to kiss properly. Just for the record, men do kiss each other when they spot each other on teh street.

As far as food is concerned, she admitted that the French cannot get enough of it. Not in the sense that they stuff themselves, though. They are real gourmets, who eat small yet nutritious portions.

It is so fortunate that I came across her.

There were two other real characters there- Mandy, an Austrian, who works as a realtor for the filthy rich, and Tom, a Belgian engineer, who is, in his spare time, a "chocolate dealer".

This is no joke. The Belgians really have the best chocolate on the planet, especially chocolate candies. Because of this fact, Tom cannot survive without his home country's chocolate and he takes kilos and kilos of it to Austria and England (where he actually works).

In a nutshell, this night in the Prince Charles was one to remember.