Sauf Samedi

Saturday: market day! Beth and I adopt full Tourist Mode and have a nosy.

Fun things we see
- A cage of live chickens evidently not giving a flying cluck about their future as they peck around right opposite an enormous display of rotisserie chickens. A blatant denial of The End. Makes you wonder why we worry so much about death, rather than living in blissful pecking ignorance. Rather a chicken satisfied than a human dissatisfied (although admittedly I am mainly dissatisfied because I feel it rather rude to munch on a roast chicken leg in front of my feathered companions).




- A plant stall. Not a barrel of laughs, I admit, but I do purchase two new friends: 'Basil', a basil plant, and a 'Pommier d'Amour' because I like the name. Marketing is overrated - it doesn't take much to persuade the easily pleased.

- Frog legs. Raw. Next to raw, dead squid. Probably better than live squid, but definitely enough to put you off your cheese. Speaking of which...

- Local cheese. My attempt to buy a slice results in a delighted stallholder presenting me with a whole wheel. I begin to wish two years of university-level French had taught me something vaguely more useful for everyday life. Still haven't found opportunity to discuss Classical chariots or eighteenth century philosophy in medieval French...


Annecy
Our market adventures over for the morning, a group of us pop over to the nearby town of Annecy, where we wander around a lake, canals, art stalls and cafes, feeling wonderfully Bohemian and slap-worthily smug. My inner geek gets over excited by an antiques fair with beautiful old mountaineering axes and skis. Attempt to restrain inner geek, but alas it overflows and I am forcibly dragged away from fondling well-travelled and, sadly, very expensive axes.



Note to self:
Must find a rich husband.
Preferably married to me.
Or get a job.
Or just take a photo and moan about impoverishment.

5:30pm: We persuade a restaurant to feed "zee crazy English" while the French finish lunch, then casually stroll back to the train station.

Us: "Bonjour. Could we get a train to Chambery now, rather than later?" (Note: This was all attempted in French, but I feel that comedy Franglais accents will add to the effect as I retell it.)
Annoying station woman: "Non."
"Er...okay...so we must get the 20:12 train in an hour?"
"Non."
"Oh, is it a coach, rather than a train?"
"Non. Zer are no coaches".
"Okay, so it's a train?"
"Non. Zer are no trains."
The conversation seems to have taken a rather bizarre existential twist and we appear to have found France's answer to Little Britain's "Computer says no" woman.

It turns out that despite being around 7pm on a Saturday night, there is no way to get home.

"Can we go to the last place on the line and catch a bus from there?"

She shrugs. We run. We run like the wind - it's all really rather heroic. We catch the last train going anywhere that night. We're quite grateful for the couple of glasses of wine with dinner, which makes the whole situation seem Rather Hilarious.

We arrive in Aix-les-Bains at 7:30 and look for buses.
There are no buses.
We are 10 minutes by car away from home.
The lone taxi hovering by the station costs 40 Euros.
Merde.

We do the only sensible thing and spend 4 hours at Georgie's apartment watching trashy French talent shows with spandex-clad fifty-year-olds gyrating in front of smitten blue-rinse groupies.

Hours later, as we wait for the night-train to Paris (our last chance to get home!), we look at the train timetable and finally notice the dreaded phrase 'sauf samedi' ('except Saturdays') next to every train we'd looked at.

Lessons learnt
French train timetables look really organised and efficient until you read the smallprint.
Most trains read something like this:

19h12: Annecy --> Chambery Except Saturdays and alternate Sundays if it's sunny, except if it's a Sunday. No service in the holidays unless it's a holiday. Will be 2 minutes late on 21st October, when it will be 4 minutes early. Not running until 22nd October, except on Saturdays.

Chez Nous

View from Chez Nous ^

I feel I should probably explain a little about the infamous Chez Nous, as it will no doubt be the location of many amusing soirees and petites crises domiciles.

How it all began

End of July:

F: 'Hi Beth: Apparently we're going to be working in the same school. I've just found out we should have got accommodation in June. Erm...did you?'

B: 'Hey, nice to hear from someone in the same area. June?! Er...no. Did you?

F: 'No! I'm going to pop into Chambery on my way back from holiday and try to find somewhere. Do you fancy sharing?'

*Quick bout of mutual facebook stalking*

B: 'Sure!'

August:

F: 'Hey Beth, I found a really nice place with a kitten in it!'

B: 'Wow, a kitten! Let's do it!

F: 'Er...the accommodation man wants money now...'

B: 'Kitten! Okay!'

And so it was...the future Chez Nous.

I found Chez Nous during a 16 hour blitz on Chambery in August, in the vague hope of avoiding a year spent in a cardboard box. During this exciting tour of the town with Francois (accommodation bloke), I saw 5 different apartments, of which 3 were of particular interest:


1. Very old place - this was a gorgeous, old-fashioned apartment with fireplaces in each bedroom, a massive oak dining room table, antique dressers and leather chairs. Huge kitchen, Narnia-style wardrobes, awesome knockers (on the doors, of course...). All was fine until Francois mentioned the 'occasional' problems with water. And electricity. And heating. The shower was a hole in the wall with a dirt stain below it. My internal mother said NO.

2. Very dodgy place - this was, well, very dodgy. It was above an abandoned shop with smashed in windows and bits of brick lying around. Francois put me in the rickety old cage lift and decided to take the stairs himself. Not a good sign. The apartment was 'cosy', 'intimate' and 'unique'. So, small, smelly and weird.


3. Shared house with a garage if I wanted the car. All was looking promising, but Francois was reluctant to let me see the kitchen. While he was fiddling with the telephone, I snuck in. All looked fine. I opened a kitchen cupboard to have a nosey inside. A strange squeaking noise came from within. Door opened: kitten inside! A gorgeous, white, fluffy furball of joy. A rather fast furball of joy, it turned out, as it leapt kittenishly from the cupboard and sprinted for freedom towards a rather distraught Francois.

It had to be that one.

Chez Nous now

Little Excitements

The Mysterious Basement - spiralling stone steps leading down into the dark behind a locked door...

The ski cupboard in the hall, complete with fluorescent vintage skis!

Housemates
2 French students
1 Swedish student
2 giant centipedes: Guillaume Whizz and Houdini (discovered in my rather traumatic first week rather too close to my bed. House centipedes eat spiders, bedbugs and ants, and can run at 16 inches/second. Houdini is so-named after escaping from a box he was trapped under for 2 days.)
No kitten: sadly, it seems to have moved :o(

And, of course, Beth and me.

Lessons Learnt
In France, our names have unfortunate connotations. French people struggle to say 'th', so Beth becomes 'Bet', or 'Bête', which means 'stupid' or 'beast'.
Flick sounds the same as an insult for 'cops', which translates as 'scum' or 'filth'.

So there we are: Scum and Stupid, Filth and Beast, Chez Nous.

Premier Jour

7:15am: Hold on, let me just repeat that: 7:15am.

CRASH! BANG, BANG, BANG, WHIRRR... CRASH!

Wake up in foreign bed in foreign country with foreign war being waged all around. Decide I have probably been in a coma and am suffering from amnesia somewhere in an apocalyptic future.

CRASH! CRASH! ... CRASH!

Decide to attempt movement in case still asleep. Lean over and open window. It feels pretty real. All philosophical thoughts on the nature of reality rapidly vanish as a huge plank of wood comes flying down to join a pile right outside my window.

There is a crane outside my room.

There is a man hammering the wall the other side of my bed.

It is is 7:15am.

That's 6:15am English time.

This is distinctly merde.

Reality

Speak to Francois (accommodation bloke), who reassures me that they are simply touching up the paintwork on the side of the house. Too tired to debate definition of 'paintwork', so go to explore town with Dad and Beth.

We 'do' Chambery's main tourist attractions:

- An elephant fountain: a giant fountain with four very life-like elephants coming out of it.

- The chateau - sadly not open, but spot a row of ground fountains to play with in the summer.

- The cathedral - all the walls are covered in trompe l'oeil paintings, giving the impression of intricately engraved arches and stone carvings. Really trippy - touch a couple to prove to myself that they're not real.

- Memorial gardens

- Skate park - Chambery is keen to get past its image of a bourgeois retirement home.

- Can't find Rousseau's house, so think about him instead and feel literature-ly fulfilled.

Reasons why Chambery is very French

> Every bench has either a collection of old men on it, or a couple engaged in tongue tennis.

> There is a Galeries Lafayette area with mutton-dressed-as-lamb old women caked in bright blue eyeshadow and bright red lipstick, complete with little rat-dogs yapping at their stilettos.

> Every 5 metres there is a dog turd. These are conveniently positioned so that you really can't avoid treading on them, unless you do a dance-machine style, hopskotch routine. There's actually quite an interesting range of colours, shapes and textures. You soon learn which are the worst sorts (usually the crusty ones with stiletto holes in from previous victims).

> All the shops shut for at least 2 hours at lunch time. Goodness knows where everyone goes - it's not like they can go shopping in their lunch break.

That said, it's a lovely town. The sun shines, there are enfants climbing trees, I can spot mountains in the distance, and we have dinner in a lovely traditional restaurant. Pudding is a killer: ice cream sandwiched between two giant meringues and draped in chocolate. After a couple of glasses of wine, Dad's French picks up, and he is able to order 'le bill silver plate thank you'.

Day Two

After a final morning of essential patisserie evaluation and How Not to Die in Your First Week driving lessons from the patriarch, my source of money, amusement and food departs back to England.

I merrily head off to the supermarket, which is 5 minutes down the street.

20 minutes later: it still hasn't appeared. I decided to keep walking forward, assuming that it will eventually materialise.

10 minutes later: still no supermarket. I appear to be in the foreign quarter of Chambery, with illegible shop names, dodgy looking characters leaning against walls, and a variety of leaves and smoking devices on sale in every other shop that isn't a takeaway. I speed up to a half-walk, half-jog.

10 minutes later: where the hell am I? Follow a sign to the town centre. It's definitely not Chambery town centre. A hoard of school kids rush past, gold teeth and tattoos glinting alongside their knife blades as they cackle in a foreign tongue. I enter a supermarket to ask for directions, but the shop assistant looks like she'll set her dogs on me if she finds out I'm English, so I buy some hot chocolate and escape.

10 minutes later: having followed a promising-looking bike track down a river, I end up fighting my way through prickly bushes. Maybe it's just an overgrown bike track...I find myself in a small clearing next to a barbed wire fence by the railway. The floor is nicely decorated with broken bottle. My mind full of tetanus and used syringes, I rapidly retreat and call the hubby for directions home from Google Maps. The shame.

Finally get back home to find series of panicky texts from the patriarch asking for translations of various transport-related words. Luckily he made it home more successfully than me!

Le voyage

2:45am: A strange, unshaven man staggers into my bedroom and tells me to get up. It turns out not be a Communist Purge or the FBI as my semi-conscious brain half-heartedly warns me, but my own dear patriarch telling me my adventure is about to begin.

Sod adventure. I roll back under the duvet to sleep. Bladder rapidly disagrees: too much nervous drinking the evening before.

3am: On the road, full of warnings and messages from darling mother, and wishing Dad sounded a bit more confident that he knows the way to Dover. Try to remember the last time I saw this hour and decide that mid-sleep toilet trips aside, it was probably in an alpine hut. Sadly no mountains to climb now, except the 2 degree slope that Felicia battles her way up in first gear.

3:45am: Woken up by Miss TomTom, our annoyingly well-spoken Satnav, and Dad swearing at her. Tell him off for abusing nice English women, then swear at her myself as she tells us to 'turn around when possible' on dual carriageway.

Unearthly o'clock: Arrive at ferry 1 hour and 20 minutes before it leaves. 80 minutes of my life wasted. Tragic youth. Wake up as we drive on board and yell at Dad that we must run full pelt to claim a decent bench to sleep on. Adopt full January sales shopping attitude and run, elbows out, towards the bar. Followed by about 5 people and, well, nobody else actually. Try to ignore the rusting window frames and knife slashes in the seats. Force down suspiciously stale roll for breakfast and sadly decline the Coke Dad has bought me. Caffeinated or not, it's just not a good time for fizzy sugar. The ferry docks with a nauseating bounce, and we discover there are exactly 23 vehicles on the ferry. It still takes 20 minutes to unload them all.

Vaguely acceptable o'clock: Gawwwwd French autoroutes are boring. Wonderful, easy driving, but b-o-riiinguh.

Elevenses o'clock: Early lunch of steak-hache and frites. Feel rather unhealthy, but too scared to do anything but point when ordering and the canteen lady decided we were Eeeengleeesh so must eat ze fast food. Leave a small pile of bright pink meat - still in very British, paranoid state of mind about eating raw dead animal.

My turn to drive: Dad has 3 hour long panic attack: "Make sure you stick to the right, watch that car, remember to indicate, you can use the screenwash if you like, listen to the SatNav, STAY LEFT IN 50 MILES!!, have you still got your passport?" Novelty wears off after an hour or two, and 5 hours of Radio Nostalgie and Radio Cherie (Radio Darling) start to wear on the nerves. Suicidal thoughts lead to a more relaxed driving style.

6pm: Accommodation man Francois phones me as he is being violently murdered. Can hear his blood spurting out and several deadly punches. Hang up and contemplate living in cardboard box. Phone rings: Francois is back from the dead, or rather, his young son had decided to phone me and gurgle down the phone before whacking it very enthusiastically against something very solid.
First sight of mountains! Dad yells at me to watch the road. He just doesn't understand that some people's minds are on higher things...

7pm: Miss TomTom rebels when we we go through a tunnel, so end up completely lost on a one-way street. Drive straight past the house, which now appears to be on a very busy main street, rather than the nice, quiet residential area my rose-tinted mind had remembered. Finally find house again. Greeted by lovely new housemate Beth and unload the car. Leave Felicia in my garage, which is near The Ghetto then head out to dinner.

10pm: Feel rather smug for getting dinner in posh restaurant while wearing yesterday's underwear, crumpled jeans and hoodie. Feel rather less smug when Dad's hotel receptionist gives him a knowing look as he kisses me goodnight. He fails to inform her that I am his daughter, and I feel her beady eye giving me the once over every time I come to meet Dad from then on. Try to break it to him gently that she thinks I'm his prostitute. Turns out he had already twigged but it wasn't worth correcting her. Charming.

11pm: Resort to 4 season sleeping bag as room is freezing cold. Finally fall asleep after what has been a very long day.


Lessons learnt
- It is impossible to drive close enough to toll booths in a right-hand drive car.
- French radio is truly dire.
- Haribo jelly beans taste really chemical. Only the green ones are worthwhile.
- You should not rely on SatNav in regions with lots of tunnels.

Les preparations

Packing list

10 pairs of shoes (all essential, of course)
Ice axe and crampons
Cadbury's chocolate
Salt and vinegar crisps
Whittards hot chocolate
Laptop
Slipper socks
Emergency loo roll
Ascent of Rum Doodle
Beano

All set to go, Dad and I loaded poor little Felicia (my mum's Skoda) with all my baggage. Delighted to find a spare square centimetre, I packed mountain biking stuff, and we arranged 2 bikes very prettily on the back of the car, with the apparent aim of doubling our width and wind resistance. Wonderful.


The night before the morning after
"Bugger: where's my passport? ...Tit: Can't find my keys ...Wank: Did I phone the accommodation man to say when I'd be arriving? ...Crap: do I need a duvet or not? ..Arse: packed all my underwear and deodorant ...Bollocks: I can't remember the word for 'deodorant' ...SHIT I can't speak French and I'm going to live in France!!"

Needless to say, with all the arse-related swearing, the planned 8:30 bedtime didn't happen. Dad managed to at least be in his room by then, but got up an hour later for a postponed Mega Faff. We were chivvied back to bed, where I had disturbing dreams of snails, frogs and flat land.

Introduction

Well, here it is: my blog on life in France. For those of you not in the know, I am moving to Chambery in the South East of France to be a teaching assistant and general bum for 7 months.

My aims:

- Climb lots

- Ski lots

- Eat lots

- Learn lots

- Become fluent.

Until those are achieved, I shall be the 'rosbif' from England, who tries desperately to speak fluent franglais.

This blog will be a record of lessons learnt, adventures experienced and cultural clashes. I hope you find it funny, informative, or at least like the pretty pictures.