Across the mountains lies Spain.  Across the fields, that is France.  Here, in this land of gently rolling hills, this is l'Occitan. 

To picture it - the rolling hills, lined with trees, the ancient church-spires poking out of the hollows, like something from a medieval painting.  It is green, very green, almost year-round - it is never very cold, even in winter, and there are pines and fruit-vales full of evergreens.  They grow oranges, wheat, lentils, chestnuts; they raise sheep and pigs and flocks of ducks and geese; there are oyster beds in the south where it touches the Mediterranean; I do not know whether snails are farmed or how they are caught, but these, too, are part of the local cuisine. 

It is quiet and peaceful, usually.  The winter is fought off with bonfires, the spring is brought in with dancing and garlands of flowers, in every season there is singing, music - this was the land of the troubadours, and their songs have been passed down.  Everyone sings, or plays an instrument, or often both; every gathering ends in song.

Everyone can speak French - in my parent's youth the langue d'oc was outlawed, no longer taught in schools, and so only a sort of nationalist pride keeps it alive at the home hearth.  Still, that pride is something we all bear to a degree, and so it can be heard in all the streets; the French has not killed our language, just as hundreds of years of being a departement rather than a nation has not killed our country.