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What a strange fate, Ukraine to waitress in V———! And what quiet heroism and courage it must have required! I wanted to ask her about her life, but of course I didn”€™t. What did she flee from, how did she get here, in what conditions did she live now? We left her a generous tip.

The town was obviously one of high unemployment. You could tell: V———was like the French national reserve of the morbidly obese”€”I have never seen so many grotesquely fat people anywhere else in France. Perhaps obesity explains why, when more than a quarter of young people in the town were unemployed, the hotel had to employ a Ukrainian waitress.

Breakfast in the hotel was a fine spectacle. Sitting at a table by the window onto the street outside was a man who was the male equivalent of Degas”€™ absinthe drinker. By the time we had a second espresso, he was on his second glass of wine. He was the kind of alcoholic with a beacon face who would never be drunk, but on the other hand would never be sober.

Outside, the municipal electronic notice board offered courses in Zen Buddhism, no doubt heavily subsidized by the municipality. Then two more alcoholics came in, aged about 60, dressed as adolescents, one of them with as much of a Mohican haircut as his one remaining lock of hair permitted. They settled down to their first beer of the day.
       
We left V———. Only the very old there dressed with self-respect, everyone else as a slob. One our way out, we passed the tourist office. Yes, there is a lot to see in V———. As there is everywhere else.