Montmorillon

Montmorillon, Medieval City "Cite de l'Ecrit"

The new town that I'm living in this year is called Montmorillon. Its in the Vienne department in the Poitou-Charentes region of France (here's a breakdown of what each of those is basically equivalent to in the USA: town=city, department=county, region=state). Its about a hour north of where I lived last year. Montmorillon is very small with a population around 7,000 people. The only way to access the town is by car or bus (there is a train, but its under construction until January). The bus ride takes a hour to get to Poitiers and there is only about 5 buses that leave town a day, so I'm basically stranded here. Montmorillon is known for its "Cite de l'Ecrit" (the city of books or the written city), which is located in the old medieval part of town. The Cite de l'Ecrit is basically just a whole lot of bookstores that sell really, really old books, documents, scrolls, etc. I think that there is probably some illegal black market trade going on in the 'caves' (wine cellars) and backdoor rooms. Probably selling holy grail maps/documents and old dead sea scrolls :P Which I guess is kind of cool. Otherwise the town is pretty dead most of the time. Its mainly filled with old retired people and brits (there are a lot of British people who live here. I have some of there kids in my classes).