Coup de coeur – my French house

This month, my guest post on MyFrenchLife, the Australian-based online magazine & global community of French & francophiles, tells how I fell in love with my beautiful Renaissance house in the Loire Valley and takes you on a tour.

Coup de coeur they say in French. Literally a blow of the heart. And it can be used in so many different contexts and translated in so many different ways: “love at first sight”, “a favourite”, “a crush”, “an impulse purchase”, even “kudos” and sometimes there’s no translation at all! Read more

 

The Bird Bath

The previous owners of Closerie Falaiseau were very keen on birds. When they handed over the keys to the house, they explained how to feed them and left us enough feed to go on with for a week or so, including couscous (these are French birds after all). There are lots of different bird feeders scattered about in the trees with a cute little one on a stand in our little wood behind the house. There are also a couple of recipients on the living room window sill. Oh, yes, and we’re also supposed to put bits of fat in little string bags especially in winter. I asked the butcher to give me some fat off the côte de boeuf for the birds and he seemed to know what I was talking about.

However, because of the weather and all the things we’ve been doing inside the house, we haven’t been able to observe them very much. Another thing Mr Previous Owner left us is an endless collection of pottery so I’ve been putting it to good use to store thyme and rosemary and coarse salt, for example.  I chose an appropriate dish and put it on the window sill at the front end of the kitchen since that is where we usually eat. I filled it with the crumbs from the multi-grain bread we bought from the organic bakery.

And lo and behold! It attracted a little bird. We’re not sure what it is because every time we approach, it flies away, but I’ve ordered a French garden bird poster from the bird association and am hoping that  this little guy will soon become used to us and I’ll be able to get a closer look (and a better photo)! I’m now feeding it crumbs from my home-made multi-grain bread. I’m sure they’re superior and will be much appreciated.

Yesterday, while on yet another excursion to Bricorama (more on why in the next post), we went past a dépôt-vente and I thought I’d have another look for bedside lamps as I haven’t found anything, either old or new, that I like yet. Down the back of the shop, they had an amazing collection of iron garden furniture. The prices were outrageous but I spied a bird bath that didn’t have a price on it.

It turned out to be reasonably priced (it was even on sale!) so Relationnel lugged it out to the car and now it is standing happily next to the kitchen window enticing the birds to use it. Not that they really need it at the moment. There are a lot of puddles to bathe in …

Voting for a New President

As I explained in Battling with French Administration, I have only  started voting relatively recently and this is only my second French presidential election. The first time, we were here for both rounds. Of course, it would be much easier if they adopted the preferential voting system in France, but having the two rounds is all part of the strategy and I don’t think any of the politicians would agree to eliminating the second one! This time, however, we will be in Blois the second time around. Black Cat will be away on both occasions.

So how do we go about voting? First, I’ll describe the normal voting system. When you become eligible to vote, you have to register with your local town hall. It’s wherever you’re registered on 1st January that counts. We are registered in the 1st arrondissement. Even when they move (provided they don’t go too far away), most people prefer to keep their original voting office rather than spend hours waiting around in queues to change it.

In about March, you receive an electoral card with the address of the polling station (usually a school) that you have to take along with you to vote, together with your ID. You hand them both over to the person sitting behind a table with all the ballot papers (bulletins de vote) in front of them. After they check your ID, they give you a little blue envelope and you take a copy of each ballot paper (10 this time because there were ten candidates) and go into the voting  booth (isoloir – love the name!), put your paper in the envelope and throw the others in the bin. Since we also receive the ballot papers by post, I prefer to select mine before I go. It’s a simple piece of white paper, about 10 cm x 15 cm with the name of the candidate printed in black ink.

Then you go to another table, with your envelope and ID. At our voting station, there are tables on either side of the see-through voting urn with a person at each table. One has the register with half the alphabet and the other has the rest. The person standing behind the urn reads out your name. After it’s located on the register, you sign and the urn keeper pulls back a lever so that you can drop your envelope in. When you have done so, he says in a stenorous voice, “A voté” (has voted). It’s all very formal. I was actually surprised they let me take photos but the urn keeper was very pedagogical, explaining everything to me in detail.

Now if you can’t physically go to your polling station on D-Day, the only solution is to find someone to represent you. They don’t have to be attached to your polling station (they just have to live in the same town), but they do have to go there to vote for you. You have to go along to the police station beforehand with the details of your proxy (full name, birth and place of date), your ID and your electoral card. You’re given a little bit of paper that says “récipisse à remettre au mandant” (receipt to be given to the proxy) that you hand over with your ID. A proxy can vote for one person living in France and one person living overseas.

So with Leonardo in Australia, Black Cat in Thailand and Forge Ahead in Madagascar, there’s only Thoughtful left.  He’s going to vote for Black Cat and Forge Ahead so Relationnel has found two work colleagues to vote for us. And they tell me they’ve simplified matters. We haven’t been to the police station yet …

I’ve Joined the Kindle Community!

I’ve always been a ferocious reader. I had the great fortune to have a father who let me read absolutely anything I wanted from both his own library and the town library (he had to sign a paper saying that I could take books from the adult section when I was still a child) and who encouraged me to use a dictionary. I’d be lying in bed reading at night and call out hopefully “Dad, what does ‘testimony’ mean” and he’d inevitably reply, “Look it up in the dictionary”. So I’d take my trusty Pocket Oxford from the bedhead behind me and look it up.

As a result, I grew up knowing the real meaning of words and how they are used.  And I love words. I loved the Latin at church and I adored learning French at school. And my love of reading has never left me. I remember the very first book I ever read – an abridged version of Peter Pan. I think it probably shaped my whole life. I was fanatical about the Pollyanna series and read and reread them constantly. There was also Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, What Katy Did and The Bobbsey Twins, The Secret Seven and The Famous Five. But I soon left them behind for Gone with the Wind and Anna Karenine.

Dad had the complete collection of Maupassant’s short stories and novels (in English of course) which I devoured. How much I really understood I don’t know, but it introduced me to the fascinating world of France. My love of literature and French led me to an Arts degree with French honours despite my mathematical leanings and I was overjoyed when I came to France to discover that such a thing as a technical translator existed. I went on to get a masters in translation at ESIT in Paris and have been a freelance technical and legal translator ever since. What a wonderful excuse to have a bookshelf full of dictionaries of every kind!

One of my big problems has always been to find enough books to read particularly on a reduced budget when my children were small.  Libraries obviously solved the problem for French books. I also made the wonderful discovery that my beloved Russian novelists translate much better into French than into English. Fortunately I found a library nearby which had a good collection of English novels so I reread all the classics. My taste in reading is very eclectic and I’ve always loved rooting around in other people’s libraries to see what I can find. I’ll read anything that someone recommends.

When I began teaching translation at ESIT, I started swapping books with my students. With the coming of Internet, especially sites like the Book Directory and Amazon where you can get the latest novels (well practically) without having to pay postage, my access to books changed dramatically. I can talk to my aunt in Australia about what she’s reading, order her suggestions off the Net and receive them within a couple of days! When we moved into Paris, I found a wonderful source of second-hand English books at Book-Off on rue Saint Augustin. AT 2 or 3 euros a time, I can fill my carry bag. They also buy the books back again (at 20 centimes!) thus eliminating the problem of where to put all these books once I’ve read them.

But there I was the other night, wandering aimlessly around, sifting through my bookcase and wondering what on earth I could find to read. I was sure I had a whole stack of unread books on a shelf somewhere. Sadly, that was not the case. I finally found Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day which I had totally forgotten and am thoroughly enjoying.

But now, thanks to Leonardo, I have a Kindle with international 3G so will never be short of reading material EVER AGAIN – provided I remember to charge it of course!

Bruce McAleer, Bike Tour Guide – Travelling to Provence – Crossing the Berlin Wall

This Wednesday’s features from other people’s blogs. Thanks to Judy McMahon from MyFrenchLife, a global community of French and francophiles connecting like-minded people in English & French, for her profile of Bruce McAleer, Vicki Archer, an Australia writer who lives between London and Saint Rémy de Provence and author of French Essence for her tips for travelling in Provence and Andrea from Destination Europe, also an Aussie Expat who’s been living in France for the last 5 years, food and travel blogger for her very informative post on visiting the Berlin Wall.

Profile: Bruce McAleer, Bike Tour Guide

by Judy McMahon from MyFrenchLife

Bruce, can you please describe your business to us?
I offer day trips by bike from Paris to numerous locations in the countryside of Paris. My tours generally include a well-known destination (Chartres, Giverny etc.) but are mostly designed with getting off the beaten path in mind. We bike through scenic countryside, quaint country villages, medieval towns and pass by various châteaux. I take people to unknown places not covered in guidebooks. Read more …

Travelling to Provence

by Vicki Archer from French Essence

I am often asked about travelling to Provence and while I am neither an expert nor a travel guide I do love Provence with all my heart. I spend most of my year getting there, being there and dreaming about there… I thought I would put together a series with travel tips, websites and information that might help when planning a trip… Simple details, that I take for granted… yet if I had known them way back… it would have made all the difference… Read more

And part 2: http://frenchessence.blogspot.fr/2012/03/travelling-to-provence-part-two.html

Crossing the Berlin Wall

by Andrea from Destination Europe

Imagine getting a new job, moving into a new apartment and spending just one last night in your old apartment only to wake up in the morning to find you have been barricaded in by a barbed wire fence with no way in or out. You have no access to your job or belongings.  Read more

The Eternal Dilemma of What to Pack

Let’s face it. No matter what you do, you’ll never look like a local. It takes years of living in a country to blend in with the masses, and even then, your hairstyle or the way you walk or wear your handbag will give you away at some stage! So you may as well go for comfort and practicality. I’ll never forget the time Black Cat spied a group of people way across a vacant allotment on Magnetic Island in North Queensland and said “Those people over there are French”. And you know, it turned out they were !

The range of temperatures you are going to encounter also makes a difference when you’re packing. If it’s going to be 0°C at night in Orange and 30°C in Townsville on the same trip, you virtually need two sets of clothes. But if you’re coming to France in May, it’s going to be much easier.  How often you can wash will also determine what you take. If we are travelling for a month, I try to alternate accommodation with and without a washing machine so I can wash every few days.

Sometimes when we get home from holidays, I put the whole suitcase in the wash. That’s when I know I took the right clothes. If you come back with things you didn’t wear, you should note it for next time. I don’t usually take anything very dressed up. In France, at any rate, people don’t necessarily change to go out at night. They simply wear smart clothes to work that are also suitable in the evening with maybe a change of shoes or bag that they keep at the office. In fact, that’s one way you can pick the tourists in a restaurant  at night – they’re the only ones dressed up!

Pick one or two basic colours – not necessarily black! – from your wardrobe and see if you can work around them. It’s fairly pointless taking a top that only goes with one skirt or pair of pants, for example. Remember that no one is going to know that you wore the same outfit the day before, except that you changed your T-shirt or blouse. If you get sick of wearing the same clothes all the time, shout yourself something new.  Everyone says layers are the best and they really are except that you don’t want to end up looking like the Michelin man!

Skirts and tops are obviously more versatile than dresses because you can adapt more easily to the season. Though I’ve seen Black Cat – who really is French because she was born and bred here – wear a dress with a top or pullover as though it were a skirt. Unless you are absolutely certain that you aren’t going to gain a gram during your holidays, avoid clothing that is skin tight in the hope that by osmosis with the slim French women of your imagination, you might just shed a few kilos along the way. Wishful thinking I’m afraid!

Perhaps you’d like something more specific. Well I’ll try and remember what I took (and wore) on our holiday to Croatia last year where temperatures ranged from 10°C to 35°C and our activities included cycling, walking, swimming and sightseeing. I prefer to wear a lot of blouses so I’ve learnt how to track down inexpensive ironing services wherever I go! I also have a foot problem which means comfortable shoes are a must.

–          1 pair of lightweight jeans
–          1 pair of beige pants (full length)
–          1 pair of light brown pants (full length) and more dressed up than the others
–          1 pair of fushia ¾ pants
–          1 pair of white ¾ pants
–          1 pair of ¾ jeans that can also be used for cycling if it’s a bit cold
–          1 brown skirt the same colour as the long pants
–          1 red polo neck sweat shirt (to go with all pants except fushia)
–          1 blue polo neck sweat shirt (to go with beige & white pants & jeans)
–          1 light brown jacket same colour as pants & skirt (to go with beige and brown)
–          1 white denim jacket (for fushia & white pants & jeans)
–          1 long-sleeved denim shirt/jacket
–          3 T-shirts (white, red & light blue) (I don’t often wear T-shirts but they can be useful)
–          3 white blouses (for fushia pants & jeans)
–          1 pale yellow blouse (for brown & beige)
–          1 pale pink blouse (for brown & beige)
–          1 green & white sleeveless check shirt (that only goes with one thing but it’s my only sleeveless blouse!)
–          1 decent-looking caramel-coloured waterproof jacket with hood and white fleecy-lined front-zip jacket to go underneath
–          1 pair of walking shoes
–          1 pair of walking sandals (also used for cycling)
–          1 pair of ordinary sandals
–          1 straw hat
–          enough underwear & socks for 5 days with 2 pairs of socks for each pair of pants
–          swimsuit & pareo & plastic shoes
–          cotton kimono & scuffs
Cycling
–          2 pairs of denin shorts for cycling (because they’re the most comfortable)
–          2 cycling T-shirts that are fast-drying and no-iron
–          1 windcheater for cycling

What would you add or subtract?

Birthday Lunch at Carre des Feuillants

Every year on my birthday, Relationnel takes me to a surprise venue.  In 2010, it was La Cascade in the Bois de Boulogne and last year it was the Ritz, no less! It was a perfect spring day and we were able to sit outside in the inner courtyard. I am embarrassed to say that I don’t remember what I ate but I know it was delicious and that the service was impeccable. The Ritz is currently closed for Renovation.

This year, I had suggested we have lunch at Les Ombres, the restaurant on top of the Quai Branly ethnic museum because I’ve seen photos  of the stunning views of the Eiffel Tower but with a temperature of 12°C, uncertain skies and disappointing reports about the food, we decided to change venue. What an excellent idea!  Because Relationnel chose  Michelin 2-star chef Alain Dutournier’s Carré des Feuillants just off Place Vendôme. Not exactly in the same league.

Discreet but warm welcome into a very modern and spacious dining room. We both chose the all-inclusive “Idées de la Saison” menu including drinks, starting with champagne to accompany the mouth-watering mises en bouche. Then the starters: fresh wild salmon on a bed of boletus mushrooms, smoked salmon with horseradish and blue lobster with tiny fried spring rolls, followed by melt-in-the-mouth suckling lamb from the Pyrenées with cress and aubergine lasagna. The cheese was a strong Roquefort with a dried fruit centre.

We had a glass of Montée de Tonnère chablis 2010 from Château de Maligny with our starters, followed by a Domaine Gauby côtes de Roussillon 2002 with the lamb and a Château de Carles 2008 fronsac with the cheese. Relationnel asked if he could try a demi-sec white instead which proved to be a much better combination. The wine did not seem to be limited.

Only the desserts , based on vacherin and raspberries, were disappointing. Either  Alain Dutournier isn’t interested in sweet food or he’s chosen the wrong pâtissier! I’m not a big fan of desserts but when I have them, I like to remember them! The petits fours with the coffee were good though. In any case, the service was perfect throughout, attentive without being obsequious and all was well orchestrated. When I was reading the menu, the print was too small so the waiter went and got me some glasses!

Alain Dutournier, who comes from the southwest of France, has three other restaurants : Au Trou Gascon (his first address) in the 12th arrondissement, Pinxo in the 1st and Caves Marly in Versailles. Pinxo sounds very interesting from the blurb on the DVD that you get when you leave : “Original concept conceived and created by Alain Dutournier – contemporary french (sic) restaurant – dishes executed in an open kitchen – surprising combinations, creative and authentic cuisine that focuses on the products – instantaneity of preparation and quick sampling are key words – all the dishes presented by three parts can be easily shared. Wide choice of authentic wines by open price levels (NOT MY TRANSLATION, by the way!). Might just try it sometime.

Carré des Feuillants, 14 rue de Castiglione, 75001 Paris
01 42 86 82 82 carredesfeuillants@orange.fr – www.carredesfeuillants.fr

Sunday’s Travel Photos – Mostar – Bosnia Herzegovina

I described our visit to Mostar in Part 4 of My Croatian Itinerary series. It was a terribly hot murky day and it felt as though we had reached the end of the earth, but the little cobbled street leading up to the famous arch bridge and over the other side was absolutely full of tourists. It was so wonderful when we finally reached the shady inner courtyard of the Ottoman house and had it to ourselves.

Adjusting to Living in Two Houses

Well, so far, I’m not doing so well! Relationnel came back to Paris on Sunday night by car and I followed by bus and train on Monday afternoon because I had to wait for the EDF man to increase the wattage. When I caught the metro in Paris, I suddenly realised that I had left the keys to my Paris apartment in Blois. Fortunately the train was late so Relationnel was home by the time I got there. I’ve now borrowed the keys from my cleaning lady.

When I took my shower in Paris, I had trouble getting used to the taps and the shower rose being at the wrong end! Then when I woke up during the night, it took me a while to work out where I was. That has never ever happened to me before. I am always totally aware of my environment the minute I wake up. I walked into the bookcase, then the divider before I finally realised I was going in the wrong direction.

Next morning, I was about to set up my computer (I had taken my CPU to Blois to transfer everything to my laptop but never found the time) when I discovered I had left the multi-socket thing in Blois as well. Sigh. Relationnel brought home another one at lunchtime but in the meantime, I had a rather frustrating morning trying to work with the laptop which doesn’t have all the files and programs I need.

I had no problem adapting back to my Paris kitchen though. It’s so much more practical! I don’t have to kneel down to take things out of the oven for a start. I pull out a drawer to get to the saucepans instead of bending down to find them in a low cupboard. I have plenty of bench space and a high stool to sit on when my feet are tired. The sink is made for people over 1 m 70 and there’s lots of food in the pantry (though nothing in the fridge …).

However, when I walked into my office, I was greeted by two flowering orchids (birthday presents from Leonardo in the past) and some African violets that had bloomed in my absence but I had missed the tulips on the balcony altogether! I hope that the wisteria will still be in bloom in Blois when we go back at the end of the month. I adore wisteria and the Loire is just full of it at the moment.

We have always made the choice not to have a country house or a beach hut so that we are free to go where we want on holidays because we love discovering new places. As a result, I don’t think I have ever spent more than one week at a time in any place other than my home of the moment, except maybe two weeks in a house near Albi about 10 years ago! So I don’t usually have any trouble remembering where I am.  When I spent the day alone in Blois on Monday, I really felt at home which I guess is what made the transition to Paris more difficult.

All the downstairs rooms are now furnished and decorated even if there are still a few details missing. You can see the photos on the website for the gîte under Accommodation: www.closeriefalaiseau.com.

This time, to make the transition a little easier, I dug out one of the two sweat shirts I wore most days in Blois. I immediately felt better. Maybe there is something to Linus’ security blanket after all!

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