Le Franco Phoney

Shops here in the French Alps keep strange hours. For example, the supermarket in La Clusaz is closed from 12.30pm to 4.30pm, and rumour has it that the reason for this is so that tourists have to buy their lunch from the bakeries and restaurants and thus spend more money in town. In fact, most of La Clusaz closes for the inter-season months of May, October and November. And as I’ve written about in the past, convenience stores are more like inconvenience stores, while “fermeture exceptionelle” (unexpected closure) is a sign well used here in France, and one I’ve struck when attempting to go to a Chinese restaurant in Annecy, the post office in Bonneville and of course, the government office in Annecy for car registration. When I made it to the post office in St Jean de Sixt before it closed for the weekend at midday on a Saturday, I was then told that my item wouldn’t leave until Monday because nobody picks up the mail on the weekends. Shop keepers apparently have a comfortable life and they don’t need to open as often as I’d like them to.

So why am I still surprised to see this sign? Pictured here is a sign for a shop in Annecy called “Espace Déco” (a home decorations shop). The sign then reads:

Opening hours

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 12.30pm - 2.00pm

Monday, Wednesday, Saturday: by appointment or call (number blurred out by me)

So, that’s a total of four and a half hours per week for customers to just happen to walk past while the shop is open. Does anyone ever really bother to call a number just to touch an item for sale and discover its price? I’d feel kind of obliged to buy it if I hauled the shopkeeper out of bed or wherever just so I could browse a few serving trays. How are these shops still in business? The only reason I can think of is that people must think it’s more exclusive if the shop stays closed most of the time and then they make the effort to come back. I think I’ve found the most exclusive shop in the Alps.

The Winter Olympic Games (les Jeux Olympiques in French) are in full swing, and I’ve been following the sports on French television. The French athletes have been a bit unlucky so far, and at first the commentators blamed it on badly-made courses. I think they’ve given up on that angle now but they certainly haven’t stopped saying: “Ooh la la”, nor the variation: “Ooh la la la la”, nor the variation of the variation: “Ooh la la la la la la”. Seriously, the commentators are la la laing so many times that I’m losing count. As the Men’s Cross-country Relay went on (and on and on)  last night, the commentators became more and more worried, using more “Ooh la la”s, when the Norwegian approached from fourth place, and eventually made it to second place, ousting the French team to fourth place. Vincent Vittoz from La Clusaz was in that team, and it was pretty much his last chance of winning an Olympic medal after many years of trying, so the commentators were hoping for him as much as I was that he would get at least a bronze. There’s still a chance he might get one because the French team have complained about Sweden (or is it Norway?) bringing two pairs of skis instead of one. If their complaint is successful, Vincent and the French team will move up to win bronze. And the commentators are sure to la la la themselves into oblivion if that happens.

Between the Ooh la las, it’s often difficult to hear much else because the commentators like talking over each other. During the replay of some figure skating last night, I wondered if they’d forgotten to turn off a few microphones as there were no less than four people talking at the same time. Really, I’m not joking: four people at once. The French do seem to have a knack of being able to talk and listen at the same time in everyday life, so such commentary probably shouldn’t surprise me as much as their moment of absolute silence when Ladies’ Downhill hopeful Marion Rolland hurt her knee and fell just seconds after she started her run. The French commentators had been excited about her run and they switched directly to her when she was getting ready to leave the gates. Bing! Off she goes! As she veered directly to her right and off the course, only one commentator let out a single, sad “Non”. Ten seconds must have passed before any of them could muster up the ability to speak. The catastrophe of another French athlete going down was just too much.

As I write this, the French are ranked equal sixth in the medal tally. Compare this with my native Australia — a country renowned for producing sporting champions, which has a whole three medals, putting them in sixteenth place. We’re better at summer sports really. Us Aussies are rapt with our best ever winter Olympics medal tally despite it being nowhere near the top-ranking countries. So, France, don’t fret: you’re doing alright. And may Vinny get that bronze.

Months ago, I wrote about the noisy church bells in my friend’s village and how annoying they were at 7am on a Sunday morning. You’d think that, just a few months after that experience, I’d be wise to moving near a church, and yet here I am in St Jean de Sixt, close enough to the church to be heard by the bell ringer if I yelled out to stop that noise if only he’d stop ringing the bells. And yes, apparently, the church bells are still rung by a local here. Thankfully, the bells don’t go off at 7am on a Sunday morning, but they do go off at 8am on a Sunday morning, and every hour after that until 10pm. There’s also the “It’s lunchtime!” ring at midday, and the “It’s hometime!” ring at 7pm. Friends say: “Oh, you get used to them,” and I guess I have to a degree. Hearing the DONG DONG DONG is in fact great for time keeping: I’m much more aware of the hours ticking past, but as a light sleeper who rarely enjoys a sleep-in, the Sunday morning bells are still annoying, so I now have ear plugs on my bedside table at the ready.

What ear plugs cannot fix is funeral parking traffic. The surrounding streets are lined with illegally-parked cars, and my usual car park is jammed to the point that some of those cars are wedged in behind other cars which hopefully only belong to other funeral-goers. I know it’s wrong of me and a terrible thing to have a whinge about funerals: somebody has died, and all I care about is the fact that I have to lug my skis fifty more metres because my usual parking spots are taken. So, deceased people, I’m sorry. But then, the church should be sorry too because when I first heard the funeral chime, I presumed it was a wedding with all its cheery major key chiming. Church, shouldn’t you be more solemn? Like me when I’m grumpy carrying my skis past all the people wearing black?

I can see into the cemetery from my house, and after each funeral, the attendees walk slowly through the cemetery before leaving the church grounds and waiting in their cars of other funeral-goers to move theirs out of the way, but the body never seems to get buried there. In fact, the cemetery seems pretty full — and a bit sad for its occupants during winter, for although the path is kept cleared by a lawn-mower-sounding snow clearer, the snow on the graves remains, and fresh flowers are a rare sight (where can anyone put them?). On the upside, they get a great view of the mountain. I took this photo from the cemetery, with the lovely view of the l’Etale peak of La Clusaz, when I walked through it the other day for signs of fresh flowers. There were none, nor any funeral goers, nor any signs of the bell-ringer, but I’m going to check that out with the local tourist office. And if he does exist, does that mean he never gets a sleep-in?

So, here at Le Franco Phoney, I provide a written commentary on life in the French Alps, and from an ex-pat’s perspective. I’ve discovered an illustrated version of life in the Alps from a true French person, Caro (that’s Madamoiselle Caroline to us), who I had fun skiing with last week in La Clusaz, and who has since illustrated that particular day on her blog, including a stick figure of me on telemarks. Although her entries are in French, the illustrations mostly speak for themselves and she’s not scared to make fun of herself in order to give the rest of us a laugh. And now that she’s mentioned it, our mutual friend, Tim, does indeed look a lot like Sam Neil.

Although we don’t share the same language, nor her talent for drawing, we do share a love of snow, and the photo of her planted next to a tree, deep in snow is something I’d experienced just one day earlier on my snowboard (being waist deep in powder is more of an aerobic workout than you can ever imagine). And looking at her older blog entries, there are plenty of amusing illustrations of what life is all about here in the Alps, along with life in general (like having a husband who says he’s helped because he’s put the washing machine on after she’s spent the day cooking, shopping for her kids’ clothes and looking after her kids). She’s my new favourite illustrator and new favourite blogger. Enjoy!

A French friend of mine once told me she had no idea that the rest of the world did not say “Ooh la la” and that she was surprised to discover it was a stereotype of what French people say. I remember in Australia, there was a chain of fashion accessory shops called “Ooh la la”, and my friends and I pronounced it “ooooooh la la”. It turns out it’s a bit more of an “oh la la” in French, or at least, somewhere between the two. It’s a phrase that, to me, sounds cheesy when anyone but a French person says it. An American friend says it with a total American accent that sounds as wrong as the shop name in Australia, and hearing her say it was enough to prevent me from using it as anything more than a joke.

That all changed last weekend when the pistes got busy with people. I managed to use it twice when people got too close to me and it came out naturally both times. I was talking to a different French friend about how good it felt about being able to use it so naturally, and he said he doesn’t really consider it a word in French as much as a saying, like “Oh” in English. Except, of course, “Ooh la la” covers so much more. It can be used for surprise (”Ooh la la! or “Wow!”), disgust (”Ooh la la” or “What a terrible cheese”), injury (”Ooh la la” or “Ouch!”), admiration (”Ooh la la” or “The bride looks beautiful”), uncertainty (”Ooh la la” or “This big pile of paperwork might not be enough to change your address with us”) and regret (”Ooh la la” or “Damn, I’ve taken a gouge out of my skis”). There are probably plenty of other meanings to it because when I hassled my French friend about it he said: “I don’t know: it comes out so naturally that it’s hard to think of any examples”.

So, now you know: if ever you’re stuck in one of those situations where someone is speaking to you in French and you have no idea what they’re saying, just say “Ooh la la” and you’ll probably be okay.

French imagery in advertising, roundabouts and even pizza boxes is something I’ve discussed many times on this blog, but this image is the most provocative I’ve seen in a public place. Apologies for the lack of quality: I took the picture temporarily on my phone a few days ago and the poster has since disappeared.

So, here we have a poster for the Lalu nightclub in Le Grand Bornand, featuring smurfs (called ’schtroumpfs’ in French). I remember Papa Smurf there in the red, and Lady Smurf is of course the woman next to him. The post says ‘Smurf me’ in French (they’ve made ’smurf’ into a verb), so I guess it’s a party where people dress up as smurfs. And what is that smurf doing below that, with the scissors and the comb? Is that hay being taken away? No. Look more carefully, and if you’re pre-teen, just skip the rest of this entry: it will only add to the teenage angst that you’re destined for.

I’d say to look closely, but you don’t really need to. Can you see anything amiss in this poster? Anything slightly wrong, considering the poster was placed at the height of a kid’s eyes? That’s not hay that the smurf is carting off. It’s pubic hair. That’s not a hill with a house in the distance, it’s a breast. As you can now see, there isn’t much left up to the imagination in this poster.

Admittedly, I stared at this poster, pointed out to me by my friend, for a good minute or so without noticing anything odd. If this poster was in the nightclub itself, I wouldn’t even blink an eye; but it was placed outside the lift ticket office in Le Grand Bornand, right by the ski stand, where parents tell kids to wait with the skis, and as I mentioned, right at kid height, with all these cute, lovable smurfs on display to attracts kids’ attention. Perhaps most kids just overlook this for the love of smurfs the way I did. Still, could any other country be so open to Hairdresser Smurf giving a human an alternative Brazilian? And is that really how you make a human into a smurf? I reckon Painter Smurf with his can of blue paint would have a strong opinion about that.

In the lead-up to Christmas day, I was excited to have my very own, real, potted Christmas tree for the first time in my life. Strange, you might think, that someone can reach their thirties and never have had a real Christmas tree despite celebrating the holiday every year of their life, but I guess the heat in Australia always put my Mum off buying a real one, and the reliable plastic one was easy to put up and didn’t drop needles all over the place. The neighbours in Australia had a white Christmas tree, which now seems a bit peculiar, given the warmth of summer had usually kicked in, and while the white Christmas tree sat in their front window, we’d be having water fights on the hot pavement.

Not only had I not ever had a real Christmas tree until last Christmas, but for the previous five years, I had missed out on anything resembling a Christmas tree due to my last few abodes being too small or poorly laid out to fit one in. I was determined to change that last year, and on the first day of December, I was the proud owner of a Canadian pine tree. I decorated it with tinsel, baubles, chocolate bells and my own home-made gingerbread. I marvelled at it every morning and again every afternoon when I turned the lights on. I watered the pot and lovingly laid Christmas presents under this wonderful thing that twinkled and grew right there in my loungeroom. It was there for me when I needed a tree. It still looked lovely on Christmas Day, although some of the gingerbread and chocolates had gone missing by then.

Twelve days later, I knew I should have taken the Christmas tree outside, but it was so pretty, I left it inside. Besides, I needed to find someone who had room to plant it. I didn’t want to take it to the forest and plant it just in case it introduced any non-native tree problems. And I specifically wanted a potted Christmas tree that could be replanted because I always feel so sad when I see these once lovely, proudly decorated trees stripped of all those decorations and tossed on a cold balcony to die and eventually be removed when someone can be bothered. I loved my tree so much that I took my time to find a new home for it, and after a few attempts, a family in La Clusaz offered to take it and plant it in their yard. All I had to do now was undress the decorations from the tree and get it to their yard.

I undressed the tree tonight. In the process, most of the lower branches dropped the few remaining needles that hadn’t already dropped off, while the needles from the upper branches trickled through the tree with every bauble removal. I think the tree is dead. A visiting friend helped me get it outside, and it’s now dumped in the snow, surrounded by its own needles. Accuse me of having an overactive imagination, but seeing that tree out there tonight was like seeing a nearly-dead body, with the needles being the blood leaking from the body. And I feel guilty. I’ve killed the tree that brought me so much happiness in December! Had I found it a home earlier and not been so selfish, the tree might still be alive, nay, thriving today! Instead, I now have a dead tree in my front yard — the one thing that I wanted to avoid doing. Worse still, I know I’ll be cursing it dropping more needles when it goes to the tip in the back of a car. I know a Christmas tree is probably one of the most objectified things in the world, but I wanted to make sure mine would revert back to just a tree once Christmas passed. So, Christmas tree, this is your blog entry, to say thank you for the lovely December, and I’m so sorry for killing you.

Should I just get a plastic tree next year?

A blog reader, Carmen, got in touch with me a while back with a great question which I’ve been meaning to blog about ever since. She asked about the integration between the French and the British, as she’s noticed that some friends in the valley of Chamonix only seem to mix with other Brits. She asked: “Is Chamonix Valley the worst Alps area for this kind of divide or are there others with a more integrated expat/local community?” Here comes a serious post, so if you’re here for light entertainment, you might prefer to check my post about rural fairs or dodgy translation or crazy people or chairlift queueing. For those of you left, here’s my reply for Carmen.

I’m happy to say that there are plenty of places in the Alps where the expats integrate with the locals, including right where I live. Although I’ve never lived in Chamonix, I did spend many winters in the Méribel valley — in the more residential Les Allues, and before that, Brides les Bains. Some of those in the community of expats never bothered to be friendly towards seasonnaires such as myself even though I returned year after year. I didn’t live there in summers, so I guess it wasn’t worth their time to invest in my friendship. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t hold it against any of them and I do have friends who live there permanently. It’s impossible to befriend all the seasonnaires. I guess many of them just weren’t my type and vice versa. C’est la vie.

It’s the same with the French. Some expats will gel with some French and some French will gel with some expats, but at the end of the day, expats have some things in common with each other that the French don’t — language and culture are the two big ones that spring to mind — and so it’s not surprising that the two communities tend to hang out separately (but not necessarily always).

I’m as guilty of it as anyone else. I have both French friends and expat friends, and I would say the divide lies directly with the language and comfort: my French friends who can speak English are my best French friends because we can communicate easily, while my non-English speaking French friends politely put up with my dodgy French, of which they have to second-guess the meaning, and I can never feel totally relaxed with them because I’m so busy concentrating on understanding what they’re saying. Also, it’s really hard to go to a party filled with French people and try to chat with music pumping in the background. I get embarrassed asking someone three times what they said, and still not actually hearing it properly to respond as expected. I hope to be able to in the future, but I imagine it will take years to fill my French vocabulary to the point that I can speak French with as much ease as English, and I think many expats—certainly my friends here—feel the same. In the mean time, I still do go to French-speaking parties, but I enjoy the ones filled with English speakers more because we can communicate.

Some might say it would be faster if expats communicated more in French and therefore integrated more with the French, but I think it’s human nature for a lot of us to feel the need to communicate more than the basics if someone is to be a true friend. And I guess in resorts such as Méribel, Chamonix and Morzine, the expat community is so big that it’s a bit harder to meet any non-English speaking French people at all. For example, most bars in Méribel (and plenty of other resorts) are run by English companies with English menus and English staff, and English tourists walk into the shops expecting shopkeepers to reply to them in English. This is partly what prompted me to settle in a smaller resort: a French friend, Gael, who runs Oxygene board shop with his sister in Méribel, said to me one night when I tried to speak French: “Oh just speak in English will you.” His English is perfect, so it made sense. It didn’t help me though. Living in a resort with so many English speakers made it difficult for me to find anyone who wanted to speak French with me. Here in the Aravis valley, many locals have to put up with my bad French because it’s still better than their English.

So Carmen, to answer your question, I don’t know if Chamonix has the worst divide for expats to natives, but it’s probably one of the harder places to get between the two communities. I do know that unless I gel instantly with an English-speaking seasonnaire, I’d prefer to befriend a French speaker who lives here permanently, but that choice would be harder to make in a bigger resort where more expats live.

St Jean de Sixt is quite a small village. It has a fruit & veg shop, a convenience store (called “8 to 8″, but actually, it’s more like 9.30 to 7 with at least a two hour closure for lunch, closed on public holidays and possibly Sundays and sometimes just if it’s quiet, and perhaps it should be renamed an inconvenience store), a tourist office, TWO ski shops and two bakeries. It’s the village nested between the ski resorts of La Clusaz and Le Grand Bornand, although perhaps some would argue that it’s a ski resort itself, as it boasts a few drag lifts and has its own ski lift company.

Regardless, St Jean de Sixt is not a big town. Yesterday, I decided to try out the free bus service (free to resident card holders or people with a season lift pass for Les Aravis—La Clusaz and Le Grand Bornand). The bus was on time in both directions and the connection to La Balme once I was in La Clusaz was conveniently timely. After a day on the slopes, the bus dropped me off once more in St Jean de Sixt. Within metres of the bus stop, a kebab van had appeared. It was open, although its number plate and signs suggested the van was normally stationed down by the southern coast of France. Still, I was impressed that I’m living in a place big enough to have a kebab shop, even if it’s just for the winter. As I walked home, I noticed that the van driver had plugged in an electrical cable. It trailed about ten metres from the van, around a corner, along a car park and finally, wedged under a closed door of the public toilets. I wondered if anyone had opened the door, pulled out the cord and watched the man in the van saying: “Bah, qu’est-ce que…putain” and shaking his fist, then chuckling as the plug-puller plugged the cable back in. I honestly can’t imagine anything more sinister.

Today, I was in a car with a friend who also lives in St Jean. I told him about the kebab van and he was very excited. After our afternoon on the slopes, he decided he deserved a kebab for his dinner. We drove down to where the van had been but it was gone. GONE.  I think I ruined my friend’s day, with the excitement, then disappointment of the fallacy of a kebab shop much closer than ever before to his home. He wants it to come back. Will it be back? Or did too many people pull the cable from the power socket in the public toilets for it to make him smile anymore? If you’re out there, kebab man, please come back.

In France, the 6th of January, Epiphany, is celebrated with a sweet treat. La galette des Rois (wafer of the kings) is a puff pastry pie-like thing with a layer of almond paste, known as frangipane, sandwiched between the pastry. It’s a special cake because it contains a porcelain figurine (now usually something plastic), which entitles the finder to be king of the household for the day.

Some history of the cake can be found here, but I’d prefer to talk about the here and now. Pictured is my very own wafer of the kings, which I bought at the local bakery yesterday. As you can see, it’s more like a pie than a wafer, and you get more than just a baked good when you buy this beast. Apart from the hidden figurine, the cake also comes with a cardboard crown for whoever finds the figurine to wear for the day. It also comes in this cool paper bag which allows the pie to be lightly heated in a microwave without losing its crispness.

My bag contained logos from the Savoyarde region. You can see there’s the Savoie coat of arms in the centre, a skier on the left, a local flower, a chalet (hidden by the galette), a bottle of booze with the same coat of arms, and just out of the the shot is a kid with a ladder because the Savoyardes used to be very poor and they would send their kids away to work as chimney sweeps in big cities. I don’t know why the yellow thing at the top has elephants sticking out of it. This must be a Savoyarde memento I’ve yet to familiarise myself with.

The great thing about this pie is that you don’t have to carry it flat. It’s so dense, it’s like a giant biscuit, and I guess that’s why the bag works so well. I carried this one to a friend’s place last night and we cut it up and ate all but two pieces. The hidden figurine is still hidden (hopefully). Maybe it’s an elephant sticking out of a yellow thing. Can anyone tell me what that’s about? None of the French people here seem to know.