Mike: Yeah, uh, I've been back to Europe on a couple of occasions. The first time, I guess I went back to Europe was in 1989, 1990, when I went to visit my brother who was studying in France in Paris, studying business at one of the business schools there. And during the trip, I'd, we'd rented a car, so we were driving around the country and one of the best memories I had was when we drove into Leon, in the center of France, and the people were really friendly, really fantastic and we just met some people in a bar who then invited us out to their cottage, in the 

country, the following day for a pig roast.

 

Todd: A pig roast!

 

Mike: Yes!

 

Todd: What is a pig roast? You put a pig on a stick?

 

Mike: Yeah, well, that's exactly, we had no, we thought it was just a barbeque but we drove through this tiny road into the middle of the forest it seemed, and, there was this, we came to a cottage, a small wooden, very old-looking cottage, and next to it there were roasting a gigantic pig on a big spit over an open fire, (Wow!) and there was one, one of the people that we met was there turning the spit so that the pig was being, obviously was being well-cooked, and he'd been there for several hours already doing this by the time we arrived about 1:00 in the afternoon, and it was interesting. It was amazing. They told us the history of this little cottage that belonged to one of the people. It was several hundred years old, and apparently, it used to be a hide-out for French pirates.

 

Todd: No way!

 

Mike: Yeah! Yeah, and it looked like a wooden shack. It didn't really look like something, which would be perfect as a hide-out because no one would suspect it. But it was fascinating. They even had pictures on the walls of two of the pirates that I guess visited or had visited been there during that time, and so, a lot of, just it's incredible, the history, and the culture that you'll find in that small little shack in the woods, in the middle of Leon.

 

Todd: That is cool!

 

Mike: Yeah, that is neat.

 

Todd: That is really cool! Nice, so um, what happened? You had lunch and then you.

 

Mike: We had the pig roast, and obviously some wine and just had a great time. Got to meet all kinds of really new and interesting people and talk about the history of the place, and the actual, the region, the Loire valley, which is just famous for castles and for wine, very historic area in France.

 

Todd: Mm, that sounds nice!