Flags

This is one of the giant signs welcoming everyone to Montpellier. Well, everyone apparently except for Spain, who got shafted. With my not-great knowledge of flags, I can distinguish France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and, with help, Austria and Belgium. Nor is there a mention of their closest neighbor, Andorra.


I had a catlike curiosity to find the national flag of Andorra, and I am somewhat underwhelmed. Several program participants took a weekend trip there to go camping, and they reported it to be getting quite cold. According to my French professor, in a month or so there's going to be snow four feet high, and it's a good place to ski.

During this fun-filled search, I learned that the study of flags is vexillology. That should come in handy someday.

Snakes! On a flag! These were sailed by French merchant ships dating back to 1766, way before Samuel L. Jackson. The site said that the snake Hiss!


This is probably my favorite, and that's saying something since there were some pretty trippy flags out there. I said to myself, "this seems like a character from a Beatles movie", and as luck would have it, it's for the Isle of Man, which is indeed a British dependancy.


Their national food is the tasty-sounding 'Spuds and Herrin', and while the language of Manx is dying out, their motto is "Traa Dy Liooar", which means, "time enough". Their leader is the Lord of Mann, which would be a pretty solid ego booster. Although they aren't technically part of Great Britain, they take advantage of the military (even though I really doubt anyone's trying to get a stronghold on Man), but they did have a falling-out with Parliament in the 1970's. Apparently, they wanted to hold onto the honoured tradition of birching delinquent youth with a cane.

The Bee Gees were born on this island! Maybe that's reason enough to include this on my list of possible future vacation spots.