It’s been just over a week in the south of France. I’ve been to the same boulangerie a couple of times (I’m a regular now, in my book), figured out my favourite walking route into town, and developed a general sense of north and south. I know where all the rooms in the house are. And at night, I’ve begun to expect the sound of the 6217 from Montpellier to Perpignan: the train coming in, the recorded female voice welcoming you to Narbonne, the dong-DING-dooooo preceding the announcement of the departure, and then the train leaving: all of these sounds bounce off the graveyard wall at the back of our yard and into our bedroom window.
As we’ve been gradually acclimatizing to this new world, the days have been rather full. The above is the list of things needing doing or needing to be purchased. Monday last saw us at Ikea in Montpellier at lunchtime. Those of you who have taken children to Canada’s Wonderland on the first nice Saturday in June will be familiar with the scene that greeted us at our first French Ikea. We arrived hungry, which meant joining the line of 400 men, women, and keening children who were waiting for Swedish meatballs. Then we filled a rented van with about a tonne of furniture which, at this writing, is almost fully assembled in our house. Bunkbed, dressers, bookshelves (Flarks, if you must know), guest couch/bed, and so on. Anne and I both have bad Allen key bruises, but at least now we have somewhere to put our clothes, books, and children.
We love the house. In my next post, I’ll show you what some of the rooms look like now. The place is wired for a nice old couple: ie, one phone jack on each of two floors, one ungrounded plug in most of the rooms, etc. Right now, while waiting for all of the French electricians to come back from the beach, our second floor looks like an emergency at NASA: wires everywhere, extension cords attached to convertors which are in turn stuck in multiplugs. The problem we faced trying to get the television working involved finding a way to coordinate with the internet “LiveBox,” from which we were getting our television signal and which required a phone jack, and the television itself, which needed to be grounded. These two outlets were 25 feet apart. The resulting nest of wires is, uh, rather unsightly.
But with Ikea and the local Carrefour, we have a house we can live in. The Carrefour, especially, is a wonder. There’s nothing like it where you are, no matter where you may be reading this: imagine a store the size of 3 football fields placed side-by-side. You begin on the furthest wall from the entrance, and there you can buy an 80” flatscreen plasma TV for the equivalent of $4500 Canadian. Then, passing through the store, you can pick up a birdhouse, an outdoor brick woodburning stove, a fishing rod, Javex, a bicycle, a fresh peach tart, then you pass into the fromagerie, which takes up about 100 square metres, so too the terrine/sliced meats/casserole zone, behind which is an enormous aisle of fresh vegetables (only local, only in season: spinach monsieur? Not in August, my god, October, come back in October) and then, behind it, a giant display of seafood sitting on ice. Here you take a number and stand with the other Narbonnais who, although they’ve lived here longer than you have, can’t believe their good luck either and wait patiently to be served by the six or so uniformed poissonieres. After this, it’s a grocery store except half of it is taken up with aisles of wine, from the two-euro plonk that you’d be happy to drink this evening with your steak (cut from a massive hunk of “faux filet” to your exact specifications), to the 1987 Chateau Margot, just to the left, for 200 euros.
And this is just the big local store, not the actual market. Which I won’t write about until I have a chance to photograph it and which may turn out to be the reason I can never come home.
So: a crazy week. And not just because of Ikea, but because of something unexpected which those of you who know us will already be aware of, but which otherwise needn’t be discussed much here. Except to say that it turned an already crazy week on its ear and gave us even more (if it’s possible) to delight in on our arrival in France. The week culminated in two lovely experiences: the first on Thursday in Carcassonne, one of Europe’s last remaining walled medieval cities. In August it’s its fullblown tourist-trap self, but nothing can detract from the wonder of this amazing, ancient city, which was a Cathar stronghold.
Carcassonne: France's only fully walled medieval city
All of us standing at the northern gate to the cityThen yesterday, Friday, we were invited to our first dinner, by the people in whose gite Anne stayed in June when she came to Narbonne to find us a house. These two marvellous people—Jacques and Christianne—own two of the buildings that are part of a failed 19th century vineyard, in a beautiful stone house beside which is their tourist accomodation (just ask, folks, and we’ll connect you).
At their house, after being taught the rules to the southern game of petanques (AKA boules), we were joined by our landlord, Bernard, and his partner Françoise for supper. Jacques taught me how to build a wood fire for cooking in (I’d tried earlier this week on our indoor BBQ and succeeded in creating a great deal of smoke). We cooked sausage, roasted figs right from the tree we would later eat beneath, broiled lamb and spareribs. The bottles of wine I was able to count before I stopped having access to that particular brain function numbered ten, including two of an extremely fine champagne, one, they said, to celebrate our good news, the other to mark the beginning of their vacation. Anne, who drove home, stopped drinking by 9:30. I did not. I spoke fluent French by 11. (I think.) I know I tried to tell some jokes, but I don’t know if the laughter was because the jokes were funny or I was. The best line of the night came from Bernard though, who, when he saw me take a slice of cheese he deemed too small, he called it un dose d’un asthme: a serving for an athsmatic.
Dinner beneath the fig with (left to right) Christiane, Anne, Jacques, Françoise, and Bernard
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It is now 10:30 pm on Saturday night here in Narbonne. I took the boys to the beach this afternoon, and we tried to have a day off, but Anne spent much of the afternoon trying to fax a fund transfer request to the Royal Bank in Canada so we can complete the purchase of a Toyota Yaris on Tuesday. Everything takes twice as long here, but the experience ends up being three times as charming, because all the people who hold you up, mislead you, connect you to the wrong extension, and generally merde you do it in a ceaselessly friendly manner. They like you, they really like you. And they find it absolutely charming that you want to fax something to another country on a Saturday afternoon when both of you should be drinking rosé on the beach, preferably half-naked, but even fully dressed if you please, but since you’re not doing that, then why, of course they’ll try eleven times to get one piece of paper to fax overseas. But the lines may be occupied, forest fires ten miles away may be interfering with the signal, or, hell, it may just be impossible.
And when you leave, the afterglow of your utter failure will be a little sunny. And you’ll get home and despite the lessons being lost in the mists of a drunken evening, you’ll put the paper and twigs and branches and logs together just like your first new friend in France showed you the night before and you’ll make a perfect fire to broil those two giant faux filets on …
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Cultural Adjustment Department, second entry: Municipally enforced horror and embarassment
On Tuesday, we went to L’espace Liberté for the first time. This is the city’s big community centre, with three pools, an ice-rink, a bowling alley, a pub, and lots of other great amenities. I went with the boys for a swim, but there was a sign outside of the changeroom that read Les swimshorts sont interdits. Meaning those nice, loose-fitting swim trunks we guys all like to wear are forbidden. Why? “Parce-ce que,” said the nice lady behind the desk, “ils sont pour promener dehors.” They’re for walking around outside in, not for swimming in, you silly man.
Therefore, we had to go to the vending machine and buy new, approved bathing suits. Yes, these bathing suits were so tiny that they could be vended by a machine in little packages not much larger than a Coffee Crisp bar. The boys had to get Speedo-type suits. I was able, thank the powers that be, to get a suit that resembled biking shorts. Max and Ben looked very cute, but I looked like a watermelon stacked on top of two walnuts. Luckily, no one noticed because I was not the only hairy, swarthy, lumbering brute parading the poolside in his two ounces of bathing costume.
Two-and-a-half ounces of bathing costumes.Send $100 to see what they look like on.
