Greetings from the retired one (February)
Well the hollidays are over and the kids are all back at school. For some people that means they won’t be back till dinner but for us it means we won’t see them for months. But with a stiff upper lip, we are determined to suck it up and deal with it.
We are going to travel.
Rise and shine….
But first,we gotta get our act togeather. We have noticed that being at a different latitude means that it is darker later in the morning than we are accustomed to. That, coupled with the fact that I have always abhored getting up when it is still dark has meant that we are never up before 9:30 AM
I know this because our village does not leave the street lights on all night. They go out at 10:30 PM and don’t come back on until 7AM and then go out again at 8:30AM when it finally gets light enough.
So, if we wake up and the streetlights are on we know that a) it is too darn early to get up and b) it is not 8:30 yet.
We know it is 9AM if the lights are out and we can hear the schoolteacher in the schoolyard next door ring one of those old fashioned handheld bells, calling the kids in for their classes. After that, we have to rely on the town churh bell ringing every half hour. We soon realise that if we don’t hurry up and get up to have breakfast, we will be late for lunch.
I have vowed that come the next New Years, my resolution will be to discipline myself to get my act together and get up earlier.
Life here continues to facinate….
We always get a kick out of discovering new facets of life in Europe. One that we discovered was when we recently took a friend out for lunch. After the meal was over I still had a fair amount left on my plate (a great chicken dish) so I asked the waiter to have it wrapped so that I could take it home. Our friend started to laugh saying “oh, you are such a kidder, Michel” When she realised that I was serious, she informed me that in France, it is considered quite gauche to take any left overs from your meal with you.except in rare cases, for your dog. (Oh that’s why it’s called a doggie bag!!!)
Well, excuuuuuuuuuuse me! That might be the case at the hoity toyty places where you eat out at but us poor unemployed would rather eat lunch left overs than to dumspter dive for dinner any time.
Speaking of food, an interesting thing about it is how you get it. When you grocery shopping, all the shopping carts are chained togeather outside in the parking lot. To get yours, you have to stick a one euro coin or token in a locking mechanism to release your cart. Then to get your coin back you have to return the cart to its proper place and relock it, releasing your coin. It’s a clever way to insure compliance but somehow it’s so un-American.
The kicker is that when you get through the check out line you are left standing there looking quite stupid because you have a $100. of groceries on the conveyer belt and no place to put them. You see, none of the stores have bags (grocery or other).
France, (and all of Europe really, are full of ‘fruits-and-nuts-Greenpeace-Kyoto treaty-loving-tree-huggers’) You are supposed to bring your own bags with you into the stores. They sell multiple use canvas bags for this use and will often replace them for free to encourage you to be “green”. We still only remember to bring ours in half the time, so one of us (guess who) has to quickly go back to the car while the other is in the chekout line.
After two months here, I still can’t get over the number of stone buildings that look like they could be great homes or what ever but are deteriorating into ruins. The problem is that when the roof collapses on these old derelict buildings, you would think that the stone walls would continue to stand for almost ever but they don’t. The thick stone walls are made of a solid outer and inner layer. But between them lies a fill of smaller stone, mud and whatever “filler”, like icing between two layers of a cake. When the rain gets into this layer from the top after the roof opening has exposed it, it washes away and expands and contracts untill it collapses. I would love to see them all salvaged because they are soooooooo beautiful, but there are thousands of them..
By the way, that’s why if they gave you one of the hundreeds of private chateaux’s in France you would loose it. The upkeep alone would be astronomical. Still, they look great in the pictures and even better in person.
The price of gas is outrageous…
Sometimes I wish Liberals had a clue as to what they were talking about and were right when they say that the reason we went to war in Iraq was for the darn oil. What this country needs is a regime change to bring about needed reforms in their gas taxation policies.
Some of the new obsevations we have had was to notice that the traffic signal lights are not quite at the corner of the intersections. This means that they are not on the oposite side of the street when you come to a stop. Also, the pedestrian crosswalks are prior to the streetlights. What this means in practice is that if you come to an intersection as you do at home, you now find that a) you have driven through the crosswalk and that b) the signal lights are now above and behind your line of sight (over the roof of the car), making it ackward to know when the light is green and you can go.
I found this out in Paris, when I was pulled over by an angry ‘Gendarme’. After eh…., inadvertedly identifying myself with what within the family is fondly refered to as ‘Masterbadge” the officer pointed out that as colleagues of sorts, surely we could reason togeather.
We did.
Probably due in part to my not pointing out the shortcomings of their system, I was on my way.
Having traveled an average of 1000 km per week since we have arrived Dec 1, we are starting to get a real good feel for driving conditions. One of the things we have noticed is that frequently you will find a large, clear sign indicating the road you wish to take. Then, a mere hundred yards up the road will be a fork in the road of equal size and importance, clearly dividing the road in two very distinct directions without as much as a hint as to which one goes where. Even after you have made your choice, there will be no signage of any kind as to what road you are now actually on.
As you have already surmised, it doesn’t matter which one you choose because you eventually determine you are going the wrong way and you get to pay the toll going back to where you should have gone in the first place.
Most major highways in Italy are toll roads and if you decide to bypass them to “see the country and it’s people” you will. …..every town and hamlet in the country. Trying to find your way through every city in the country without maps (you can’t have detailed street maps of every city in the country with you) in a language you don’t speak or read (except France) is quite daunting. So in practice, it’s back to the toll roads.
Who among us has not noticed at one time or another the highway crosses on the roadside marking the place where fatal traffic accidents have occurred. Well here it is no different except that in some places the state has taken matters in it’s own hands. They place a completely black almost lifesize silhouette outline of a person (kind of like a target without the bullseye) on the roadside where the accident occurred. In the center of the chest, they paint a red heart with a crack in it (like a broken heart). Sometimes there are several togeather. They sure make a point.
Did I mention that the price of gas is outrageous?
And the truth shall make you free….
Part of making part of our life here is trying to truly understand the French mindset. We have traveled around the country and seen many WWI and WWII memorials “to the heros who fell to free the country”. What is unmistakable though, is that these town memorials are almost always shared. That is the names of the fallen from both wars are inscribed on the same memorial. The problem is that there is a long list of names under the WWI side of the monument (when the French actually fought) and very few names on the WWII side (when the French gave up and sat out the war being occupied by the Germans) Few French died in actual combat.
Particularly gauling (no pun intended) was seeing a monument at the D-Day beaches in Normandy next to the Canadian landing area on the beach stating that:
At this place, our glorious president Charles DeGaule
began the liberation of France and Europe
Yea, right. This while leading the fight from London where he hid out the entire war until it was safe for him to return.. I expect that the Brits, Americans and Canadians on the beaches were just his ‘back up’ in case they were needed…..
We visited the war museum in Paris where we heard an explanation that the ‘Maginot’ line had worked!
www.maginot-line.com/ang/c_forum_base.htm
The explanation was that since the Germans never breached it, therefore, it worked. This, completely ignoring the fact that the Germans simply went around it or flew over it, ignoring it altogether.
When we talk to older people here in our village about the war they have great stories to tell, but to listen to them, everybody was part of the resistance. There is a marker in front of a house near the beach here that indicates that it had been used as a refuge for resistance fighters during the war. One sometimes wonders just who they were resisting.
It seems to us that the French are simply delusional regarding their participation in the war and will continue to be in order to keep any sense of national pride.
Next stop, Italy…..
As I write this we have just returned from being on the road for over 2 weeks for a side trip to Italy. I think I had previously mentioned that one of the great things about having a home here was being within 1 days drive of 8 countries. I was wrong. Closer inspection of driving distances revealed that we could actually reach 13. Within 2 days drive we could reach 23. This in the time we could drive to Oregon from home.
This time though we drove through ‘Tours’, a city that had suffered a lot of bombing damage,‘Bourges’
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.bourgestourisme.com/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dbourges%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
in the Loire valley with yet another spectacular cathedral, ‘Luynes’ an entire village built in the Limestone cliffs,
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.luynes.fr/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dluynes%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
‘Lyon’ and ‘Vichy’ where the French government was run for the better part of the war when the armistace was signed.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWvichy.htm
When we reached the south of France we drove through the French / Italian Alps down the Mediteranean to Pisa (tower) and to ‘Soriano nel Cimino’,
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://www.prolocosoriano.it/&prev=/search%3Fq%3DSoriano%2Bnel%2BCimino%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
a midieval village an hour out of Rome where we based ourselves for a week in a 17th century ‘Palazzo’ (palace). Boy, was it ever. Our bedroom had a coffered ceiling and a Jacuzi in our bathroom. The lobby had a fresco painted on the ceiling and our living room had a huge fireplace, stone floors, ornately painted walls and a 14 foot ceiling with a spectacular eye level view of a 700 year old castle on the opposing hilltop.
Bitching!
We spent the week visiting Rome (The Colloseum, Pantheon, Trivoly fountain, Spanish steps, ect) and the entire area before heading back home (!) (Our return trip consisted of driving to Siena in Tuscany,
http://www.knowital.com/Towns/sienandsan/html/siena_images_thumbmenu.html
‘Lubriano’ a tiny villvage of 30 families buit on a mountain peek, accessibly only by a pedestrian walkway,
http://www.lagodibolsena.org/images/album/altri_paesi/lubriano/lubriano_cat.html
the Italian and French Riviera, by way of Monte Carlo (Monaco), Nice, Cannes and St Tropez on the ‘Cotes d’Azur’. I wore my sunglasses the whole time so I could fit in with the beautiful people…..
Outside of ‘Nimes’ in Provence, we saw ‘Le pont du Gard’, the best preserved 3 level Roman aqueduct in existance today.
http://www.avignon-et-provence.com/pays/30-uzege/pont-gard/gb/
In ‘Millau’ we drove over the current record holder for the world’s tallest bridge (it was just opened a month ago).
http://www.viaducdemillaueiffage.com/
Well, on our last travel day on our way home we stopped by ‘Oradour-sur-Glane’ While hardly a ‘fun’ visit it was as educational as my visit to ‘Dachau’, the German extermination camp. The story is horrific but simple. June 10, 1940 the Nazi’s came into this little French town to retaliate for German losses. They gathered 642 people (192 kids) put the women and kids in the church, the men in barns and set the entire town on fire killing them all.
Every house and business was burned.
To this day, burned out baby carriages, pots and pans and all remain just where they layed after the attack. The entire town is preserved as a memorial and you walk the empty streets from house to house. The new ‘town’ was rebuilt nearby.
http://www.softadventure.net/oradour.htm
Enough.
A bientot!
Michael & Janice
Well the hollidays are over and the kids are all back at school. For some people that means they won’t be back till dinner but for us it means we won’t see them for months. But with a stiff upper lip, we are determined to suck it up and deal with it.
We are going to travel.
Rise and shine….
But first,we gotta get our act togeather. We have noticed that being at a different latitude means that it is darker later in the morning than we are accustomed to. That, coupled with the fact that I have always abhored getting up when it is still dark has meant that we are never up before 9:30 AM
I know this because our village does not leave the street lights on all night. They go out at 10:30 PM and don’t come back on until 7AM and then go out again at 8:30AM when it finally gets light enough.
So, if we wake up and the streetlights are on we know that a) it is too darn early to get up and b) it is not 8:30 yet.
We know it is 9AM if the lights are out and we can hear the schoolteacher in the schoolyard next door ring one of those old fashioned handheld bells, calling the kids in for their classes. After that, we have to rely on the town churh bell ringing every half hour. We soon realise that if we don’t hurry up and get up to have breakfast, we will be late for lunch.
I have vowed that come the next New Years, my resolution will be to discipline myself to get my act together and get up earlier.
Life here continues to facinate….
We always get a kick out of discovering new facets of life in Europe. One that we discovered was when we recently took a friend out for lunch. After the meal was over I still had a fair amount left on my plate (a great chicken dish) so I asked the waiter to have it wrapped so that I could take it home. Our friend started to laugh saying “oh, you are such a kidder, Michel” When she realised that I was serious, she informed me that in France, it is considered quite gauche to take any left overs from your meal with you.except in rare cases, for your dog. (Oh that’s why it’s called a doggie bag!!!)
Well, excuuuuuuuuuuse me! That might be the case at the hoity toyty places where you eat out at but us poor unemployed would rather eat lunch left overs than to dumspter dive for dinner any time.
Speaking of food, an interesting thing about it is how you get it. When you grocery shopping, all the shopping carts are chained togeather outside in the parking lot. To get yours, you have to stick a one euro coin or token in a locking mechanism to release your cart. Then to get your coin back you have to return the cart to its proper place and relock it, releasing your coin. It’s a clever way to insure compliance but somehow it’s so un-American.
The kicker is that when you get through the check out line you are left standing there looking quite stupid because you have a $100. of groceries on the conveyer belt and no place to put them. You see, none of the stores have bags (grocery or other).
France, (and all of Europe really, are full of ‘fruits-and-nuts-Greenpeace-Kyoto treaty-loving-tree-huggers’) You are supposed to bring your own bags with you into the stores. They sell multiple use canvas bags for this use and will often replace them for free to encourage you to be “green”. We still only remember to bring ours in half the time, so one of us (guess who) has to quickly go back to the car while the other is in the chekout line.
After two months here, I still can’t get over the number of stone buildings that look like they could be great homes or what ever but are deteriorating into ruins. The problem is that when the roof collapses on these old derelict buildings, you would think that the stone walls would continue to stand for almost ever but they don’t. The thick stone walls are made of a solid outer and inner layer. But between them lies a fill of smaller stone, mud and whatever “filler”, like icing between two layers of a cake. When the rain gets into this layer from the top after the roof opening has exposed it, it washes away and expands and contracts untill it collapses. I would love to see them all salvaged because they are soooooooo beautiful, but there are thousands of them..
By the way, that’s why if they gave you one of the hundreeds of private chateaux’s in France you would loose it. The upkeep alone would be astronomical. Still, they look great in the pictures and even better in person.
The price of gas is outrageous…
Sometimes I wish Liberals had a clue as to what they were talking about and were right when they say that the reason we went to war in Iraq was for the darn oil. What this country needs is a regime change to bring about needed reforms in their gas taxation policies.
Some of the new obsevations we have had was to notice that the traffic signal lights are not quite at the corner of the intersections. This means that they are not on the oposite side of the street when you come to a stop. Also, the pedestrian crosswalks are prior to the streetlights. What this means in practice is that if you come to an intersection as you do at home, you now find that a) you have driven through the crosswalk and that b) the signal lights are now above and behind your line of sight (over the roof of the car), making it ackward to know when the light is green and you can go.
I found this out in Paris, when I was pulled over by an angry ‘Gendarme’. After eh…., inadvertedly identifying myself with what within the family is fondly refered to as ‘Masterbadge” the officer pointed out that as colleagues of sorts, surely we could reason togeather.
We did.
Probably due in part to my not pointing out the shortcomings of their system, I was on my way.
Having traveled an average of 1000 km per week since we have arrived Dec 1, we are starting to get a real good feel for driving conditions. One of the things we have noticed is that frequently you will find a large, clear sign indicating the road you wish to take. Then, a mere hundred yards up the road will be a fork in the road of equal size and importance, clearly dividing the road in two very distinct directions without as much as a hint as to which one goes where. Even after you have made your choice, there will be no signage of any kind as to what road you are now actually on.
As you have already surmised, it doesn’t matter which one you choose because you eventually determine you are going the wrong way and you get to pay the toll going back to where you should have gone in the first place.
Most major highways in Italy are toll roads and if you decide to bypass them to “see the country and it’s people” you will. …..every town and hamlet in the country. Trying to find your way through every city in the country without maps (you can’t have detailed street maps of every city in the country with you) in a language you don’t speak or read (except France) is quite daunting. So in practice, it’s back to the toll roads.
Who among us has not noticed at one time or another the highway crosses on the roadside marking the place where fatal traffic accidents have occurred. Well here it is no different except that in some places the state has taken matters in it’s own hands. They place a completely black almost lifesize silhouette outline of a person (kind of like a target without the bullseye) on the roadside where the accident occurred. In the center of the chest, they paint a red heart with a crack in it (like a broken heart). Sometimes there are several togeather. They sure make a point.
Did I mention that the price of gas is outrageous?
And the truth shall make you free….
Part of making part of our life here is trying to truly understand the French mindset. We have traveled around the country and seen many WWI and WWII memorials “to the heros who fell to free the country”. What is unmistakable though, is that these town memorials are almost always shared. That is the names of the fallen from both wars are inscribed on the same memorial. The problem is that there is a long list of names under the WWI side of the monument (when the French actually fought) and very few names on the WWII side (when the French gave up and sat out the war being occupied by the Germans) Few French died in actual combat.
Particularly gauling (no pun intended) was seeing a monument at the D-Day beaches in Normandy next to the Canadian landing area on the beach stating that:
At this place, our glorious president Charles DeGaule
began the liberation of France and Europe
Yea, right. This while leading the fight from London where he hid out the entire war until it was safe for him to return.. I expect that the Brits, Americans and Canadians on the beaches were just his ‘back up’ in case they were needed…..
We visited the war museum in Paris where we heard an explanation that the ‘Maginot’ line had worked!
www.maginot-line.com/ang/c_forum_base.htm
The explanation was that since the Germans never breached it, therefore, it worked. This, completely ignoring the fact that the Germans simply went around it or flew over it, ignoring it altogether.
When we talk to older people here in our village about the war they have great stories to tell, but to listen to them, everybody was part of the resistance. There is a marker in front of a house near the beach here that indicates that it had been used as a refuge for resistance fighters during the war. One sometimes wonders just who they were resisting.
It seems to us that the French are simply delusional regarding their participation in the war and will continue to be in order to keep any sense of national pride.
Next stop, Italy…..
As I write this we have just returned from being on the road for over 2 weeks for a side trip to Italy. I think I had previously mentioned that one of the great things about having a home here was being within 1 days drive of 8 countries. I was wrong. Closer inspection of driving distances revealed that we could actually reach 13. Within 2 days drive we could reach 23. This in the time we could drive to Oregon from home.
This time though we drove through ‘Tours’, a city that had suffered a lot of bombing damage,‘Bourges’
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.bourgestourisme.com/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dbourges%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
in the Loire valley with yet another spectacular cathedral, ‘Luynes’ an entire village built in the Limestone cliffs,
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.luynes.fr/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dluynes%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
‘Lyon’ and ‘Vichy’ where the French government was run for the better part of the war when the armistace was signed.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWvichy.htm
When we reached the south of France we drove through the French / Italian Alps down the Mediteranean to Pisa (tower) and to ‘Soriano nel Cimino’,
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://www.prolocosoriano.it/&prev=/search%3Fq%3DSoriano%2Bnel%2BCimino%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
a midieval village an hour out of Rome where we based ourselves for a week in a 17th century ‘Palazzo’ (palace). Boy, was it ever. Our bedroom had a coffered ceiling and a Jacuzi in our bathroom. The lobby had a fresco painted on the ceiling and our living room had a huge fireplace, stone floors, ornately painted walls and a 14 foot ceiling with a spectacular eye level view of a 700 year old castle on the opposing hilltop.
Bitching!
We spent the week visiting Rome (The Colloseum, Pantheon, Trivoly fountain, Spanish steps, ect) and the entire area before heading back home (!) (Our return trip consisted of driving to Siena in Tuscany,
http://www.knowital.com/Towns/sienandsan/html/siena_images_thumbmenu.html
‘Lubriano’ a tiny villvage of 30 families buit on a mountain peek, accessibly only by a pedestrian walkway,
http://www.lagodibolsena.org/images/album/altri_paesi/lubriano/lubriano_cat.html
the Italian and French Riviera, by way of Monte Carlo (Monaco), Nice, Cannes and St Tropez on the ‘Cotes d’Azur’. I wore my sunglasses the whole time so I could fit in with the beautiful people…..
Outside of ‘Nimes’ in Provence, we saw ‘Le pont du Gard’, the best preserved 3 level Roman aqueduct in existance today.
http://www.avignon-et-provence.com/pays/30-uzege/pont-gard/gb/
In ‘Millau’ we drove over the current record holder for the world’s tallest bridge (it was just opened a month ago).
http://www.viaducdemillaueiffage.com/
Well, on our last travel day on our way home we stopped by ‘Oradour-sur-Glane’ While hardly a ‘fun’ visit it was as educational as my visit to ‘Dachau’, the German extermination camp. The story is horrific but simple. June 10, 1940 the Nazi’s came into this little French town to retaliate for German losses. They gathered 642 people (192 kids) put the women and kids in the church, the men in barns and set the entire town on fire killing them all.
Every house and business was burned.
To this day, burned out baby carriages, pots and pans and all remain just where they layed after the attack. The entire town is preserved as a memorial and you walk the empty streets from house to house. The new ‘town’ was rebuilt nearby.
http://www.softadventure.net/oradour.htm
Enough.
A bientot!
Michael & Janice
