Le Franco Phoney

Amongst much fanfare from the schoolkids (the blue flags on the left) and the ski instructors (the red dudes on the right) and the general public (everywhere else), Nicolas Sarkozy visited La Clusaz yesterday. If his entourage had been in white, this moment would have looked like a human French flag. I’ve circled him in case you can’t already see him. Organised chaos ensued for a few hours as the French president visited a few sites and met with a group of important people. He was here to discuss the 2018 Winter Olympic games bid for Annecy.

What this photo doesn’t show is the dodgy building site just a bit further to his left — an ugly concrete mess that La Clusaz didn’t bother trying to make pretty despite the bunting and posters through town. The wire work fence in front of the site had one of these posters on it, so job half done. The photo also doesn’t show the man on the balcony just near me, who was out in his night robe and jimjams to greet the president. I wonder if he saw.

So here we have a president who everyone loves, right? Certainly, they love to pick on his height. All around me were French people saying things like: “No, I can’t see him, but no surprise there,” and “Just look for the short guy” from a mother to a child on her shoulders. Worse still came from at least one of the mass of police (of the important gendarme type) brought in for security. A day before his visit, one of them asked a local seller some security questions, explaining it was regarding “the dwarf’s visit”. Vive la France.

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.

If you run out of bread at lunchtime in my village, you have to wait until 2:30pm when the first bakery reopens after lunch. In fact, retail hours in France are still at the low levels I remember in Australia in the early eighties. I embrace this now that I’m used to it, but when I first moved to France, I kept forgetting that I couldn’t pop down to the shops on a Sunday or on any evening to grab a block of butter or some other random cooking ingredient. However, things are starting to change around here as pointed out by one of my blog readers, Suzanne (co-incidentally a fellow Aussie who has been living just down the road for about a year — and now a friend), who kindly sent me this photo of a milk filling station, complete with paper towel dispenser for any milk spills, just down the road. She wrote:

We were riding our bikes this morning and came across this self serve milk dispensing machine in Annecy-Le-Vieux. €1 a litre is good and you can even buy empty bottles if you forget to take your own.

I’ve heard about these milk dispensers but I’ve never seen one, so I’m happy that Suzanne snapped away with her camera. Not only can you buy milk at any time of the day or week, but it’s not UHT milk — something of a standard in France for drinking milk. I’ve become used to UHT milk on my cereal and it doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, it’s handy to have stocks at home so I never run out, but I’m wary that if I were to revert to fresh milk now, I may never be able to buy in bulk at the supermarket again. I’d be running out of milk all the time and heading down to Annecy-Le-Vieux for a fresh milk fix. Suddenly, the convenience seems very inconvenient! Now, if one of these stations happened to appear in St Jean de Sixt, I’d no doubt be the most regular customer.

July and August are the peak months for tourists flocking to Annecy to spend all their tourist money on ice creams, live entertainment, paddle-boats and admission fees. Ponies and bouncy castles will always get the attention of kids whose parents are nagged into submission. A couple of Euros here, and a couple more there. Holidays for families in Annecy can be expensive.

It looks like Santa is getting in on the act too, with his abode being open to tourists from 3rd July to 29th August. I found this sign in Annecy last week. It says: “This summer, discover the hamlet of father christmas” and then says “Unique in France”. Well, yeah, I imagine it is, given it’s summer and Santa is meant to live a bit further North than the French Alps. A friend of mine, Lilly, worked at this very tourist attraction a few years ago, tossing crepes as the French do, for hungry kids during November in the lead-up to Christmas. When I visited her at work, I had to race through the rooms of Santa’s house, which were very glittery, to get to where she was at the café — appropriately placed at the end of the tour for parched and hungry kids and parents. The kids all seemed to be pretty happy, but that was in winter. Right now, it’s summer. Are families really interested in starting the Christmas hassles this early in the year? Surely this just starts the nagging for Christmas presents and those awkward questions from older kids about Santa himself.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for the Christmas spirit, but it’s not Christmas. However, I must thank Santa for Lilly’s great crepe-making ability, which I’ve benefitted from on more than one occasion.

I love shopping when the sales are on, and I love that the new stock sits expensively beside the cut-price old stock so that I can prove to myself that I’m getting a bonafide bargain. Sometimes, I stray to the new stock and end up spending way more than I intended. That’s the trick, isn’t it? Shopkeepers lure you in with the promise of amazing bargains in the hope that you will rid them of old stock and buy some of this shiny new stuff, suggestively placed right next to the bargain bins, while you’re at it.

Apparently, not all shops do this. I came across this sign in a shop in Annecy having a ‘total stocktake sale’ yesterday. The sign says: “Don’t touch the new collection. Thanks.” If you’re good at French, you might notice there’s a missing letter in “novelle” which should be “nouvelle”. Racks of old clothes formed a horseshoe shape around this central rack of new clothes, and two bins of mixed accessories right in front of it. You could say it was the centrepiece, drawing the attention of every shopper, from bargain-hunters to aimless browsers. Are they not cutting off their nose to spite their face in this shop? Why put the new stock on the shop floor if you don’t want people to touch it? Will jeans break if someone touches them? I touched them and the woman adding more sale prices a few racks away didn’t say a thing. No alarms went off and the world carried on.

August is the month of things happening in Annecy. This weekend signals the annual Fete du lac which I wrote about a few years ago, and barely a day goes by when there’s not some sort of activity going on. However, July 2010 was also fun-packed. I accidentally stumbled on this band playing on a canal just before August kicked in. Yes, I stumbled on a band playing on a canal. It was part of some four-day festival I had no idea about which involved wandering minstrels, some bizarre karaoke action, and this band playing on a canal.

They weren’t the best band in the world, but how could they be when they have to concentrate on standing still to prevent the whole floaty thing from tilting, possibly causing seasickness, as well as playing their instruments and singing. In fact, I’d say they were quite impressive because they kept a large crowd of people entertained amongst all this. Actually, were they entertained or bemused by the site of these three guys struggling to stay upright and perform at the same time? That, I’ll never know.

It’s a well-known stereotype, right or wrong, that French footpaths are covered with dog poo. There’s certainly a fair amount of poo here in St. Jean de Sixt, and in an effort to clean up the dog poo in Annecy, the council installed dog toilets. Pictured is one from further up north near Boulogne, where I’m staying at the moment. These large dirt pens let dogs do their business and walk away without their owners having to address the steaming pile their dogs have left behind. Annecy also provides bag dispensers around town so that owners whose dogs prefer not to use the toilets can remove the poo from the pavement. However, St Jean de Sixt does not, and I learnt this the hard way.

Some friends asked me to look after their dog, Snoopy, who looks much like her namesake, overnight. She seemed edgy at 8am the next morning, so I took her out, half asleep, with a coat hiding my pyjamas. Within a metre of getting her onto some nearby grass, she stopped to poo. About 30 metres away, a woman in a chalet started shrieking that it was her property and I must clean it up. The dog was still pooing. As I was yelling out sorry (I had no idea it was private property that far away from the house: it looked like part of the public field the house backs onto), she repeated herself. As I tried to explain that I would go home and get a bag, she was again yelling the same words at me, and I was by now embarrassed that she had woken all her neighbours because of me. I know the norm in France is to talk right back over the person talking to you, but there was no point: she was too far away. When she finally finished, I explained once more that I had no bag on me and that I would return with one and she thanked me and said that was kind. Err, no it’s not kind: I didn’t feel like I had a choice!

Had Snoopy pooed just one metre before, where it was practically piled up on the road next to the field, she couldn’t have said a word. Or could she? My friend here near Boulogne told me a woman once told her off when her dog was pooing in a public place, even though my friend already had a bag in her hand to collect the mess. So despite the stereotype of streets covered in dog poo being the norm, clearly, at least two French women object. I can’t help but feel they’re fighting an uphill battle though. Good luck to them.

Us Aussies are pretty good at making biscuits, and that’s why Tim Tams have appeared as the only Australian product on the shelves of the supermarket chain Carrefour in Annecy.

These biscuits, similar to the UK’s Penguin biscuit (but nicer — I might be biased of course), are hauled all over the world by travelling Aussies and after years of only being available in shops selling Australian goodies (mostly to Australians desperate for a fix of something from home), Tim Tams made it onto the shelves of Tesco supermarkets in the UK about five years ago. I took them for granted: they were always available and I bought them only when I had a real hankering.

That all changed when I moved to France. The “foreign foods” aisle of the supermarket has various things from the UK — Heinz Baked Beans, treacle, tomato soup(!), and this really posh (ie, tiny cardboard container and very costly) oatmeal stuff that I never actually saw on the shelves anywhere in the UK — but there’s never anything from Australia — until now, that is. Wedged between random honey from the Middle East and biscuits from Italy (oh come on: Italy is only an hour away!) lies the Tim Tams in all their glory. Just to reiterate, I have never seen any Australian product on the shelves of a French supermarket. I heard rumours that vegemite is available closer to big cities, but I’ve never seen that. The Tim Tam presence is a total win in my books.

Upon arrival in the aisle containting these treats, I embarrassed my shopping partner by letting out a shriek, followed by “TIM TAMS” in an overly loud voice. The five shoppers in the aisle all turned and stared at me, my shopping partner disowned me, and I ran to the Tim Tams and picked up two packets for the trolley. The five shoppers shrugged at the weird English girl rejoicing about her English biscuits and moved on.

Since that day, I’ve been checking that the Tim Tams are still there (and they are). Just in case, I’ve been buying a few packets every few weeks — obviously to keep the Australian export market bolstered rather than for any personal enjoyment. Obviously.

Now that the sun has finally arrived after months of rain and even some snow on the peaks of La Clusaz last week, Annecy is getting excited about the Winter Olympics. Annecy is one of the three final candidates for the 2018 Winter Olympics, so to celebrate officially, Annecy laid out some winter sports for people to try — sans snow.

Pictured is the massive ramp for skiers to slide down and try flips, twists and backward landings. No worries if you can’t ski: there were some giant inflatable rings for zooming down the ramp on instead. Kids and adults were all keen to try the ramp, with ski boots and skis available for use. There was one guy who, according to his mates, was going to try a double back-flip, except he leant back too far at the moment of take-off and bumped the back of his helmet-clad head onto the ramp before falling in a heap on the inflatable cushion. I think the impact knocked his helmet off completely, as it was nowhere to be seen. Paramedics put him in a neck brace and carted him off. Regardless, the queue of people to try the ramp grew while they waited for the paramedics to clear the area. I think it would have put me off, but I’m not very Savoyarde I guess.

Other highlights of the day included various French celebrities dotted around being interviewed by news reporters, a hot air balloon with the Annecy 2018 logo on it wafting past, a stage with lots of entertainment, a whole swag of local food to try, and of course, some other winter sports.

Apart from the ski ramp, there was a cross-country ski track — made of plastic so that the hot summer day didn’t melt any snow. I can think of nothing more boring than forcing my feet into ski boots on a warm day, then attaching skis, then putting those skis into blue plastic tracks like reverse railway tracks, and moving my feet along. However, the kids seemed to love it, so again, it’s probably because I’m not very Savoyarde.

The luge looked like fun. Yes, there was a luge! It too functioned without actual real snow. It used wheels on rails set in concrete to keep the luge on the short flat track. The kids loved it too. To top it all off, BMX courses were set up for different levels of ability, which, of course, the kids also loved. I have no idea what BMX biking has to do with the Olympics but nobody there was complaining.

Pictured are a few musicians outside the old prison walls of Annecy, smack bang in the centre of town. No, it’s not a prison anymore, but I bet the prisoners would have loved to have heard the music back when it was (and maybe the hot raclette cheese sandwich I was eating while watching the band play). So, why were musicians set up outside this picturesque spot in Annecy? Because Monday was the Fête de la Musique — the annual event throughout France where musicians play to crowds in the streets, parks and anywhere else they fit. Rather than waffle on about it, here are some of this year’s highlights:

• A woman with bagpipes walking around casually as if everyone carries bagpipes.
• A dog totally oblivious to the thrash metal happening on stage because he couldn’t take his eyes off the ball at his owner’s feet.
• A flirty moment between teenagers who were both too shy to do anything more than flirt while a band played on the stage in front of them. He reluctantly left with his friends. She watched him leave, blushing.
• An opportunistic street performer with a diabolo (piece of string with a cylindrical thing to balance on it) who looked like it was his first time trying out the equipment. A small crowd of disbelievers had gathered.
• A reggae band headed by a guy with a #2 head shave (he sounded properly reggae though).
• Bottles of ‘orange juice’ being shared by teenagers who were eager to drink – what good kids!
• A mosh pit/circle that was started by those same teenagers with all that goodness of fresh orange juice in their blood. Lovely to see teenagers working off some of that juice through exercise.