Firmi Part Deux

So, I hinted at how La Gouzine has remained unchanged since...whenever it was founded. Certainly, there are modern buildings interspersed with the stables of the 1700's, and there are modern amenities like indoor plumbing, but the place just feels old. The fact is that Nick's two aunts and their husbands have lived there their whole lives, had children who now live within 50 meters from them, and can remember the exact homes their grandparents were born in. They keep their caves (larders) for the winter, to stretch pensions from the only businesses the town offers- a now-closed coal and zinc mine and an automobile filter factory. The larders are well stocked with home grown green beans, onions, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes, zuchini, cucumbers, peaches, pears, plums, and apples.  Chicken and pigeon coops and rabbit hutches provided protein, aided by one pig purchased in autumnal preparation. Swine were slaughtered in the back yard and preserved through charcuterie or freezing. In the last few years, the aging couples have been unable to keep up with the care of the animals, so they have gotten rid of them.

Speaking of, introductions:

 Jacqueline, Nick's aunt.

Tony, Nick's uncle (and, as you will see, an inveterate prankster with a streak of mischief 1.6 kilometers long).

Everyone in their family worked in either the mine or the factory, or was a farmer, save for Nick's father, who left his home with an outhouse and a well down the road at age 16 to join the Army.This is where he left:

While the view is majestic, and (lacking a better word) soul of the residents is open and fraternal from living hard lives and needing to value relationships and the pleasurable things in life (like food, wine, and Ricard Pastis, an anise liqueur), there is not a whole lot going on down there. My guide claimed that I was probably the first American Firmi had seen since Liberation.

Given that, I'm assuming that when the Australians came, they were the first ever to step foot in Firmi.

Three of Nicks friends from Australia were doing a tour of Europe and came to Firmi for two days. They arrived just before dinner time, and rolled up a few hours late as Firmi and Gouzine somehow were missed on their GPS program. How about that?

Thus began a bacchanalian evening that began innocently enough with that indulgent mistress  soupe au fromage. A variation of the famous French onion soup, where a base of caramelized onions is suspended in a broth with a bit of cognac, with crusty bread and cheese, Cheese soup uses only the crusts of the local bread, unavailable anywhere else (Nick, a chef and restaurateur himself, confirms this), layer upon layer of shredded cheese curd, and just enough condensed onion stock to make a stringy porridge. This stuff is so heavy, it would put an insomniac in a coma.

The Aussies, left to right: Scott, Miranda, Shane.

I suppose that one side effect of a town with nothing happening is that the conversations are rich with local histories and customs. Nick mentioned that he had re-sprained his ankle a few days before heading down to Firmi, and all his relatives insisted that he go see the local healer. Yes, the French countryside apparently has healers: gifted natural talents who, without any sort of training, official or folk, are inexplicably able to feel the nerves, tendons, muscles, and pulses of any given area and realign them as a palliative for the associated pain. The locals swear by it, so Nick and I went to see the guy. After being welcomed in to a basement office in the healer's home, he asked what the problem was then proceeded to feel Nick's ankle. He found something and started digging and rubbing the ankle, methodically working higher on Nick's leg. It was obviously painful, but Nick said that it felt like there was a stone that was causing him pain, and the healer was just working the stone up where it diminished to a bearable degree. As Carl Sagan says "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Just because something isn't proven to work doesn't mean it doesn't, even when in all probability a placebo effect is occurring.

Next up: Fairytale Land and Town Loonies

Mordicus (that's French for Oscar the Grouch)

I have not had a great week. I've just been kind of mopey, not going out much, feeling a little depressed. This kind of thing is not unusual for me and, in fact, has happened every time I have moved to another country (this is the fourth time). I'm sure it just has something to do with trying to get adjusted to life. It can be frustrating, I guess, but I have not really had that difficult a time getting around or communicating, surprisingly.

The majority of my woes so far feel like they stem from this damn French class I signed up for. Don't get me wrong, the school and teacher are excellent, yet every time I go I start feeling like I just want to quit. What I'm struggling with is the fact that I'm probably the worst student in class. Thanks to my ability in Spanish and a decent grasp on linguistic concepts in general, I did very well on the placement test and was placed a level or so higher than I probably should have been. If any of you have known me for any period of time or ever attended school with me, you'll know that things come easy to me and that I'm usually one of the best in the class. So it's hard for me to sit there being the person that everyone thinks is an idiot.

It's not all me, of course. For the most part, I understand what is going on in class now. I'm used to the teacher's manner of speaking and generally get what he's talking about. The most frustrating thing at this point is my inability to communicate even on a very basic level. I cannot say most of the things I want to say because I lack important, frequently-used words in my vocabulary. Every day I learn a couple more and incorporate them, but you never realize how many words are important in your day-to-day life until you are confronted with the fact that you don't know them.

This has really only affected my ability to interact with other people in my class and participate in group exercises. I usually cannot understand the things they say to me, both because of the vocabulary problem and the fact that pretty much everyone sucks at pronouncing French. However, this is actually one of my own strong points. Yesterday I had to work with this Italian girl who, besides the other anglophones in the class, has the absolute worst accent. She pronounces her vowels as she would in Italian and rolls her R's to a ridiculous degree (Je parrrrrrrrle le Frrrrrançais, if you can imagine), making her very difficult to understand. In fact, it pretty much just sounds like she's speaking Italian all the time. Yet, she had the nerve to get frustrated with me because I could not understand her. She expressed this to the teacher, who could not understand her either. Nothing like a little schadenfreude to brighten one's day.

Another problem is that I took the afternoon class, which is probably the worst time of day for me to try to learn anything. It's when I get all sleepy and hungry and end up yawning all the way through class. One good thing is that I have started making a few friends. I actually ride the metro home with two Spanish-speakers and was relieved when I figured this out because it meant that I could actually have a real conversation with someone and impress them with my language skills. I even wowed a Chinese classmate when I demonstrated my ability in that language. Now, if only I could add in the French...

All this week as I have been moping around feeling sorry for myself for being the classroom dunce, Charlie has been off enjoying himself in the south of France, sightseeing in a place that probably has not changed in 500 years, and eating excessive amounts of cheese. I wish I had gone with him instead. I might not have learned as much French (or maybe I would have?) but I certainly would have enjoyed myself more while taking part in cultural immersion. Don't worry, I'll make Charlie write all about his trip when he gets back on Saturday.

Not much has happened this week, partly because of my bad mood, but also because of circumstances (mainly that my school schedule interferes with my ability to go gallivanting about). As I have been going around Paris and carrying out my daily errands, I have been wondering how the French came to have such a bad reputation for being rude. Maybe I have just been lucky, but the worst thing I have been met with is indifference and even that has been scarce. Almost everyone I have interacted with has been extremely gracious and patient. I haven't really even had any linguistic troubles. For daily tasks, such as shopping, I more or less know all the words I need to know. In the few instances that I did not, whoever was helping me did their best to make sure I understood without showing even an inkling of annoyance about it. I even went to a restaurant for the first time here the other day, all by myself. There wasn't anything particularly complicated about it. The busy host showed me to my table, I ordered a croque-monsieur (a hot ham and cheese sandwich with another large gob of toasty cheese melted on top), paid my bill and voila! Nothing to it. It was surprising, actually. The restaurant experience differs depending on what country/region you are in and I have indeed been in some awkward situations, but as far as I could tell this particular restaurant worked just like one in the U.S.

Besides French class, the only other thing really irking me this week is my supposed student advisor at AUP. She is actually substituting for the usual very pleasant woman who went on maternity leave. Her job is to help students carry out all of the administrative tasks they need to, in terms of financial aid, visas, etc., so that they are all set when orientation starts. Going to school in another country is particularly complicated and, in the case of Paris, extremely expensive. Anyway, she has been a royal bitch ever since I have begun dealing with her. She takes forever to answer e-mails and does so in a condescending and uninformative manner. Recently, there was a problem with my student loans for which she first treated me like an idiot and then, realizing the problem was on the school's end, brushed me off completely, telling me not to panic. Excuse me, but without my loans I can neither pay for school nor my rent or food, so don't tell me not to panic. When all is said and done I will indeed be submitting a complaint to her supervisor. It is hard enough to do all of this without some asshole making things harder for you.

Sigh....

I'm hoping things will start getting better soon. My college friend, Sabrina, is in town and I'm going to try to spend some time with her while she's here. Also, Charlie gets back Saturday night and we have tentative plans to visit the Dali museum on Sunday. To atone for complaining this entire entry, I will now list 10 good things that happened this week:

1. I found a delicious sausage at the store - Saucisse de Toulouse - and ate copious amounts of it.
2. I gave money to the homeless man at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette who always wears a suit jacket and carries a bottle of red wine (you can see him in the previous entry's video at about 2:10). He is the classiest homeless guy I have ever seen.
3. I bought some avocados for €0,50 apiece from a random street vendor. They usually cost at least twice as much in the grocery stores and open-air markets. Avocados here are scrumptious and way better than what we get back home.

4. I figured out how to operate our washing machine, which is in the middle of the kitchen:

And here is our dryer:

5. I watched two excellent movies: "La Bête Humaine" by Jean Renoir and "Fifty Dead Men Walking" by Kari Skogland
6. I impressed some of my classmates with my Spanish AND Chinese skills.
7. I made my first fully-edited movie, the one of the previous blog entry.
8. I went to a restaurant all by myself and ate a mountain of cheesy goodness.

9. I checked out the outside of the pretty church near our apartment - Notre-Dame-de-Lorette - but you can only go inside and do group tours at certain times during the week.

10. Uh... I moved to Paris?

Stay tuned for a more cheery blog entry soon.

La France Profound...or Je Suis Plein by Charlie

Due to the wonders of modern technology (thanks Facebook), I was able too go on an amazing five-day adventure to southern France, in the deep countryside (or, as my friend Nicolas says, ‘La France profound’). Seventeen years ago while in Benin, Nick and I met at our fathers’ weekly rugby practice.

That rough looking guy in the yellow shirt is Girard, Nick's father. Mine is the fifth from the left in the back row.

We became friends and eventually did summer exchanges for four years during our teens. We reconnected after 10 years, and it just so happened that he (now in Australia) was taking a month long vacation in France visiting family at the same time as Marie and I were in Paris taking in the sites prior to our courses beginning. He kindly invited me as part of the family to visit his father’s side down south. “I want to take you to Firmi, this is real France.”

Turns out, Firmi is not really on any maps, nor were we staying in Firmi proper. Firmi is a small town outside of Decazeville, about a 3 hour drive east of Toulouse. La Gouzine (LAH gooz-AH-ny) is a smaller town outside of Firmi. The total population is about 200 people, according to local estimates. Most of them are from a handful of families, and driving through town, your license plate is the first thing people look at to determine whether you are a local or miraculously found out about The Town That Time Lost.

We left Paris early in the morning to begin the eight hour drive. After a few hours of wheat fields, the scenery turned to something like this:

You have heard of the rolling fields of France? Well, there they are. Eventually we reached the Aveyron region in the Mid-Pyrenes and had to leave the highways and drive through the smaller towns. As you can see, in between more modern developments lie traditional churches, castles, and chateaus.

In between catching up and telling me the local legends of his father’s town, Nick began preparing me for the meals to come, saying that we would be having nothing but traditional country meals, with the first of many being aligot and boudins. Aligot is a potato mash that is mixed with equal parts of cheese curd, then vigorously stirred until it forms an elastic mass that is pulled in long dollops onto the plate. A good aligot can pulled in one strand from the bowl to above head level before being plopped in a steaming mass, then cut with a spoon. The boudins were local blood sausages, comprised of pigs blood (collected during slaughter) mixed with the meat from the esophagus and trachea. The throat meat is cubed and then stuffed into the intestine of the pig. The sausages are fried, with the dripping oils and juices becoming a pan sauce for the potatoes. Not healthy, but so delicious. This after courses of charcuterie, garden tomato and green bean salad, and followed by cheese, fruit and a dessert tart of garden plums.    

The is view from the terrace where we took our meals (not to use hoity toity English, but that is certainly what it felt like).

Stay tuned for healers, town loonies, weekly market, a country discotheque, and formidable dish to contend with: La soupe au fromage (cheese soup).

Le Petit Voyage - The Green Line

This video is dedicated to our niece, Emma Rae Hutchinson.



Description: This is the route I take to get to my French classes as Alliance Française. This is a re-post, as the first version exported to YouTube with a lot of the sound missing.

Happy Birthday to the Chef!

Before I begin my actual post, I would like to draw your attention to the donation button at the right. I put this up at the suggestion of a friend who thought it would be a good way to experience more of the finer things in life here, like CHEESE! Alternately, if there is some particular place or activity you're anxious for me to blog about, such as riding up the elevator on the Eiffel Tower, remember that these things cost money and we are poor college students.

Also, today is Charlie's 27th birthday!  Happy birthday, my sweet! (A donation will certainly help fund a fancy French birthday cake for the nicest guy in the world).

Two days ago Charlie and I practiced riding the metro to two out of three of our schools. First we found our way to Alliance Française where I began French classes yesterday. I forgot to take a picture while we were there, and it was closed anyway, but here is what it looks like. Thanks, Google Street View!

After that we headed over to Charlie's school, Le Cordon Bleu, for a quick look. Here is our excited chef now:

Both of these schools were easy to find, being just a couple blocks from metro stops on the line that runs nearest our apartment. Le Cordon Bleu is the furthest and it only takes about 20 minutes to get there. We decided not to stop by my actual school - The American University of Paris, for those of you who don't know - because it was raining, we were tired, and the trip was a little more complicated. We hadn't bought a map yet and I hadn't worked out the route in advance so we probably would have just gotten lost anyway.

If you're wondering why we didn't really stop to explore the neighborhoods we were in, it is because they are pretty much deserted right now, as is all of Paris. August is the month that Parisians pack up and leave on vacation for weeks at a time, closing up their business and leaving a sign on the door to that effect. When we go out it feels like siesta in Spain; everything is dead quiet except for the occasional car passing by. When everything is closed it is kind of hard to tell what's around, especially in terms of stores. Most of the shops here have large garage-type doors that come down over the main store front so unless you are reading every single sign (which are usually directly above your head because the sidewalks are so narrow) or what you are looking for is flashy and obvious, you can easily miss the fact that you are even walking by a place of interest. In a couple weeks everything will change as the locals return from their vacations. From what we understand, it will be utter chaos. We'll enjoy the peace for now.

In other news, I started my very first French class at Alliance Française yesterday. A few weeks ago when I registered for it I took their placement test online and, thanks to my background in Spanish, was able to read, understand and respond to a good amount of it. As a result I placed into a class that is just a smidgen from being over my head. I had to pay very close attention at all moments to stay on top of what was going on, which was no easy task on a mere five hours of sleep. I pretty much had to stare directly at my teachers mouth the entire time so that I could follow along. It was an exhausting four hours, but my vocabulary probably tripled. Hopefully, life will seem less like this soon:



Charlie left this morning on a short road trip to Firmi with an old childhood friend, Nic, that he hasn't seen in about 15 years. They are going to spend a few days there with Nic's family and then Charlie will be coming back alone on the train. It just occurred to me that I maybe should have sent the camera with him, but then I wouldn't have it for my escapades here. I plan to try to get out at least once a day to explore the city, most likely to places that Charlie has already been, such as the Eiffel Tower. Other than the major tourists sights I'm still pretty ignorant about what's out there to see, so I welcome any suggestions. After all, you all know how I feel about tourists and how little time I prefer to spend around them.

Okay, time to do homework and then we'll see which way the wind blows...

Bones

Charlie and I had a wonderful outing today. We visited the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in the 20th arrondissement on the east side of Paris. Many famous people are buried there and we wandered around to find them.

We went in the side entrance near the Père Lachaise metro station, entering the grounds through an opening in a tall stone wall. I was immediately struck by how beautiful the place was. There are more trees than I have seen anywhere in Paris so far, some of which were starting to turn fall colors. What impressed me the most was the number of gravestones nearly stacked on top of one another, many of them gigantic and wonderfully artistic compared to what you generally see in the States. Some of them were just stones or large horizontal slabs with the deceased person's name on them, while others were like small chapels (some even had stained glass windows!) where one could enter to light candles and leave flowers. Unless you are walking down one of the large paths that run through the grounds, you can't really see farther than the equivalent of a city block because of the sheer number of tall monuments.

We arrived soon after it opened so the light was beautiful, the ground was still damp and it smelled wonderful.

As you will see from the pictures that follow, Charlie and I wavered between awe and total irreverence.

Hahaha!

Frédéric Chopin

Jim Morrison, the man whose jackass fans are unfortunately responsible for a lot of vandalism in the cemetery. I only saw one instance of vandalism (a heart with "Jim" inside it drawn on someone else's mausoleum), but apparently it is rampant.

Just a lovely collection of monuments in a variety of sizes.

Georges Bizet

Honoré de Balzac

And thus, Proust was summarized.*

The only way Charlie could be more goth right now is if he was Trent Reznor himself.

I don't think this belonged to anyone famous, but their (or their family's) taste in sculpture is exquisite.

Some larger mausoleums.

Oscar Wilde's art deco headstone, covered in kisses and graffiti.

Even the sculpture's crotch had been kissed (and stolen). Someone wrote "Por quoi?" on it.

No relation, I'm sure. It's too modest a grave for such a man.

Les arbres

After the cemetery we set out in search of a place called Caféothèque, a specialty coffee shop that is one-of-a-kind in Paris. For some odd reason, and contrary to what most people believe, Paris sucks at making coffee. I did a web search on this phenomenon and found out that there was an article in the New York Times all about it.

Places like Caféothèque are normal in Seattle but unheard of here. When we told the barista that we were from Seattle he gasped as if we lived in coffee Mecca and started asking us about Vivace Espresso, which is apparently famous enough to be known about in Paris. We bought some nice whole bean Guatemalan coffee and had the barista grind it for us since grinders are also unheard of in Paris unless you want to spend €300. We bought about a pound of coffee and it cost about $25, whereas we could get something similar in the States for half of that. Once again, this is going to have to be a special occasion place.

We are still trying to work out how to live frugally in Paris. We have a very limited amount of money that is supposed to last us all year, and it is not always easy to tell how much things cost, especially considering our lack of French at the moment. We've managed only to make a couple of really frivolous purchases and are trying to be otherwise thrifty. As a result, we have been under-caffeinated and hungry pretty much since we left the States. We are still trying to learn how to shop and eat smarter so that our money will last, but I think the low blood sugar is taking it's toll as we have been a little snippy with one another the last couple of days.

I now understand what people were talking about when they said we were brave to just pick up and move to another country that speaks a different language. At least when I lived in Spain before I had the advantage of being able to communicate or having people who could help me when I couldn't. Here we are on our own. It can be stressful and frustrating. It takes balls just to walk into a store to buy something, especially if you have to actually tell someone what you want or ask any questions about it, because you are pretty much guaranteed to make an ass of yourself. I suppose it makes for a quick way to learn - we always remember the words we should have used after suffering humiliation at the hands of a local. Slowly but surely we will figure things out and integrate into French society. It will be much easier when we start school and have the support of our teachers and classmates.

That is all for tonight. We are settling in and trying to stay up a little later so that we can sleep in past 4:00 AM, unlike this morning, all the while attempting to ignore our hunger and listening to the opera music blaring out of a neighbor's window. Hey, at least it's not crappy French pop.

Bon nuit.

* All-England Summarize Proust Competition

Voila!

We are now in Paris, trying desperately to recover from jet lag. The trip itself went too smoothly to be true. My only complaint was that Iceland Air makes you pay ungodly amounts of money for food on their flights, so we more or less starved the whole way. Also, after viewing all the lovely advertisements on our airplane TVs about the breathtaking landscapes in Iceland, we were looking forward to seeing some of them as we landed. Alas, it was raining and foggy and all we could see was about a half mile of flat, greenish nothingness just before we landed. Maybe next time.

We've been here a whopping 24 hours now and so far I have not experienced any of the supposed rudeness that Parisians are famous for. Maybe it's just our neighborhood and the fact that there aren't any tourists around to annoy people. Pretty much every person we have encountered has been either extremely gracious considering our lack of French skills, or just indifferent. No one stares (for once!) - they just go on about their business.

Our neighborhood is absolutely beautiful. We live in the 9th District near the Notre Dame de Lorette church, whose bells we can occasionally hear. Nearby is a street called Martyrs which offers a very traditional shopping experience. There are several produce stalls, bakeries, cheese shops, butchers, wine stores, and even a shop dedicated exclusively to caviar.  How French! Of course, there are also a couple of supermarkets for practical items like mayonaise and toilet paper.

Last night after a too-long afternoon nap that eventually destroyed our ability to sleep in the night, we wandered out in search of food. We stopped into a fromagerie (cheese shop), with an array of fine, mostly unpasteurized cheese sitting around unrefrigerated. It smelled delicious! Because the cheese is so susceptible to bacterial growth, the man working in the store had to instruct a shopper not to touch it. They also had cured meats that I had only seen in Spain before, such as jamón serrano. We opted for a large hunk of compte and an air-dried salted beef from Italy called Bresaola. At first we asked for a half kilo of it and the lady helping us gasped, instructing the English-speaking man working there to inform us that the price per kilo was €52 (about $66). Instead, we just had her give us about a dozen slices. Just the meat and cheese alone cost the equivalent of $15. That shop will have to go on our "Special Occasions Only" list.

Here's our first meal. It was divine.

And now for the grand tour!

That's all for today. We plan on venturing out to explore more of the city tomorrow. I'll update again soon!