Le Franco Phoney

No, that’s not a typo, there’s a new ski ‘posse’ called Coreupt (or coreUPT — they can’t seem to decide), and Candide Thovex is in with them. The news isn’t actually that recent, but I’ve only just discovered the (very short!) video (see below), which is kind of an odd one, and since Coreupt seem to be based in Tignes, perhaps the Candide Invitational 2009 will be held there instead! Coreupt seem to be collecting a pretty good team of riders. Anyway, I heard a rumour that Coreupt equipment will be available for testing on the last weekend of November. Don’t blame me if I’m wrong — I’ll be going to Tignes that weekend anyway for another snow fix before La Clusaz’s lifts open in December.

Many years ago, I recall a supermarket visit that involved a woman telling my mum and I about her son in a mental institution who was being allowed to visit for Christmas. We didn’t know her: we were just checking out frozen turkeys for the festive meal when she walked up and said she would need a bigger turkey this year because her son was visiting. Instead of ignoring her, my mum said “Really?” and smiled, and that prompted the woman to talk at us for a good ten minutes (hey, it might not sound like long, but when you’re in a frozen turkey aisle, it really is) about her son, the dogs in the sky (!?) and various other topics that actually made no sense. My mum just attracts people like that. It’s what she’s good at.

It looks like it might be genetic. Just last week when trying on a pair of boots, a little old lady informed me that she is old and sick and “look at my feet.” I looked at her feet and they were indeed as old and sick as she had explained. I didn’t understand much of her French, but I was left pretty speechless after burning my eyes with the image of her twisted, dry, bruised and lumpy feet with yellow toe nails. I escaped, feeling just a bit ill.

I’d hoped it was a one-off, but it was not. Today started with a man who saw I was buying three plates. Yes, today, I bought three plates. I will use them to sit my gingerbread houses on, as my friends never give my my own plates back. I’ve learnt to buy the cheapest I can find, and I was in the cheapest shop with all the world’s crazy people. The man in front of me at the checkout turned to his, erm, I can only assume it was his minder, and said in French, “Looks, she’s buying three plates. Three plates. That’s what she is buying. Three.” She pulled him away while I did exactly what my mum does - I smiled as if it was normal. These people are not normal. Later today, a woman came running up to me. Now, I had baggy jeans on and a blue hoody, complete with dreadlocks loose almost to my behind, yet she seemed to think I had a red supermarket apron on and was an ideal worker to ask directions from. “Where are the detergents?” she demanded, impatiently. Eager to help (will I never learn?), I said I wasn’t sure but I thought they were over- Too late! She heard I wasn’t a native French speaker and dismissed me as a BAD store worker who was probably taking a local French person’s job. “Oh,” she said as she walked off in a huff. I felt like yelling out in English: “No worries, any time, glad to help such friendly people as yourself. And have a great day, sunshine.” Instead, I carried on and was grateful I was not in the frozen turkey aisle.

For someone who once lived in Annecy, it’s a disgrace that I never made it to some of the tourist attractions there, such as the old jail. So, I recently rounded up a few others and we spent the day as tourists, checking out Annecy’s offerings. We started at the jail, officially known as Palais de l’Isle. It’s funny to think that a jail is actually a palace, but indeed it is! I suspect it’s also the most photographed structure in Annecy. As the name suggests, it is an island - perfect for a jail, but it was actually built in 1132 for the Lord of Annecy to live in. It’s also been a mint, amongst other things. Two rooms show where the coins were made, and some areas of the jail are open, including the toilet holes, which lead directly into the canal.

Now, if you’re thinking this wouldn’t be a bad place to be incarcerated, think how frustrating it must have been to be just feet away from either bank of the canal, hearing the bustle of the city around you, and being stuck in an overcrowded, smelly, cold jail, right in the centre of town. We looked at the scrawlings left behind by anonymous inmates, then moved onto the chateau.

Now, the chateau in Annecy is one attraction I had already seen. A few years ago, as a French language student in Annecy, a group of us had checked it out. We noticed some dead fish in the fish tanks, but apart from that, it had an interesting assortment of artwork and artifacts. Actually, our French was so bad that we told the teacher that “nous sommes allés á le chapeau et les piscines sont mort” (”we went to the hat and the pools were dead”, when we meant “we went to the castle (’chateau’) and the fish (’poissons’) were dead”. Time has passed since then and no fish were dead on this particular visit. Favourite bits were the Emile Cohl exhibition, the sock monster and the 3D miniature of the lake and mountains of Annecy.

Here is a menu from a restaurant in La Clusaz (you can click on it for a much larger version). It’s possibly the only restaurant in town that offers a separate English menu, so I probably shouldn’t pick on it, but when the translation goes this wrong, I honestly can’t help myself. If you can shed any light on some of these dishes, I’d be grateful.

I started off looking at the “Salad and Starters” section. “Salad of goat” takes the number one spot on the menu. I’m picturing a goat’s head with those funny square eyes sitting on a bed of lettuce, or maybe some goat’s legs sticking up between some tomatoes. Further down, a “Salad tomatos mozarella with the pest and Parmesan” is available. Can someone please get the pest out of my salad tomatos?

The “Spéciality of wood burning stove” options are a little better. “Crozet” is actually a Savoyard pasta, which might help you interpret this: “Roasted of crozet (svoyard pastes) with boletus and green salad”. Err, what is it?

Meanwhile, the “Sea food” options sound far more interesting. You can order a stove! Yes, the “Stove of st jaques in vegetable julienne”. Now, I’m not sure if st jaques is related to St Jacques, and whether he really wants you covering his stove in sliced vegies and attempting to eat it. I imagine the waiters would have a hard time bringing it out to the table too. No problem — you can order “Coco - curry of St Jacques to zucchinis”. Again, what?

Obviously, a restaurant modern enough to have a separate English(?) menu offers more than the regional specialties. Wok dishes are available too. What delights await us? Who can resist “Noodles jumped to the gambas and crunching vegetables”? Are the noodles crunching the vegetables after jumping to the gambas? I have an image of noodles in karate outfits bouncing all over the place, with thinly sliced vegetables breaking under their weight.

Meahwhile, the “Specailities” section offers something extra special: although orders are for a minimum of two people, the menu also announces: “price by anybody”! Great! I’ll just order my favourite dish, even though I’m not sharing it with anyone, and charge myself a Euro twice. Bargain for two! I might avoid the dodgy-sounding “jumped spotted potatoes” and the “Molten with the farm reblechon”: a stove is hard enough, but an entire farm named after a misspelt cheese is too much for anyone.

I’m a little concerned for the butchers of La Clusaz, as the “Meats” section offers “Rib steack of the butcher”. Ouch! And “Paving of beef”. What’s that all about?

LIke any great meal, the highlight is the dessert. This menu lives up to my expectations. I could have “Greedy coffee”, which comes with a description: “coffee and his preciousness”. Not convinced his preciousness was for me, I found another option: “Ministrone of vanilla fresh fruits, jelly of barley water”. Now, if I could just figure out what vanilla fresh fruits are. Someone “spilt” the almonds on the “Strawberry melba” (double points if you can guess what’s wrong with this dessert name). Alternatively, you can buy “2 balls” in a variety of flavours. I think I might give the balls a miss.

With even more snow falling in La Clusaz, my mountain-biking buddy from a few weeks ago and I took the opportunity to visit a friend in Tignes and hit the piste for a pre-season slide.
Although the wind prevented the telepherique on the glacier from opening, all the t-bars were open, and as the only snowboarder out with four skiers, I’m currently sporting a bruised behind from the t-bar…erm…bar. In case you don’t know, skiers rest the bar at the very top of their legs where their legs meet their cheeks. Snowboarders, however, have to go up sideways and take all their weight on their inner thigh and the cheek nearby. It also works your muscles a bit more when riding a t-bar on a snowboard and after the fourth journey up, I was wishing I had skied instead. My forward leg was like jelly.

The snow was fresh and powdery, but visibility higher up was not so good. So we stayed lower down and I played on a friend’s 2006 Nidecker Diablo (pictured) which was lots of fun. It’s much softer than my Burton Custom, but it felt just as hardy when going at speed. This board didn’t flap, yet the extra softness provided great suspension over the few small bumps that I could find on the well-flattened piste. I managed to find some powder that had blown into a gully the whole way down one side of the t-bar and that’s where I noticed that the board had that sinking feeling. Just one centimetre shorter than my Custom, I expected it to float just as well. It did float, but it felt like the back end was sinking - a feeling I haven’t experienced on a board before.

We ended the day in Tignes with a hot chocolate and drove back to La Clusaz, satisfied that the first day of the 2008/09 season was a good one. Meanwhile, more snow is due to fall this week. Winter is coming!

After some rather dodgy pizza boxes, including this one from Geoff, and this one from me, I bring you the perfect pizza box.

It has everything you want in a pizza box: the idea that your pizza has been made in a wood-fired oven; an aroma that the pizza maker himself is loving; written comfirmation, if there was any doubt, that you have a pizza inside this box; and a tasty-looking pizza to get you in the pizza mood while you’re driving back from the pizza shop or paying the deliverer. There are no toothless urchins and no young girls with cleavage in bikinis. This picture has a cartoon feel about it, so if you’re imagining the cartoon man salivating over your pizza, that’s okay too: cartoon saliva isn’t real.

Even better, the size of this pizza box was almost double the size of the last few pizza boxes I’ve had. Its size dictates that the pizza inside is a serious pizza, and not some poor attempt and covering some dough in some canned tomato sauce and hoping it won’t taste too bad.

My rating of this pizza box is a ten out of ten! Have you had a better or worse pizza box experience? Feel free to send me a photo of your loved or hated pizza box and I’ll post it up.

I’ve been meaning to write about a few final places from my summer road trip which simply can’t be missed, or that at least deserve some comment.

First of all, Lascaux II. If you’ve ever seen a prehistoric cave painting, chances are it’s from Lascaux. The cave was discovered when four boys and a dog found a hole in 1940 that led to a large underground cave, covered in artwork. The original cave is now closed to visitors because human traits such as breathing and body temperature were damaging the paintings, but a replica has been made using the same techniques as the original. I wonder if it too will suffer the same fate in years to come. Of course, photos, even without a flash, are not allowed, and since this was the start of our trip, we obeyed.

However, we then moved onto the Gouffre de Proumeyssac, where photos were also forbidden (just like in the Gouffre de Padirac). The slide show below has some photos from inside. Yes, by this point, the ‘no photos’ thing was boring, and we clicked away without a flash. This gouffre, or cave, features lots of squid-like staligtites and a very rare triangular rock formation which only occurs in the stillest of waters and with the right chemical conditions. Photos of that are also below.

Since we had already visited La Roque St Christophe and a few smaller rock-shelter villages, we only stopped at Les Eyzies de Tayac to take some photos of the giant man overlooking the town. He’s pictured in the photos below too. The museum does look good there, but we had no time to stop. We had a quick home-made icecream and drove away.

After a long, hot day, we picked a fantastic town to stay in overnight: Sarlat-la-Canéda. The town was full of activity well into the night, with street performers, an open-air theatre, all sorts of restaurants and really narrow, pretty alleyways in the largely pedestrianised town. Famous people have been born in asymmetric houses there, and the medieval feel of the place really adds to the relaxed atmosphere there.

Last, and for me, least, is Collonges la Rouge. This is a tourist town purely because all the buildings are made of red stones. For me, it wasn’t anything special, but my travelling companion loved it, so some photos appear below from that too. Don’t get me wrong, it was very pretty, but the whole ideology of a town being a tourist attraction because they happened to have a lot of red rock to use up makes me feel as if the inhabitants have really just cashed in on the population of non-colour-blind people. Minus points also for a less than tasty sandwich-based lunch with not much choice left at 2pm.

From my place, I can hear the mountain bikers zooming down a green piste in summer. But have I ever tried mountain biking? No. I almost hired a bike a few months ago, but I would have been out with two very experienced, competitive boys, so I chickened out and let them go off without me holding them up.

You see, even on the ’summer luge’ (a couple of metal toboggan tracks on a hill), I used my brakes constantly and watched three of my friends go past me in the faster track next to me. I am cautious. I don’t like hurting myself. I am a wimp.

So, I was very pleased when a girl I met recently asked me if I’d like to go mountain biking with her. She had been a couple of times, but felt like she was holding up the boys she’d ridden with, and preferred to go with someone, well, wimpy, like me.

Yesterday was the big day. We got driven to the top of a green piste, then, after one small incline, it was a gentle decline. At least, on a snowboard or skis, it’s a gentle decline. On a mountain bike, it felt more like an out-of-control roller coaster that just got faster and lower. I hadn’t ridden a bike down a hill since I was a kid, and yesterday I felt that gravity and age were both against me. We skidded over slippery, wet tree trunks, small and large stones, and piles of autumn leaves that sheltered hidden traps such as holes, creeks, and more stones. I did see one stone jutting out loosely on the piste and tried my hardest to miss it, but of course, no matter how hard I aimed away from it, my bike was drawn to it and I was grateful I didn’t fall. I was going at around the same pace as a power walker and the stone was maybe 15cm high, so it’s hardly surprising that I wasn’t catapulted into the air. But at the time, the rock was ten feet tall and I was going faster than an English car on a French toll road. For wimpy me, it was a moment.

Good news for the girl I went mountain biking with: I think my constant braking and howling has given her much more confidence and proved that there is, indeed, someone much slower than her.

There are lots of cool stories about wildlife in the alps, like the dahu, pictured to the left. The dahu, now extinct, had four legs and looked a bit like a mountain goat, but it had one important difference. As it grew to full size, two of its legs grew longer than the other two, allowing it to walk on steep mountains and stay completely upright. They became extinct because they were too easy to catch. The French folk loved the taste of the dahu, so they would creep up behind one and say, “Dahu, dahu…” and the dahu would hear its name and turn around. However, with the two longer legs now being the uphill legs, it would fall over straight away, allowing the hunters to catch them very easily!

By now, you may have guessed that the dahu is not a real animal. It’s a legendary story, but sadly just a story about a mythical creature that never existed. There’s even a piste here in La Clusaz called ‘Dahu’, which is odd, as it’s a pretty flat access track.

And then there’s the marmot. Now, I first learnt of the marmot during my first season as a ski bum. I had seen these plush soft toys in the shops that looked like an American gopher, and just presumed that’s what they were. Then people started talking about marmots. They sleep through the cold part of winter, waking up in April to bask in the sun on the rocks re-emerging from the melting snow. I spent four seasons looking for a marmot. I heard they hung out under one of the chairlifts in Meribel, and I checked each rock beneath the chair every time I was on it. I never saw a marmot.

By my fifth season, I was well and truly convinced that the marmot was a made-up animal — a marketing ploy by the French tourism board to sell plush toys (see photo to the right, above) to unsuspecting tourists who were destined never to see a marmot in real life, since they didn’t actually exist.

And then, it happened. I saw a marmot. Actually, I saw two! Some friends and I had headed over to Chamonix late in the season. When we stopped for lunch, one of them pointed out the marmots, busily arranging some scraps of food that the chef must have left for them. They were a level below our outdoor eating area, which was surrounded by perspex. So, I tried to take a photo. The result, sadly, is lacking clarity due to reflection and distance, but here it is (pictured to the right). I decided it needs this red star around the marmot just to make it clear.

So, last summer, I decided to go on a marmot mission. I put my walking shoes on and armed myself with my (pre-SLR) instant camera and food supplies and I walked to the hills! I walked and walked and never saw a marmot. I sat on a rock and ate my packed lunch, waiting for a marmot to poke its head out. Nothing. I had already waited for a few hours and I was getting bored. Lots of other people were wandering around so I presumed that the marmots had gone into hiding until everyone went away. Resigned to not seeing a marmot, I descended the rocks and hills. And then — in the distance — I saw one! It hadn’t seen me and it was sitting on a rock right next to a path. My luck was in! I got my camera out and took a photo from afar. Alas, the zoom on my old instant digital camera was hopeless and I knew the photo would be like a Loch Ness monster sighting — kind of small and blotchy and a little bit blurry (see photo to the left). Taking small, slow steps, I honed in on the marmot. Too late! It saw me and scurried under a rock. “No worries,” I thought, “I can wait a bit longer: it’s a sunny day.” So I sat on a close-by rock and waited. And waited. And waited. The camera was propped by my eye so I didn’t have to make any sudden movements when it did return. Finally, its little nose emerged, followed by the rest of its body. And just as it did, a family of tourists approached. It was a catch-22: if I had asked them to wait, the marmot would have heard me and run away again, and if they got any closer, the marmot would have heard them and run away again. And it did. So, I sat and I waited again. And I waited. My arm muscles grew sore from holding my camera by my eye, so I put my arm down for a moment. And of course, the marmot returned before I had put the camera back near my eye. I moved my arm slightly, in an effort to fluke a photo without it being by my eye, and the marmot saw and ran back in. So I gave up and went home.

I decided today that I would not let the marmot beat me. I wanted to take a proper photo of a marmot now that I had a proper camera and a few hours to spare. So, I set off late in the afternoon and headed for a different area, which is normally a lovely piste on the way down from the La Balme ski area. I passed some cows that were roaming un-fenced near their farm and watched as a dog herded them. The cows were running to avoid his wrath and I continued up the hill. I passed some giant, man-made rock sculpture. I spotted a gardening glove — odd for an area of rocks and cattle, but perhaps it was a left-over the man-made rock sculpting. I spotted a disposable camera. I guess someone fell over in the snow during winter and lost it. I stepped over a variety of types of poo. I spotted a bone, which to me, looked like the remains of a goat’s tail bone. Perhaps one of the wolves I’ve heard about had eaten it when it strayed from its herd. I had reached as far as I wanted to go and still hadn’t seen a marmot. I decided to return home, defeated again by the marmot. As I walked towards a rise, a little red-brown slinky thing appeared from the other side of the rise. A marmot! We both froze and stared at each other. As I raised my camera, the marmot turned around and slinked away to another rock and watched me cautiously. There was grass in the way and it was much further away than the other marmot had been, but I snapped a photo as it contemplated climbing another rock (see dodgy photo to the right). As soon as I did, it ran out of sight. I went past the rock it had been on and found one to sit on, hoping it would emerge. Alas, the marmot stayed in hiding and I eventually gave up again.

So, that’s three photos which all look a bit like the dodgy Lock Ness monster photos we’ve all seen. If I hadn’t seen the little buggers scurrying around each time I took my dodgy photos, I would still be thinking a marmot is as mythical as the dahu or just a French marketing ploy to sell plush animals to tourists. And of all my friends who have seen marmots, none of them have photos. Coincidence? I think not. Google has images of marmots. Here’s one of them (see left). But Google also produced images of dahus and they never really lived. So, the marmot: fake or real? Judge for yourself.