Le Franco Phoney

For years, I’ve lived in France and been confused about a few signs on cars (and on roads, but we’ll save that for another time). I thought this black and white sign was a graphic version of ‘Baby on Board’ with a mother and a baby, or maybe a pregnant woman. I never looked closely enough to properly check. Turns out it’s a steering wheel rather than a baby.

So what does this sticker mean? The steering wheel clue has probably given it away. The text, if you speak French, has probably also given it away. I’m just not that observant. It actually means that the person driving is learning how to drive, and it’s known in France as conduite accompagnée or ‘accompanied driver’ in English. In other words, the driver is being yelled at in French by someone who already has a license to drive. However, there’s every chance that the person driving has a license already: it’s not obligatory to remove the sign when the learner driver stops driving.

Now here’s a tricky one. When I first moved to Annecy, I thought that perhaps this sticker was an A for Annecy. That would explain its popularity on so many cars, right? Wrong.

My next guess was a learner driver (remember, I thought the previous sticker was a pregnant woman), because the French word for the verb to learn is apprendre, which, of course, begins with an A. Sorted! But also wrong.

This sticker stands for apprenti which pretty much translates to ‘apprentice’ in English. Basically, when someone has finally jumped through the gigantic hoops required to get a license (including trick questions on the theory), this sticker must be displayed for either two years or three years, depending which French person you ask (there’s a 50/50 split amongst my French friends). Either way, it’s the equivalent of a the good old P plate I had to display when I got my license in Australia, and requires drivers to drive more slowly than the speed limit allows. I’ve yet to see any car with this sticker going at less than 10km over the speed limit, let alone that much under.

Although it’s not mandatory to know what these things mean (I managed to get through years of living in France with no clue about them), it’s handy to know what they are anyway. Otherwise, you might be wondering why so many people in Nice are fans of Annecy.

Last weekend, La Clusaz hosted the world cup of cross country skiing, or, in French, le coupe du monde de ski de fond (which rhymes quite nicely).

The high wind on Sunday closed any higher parts of the resort that had snow worth skiing on (although the wind blew that away too), a friend and I decided to check out the world cup. Please understand that I have no interest in cross-country skiing: I have tried it (once, in a competition for my university, and even the people who knew what they were doing fell on the downhill sections and looked unsteady at the best of times), and I think downhill skiing or telemarking is far more enjoyable – both for participation and watching.

But with nothing else to do, we walked to the hill in the distance of the photo and tried to figure out which countries had which outfits; we established, much to the horror of my French friend, that France had the terrible black and yellow lycra, perhaps inspired by the nasty Burton one-piece from a few years ago.

The highlight of the day was this guy carrying the flags of France, Norway and Sweden. I know, that’s not much of a highlight. I just can’t hype this sport. Anyway, the reason it was a highlight is because he seems to be hedging his bets pretty well there. I mean, those two Scandinavian countries are always going to do well in this sport, and it makes sense to carry a French flag in the somewhat Xenephobic environment of the Aravis region of France.

Meanwhile, I carried around my tiny plastic ‘Annecy 2018′ flag, but chucked it out when waving it caused the plastic support stick to bend.

Pictured is an envelope and part of a tax invoice it contained, which I received on Saturday. Just to confirm, that’s Saturday 18th December. As you can see by the stamp on the envelope, the letter was sent on 15th December. Apart from it taking three days to travel just 30 kilometres, check out the date on the tax bill. The text pretty much translates to “final payment date” which is, impossibly, 15th December. That would be three days before I even received the invoice.

On top of that, this is the third separate bill for tax that I’ve had in a few months (each sent from different centres), and this one still has my old address from more than a year ago despite notifying them of my change of address more than once. What is this tax even for??

I’m stopping myself from ranting, swearing and shouting like a crazy lady because if I start, I may not stop, and I don’t want to end up in a mental institution. Imagine the scariest wierdo you’ve ever met and multiply it by ten and that’s roughly how I’m feeling right now. Alternatively, I could shrug and say “c’est la vie” but I’m not French: I haven’t grown up with this lame excuse for a taxation system and I don’t know how much longer I can stand it. Next country?

One of the interesting things about learning French with native speakers all around me is their use of words that they never teach you at school. Take terrible for example. It has the same meaning as the English word, but is pronounced “tair-ree-ble”. However, terrible can also mean good. I know that in English we’ve got slang words for good such as “phat” and “cool” but they don’t mean the opposite of good.

If, for example, someone says to me that they’ve been given a pay rise, I could say: “Ah bon? C’est terrible. (“Oh really? That’s great”). I’m still loathe to use such a phrase when someone says they have a new haircut. However, it all goes downhill from there. Take the following phrases:

“C’est pas terrible” (“It’s not good”)

“C’est pas si terrible” (“It’s not so bad”)

That’s right, if it’s not hard enough to learn that a negative word means a positive, you then have to remember that adding in a “pas” which basically means “not” changes the phrase again to mean it’s not good, and then including just two extra letters, “si“, flips the meaning yet again from negative to positive. Confused? Join the club.

So, when someone uses a phrase with “terrible” in it, make sure you listen very, very closely. Or do as I do: raise your eyebrows, purse your lips and make a short “mm” sound. Works every time, even if I have no idea what’s going on.

This year’s Fête des Lumières in Lyon was full of cool stuff and some disappointments too.

Held for just four days a year — and often with bitterly cold temperatures (it was about 2°C when I was there on Friday night), the streets on Lyon’s central island are closed to cars due to the huge influx of freezing pedestrians. I wrote about it here last year.

The giant Ferris wheel looked magnificent, but advertisements for new movies kept appearing when I was hoping to see something a bit less commercial.

And I wish I’d taken a photo of the ‘giant squid’ which was actually just a whole lot of cloth hanging from above that didn’t look a lot like a squid. It’s disappointing because the guide has this fantastic photo of an amazing squid, but that’s obviously just the artist’s impression before it was made. Many other illuminations suffered the same fate or weren’t working despite the darkness.

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However, the statues holding the fish was great! Pictured to the left, the four statues each had a fishing rod added, and tiny fish and ducks in bowls were dotted around (there are a few in the bottom right corner of my photo).

The fountain itself was dry, with lights and material added to simulate the flowing water. Although the photo can’t capture the flow, you can see the lights leading down from behind the statue. They impersonated water better than I imagined possible. The detail of the fishbowls impressed me further as they were a lovely touch to a great illumination.

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Up and down one of the main shopping streets were these great giant desk lamps which changed colour regularly.

They sat in the middle of round seats, but being an infrequent visitor to Lyon, I don’t remember if these seats are always here and that the creators came up with a great idea of how to fill the centres or if the seats are part of the creation.

You might also see some other lights in the street: these were illuminated cranes. They were still birds. I would have enjoyed them more if they moved just a little bit.

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This is an actual building, illuminated to appear skewed (if you look closely at the windows, you can see the illumination is weakened).

Members of the public were able to control how skewed the building looked by singing into a microphone. Different pitches caused the building to sway in different directions. This was possibly the most impressive illumination I saw due entirely to the interactivity.

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Last year’s flowers on the steps towards the Croix Rousse end of town were replaced by moving space invaders.

They started high and came down row by row, just like the game, then started all over again. They moved both horizontally and vertically through illumination of different rows and columns at different times. Very amusing.

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The place I stayed the longest didn’t involve any animation at all: it was a brass band of around twenty people who played everything from Blondie to Muse, and each member did a little spin when they played a Daft Punk medley that included ‘Around the World’.

It’s impossible to capture their spirit properly in a photo, but here’s one of the musician’s face reflecting in her own instrument.

Their clothes and movements were as quirky as their choice of songs. I don’t know who they were but they were a fantastically entertaining band to watch play. Bring on 2011.

Yes, there’s a brand of ski called Heidi Ski and they come from Switzerland. I tried some out at last weekend’s ski test held in Le Grand Bornand just up the road and I was really impressed. Despite the off-piste model being only 80mm across the centre, these babies floated nicely and with such a narrow waist, turned off piste like no other pair of ski I tried all day. I should point out, however, that I’d never really skied off-piste before – that’s what I’ve used my snowboard for. This year was going to be the year, and Heidi Ski were looking like my ski of choice. Aren’t the graphics lovely too? You don’t want to buy a pair of skis with horrible graphics, do you. I remember once asking a snowboard instructor friend what my next snowboard should be and his reply was: “The one with the nicest graphics,” so I’m pretty sure it’s not just me that looks at the graphics as well as the performance of the ski.

Other favourites were the Dynastar Legend Sultan 80s for on the piste (I’m pleased about this, as I’ve bought a pair to use for telemarking which I’m still learning how to do), Movement Black Rose for both on-piste and off-piste (and lovely sparkly-in-sun purpleness), and the Salomon S7s fo, r off-piste (although sadly I’m not that good off-piste yet to use them the way they deserve), but I came home and Googled Heidi Ski. I wanted a pair of Heidi Skis…until I saw the price. There’s no way I can afford those beauties no matter how lovely they were, and so the hunt for a new pair of skis continues.

Apologies if this post sounded a bit “me me me”: the beautiful snow of the French Alps is what motivated me to live in France in the first place. I’m passionate about the snow and winter sports, so sometimes I can’t help myself but write about it all. Back to French observations next time.

I’m sure you’re aware that Europe has been getting a big dump of snow due to some Siberian winds travelling further south than usual and meeting up with warm, moist Mediterranean air. The result? The photos above.  St Jean de Sixt has a swag of beauty to offer, making photography far easier for an impatient person like me than it should be. As you can see from the usual mannequin photo, all the lady’s friends below the balcony have taken shelter from the cold conditions, but a fake flower shop has appeared to keep her company — perfect shop type for these chilly days. Enjoy the photos.