Le Franco Phoney

I was down in Annecy with a friend last night for a movie and a meal. We decided to eat at the little-known Mediterranean gem just outside of town, but when we got there, it was gone. Their food was great, but the disappointment soon turned to glee when my brain registered that a Thai restaurant called Lan-Som-Tam had taken its place. I think I’ve tried all the Asian-style restaurants in Annecy, with the Chinese restaurants typically adapting to the host country, serving frogs’ legs and omelettes (replace those with dim sims in Australia and fat chips in England). We were concerned that this newest Thai restaurant could be yet another sly attempt of non-authentic cuisine served up to a nation who prefer garlic over anything spicy (a mass generalisation, but I’m going with it based on my own observations). Regardless, the miniscule chance of authentic Thai food drew us in.

We weren’t disappointed. The food was exceptional! My Pad Thai was lacking in spices, but no worries: it arrived with a small dish filled with dried chilies and a warning that I’d only need to use a tiny sprinkle. Entrees, mains and desserts were all fantastic, but the only drawback for me was the green tea — a Lipton teabag rather than the loose leaf variety.

And then the night got a whole lot better. We headed to the Décavision cinema to catch a French comedy. I might have missed a lot of the jokes, but that wasn’t a problem. Why? I was in my own personal food heaven, with salty popcorn finally on offer (and purchased for a ridiculous price) at Annecy’s biggest cinema. For year’s I’ve felt annoyed that a cinema with ten screens doesn’t provide such a base choice of popcorn to its movie-goers. So, a bit like the Tim Tam biscuit moment in Carrefour Annecy, I gasped out loud when I saw the golden goodness available in salty flavour. No more weird, sweet popcorn for me: proper popcorn has arrived and I embraced with with open arms — and mouth.

There was another change in Annecy, but my elation about salty popcorn and Thai food have clouded my memory.

I’m not sure I need to write anything to accompany this photo, which I snapped this week in the carpark of the Carrefour supermarket in Annecy. But I will.

I remember my secondary school days, when some of the students would draw hairy genitalia on the plastic seats, which no doubt amused them, but always made me want to swap chairs. The thought of sitting on that before I’d even seen the real thing grossed me out. And now I’m wondering if some painter dudes came along and saw an opportunity to relive their school years. I wonder if they stood back and admired their handy work. And do disabled car park users feel the need to switch car parks out of not wanting to park their car over that?

The pictured symbol was one of many racy symbols on the ground that day. It lifted the mood of shoppers who were ready for the drudgery that lay ahead in the brightly-lit supermarket. And for those leaving the supermarket, it gave their brain something else to think about after having the intro of the ‘Happy Days’ tune rammed in their ears to the point of going mad. Happy days, at least, for the disabled symbols getting it on.

There’s a bar in Annecy which specialises in looking grungy. The toilet walls have been repainted so many times that they’re about an inch thicker and the bar’s walls are plastered with posters of rebellion, such as this Sex Pistols poster right by the stage.

I love venues like this. They have that feeling of being the real thing: they’re all about the music, as opposed to a nightclub with its designer lights, strategic colour scheme, doof-doof music and manicured people conforming to the dress code.

Meanwhile, stepping into this grungy bar in Annecy feels like being transported to a New York dive bar. Denim and beer are perfectly at home among the peeling paint and plastic cups. And yet this grungy bar is still innately French. Right next to the Sex Pistols poster is a sign saying that food, including the typically French croque monsieur, is available all the time.

So between all that rebellion and rock, head-banging gig-goers can take five minutes to dine on their favourite French snack. I imagine a French bloke with his Doc Martins and heavy silver necklace tucking into his croque monsieur with a serviette to wipe his hands on after and perhaps a little salad garnish. It’s the French way.

The eternal shopper in me enjoys exploring foreign supermarkets for local products and cultural differences, and supermarkets here in the French Alps have pleasantly wide aisles to accommodate most busy times. When I first moved here, I appreciated the extra space after years of cursing the often overcrowded, narrow-aisled supermarkets in England. However, returning to an English supermarket last weekend, I can now appreciate how much better it can be.

More than one supermarket in Annecy has some staff on rollerblades who can help customers quickly. Handy eh? Yeah, except customers also must weigh and price their own fruit and veg, and if you forget to weigh something, don’t expect a rollerblader to help. You must run back to weigh the offending item, much to the huffing of those in the queue behind you. And that’s not where the fruit and veg problems end. This summer, checkout staff have questioned me over (my correct) pricing of grapes, lettuces and a watermelon. The results were more sighs from the queue as the inevitable long and pointless discussion in French began about each item.

Speaking of queues, one supermarket introduced “La ligne bleu” — a thin blue sticker that runs the length of the shop just a few metres from the checkouts. If a checkout queue ends up beyond the blue line, more checkouts will be opened — except they never are. The line is now cracked and disappearing and presumably abandoned from the start. But then, maybe the French aren’t so bothered about queuing — or at least that’s what one couple in front of me thought, when after bagging their items (because the staff merely throw things in your direction after scanning them, leaving you to bag as quickly as they throw or face smashed eggs as the next item is flung), they couldn’t pay, so one ran off to get money. After 20 minutes, the other one explained that her boyfriend had driven home to get some money and might be a while. Who does that? I was buying just a few items, but with no express checkouts, I had no choice but to pick up my items again and join the back of another queue — which extended beyond la ligne bleu of course.

Meanwhile back in England, the checkout boy apologised for keeping me waiting (just three minutes while he took payment from the only other customer). He scanned and priced my fruit correctly and bagged it up for me, adding points to my loyalty card for bringing my own bags. If only English supermarkets would deliver to where I am in France. God knows the French ones don’t.

Some 597 swimmers braved the unusually chilly water of Lake Annecy yesterday to complete a 2,400-metre race. Registration was somewhat subdued, with rain dolloping down, but the clouds cleared and the race finished with blue skies and hot sun. A few extra participants weren’t timed — the life guards. Pictured is one of many huge Newfoundland rescue dogs who swim the race with a life guard and save people who look like they’re starting to drown. Thankfully, we didn’t see anyone drowning on the day, and the dogs seemed to be in more photos at the end of the race than the racers. The winner was Damien Cattin-Vidal in just 27 minutes and 43 seconds. My two friends came in at just over an hour with many of other breast-strokers, while the last person finished in just under 1 hour and 45 minutes. Well done to everyone!

…would you see this offer of buying baguettes.

That’s right. Here is a sign offering a free baguette at the supermarket attached to the petrol station I was filling up my car at. Only in France.

This is how the green fields of the Paquier area of Annecy could have looked in seven years’ time had they won the 2018 Winter Olympics bid. However, favourite contenders Pyeongchang in South Korea won, leaving the Paquier full of a crowd of people who sighed and muttered before walking away, ending the party that had been happening all day in the lead-up to the winning bid announcement.

There was, however, one group who kept partying. They were the ones holding the placards protesting against the Annecy Olympics bid. I imagine they’ve all woken up with hangovers this morning.

With just weeks to go before the decision of who will host the 2018 Winter Olympics is announced, I spotted this graffiti in Annecy. In case you didn’t guess, “NON” in French means “NO” in English, and this sign is right by the lake on one of the entrances to the Bonlieu Centre which houses the tourist office. Foot traffic from tourists and locals alike is heavy, so whoever defaced the sign picked a very public place. Plenty of people want the bid to be a success, but lots of locals are against the whole plan. A car around the Aravis has been plastered with posters for months showing the the € (Euro) currency symbol in the colours and form of the Olympic rings, and a variety of e-mails are still being bandied around saying how evil the bid is and how much it’s costing the villages involved.

The winner of the 2018 Winter Olympics will be announced on 6th July. I’m expecting to hear celebrations into the evening whether Annecy gets the vote or not.

My mum arrived a few days ago, and I’m enjoying seeing France through her Australian eyes. She’s reminding me of all the great and odd things about France that I’ve become so used to that I barely even notice. The scenery is the most obvious of things, with chocolate box-style chalets dotted around and hills of grass topped with white snowy peaks. Beautiful and enormous, I’ve grown to take the scenery for granted.

Meanwhile, she loved our visit to the post office. “Wow,” she said, “THIS makes a nice change from MY post office visits in Australia!” Why? Because the guy behind the desk said hello to us both, then asked how we were, then chattered away while weighing my two items of mail, then licked each stamp and attached them for me, then popped the envelopes in the mail outbox before finally tallying up the total. He also said goodbye and wished us a good day as we left. I’d never really thought about it before, but I can’t imagine any Aussie Post worker licking my stamps or posting my mail.

On a less positive note, there’s the roads. Clinging to her seat, my mum was terrified as I drove around bendy, narrow mountainous roads at a speed that she didn’t think possible. I’m not a fast driver, nor have I ever had an accident. Gripping her seat, she had to look away from the drop on one side of the road which had no barrier to prevent any cars from just dropping off the side. She’s lucky there was no fog, like on the road pictured, or random obstacles such as herds of sheep or tractors. Down in Annecy, we left a three-lane, well-made motorway/freeway and took the off-ramp directly onto a pot-holed mess of a road that had no road markings until beyond the first small intersection. “It’s like we’re in the sticks,” my mum said, while the car bounced between pot-holes, “except this is still the centre of town, right?” We certainly weren’t far away. However, back at home in St Jean de Sixt, it’s clear that we are. “I don’t hear any car horns,” she said to me, suspiciously. She’s right: outside of peak season, the only time the car horns go are for weddings on Saturdays, when the procession of wedding guests behind the happy couple toot their klaxons the whole way to the reception. She’s got that to look forward to at the end of this week — along with the clanging Sunday church bells which start at 8am.

Shopping in Annecy the other day, a child no older than twelve approached me and pushed a clipboard towards me. On the clipboard was a piece of paper to donate to a deafness foundation, complete with the symbol of the foundation in one corner and some signatures from people who had donated up to €20. A couple of things seemed odd to me. Firstly, this wasn’t like a read-a-thon where he was gaining sponsorship for challenging himself to something: this was out-and-out hassling people for money, as you see paid university students do with big bibs or t-shirts on to identify them as charity workers. Secondly, he had no bib or t-shirt (and was dressed in a dodgy tracksuit). Thirdly, he wasn’t old enough to work. Fourthly, he was in a rather posh kitchen and homewares shop where the staff are frosty at the best of times: I’m guessing they wouldn’t let someone into their shop to hassle people for money under most circumstances. And finally, the paper didn’t look all that authentic, as the signatures from that day were in different colours, but he had just one pen in his hand.

So, I asked him for some identification. He pointed to his ears to and moved his fingers as if he were signing, and perhaps he was, but wouldn’t he be able to lip read by that age? I repeated myself, motioned in different ways to suggest an ID card, and eventually showed him my own, but he just shook his head and shrugged.

I said sorry and shook my head back, then walked away. I felt guilty and annoyed in equal parts: guilty for not giving money to someone who seemed to be collecting money for a charity, but annoyed that he expected me to believe him. Would a deafness foundation really send kids out to collect money for the charity they benefit from on a schoolday? But then, I’m basing this on the values I grew up with in Australia and my experience as an adult seeing people scam others. Maybe things are different in France, and I find those cultural unknowns hard to learn and adjust to. Was I in the wrong? Was he bonafide? Should I have donated?