The day lights up like floodlight. As my eyes adjust and the pupils widen, the colors turn from overexposed to normal I get up and am already brewing tea. Yesterday my friend F sent some energy across the ether, her battery is almost always full to a point where I think that one day there will be a miniature stature of her in the Volta museum that looks like the Pantheon in Como. Some days are particularly strong. It's also the end of April, spring is now dancing through the streets and people are ready for newness. Nowhere more so than at the newly opened bakery Flør. They suddenly opened in the upper city of Le Puy, just at the foot of the hill leading up to the cathedral. The owner K, once went on a pilgrimage across half of europe with out any religious need and never turned back. Now she is the proud co-owner of the best bakery in town and we just smile and joke whenever A and I go over there. Which is to say, almost every day, because I've seriously never eaten a brioche au chocolat like this one. I like sitting near the door, because that way I can oversee the whole room and I'm also the first person people greet when they come in. Most of them are smiling, most of them look interesting. I could spend hours here, customer service is dynamic, fast and streamlined and full of spontaneous reactions. We order coffee and the brioche. K puts the viennoiseries on the table, saying: "You can't touch them before the coffee arrives" - "ok", I put a napkin up like a folding screen to resist the temptation. A french lady comes in, guided by her son, red padded jacket and a cool hat. "Je veux un croissant!", 'Il n y a pas des croissants, but look at this brioche!'. "It is delicious!", I try to convince the boy, normally I'm like him, nothing beats croissants but here it's different. K comes back from the oven in the backroom, they believe me and there they go with their brioche, although the boy remains sceptical. An older guy with a book and a pink pullover sits down on one of the chairs on the very narrow pavement terrace outside. He looks content, pondering about the church uphill, skimming through the pages. At some point he comes in and asks for a coffee with a foreign accent. He jokes that his wife went on to look at the city and he prefers to sit down and read, K prepares his drink in a vintage cup with a blue and white glazing showing some country scene. There are not many clients yet so K combs her short grey hair with her right hand and walks around swinging her arms from one side to the other and then fetches a new cup she just bought. "I love going to garage sales to find stuff like this, 50 cents can you imagine?" It's a nice cup but a bit old fashioned. "It's english, only they made cups in this shape" - "It's beautiful but of course no Limoges porcelain", A quips - "That's a very french thing to say though", "Ah the French are like that", I tell K in german and want to put a 😉after my sentence, I think she enjoys hearing her mother tongue from time to time. A continues "You know this joke about people from Limoges who will go to the restaurant and immediately start turning all the tableware upside down to know from which manufacture it comes? No matter what's on the dish." - "We missed a lot of good soup when we lived there ourselves" I add. K's husband G comes to say hello. He is the baker and his diligence doesn't just find it's way to the taste of his bread, you can feel it. He's also very relaxed. "Can I help you pull the next batch out?", K asks, "It's a bit complicated", he says, "not like the carrot cake?" - "Not like the carrot cake that I accidentally forgot to put in today", he says in a joyous tone. She massages his temples a bit and they hug. What a cute couple and here they are, just two months into a common dream project. G returns to his furnaces, K turns the chill jazz music up a bit, A and I rave about the brioche, I think the secret is the homemade yeast is their secret. An Asian man in his thirties comes in, accompanied by a cute dog in a red jacket. He was very polite and measured but you know like in the movies, when very powerful mages enter the scene, the sound becomes all slow and heavy, closeups on supernatural vibrations in the air and faces solidify into amazed or shocked expressions like a careful rabbit's ear? He ordered something in such a low voice that K couldn't understand. He smiled and pointed and nodded politely every time K fetched the right thing. The dog didn't move one iota. He said something nice, walked over to the bread to chose and waited arms folded in front of his stomach for the moment to pay. The dog didn't make a sound. The man leaves, nodding in our direction and slowly walks out as if he had measured the length of each step beforehand. "He must be japanese", I wanted to think but was interrupted by a loud booming voice of a small, round man in his 70s, evidently a friend of the baker couple. "Ca va? Ou est G, dans le four?", they talk a bit about his wife, who seems to go through a rough patch, but he doesn't stop joking and goes to see his friend in the backroom. In the meantime another lady comes in, I call her the schoolmaster. Tightly dressed, upright, piercing eyes. She smiles and I greet her courteously but feel that she's running on a precise schedule. While she's ordering exact quantities of various breads, 4 or 5 school girls follow her like ducklings in closed formation. When K and the woman engage in friendly banter as well, I start realizing that K must be one of those people too, you know, extroverts who make everyone around them feel better. That particular group of fellow livers has been my main interest over the last couple of years, they are a driving force of civilization that I didn't consider in the past. I knew mathematical geniuses and artists who have been touched by the cosmic powers that allowed them to glimpse to the very heart and essence of what holds together the world, precise craftsmen and those fighting for a vision only they posses, with the righteous power of conviction. But where do all of these take their energy from? It might just be an equally smart and understanding person who makes sure they don't just solve, dream, craft or fight alone. "See you soon", G says as the fun guy returns "yeah that depends on how fast the baker's wife is". The schoolmaster, still selecting milligrams of olive bread or rye bread, turns around: "She's taking a nap after us, come back another time". A and I have finished our second breakfast and are ready for our daily walk. It's getting a bit hot for my taste and things are starting to smell like summer. Maybe it's my allergies or I just don't like the odor of heated greenery but this is where I prefer to sit in a coffee shop all day long instead of walking around in circles. A last customer comes in, a woman with a backpack and bright blue eyes. She's waiting for the school excursion to move to a new subject and when it's her turn, her whole face lights up in joy. You can see the anticipation in her eyes, her hands start moving quickly, memory and anticipation swirling in an upwards current that will carry her through the day like a bird. I don't like to go just anywhere for no reason, but I love spending a couple of minutes in places like this. Who needs the Eiffel Tower, full of stressed, directionless people who don't appreciate each other's company, when in the same country, in a random shop somewhere, you can be in time to live the bets moments of your days with a bunch of strangers.