Le Franco Phoney

La Clusaz has all sorts of festivals in summer and winter, but now that school holidays are over, today’s fair was all about the locals. The Foire de la Croix is a chance for the local farmers to catch up and socialise (err, drink lots of beer) with one another, and their smiling faces show that they enjoy every minute of it. One Sunday every year, the farmers celebrate the cows’ return to town from the higher pastures (while the cows no doubt despair just as soon as they realise that they’re back in sheds for winter). They display their best Abondance cows and hold a competition for the best Reblochon cheese. The cows are plentiful, and each one is paraded while the MC talks about her special qualities. This is the La Clusaz equivalent of the Grammy awards.

Just last week, those mountains in the background — the Aravis chain — were covered with fresh snow. Recent warm weather has melted it away and provided a hot, sunny day for the farmers to enjoy.

But it’s not all social. Farmers can also buy new bells for their cows, as pictured, along with farming equipment between talking shop with other farmers.

The fair is still running as I type this, with the awards from the day’s events running into the evening. Some farmers will no doubt be milking their cows with very sore heads tomorrow. Let’s just hope none of them wake up with a giant bell around their neck.

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Teams from five villages met on Friday night in Saint Jean de Sixt for the annual inter-village games (Les Gamineries des Aravis), but you might notice that there are six different coloured teams. A group of tourists makes up the sixth team, who were given tasks including the one pictured above, where they had to make a boat out of a cardboard box, then do laps of the ‘river’ (a blue carpet). The river included rapids (lumpy carpet) and a storm (a man with a garden hose).

I was lucky enough to get the grand stand view from my friends’ chalet overlooking the games, complete with a backdrop of St Jean de Sixt and the l’Etale peak of La Clusaz. Even though I was on the outskirts of the crowd, I felt like a local, with my yoga instructor getting on the mic for one of the games that involved contestants holding the ‘tree’ yoga position, and the winning contestant climbing the climbing wall (far left) to retrieve a note which said that in the zen world of yoga, everyone is a winner, and all the teams scored equal points.

Thônes won the competition, with Le Grand Bornand second, La Clusaz third, the tourists fourth and St Jean de Sixt equal last with Manigod. A hard rock cover band had already started before the announcer had finished thanking everyone for coming, and the crowd made a beeline for the bar. Sadly, the stage was not facing the bar, so the band were having some good, honest fun mostly by themselves.

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The French language is always switching things around, like “la piste bleu” for “the blue piste”, so when I saw La Clusaz advertising “The Vespa free” I figured they were giving away a free vespa, or better still, holding a day of vespa riding for free. I have friends visiting during The Vespa Free, so when I saw this flier, I imagined my friends and I humming around town on different coloured buzz-bikes, with sunshine and giggles.

This is totally incorrect. There is no day of free Vespa riding. It’s actually no fun at all for us non-scooter owners. No.

The Vespa Free is just a way of annoying those of us who live here by gathering all the people with scooters in one spot, making them pay, and letting them loose on the mountainous roads. There will be so many buzzing around the roads that cars will find it impossible to overtake the glorified lawn mowers, and will instead be surrounded by that constant, annoying buzzzzzzz from the scooters in front and behind. It will be a slow traffic weekend.

Scooters remind me of mosquitoes. Unless you like mosquitoes, avoid La Clusaz on 1st and 2nd of September. The mountains will go from tranquil to two-stroke in just over ten seconds.

The only redeeming feature is a DJ set from Radio Meuh, who will hopefully be able to quell the buzzing at least for one evening.

If The Vespa Free had been free Vespa testing, I never would have mentioned mosquitoes or lawn mowers. My version of The Vespa Free would have been a fun weekend. Looks like my visiting friends will see more of Annecy than La Clusaz!

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Saint Jean de Sixt partied on Saturday night in the lead-up to the national Fete de la Saint Jean (John the Baptist) on Sunday. Pictured is every kid’s favourite car ride, and this year, it featured a lighting system more impressive than most nightclubs. Each car flew a flag with the Savoie cross. The locals seemed impressed, and the occupants of the cars were even happier when the smoke machines at each end of the ride kicked in, making it truly difficult to avoid other cars. I remember as a kid in Australia, going to Luna Park and being told by the man in charge to avoid the other cars. What fun is that? The French clearly have the right idea there.

However, getting the local band to attempt La Bamba was probably not the best idea. But it was still an improvement on the music from the night before, which seemed to be a loop of French ‘artist’ Keen’V and Katy Perry, with the odd dodgy summer pop hit thrown in.

In the background is what looks like a marching band in the French flag colours of white, red and blue. Don’t be fooled: in the ever-popular French tradition, it’s a group of men dressed as marching girls — each one sporting massive breasts and playing with their hair between their marching exploits. They weren’t marching to La Bamba. No, they were marching to the loop of Katy Perry hits that the dodgem/bumper car ride was still pumping out.

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The 21st of June is a special day in France and other parts of the world. It’s the national day of music – la Fête de la Musique. After much uncertainty about the weather, I headed down to Annecy with umbrella in hand. There was the usual quirky stuff and non-mainstream bands which I’ve written about before, like the death metal band singing to an audience wearing mostly black.

As I looked around at the crowd, I wondered where this lot go for the rest of the year. There are few lively venues in Annecy that cater for anything that hasn’t made it into the charts during the past 50 years. When they put their arms in the air to do the devil’s horns (index finger and pinky sticking up while the rest are folded down), some of them left their thumbs sticking out, as if they were telling the devil to hang loose (hang loose, if you don’t know, is thumb and pinky sticking out only). Come on, goths and headbangers, you’re letting the team down. Know your devil’s horns.

Rain unfortunately caused a whole lot of the stages to close early, no doubt disappointing hundreds of band members who had been hoping for that big break, but the good times continued elsewhere. Never in Annecy have I seen such a party atmosphere as the one created by a ska band in the old town. The crowd danced and clapped, and their vocals were almost as loud as the band’s. Here’s some footage:

Not bad for 11pm on a wet Thursday night, eh?

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On reflection, I should have taken this photo from a different angle. Too late now, so let me tell you what it is and why I’m writing about it. First of all, it’s a double-chocolate bread roll. But more on that in a minute.

Today, the 14th May, signals the start of La Fête du Pain (a festival of bread) here in France. The celebrations began back in 1996 when the then French minister of commerce, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, inaugurated the event. So, why May? Because the 16th May is the Saint Honoré day. ‘What saint is that?’ you ask? He’s the patron saint of bakers, of course! The lucky guy even has a cake named after him. It too looks quite tasty. If I’m honest, I’d prefer to have a cake named after me than to be a saint. Hint hint…

Back to bread. French bakeries will celebrate for a week, so I decided to celebrate too — by sampling something I’d never tried before. This double-chocolate bread roll, called a baguettine au chocolat in French, is chocolate bread with chocolate chips added. It’s chewy, sweet and chocolatey. More filling than a chocolate bar, this thing is the perfect indulgent snack between meals.

For those seeking something healthier, I can recommend the baguettine aux fruits. Okay, it’s probably just as calorific as the baguettine au chocolat but surely a lot less than a standard croissant. What will you be sampling?

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It’s been a few years since I mentioned the Fete du Reblochon, but watching the parade here in La Clusaz the other day made me realise it’s time to bring it up again. Where else in the world would you be ‘chased’ by a stuffed wild boar on wheels, led by a man dressed as a country bumkpin?

The boar was projected towards the crowd that had gathered for the Fete du Reblochon parade and the French man directing it seemed pretty happy with his job. Other highlights of the parade were the kids throwing hay and some sort of seeds that stung as they hit bare skin, and the men carrying an enormous amount of hay on their heads (like massive grass affros), the deafening bell ringers and best of all, the free samples of Reblochon cheese — the local cheese of the Aravis valley, which covers La Clusaz, Le Grand Bornand, Thônes and the villages dotted around them. The Fete du Reblochon is a really enjoyable day offering all sorts of rural entertainment. It swaps the Ferris wheel for a donkey race, the target shooting for wood chopping, hot dogs for local diot sausages, the man selling that amazing kitchen chopping device that peels, grates, chops, dices and more for the woman explaining how cheese is made, and the showbags of sweets for bags of cheese. It’s a great day out.

Now, back to the boar. Spain might have the running of the bulls and Rio might have Carnival, but La Clusaz is possibly the only place in the world that has the stuffed boar on wheels. And at least one person (the guy pulling the boar) thinks that’s a win.

Ever wanted to turn your old camper into a cow? Someone in Le Grand Bornand here in the Aravis can help you. Although the eyes suggest the cow has been on the whacky tobaccy, the rest is in order, with a decent set of horns, four legs, an udder, a lovely tail hanging out the back, and a great big mouth and tongue chewing some hay. There’s even a tag on the ear.

The cow van has been on the hill up from the French village of Thônes to advertise last weekend’s Fête de l’Alpage (cow fields fete) in Le Grand Bornand, which, as you can see from the photo, involved Reblochon cheese and probably a lot of cows. I missed it, but I’m not sure the fete could have been any better than the advertisement for the fete. In fact, I reckon I would have been let down if I’d gone and there were no other innovative cow art installations to take photos of. I’m looking forward to next year’s advertisement.

April Fool’s Day in France is known as Poisson d’avril (April Fish) thanks to a bizarre tradition of sticking paper fish to people’s backs. Perhaps equivalent to ‘Kick me’ signs in English, the fish should only be attached on 1st April, and retailers encourage such behaviour by baking fish-shaped pastries and making fish-shaped chocolates. So how and why did this start? Nobody seems to know for sure but there are many theories, ranging from the date’s proximity to the Pisces astrological sign (although it falls smack bang in the middle of Aries) to when mackerals are good for eating to a French king’s change to the calendar year start date, which had been 1st April prior to his change, with many of his subjects refusing to let go of the day as a deay of celebration. And what better way to celebrate than to stick a fish on your mate’s back?
So, I gave it a go this morning. My cat, Bruno had no idea when I slapped this paper fish on his back while he slept, curled up, on his favourite soft toy (which happens to be a dog – double ‘hah!’). I giggled away and taunted him with ‘poisson d’avril‘ as I took this photo. Then I realised that the fish looks quite like a dolphin and I think the cat may have had the last laugh.

Anyway, I’m off to the bakery to pick up some fish-shaped pastries before they’re gone for another year.

Last night, La Clusaz held its annual carnival, with groups dressed in 70s disco outfits, cops and prisoners, Star Wars characters, Cleopatras being carried by mummies, various superheros, and even a ladybird. The parade is held early so that kids, like the one pictured, can watch. A power ranger handed his sword over to this kid and motioned for the kid to attack him, which he did (had I remembered to charge the battery on my proper camera, this photo would have been clearer).

With plenty of kids around before 8pm, the DJ playing the loud party music in the centre of the gathering put on “Why Don’t We Just F**k” by Greg Parys. I know, I know, it’s an English word, but I can’t imagine many parents wanting their kids swearing in English or French or any other language. Some kids danced away to the song, while a boy of about twelve just next to me teased a group of local boys the same age by wearing a mask so they couldn’t tell who he was. How did he tease them? He rubbed his mask up and down with his hand. His mask was the head of a penis. He couldn’t have timed it better with the music, although the group of boys watching looked stunned despite their preference to look cool.

For all the entertainment provided, this kid was by far the most entertaining to watch. Eventually, one of the stunned boys walked towards him and ripped his mask off before the boy grabbed it back and ran away. The boys still looked stunned.

Like all public events in La Clusaz, the parade ended with fireworks, signalling bed time for the kids and pub time for the oddly-dressed adults. I suspect the stunned boys lingered outdoors, being too old for bed and too young for the pub, and probably watched the kid in the penis mask steal his way into a pub before turning to taunt them from the window. I can’t wait for next year.