Le Franco Phoney

France and Switzerland seem like unlikely neighbours to me. The French love slow time while the Swiss love to keep time. Some of my French friends park illegally and don’t care while a Swiss person can book their neighbour for parking in a car-free neighbour’s allotted spot. France is still learning what the internet is all about while the Swiss tourism people have already embraced social networking to make personalised advertisements starring you.

In a country where the tunnels near Geneva airport sometimes smell of peach cleaning product, Switzerland takes the cake for being efficient. And that’s why I was surprised when these doors appeared across the car park at Geneva airport when I tried to leave. My passengers, eager to get on the piste, had already been held up for an hour getting through airport security. They tried to hide their impatience.

I buzzed a nearby airport intercom and explained in French that some doors were closed and I couldn’t exit the car park. The guy clearly thought I was a nutter, but said he would come down. Minutes passed so I called again. The man said he was still on his way.

Five minutes passed and a queue of cars had built. This didn’t feel like Switzerland at all! A driver asked me what was happening, then he swore into the intercom and eventually, two workers arrived and looked surprised at the closed doors. After some discussion, they overrode the automatic closure system and manually forced the doors open, grunting along the way.

Just a few minutes later, we were moving at the speed of a tortoise with a hangover thanks to a car accident and the chaos of no traffic police. I wondered if we were really in efficient Switzerland until the smell of peach cleaner returned as we crawled through a tunnel. My friends managed half a day on the piste. It would have been less had I not made a new car parking space near the ticket office.

Today, I was going to write about something completely different, but this French TV advertisement just came on and it annoys me so much that I had to write about it. Perhaps it’s just me applying far too much logic to a simple ad. It features top French tennis player Jo Wilfried Tsonga, and is one of three I can think of with him in similar situations, where he wants the last Kinder Bueno. Can you guess why this advert annoys me? There’s a translation below if you don’t understand the French phrases:

Translation:
Woman (thinking): I’m just a little bit hungry.
Woman: Good evening. The last Kinder Bueno please.
Shopkeeper: Someone has reserved it. How ’bout a fresh muffin?
Woman: That’s too much for me. What about offering the reserver these cookies?
Shopkeeper (looking majorly stressed, as if our mate Jo has a gun pointed at his head): I think he’d really prefer the Kinder Bueno.
(Woman turns, and Jo shrugs as if to say the Bueno is too hard to resist.)
Shopkeeper: What if you share it?
(Woman and Jo laugh like old friends.)

So what’s wrong with this ad? What’s right about it? Nothing is right about this ad.

PROBLEM 1: Who ever reserves a chocolate bar? Why does she even suggest the cookies instead of telling the shopkeeper where to go if he doesn’t sell her his goods?

PROBLEM 2: Why on earth does the shopkeeper looks so scared of Jo? Is he worried Jo’s going to volley a ball at him at close range? I mean it’s serious overacting going on there.

PROBLEM 3: Why doesn’t the shopkeeper have more than one Kinder Bueno? Do they not have more boxes out the back? Or another chocolate bar alternative that either of them would surely scoff down as an alternative if they like chocolate that much?

PROBLEM 4: Why why why why why is the woman so happy to share this chocolate bar that is rightly hers? She’s at the front of the queue, and I’ve never seen someone give up front-row seats for something just because the person behind them wants them. Had I been her, I would have grabbed the bar and done a runner before sharing, stopping only to stamp on both the idiot shopkeeper’s foot and the star tennis player’s.

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.

Ahh, France. Did they start the Slow Food revolution? What a great idea Slow Food is: enjoy your food, cooked lovingly for taste rather than speed. The concept seems to have oozed partially into France’s fast food. Pictured is the only vegetarian burger option at Quick, which is France’s answer to McDonald’s. Given that many restaurants have no vegetarian option, I praise Quick for their non-meat alternative, albeit the usual goats cheese deal. This burger is meant to have tomato in it too. Can you see any? There’s one slice hidden at the back that my bights have yet to reach, but I digress.

Back to the Slow Food revolution. Quick seems to have chosen just the elements of the Slow Food revolution that work for it — namely slowness.

I was unfortunate enough to have to eat at Quick after a friend said he was craving a burger. We had to wait for both burgers, fat fries, and condiments. I’m not sure how packages of salt and sauce can be held up, or why mayo turned up when we didn’t request it, then had to wait again while our trusty server went on a mission to find the correct condiments. The wrong fries turned up but we were so hungry by the time the rest of our food came that we thanked the server and walked away.

Pictured is the burger I bothered waiting for. What a waste huh? Burnt on top with one tiny bit of tomato inside, no cheese flavour, but some sort of oil-based mayo making up for that loss, I didn’t get a bit further before giving up. At least if I splurge on dessert, I enjoy it. Here was the equivalent in fat and sugar without the enjoyment factor. And it was slow. And they burnt it and still served it. Fine, it’s fast food, but that’s my point: it’s not even fast. If I’m going to buy fast food, I want it fast because I’m going for the food hit rather than the taste. Just gimme my food!

So, I ate a few skinny fries, watched my friend down all his food — along with the burnt ‘tomato and cheese’ burger (talking marks because  those ingredients are alleged, and I’m still not convinced it should be called anything but the cardboard burger).

I went and bought a crepe instead.

Let me introduce you to Dave. Dave was born Wouter Otto Levenbach in the Netherlands, but has remained relatively unknown in his home country despite having a few chart hits in France. One of his first big hits in the 70s was Vavina, which you may recognise this clip to the left.

For those of you who don’t recall the song, including my French friend who until last week thought it was a Dave original, it’s actually a Frenchified (yes, I made that word up) version of “Runaway” by Del Shannon, recorded in the 60s (also to the left).

Okay, the 70s seemed to be the peak decade for musicians to switch song languages, with The Four Seasons’ “December 1963 (Oh What a Night)” being covered by Claude François as “Cette Année-Là” (“That Year Then”), while his song “Comme d’Habitude” is more famously known as the the translated-into-English “My Way”, sung, but not written, by Frank Sinatra, and good old Johnny Hallyday covered all sorts of songs including “Long Tall Sally” as “Oh! Sally” with French lyrics. The list goes on. Again, I promise to write about Claude François one day: his story is a good one.

So back to Dave. Good on him for taking a hit song from the US and turning his translation into a hit in France. But you may ask why on earth I’m bringing this up now. This is why:

Dave has done a cover of his cover. He’s really taking recycling to new levels. Apparently, it’s a surefire hit, with French TV and radio stations picking it up, and Dave starring as a panelist on France’s talent show “La France a un Incroyable Talent” (“France has an Incredible Talent”). So as we say in Australia, “good onya, Dave”: you’ve done well. And you haven’t aged badly either.

Today marks the release of the controversial Beaujolais Nouveau 2011 batch. That’s right: a 2011 wine is already on the market, but it won’t be there for long. If you’re not familiar with this wine, it’s a young wine which needs to be consumed quickly after production, rather than aged. Although it was officially released in 1951 when the AOC rules for Beaujolais sales were relaxed to allow sales prior to 15th December, it only really became better known in the 1970s, when the race to Paris grew in popularity. Yes, there is a race to Paris with the new wine, from the Beaujolais wine-making area just west of Switzerland, every year and it has since spread to other countries. The date of annual release was 15th November until 1985, when the French realised they should sell the wine just before the weekend to take advantage of marketing opportunities around the world. And so now it’s released on the third Thursday of November.

History lesson out of the way, here’s the dirt. Years ago when I was a French language student in Annecy, the teacher announced that it was Beaujolais Nouveau release day, and that there’d be a wine-tasting session upstairs, put on by the school. Actually, I didn’t understand anything she said but a classmate explained it in English. We discovered a room full of clueless students getting a free swig from French wine sellers who explained to them in English why they should buy a bottle or two. Lured with enough freebie snacks, some of them spent their lunch money on the wine and filled up on crackers and cheese — and wine — instead.

I’ve asked some French people what Beaujolais Nouveau is all about and the general consensus is that it’s a good excuse to make fast cash on unfussy wind drinkers both here in France and abroad who know nothing about wine. Of course, there must be plenty of French people who love the wine (probably mostly from Beaujolais, in the same way that the Savoyards love their sickly sweet Savoyard local white wine as if it’s the best stuff in the world), but I’ve yet to met them.

So, today marks the day when the French supermarkets and wine sellers go into a marketing frenzy to try to get as much of the short-lived wine from shelves to customers’ mouths, while many around these parts walk past saying “bof” at the whole spectacle, plucking a bottle of that world-class Savoyard white wine instead.

Okay, I know this is just an unfortunate translation, but it made me giggle, wondering exactly what lads’ services the occupants of this car were offering. For non-Brits, ‘lads’ is a bit of a stereotype of those guys you see on bucks nights/stag nights/bachelor parties doing things that only they find amusing. Thankfully, La Clusaz isn’t a lad hotspot, and I’ve no idea where the name for this business came from. The services offered actually include rental property management, cleaning and taxi service.

In the same vein, French speakers can snicker when they go to England and see the restaurant chain Zizzi because in French a ‘zizi‘ is a little boy’s term for their private parts. That’s right: Brits are eating in a restaurant that roughly translates to ‘willy‘.

Of course, there are plenty in English alone, with my fellow Australians calling those things you wear on your feet ‘thongs’ (which in Britain is a skimpy type of underwear, while the footwear is called a ‘flip-flop’), and the things you wear in winter to keep your legs warm ‘pants’ (which the Brits call ‘trousers’ because ‘pants’ are, again, underwear).

Getting back to French language surprises, an American friend went into a French lingerie shop and said she needed ‘a slip’. In English, that would mean a skirt-like type of underwear. She soon discovered that it’s French for ‘underpants’, and she can only hope that the shopkeeper didn’t think she needed a pair that urgently. Have you stumbled across similar mix-ups?

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.

Watching French television the other night, a woman wore a t-shirt that said:

40 balais, la frite

This directly translates to “forty brooms, the chip”. Any idea what that means? It sounds as though it’s related to a long session of sweeping a single thin slice of fried potato.

It means something entirely different.

In French “balais” officially means “broom”, but it can also be used as a slang word for “years” for reasons that I’m sure I’ll never discover. Meanwhile, “la frite” can be used like some other food substances to convey feelings. For example, “J’ai la pêche” means “I have the peach” or, as we’d say it in English, “I’m peachy”, which actually means “I have lots of energy” when the French use it. Other food substitutions include “J’ai la banane” (“I have the banana” or “I’m smiling”) and “J’ai la patate” (“I have the potato” or “I’m happy”). Okay, the banana makes sense, but a potato? Really? Anyway, it’s also possible to say “J’ai la frite” to say “I’m happy”.

So, if you put it all together, “40 balais, la frite” actually means “Forty years old and happy”.

And the French wonder why it takes us foreigners so long to learn the language…