Where people meet

We’ve been in Cognin for about two weeks now. The centre of the town is mainly made of building blocks, about 8 floors high for most of them. Ours is the tallest, with 15 floors. It means it is quite compact. Everything is less than 5 minutes walk away.
Yesterday afternoon I took Jean-Baptiste to his first training session with the local football team. It is across the road. There is a also a park. There were dozens of children playing around. The parents were sitting on benches or standing around. Some were chatting, others were reading. It downed on me that when people live in building blocks, you have to get out when the weather is fine. So people seem to spend a significant amount of time hanging around and chatting.
It was different in Pabu. Many people had gardens around their houses. There were no building blocks. That meant that houses were more spread out, but also that many people didn’t feel the need to go out of their properties. It actually could be easier to make contacts here because many people want to get out of their small flats. Time will tell.