Le Franco Phoney

I really should have written about this days ago: Xavier Bertoni from La Clusaz won this year’s X Games Men’s Ski Superpipe last weekend, doing some very cool things while riding switch. He’s the first French man to win this competition since Candide Thovex, also from La Clusaz. Snow sports really are taken seriously here, with five year-olds training to get into the local ski team via their own ski team called ‘Pre-club’. At five years of age, I was still stumbling around in a leotard and trying to figure out how to get from first position to fifth position in ballet. But here in La Clusaz, I’ve seen five year olds chucking themselves of kickers with their parents applauding them for landing 360s on their skis. No wonder the La Clusaz kids are winning stuff.

Here’s Xavier’s incredible run:

Coreupt’s TJ Schiller won the Men’s Slopestyle, with teammate Colby West coming third. Colby also finished fifth in the Superpipe. A good result for Coreupt.

As I’ve described before, I’ll never be considered a local here in La Clusaz. In fact, it takes about three generations for someone to be gain that privilege. Because I’m not local, it’s always nice when familiar faces whose names I don’t know say hello and stop for a chat. Yesterday is a perfect example. This afternoon, I popped out for a quick slide down the mountain. When I arrived at the first drag lift, the (normally grumpy) guy checking the electronic tickets said: “You’re late today.” For the past month, I’ve said hello to him every time I’ve seen him. Sometimes I’ve had a reply; sometimes I’ve had no acknowledgment at all. Grumpy? Maybe. Or shy? I’ve persisted in saying hello because even if he is grumpy, I refuse to let it rub off on me, and I’ve embraced the way the French say hello to strangers. So, back to the moment. I explained to him that I had finished my work early. He nodded and told me to be careful on the hill. Achievement #1: get grumpy/shy drag lift man to talk. Achieved. Bonus points for his apparent concern for my well-being.

At the very next lift queue, the ticket-checker also said hello. I said hi back, and to my surprise, he told me that my accent had improved significantly since last year, which led to a quick conversation about how important it is to be able to communicate even if you don’t know all the verb tenses or the entire vocabulary. Achievement #2: Have a conversation with a stranger and actually understand everything he says, and speak well enough for him to understand everything I say. Achieved.

The reason I was surprised (and still am) when he said that my accent had improved is because the only words I had uttered were: “Bonjour. Ça va?” These words (”Hello, how are you?”) are not the most difficult to say. In fact, they are some of the first words I ever mastered in French. I’m certain that my accent on those words is exactly the same as the first day I learnt them. La Clusaz can sometimes be xenophobic, and although this guy is probably not a ‘local’ (in the La Clusaz sense of the word, and therefore an outcast like myself and most of the people I mix with here), he already knew I was not French and he still made the effort to have a conversation with me. Achievement #3 (not mine): give a foreigner warm and fuzzies by patiently speaking French with her. Achieved.

Something that Australia is unlikely to ever host is a winter Olympics. So, for an Australian living in France, I’m very pleased to hear that Annecy, just down the road from La Clusaz, wants to host the 2018 Winter Olympics, along with three other places in France (Nice, Grenoble and Pelvoux). This lovely logo (top left) has started appearing on websites and in magazines, and has now physically made it to La Clusaz in both banner and sticker form. La Clusaz would actually get quite a few of the events, as you can see from the two diagrams showing both the Winter Olympics and the Winter Paralympics sports locations.

If Annecy were to host the games, La Clusaz would host the ski jumping, combined nordic skiing, cross-country skiing and acrobatic jumping. La Plagne, not actually in Haute Savoie, but already equipped with a bobsleigh track from the Albertville Winter Olympics in 1992, would host the luge, bobsleigh and skeleton (that’s the one where the participants lay down on their bellies for that extra (!) hit of speed on their luge). Other events would be held in Chamonix and its surrounding resorts and Avoriaz.

Meanwhile, the Paralympics, held after the Olympics and generally less televised and reported on, will actually do better out of its reduced size: the Olympic Village will be in Annecy for the Paralympians, while the Olympians have to stay way out in Argonnay and Pringy—little rural towns miles away from Annecy. Apart from the curling (which I actually saw at the last Winter Olympic games, of all sports!), all the Paralympic games sports would be held either here in La Clusaz or Le Grand Bernand, just next door.

I wonder if the local bakeries would create les rings d’Olympique to sit along side le croix de Savoie. I’m all for that—and the Winter Olympics!

One of the things I really love about living in France is the baked goods. Another is the jovial sense of humour with strangers. Mix the two and you’ve got the perfect situation for a practical joke. The Savoyarde folk are very proud of their heritage: many would like to be independent of France, much like Monaco. The Savoyarde coat of arms—red with a white cross (like a plus sign)—is a common sight in farming villages and major towns alike. And if the coat of arms isn’t apparent enough on the streets, you can even find the Savoie cross in bakeries: le croix de Savoie is a baked good too. The brioche-based treat is, as you would expect, in the shape of a cross, and delightfully filled with vanilla custard. It’s a very tasty treat.

I was discussing the croix de Savoie with a friend of mine and he told me there’s more than one type. He said he had bought one in La Clusaz earlier in the week and that the baker insisted on calling it le croix de Haute Savoie (La Clusaz is indeed in Haute Savoie, the region north of Savoie) when he rang it up on the cash register. The baker seemed indignant when my friend requested the item without adding “Haute” to its name. My friend did not ask why, and, being French himself, was surprised to hear the baker differentiate his own baked item from the well-known Savoie version.

Me, I’ve lived in both places and eaten many examples of the baked treat and I’ve never noticed a difference. Curious to find out, I went to the same bakery and snapped this photo of the croix de Haute Savoie alongside some other baked treats. The baker was there so I asked him what the difference was. He looked confused, so I explained in my best foreigner French what my friend had told me. “Ah,” he said, “it was a joke. I was just seeing if he would believe me if I called it that and I guess it worked!” At least, I think he said that, based, again, on my best foreigner French. He then chuckled with his visiting delivery mate and the a bakery assistant. I felt I should join in with the laughter despite not understanding just why they found the joke so hilarious. Eventually, I left the shop, with a bread stick under my arm, and left them still giggling about the whole thing.

Later on, I told my friend that he’d been taken in. He smiled and said, tongue in cheek: “There is a difference between the two regions you know. A friend from Haute Savoie told me. She said: ‘The difference between Haute Savoie and Savoie is just like the difference between couture and haute couture.’ There you go, that’s two French jokes in one day.

The year of 2009 has so far been good, if not a little odd. For example, I saw this car wedged in some trees after it skidded off the road backwards. This happened in the afternoon when the roads were completely dry from sunshine all day. The car is from this area (the 74 in the number plate gives it away), as was the car in my front yard one morning last year and the one in the creek opposite at 2am one morning. Maybe they’re just bad drivers here.

Meanwhile, in the snow park on Monday, I saw a snowblader land in a heap after trying a small kicker. He didn’t move in time and the next jumping blader then landed on his mate. They were then landed on by a third blader. Where is their common sense? Most of us check that a mate has landed safely and cleared the area before we take the jump. A kid barely old enough to be on skis somehow dropped off the huge red kicker in the park, much to the disgust of some La Clusaz team dude who was training teenagers how to do big tricks off it. Everyone had to wait while this kid zigzag-snowploughed down the landing zone, while his mother apologised profusely to the La Clusaz team dude who just shook his head.

Over in La Balme, the cool kids were trying out next year’s snowboard range. Their presence meant that bling came to La Clusaz. I missed the public testing day without realising, and was told I could not enter or try any boards. However, I know a ski technician who was allowed in, so together, we shared inverted camber snowboards, double inverted camber snowboards, and a few other boards too. While I waited for him at the gate with my own snowboard, a man asked me if I liked my board. I said I wasn’t sure as I had just bought it off a friend, and he said “Oh, it’s just that I’m the head of Rome snowboards in France, so I always like to ask people if they like their Rome boards.” Actually, I wish I could now tell him that I do quite like the board.

At the end of the day when the testing was over, the man at the gate let me in. However, my snowboard—a 2007/08 model—was not allowed. I had to leave it at the gate. Did he think I was planning on dumping it? What on earth was that about?

La Clusaz is now returning to normal with the bling snowboard tests over and this week’s bladers all too tired to keep going or injured from doing stupid things. This means I can write part two of my thoughts on French bakeries very soon. Tasty.

I received an e-mail from the La Clusaz Tourist Office a few days ago that announced the La Clusaz Free Sessions. This confirms the death of the Candide Invitational for 2009, with the event taking place in March (like the Candide Invitational), a concert on the Saturday night in the La Balme carpark (like the Candide Invitational), and an evening jib session (like the Candide Invitational). There are, of course, many differences: it’s being ‘endorsed’ by Seb Michaud (the 2008 world freeride vice-champion) and not Candide; the gig will feature ‘live rock and electro’ instead of ragga, and the competition will be held as team events (hmm—much like the Riderscup in Tignes, which Candide hosted earlier this month).

Actually, it sounds like the decision-makers of La Clusaz have actually thought this one through: the day-time events are freeride events held off-piste, filmed by professionals and viewable each afternoon before the evening jib session. My only concern is that the event will make La Clusaz look like a freeride heaven and attract freeriders who will inevitably take some of my fresh tracks from me!

This morning, I entered a local bakery, where the nice French lady always smiles at me. This morning, however, things had changed. Instead of smiling, she was scowling at the woman in front of me, while the woman threw down the lid on a beautiful-looking raspberry cake and said: “bof”. This prompted the scowling lady to huff, which prompted the woman to huff, which prompted the scowling lady to call for the baker/owner/husband to sort out the problem. While they awaited his arrival, she swore loudly: “Putain de bordel de merde fait chier” (which means, in nice-speak “lady-of-the-night from a lady-of-the-night’s house of poo makes me poo”), then smiled in my direction and served me (giving me, I discovered later, the wrong bakery items, which were pleasing to taste nonetheless).

Meanwhile, the baker arrived and it was only now that I discovered the severity of the situation: the customer had ordered a raspberry cake only big enough to feed four children, and this was far too big. Can you imagine the disaster?! What on earth would she do with all that delicious cake that the children would snub after their first piece? How could this problem possibly be solvable? The baker knew the answer: “Just charge her for a cake the size for four people,” he said to his wife. Now, this may have eased the customer’s mind—she seemed very happy with this resolution, but the baker’s wife was still shooting evils in her husbands direction, clearly hacked off that he had undermined her stance and given into the client.

With a face of thunder, she looked in my direction as I was still waiting to pay while all this was going on. I must have looked a bit scared because her scowl turned to a cheery smile as she took my money and apologised for the delay. I said it was no problem, smiling back sheepishly, which encouraged her to launch into another bout of swearing and a scowling face, clearly aimed at the other customer, but said while looking at me. I whispered goodbye mid-swear and left the shop as quickly as possible with my own incorrect order. I’m not convinced the cake didn’t end up on someone’s face before I was at the end of the road. French bakeries can be scary despite their attractive appearance.

Yes, apparently the French aren’t happy with just eating fully-grown snails. Now, you can buy snail eggs. I read about this in a magazine a few weeks ago and decided to keep the article as a worthy snippet for my blog.
The words basically say that in these times of ‘thin cows’ and with the financial crisis, if you want to impress your friends at Christmas, why not replace fish caviar with snail caviar. At only €49 for 30 grams, it’s a bargain (apparently). I’m struggling to think of any eggs I’d like to eat less than snail eggs. I’m struggling to justify spending anything like that amount of money for the ‘privilege’ of doing so. Just. Yuck.

Happy New Year too.