Festival de Petanque

Yesterday we rushed into the festival of petanque - some kind of boule trophy. You know, those small silver heavy balls you can buy in the DIY shop. Hum, not really. Those boules are real expensive. Did you know that there are even competition boules? And a international league? The rules are easy: a team consist of 3 players with 2 identically coded boules each. The Pointer attemps to position his boules as close as possible to the coche (piglet). The counterpart falls upon the shooter who aims to shoot opposing boules. Well, sounds like a match of chess doesn`t it?

We watched the finals late at night and actually it was pretty cool. They had closed the complete Rhein bank and created a huge area of competition fields - like a beach ball area with gravel instead of sand. People hung around everywhere and there were heaps of french guys. It had a flair of late summer evenings somewhere in rural France. Much better than chess....