It was a great journey, even though or maybe because I didn't really choose this destination. I arrived in Rennes I think on May 7 rather late in the evening. On the next day, Tom Techner and I made a trip to Saint Malo. It was low tide and the landscape did't really really look very nice, but the photos turned out quite ok.

After LGM I moved to Morlaix and made two hikes, both of them were part of the Sentier des douaniers. The first one was in Ploumanach and the second one on the Kercoz peninsula. On May 16 in the afternoon I began to sneeze and my nose began to run really terribly. I think I had fever when I was sitting in the plane back to Vienna, although I didn't feel sick during the day, but on the days after my return I did. I had no throat ache though. The plane back to Vienna was delayed by almost 3 hours because of a storm in Schwechat.

Britanny is definitely a higly recommended destination for photographers and nature lovers. I am absolutely satisfied with the photos and I am so happy that I saw the Atlantic again after such a long time! However, if you don't have a driver's licence, you might get problems. In Morlaix, it is necessary to order taxis two days in advance. There is public transportation, but it is not optimal. There are few trains and few buses in France in general I think. If you read in some hiking books that the Maison entre deux rochiers is accessible via public transportation, that's a lie. But I chose the hikes that are accessible via public transportation, and I think there are enough of them for two weeks or so. They might not be the most interesting or important ones though. For instance in the case of Ploumanach, the problem is that the bus that goes to Ploumanach from Lannion leaves rather late and the one that goes back leaves too early. There is enough time for the hike, some normal shots and maybe two long exposures, but not more, no coffe or lunch break. There are very many hikers who walk along the Sentier des douaniers, especially in Ploumanach, and it's indeed a really great and easy hiking trail. Except for Ploumanach, most tourists and hotel guests are French though. The number of tourists is approximately one third of the number of tourists in Vienna and Austria, so I realized that we have really hard core mass tourism here.

In general I have the impression that... there is not much freedom in France these days. Everything seems to be extremely regulated. Name tags are obligatory on your luggage in the trains and there are lots of security people with big dogs especially in the train stations. Obviously people are supposed to be intimidated. If you buy a train ticket from a ticket selling machine, you have to enter your name, your birth date and your phone number. I mean e.g. public transportation is more functional than in Germany, the trains are extremely punctual and reliable, but there are too few of them and I think state funded services, probably also health services and education, not only things like public transportation, are in general reduced to a minimum. I also saw and smelled several heavily drunk men, usually they are young and native white French people. I think the Rasseblement National is not yet officially in the gouvernment, but in reality they are kind of "driving" the "liberal" gouvernment, Macron & co have no other choice than do what they say. The liberals obviously want to prevent that the RN grows even more, but it looks like their plan is failing. I don't like Macron's recent statements about the war, but in France many things seem to work better than elsewhere.

I also witnessed a very interesting scene. On May 17 I was sitting in the train from Rennes to Aeroport CDG. I had to buy the train ticket more than 2 weeks before the ride and I was happy that I got one of the last cheaper second class tickets. Seat reservation is obligatory and most of the time the French seem to be okay with that. I was sitting on a seat next to the corridor, two other women were sitting on the seats opposite of mine. The seat next to me was empty for some time. On the other side of the corridor there were three black women. A man around 40 or so entered the train somewhere before Paris I think and asked me to stand up so he could sit down on the empty seat next to me. Approximately half an hour later another man entered the car, and as it turned out, he was the actual owner of the seat next to me, because he signalized his confusion about the fact that his seat was already accupied. Nevertheless he sat down next to the black women, although the first man was willing to stand up.

I will not write much about LGM here because you can read a report about it in Linux Magazin soon. But I want to mention that there were siginficantly fewer participants than before Covid and that there were no dicussions about "taking down Adobe".

I hope LGM will be in Rennes again eventually. I would like to explore this region more. I was planning to make the hike in Huelgoat, which is easily accessible via public transportation, but there was no time. I also wanted to visit the Impressionist exhibition in the Musée d'Orsay, but with those few trains there is no chance for a spontaneous rainy weather trip.

Actually, I just realized that we also walked a third part of the Sentier des douaniers in Saint Malo.