Le Franco Phoney

I was in Sweden last week to visit a friend. She showed me around her hometown of Stockholm and I couldn’t help but compare Sweden with France. Although the hut pictured is similar to the one I took in Switzerland last month, the feet are really unusual and like nothing I’ve seen in any other country. In the background is the city of Stockholm, merely a narrow stretch of water away. Stockholm is made up of a number of islands, and this hut was on the island that houses the Djurgården (a mini animal sanctuary, with antique farm houses and other traditional things), which overlooks the islands with the city centre and the old town, amongst others. I’m impressed that a city can have so much greenery so close to the centre of town.

One big difference is the options available for vegetarians. Of course, I’m comparing a capital city with the French Alps, but I’m not sure even Paris has vegie sausages available for takeaway (as pictured, mixed with mashed potato, salad and sauce). Gone are the tuts from meat eaters, replaced with a smile from the Swedish man who cooked the vegie sausages on a separate grill free of meat. Luxury!

But a lot of things are the same. Raclette, for example. Okay, there was an international food fair on in town, but still, my Swedish friend had just finished telling me that Raclette is not available in Stockholm, and there it was less than 24 hours later, luring people in with its description in English. If you’re interested, it cost about €6 for a plate of the cheesy goodness.

I was amused to see that France isn’t the only country with symbols that need some explanation. Pictured here are some train symbols. The first one could be misconstrued entirely (a gap between the train and the platform), and the second one just screams “No drunken disco dancing”, but it is, of course, remember not to get your hand stuck in the door when the automatic doors close.

Best of all was this chocolate bar called Plopp. Sometimes, in France, I see French words that are amusing when they mean something else in English (almost like “sucre daddy“, but not quite). With Swedish people apparently more fluent in English, I was surprised to see this chocolate bar. Not only does it sound like a excrement, but it kind of resembles the shape and colour too. Thankfully, with a caramel centre, it tasted much better than that.

That there is a giant Lindt Easter bunny, chained safely to the top of the Täsch train terminal in Switzerland to prevent me from attacking the ears just in case there’s chocolate inside.

As you can see by the name of the train station, I was in Zermatt last weekend, and this station is the last one before Zermatt where you must leave your car, since no cars are allowed in Zermatt itself (apart from small electric cars and buses which people must have hard-to-get permits for). Although excited to go skiing in the fresh powder on the Italian side of Cervino the following day, being welcomed by a giant bunny was a great start to the weekend.

The desperate last ski of the season turned out pretty well, with the sun shining on Sunday and few people on the hill after Saturday’s snow fall, allowing us to take fresh tracks off-piste for most of the day before heading out to more of the many closing parties in town that weekend.

Of course, getting to Zermatt is a bit of a faff unless you arrive by helicopter, with the closest airport being Geneva, four hours away. By car, it took our convoy around the same time from St Jean de Sixt to the Täsch train station, followed by the car parking, car park paying, car unpacking, luggage lugging, train ticket buying, train waiting, train travel, and then travel to accommodation. Driving directly there would have saved a lot of hassle. But this is Zermatt, the holiday home of the rich and famous who do often arrive by helicopter — and the rest of us who just want some decent snow.

Out for a coffee the other day, I was surprised to see I’d scored myself a sugar daddy, so I took a photo. Here is my sugar daddy. Actually, it’s a ‘sucre daddy’ (‘sucre‘ is French for sugar), and as you can see, it’s the name of the sachet of sugar that came with my coffee.

The anglo meaning of sugar daddy does not translate as ‘papa du sucre‘ in French at all. As far as I’m aware, there’s no name for a sugar daddy in French. So, this translation is lost on many of the French people I know who don’t really know the phrase in English even if they’re fluent.

The person/people who came up with the sugar sachet name should give themselves a hearty slap on the back as it made my day — and no doubt the days of many other English speakers.

Pictured is a photo I snapped outside one of the snack bars near a piste in La Clusaz. Here is an ice cream board with very few ice creams available. Okay, it’s been a warm winter, but not warm enough for ice cream sales to soar to the point of being sold out.

Black crosses adorn all but four brands (although the Cornetto brand has three of the four varieties still available).

The snack bar is only small, so it’s possible that they’ve never stocked the entire range shown on the board (although most seem to show prices written in the same black marker pen, indicating they were once available). Whatever the reason, this board is equivalent to dangling a carrot in front of a donkey’s face. “Oh look at the nice Double Caramel Magnum: how tasty eh? You want one? Too bad — you can’t have it. Drool over the photo while you chow down on a Chocolate Mini Milk instead.”

Surely the delivery rep from Miko has seen this dire shortage and could provide the snack bar with a sign showing a more restricted range of ice creams. Other places as small as the snack bar must surely have the same ice cream storage limitations. But then, maybe the snack bar is facing an ice cream shortage because the rep is taking advantage of this warm weather somewhere coastal. He or she is no doubt enjoying a few Double Caramel Magnums in the sun.

I’m curious to see what the ice cream board says next season when the snack bar re-opens for winter. Maybe there will be one big red circle around the Twister to highlight that it’s still available amongst all its crossed-out peers.

Since the last French advertisement went down so well, I wanted to post this McVities ad currently on TV. McVities make biscuits in England, and their ad pokes fun at themselves with the phrase: “They’re English but they’re good.”

However, I only realised that this advertisement is to help McVities relaunch their biscuits in France, and the original ad from a few years ago is far, far more entertaining. I recommend you watch this (it’s in English):

So, what do you think?

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.

How do you make Reblochon cheese? Well, that’s still a bit of a mystery to me, thanks to a rather odd night in Le Grand Bornand to learn more about it. The lovely people who run the resort put on a display of cheesemaking last week for the tourists — in a nice, warm tent-like structure, complete with seats for the audience and a little stage for the cheesemakers. So why is it still a mystery? Presuming my French is good enough to understand the guy with the microphone, I’d also need to be standing right next to the speaker to hear him, thanks to the crowd of locals (the musicians waiting to play after, staff ready to serve meals to those willing to pay for a plastic tray of steaming sausage, mushy stuff and cheese after the cheesemaking display, and friends catching up) who were hanging around the bar.

The kids at the tables just wanted some food and the adults looked bored, but we were all entertained when a piste basher trundled past outside, overpowering the noise created by the bar flies as well as the man on stage, who hammered on regardless. People tried to turn their attention back to the stage on its second zoom past the window. Why was a piste basher going past? Because the cheese tasting was not in the centre of town as expected, but further away at some place that was announced on a sign in the centre of town, but without directions or a map to show where it was. We circled the resort like a police helicopter before eventually finding some lights and a big tent by the cross country piste. It seems that nobody co-ordinated the half-hour demonstration with the piste basher staff. For me, it was a bonus anyway, since I couldn’t hear what the guy on stage was saying anyway. Cheesy entertainment indeed!

When I think about romantic gifts on St Valentine’s Day, I think of homemade cards, a heart-shaped box of chocolates, a thoughtful trinket or a special meal out. One of the French supermarkets thinks about liver. In their catalogue for the day of romance, they included these heart-shaped delights of foie gras with gingerbread.

“Here: have some heart-shaped liver which has gone a bit squidgy in my fingers while I attempt to pop it whole in your mouth seductively.” Oh, the romance.

“Mmm, what’s that I can smell on your breath? Oh of course, duck liver mingled with hints of ginger.” A kissathon sure thing.

“I could have got you that lovely little bracelet you’ve been eying off for months, but I knew you’d prefer these lovely liver hearts that I made yesterday and popped in the fridge overnight. Oh, doesn’t the fridge smell lovely now?” Yumbo.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. May your St Valentine’s Day involve anything but heart-shaped duck liver.

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.

Le Bélier (the name of a local goat-like sheep whose head forms the logo for La Clusaz) is a 27km course around the five peaks of La Clusaz (click here for the map if you want to see the route), which was held today. Participants can run or walk, and the goodies on offer on the way around differ for both. Walkers are offered local sausages and Reblochon cheese while the ‘serious’ runners get water and energy drinks. Walkers can choose to do just half the course (called “L’Agneau”, which means “lamb”), and many of my brave friends did one or the other today (well done to Dave, Alex, James, Paul, Jess, Richard, Samantha, Janelle, Steve, Max, Josh, Elliot and anyone else I’ve missed), with wobbly legs, a torn muscle and bloody toes just some of the outcomes from their efforts. Their reward, apart from the achievement itself, is a free massage and a meal involving more local sausage and some chocolate on bread, amongst other things.

I watched those doing the full Bélier course cross the finish line, and noticed this man who had an innovative take on the cow bell that’s so often heard at ski races in Europe and around the world. He’s stuck a cow bell on an old ski. If you’ve ever held a cow bell, you know how heavy cow bells are. Jingling them takes a fair amount of effort — and space. Carrying them to an event is dedication in itself! This man has all the answers: he can sling the ski over his shoulder while walking to his destination, then let the ski take the weight of the bell and simply wobble the ski to make the bell jingle. Congratulations again to everyone who took part in Le Bélier/L’Agneau today, but most of all, congratulations to this guy for coming up with such a great idea.