Le Franco Phoney

My childhood Christmas dinners involved roast turkey and hot plum pudding (sometimes on 40+°C days) in Australia, and they always started with the Christmas cracker. You know, those bits of paper or foil with a ‘party’ crown (a thin paper hat that often tore before you stuck it on your head) and a ‘toy’ (eg: a plastic ring in almost orange-coloured gold; a measuring tape; a leapfrog if you were lucky) inside.

Who doesn’t have a photo of their family all looking bored and embarrassed, eating their roast dinner with a paper crown on their head? Actually, French families don’t. Christmas crackers don’t seem to exist in France, but they do have Christmas bonbons. Yes, chocolate: so much better than a paper hat! But just when you’re thinking it’s a win-win situation, think again. The bonbons share something in common with the crackers: they contain a dodgy joke that just isn’t funny. Safe for all the family, here are just two of the typically corny jokes:

	It says: “A snail waits for his friend, a slug. The slug arrives late and the snail says, ‘And also, you haven’t brought your backpack’.” Get it? The snail thinks the…oh, you must get it.	It says: “What is the worst thing a gymnast can do? Faint while doing a hand stand” (it’s a play on words, as ‘tomber dans les pommes’ literally means ‘fall in the apples’ (faint) and ‘faire/faisant le poirier’ literally means ‘act like a pear tree’ (hand stand). Get it? Apples and pears…

Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but Copain des Alpes is my new favourite book. Although it’s a children’s book, it’s great for adults learning French. I discovered this one at a French friend’s place the other day, and it answered all three questions that another friend and I were pondering on the chairlift the very same day. The questions were:

1. Why don’t rabbits get cold? Wouldn’t they be happier if they went down the valley where it’s warmer?
2. How do snowflakes form?
3. What is the turkey-like animal that the signs say not to run over on your snowboard in the forest areas of La Clusaz?

The answers (thanks to the book):

1. In winter, animal fur thickens with extra hair called (in French) “jarre”, which is like a tiny tube, holding the air in to keep the bunnies warm. It’s apparently just like a mini-radiator around them. So no, they would not be happier in the valley.
2. For snowflakes to make it to the ground, not only must the cloud where they form be cold, but so must the air between the cloud and the ground. Otherwise, they’re just clumps of snow falling from the sky. The tiny drops of water that freeze in the cold cloud form miniscule crystals of ice — or snowflakes as we know them!
3. The turkey-like animal is actually called a ‘Tétras-lyre’. This explains the number of pistes called ‘Tétras’. The book also listed various other animals which I know as pistes, such as ‘Aigle’ (eagle), ‘Bouquetin’ (something with long horns that looks a bit like a brown, fat goat), and ‘Merle’ (blackbird).

Browsing through the 230-odd pages, I’ve found recipes for blueberry jam, a ’spot that flower’ section, advice on staying at an overnight refuge, a walking map of La Grave, and an explanation of hydro-electric systems. There are least 25 of these “Copain” books available. I want the whole collection! My French friend told me that “Copain du bricolage” (DIY friend) is really good. She said: “It’s great! It shows you how to make chairs and picnic tables and snail houses”. Now, picnic tables make sense, but snail houses? “Yeah, they’re great! We had pink snails and yellow snails and black and white snails, and we built them a shelter,” my friend told me. Apparently, they did not eat them. In fact, the snail house was flawed: they kept escaping, leaving snail trails in all directions. No worries: they made a new on in a forest with some friends: they put it in the middle of a private track. Just a day after the snails were placed in their new house, the other friend’s dad drove a tractor over the road, squashing the snail house. “I was very sad,” my friend said, “but they had all the night to escape.” She told me this very, very seriously. Maybe I’ll skip the DIY book of the series.

Sunday was a very windy day in La Clusaz. Outside my window, I could see the snow being picked up in mini-tornado fashion and taken away to somewhere else. So what do you do when it’s so windy? Well, if you’re the La Clusaz ticket office, you keep selling lift passes while closing most of the lifts. The day started with four out of the five peaks open, but by midday, only one was open. I chatted later that night with an angered friend: she had bought an afternoon pass, only to discover that the few lifts open in La Clusaz were drag lifts for beginners. She demanded a refund, but she said the ticket office told her that Croix Fry/Merdassier was still open so they could still sell the tickets. That’s right: no way of getting there without a car, but they can still sell the tickets without actually mentioning that fact. My angered friend should have looked at the piste report online like my other friends and I did. We jumped in my car to get to the only open area, inaccessible on skis from La Clusaz village, dodging branches that littered the road and driving over snow drifts that had built into mini snow dunes.

With a layer of snow in my car just from the time it took to put on my ski boots, we ventured into the storm. Unsurprisingly, few people were on the windy pistes, but we found some sheltered areas with plenty of trees to dampen the wind. Shouting on the chairlifts was the only option to be heard. One panicked guy and his family came over to a drag lift worker at the end of the day after realising the lifts to get back to La Clusaz were all closed. How would he get back? Luckily, an extremely flat piste could take them back, and the road it crosses (requiring skis and snowboards to be removed for a whole five metres) was probably covered with snow from the wind. A bonus: they’d save a few minutes in the half-hour or so it would take them to get back, presuming the dad helped the kids climb the uphill sections of the supposedly downhill piste. Fortunately, we had the car. Next time, I’m staying in.

As I predicted, Candide will indeed be holding an event in Tignes. It’s not actually called the Candide Invitational 2009, but it seems to be the closest thing so far. The Riderscup (yes, one word) will see two teams competing against each other: one led by Candide and the other by TJ Schiller, according to the Tignes.net website. The competition will involve an XXL half pipe and Big Air session. It’s being touted as the US against the Europeans, which seems a bit like a marketing ploy to me.

If you’re interested in going, you’d better get your skates on: it’s happening in early January.

The cross-country World Cup was held in La Clusaz last weekend, so I went up to check it out on Saturday afternoon. Of course, as soon as I arrived, the competition ended for the day, but I was surprised at just how many people were there to watch a sport which I find, well, completely boring. Don’t get me wrong: I participated in a mini World Cup for cross-country skiing once (okay, it was inter-varsity ski week, where I was given a pair of cross-country skis from the 70s and told to learn during the competition: my university needed some extra points; I learnt quickly but was happy to get those quasi-skis off my feet).

Clearly, some people do enjoy both participating and watching, and La Clusaz had gone all out, putting up this lovely hot air balloon, and even a big screen so the people at the back of the crowd could see the action. I got there just in time to see that a Norwegian won the women’s competition. The bell ringers decided to stand next to me, and as you can see from the photo of them, the snow was still hurtling down from the sky after days of snowfall. The weather was sunny on Sunday, but I was too busy going down a hill on a snowboard to bother checking out the people going around in circles on funny skis.

A friend of mine was talking about the World Cup, which he had also had a quick look at. It inspired him to try it out on Monday, when the crowds were all gone—along with the big screen and the La Clusaz balloon. He had access to all the equipment he needed, so he headed over to a flat area and strapped in. Top marks for trying, but his verdict? “It’s boring,” he said with a shrug. That’s good enough for me. I’ll stick to going down hills and will no doubt marvel at mini-extravaganza of next year’s World Cup when it comes back.

The great thing about visiting a ski resort that one of your friends lives in is that you get to be a complete tourist without having to worry about people knowing you. Of course, this isn’t so good for the friend in the resort, but when the group consists of four girls — two of them single, you can get away with quite a lot. Our first night in Tignes started off innocently enough, patting Oscar the giant dog (just 3cm shorter than the world’s tallest dog) at the Alpaka before having a few drinks at my friend’s place. We headed back out and were told off for leaving the door open at La Grotte du Yeti before deciding it smelt too much like a toilet to stay, deciding instead to chat up the barman at the Jam Bar who put up with us until we thought we should try to get some sleep before catching first lifts in the morning.

After a full day of snowboarding the next day, you’d expect us to be somewhat subdued the following night. Two girls went back to the Jam Bar and continued to chat up the barman, and by the time the other two arrived a few hours later, the first two were beyond tipsy — one becoming very giggly while the other one spoke loudly over a pizza dinner about all sorts of odd, but entertaining, dinner topics, such as squat toilets. Before we had paid the bill, we were asked not to come back to the pizzeria, but that wasn’t even related to the drunken girls.

Add into the mix a boyfriend of one of the girls, who arrived in Tignes just in time to take us away from the pizzeria of our disgrace, and who was happy to ferry the girls around while doing handbrake turns in his van even though he only has one passenger seat, and you’ve got a party in a van right there. More like a fun-park ride than a drive to Val Claret, we eventually arrived with three girls splattered in the back of the van, giggling after their joyride. We stuck our necks into Daffy’s, but continued onto a bar that has an @ symbol in its name (which I’ve forgotten) while our bloke driver faffed around at his car for another few minutes.

It was in this particular bar that a French man came over to take our order. He didn’t work there: he just wanted to chat us up, and it worked. With our driver finally finding us seated in a corner, he explained to this guy at the bar that two of us were single and two were not, and that it was up to this guy to figure it out. He chatted up one of the non-single girls first before moving onto a single one. He told her he had not had a girlfriend for four months, yet he had told our bloke mate that his current girlfriend had cheated on him. Was this payback? Who knows. He didn’t get the opportunity despite some great efforts.

My Tignes friend wanted to check out another bar, le Couloir, so she and I ducked out for five minutes to find it and see what it was like. We didn’t make it through the door for two reasons:

1. some posh kid who had just arrived in the resort kept trying to talk to us; and,
2. a dog came and sat on my foot.

So, we eventually slipped away, with one very warm foot, and a posh kid imploring us to stay for a chat. Meanwhile, back in the bar, a guy attempted to drunkenly ballroom dance with one of the others, which proves that no matter where you go in the world, alcohol makes men believe they are Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. They never are, but they’ll never learn.

We demanded that the DJ play some 80s music for us, then left, as you do when drunk, just a few minutes later. We did some more handbrake turns on the way back to Tignes le Lac before finally piling into my friend’s very small bedsit (around 20m² including spacious bathroom) in the early hours of the morning, ready to attack the mountain in daylight the following morning. Luckily, the subsequent snowstorm kept us in bed long enough the next morning to fully recover first.

Well, what a start to winter: La Balme here in La Clusaz opened last weekend, providing an entire area of untracked powder — and a few rocks underneath. With my snowboard relatively unscathed, I popped over to Tignes with some friends for Sunday and Monday. Despite the sunny weather on Sunday, the wind was strong, causing the fresh snow to feel like pellets of rice hitting us in the face at times. The glacier was mostly closed, again, like last time, due to high winds. The run down from the glacier was still rocky, presumably due to the high winds stealing all the snow.

Meanwhile, Monday was even worse. A friend in Val d’Isere texted me in the morning to say she was looking at a blizzard, while the rest of us chickened out of the 9.30 start we had planned. The fog and snow stayed, so we ventured out after a long breakfast and played on a free piste (thanks Tignes!) at Val Claret that was pretty much untracked until we arrived. That would be because there were only a few other suckers out there, but it was fun to try to see the kicker before actually hitting (or missing) it.

One of my friends chickened out of skiing, opting for ‘defrosting the car’ instead. This involved sitting in her car with the engine running and her feet over the heater vents on the console until she thawed out. By the time she was warm, the centimetres of snow on her windscreen had melted away. Meanwhile, just up the road from her, my handbrake-turn-loving friend had put on his snow chains and was happily pulling on his handbrake all around the ever-white roads of the resort.

So, two days of cold fingers on this visit, plus the day of boarding on the glacier in antarctic-style conditions in November, added to all my previous visits which mostly involved snow or high winds has led me to believe that Tignes actually means “bloody freezing” in French.