Chateau Bienassis
Built in the late 1400’s, this little gem is about an hour from our house. It remained within the family of the original owners until 2005 where the last descendants voluntarily deeded it to the state. With period furnishings and loads of interesting history, it was a great place to visit.
So, what’s new in France?
It is always a bit of a shock to arrive after being up for 36 hours on the clock from the time we got up in Seattle to the time we open our front door here. This includes flight time, delays, shuttles to and from airports, layovers between flights, the drive from Paris to home and the 9 hour time change. It was very heartwarming to arrive at our front door only to see the lights on, the hot water tank warm, the fridge turned on and a few necessities in it and----get this---- a roaring fire in the fireplace! WOW, what a welcome from our friends and neighbors Malcolm and Rebecca. We are sure treated better than we deserve.
With the US dollar now in free fall on the world market the cost of living here has got our undivided attention. We have seen these fluctuations before but over the last 5 years it has gone from bad to much, much worse. While the majority of the big-ticket items we have are bought and paid for (Homes, cars, boat) it is inescapable that everyday items (not to mention a daughter in law school in Europe) consume a much larger share of our pitiful resources. Our purchasing power has dropped 35% in both Canada and Europe in the past 5 years due to the declining exchange rates.
I imagine that you are on the verge of tears over our predicament so I want to reassure you that we have not sought the location of the local soup kitchens….yet.
All kidding aside, gas is now $2.10 a liter ($8.40 a gallon) and everything else is 1/3 more expensive than when we started coming to Europe ….and Canada. It can’t help but make a difference.
One of the things I love about being in Europe is that while we have lived here half the year for the past 3 years we are forever finding little nuggets of interesting local history. For instance, I was walking though Treguier, a little town just 4 miles (6 kilometers) up the road from our house when I stumbled upon a dedication plaque on the wall in front of city hall. It indicated that it was where the first French/ Latin /Breton dictionary was ever printed in 1482, some 525 years ago or 10 years before Christopher Columbus sailed to America. (Breton is the second official language of Brittany) This was only 30 years after Johannes Gutenberg printed the world's first book (The Gutenberg bible which we saw in Mainz, Germany) using movable type in 1450. No town in America could lay anywhere near such a claim.
Treguier Cathedral
A big change recently in French Law has some Brits we know in a real tizzy. The French government has decided that anyone who is under 65 years old and is not employed in France must buy private health insurance. Previously, anyone who was a resident here and paid a minimal public health premium was eligible for French health services. Curiously the law is being applied retroactively to anyone who has been here less than 5 years and had not applied for citizenship. It does not matter if they are retired and receive income from abroad; the French classify them as ‘inactive’. The premiums are substantial enough that our dear friends and neighbors plan to return to the UK and maybe forced to sell their home. It’s a real bummer. This new law has no effect on us of course as we are not residents and are covered by our own private health insurance from the US. (This just in: the law may be repealed)
On a lighter side, I recently found myself needing to use a public bathroom and when I entered the men’s room I immediately came 
upon 4 women. One was entering a stall; the other was coming out of another. A third woman was washing her hands while the last one was brushing her hair. Quickly realizing I had mistakenly entered the ladies room I turned around and left. As I opened the door I glanced up to see that the sign on the door clearly said “Men”. (OK, it said men in French). I stopped to see that these women we glaring at me as if I had done something wrong. For a moment I flashed at our experience last month in Cape Cod when we walked into a transsexual convention but I could see that these were real women, with urinals behind them on the back wall.
There were among a growing number of women here who are sick and tired of waiting in long lines to use ladies rooms while many stalls in the men’s rooms are empty. The have cast aside any inhibitions or shame and are simply turning men’s rooms into unisex facilities. Any man who so much looks at them askance faces the scowl I got: “Wanna make something of it, mister?”
Who are you?
One of the fun little features of writing this blog is that it keeps detailed records of all those who read it. No, I can’t tell if you were in your pajamas when you read this but I can tell almost everything else. I can tell obvious things like how many people read it, for how long and if they came back to it later. Less obvious are things like what cities and countries they were in and what 
their IP address is. (It is like your street address but specifically for your computer) Who should be receiving this blog is obvious to me as I know whom I send this out to but last month I was stumped.
I noticed that someone in Renne Brittany had read it but I don’t know anyone there…that I can recall. Also in Atlanta Georgia, I don’t know anyone there either, do I? Someone in the city of Mission, in the province of British Columbia, Canada read the blog. Huh? I even had two readers from blocked web sites. Langley Virginia? Could it be the NSA? No, because there is No Such Agency…Finally, Pays de Loire, France.
Who are you people? As long as it is not the IRS…..
Artsy Fartsy
Last spring, 
days before we left for the Island we finalized an agreement with a young local “Ferronier d’art” (an artistic blacksmith) to accept a commission for an exterior art piece for the entry to our home here. This is not the old village blacksmith I ‘studied’ under last winter but a recent graduate of the formal state school for the art of creating forged art. He has made many objects that have sold but this was his first substantial commissioned piece and it was a doosy.
Our village goes dark at 11 PM when all the streetlights are turned off. (Don’t ask!) When I say dark, I mean go in your bedroom closet, close the door and shut your eyes tight ….kind of dark. So, we asked him to forge us an entry light and found a design that we felt would be in character with our village and the fact that our home is within the town square. This would look ridiculous anywhere else but here, but here is where it has to work. The design so impressed a friend in the village that he gave us the antique hand blown magnum that had been in his family for 50 years. It serves as the shield for the bulb contained within. It turned out much nicer than we had ever hoped for. Now when friends come over for the evening they are safe for the last 50 feet (15 meters) up to our door or the first 50 feet when they leave. After that, they are on their own.
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You packed WHAT?
We have all heard the expression “They took everything but the kitchen sink”. Well, as I wrote last fall, upon our return to France this time we not only brought a kitchen sink but our Master bathroom one as well…and a faucet for good measure. This is for a little renovation we will work on this winter. Yes there are plenty of sinks available here but frankly we didn’t like the styles.
European styles are usually the rage in many things and are sometimes more sophisticated than what we have available at home. Oddly, many of the sinks here look like they are out of a tract home in the 50’s. The really nice American styled sinks are available at specialty shops but at prices that are prohibitive to us poor Americans. This not only because of the dollar exchange, but simply because so many things are breathtakingly expensive here to start with. I know it sounds like an inordinate amount of trouble to go to but we have come to see just how easy it really is. It is no more trouble than taking a suitcase to the airport and handing it in then having it handed back to you in Paris and putting it in the rental car to drive home. Bingo!
Savings? About the cost of the flight here for one of us. The food disposer and Reverse Osmosis water treatment system will follow next year.
This is not to say that getting something here is always trouble free. To explain, I must digress for a moment. In America you are permitted to deduct the ‘cost’ of your home on your taxes when you sell it. While we have no such plans to sell, at some point all homes are sold, so we (or our beneficiaries) will want to be ready to take full advantage of this tax break. Normally this is simple as people can prove how much they paid for their home. As we physically built our own, it is a little trickier. The cost of the property itself (the land) is documented with the county but we also have to provide receipts for everything we claim as a deduction towards the cost of building or renovating the house itself. Everything.
So, over the years we have accumulated enough receipts to fill a suitcase. After the recent fires in California, we thought it prudent to digitize this information by taking the time to scan them and have an off site copy available. A good project for Janice this winter, we thought. To that end, I packed them all in my roll-on to take with us. Because of their ultimate value, I was going to take them on board the aircraft as ‘carry on’, never leaving them out of my physical presence. We all know that checked suitcases have been known to get lost.
As we boarded the aircraft we were seated near the front so we were among the last to get on. The problem was that the overhead bins were now full so the crew wanted to take our roll-ons from us to put them in the cargo hold as checked luggage. This was not optional and these are testy days to get ‘in-your-face’ with an aircrew. Against my better judgment, I relented. With all of the straight-faced assurances they could muster they promised us that the bag would follow us to Paris. You guessed it: it didn’t.
It was the only bag that did not arrive and panic set in. There were well over $150,000 (100,000 Euros) worth of receipts in there and would cause untold havoc in providing acceptable replacement documentation, if available. Early on we were told that the bag had been located and would arrive within a few days. Since my shaving kit was the only other item in the bag, I decided to take on the ‘Mr. Hollywood’ look for a few days but then I quickly started to look like ‘Mr. Dumpster Diver’. Thankfully a knock on the door announced the arrival of my shaving kit…..and our receipts.
The ‘Le Guindy’ Aqueduct
Four miles (6 kilometers) from the house is the ’Le Guindy’ aqueduct, named after the river that flows under it. Built in 1610 it provided drinking water to Treguier where our local Cathedral is located.
Enough! We are off to explore
so we will see you next month.
