Waking up in Toulouse
This is our first post from Toulouse, France. Took places on the 15th of May and the following 9-10 days and got posted today on the 31st.
39,000 feet
Our last post went live back in April, right in the thick of packing, logistical checklists, and the bittersweet goodbyes. Then, the calendar blurred. We boarded an Air France Airbus Neo, watched the American coastline fade away, spent a quiet two-hour layover navigating the terminal in Amsterdam, and finally boarded a smaller KLM Boeing 737 bound for the south of France.
If you are looking for a dramatic travel tale of lost luggage or missed connections, I have to disappoint you. The flight was long, smooth, and mostly defined by the quiet hum of the engines. Lelaine and I sat side by side on both flights taking turns at the window seat, watching the landscape shift below us, each lost in our own thoughts about what was waiting at the other end of the descent.
The real magic of the journey didn’t happen in the air; it started the moment the wheels hit the tarmac in Toulouse.
Through Facebook, Lelaine had connected with a local French girl who offered to pick us up. Meeting a stranger in a new country can always bring a fleeting moment of anxiety, but she greeted us with warmth and two bottles of cold water just in case we were thirsty. She navigated the traffic and dropped us off at our new apartment, where we sat on our suitcases for about an hour, waiting to meet our landlords.
When the door finally opened, any lingering nerves completely melted away. The landlord and his wife turned out to be an incredibly kind, welcoming couple. They didn't just hand over a set of keys and a stack of legal papers; they had actually gone out and bought us brand new sheets and towels out of their own pockets, just so we could sleep comfortably on our very first night without scrambling to find a home goods store while completely jet lagged. It was a small, profound act of hospitality that we won't soon forget.
That night, exhaustion took over and on the morning of May 15th, the sun came up, and we woke up in France.
Place du Capitol, Toulouse
It is difficult to describe the first twenty four hours. For months, Lelaine and I had prepared for this by watching countless YouTube walking tours of Toulouse. We knew the corners, the facades, and the streets through a tv screen. Walking out into the neighborhood that first morning felt like stepping directly into a movie we had memorized. We ran into familiar landmarks almost immediately, yet everything felt entirely unreal.
The internet can show you the architecture style, but it can’t prepare you for the sensory shift of a relocation like this. For the first ten days, we felt completely out of place. It wasn't just the language, it was the entire atmosphere. The air smells different here. The vegetation is distinct, the scents drifting from the open doors of local bakeries and apartments are unfamiliar, and the rhythm of the people on the sidewalk has its own unique tempo.
More than anything, there is the sheer scale of our new life. We moved from a quiet, familiar town of just 5,000 residents to a vibrant city of over half a million, centered in a metropolitan area of more than a million people. The energy of the crowds, the rumble of the transit system, and the sheer volume of life happening around us all at once is a massive, beautiful shock to the system.
We are still finding our footing, still learning how to navigate the grocery aisles, and still pinching ourselves when we look out the window. The transition is immense, and the culture shock is real, but the overwhelming truth of the matter overrides everything else: We are finally here. We are in France.
2 minutes walk from our place
