Le Franco Phoney

Every year, the French get dressed up on Shrove Tuesday and hold local carnivals and eat pancakes. La Clusaz is no exception. With a parade held early enough for kids to watch, my friends and I witnessed lots of wasps (to signify La Guêpe Ride, an annual telemark event: guêpe=wasp), blokes in German lederhosen (complete with beer in steins), fish, playing cards, farmyard animals, a gaggle of clowns, ghouls, various nationalities’ traditional outfits and lots of dodgy fancy dress outfits chucked in as well. However, the strangest moment came when a giant, very cartoon-like Mickey Mouse walked into the bar later on and chatted a group of tigers. Mickey tapped his first tiger mate on the shoulder and the tiger mate didn’t recognise him at all. He did, however, recognise the cartoon character and proceed to scream a girly scream and pull a face of horror. Who ever thought Micky Mouse was so scary? At a few seconds, he realised that Mickey was actually his mate, and he moved over to make room for the giant mouse among the tigers. Unfortunately, I didn’t capture this moment on camera or any of the other great outfits at the pub, as I’d left my camera at a friend’s place between the parade and the pub. So, let me just say: cowboys; Indians; gansters; witches straight from Halloween; slalom skiers in lycra; a variety of face paint. Bring on next year!

I come from Australia. We don’t really do avalanches in Australian ski resorts. There was a landslide at Thredbo back in 1997 which killed seventeen people, but that was caused by a faulty water pipe rather than any natural catalyst. Bluntly, I knew nothing about avalanches before I moved to France. I now do. I know how to use my avalanche transceiver, and I have a probe and a shovel. I’m still no expert, but I at least feel prepared.

So on the weekend, I was surprised to see a man prepared in a different way. He and his two friends were off to an off-piste area called Bellachat. It is not a secured area (that is, mountain staff don’t let off avalanche bombs there so the snow can be less stable). The man unzipped his jacket and revealed a transceiver to all of us in the telecabine (aka bubble or gondola). He had a large back pack with plenty of room for a shovel. However, he plucked out something different — an eight-pack of Jagermeister minis, offering them to his two friends. He described the minis as not very alcoholic and a good way to start the day. After downing their minis, he brought out the assortment of mini chocolate blocks. He then pulled out some items for later: a ginger cake; three glass jars of spreads; a German leberwurst, which he swung around his head for good measure; and some sort of chocolate fudge substance. These, he said, were his survival requirements for their day off-piste. His friends giggled. His backpack was so full of breakable glass items that there was no room for a shovel or probe.

Anyway, I doubt they would have been much use to him: his mates were unequipped and I’m guessing he didn’t actually know how to use his transceiver because he turned to his mates and said: “Are the lights flashing on this thing? Yes? Excellent. I’d be annoyed if I hired it with a flat battery.”

Each year, La Clusaz puts on a free ski/snowboard movie. For the past few seasons, we’ve had Candide Thovex movies, and they’ve been great. Last year, despite waiting outside for more than an hour, the cinema finally let us in to take our seats, then made us wait at least another half an hour while—it was rumoured—Candide himself finished off the final editing of the movie. However, it was worth the wait. The movie was motivational, inspiring, interesting, and funny.

Travis Rice, please watch some of Candide’s stuff or movies like Steep. Your film was this year’s freebie, and I’m glad it was free. Despite the great reviews, Trav, your movie was a complete cliché of everything used in 1990s snowsports movies: an old car that gets wrecked (this one in particular featuring a Burton logo on the bonnet and a stick figure peeing on the logo); a ‘comedy scene’ (talking marks needed because it wasn’t funny) involving lumberjacks; lots of time-delay sequences of the sun, the moon, the clouds, an airport etc.; at least four snowboard throws (”look at me: I’m sponsored so I can just chuck my equipment where I want and if it breaks I’ll get new stuff”); stereotyping of each country visited (is talking pretend Japanese to a Japanese cameraman really funny or worthy of being in a film?); and let’s not forget the cheesy quotes, including; “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, and the eye-roll-inducing; “Snowboarding isn’t just a sport: it’s a way of life” right at the end.

Yes, the photography was very special and of that you should be very proud. I now know what some sort of mountain goat looks like in New Zealand. However, I wanted to see snowboarding and not nature. So let’s talk about that. If I’ve seen you jumping over a tree once or twice, I don’t need to see it a further five or so times straight after. I get it: you can jump a tree. I was impressed the first time, but I was bored by the last time. This also goes for your jumps: I’ve seen you do multiple somersaults in the air once, twice, ten times, no maybe thirty times now. Really, I don’t need to see that trick again just because the country has changed. Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure you’re very talented, but this really was the Travis Rice show. Despite luring in such amazing riders as Terje Håkonsen and Jeremy Jones, they barely got their faces on camera (except when Jeremy’s was covered in blood). When Jeremy and the other riders spoke, I felt motivated to take my board out and attack a mountain of white stuff. When you spoke, I felt like telling you to stop. They sounded professional. You did not.

Anyway, my mother always told me that if I don’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all, so I’m sorry for all of the above. Let me make amends by reassuring you that I was impressed with the way you can ride on the tail of your board in powder and flick around to ride switch, and I’m sure you can do some other amazing things. Also, my friend enjoyed the movie and embraced the cheesiness as everything that a snowboard movie should be. But why not try to break those boundaries instead of reinforcing them? I’m left with the question: “That’s it? That’s all?” An appropriate title, with or without the question marks.

As much as the Brits are known for queueing, other European cultures are known for anti-queueing. I grew up in Australia where we seemed to find a happy medium. At the bus stop, you just hang around, and when a bus pulls up, nobody cares who should get on first. We just get on the bus. In London, I noticed the opposite: you queue at the bus stop, even if it means a line that gets in the way of others. It’s only fair, apparently, so that the people who have waited longest get on the bus for sure, while the late-comers may have to wait for the next bus. Of course, I didn’t realise this straight away, and I regularly stood at the bus stop wondering why people were staring at me. Nobody ever said anything, but I learnt over time, and I soon became the staring queuer, angered when another new-comer didn’t know the rules, yet too assimilated with the locals to actually speak out.

In the French Alps, however, it’s everyone for themselves. I’ve seen it in action, but I hadn’t ever thought about it until I got this e-mail from a blog reader called Jen. She said:

I’ve noticed that the French are amazingly patient and are able to wait hours for meals/rides/appointments but cannot seem to wait at all in a line. My 5 year old has been trampled repeatedly by adults in lift lines of less than 10 people! At the airport check in, even if there isn’t a crowd, everyone feels compelled to sneak ahead. I don’t get it!

Jen is spot-on with her observations! I’ve often been annoyed when waiting for locals to chat for anything up to ten minutes while I wait just to ask for a postage stamp, or the classic time at the supermarket when the couple in front of me didn’t have enough money to cover their purchase, so one left—I presumed to get to the bank machine around the corner—and after fifteen minutes, his partner revealed he had gone home to get more money. Home!

Patience is required often in France, but as Jen says, lift queues in ski resorts are like some sort of post-Christmas stocktake sale, with skiers and snowboarders pushing forward and sliding on the skis of those in front of them. Even when halted by a ski pole stuck between their skis, or a snowboarder’s foot stamping down near or on their equipment, the queue-jumpers know it’s just a temporary barrier that they see as a challenge to overtake before their queueing is over. And as Jen says, even a five-year-old is likely to get trampled during such a challenge.

But Jen, I have news for you: I have seen a perfectly orderly, single-file queue for a drag lift here in France. Yes, honestly. My French friend was just as surprised as I was, and the Brit in front of us was so excited at seeing such a thing for the first time in the “twenty years I’ve been coming here” that he felt the need to tell us so. None of us are sure why this rare phenomenon happened during a peak tourist time (Christmas), especially since the queue area was wide and unused. We wondered if they were all English tourists, but the French voices in front of us disproved that theory. To this day, it’s a mystery, and one that’s likely to remain unsolved.

If you’ve ever learnt any French language, chances are you know the most words are pronounced differently to how they’re spelt; for starters, the last letter is normally left off. For instance, “un chocolat chaud” is actually pronounced, starting with a nasalised “a” sound: “a shoh-koe-lah shaw”.

Following this rule, La Clusaz is actually pronounced “la cloo-zah”. No problems there. So it was with great surprise the other day, when I ventured to a neighbouring ski resort called La Giettaz (”la jee-etah”, right?) is actually pronounced “la jee-et”. What happened to the “ah”? How can two village names, just fifteen minutes apart from each other by road, and spelt with so many similarities, be said differently by the locals? It’s an exception I guess.

Okay, so there are always exceptions to the rule: a word has an alternative pronunciation. I can handle that. Parisians and others no doubt include the “ah” at the end of La Giettaz. So when I heard my friend talk about a chairlift called Torraz — in the epicentre of a ski resort called La Giettaz — I was surprised when he pronounced it “toh-raz”, complete with the “z”. So, what we’re looking at here is a chairlift called Torraz (”toh-raz” in a resort called La Giettaz (”la jee-et”) just around the corner from La Clusaz (”la cloo-zah”).

Yes, that’s three different endings for three different words with the exact same written endings. No wonder Spanish is all the rage these days.