Vivaldi or Tchaikovsky?

What happened before …

The next morning, at breakfast, we saw the man and his wife again. They were two of the eight guests (including us) who had spent the night at the ‘Manoir des Charmes’ in Ay. We were the last ones to arrive and the others were already seated around a large oval table. There was some light classical music playing in the background and our hosts were busy serving coffee, tea, hot chocolate and orange juice.

Manoir des Charmes - Ay
Our room and large terrace are on the left.

Suffering from a very bad cold which had been bothering me for the entire week of our vacation, I wasn’t in the mood to make conversation with the other guests. In fact, and to be honest, breakfast is the only aspect of staying at a B&B that I don’t like, especially when all the guests have to share the same table at the same time. In the morning I simply like to chat with my friend, discussing our plans for the day.

That morning, however, our late-night caller turned out to be in a talkative mood. Apparently the man had already made some attempts to start a conversation with the four other guests: a young Austrian couple and two Italian women. Getting little response from them, he turned to my friend and enquired about our evening in the cabin. We replied that we had had our supper there, on which he started to explain the details of his dinner in town. Everybody nodded in silent agreement as he went on and on and on and on … until his wife put her hand on his arm and whispered: “Eat your breakfast now, dear. On which the man fell silent and put a slice of buttered toast in his mouth.

I felt really miserable, coughing and sneezing and feeling slightly embarrassed about it.

As soon as the talkative man had swallowed his last bit of toast, he launched another conservation attempt. “Hum, nice music, isn’t it?” he said tilting his head and listening to the classical music. “Vivaldi, I think.” “Yes, definitely Vivaldi… the Four Seasons.” “Spring, I think.”

Although I know little or nothing about classical music, this certainly wasn’t Vivaldi.

Finally, the Austrian girl looked up from her scrambled eggs and volunteered: “No, I think it’s Tchaikovsky.” “Yes, now that you mention it, you’re right … Tchaikovsky. I should have known.”, our happy talker exclaimed. By then I had ran out of Kleenex, so I excused myself and left the table. Twenty minutes later my friend came up to the room too. He had left the others in the good care of our music connoisseur, who, encouraged by the Austrian girl’s input, had burst into an exposé on the life and work of Tchaikovsky.

Do you likeTchaikovsky?

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