Breizh Bistrot

Entering Breizh Bistrot, a crêperie in La Marsa, is like leaving Tunisia. Its beautiful wooden floor and its dark wooden furniture and decoration in different shades of brown make for an atmosphere that could be anywhere in Europe. And while that result is what many cafés and restaurants attempt in La Marsa, here it is actually achieved. It is not the only place around this posh neighbourhood where that is the case. Some luxury shops and cafés here also have that almost uncanny out of place feeling.

Breizh specializes in crêpes and galettes - types of pancakes - and it has some amazing choices on the menu. Its smoked salmon galette is exquisite and its caramel crêpe is simply heavenly. The atmosphere is subdued, with effective but silent waiters and the clientele is upper class. Apart from tables and chairs, the bistrot also has a few very pleasant comfy chairs and couches around low tables.

Apart from two foreign women there is no one, so I feel free to settle down in a group of couches an chairs around a large low table. Rihanna Gaga is very cheerful. I might be mistaken, but I have the feeling that she feels more comfortable now that we have returned to the old rythm of three days at daycare and four days at home - the rythm we also had when we lived in Scheveningen. The last year, we mostly had blocks of four or sometimes even five days at daycare, or - in the weeks that I wasn't spending part of my time in the Netherlands - one day daycare followed by one day at home. She clearly enjoys spending longer periods of time with us and she also is much less reluctant to see us go when we leave her at the daycare. She's always liked the daycare - describing it as 'wow' or as the place where she can watch 'babies' (a favourite activity of hers), sometimes even demanding to be taken to the daycare on weekend days when it's closed  - but she also has periods where despite the fact that she likes it there, she finds it hard to say goodbye to us. This has not been the case since I quit travelling up and down to the Netherlands.

And I really relish the fact that the Mondays are now 'our' day together again. The Monday is a very good day to spend with your child. Almost everybody works, so it is quiet. Wherever you go, you're almost always the only ones or almost the only ones And it extends your weekend by a day, which can never be a bad thing.

Rihanna Gaga brought her doll with her. A cheap affair that my girlfriend bought for her about a year ago on a whim, a rather simple but friendly looking baby doll. Once it made sounds if you pressed its tummy (if I remember correctly, it said 'papa, papa', 'mama, mama' or it laughed), but that ceased a long time ago. We took the box that made these sounds out when the batteries died and the baby's voice slowed down to an eerie, horror-like stuttering. The baby came with a blue onesie and a hat, but Rihanna Gaga likes undressing it, so it mostly spends its time stripped down naked - its feet, hands and face are made of plastic and its body was once made of white stuffed cotton, but after its head threatened to come off, my girlfriend took it to the tailor. That tailor is quite a character. He spends his days in a little, cell-like shop surrounded by clothes, heavy honey flavoured incense and cigarette smoke (so that when you collect your clothes from his shop, they will smell for months like a honey-sprinkled ashtray), engaged in what sound like nasty arguments with his customers whom he abuses freely. He's a small man with a hunched posture - like most of those who practise his profession. His hair is always gleaming with gel and combed backwards, and on his large, protruding nose he wears thick glasses with a heavy black rim. Rihanna Gaga is both fascinated and disgusted by him. She always wants to enter his shop, even though she knows he will attack her with his foul smelling attempts to kiss her. The tailer covered the white cotton with a thick grey cloth sown tightly - but not very neatly - around the white cotton. It might be my imagination, but it almost looks as if he cut the grey cloth in such a way that the baby now mimicks his own rather awkward posture.

Anyway, that baby is one of Rihanna Gaga's most treasured positions. She simply calls it baby - pronounced in a French way, like everybody says it around here: bébé - and carries it everywhere with her. The baby is always tired, scared, hungry or in need of a nappy change - in any case, it needs to be cared for, which Rihanna Gaga does with great sense of duty. She feeds it, wipes its bottom, speaks sternly to it when it is doing something it shouldn't, or she just picks it up and comforts it, kissing it or gazing into the distance with a kind of Mona Lisa smile that I imagine she copies from the women at her daycare when they care for the babies there. If that is really the case and she indeed mimicks what she sees at daycare, that means the babies there must be very content little creatures.

I order the set menu: a galette with jambon (slices of chicken meat) and a crêpe with salted butter and caramel. Both taste great and Rihanna Gaga eats almost half of them, while also drinking the orange juice that comes with the menu almost by herself.

While I enjoy the peace and quiet of the bistro, Rihanna Gaga disappears behind some tables. When she comes back, I smell that she needs changing. First she denies this when I ask her about it, but then she cheerfully gives in. Yes, she needs a clean nappy. We're trying to potty train her - something we postponed until I had more time on my hands - but so far, that's going slowly. Unfortunately so, because finding a place to change your child is almost impossible in Tunisia. Most of the time, like today, I end up changing her whil she lies in her stroller, a difficult operation that is uncomfortable for the both of us. After that, it's up to the ducks and the playground again.