Musings

• I went to the grocery store in our village yesterday and bought two ribs of stalk of celery. (I had to look up the definition to be sure that I had the terms correct.) I don’t think I have ever bought celery by the rib before. I don’t know whether it is a French thing but I am sure that every time I buy celery in the states, the stalk comes in a plastic bag. You don’t slide the stalk out and break off some ribs. You buy the whole stalk in its plastic bag.

• If I wanted to make something with a pumpkin-like squash, I could tell the vendor to cut off as much as I wanted; I wouldn’t have to buy the whole squash.

• When the vendor has cut the piece of squash or I hand over the ribs of celery to be weighed, I put them in a bag which I carry and reuse with regularity. The French have gotten serious about the overabundance of plastic and do not permit merchants to provide plastic bags unless they are made of bio-degradable materials. No one at the checkout counter asks “paper or plastic”. You are expected to bring your own shopping bags. (Grocery stores have not provided shopping bags for purchases for as long as we have been coming to France but eliminating the produce plastic bags is relatively new.)

• The perils of plastic remind me of an Italian cartoon I saw on Facebook in which the fish monger is handing a whole fish to a woman and the woman asks: “No plastic bag?” to which the fish monger replies: “It’s already inside.”

• We recently had a mechanical problem with our French car: the power steering went out. We had to call a towing service to transport our car to a garage. First, I had to learn the term for power steering (direction assistée) so I could begin to explain the problem to the tow truck operator. Then, I didn’t know the term for tow truck (camion de dépannage, dépanneuse). The French terms – repair truck, repairer – are more generic than English which was a good thing in this instance as the truck that arrived was a flat-bed; not a tow truck at all.

• For all of the allegiance to supporting handicappers in France, there are few sidewalks in this village which would accommodate a wheel chair…

• I have written before that Vaison la Romaine is a tourist town because it has the most extensive Roman ruins sites in all of France. Being a tourist town means that the population changes from about 7000 in the winter to 14000 in the summer. Being here in the low season has its challenges. Several restaurants have only eight or nine month schedules. If the restaurants are open all year, it is certain that they close for several weeks in the winter for congé annuel – annual vacation. It is not rare to plan to go to a restaurant only to find a sign on the door saying congé annuel or fermeture exceptionelle (closed due to unforeseen circumstances). Add to that the regular weekly closings of all commerce (closed after noon on Sunday and many places stay closed all of Monday), one learns that it is necessary to have provisions in place because one cannot jump in the car on a Sunday and go to a store to pick up a forgotten item and expect it to be open. And don’t bother thinking about the concept of 24/7.

• Twelve years ago, someone staying at our apartment wanted to find a café or a coffee shop where he could order a take-out coffee. I don’t know whether it is a good thing but there are now a couple of shops that will sell a coffee to go and now there is also MacDo – the term the French use for MacDonald’s – in Vaison : (.

I Know Where You Are From

Do you remember in the movie Inglorious Basterds when Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is discovered to be a spy because he orders three beers in a German bar raising his hand and using his index, middle and ring finger for the order? Our hand gestures, facial expressions and mannerisms are part of our identity.

     I used to be “discovered” to be American when I would raise my index finger to designate one of something. At the crèche where I volunteer, the kids learn to count using their thumb for “one”, their index finger for “two”, etc. When I teach the kids word games that have hand gestures, I have to remember to use the French system.

     If you are getting dessert in France (or in England), you will get a spoon with your dessert even when it is cake or pie. Forks are apparently not for eating dessert. Spoons are reserved for eating ice cream or pudding but not for eating cake or pie. By the way, “pudding” is the generic name for dessert in England whether it is pudding or pie or sherbet. Giving your guests the option of using a spoon or a fork when you serve pie or cake for dessert will help discover where they are from: the Americans will pick up the fork; the French (and the English) will pick up the spoon.

     If you see a person asking someone a question and they don’t start by saying “hello, how are you” (or similar salutations), you can pretty much guess that the person is an American. We want the answer, now! No wasting time with unnecessary pleasantries (though pleasantries ARE necessary)!

     It used to be that if you saw someone wearing sweats in public, you knew the person was American but wearing sweats or jogging suits is becoming more prevalent in France. (It still doesn’t make it right.)

     At the market, I continue to be amazed at how well the market vendors can pick one’s nationality. I sometimes feel that I have “American” stamped on my forehead because the vendors have already figured out where I am from and offer me the “discount for Americans”. I know American clothes are different from European clothes but what about when I am wearing my purchased-in-the-village jacket over my American shirt? How do they know? Shoes could be a giveaway. Americans wear comfortable shoes – often trainers or walking shoes – and often white ones…

Travels from France

First of all, it has been a really long time since I have posted my observations. When I finished my text, I couldn’t remember the procedure for creating a post. It took me a few minutes of reflection before I remembered that Google has a variety of apps and “Blogger” is one of them.  Posting a new article should be straight forward: I have written and posted more than 150 of them. I guess when readers of my blogs have said that it has been a long time since they have seen any now posts, they are right! Let’s see if I can still do this…

We had two trips out of France this year. We went to Barcelona to meet Lansing friends and the four of us went on to Bordeaux via Carcassonne. The second trip was to Florence as our next-door neighbors (Lansing) invited us to join them at the apartment that they had rented there.

Ellen and I had not been to Barcelona in fifty years. I guess it has changed. The Gaudi cathedral (Sagrada Familia) is closer to being finished. As we did on our last visit, we ambled along Las Ramblas but so much has changed. Barcelona hosted the Olympics (1992) and appears to have used the opportunity to clean up the whole city, especially the waterfront area. We had tips on places to see and good restaurants in which to eat from our friends at Thé Chez Toi who had lived in Barcelona before they moved to Vaison.

Carcassonne is one of the most famous walled cities from the middle ages and we wanted our friends to see it. We also wanted them to try Cassoulet – the white bean, sausage and duck confit stew - in the region where the recipe was created. We stayed at an old (Renaissance era) hotel in Caunes-Minervois; a hotel at which Ellen and I had stayed 12 years ago. The owner, Frederic Guiraud, is a charming man who is continually working at updating Hôtel d’Alibert. Our only disappointment was that the owner had closed the restaurant but he made reservations for us at another place. The rooms were large but just the idea of sleeping in a room that is older than the United States gives me pause.

We left Caunes-Minervois and headed off to Bordeaux. Travel has changed dramatically since the arrival of smart phones. Twelve years ago, when Ellen and I were travelling across the south of France, I found the Hôtel d’Alibert in Rick Steves guide and called from the car. (Ten years before that, we didn’t have cell phones.) This trip, Ellen not only let the owner of the hotel know when we were arriving but used her phone to find restaurants along the route.

Bordeaux was as good as friends said it would be. It is a vibrant city. On the first day there, our trolley trip was interrupted by a huge demonstration about climate change. We didn’t let it rain on our parade. We made it to the Cité du Vin – the new wine museum. It is a museum with a lot of interactive displays so we all had fun trying to improve our wine knowledge. We took a side trip to St. Emillion to taste wine.

We had been to Florence before but for only a day. The apartment that our neighbors rented was in the center of the city only a kilometer from the city market and the Duomo – the spectacular white and green marble cathedral in the center of the city. Even in early April, the lines of tourists waiting to enter a museum or historic site were foreboding. The apartment was close to Piazza San Marco and a tourist group staging area so we were sharing the narrow sidewalks with tour groups of seniors or school-age children. I can’t imagine what maneuvering the city would be like in July.

We ate well and drank well. Our neighbor loves Chianti classico and he found a number of great ones for us to try.

One day, on our walk to the city market, we noticed that there was a photo exhibition of David Bowie being shown at the Medici Palace. The exhibition, called “Heroes – Bowie by Sukita” was a collection of photos taken by Japanese photographer Masayoshi Sukita that spanned the public life of David Bowie from 1972 until his death in 2016. The juxtaposition of photos of a pop icon in the city palace of the Medici family (construction started in 1445) made the exhibit all the more interesting.

I love our village in France but must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed Barcelona and Florence. I can get pretty chauvinistic about French wines and French cuisine but I also appreciate the quality of the foods and wines in Spain and Italy. The things that made the trip special were friends. Experiences are so much richer when they are shared.

La Bureaucratie Française

A bureaucracy is “a government administered primarily by bureaus staffed with non-elected officials”.[1] Bureaucracies were established in ancient China, in ancient Egypt, in the Roman empire and have continued to modern times. Karl Marx, Max Weber, Woodrow Wilson, among others, wrote about the advantages of bureaucracies.

Over time, the definition has moved to describe the “dark side” of bureaucracy. We talk about the red tape, the inefficiencies and the problems and have come to expect that an encounter with a bureaucrat will be negative. Ellen and I have heard horror stories about the French bureaucracy and have come to fear that we may have to meet with impatient and impolite functionaries.

Au contraire, mes amis! Our encounters with la bureaucratie française have been positive.

Maybe it is because the specter of an encounter with an impolite or bored functionary makes us invest an inordinate amount of time in preparation. Maybe it is because we are polite. Maybe it is because we speak French. Maybe it is because we’re old. Whatever the reason (most likely the last one), we have had only successful and positive encounters with the French system.

Case in point: the French visa process. In the original application, we had to travel to Chicago to visit the French consulate to obtain our first visa. We arrived armed for bear and encountered a lamb of a bureaucrat. She was most impressed with the notebooks with tabs marking the sections to match the questions that Ellen had created. “Très organisé!” she said to her colleague as she held up the notebook. A few weeks later – in the timeframe she had given us – our visas arrived and we were off to France.

Each time that we have gone to our local prefecture in Avignon to renew our visas, we have had similar experiences. The appointments have been efficient. At the prefecture, you are greeted by a person who asks why you are there and then helps you select the right category so you end up with the appropriate number for the queue (there are multiple reasons that people need to meet with a bureaucrat: driver’s license, identity cards, visas and each category appears on the overhead screens with the number of the person currently being served. Our waits have been short even though I am pretty meticulous about being there with plenty of time prior to our scheduled appointment time.

It seems now that the hardest part of our “day with the bureaucrats” comes after the appointment when we have to choose where we will have lunch in Avignon!😊

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[1] Vocabulary.com

Compare and contrast « Ob-la-di » with « Ob-la-da-blah-blah-blah»

Every year we come to France, I am struck by the differences between our countries. We have been doing this transcontinental shuffle for ten years (!) now but the contrasts are still striking.

There are the givens of geography: Provence is much sunnier than Michigan. Even though our village is at a latitude comparable to Traverse City, MI, the weather is much milder. I have read that Global Warming will negatively affect the Gulf Stream and Europe will lose the warming effects that the Gulf Stream brings but at the moment, the warm winds continue to make the Provence climate feel like South Carolina.

Another thing that strikes me each trip is that Americans are heavier than French people. When one thinks about the differences in cuisine, one might conclude that the French ought to be heavier given all of the wonderful sauces and cheeses added to foods (not to mention all of the wonderful French pastries and, of course, wine). I am guessing that the biggest difference is that snacking in France is at a minimum. One does not find a rack of candy bars at the check-out lanes of the grocery stores in France.

Relatedly, the French dress better. In general, they have not adopted American ultra-casual styles. For instance, one rarely sees people in sweats at a store or an event. Many French people wear sport shoes as we do in the US but they are most often not white. French women are especially aware of fashion trends and seem to buy the latest styles. In terms of fashions, France is the land of scarves. Women and men wear scarves in every season but in winter the scarves are as long as a person is tall and though a scarf often looks like the person threw it on, it has been wound and knotted with careful attention.

Another striking difference is that Americans are louder. At a restaurant or at a café, the noise level is lower than in the states. Ellen and I were at a bistro for lunch one day and a woman at another table laughed out loud – so loudly that people turned to see where the noise was coming from. When we go out to eat, you can usually identify the Americans in the restaurant by the decibels emanating from their table. I also think that the French have a different intonation in their voices. You don’t have to hear the words to know that the person is speaking French.

There is much less litter in France. I don’t know whether that is due to an awareness of the environment or the fact that cities and villages still hire street sweepers whose job it is to keep the streets litter free. The downside to street sweepers is that French sidewalks are often booby-trapped with dog-do. (The attitude among many French dog owners is that since the street sweeper is paid with my taxes to clean the streets, it is not my responsibility to do his job. The attitude is slowly changing.)

The French smoke a lot! Leaving the airport terminal as we arrived, we had to walk through a veil of cigarette smoke from people standing outside of the terminal. Smoking is much more pervasive than in the states. You cannot smoke in enclosed spaces in France but all of the cafés have an outdoor smoking section and even on cold days, people sit outside all bundled up in order to have a cigarette with their glass of wine or cup of coffee.

Our lives go on and the differences between France and America increase or diminish over time. The only constant is change.

Random observations

It has been very chilly here. The daytime temperature going only as high as 50° is bad enough but when the Mistral is blowing it is downright cold. We walked up to the old town yesterday and the wind was a literal slap in the face. (I understand that the word literal no longer means only literally. It can also mean figuratively.)  It was supposed to warm up before Easter but the wind continues to keep the temperatures cold…

Many of the shops do not heat the interior or if they are heated, they set the temperature very low. Several stores leave the entry door open even when the outside temperature is around 45° F. The clerks work while wearing big sweaters or coats and scarves. Customers don’t seem to mind.

More than a year ago, a dear friend sent me the Food Section of the New York Times. The section was titled: “The New Essentials of French Cooking” by Melissa Clark and includes 10 recipes. Since receiving the section, I have been going through the recipes to learn them. So far, I have been successful in making Coq au Vin, Cassoulet, Sole Meunière, Omelet, Ratatouille, Quiche and Steak. I have yet to try Tajine, Pommes Anna and Soufflé. I think my favorites so far are Cassoulet and Sole Meunière though I love making/eating Ratatouille and what’s not to like about a recipe that calls for marinating chicken with a bottle of wine? I would never have predicted that Tajine would be on the list but the author says that this dish of North African origins is so good it has found its way into French cooking. (I agree with her: it is quite good.)

It has been fun learning new recipes. My kitchen skills are still fairly minimal – I don’t have the creativity of our friend Dan or my high school friend who writes the food blog Yo Jo, What’s for Dinner but I enjoy shopping and then cooking. Plus, now I have more than six recipes so we no longer have to eat the same recipe twice in one week.

It is supposedly spring here though the temperatures belie the fact. But, one can now find asparagus and strawberries in the market. The early asparagus is expensive but the price drops every week until the end of the asparagus season. The strawberries are so sweet, one cannot imagine how nature packs so much sweetness into the berries. Soon, the vendors will start selling the softball-sized melons that are grown about 50 km south of here.

Related to the strawberries – and other foods as well – the location at which the produce is grown is important in France. Somewhat like Americans who buy salmon and choose the salmon based on its source. In Provence, the best strawberries come from Carpentras – a city about 25 km from here. The best melons come from Cavaillon. If you like mussels, the best mussels come from Brittany – moules de Bouchot. The best lentils come from Le Puy-en-Velay. And then there are the cheeses – all of which have a geographic origin. French gruyere for instance is called Comté and comes from the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. Grocery stores must post the country of origin for fruits, vegetables, honey and meat.

We have had a rush of visitors: our next door neighbor from Lansing, a long-time friend and colleague of Ellen with her friend. It has been fun – it is always fun – to show people why we like Provence as much as we do. On the clear days, the sky is a brilliant blue and the limestone in the mountains seems to glisten. And, of course, limestone contributes to creating the wonderful wines of Provence – les Côtes du Rhône – which have become my favorite wines.

St. Valentine’s Day Dinner Chez Entre Amis

We decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day by going out for dinner. We went to a new restaurant in the middle of town that is quickly becoming a favorite of ours: Entre Amis (Between Friends). We have eaten well there twice since our return in December and the last time we were there we learned that the chef was a woman – fairly uncommon in this area. In fact, Entre Amis is the only restaurant that I can think of that has a female chef.

The restaurant was offering a special Valentine’s Day menu that looked inviting. (Every time there is duck on the menu, I say the menu looks inviting.) The meal started with an “amuse bouche” of black olive tapenade on toasts. Their tapenade is very strongly garlic-flavored. I love it! The “amuse bouche” was followed by a “P’tite Pomme d’Amour” which was not an apple at all but instead a fat cherry tomato dipped in toffee and then rolled in crumbled nuts.

The Entrée was « Gravlax de Cabillaud agrémenté d’un Duo de Betterave et d’une Tuile aux herbes ». Raw cod served with tiny pickled beet tips and herb crisps. The seasoning was very delicate but savory. The herb crisps were like thin baked pesto crisps and were an attractive addition.

Question: Do you eat crisps with your fingers or with a fork? The French seem to know how to handle every food item without touching it with their fingers. – I used my fingers.

The Plat: « Magret de Canard aux saveurs Provençales et son Foie Gras accompagnés d’un Mélange Gourmand. » The main course was a duck breast with seasonings from Provence, foie gras served on a bed of couscous with vegetables. Again the flavors were perfect. The couscous was prepared with lemon zest and minced vegetables. The foie gras was warmed. (I prefer it cold.) The server said that the chef prefers to serve the duck breast “rose” (pink). It was delicious.

The dessert was: « Guimauve parfumé à la Noix de Coco et son Coeur Passion sur un Croquant de Spéculos » round marshmallows coated with coconut and served on a spice biscuit. This was a fun and light dessert.

Question: Why do the French (and the English) provide only a spoon for eating dessert? I have trouble picking things up with a spoon when a fork would work better.

The evening ended with a glass of Floraison de champagne – a tiny glass of champagne in which they had placed a litchi making for a perfumed drink to end the evening.

I had chosen a Domaine Martin 2015 Plan de Dieu red wine which is a mostly Grenache (60%) Rhone blend. It went well with the duck breast.

I hope your Valentine’s Day was as much fun (and as flavorful) as ours.

Stepping Out

Now that we are back in France, it is clear what I miss most about France when we are away: steps, baguettes and local groceries. (The list could go on for several more pages, but these three come to mind first.)

Baguettes and local groceries are related to steps. Each morning, I walk to get a baguette. Then I walk to the local groceries and do the grocery shopping for the day and later I may need to make an extra trip for something that I forgot. At the end of most days, I have accumulated more than 10,000 steps just doing errands.

When in Lansing, I have to drive to a grocery. I used to walk to the City Market but all of the produce vendors have closed their booths. I now go to the City Market only for cheese. There are no small grocery vendors in Lansing though there are three within the center of Vaison la Romaine. I had hoped that the people who are buying lofts and condos in downtown Lansing might have created a demand for a local grocery but it has not happened yet… Maybe the recently passed legislation, introduced by Lansing Representative Andy Schorr, to bring groceries to urban food deserts will provide the incentive to establish local groceries or maybe Andy Schorr becoming mayor will bring a renewal of downtown Lansing commerce. We will see.

Grocery stores located beyond walking distance are an inconvenience but I can still get in my car and drive to one of the big box stores in Lansing. Finding a bakery that sells baguettes, on the other hand, is impossible. (People may object to my statement that there are no baguettes in Lansing by pointing out that almost every grocery sells a loaf of bread they call “baguettes”. They are all correct. But, I am talking about real, crusty baguettes, not the soft as white bread versions that most stores offer.) It seems that real baguettes have a freshness timer in them. If you don’t eat all of your baguette in one day, it turns hard. All you can do is use a plastic bag to keep the baguette soft or break up the hard left-over piece and make bread crumbs. Our while-in-Lansing solution is to buy frozen baguettes and bake them at home. The frozen baguettes are an acceptable substitute but far from the crunchy joys of a freshly baked baguette!

I guess that I have just become a proponent of “shop local, buy local”. I appreciate that I can walk that philosophy while I am in France – and am waiting for the day when it will be true in Lansing.

La Feria de Paques in Arles

We went with American friends to Arles for «La Feria de Paques» (Easter Festival). Ellen read that the festival draws 500,000 people to Arles! There is music, paella, bullfights and wine. We chose to go on Saturday which is also the regular «market day» for the city.

Our visitors said that they wanted to go to the bullfights in the arena in Arles. We would have avoided the event because the idea of watching a bullfight has never made it to my bucket list. Our visitors had learned that there were two types of bullfights: the traditional gory spectacle and the non-killing performances. Our friends had heard that the newer style of bullfighting was where the matador pulled flowers from a flower crown that the bull wore.

We had a great lunch at one of our favorite restaurants (Hotel Voltaire) and then made our way toward the place where they were having the non-carnage bull fights. (There were no bulls killed in this arena.) In this small arena, we watched a half dozen or so junior/apprentice matadors honing their skills in the arena. These young men (ages 15-20) were very confident and very thin. So thin that a bull would have had a difficult time in finding one of them as its target. Despite their body type, they were valiant and aggressive facing the animal charging at them. There was one instance where the bull succeeded in pulling the matador’s cape from his hands and then the bull started to chase the matador who showed that he was not only capable at using his cape, he was fast on his feet and climbed the arena wall before the bull could get close.

The bullfights we watched were more like bull teases. There was little to compare them to the bullfights that Hemingway described in The Sun Also Rises. One must still admire the courage and confidence of the young men as they stood in the path of a charging bull.

I like the city of Arles. The arena is a major attraction, but for me, it is the city where Van Gogh painted «Café Terrace at Night,» «Garden of the Hospital in Arles» and of course «Starry Nights». (I have been singing/humming Don McClain’s «Starry Nights» ever since we were in Arles.) After the bullfights, we took our friends to the place where Van Gogh painted «Starry Nights» and then we walked back to the place where we had parked the car.

The route I chose took us past the Roman-built arena in the center of Arles. BIG MISTAKE choosing this route! We were walking away from the arena as the rest of the people were heading to the arena for the 4:30 bullfights - all 500,000 of them (or so it seemed). I told Ellen to let me lead the way because I look old and people would clear a path for me. (wrong!) The crowds were so thick that people could not step to the side. We slowly made our way past the arena, over the hill and back to the car.

We left Arles to drive back to Vaison. Curiously, the GPS took us past Nimes; the other city in France that has a Roman-built arena and still uses it for bullfights (les Corridas).

Rally round Spring

Ah, the early signs of spring: the almond trees are blooming, asparagus is on sale at the market, the streets are filled with Rally cars. (?)

Last weekend was the annual auto rally. It happens at the beginning of March every year in Vaison la Romaine. People and their cars start arriving around noon on Friday and by Friday evening, the upper parking lot and the field are filled with trailers and tents and tarps on which mechanics lie or sit and work on making the last adjustments to the cars.

I recently read a nice description of road rallies in the book Fatal Pursuit by Martin Walker (the recent addition to the Bruno French Chief of Police series.) I enjoyed walking around the cars and listening to the teams talk but If you are interested in car rallies, I refer you to Fatal Pursuit or some other source.

A sure sign of spring is when the produce sellers start selling asparagus at the market. Last Tuesday, there were three or four stalls that had asparagus. The first asparagus is extremely expensive: 11€ a kilo (about $6.00 per pound). As spring progresses, the price will drop to the point where the price will match the Michigan asparagus price at the height of the season; about a dollar a pound.

Soon the asparagus will be affordable and we can start making spring vegetable risotto, asparagus soup, etc... Asparagus might be a vegetable that is difficult to pair with wine but I love it just the same.

As spring asserts its presence, we will soon be able to get delicious strawberries from Carpentras and small (about the size of a softball) melons from Cavaillon. La vie est bonne. Life is good.

Robert Burns Night

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, 

Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o' a grace
As lang's my arm. 

Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis

(First and last stanza. Address to a Haggis. by Robert Burns)

I can say in all honesty that there are two things that I would never have imagined doing during our days in France: attending a Robert Burns birthday celebration and eating haggis. Last week we did both and had a wonderful time!

There was a certain serendipity to the event. We happened to run into UK friends while shopping last week. We talked for a while and then provided them with our phone numbers. Before we got home, we had a message inviting us to join them for dinner. When we called to confirm that we would love to have dinner with them, the hosts clarified that it was for a Robert Burns night - January 25 to celebrate the birthday of the Scottish poet - and that in addition to the traditional agenda of the evening, we would be eating haggis. So, a new opportunity. . .

Our hosts had decorated their house in a Scottish theme. They even had found “Robbie Burns” napkins to complement the appetizer. I had put on my most representative plaid shirt and we headed out of our village, traversing time and geography to reach the moors of Scotland. People arrived wearing Scottish plaids and tam o’ shanters. There were no bagpipes to greet us but our host plays the piano and played "The Skye Boat song" as we moved to the dining room.

The evening included poems between the meal courses and a lot of wine, though the traditional Scotch was also offered for a toast. Though not everyone drank it, a Burns Night would hardly be complete without it.

And then there was the haggis... It was served as the Robert Burns poem Address to a Haggis was read. I purposely did not look up the description of how haggis is made. I had a recollection of ingredients that left me not interested in ever trying it. I was wrong! It was very tasty and I did not have to ruin my Robbie Burns napkin by hiding my haggis in it.

As our (Ellen’s) contribution to the evening, Ellen had researched the links between Scotland and the USA. She found that Burns had had a strong influence on our own President Lincoln as well as many other Americans during his time. She talked about how President Lincoln had enjoyed Robert Burns’ poetry and how the two men had had similar philosophies of social equality and nonjudgmental tolerance. Lincoln had recited Burns poems from the time he was a teenager and these poems influenced the cadence that Lincoln used in his public speaking. It was a gratifying discovery, especially in these times when presidential rhetoric has changed so much.

The evening ended with all of us singing "Auld Lang Syne" (another Burns poem).

Là breith sona dhuit, Robbie. (happy birthday, Robbie)

Slow Trains

Years ago, I asked my secretary to do something that was either redundant or not needed which she pointed out to me. I still asked her to do it – whatever it was, only to realize that she was right. When she brought me the results, I apologized and admitted that I was wrong. She looked at me over the top of her big 1970s glasses and said: “When God was handing out brains, you thought he said trains and said ‘I’ll take the slow one.’”

Taking the Amtrak train to Chicago last week, I was thinking that I have still not learned my lesson. I still take the slow one. Taking the train to Chicago requires as much time as driving. If we had been able to take a French fast train, we would have arrived in Chicago in less than two hours. Instead, we were on the train for almost four hours.

It is so different from taking a train in France. The French trains are called “TGV” (Train à Grande Vitesse) and they roll at 130 miles an hour.

The big difference is that French trains can roll without interruption. They never have to cross a road or street. Every rail/road intersection is either an overpass or an underpass. The Amtrak train to Chicago crossed a street or road about every four or five minutes until the train got past Niles, MI and then completed the route on Chicago train tracks (no street crossings).

Amtrak does not own the rails on which its trains operate. They have had to rent rail line time from freight lines and, as renters, Amtrak gets lower right of way priority. (Our trip to Chicago was slowed by 15-20 minutes because of a rail use conflict. Our delay was small in comparison to horror stories that we have heard.)

Europe made train travel a priority and as a result has an amazing network of rail lines. A person can leave London in the morning and have dinner in the south of France the same day. The trains are electric and controlled by a computer network. They are as clean as they are fast. Newer rail beds and electric motors make for a very smooth ride on trains in France. The Amtrak ride was not nearly as smooth. Walking to the café car on the way to Chicago, I looked like a little boy who had filled his pants with my wide stride so as not to fall on someone as the cars jostled back and forth. Needless to say, I held my beverage rather than setting it on the tray.

Not everyone likes the fast trains. We have an ex-pat friend who laments the loss of slow trains in Europe. He claims that one can no longer get a proper meal on a train. No more dinner jacket dining for the James Bond types of the world.

I may have chosen the slow one before but now I prefer the fast trains of France.

Rolling up the sidewalks

We still get questions from friends who ask about the differences that we note between life in Lansing and life in Vaison la Romaine. We still get questions about how long it takes to readjust to one environment or the other. 

Since we have been living our schizophrenic lives for the last eight years, I usually explain that we now have a routine of how we handle the changes in location and life style. For the most part, once we have put the clothes away and returned things to where they belong, we are pretty much settled. 

Even though our life in France follows the beat of a different drummer than our life here, we have come to enjoy the differences in tempo and thus enjoy wherever we are. After so many years, it is rare that we encounter a situation that surprises us. Sometimes it takes a visitor to the US or a visitor to France to ask a question that surprises us and makes us think about the contrasts. For example, a French person asking about why we permit pharmaceutical companies to advertise on television (not permitted in France) or an American visiting France who asked what stores are open on Sunday afternoon (none!).

Friday evening however, I surprised myself in my incorrect assumptions about our life in Lansing. We had gone to a concert and invited other concert-goers to join us for a drink after the performance. We chose a restaurant in the heart of downtown Lansing and went to wait for our friends there. We walked through the door at 9:36 and the hostess announced that the kitchen had closed at 9:30. We had eaten before the concert so food was not the objective in going there but nonetheless...

• If we had been in France - even in our little village - the dinner service would have continued until 11:00 PM. In Paris, people often arrive at restaurants after 9:00. (In Spain, it seems that the most popular dinner hour is 10:00.)

• The waiter brought our bill shortly after 10:30. To me it was a clear suggestion that we drink up and leave.

To tell the truth, we may have picked the one restaurant in downtown Lansing that closed early. I just never expected that the well-known restaurant that we picked would operate on such a schedule. The restaurant across the street appeared to be open and seemed to have a lot of people in it. I know I am using broad strokes to paint this picture but really... I never expected the restaurant that we chose to have such a roll-up-the-sidewalks schedule. I had believed that Lansing was more cosmopolitan. 

PS: We drove through downtown Lansing again last night and confirmed that I had chosen the only restaurant to close early; every other food-beverage place seemed to be filled with customers. I guess my skill at picking restaurants matches my skill at choosing the slowest line when going through customs. I have a knack at picking the wrong one.

Home again, home again...

We have been back in Lansing almost a month. We have settled in and our house feels like it is ours again. Clothes and objects that we stored so that our house-sitters would have empty closets and dressers are now back in their proper places.

I have claimed this so often to be boring but we live in the best neighborhood in the city/state/nation. Just one example: our neighbors wanted to surprise us when we came back to Lansing and since we had changed our calendar to be in France until the end of July, they prepared the soil and planted a vegetable garden for us. What a wonderful surprise! We have been enjoying the fruits of their labors since the day that we arrived. (I need more zucchini recipes!)

For the last eight years, we have been following our schedule of half-year here, half-year there. One would think that I had reported on all of the differences between our two life-styles but there are always things that surprise me when we arrive here (and there). 

One big difference this year, we stayed through two of the summer months: June and July. Vaison la Romaine changes a lot in the summer. First of all, the population doubles - from 7,000 to 14,000. A lot of people arrive with their bicycles. They fill the streets and the roads and, after a nice ride, the cafés. Vaison has one of the best street markets in Provence but in the middle of the summer it is packed with people. It is almost impossible to navigate through the throngs. (The locals have advised us to shop early - before 9:00 AM.) The shops that cater to tourists expand their hours. The cafés offer more live music at night thus the cafés are filled from morning until late in the evening. There is a proliferation of ice cream vendors. There are several ice cream specialty shops but the cafés also add ice cream coolers. If one could rank order the popularity of a type of store by the number of stores of that type, in Vaison in the summer the ranking would be beauty salons/coiffeurs, restaurants and cafés, bakeries, ice cream vendors, real estate sales offices... 

Vaison has become known for the dance performances held in July and August at the Roman Amphitheater. We went to one of the performances and I can only describe it as magical. The show started at 10:00 PM - just after sunset - and we and about 5,000 other people were finding our seats in a 2000 year old amphitheater that was built by the Romans. The performance that we saw was by an American company - the Los Angeles Dance Project - though the director is Benjamin Millepied is French and former director of the Paris Opera Ballet (and husband of actress Natalie Portman.)

Another observation: Even though we live in a village in France, people there dress better than people dress here. One expects people of Paris to dress well but the rules of fashion are somewhat relaxed outside of the large cities. One rarely sees people dressed as casually in Vaison as one sees people here. Even the tourists dress better in France. No sweats in public - ever! It reminds me of the quote about wearing sweat pants in public attributed to Jerry Seinfeld: “You’re telling the world ‘I give up.’” (Training outfits/warm-up suits are becoming more popular in France...) The contrast in fashion was underscored for me when I encountered a woman who was wearing pajamas as she shopped in one of the local superstores. Now that is casual! Welcome home!

Nantes and Paris

 

We went to Nantes to visit a dear friend. (We also got to see a friend who we have not seen since she was in East Lansing in 1980!) Nantes is at the mouth of the Loire River on the western coast of France. It was not our first trip there but was the most memorable. We toured the city with our friend who was born and raised there so he is very knowledgeable guide. He lives in the center of the city so we walked most places. 

We took the “Navibus” to the other side of the Loire river and walked around the village of Trentemoult. We visited the island of the city and got to see the huge (three stories high) mechanical elephant that walks around the island.

We went through the castle of the dukes of Brittany (le Château des ducs de Bretagne) and ate at a lovely restaurant facing the castle (Le Fou du Roi - the Court Jester). Every meal during our visit was excellent and, since our friend is a very knowledgeable connoisseur of wine, we drank well.

Note: Nantes was thirty degrees Fahrenheit cooler than Vaison. Everyday, we went out with a jacket!

We left Nantes and took the fast train to Paris. We visited our friends who were staying in Paris for several weeks. Paris is always awesome.

We had planned to go to an American restaurant for dinner on the 4th of July. (American Independence Day is not a holiday in France.) Two of the Americans with whom we were going to eat did not like the restaurant so we decided instead to find a restaurant in the neighborhood that made hamburgers. We found the perfect café and had great hamburgers and fries - with Heinz catsup!

We went to Versailles to see the new exhibition of paintings depicting the role of France in the American Revolutionary War. (The French call it the War of Independence.) It was a very engaging and enlightening exhibit. Somewhere in my past, I remembered that La Fayette had helped Washington and that the French had also sent naval support but I always thought of the French help as a small footnote on the war. The French were very much involved in supporting our independence and fighting England.

There was an exhibit of three hundred years of women’s fashion at the Museum of Decorative Arts. I am probably showing my age but I much prefer the hoop skirts of the seventeenth century to some of the extravagant (outrageous?) fashions of the current time. (There was also a Barbie exhibit at the same building but we decided not to pay to see that exhibit.)

On our last day in Paris, we went to Montmartre - the highest part of Paris. We found a little café and had a wonderful lunch and then spent the afternoon climbing and descending the hills of Montmartre. Ellen wanted to see the little vineyard in Montmartre because she wanted to compare it to the little vineyard our friend had shown her in the center of Nantes. 

As we walked around Paris, I was asking myself if anyone there spoke French. I heard many languages most of which were not French. Maybe it was the multitude of tourists, maybe it was because July is one of the two vacation months for the French and the French-speaking Parisians had left the city. For whatever reason, it was amazing to hear so many languages. 

Bonne fête nationale de France! Happy Bastille Day!

June in Vaison la Romaine

This is the first time we have spent June in France. I am glad we did. The weather is warmer and though we had several severe rain storms at the beginning of the month, it has not rained since - and that is a good thing as no rain means low humidity which means the temperature drops after sunset and the sleeping is easy.

Activities in Vaison increase markedly in June. (It also helps when the European Football Championship is going on and the bars and cafés have their big screens tuned in.) On weekend nights when there is no football, there is music. No matter the reason, people seem to flock to the central square of the town and enjoy the long and cool evenings.

The Alliance Française - Michigan Capital Area Chapter has always dedicated the June soirée to La Fête de la Musique (the music festival). We listen to French music on CD's or sometimes played by talented members of the group, sometimes we sing French songs. I have enjoyed our little tribute to La Fête de la Musique but had no idea of how big the celebration was in France or more accurately in Vaison. 

On the evening of the Solstice, musical groups started playing at around 6:00 PM. There were at least six venues where musicians were playing simultaneously. The groups came and went but the music continued well into the night. All of the cafés and bars had added tables and chairs and they were all full. I have never seen so many people in town as were there for La Fête de la Musique. The central square was filled with people as were the other streets and gathering areas. It was harder to walk from one venue to another than it is to walk through the Tuesday market. Some of the music enticed people to dance - and they did! It was a fun-filled enjoyable evening and a wonderful way to celebrate the Solstice.

Health Care in France

I am continually amazed at the French health care system. 

On Friday morning, Ellen and I walked to the Vaison hospital so that I could have a cyst removed from my eyelid. The operation was the culmination of a four-month process the extent and success of which I am in awe.

When we arrived in France in February, I had developed what looked like a boil on my eyelid. My local doctor referred me to an ophthalmologist. The ophthalmologist corrected my diagnosis: I had a cyst that had become infected. He prescribed antibiotics and suggested that I should have it removed.

Before proceeding with the operation, my physician suggested that I consult with the local cardiologist which I did. The heart doctor did an EKG and an echo cardiogram and he wrote to the ophthalmologist that my heart was functioning well and there would no reason that I could not have the operation. I did not schedule anything for May as we had Lansing visitors and then a trip to Porto, Portugal.

Friday was the day. The cyst had reduced in size from being about the size of an olive pit to being only the size of a grape seed which pleasantly surprised the ophthalmologist. We met him as we were walking to the hospital and he got to meet Ellen. He told her that the surgery would take about an hour and then he asked me to follow him to the operating room.

As promised, we were walking home an hour later. I had a big patch over my left eye which covered four stitches closing the spot from whence he had removed the cyst.

This is all pretty boring stuff except when one compares health care in France (Vaison) with health care in the US. Some things jump out as differences:

• Regular visits to a doctor cost 23 € - under $30 at the current exchange rate.
• Visits to a specialist like the cardiologist are more expensive. I think I paid 150 € for the visit during which I had the EKG and the echo. 
• Before going to the hospital for the surgery, the ophthalmologist had given me a list of medications and supplies that I needed to buy and bring to the hospital. All of the supplies that the ophthalmologist used during the surgery - minus the thread used for the stitches - were in the things that I had purchased at the pharmacy (about 9 €).
• Doctors work alone. My physician does not have any office staff. If I call for an appointment, it is he who answers the phone. The cardiologist has an office assistant but he performs all of the procedures himself. The ophthalmologist performed the surgery by himself. He had no assistance at all.
• As we left the surgery, the ophthalmologist gave me an invoice to pay to the hospital. He reminded me where the billing office was and said: “You don’t have to stop there right now if you don’t want to. Pay the bill when it is convenient for you.” (The bill for my time in the hospital surgery was under $100.) The ophthalmologist had told me that my bill for his time would be about 150 € - $175 - a bill that I won’t see until he removes the stitches.)
• Medical school is free, so those who become doctors are not burdened with overwhelming debt. Malpractice lawsuits are rare in France so doctors do not have to spend huge sums for insurance.

I remember speaking with an emergency room physician several years ago when I had gone to the ER. He said that health care in France costs about one/tenth of what it costs in the US. (He was a French doctor who had worked as a doctor in California before settling in Vaison.)

Not only is the cost of health care significantly less than in the US, prescriptions are equally inexpensive. I had told the cardiologist about a drug that I was taking and that the copay portion that I paid was extremely expensive. He wrote me a prescription for this same drug and my total costs are now about one/third of what my copay was!

I am pleased that we finally have The Affordable Care Act in the US but when I compare it to health care in France, I know that the US has a long way to go in meeting the health care needs of its citizens. We can and must do better in the US.

Travels

I have been reading Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck and it has made me think a lot about traveling. We traveled a lot in May. We entertained neighbors from Lansing at the beginning of the month by showing them some of the sights and sites of our area and then made a trip to Porto, Portugal to meet up with other friends for the end of the month. Traveling familiar roads with neighbors who have never seen the area forces you to adopt a different way of looking at the area based on their questions and reactions. Their visit expanded our ways of seeing and enjoying beautiful Provence.

Traveling to a different country or a different region of France I notice things that remind me that I am no longer in Provence. It is like the first time we drove to New York via Canada. Once you cross the border, you begin to notice that the houses are just a little different from American houses. It might be construction materials or decorations or maybe gardens but the houses are different. 

The same is true when we crossed the border from France to Spain. The houses south of the Pyrenees were different from French houses. Of course, the predominant culture of the Pyrenees is related to the Basque people and their customs and life style spill over to the style of their houses. Basque houses have wood beams and stucco and thus seemed similar to houses in Switzerland.

Porto and its architecture was different from what we witnessed in Spain. Many houses, buildings and churches were covered with ceramic tiles - some were geometric patterns, others were pieces in a mural. The tiles were predominantly made of shades of blue but there were other bright colors as well.

In Provence, houses are built of stone or cement blocks and covered with stucco. The roofs are orange Spanish tiles and the shutters (everybody has shutters that work and that they use) are painted in muted blues and greens and grays... 

No matter where we went, one thing was constant: local residents recognized us as foreigners - English-speaking foreigners to be exact. I thought that I would have become less recognizable as a foreigner since we have been coming here for so many years but I must have “American” printed on my forehead. Whenever we walked into a restaurant, the waiter would ask if we wanted menus in English. The landscape may change, the architecture may change but we are recognizable no matter where we are.

Chocolate wars

For the eight years that we have been coming here, Vaison has had one gourmet chocolate  shop. There are, of course, chocolates made and sold at some of the bakeries/patisseries and there is the Comptoir de Mathilde which is a franchise and to my way of thinking a tourist shop. 

Peyrerol has been the gourmet chocolate shop in town since it opened in 1998. The chocolates are excellent and always presented in creative ways. For instance, we took a fish made of dark chocolate and painted silver to our friends to celebrate “Poisson d’avril” (fish of April) which is the French version of April Fool’s Day. At Easter, the shop was filled with gorgeous creations of eggs, bunnies and bells (in Europe, Easter goodies are delivered by the bells of Rome). The store has earned the respect of the people in town. When one takes a gift in the distinctive black and red Peyerol bag, the recipient is always delighted and knows that the gift is special. Peyerol has been synonymous with gourmet chocolate in Vaison and has been the best place to buy high-quality chocolate and chocolate creations.

Until now... “There’s a new kid in town...” Renting space in a newly renovated shop and situated right around the corner from Peyerol is Jeff de Bruges. 

Jeff de Bruges is a franchise gourmet chocolate shop. I first heard about the chocolate shop twenty years ago when a Lansing friend asked us to bring some Jeff de Bruges chocolate back to the states for his wife. As the name suggests, it is Belgian chocolate (a hands-down favorite of my brother-in-law.) I don’t know when the company got so big but there are now Jeff de Bruges shops all over France.

This new store has me sitting on the horns of a dilemma. (A very uncomfortable place to sit!) On the one hand, I find myself feeling somewhat chauvinistic and protective and thus thinking that our store (Peyrerol) is enough - thank you very much - and I don’t want this franchise crowding the playing field. On the other hand, I love chocolate and am interested in tasting whether Jeff de Bruges is still as good as I remember. On the other hand, I always prefer locally-owned. And on the other hand, can there ever be too much chocolate?