The Epistle May 2007

Recently started Italian tradition.
Suitors pledging their undying love for their special someone add their own lock.

Italy or Bust (Part II)

Last month I left off as we were on our way to our second house exchange. This was actually the family apartment (located in the mountains near Cosenza, famed for it's mushrooms) of the same people we had exchanged with in our first 10 days. While they were wonderful and their homes are quite nice, it is still Italy. Both times we killed ourselves to get precise and exact directions to the homes, with street addresses, phone numbers, emergency contacts and a physical map with the homes clearly shown on it. Great theory.

In practice, the streets that the homes are on are not actually on any map. The homes do have legal addresses but they were not on the homes to be seen. We got a lot of “it’s right near to” and “it’s right around the corner from”…. type of directions. Not to worry because they gave us phone numbers of family located nearby to call in case of problems. Perfect, except for the fact that they did not speak a single word of English. My total Italian linguistic repertoire consists of “Mama Mia” so that was of limited use. My idea of speaking Italian is using the same English words I always use but add some weird ending to them and throw in what I think the Italian accent would sound like.

Our
'street'
in
medieval
Viterbo

Language issues aside, we always find where we are going by using what we have dubbed “The 100 meter rule”. The Italians were very gracious and always tried very hard to help. Still we found it best when we pulled over to ask directions for anything and they began to blabber, not to listen to a word. Listening to what we won’t understand would only distract us from what we really needed to do, which was to watch their hands. By watching their hands we had a shot at seeing if we should go straight, turn left or even turn around. With enough practice you can even get the first few turns correct before getting hopelessly loss again. That’s where “The 100 meter rule” comes in. If necessary, we go 100 meters (100 yards), usually a turn or two and ask again. You would be surprised how by getting the first few rights and lefts correct, a hundred meters at a time can soon get you back on your way to a sign you can read. Meanwhile, these poor people think that my understanding of Italian will improve if they explain it again or my favorite –LOUDER- as if I am deaf.

Medieval “street” in front of our home exchange. Left up to her own devices, Janice would move here in a minute. Good thing one of us is sensible and has a little more self-control, huh?

The other thing we found was that unlike in America where cities are largely laid out in a grid pattern, or in France where many cities are laid out like a wheel with spokes emanating from a central hub, in Italy many of the cities are laid out like a maze. On purpose, no less. This, we were told was to give the maneuvering advantage to the home team when attacked by outsiders which history tells us, happened frequently.

This is great, but as a visitor you can walk just a few blocks and never find your car again. Janice came up with a brilliant solution. We now carry fluorescent pink chalk and mark our way subtly at street corners like Hansel and Gretel with their breadcrumbs. We have not lost our way since.

After leaving the house in Santa Maria Al Bagno, we drove to Cozensa in the mountains (above Sicily) to the second home exchange. Upon our arrival we meet a young couple our age (plus or minus 28 years) that were neighbors (he a criminal lawyer, she a journalist). They invited us out for dinner and we had a great time discussing his mafia clients. He told us he was going out of town for a few days to a court hearing that was to be held in an underground bunker. Puzzled, I asked why it was underground. He said that the risk was too high for an assassin or bomber to attempt to silence his client. Life in the fast lane, Italian style. They were an absolute kick and we enjoyed each other’s company immensely. It seemed odd in a way to be making adult friends that are younger than our older kids.

We spent the next 3 days touring the area before driving North to our third home exchange in the heart of the medieval walled city of Viterbo, just above Rome. Along the way we drove along the Amalfi coast, classified as a World Heritage Site (WHS # 74), http://www.ecostieramalfitana.it/costieraamalfitanatour/amalfinf.htm

and the Archaeological ruins of Pompei (WHS #75) http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/829

In Amalfi we found ourselves stopped at a traffic light when a young woman standing on the other side of the street with her friend looked at me and named some village up the road. Thinking that it would be odd for her to ask, I said “yes”, that was where we were going. Before I could blink, I had two buxom 25 year olds in the back seat and a scowling, fuming wife. I felt like I had just kicked a hornet’s nest and stood on top of it to see what would happen. Apparently, I had inadvertently and quite innocently offered a couple of babes a ride. (As much as a guy can claim picking up two chicks as an innocent act). As a result, I am no longer authorized to step out with the car keys to so much as get a quart of milk.

Later, I had a chance to redeem myself when we were out in the middle of nowhere. An old woman stood by the roadside in front of her farmhouse and flagged us down. The custom in this outlying area was that she would flag anyone down who came by and ask for a ride to the local village. I pulled out a map of Italy and assured her I would drive her to anyplace in the country she wanted to go. At least I could then claim that I was not profiling 25-year-olds.

In one of the little villages we stopped at, we walked around the streets that are as wide as a sidewalk. A woman stopped to greet us as we were obviously not locals. Unable to communicate, she invited us nevertheless to come in for coffee. We spent the next 45 minutes visiting with us explaining that we were “Americanos di Californiato”. She looked puzzled, so I figured adding “New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles” would clear things up. She had never heard of either of them but pulled out a map of south America and asked that we point to the country we were from.

Ironically, when arriving in tiny remote villages of Italy, they would see us drive up with French license plates and naturally, assume we were French. Go figure! It was a little complicated explaining what Californians were doing driving a French car in Italy but we only got warm friendly receptions everywhere we went.

Part of the reason we chose to spend 10 days in Viterbo was its proximity to several other World Heritage sites. Over the next week, my co-pilot and California babe (J) directed us to a couple of Papal summer homes and a whole slew of Etruscan tombs, including the ones at Tarquina (WHS #76)

http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/classics/students/belanger/tarquinia.html.

We thought that these bad boys were more impressive than the Anastassi cliff dwellings we visited in New Mexico. For one thing, they are a tad older, as in 400 BC. For another, they have beautiful Frescos painted in them. For a third, there were 6000 of them.

Some of the tombs I crawled into on hands and knees, past overgrowth covering the entrances. Some were as much as 30 meters deep, 10 meters wide and not quite tall enough to stand in. They were dug out of solid rock into the Cliffside but being seriously prepared, I brought a large searchlight to explore the interiors and saw many-opened sarcophagus. (Up to 50 per tomb) It made ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’ look like an amateur.

Hanging out around Rome for several days, we visited the WWII invasion site and the American cemetery at Anzio, Hadrian’s villa (WHS # 77) of Scotland’s Hadrian’s Wall fame http://sights.seindal.dk/sight/901_Hadrians_Villa.html , Villa d’Estes and the Tivoli gardens (WHS #78) http://www.gardenvisit.com/ge/dest.htm , San Gimignano (WHS #79) http://www.castellitoscani.com/sgimignano.htm and spent a day at the Vatican (WHS). Whew, we need a vacation! It had been 4 decades (Yikes!) since I had last been so I was seriously due to return. It was fantastic to see the Sistine chapel again since it underwent a 3-year restoration.

Villa Estes and the Tivoli gardens




It was time to call it a wrap and head back to the crib. North to Bologna, crossing back into France through the massifs near Lyon, on to Bourge and home.

We pulled in after 5 weeks on the road.

Whine, whine, whine.

You would think that with all my whining last month on the subject of Italian driving skills, I would have gotten it out of my system. But noooooooo, there is much more whining to do. Having driven 9,500 kilometers during the past 5 weeks (the equivalent of driving from Los Angeles to New York and back!), most of it in Italy, I feel that I am in a position to offer an opinion. It turns out that it is one of the daily experiences that separates this trip from others in a significant way. You might detect a tad more diplomacy in my comments as we now have Italian friends who are new readers and well, as you already know, I am a sensitive millennium kind of guy.

During the past month, we have observed many drivers who have displayed their skills by:

• Riding in the front passenger seat with an infant in their lap. (An Italian airbag?)
• Pass other cars in two-way tunnels (over the double lines). 1/3 of the long and winding tunnels don’t have lights, making the experience extra exciting.
• Cut in line in front of 20 cars at a toll both. Cutting other drivers off is so prevalent here it is like a national pastime.
• Pass a dozen cars and trucks by driving down the center double line with half of their vehicle in each lane, flashing their headlights to the oncoming dozen cars and trucks to force them to ‘make way’ or get ready for a head on collision. I kid you not.
• And my personal favorite; having gotten half way across and deciding they did not want to proceed, 2 cars decided to back up….on a &#%*@ …bridge!

Parking in tow away zones is so common that we do it all the time ourselves without giving it a thought. There is a completely different mindset in Europe about parking. Rarely enforced parking regulations means that it is every man for himself (sidewalks, median strips, double and triple parking, crosswalks, etc, it’s all good!)

I said it last month and I will say it again. It’s the Wild West out here! So wild, you can still order horse meat off the restaurant menu and purchase it at the grocery store…..

Morgan Mag

A couple of months ago we got a call from the editor of local magazine called ‘Morgan Mag’. It is a bilingual quarterly publication about life in France as experienced by the English who move here from the UK. Well we have been around the block about this whole ‘English’ thing before, so I was quick to point out the obvious, which is that it is a language, not a nationality. The French here mistakenly say that we speak ‘American’, as though that was a language as opposed to a nationality. Anyways, I digress. The editor asked if she could drive up (she came from 2 hours away) to interview us regarding our experiences as Americans in Brittany and in France in general. It turned out to be a puff piece (one of those warm and fuzzy pieces as opposed to an ambush: “Go on, admit it!!! Bush lied, kids died” types of interviews) so it was a lot of fun. I was a little surprised that politics never entered the conversation, but it does not seem that it is that kind of publication.

Speaking of politics, I have been told that the majority of the French do not have a positive view of Americans. I don’t doubt that there are strong feelings about America’s more recent foreign policy forays and I surely know that the general feeling in America is mutual toward France. We however, have never had an unpleasant encounter with any of the French (or Italians) that we have met.

Initially, because of my French Canadian accent, they assume that we are Canadians. I always correct them and tell them we are Americans from California. We have invited them to our home and they have invited us to theirs. I have to believe that this goes beyond simply being polite and not wanting to talk about the elephant in the room.

Admittedly, we don’t talk politics much to our French friends and when we do, they are usually complaining about their government. Of course if things got rough and it were needed, I always have the ace in the hole. I could always remind them that if it were not for America they would all be speaking German today…

To see the article (or any of the pictures) full size just double click on them.

We have visitors

In our last month here for this year we have been very fortunate to have visitors from home. Our pastor and his wife from our home church in California were in Albania doing missionary work with a sister church there. On the way home, they met friends of theirs who were already in Paris and the 4 of them took a little detour to come see us and visit Brittany. They rented bikes and went scooting all over the place during one day and toured the area with us over the next few days as the weather became rainy. We hope to see them at the Bee this summer.

Correction

Last month, I wrote that we had once visited Carlsbad Caverns in Arizona. My Friend Bob in San Diego quickly wrote back to tell me that his uncle's friend's son in law's Grandfather (!) was among the original discoverers of the cavern and that it was located in New Mexico. These are very big caverns and my only explanation for this discrepancy is either we visited the part that went all the way to Arizona or that my proofreader was sleeping on the job, again. The research, as always, was flawless. I do appreciate your feedback and corrective input though.

The Epistle, April 2007

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Chateau Courbon

Italy or Bust! (Part 1)

As I publish this from a secure undisclosed location, we have been on the road for the past two weeks. We left Brittany on April 1 and headed for Italy for an almost 5 week vacation. Wait a minute!… I have been on vacation for 2 ½ years! OK then, we have been on a trip. Over the past several months we set up 3 home exchanges in all corners of Italy so we are traveling the length and breadth of the country. Down one side of the coast and up the other, crisscrossing as we go.

We started off at the Chateau La Roche Courbon on our way to Bordeaux, from the northwest to the southeast corner of France. Built in 1475 it was turned into a pretty respectable private residence where the older current owners occupy the third floor while we minions visit the rest of the place. On the same grounds of this privately owned chateau are Neanderthal Grottos in the cliff sides. Essentially, they are 50,000-year-old condos.

Knowing that there is so much that we could see and only so much time to see it in, we decided that a good way to start would be to peruse the list of World Heritage Sites (WHS) and see what we could find along the way. After all, these folks have an unlimited budget to see all the very best places in the world and it seemed foolhardy not to take advantage of it. Besides, we have been awed by their choices in the past, having visited 67 of them to date.

Wham-O! We struck gold. At our niece Christine’s suggestion, the next day in Bordeaux we visited two sites that are part of the Pilgrim routes of Santiago de Compostella; The Basalillica Saint Michel (who else!) and The Saint Andre Cathedral. (WHS # 68) It is just around the corner from ‘Pont de Pierre”, the stone bridge commissioned by Napoleon. The afternoon was spent up the road at the medieval fortified city of Carcassonne. (WHS # 69)

http://www.carcassonne.org/carcassonne_en.nsf/vuetitre/docpgeIntroPatrimoine

Heading south the following day, we were in “Aigue Morte”, yet another medieval fortified city on the Mediterranean and onto the “Midi Canal” (WHS #70). Driving east down the French Riviera past Antibes, we proceeded past Nice, Monaco and into Italy. Continuing down by Genoa and Pisa on the Italian Riviera, we stayed in Calci at a B&B in an olive grove where we have been offered an opportunity to return during harvest time and help. (Would that count as a job?) Moving on to Florence, we visited the “Duomo”, a many figured multi colored marble façade cathedral and the “Ponte Vecchio”, a series of gold shops situated on a bridge that crosses the river.

Naples was a disappointment to us. It is a filthy, garbage strewn, graffiti covered, overcrowded, dingy city that reminded us a lot of similar areas of Mexico. We stayed in a place that from the outside gave us the creeps, but once admitted to the inner courtyard it was a different world. It almost made us feel guilty. (Well, nobody is perfect)

As long as I am going all negative on you here, this is probably a good time to let loose on the only other aspect of Italy that did not sit well with us. We found that to date (remember, we are only half way through this trip), the drivers in the north and central Italy are the worse we have seen in any country. The drivers in the major cities of France are quite similar but here it is far more widespread. It is like they are in a permanent state of road rage and think nothing of all but running each other off the road or driving in two lanes simultaneously. It seems like signaling lane changes is illegal and they become furious when a car is in the passing lane and they come barreling down the road at well in excess of a 100 MPH and have to slow down, flashing their headlights like crazy to get them to move over. We have hardly ever seen police on the highways, no speed limits are posted and no one is ever stopped. It’s like the Wild West out here. Old style black smoke belching diesel trucks and cars are still a common sight.

We nasty non Kyoto protocol signing Americans are just put zing down the highway, doing our best to reduce our carbon footprint, hugging trees here and there to offset our share of ozone depleting emissions while these guys act like yahoos.

Driving further south past Bari on the Adriatic coast, we went south to Lecci and to our first home exchange in Santa Maria al Bagno. Everyone knows that Italy is shaped like a boot. Well, we are in the bottom of the heel. It is a gorgeous area with our bedroom window facing the Ionian Sea 150 feet away (50 meters) and the ruins of a medieval fortification seen in the photo. This is only the first home exchange for both of our families but we think we are going to love it. We are not confined to a room or two as in a B&B. We have a whole house with a large garden including a fully equipped outdoor kitchen in addition to the main kitchen in the house.

The second day here was Good Friday, so we went to Galipoli to see the Easter procession. Wow! What an event. It lasts from 6PM till dawn with hundreds of men in traditional robes reenacting Christ’s death march, many carrying large heavy floats representing the Stations of the Cross, very slowly and silently through the town streets. This is a serious Catholic stronghold with many people doing the sign of the cross as they walk by a church.

The family we exchanged this home with has been around with home cooked meals and local pastries. They also had us spend a day at Easter with their family nearby. (Their principal residence is 20 minutes away) You may wonder what on earth there is to see in this outer Mongolia part of Italy but it is quite prosperous and very Italian in the sense that we have barely squeezed but a few words of English out of anyone anywhere. The area reminds me of what I think Greece will look like.

We have been here for 10 days so among our day trips we took the time to go to Bari. Six months ago, I had contacted the Canadian Department of Veteran Affairs to ask for my father’s military records (my father was Canadian) so I could try to find specific information about his war service in Bari as a radar repairman. They told me they would get right on it and hoped to have the information to me by April 2008, a full year after I would return from this trip. Gee, thanks.

So I was on my own. We went to the military airbase in Bari but so much has changed over 60 years and so much of what was going on was temporary and scattered all over the area that it was impossible to pinpoint where he had been exactly. Nevertheless, we took in the area to try to get a flavor of what he would have seen. For one thing we could just make out the Albanian coastline from the top of the hill. I also wondered if he took the time on days off to visit anyone of the three World Heritage sights within spitting distance Of Bari. We sure did.

The first was Sassi di Madera, (WHS # 71). It is “the most outstanding, intact example of a troglodyte settlement…the first inhabited zone dates from the Palaeolithic period”. Simply put, it is an entire community built in dug out caves on a hillside. In 1952 the government evicted the last 15,000 people still living in them because of sanitary conditions. By the way, it was here that Mel Gibson’s recent film “The Passion of the Christ” was shot.

http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1316817003036367367jSvKHS

The second was the Trulli di Alberobello (WHS # 72). These are homes or storage buildings that are round with gray, stone, cone shaped roofs. (And you thought our Dome was weird!) They are common in the immediate area but found nowhere else in the world. We actually have one in the yard of the home we are in here.

http://www.geocities.com/trullihouses/

The third was Castel del Monte (WHS # 73). Built in 1240 by Frederick II as a hunting lodge shortly before he was excommunicated. He was the big dog in the area until one army or another took all his toys away.

http://www.passcal.nmt.edu/~bob/passcal/catscan/catscan22.htm

Other notable sites were the Grottoes of Castellana. Quite impressive really, they were in the same category as ‘Mammoth Caves’ in Kentucky or ‘Carlsbad Caverns’ in Arizona. It had a couple of underground chambers that were larger than a football field and up to 150 feet high (50 meters). Very cool.

Next, we head for the mountains of Cosenza (just above Sicily)

To be continued….

Blacksmithing 2.0

You might have thought I was exaggerating a few months ago when I told you that our village blacksmith’s forge was like the set out of a horror movie or a torture chamber so I have decided to let you judge for yourself. (double click on any of the photos for a real good view)I have been futzing around with my forging lessons a few hours here and there for the past couple of months now and ---ok, I am no speed demon. I was asking my blacksmithing ‘teacher’ if he thought I would ever finish my project and he said “Of course you will! It will be done in 07”.

Wondering if he really thought it would take me a whole year to finish it, he turned and I heard him quietly mutter under his breath “3007”. Well, I am here to tell you that a full 999 years ahead of schedule, I am done. These were the elaborate door ‘hinges’ I had set out to forge for our main entry door at the Island. They are not actually hinges as we typically think of them but the decorative scrollwork that would be attached to them to support the heavy door. [Pics to be seen in June 07 Epistle when they are installed at the Bee] The boss was quite pleased with the outcome, so she has gone on a forging binge assigning me a number of projects for items both here and at Honey Bee.

Last May before we left, I wrote about commissioning our fireplace implements from our Blacksmith. I told him in no uncertain terms that we wanted serious tools and didn’t want ‘girly man’ equipment. Every inch of it would need to be forged and that the deadline was December 1, 2006 when we arrived. He agreed.

We arrived as planned and he had the andirons ‘almost’ finished while the tools, spark shield and wood rack had yet to be started.

The fireplace tool set will not be finished until we return next December. The one thing I have learned from the French is that if they agree to a drop dead, cast in concrete, draw a line in the dirt, no if’s-and’s- or but’s deadline, the one thing you can be absolutely sure of is that it won’t be ready on time. The work though, speaks for itself. The andirons alone are 114 pounds of steel and would make a medieval fireplace proud. You can just feel the testosterone flying about the room when you have a roaring fire going. The picture is a little deceiving because the fireplace opening is 4 X 4 feet.

Knowing just enough to be dangerous but not nearly enough to be any good, I have decided to skip the required 40 years experience needed to master the art of blacksmithing and go straight to the advanced course. I was recently introduced to a young guy who is a graduate of the school of “Ferronnier d’Art”(Artistic blacksmithing). My older instructor is certainly an artist but he has primarily worked on farm equipment and big pieces like entry gates and window grates. My younger teacher had a studio set up for ‘artsy-fartsy’ forging. These are true art studio pieces that have been forged. This should be very interesting…. We meet when we were referred to him as the ‘go-to-guy’ to have a forged entry lighting fixture commissioned for the house. As we cannot have any garden art like in California, this is a one of a kind piece that he will make over the next 7 months for our entry. It is, well, ‘oh-so-French’. Photo to be available in December 07 Epistle.

Construction updates

I have not mentioned anything about projects for some time and I thought I would bring you up to date. I have been puttering out in the garage and our terrace because the weather has been so mild. First on the agenda was re finishing the cement block walls [inside and outside the garage] with a hand troweled mortar coating. Next was installing a new door from the garage to the courtyard. After was punching through the garage block wall, where I turned the Sauna to face the courtyard so that when we are sitting in it, our view is of the deck and the gorgeous church square. I installed an electrically retracted security door to roll down in front of it when not in use. Then, I sealed the smooth finished cement wall for Janice to paint a “trompe-l’oeil” as seen in the accompanied photo. [Check out the traditional saints niche above the arbor] Next, I re-pointed the stone wall, built the arbor, installed the trellis and decked the area in Brazilian Ipe hardwood complete with deck mounted lights and a recessed planter box for a typically French crossed willow planting. Once done, I was assigned to lay floor tile in our second bathroom. I am now ready to get back to work on our Master bedroom / bathroom in the attic. We hope to have it ready so that upon our return next December we can have it carpeted and move in the new furniture.

Last winter I bored you to tears with the endless drama regarding the construction of our stone fireplace. We had our inaugural baptism of fire just before we left when we got a call from our neighbor next door telling us that there was smoke in his attic (we had some too) Seems that there were tiny cracks in the chimney wall in the upper reaches that allowed the smoke to permeate through the walls. To our horror and my utter shame, we now had a beautiful fireplace that I had spent months hand cutting the stone for but could not have a fire in. We decided to deal with it upon our return in December.

When we arrived, I immediately built a metal funnel to put above the trap, connected it to a stainless steel flue to contain the smoke. The good news was that there was no more smoke in our attics. The bad news was that the chimney no longer drew properly and we now had smoke all through the house.

Having gone this far we decided to have a wind driven smoke extractor (you know the kind that spin with the breeze) installed. It didn’t work either. By now you should know that the saga had a happy ending or I wouldn’t be telling you about it.

The last straw was to have an electric smoke extractor installed and it worked like a champ. It is just like the one over your cook top only this is the big daddy commercial version designed to operate with the high temperatures emitting from a fireplace. Proof positive that if you persist (and throw enough money at a problem) you can usually succeed.

Little Christopher

Our little guy is still in hospital and mom, Amy, and dad, Vance, are relaying to be with him. Brother Wes has arrived in the nick of time and is taking over their guest cabin and keeping up with sisters and brother Alex while mom and dad are spending their time with hospital staff learning how to correctly take care of Christopher’s trach etc. As soon as 24 hour nursing staff signs up for home care, they all will head home at last. So far, one nurse is ready to show up, more are needed. This is surely a time of faith, hope and prayers all around for the Lindor family. Little Madeline sums it all up “ I am glad God gave baby Christopher to our family”, what a 5 year old wonder. We keep faithful that Christopher will not need his feeding tube indefinitely, but will be busy growing out of this need, as well as the tracheotomy. God is able and thank you so for all of your heart-felt prayers for the whole family.

The Epistle, March 2007

Chateau Josselin

Just another day in Brittany….

Built in the 11^th century, classified as a historic monument it remains…private property.

We love it here!

Don’t let us kid you. We don’t actually work all the time. Every week we “discover” cool new places to see and things to do in our neck of the woods. Clearly, it’s what keeps us fascinated by our life in Europe. We are still very limited in our travels to the outer reaches of the continent partly because there is so darn much to see close to home and partly because we really want to finish our projects in the house before we just go gallivanting all over the place.

Recent local finds include:

The Treguier Stones: We have been doing a lot of our daily shopping in Treguier, just up the road. We have driven past the waterfront public parking lot a thousand times but recently Janice noticed a memorial plaque of sorts. Stopping to read it, she found that the 4 foot high circle of stones surrounding a grassy area was no less than an elliptical ‘belt’ having surrounded a mound of dirt that had been formed in a manner to provide housing, in 2500 BC.

BC as in Before Christ.

Tour St-Michel: This tower, also located in Treguier, is almost across the street from my hardware store. It dominates as the highest point in the area and it is said that from the top of the tower with a pair of binoculars on a clear day, you can see Jersey.

No silly, not 'New Jersey'! The isle of Jersey is a British island off of our area of the coast of Brittany. A number of executions and torture were meted out within the tower's shadows. Finally, it was also from the top of this tower that on August 14th, 1944 a German sniper shot Sgt. LLoyd W, Libben, US Army 15th Cavalry.

Sgt. Libben had the misfortune of being the only American soldier in General Patton’s army (bivouacked down the street from our house) killed in the liberation of Treguier. A memorial stone stands nearby on the sidewalk at the spot he fell .

The pillory post: La Roche Derrien is a village next door that we often take walks to from the house. Our bank is there as well as our post office. Recently, walking down the higgely piggely side street from the post office, I noticed yet another little plaque on the wall of a residence. The plaque announced that this was the spot where the town pillory post had been located and a smidgen of behavior modification had been imposed on area bad guys .

Maison du Gouffre. Another afternoon of exploring took us to Plougrescant. A private home on the beach that was actually an island twice a day when the tides came in, it is now landlocked since a causeway of sorts has been put in.

[Editors note: A boneheaded move in the opinion of one who is completely impartial regarding the subject of Islands]

It’s not easy being us you know. We have had to make a HUGE sacrifice, moving out of our family home and renting it to perfect strangers to help fund our kid’s educations while we are marooned on some God forsaken Island half the year and then having to scrape by in Europe all winter long.

[So, how did that sound? Did it have a sincere ring to it? Do you think there is any chance the kids will buy it?]

The Roman baths: Cruising down one of the local beaches with friend’s recently, they pointed out the remains of a Roman bath. While I am not sure what year this was built, I think you can know that these were not Italians that came by recently. Ingeniously designed, they allowed for a weatherproof wood storage area to stoke the fires that heated the water. The water ran under the floors through clay pipes to warm the different baths. Depending on the distance from the heat, different baths could be tepid, warm or hot. The view? The crashing surf, of course.

Like I said, we don’t work all the time

"Hey, if you like the place so darn much why don’t you move there permanently?"

That would be the next story.

Why don’t you move there?

Whooooooooaaa, cowboy! There’s no need to get your panty hose caught up in a bunch and start talking crazy. As Paul Harvey would say… "here is the rest of the story".

Finding many, many things to love about our area is easy to do but “living” here as opposed to being a seasonal visitor is a horse of a different color. We bought a home here because there was so much more that interested us to visit in Europe than in Asia or Africa or South America. As a visitor, I can smile and laugh off many things that are ‘French’ or European that I would never stand for or tolerate permanently.

You show up here as a tourist, exchange a few dollars into Euros, gasp at the fees and say, “what the heck, we're on vacation” then run off to see the Eiffel tower. It has no appreciable effect on your life. But in the time I have spent here I see that people in similar income brackets in America vs their European counterparts live quite differently. There is a significant disparity in their standard of living.

For all my griping about the high cost of living here, we are constantly reminded by our British friends that they moved here, lock, stock and barrel because the cost of living in the UK was so much higher! Yikes!

The basic formula here when you hire someone is 1/3 materials, 1/3 labor and 1/3 taxes of some sort. While there are big fines for hiring unregistered workers there are a number of people whom won't work unless they are paid in cash. All countries have an underground economy but with taxes as high as they are here, many work hard at underreporting their incomes. You can’t even hire the kid down the street to mow you lawn. Unless that is, if you pay him or other temporary workers by ‘cheque employer’. You get this special book of checks at the bank and when you pay someone with it the bank adds 50% to the amount and deducts it from your account to pay appropriate taxes, social security, ect.

No one we know here has a credit card. They are available but cost about $200. a year for the privilege of having one issued to you. They don't have a clue as to what frequent flyer miles are. Everyone uses debit cards. Free, of course at home, $50. a year for the privilege here. Yes, it minimizes debt but it also limits the financial options. Transferring money from your home bank? Free at home between the US and Canada, $30 to $80 here, no matter how little the amount --plus the exchange rate of course. Water bills? About $85. a month here, $25. in California. Building materials are quite expensive here. Not really a big deal for us as we are only doing relatively small projects but when we decided to varnish our bedroom doors, varnish ran about $200 a gallon. Excuse me? Paint is not much cheaper.
Like to futz with your computer? Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system, is sold in the US for $189, yours for a mere $350 in France. Need blank DVD’s? 100 for $25. in the US, 10 for $25. here.
Working on you car? Hey, I am not even going to mention the 3-letter ‘G’ word that makes the car run ($2.20 gal in the US, $6.50 here) A friend’s alternator was as high as $700. here, available for $89. in the US. Why? Taxes and fees.

On January 1, Germany raised its VAT (value added tax) from 16% to 19%. In Canada they call it GST (goods and services tax). We call it the ABCDEFG tax and you don’t want to know what that means! People there thought “Big deal, its only 3%”. The next day, our daughter Mandy reported that her rent in Germany went up 'to make up for it", she was told. Every business will pass their tax increase on to consumers. Besides having to register when you move from or to a new city in Germany there is, of course, a 'registration' fee. This alone would be incomprehensible in the US.

A leading presidential candidate here (the French version of Hillary Clinton) wants to set the minimum wage at $2,000. (US)/ month , with a guaranteed job within 6 months upon graduation or the state will pay for additional training. You see where I am going with this? When you keep chipping away at people you erode their standard of living. Individually they may balk but Europeans seem resigned to the fees and taxes imposed on them and quite accepting of the consequences it inevitably has on their standard of living.

So, do we not want to move here because varnish costs a few bucks more?

Of course not. The financial hit is one thing but lifestyle is another. Remember, this not about not being happy here. We truly LOVE it. But there is a reason why Americans returning from foreign travels (Ok, not necessarily from Europe) have been seen getting off the plane, kneeling and kissing the tarmac.

Its like when you visit family or friends. Its wonderful…..for a while. But at some point their lifestyle or yours will clash. It would become less fun and you don’t want to become an eternal guest. When you or they return, you can enjoy each other again.

It's a simple fact that if we lived here a hundred years we would still be foreigners. Foreigners are at inherent disadvantage speaking up in their host country. We can’t vote although we pay taxes, so local politicians don’t take us seriously. We sometimes have large farm trucks park on the sidewalk in front of our door, under a no parking sign. What I want to do is step out and say “ Hey Pal! Have you bumped your head? Make like Michael Jackson and ‘Beat It!’" But if I complain I risk being ignored or worse told “if you don’t like it here, go home” Janice feared that it would invite all kinds of unwanted attention: anti –Americanism, xenophobia or just plain scorn.

What I did was to go see the Mayor and brought pictures of all kinds of vehicles doing just that on different occasions and showing that the sidewalk was beginning to break up as a result. I offered to buy and install large planter boxes, fill them with flowers, donate them to the village and place them on the sidewalk to prevent the illegal parking. I even showed how wheel chair access would not be impeded. The town council smiled and said “No”. The temptation as a foreigner is to keep your head down. As a visitor, that’s fine, but I could never ‘live’ like that, condemned to a lifetime of taxation without representation. What this place needs is a little Boston styled tea party...

Don't ask...

Then there are French politics, the compulsory 35 hour work week limit, global warming…..please, don’t get me going.

My man Mr. Christopher

No one promised the little man an easy first year but it would be nice to give the poor kid a break. This to say nothing for his exhausted parents who have played tag team to be with him 24 / 7 in the hospital, yet again.

Our grandson came down with a bout of pneumonia. The medication to treat him caused acid reflux, which developed a bad case of thrush all the way down his esophagus. This in turn caused him some difficulty breathing. Whisked into surgery [twice no less] to have a little extra tissue on his esophagus lasered off, he (and mom) spent the next 3 weeks in the hospital while he recovered. (He would surely qualify for frequent patient miles) He was released to go back home but required a feeding tube, as he was unable to nurse and breathe. He will be on it until he grows out of this condition, which is expected to take from 6 to 18 months.

Within days his condition worsened and he was returned to the hospital where he was given a tracheotomy. He and mom will be in the hospital for some time to come. We wish him a quick recovery, mom and dad a long vacation and a hospital free future for all.

Problem solved

We are thrilled every time we find a way to solve some logistical hiccup in the way we live. For instance, we resolved banking issues long ago by having accounts in California, Canada and France. You know how it works, as long as you put more in than you take out, they are happy. The real solution of course was when we were able to not only keep tabs on our finances instantly online but to pay our bills electronically in different countries from a click of the mouse from anywhere.

On occasion we have needed to send or receive faxes without always having immediate access to a fax machine. Well, sometime ago we found a free online faxing service. With it, we have been sending and receiving faxes from anywhere with a ‘local’ US based phone number. Pretty handy when you are in some village in Italy and you are expecting a fax over something you’re dealing with in Canada. It arrives as an email attachment and we can print it if we like. I am currently setting it up with a European based number also (free of course, as it is a US based service) because people are loath to call a phone number on another continent to send you a fax. Just darn convenient.

A huge weight was lifted off our shoulders with our ability to call long distance with Skype, the Internet based phone service. Yea, I know. Some of you guys HATE our calls when we have a bad connection or when we sound like we are at a bottom of a drum. Truth is, we make many, many hours of calls and inevitably, 99% are long distance whether we are in Canada or France. Some are very, very long distance. This has allowed us to be able to call anyone, anytime without giving it a thought. On a number of occasions we have even made conference calls while located in France, speaking to Mandy in Germany as we were talking to Cassie in California. Or, my sister in Toronto Canada, my brother in Montreal, and my mother in California, simultaneously. I don’t know about you but we think it’s wild. We have great add-on external laptop speakers, a desktop microphone and a web cam so we don’t have an uncomfortable headset to wear and it sounds much better to us than a land line. We absolutely love it.

The Internet with all its available services has made how we live possible.

The last fly in the ointment was mail. For two years we have been frustrated with our mail forwarding service in California. We have tried to alleviate the problem by having a PO box on the US side of the mainland at the Island in the summer. This is needed for magazines and packages we order while we are there. We have refrained from having mail sent to us in Canada from the US as it takes too long to clear Canadian customs. Much easier for us to zip over to the post office by boat right to it’s dock.

Recently though, we did get a Canadian PO box because, again, there are Canadian magazines that won’t ship to the US or Canadian mail that will not be delayed if we get it ‘in country’ so to speak. It’s weird because both mailboxes are only a mile apart but in two different countries. The real bugaboo was mail in California. We kept our ‘main’ PO box there because for serious stuff like taxes, insurance companies and the like we wanted one central permanent address for it all to be collected at then twice a month forwarded to wherever we are at the time. Great in theory but touch and go in practice.

We have had mail sent to the wrong end of the country, mail not sent (ooops, we forgot!) mail sent twice in 5 days then not sent for 6 weeks. We felt that we had little choice but to continue, as it is a major logistical headache to notify some 60 odd contacts that we have a new address for a different mail forwarding service.Enter the Internet to the rescue again! Recently, I found a California based company that gives you a physical address so that all of your mail gets directed to them. (Yes, that means those 60 some odd contacts will be notified that we have a new ‘permanent’ mailing address) Each day they get our mail they scan the front of the envelopes and post the images online to our account. If we chose, they will open the envelope, scan the contents, post them online and we can print it or have them forward it to us. Whatever we don’t want (except for a check that would be pretty much everything) gets shredded. No delays, no lost mail, no forwarding costs. This way, we get our mail everyday (not twice a month) even if we are traveling and the cost is about a third of what we currently pay.

Is this a great country, or what?

Want to see any of the above pics really big? Easy, just double click on them!!