Le Franco Phoney

For someone who once lived in Annecy, it’s a disgrace that I never made it to some of the tourist attractions there, such as the old jail. So, I recently rounded up a few others and we spent the day as tourists, checking out Annecy’s offerings. We started at the jail, officially known as Palais de l’Isle. It’s funny to think that a jail is actually a palace, but indeed it is! I suspect it’s also the most photographed structure in Annecy. As the name suggests, it is an island - perfect for a jail, but it was actually built in 1132 for the Lord of Annecy to live in. It’s also been a mint, amongst other things. Two rooms show where the coins were made, and some areas of the jail are open, including the toilet holes, which lead directly into the canal.

Now, if you’re thinking this wouldn’t be a bad place to be incarcerated, think how frustrating it must have been to be just feet away from either bank of the canal, hearing the bustle of the city around you, and being stuck in an overcrowded, smelly, cold jail, right in the centre of town. We looked at the scrawlings left behind by anonymous inmates, then moved onto the chateau.

Now, the chateau in Annecy is one attraction I had already seen. A few years ago, as a French language student in Annecy, a group of us had checked it out. We noticed some dead fish in the fish tanks, but apart from that, it had an interesting assortment of artwork and artifacts. Actually, our French was so bad that we told the teacher that “nous sommes allés á le chapeau et les piscines sont mort” (”we went to the hat and the pools were dead”, when we meant “we went to the castle (’chateau’) and the fish (’poissons’) were dead”. Time has passed since then and no fish were dead on this particular visit. Favourite bits were the Emile Cohl exhibition, the sock monster and the 3D miniature of the lake and mountains of Annecy.

When walking through Annecy’s lakeside park on Sunday, we noticed a crowd at the Point des Amours — the bridge over the canal. On the bridge was a generator, some guys in wetsuits, and a big wheel of cable, unwound. The cable was floating calmly up the canal, and at the other end, another guy in a wetsuit with a wakeboard attached to his feet, floating in the water.

After a few false starts, the nod was given and the generator was switched on. It pulled the cable back towards the bridge — with the wakeboarder attached. He jumped over buoys and did lots of little tricks before he reached the bridge. He ended his run with a big jump and a bigger splash in the shallow water below him, much to the applauding crowd’s pleasure. Luckily, I happened to have my very uncompact SLR camera in my handbag(!), so I snapped some photos. See below, with commentary.

The first Saturday in August is not a good afternoon to drive to Annecy: the Fete du Lac — involving ninety minutes of fireworks — ensures the roads are busy from midday, with some central roads blocked off later in the day. The fireworks, however, are well worth the traffic. Grandstand seats are constructed around the city end of the lake and for those lucky enough to get a seat (they’re expensive and they sell out quickly), an abundance of entertainment happens along the lakeside, invisible to the masses of people without a grandstand seat.

I was lucky enough to view the fireworks from the closest apartment block to the lake — on a floor high enough to see the fireworks from the lake up. This year’s theme was fireworks around the world. The Australian fireworks went off to the sounds of Kylie Minogue and AC/DC, while Scotland, of course, had bagpipes. The French used red, white and blue fireworks to match their flag, but I wonder how they feel about those colours also being used on the US flag, the British flag, the Australian Flag, the New Zealand flag and the Netherlands flag, just to name a few.

I captured some of the fireworks with my camera, although the long exposure I was using meant that the loveheart fireworks did not really look like lovehearts. I did, however, capture a wall of gold, fireworks that glittered or shined on their way down (not that you can see this in a still photo), fireworks that had mini balls of fireworks explode at their ends, and the grand finale that lit up the sky for ten minutes and left a cloud of smoke when the courtesy lights came on for those in the grandstand to depart. The night costs millions of Euros and I have truly never seen such amazing fireworks as those displayed each year at the Fete du Lac.

[Show as slideshow]

July 14 — Bastille Day — in France is just like Guy Fawkes day in the UK: it involves a ridiculous amount of fireworks, entertainment for the kids, a variety of home-fireworks-related injuries, and it has something to do with independence from the monarchy.

I headed down to Annecy early and managed to go wakeboarding before the festivities began. While we were on the lake, we saw a windsurfer: a rare sight on the calm Lake Annecy.

Before the fireworks began, the kids (including us big ones) were kept entertained with wandering minstrels playing various household items as drums and rollerbladers in crazy outfits, along with fire-throwing clowns and an Indian band with twinkling costumes. The fireworks were the typical mixture of some really brilliant or pretty explosions slotted in between a range of mediocre ones, which leads me to wonder why anyone bothers with the ’stocking filler’ standard fireworks when they could just do ten minutes of amazing stuff and save everyone about half an hour of staring at a sky filled with the same old same old.

When the fireworks finished, the ‘party’ began. This mostly involved teenagers trying not to take their eyes out while lighting bangers and other small fireworks in amongst a crowd of people watching a band on the makeshift stage in the park by the lake. I took a photo of the band. They sounded like a German Octoberfest band but they looked far cooler with their green laser lights. They even managed to attract some dolphin balloons along to watch. We went for ice cream instead.

This weekend marked the annual Fete de la Musique — a national day of music in France. I headed down to Annecy with my camera, ready to snap some of the lovely ambiance that’s so much easier to describe with pictures than of words. Alas, my camera battery had run out because I had been taking photos of the moon the night before (pictured - spooky!).

So, here’s a description in words instead. Annecy was packed with locals, tourists, and even a few hens’ nights (complete with sparkly hats/bunnies ears/t-shirts with names on them), and as the sun went down, the party atmosphere increased. There were 22 stages and some wandering minstrels. It was a hot night. I think the ice cream shops were busier than the pubs. My friend and I watched Spanish flamenco dancers dance to a band that really didn’t sound Spanish to me. We saw a teenage group that consisted of:

• a singer/guitarist who had the facial blankness of Marilyn Manson, the hairstyle of Russell Brand and a fair bit of talent on lead guitar and vocals;
• a girl bassist with an amazing voice and no specific ‘look’ apart from slightly nerdy in a bad way;
• a guitarist who wanted to be in a metal band but was not; and,
• the singer’s dad on keyboards — their drum machine.

Despite not having a real drummer and being forced to play music from the dad’s teenage years (’Stairway to Heaven’ era, apparently), they sounded professional. In fact, they sounded better than the metal band we saw on another stage.  They were alright, but the singer wanted to sing death metal while the others wanted to play hair metal. Not all was lost: four little girls — all under 10 years old — were standing at the side of the stage like groupies, watching the rather cute singer, and two of the girls had a go at headbanging. It was glorious! In fact, they seemed better at headbanging than one of the band members, who recovered his coolness by taking off his t-shirt to appease screaming teenagers in the mosh pit. The fact that a mosh pit was happening in the centre of Annecy was pretty surprising in itself, but hearing girls scream at the sight of a six-pack-hiding-underneath-the-layer-of-flab chest just topped it off.

The only football I really understand — and like — is Australian Rules football. However, the rules of ‘real football’ (ie, soccer) was explained to me by various football-loving friends in the UK during my years of living there. The off-side rule was explained over a fry-up, with the help of the condiments shuffling around like players. I understand the off-side rule, but I don’t understand the hype about a game that is so low-scoring. So, imagine my surprise when, last Friday night, I was roped into seeing the France vs. Netherlands match at a pub instead of watching some lovely animated films during the Annecy Animation Festival. I was there with one French man and nine Dutch. To alleviate the boredom I decided to play with my camera.

First up, here’s a photo of what happened when the Dutch team scored a goal:

Notice the unhappy Frenchies and the lack of movement on that side of the room.

No worries. The French team also scored a goal. Can you tell?

Sadly for the French, the game ended in a 4-1 victory to the Netherlands in what turned out to be one of the highest-scoring games I’ve ever avoided watching!

Alas, I did not have my camera with me last night when a friend who had been away for a month asked me out for dinner, followed by the football. Eager to catch up with her, I agreed, and watching the football with her was actually quite entertaining. We sat in a pub, surrounded mostly by men — and one girl who spent the entire match playing on her PSP until her boyfriend, annoyed at France’s inability during the match, told her they were leaving five minutes before the game ended and she obediently packed her game away. Men like to watch. Men like to yell abuse when their team isn’t winning. Men do not like hearing women, like my friend, saying things like: “The Italian player didn’t even touch him” while a French player is writhing on the ground faining agony, or: “France are hopeless”, even if she was right on both accounts. If the French men around her weren’t already annoyed that France were losing the game, she got them there with her comments. What really topped it off was when Italy had some sort of penalty shot at the goal (hey, it’s not Aussie Rules, okay? But I can tell you all about marking and shepharding if I was talking about Aussie Rules), and the Italian player, who had kicked the ball wide of the goal area, managed to score a goal when a French player (possibly Thierry Henry) attempted to divert the ball anyway, and instead, it ricocheted off his head and into the goal, securing Italy’s victory. Had I taken a photo of the French men around me, their faces would have shown the look of unsurprised defeat. Allez les bleus!