Le Franco Phoney

Each year, La Clusaz hosts a moonlit walk through town (la balade au clair du lune in French) when the moon is full and bright in the sky. All the street lights are turned off, but the town is still lit by more than the moon. Candles flicker on the ground, in trees, and on window sills along the main streets which are blocked to cars and full of pedestrians and entertainers.

This year’s theme was light. I guess it would be a bit boring without any additional lighting to view the entertainment by, so the entertainment itself was illuminated. Pictured above is one of the acts that got friendly with the tourists. I love the smile on the drummer’s face as he tries to get a member of the public dancing. Their light came from the giant illuminated cones around them. This was the extremely upbeat band compared with the one I’d seen marching down the street ten minutes earlier: they sounded like a funeral procession from New Orleans.

Meanwhile, pictured on the right are two illuminated angel people on stilts, along with a juggler and a non-stilted illuminated angel person to keep them company. They were really magical to watch as they floated and wobbled carefully along the roads, sometimes backwards. The juggler had green illuminated pins which was probably a good thing, or nobody would have noticed him juggling. All the kids were fixated on the white lights.

The kids were also fixated on the big screen that took temporary silhouette photos of anyone standing in front of it. My friends and I tried to get in there to do YMCA with our arms, but the kids kept us back. When I finally muscled my way to the screen, strangers joined me before my friends could (reluctantly) make it, so I did a C by myself while the kids around me smiled as part of their poses, which was as pointless as my C without the Y, M and A since silhouettes don’t show smiles.

The giant inflatable angel, pictured, floated silently over people’s heads through town. It risked being popped as the two blokes driving it tried to get it under an arch of decorative street lights (unlit) and got it wedged between the arch and a neighbouring street light (turned off as well — no wonder they ran into it). Moments earlier, it had been floating up and down ‘watching’ a two-piece band playing something folky. By the time it made it under the street lights, everybody watching the band had turned their attention to the floating angel, breaking out in applause, mid-song, when the angel made it under the lights without popping. The band seemed less than impressed and I reckon they would have popped the inflatable angel with one of their instruments had it been close enough to try.

I imagine that trapeze artists don’t really like wind blowing them off course while they’re trying to catch each other and swing around in the air. However, St Jean de Sixt last week put an event involving wind and a trapeze. Let’s start with the exciting stuff — the trapeze. Both children and adults were allowed to have a go at this trapeze. Shoes must come off and a harness applied, but otherwise, off you go. Once up the ladder, someone on another swing would swing back and fourth while you get launched onto a swing, then get instructed to hold on with your legs and dangle your hands down, then the trapeze expert swinging opposite you grabs your waiting hands and you let your legs get loose of your swing, thus completing the trick.

And once you’re done, you can try your hand at one of the many musical instruments set up to capture the wind, or fly some of the kites on offer, or make a little boat and watch it sail with the wind on a big swimming pool. The whole event was staged on top of a hill — the windiest part of St Jean de Sixt, which doubles as a ’ski resort’ (two drag lifts) in winter. I heard about it from a friend. The week-long event was free, which, according to my friend, happens in July when the villages and ski resorts want to attract as many holiday-makers as possible. Freebies help ensure there’s a flow of people in July, while it’s almost guaranteed in August. So, if you want cool freebie events when you visit the mountains, remember to come in July, not August.

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.

It’s that time of year again, when movie buffs, media students and animation geeks from all over the world swarm to Annecy for the week-long International Annecy Animation Film Festival. This year, the fashion seems to be badges on bags, although I did see one guy sporting his badges all over his jeans. Yes, his jeans were entirely covered in badges.

The festival is great fun, with outdoor freebie screenings most nights of the week, and lots of animation styles to keep everyone happy. I favour the shorts: a movie-length screening of around six or more short animations. That ten minutes or so when people are entering the cinema involves more than just a hum of chatter: it’s an opportunity to throw lots of paper planes. So, on top of walking up stairs while scanning the rows of people for a few empty seats, you also need to dodge the papers zooming around the room. Long paper plane flights get a round of applause and a cheer! I saw one guy last night collecting as many as he could from the aisle beside him to relaunch, while the guy in front of me ripped off another sheet from his notebook to start folding another plane.

In fact, the planes are so common at the festival, that they’re an integral part of this year’s animated trailer for the festival, which you can watch below (and yes, that’s the actual cinema at the end).

Thankfully, the planes stop flying as soon as the first animation starts. However, between animations, the “done thing” is to make a popping sound with your mouth. You know, when you were a kid and you’d stick a finger inside your mouth near your cheek, then flick it out to make a pop? That’s the sound that gets made between movies. This is a whole separate set of cultural norms that seem to exist in Annecy purely for the animation festival.

I guess it was nice to escape some aspects of French culture for the evening, but by the time I left that cinema, I was looking forward to a crepe and seeing men in stripy shirts and berets riding bikes with baguettes under their arms and saying “ooh la la” a lot to the background sounds of a piano accordion.

So, a few weeks ago, I challenged my readers to travel in their own backyard. I took my own advice on the weekend and managed to visit something in La Clusaz, Le Grand Bornand and Annecy all in one day. In La Clusaz, some moto trials were taking place, and I snapped the photo below. The precision was amazing.

Meanwhile, in Le Grand Bornand, the local fire station was open. I thought it might be interesting, but I was scared off by all the pompier (fireman) recruitment advertisements on posters and a big television screen. As I scurried past without stepping in, I noticed these fire engines (pictured) open for people to check out. Mostly, this involved kids tooting the horns while their dads grabbed a beer at the beer tent. In fact, do you see the blue tent in the photo above? Booze tent. It seems that all sorts of events — from sporting to family — understand the importance of a beer tent. Fair enough: people get thirsty, but the fire station was holding an open morning. People were boozing on even before midday struck! It was a warm day so I guess the thirst excuse might cut it.

It was so warm, in fact, that I headed down to Annecy to test out a long board at the Fete du Nautisme, where all sorts of manual water-floating transport was available to try. This is the sport that, I’m told, Jennifer Anniston loves for keeping in shape, and who am I to deny her that right? I can see how it’s a leg workout, with my legs wobbling with the waves under the board I was standing on, but the real workout came for my arms, with lots of paddling to get anywhere on such a big board. I enjoyed it for the tranquility and the acceptable risk of falling in the cold water if I lost my balance (which I didn’t!). Lots of fun, and no beer tent in sight. This could be another sport to add to the list.

So, what have you seen in your backyard in the past few weeks?

Someone very close to my heart participated in last weekend’s Defi Foly and he did his runs with his waterproof camera stuck to various places. The video from his snowboard is rather bumpy! This one, however, taken from a stick in his hand, proved quite stable, but unfortunately made it harder for him to balance once he was in the water (I think he was more concerned with keeping the camera balanced than himself!). So, if you want to experience the speed of the snow ramp at around 65km/h, click on the video below.

He left from the first height out of three. Imagine how much faster the speeds are from the top height without any turns. I guess the force of hitting the water from just the first ramp is enough for most contestants.

The weather in the French Alps is changeable at the best of times, so organising a BBQ while the ski lifts are still running is probably a bad idea. However, as you can see from the first photo below, the weather last weekend for the Defi Foly (I wrote more about it last year, here) was great! People were burning from the hot sun as they chowed down on some BBQed goodness, watching the stunt paragliders in the sky between the crazy people zooming across the lake on skis, snowboards, monoskis or snowscoots. See photo below for a sample of all that sunny goodness. The ramp in the background is in the sun and the snow was melting quickly. Our flagpole helped my friends find our group in amongst the crowds of people.

And then there’s that big cloud that dumps rain down amazingly quickly. This is what happened just after I had reapplied sunscreen to my burning shoulders. A friend who had an umbrella to protect her skin from the sun merely grinned as the rest of us ran for cover. The wind picked up and I feared the flagpole might fall, so with thongs/flip-flops/jandals/whatever-you-like-to-call-them on my feet, I slipped and slushed over the new mud to reach the pole. It’s actually just a fishing pole which slots into itself to reduce in size, and while I shrunk the pole, all my friends decided I made a good religious photo opportunity. Some have named me the flag-loving Romanian lady, and others are now calling me Mary. What you’re actually looking at here is a grass skirt, bikini, and flower lei hidden by a hoody and scarf to soak up the rain. Within five minutes of the rain starting, people had cleared off en masse. You can see just how empty it looks compared with the photo above. What strikes me most about this photo is my friend in the foreground who hasn’t noticed the rain at all due to his heightened interest in a box of cookies.

Meanwhile, the guy who won the Defi Foly, Philippe Troubat, broke all the previous records by reaching 155 metres — almost the width of the lake! That’s ten metres more than the previous best time of Freddy Quenet, who is normally the clear winner every year. Next year should be good. I might bring a rain coat.

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?

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.