Friends

Our friends have left Vaison la Romaine and returned to the states. Betty and Cecilia left for Paris on Wednesday and John and Arleen left on Friday. Despite too many rainy days, it was a wonderful visit and a lot of fun to meet the friends of our friends and to enjoy time with the four of them. During our time in Provence, we have been making our way in our village meeting new people and finding new/shared interests. It was wonderful having the chance to meet John’s and Arleen’s friends and getting to know more people that we want to have on the “BFF” list.

If laughter is the best medicine, we should be healthy for quite a while. We had so many laugh out loud moments from sharing stories and experiences. A lot of laughs came from stories of our friends and their missteps in the dance of French culture. (In their defense, they did run into a few folks who should be in counseling for career change.)

I guess most Americans have asked/been asked the following as we clumsily trip our way through a foreign culture:

• Why should one have to ask to have butter on the tablein a restaurant?
•  Why is coffee often served tepid?
•  Why do the French drive so fast? Once they get to the café where they are headed, they will sit there for an hour after they have finished their coffee waiting for the waiter to offer to bring the bill.
• Why do they permit trucks on two-lane roads when the truck takes up one and a half lanes?
•  If you want to have a coffee with cream after 9:00 AM, does it mean that you expect to get a croissant with it?
•  Will people who you know expect three “air kisses” every time you see them?
•  Where can you get “coffee to go” in Vaison la Romaine? (Why would you want “coffee to go” in Vaison la Romaine?)
•  Why can you find only an “eastern style” toilet when you are pressed for time?
•  How can such “cute” (Monopoly-like) currency be worth one and ½ times US currency?
•  Why do most French dictionaries not include words found on menus?
•  Why are there two flush buttons on the top of the toilet?
•  Why does one ask “Ou sont les toilettes” (where are the toilets) when you need only one?
•  How many different kinds of a single cheese are there? In Lansing, we consider ourselves lucky to find Comte or Roquefort. Don’t confuse us with multiple choices of each.
•  Do shopkeepers actually spend 2 ½ hours eating lunch? (In a more American-style question: Do the French need to have a 2 ½ lunch period?)
•  What makes the metric system so special?
•  Are shop clerks going to expect me to say “Bonjour, Madame” and “Au revoir, Madame” every time I enter/leave a shop?
•  Is it the sum of these questions and similar questions that makes another culture intriguing and charming?

Eat some chocolate!

Too bad our guests had to leave before this weekend. There was a wine and chocolate festival at the Rasteau wine cooperative. John would have been especially pleased. (It is he who ends his answering machine salutation with “Eat some chocolate!”) The cooperative was offering wine and chocolate pairings. There were three chocolatiers (chocolate artisans) from the area offering samples and selling their art. In the wine tasting room, I heard them promoting vin doux de Rasteau (sweet wine from Rasteau) to go with the chocolates but I prefer deep, dry red wines – the ones that make you think of chocolate as you sniff the aroma or sip the wine. Red wine and dark chocolate: it doesn’t get much better than this! – and John is right: “Eat some chocolate!”

Another half-year in Provence

Leaving Lansing was bittersweet. I was ready to leave but we had so much fun at the gatherings of friends prior to our departure. I was happy to see that our deerhounds continue to defy the odds and live on but also know that they really are not immortal… On the other hand, we left the dogs in the care of two wonderful folks who will give them more attention than they deserve.

Alors, it’s back in France for another six months. The strikes and demonstrations did little to prevent our return. We are now comfortably settled in our village of Vaison la Romaine and enjoying the company of wonderful American friends John and Arleen and their friends Betty and Cecilia. It has been cooler than I remember from years past but on sunny days, the beauty of Provence shines through (and the temperature climbs to the 70s.)

Friends were really concerned about our return because of the strikes. They had seen photos in the American papers of burning automobiles and angry demonstrators and expressed concerns about our safety. While the strikes were frequent and included interrupting public transportation, we were lucky enough to arrive without a hitch. Our friends reported similar successes in coming from the states (though John and Arleen did have to wait several hours in Frankfurt after a flight was cancelled because of fog.)

From my perspective, the strikes and demonstrations in France are “le pipi du chat” (small potatoes) compared to the machinations going on with the mid-term elections in the United States. From what closet did all of these crazies emerge? – One of Ellen’s regrets about returning to France was that we were going to miss the John Stewart/Stephen Colbert rallies in Washington this weekend. I can think of no other time in my life’s history when the distinctions between equality and liberty have been so clear and so far apart. – and I used to think that Halloween was scary!

At times like these, one finds security in things that don’t change.

• ·   Our apartment is just as small as when we left – but feels like there is more space.
• ·   The village is about to begin the renovations to Place Monfort – just as they were about to begin when we left.
• ·   Our friends here appear the same – maybe happier – or may be it is I who am happier to see them?
• ·   I recognize a bunch of kids at the crèche. Some of the older kids must have not been old enough to move to Ecole Maternelle.
• ·   Our French class is again on Thursday and again taught by the wonderful Mme Paris.
• ·   The village workers have begun pruning the plane (sycamore) trees by cutting all of the branches that have leaves back to a knarly stub of a main branch.
• ·   The bakeries have not forgotten how to make baguettes – though there was not one to be found on Wednesday afternoon…
• ·   Mont Ventoux appeared to have snow on it – though it was just being as “bald” as usual.
• ·   The church bells that ring hourly still start ringing five minutes before the hour.
• ·   The vendors on market day have not changed their locations so I can still find the olive vendor that I like, the fruit vendor who sells the BEST pears, the cheese lady…

All in all, life returns to normal – and continues to be wonderful. It is good to be back!

Wonderful Summer

After my last post, some people told me that it seemed that I did not like being here and they wondered how I could endure a summer in the states. I must apologize to all who got that impression. While I do prefer to be in France, it does not mean that life here is without charm. I was trying to highlight differences in lifestyles and aspects of living that I like and the aspects that I don’t like whether here or in Vaison la Romaine.

From the day we arrived here (and learned that our good neighbors had planned a welcome home party at our house) to today, it has been a fun-filled summer.  As I reread this, I guess that fun and friends go together in any location but which sentence describes it best:  “Home is where the heart is.” or “Love the one you’re with.”?

·   We live on the most neighborly street in the best neighborhood in Lansing – possibly the best neighborhood in the US. People who live on our block enjoy making others feel welcome and appreciated.

·   We got to show Phil and Margaret (from Vaison la Romaine) some of the sites of Michigan.

·   We traveled through five states when Tish was with us and then returned to eastern PA for a reunion with my sisters. I had forgotten how beautiful Pennsylvania is.

·   We were invited to a “BFF” dinner at Brian’s and Ken’s house where alums of Patricia Wells’ cooking school met for a weekend in Lansing and prepared an absolutely wonderful meal.

·   We got to see Mark & Dan (more below) and Jeff & Lynn in Portland. We also enjoyed a wonderful dinner with Francophiles Susan and Alain in Ann Arbor.

·   Jim and Taffy stopped on their way to Beaver Island. Karen stopped on her return to Chicago.

·   We spent an afternoon with Nancy who was in Lansing to attend a business meeting and confirmed that “it is we.”

·   Linda invited me to speak at her training class for child care directors (more below).

·   John and Arleen visited from CO and during their visit we had a wonderful meal with Sue & Jerry and Marge & Charlie.

·   We saw Marge & Charlie numerous times here and in St. Joe as well as Olga & Blair at Gull Lake.

·   Denise (next door) gave me plants for my garden. As a result, we have enjoyed wonderful tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and herbs for the past two months.

·   We haven’t yet seen MB (Embay) but laughed through most of the summer about the way that she “scored the slices of eggplants” (Patricia Wells’ recipe for baked eggplants and tomatoes). She sent a picture of a pan of eggplant slices with little flags on each slice and each flag had a score on it – “7”, “9”, …

 What is it about friends and food that make gatherings fun?

When we were in Portland, Mark & Dan invited their friends to a dinner made from locally-grown products (from backyard gardens). We got to attend a nine-course meal that included fresh-from-the-garden items complemented with good wines, local protein and desserts from local fruits and dairy products. Since Dan and Mark were extending the invitation, it was clear that everyone bringing a dish knew that s/he had to step up to the level of cuisine one expects at the “Schmapp” household and, to my enjoyment, everyone did!

Since I volunteer at child care centers in both Vaison and Lansing, Linda had invited me to speak to her class about the similarities and differences between the US and France. In most categories the French are leading the way, though the child care directors were surprised at the adult/child ratios for Ecole Maternelle in France--one teacher to up to 25 kids! On the other hand, most of the teachers have degrees similar to our Masters degrees.

All in all, it has been a wonderful summer here in Lansing and parts east, west and south (no north yet). We are still harvesting and eating the vegetables and herbs from our garden but, better than the food, we have enjoyed time with friends, neighbors and siblings. So perhaps it’s true that home is where the heart is, and the heart is where there are friends.

Food

We have been travelling this past month with Ellen’s sister Tish. In addition to enduring a lot of “windshield” time which can be very boring in the midwest, we have had some wonderful and some not-so-wonderful meals along the roads and routes of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

When we went to Bloomington, Illinois, I’m sure that when we turned south at Joliet, the scenery immediately became and remained corn fields all the way to Bloomington. I was trying to imagine what a farmer would do to occupy his mind while driving a tractor down a field and creating a row of corn that would be several miles long. – that is ONE row… Think about fields that are miles long by miles wide.

When we stop to eat or when we go out to eat, I prefer to eat at restaurants that are not franchised or part of national chains. I prefer the surprises of a locally-operated restaurant to the predictable, same-menu-in-Bloomington-as-in-Benton Harbor that one gets with franchise/chain restaurants. I admit that it is a small, albeit feeble stance against fast food restaurants. My major motivation is the life style for which I have been singing praises, i.e., local is better, more flavorful, less expensive, etc. And it is fun getting to know the people responsible for our foods – be they the farmers or the chefs.

In addition to the surprises of stopping at a local restaurant and having a wonderful meal, we stopped at a number of local restaurants where they apparently chose to replace quality with quantity. We got off of an interstate to stop at a local restaurant. The service was very friendly but the menu choices included only fried, deep-fried or salads. I chose a salad. The waitress wheeled over a serving cart and then hefted a bowl that was larger than the bowl we use at home to serve salad to four people. I started looking around the room and saw that everyone else in the dining room was served similarly-sized portions. If I had been able to eat half of the salad, the remaining portion would not have fit in a Styrofoam take-away box. (It would have fit in a computer packaging box.)

At another restaurant, Ellen ordered “the town’s favorite” called “The Horseshoe.” It was a grilled chicken breast on a piece of “Texas toast” covered with crinkle fries and then vast quantities of a melted cheese product.  Luckily, Ellen was able to choose a vegetable as a side dish–though she could have had more fries or chips or a cream-of-something soup. (The restaurant also had a smaller portion called “The Ponyshoe.”) The cheese reminded me of a Bill Bryson observation: “In America, there are only two kinds of cheese:  White and yellow.” By the way, neither the horseshoe nor the ponyshoe resembled what we put on a horse’s hoof or throw at a stake or nail above the entryway.

In America, people often ask for take-away boxes for the uneaten portion of their meals. Waiters are never surprised at the request. (It would be a very surprising request in France.) In fact, waiters often suggest take-away boxes to those who are eating too slowly or who have stopped, leaving large portions of the meal on the plate. Weight Watchers encourages the practice – though in most cases, Weight Watchers would suggest making three or four meals out of the quantities delivered as one dinner. Given the size of the meals served and the “clean your plate” mentality that most of us grew up with, it is no wonder that America is the most obese nation in the world.

Now that I am officially old, I can understand the attraction of a restaurant where you go for lunch and take home dinner as a bonus:  Two for one!  Never mind that the food will be as boring the second time as it was the first time.

Why fuss? Take the bus!

One big difference between Lansing and Vaison la Romaine is the distance one must go to obtain goods and services. When one compares a town of 7,000 to a small city of 120,000, it is clear that Lansing is 17 times larger than Vaison. All other factors aside, that suggests that the goods and services available four blocks from our apartment in Vaison are likely to be 68 blocks away in Lansing.

In a country where the automobile is sacred – pretty much to the detriment of all other forms of public transportation – one must have a car to get around to cover the 68 blocks one has to go to get whatever. If you don’t have a car, you can walk, ride a bike or take a CATA bus. Today, for instance, Ellen was off delivering Meals on Wheels at the same time I needed to go to the dentist in the neighboring town of Holt. I couldn’t walk there – I would have been several days late for my appointment. I could have ridden my bicycle but decided that I did not want to be all sweaty while I sat in a vinyl coated dentist chair. I took the bus.

Lansing has an excellent bus system. You can get to most destinations easily and with a minimal amount of effort or cost. I left the child care center where I had spent the morning volunteering, walked three blocks, got the bus exactly on time and headed to “Bus Central” in downtown Lansing where I transferred to the Holt bus. Since the trip is about a half hour, I brought a book to read.

I must have read the same 10 paragraphs a dozen times as I looked up every time we stopped to watch as new riders climbed into the bus. I love watching people. There have been times when Ellen has said “Close your mouth, Mark” as I sit in awe watching the threads and patches of the American fabric pass by me. The bus is about the same as when it was my transportation to MSU thirty years ago. There are the regulars – all of whom know the bus drivers and each other and seem to share a sort of mobile community as they move from location to location. There are the ubiquitous students going to Lansing Community College, Davenport, Cooley Law School, MSU or some other learning location. There are the infrequent riders (like me) who slow the line of would be riders by not knowing the procedures for bus entry ("You don’t have change for $20?") there are parents with young children and elderly (older than I) folks who have difficulty standing erect as the bus lurches forward. I think I have a good sense of balance, but I ended up getting a lot closer to a rider than she – or I – wanted as a result of a quick start.

On the way back from the dentist, I decided to get off the bus at the city market so that I could buy a baguette and get an espresso from Neva at Aggie Mae’s and then walk home.

Walking is a sensual experience in that it engages the senses in ways that car travel excludes. There are the sounds, the differences in temperature as you walk under a large tree, the smells (city restaurant grills, flowers, cedar mulch and a neighbor making stuffed peppers for dinner.) The biggest difference is having time to see the “sights.” Walking from the market, I went down the street that has most of the restaurants that serve the Monday-Friday denizens their lunch. In front of one shop was a sandwich board that had three lines: “Cherry Salad” “Panty Hose” and something on the third line that I frankly cannot remember because I was so intrigued with the questions: “What kind of restaurant sells cherry salad and panty hose? Who would be enticed to stop there and eat? I was guessing that most people would order “panty hose” to go when I looked at the front of the shop again only to discover that it was NOT a restaurant but “A General Store.” Thank goodness.

Tomorrow I will walk downtown again to have Brenda cut my hair. After getting my hair cut, maybe I will see if I can get panty hose on pita bread. To go, of course.

French food reduces homesickness

It has been a long month since our return. We have settled into our state-side routine plus ou moins (more or less). But the comfort of routine does not reduce homesickness. I miss our little apartment and the village in which it sits. I feel the same as our neighbor who wrote in an e-mail: ‘I look across the street at your apartment and wish you were there to turn on the lights.’ On the other hand, the deerhounds seem to be pleased that we have returned and the back of the house didn’t paint itself so there is plenty for me to do.

I still do most of the cooking but find that I don’t get as much help from the ingredients. The foods here don’t seem to have as much flavor as what I could buy in France.  We can get good wines from the Rhone valley but at about twice the price. In a parallel to Herbert Simon’s “satisficing,” we are living with adequate most of the time and good once in a while.

BUT WAIT!

Last week, we had an invitation to eat at Brian’s house. He and several of his classmates from Patricia Wells’ cooking school had planned a reunion at Brian’s house. Brian called it a “Best Friends Forever” (BFF) reunion. He had napkins with “BFF” at each place setting. I thought of the five of them making the menu and then buying the ingredients and then cooking the meal and I thought they should be called the “Fab Five.” The “Fab Five” of cuisine planned a French menu for 20 or so of Brian’s and Ken’s friends and we were fortunate enough to be on the list. (Three of the women were able to come to the reunion, the fourth – who couldn’t come – sent French cheese. Ken stepped up to fill in for her.)

Ellen helped to recreate the menu:

·   Aperitif course:  asparagus quiche and paté served on the terrace (under the umbrella and awnings as it was raining)

·   Appetizer:  avocado and grapefruit slices in pistachio oil

·   Entree:  Thin-sliced beef Vietnamese style (recipe from Patricia Wells' recent class in Vietnam)

·   Plat:  lavender-spiced chicken thighs, green beans, and compote of onions & tomatoes

·   Cheese course:  selections too numerous to list but including Comté, several goat cheeses and others Fed-Exed to Brian from the BFF who could not come at the last moment

·   Dessert:  A salty caramel ice cream

·   Coffee

-          Nice wines to go with every course, of course.

Every course was memorable in its own right and memorable in that each course reminded me of good foods eaten in France. And oh so tasty! By the time the evening ended, I had been so transported by the excellent French-inspired food that I was speaking French (or maybe it was too much French wine???)

If excellent cuisine isn’t enough, we have discovered that Neva Austin is now making a wonderful baguette and selling it at her bakery called “Aggie Mae” at the Lansing City Market. Ellen has said that the baguette is almost as good as those that come from “Emile Bec” – considered by us as one of the best bakeries in Vaison la Romaine.

If I can’t be in France, at least I can sometimes eat as though I was there!

The Sound of Silence

It was a beautiful Saturday, so I rode my bike to the City Market. Just as two Saturdays ago when I walked there, I was surprised that in the 15 or so blocks to the market, I saw very few people thus no voices, no cars, no motorbikes, no dogs. Just the breeze and me. I was struck by the silence. Downtown Lansing was pretty much uninhabited. Once at the market, I found a throng of people but it appears that most of them had arrived via automobile. We had a similar experience in PA when we visited Ellen’s brother and sister-in-law. Ever wonder why a relative by marriage has a “legal” designation (in-law) in America whereas the designation in French is “beautiful brother” or “beautiful sister” (beau-frère, belle-sœur)?Isn’t the French a whole lot friendlier?  After seeing the renovations that their son is making to his house, we decided to stop at a local restaurant or café for lunch. We stopped at or drove past five cafés before we found one that was open on a Saturday.  Conclusion: “downtown” small-city America is dying. It seems impossible for downtowns to compete with the large parking-lot destinations located in every direction – except downtown. This is not news. It just makes me wonder what it will take to rejuvenate our cities.

Contrast the “no one in sight” in Lansing with the village of Vaison la Romaine, where the downtown is open for business from 7:00 in the morning until the last café closes in the evening and filled with people throughout the day sitting in the cafés, walking or shopping for their daily baguette.

I love sitting on our veranda in Vaison and watching the day go by. Even though we do not live “downtown,” it is amazing to me how many people walk past our apartment building every day. cWhen I leave the apartment to go shopping or to go for a coffee or for a pichet de vin, I encounter people every step of the way.

I see Jacqueline who walks her dogs twice daily. There is the elderly woman who lives down the alley, and there is the mother of one of the kids at the crèche who has a shop. Once in “centre-ville,” there are folks everywhere. There are parents whom I have met when they come to the crèche to pick up their children. There are the merchants and shop keepers whom I see on a daily basis and who recognize me. There are the few “street people” – clean and quiet but always present. On sunny days, there are older men and women occupying every bench that has a southern exposure (and there are a lot of benches in town.)

One of the advantages of small-town Vaison la Romaine (population 7,000) vs. small-city Lansing (population 120,000) is that I see more people that know me or that I recognize or know in Vaison la Romaine than I do in Lansing. – and we have lived in Lansing almost 35 years!

Centre-ville Vaison is the destination of most residents. The stores are there and they provide the services and products that we need for daily life. When I walk through downtown Lansing, there are few businesses that could help me meet day-to-day living needs. There is a very good men’s store, a nut shop, a souvenir shop and a number of restaurants/cafés/bars several of which are not open on Saturday and most of which are closed Sunday.

Is a downtown vibrant because of the critical mass of people who live in the area or come to visit the shops or do people move to an area because of the products and services available (a.k.a., What came first, the chicken or the egg?) If I knew the answer, I could be a highly paid urban planning consultant. Maybe that was the role the pope played when he ordained the “market days” throughout Provence (Tuesday was ordained Vaison’s market day by the pope in the 16^th century.) The Tuesday market in Vaison remains one of the best markets in Provence.