Le Franco Phoney

Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but Copain des Alpes is my new favourite book. Although it’s a children’s book, it’s great for adults learning French. I discovered this one at a French friend’s place the other day, and it answered all three questions that another friend and I were pondering on the chairlift the very same day. The questions were:

1. Why don’t rabbits get cold? Wouldn’t they be happier if they went down the valley where it’s warmer?
2. How do snowflakes form?
3. What is the turkey-like animal that the signs say not to run over on your snowboard in the forest areas of La Clusaz?

The answers (thanks to the book):

1. In winter, animal fur thickens with extra hair called (in French) “jarre”, which is like a tiny tube, holding the air in to keep the bunnies warm. It’s apparently just like a mini-radiator around them. So no, they would not be happier in the valley.
2. For snowflakes to make it to the ground, not only must the cloud where they form be cold, but so must the air between the cloud and the ground. Otherwise, they’re just clumps of snow falling from the sky. The tiny drops of water that freeze in the cold cloud form miniscule crystals of ice — or snowflakes as we know them!
3. The turkey-like animal is actually called a ‘Tétras-lyre’. This explains the number of pistes called ‘Tétras’. The book also listed various other animals which I know as pistes, such as ‘Aigle’ (eagle), ‘Bouquetin’ (something with long horns that looks a bit like a brown, fat goat), and ‘Merle’ (blackbird).

Browsing through the 230-odd pages, I’ve found recipes for blueberry jam, a ’spot that flower’ section, advice on staying at an overnight refuge, a walking map of La Grave, and an explanation of hydro-electric systems. There are least 25 of these “Copain” books available. I want the whole collection! My French friend told me that “Copain du bricolage” (DIY friend) is really good. She said: “It’s great! It shows you how to make chairs and picnic tables and snail houses”. Now, picnic tables make sense, but snail houses? “Yeah, they’re great! We had pink snails and yellow snails and black and white snails, and we built them a shelter,” my friend told me. Apparently, they did not eat them. In fact, the snail house was flawed: they kept escaping, leaving snail trails in all directions. No worries: they made a new on in a forest with some friends: they put it in the middle of a private track. Just a day after the snails were placed in their new house, the other friend’s dad drove a tractor over the road, squashing the snail house. “I was very sad,” my friend said, “but they had all the night to escape.” She told me this very, very seriously. Maybe I’ll skip the DIY book of the series.

Sunday was a very windy day in La Clusaz. Outside my window, I could see the snow being picked up in mini-tornado fashion and taken away to somewhere else. So what do you do when it’s so windy? Well, if you’re the La Clusaz ticket office, you keep selling lift passes while closing most of the lifts. The day started with four out of the five peaks open, but by midday, only one was open. I chatted later that night with an angered friend: she had bought an afternoon pass, only to discover that the few lifts open in La Clusaz were drag lifts for beginners. She demanded a refund, but she said the ticket office told her that Croix Fry/Merdassier was still open so they could still sell the tickets. That’s right: no way of getting there without a car, but they can still sell the tickets without actually mentioning that fact. My angered friend should have looked at the piste report online like my other friends and I did. We jumped in my car to get to the only open area, inaccessible on skis from La Clusaz village, dodging branches that littered the road and driving over snow drifts that had built into mini snow dunes.

With a layer of snow in my car just from the time it took to put on my ski boots, we ventured into the storm. Unsurprisingly, few people were on the windy pistes, but we found some sheltered areas with plenty of trees to dampen the wind. Shouting on the chairlifts was the only option to be heard. One panicked guy and his family came over to a drag lift worker at the end of the day after realising the lifts to get back to La Clusaz were all closed. How would he get back? Luckily, an extremely flat piste could take them back, and the road it crosses (requiring skis and snowboards to be removed for a whole five metres) was probably covered with snow from the wind. A bonus: they’d save a few minutes in the half-hour or so it would take them to get back, presuming the dad helped the kids climb the uphill sections of the supposedly downhill piste. Fortunately, we had the car. Next time, I’m staying in.

The cross-country World Cup was held in La Clusaz last weekend, so I went up to check it out on Saturday afternoon. Of course, as soon as I arrived, the competition ended for the day, but I was surprised at just how many people were there to watch a sport which I find, well, completely boring. Don’t get me wrong: I participated in a mini World Cup for cross-country skiing once (okay, it was inter-varsity ski week, where I was given a pair of cross-country skis from the 70s and told to learn during the competition: my university needed some extra points; I learnt quickly but was happy to get those quasi-skis off my feet).

Clearly, some people do enjoy both participating and watching, and La Clusaz had gone all out, putting up this lovely hot air balloon, and even a big screen so the people at the back of the crowd could see the action. I got there just in time to see that a Norwegian won the women’s competition. The bell ringers decided to stand next to me, and as you can see from the photo of them, the snow was still hurtling down from the sky after days of snowfall. The weather was sunny on Sunday, but I was too busy going down a hill on a snowboard to bother checking out the people going around in circles on funny skis.

A friend of mine was talking about the World Cup, which he had also had a quick look at. It inspired him to try it out on Monday, when the crowds were all gone—along with the big screen and the La Clusaz balloon. He had access to all the equipment he needed, so he headed over to a flat area and strapped in. Top marks for trying, but his verdict? “It’s boring,” he said with a shrug. That’s good enough for me. I’ll stick to going down hills and will no doubt marvel at mini-extravaganza of next year’s World Cup when it comes back.

Let’s start with the dumb. This letter from EDF arrived in a letterbox in Annecy last week. You can see from the date circled at the top (click on the letter for a larger image) that the letter was printed a month earlier. This seems to be standard practice with utility letters: it’s as if companies print out a huge pile of letters, then get someone to stuff one per day or something. Anyway, three weeks after the date, the letter arrived.

Now, three weeks seems like quite a long time when there’s only fifty-two of them in a year. But check out the other circled date. Yes, that’s December 2007 — almost a year ago. What’s the significance? Well, this is the date that the recipient requested a new service. This letter confirms the request, but then requests that the recipient call the number again to confirm once more — more than ten months after the request was made!

I know this is France and paperwork is relaxed, but tenants have come and gone in less time. And what makes the letter even more unbelievable is that it urges the reader to speed up the process two times. Great, so if your new service still isn’t working almost a year later, call this number and maybe you’ll get it after a further six months because you get to talk to the person who stuffs one letter per day between taking calls on missing letters and delayed services. Just so you know, the service still remains unused by the recipient.

On the other hand, the French postal system comes up trumps. What it lacks in speed it makes up for in service. A friend of mine received this postcard. As you can see, I haven’t had to blur out the address: it was simply addressed to my friend, with her surname spelt incorrectly, in La Clusaz. The postcode is wrong (that’s the sender’s postcode in Thônes, down the road), and no effort was made to describe the address. In the whole of La Clusaz, the post office tracked down the right person, with nothing more than her first name to go by, and delivered the postcard.

This certainly counteracts their placement of a large parcel for me in my letterbox. They wedged it in from the side that their key works in, but on my smaller, framed side, I had no way of getting the parcel out. For almost a week, it was wedged in despite the explanatory note on the letterbox. Each day, I’d fish out the new letters from around the wedged box until finally the postie saw the note and knocked on my door with parcel in hand, apologies and an embarrassed smile.

But these things are not so rare. As I type, I have a router ready to be installed, but the letter with my login details has never arrived. An insurance company who demanded I pay my renewal even though I had followed all legal routes to cancel my insurance still send letters telling me that, as a member, I can vote for their board members or something. I did quite like my water bill for 48c (if only they were all like that!), and I’m still waiting for an electrician to arrive, who promised in a letter to be here in October. We’re all, of course, only human, and French utility services certainly show their human side.

I woke up a few mornings ago to discover that the green grass was covered with a blanket of white, sparkling snow. Across the road from my place, a group of friends were having a snowball fight and one wandered further away to kick snow for the dogs to play with. See? Even the dogs love the snow, although Bruno, my cat, is less than happy about it.

Anyway, what really makes it officially winter is what happened on Saturday night. We ventured up to the carpark at La Balme, which is normally empty after dark in November. That all changes when there’s fresh snow in the vast open space. We made it up the slippery, snowy road that leads to the car park and discovered another car was already there. We saw its headlights go from side to side: its driver had the same thing in mind — handbrake turns! It’s been years since I’ve been in a car skidding sideways in the snow, and I was a little apprehensive, but it was great fun. We took it in turns with the other car to slide from one end of the car park to the other, fishtailing all the way, and ending with a 180-degree slide to go back again for more.

After three circuits, four more cars arrived. Now, the car park is big, but it’s not really big enough for six cars. No worries, the delivery van (!) driver took his van to the lower, smaller car park and went crazy there, leaving five of us all trying to hog the car park’s remaining untouched snow. After many more slides, we left the others to it: it was just too crowded, and I think we both felt a bit too old in such a young crowd. It was definitely one of those great relive-a-teenage-pastime moments, but better than that, I felt really local, with the others waving to us and smiles all around. It’s rare that the carpark is completely free of cars in winter, and even rarer for so much snow to fall to cause a spray of snow over the entire car when sliding sideways. This must earmark the start of winter.

Tomorrow, I will be snowboarding down one of the closed runs and catching freshies all day. Another sure sign that it’s winter! Bring on the snow.

No, that’s not a typo, there’s a new ski ‘posse’ called Coreupt (or coreUPT — they can’t seem to decide), and Candide Thovex is in with them. The news isn’t actually that recent, but I’ve only just discovered the (very short!) video (see below), which is kind of an odd one, and since Coreupt seem to be based in Tignes, perhaps the Candide Invitational 2009 will be held there instead! Coreupt seem to be collecting a pretty good team of riders. Anyway, I heard a rumour that Coreupt equipment will be available for testing on the last weekend of November. Don’t blame me if I’m wrong — I’ll be going to Tignes that weekend anyway for another snow fix before La Clusaz’s lifts open in December.

Here is a menu from a restaurant in La Clusaz (you can click on it for a much larger version). It’s possibly the only restaurant in town that offers a separate English menu, so I probably shouldn’t pick on it, but when the translation goes this wrong, I honestly can’t help myself. If you can shed any light on some of these dishes, I’d be grateful.

I started off looking at the “Salad and Starters” section. “Salad of goat” takes the number one spot on the menu. I’m picturing a goat’s head with those funny square eyes sitting on a bed of lettuce, or maybe some goat’s legs sticking up between some tomatoes. Further down, a “Salad tomatos mozarella with the pest and Parmesan” is available. Can someone please get the pest out of my salad tomatos?

The “Spéciality of wood burning stove” options are a little better. “Crozet” is actually a Savoyard pasta, which might help you interpret this: “Roasted of crozet (svoyard pastes) with boletus and green salad”. Err, what is it?

Meanwhile, the “Sea food” options sound far more interesting. You can order a stove! Yes, the “Stove of st jaques in vegetable julienne”. Now, I’m not sure if st jaques is related to St Jacques, and whether he really wants you covering his stove in sliced vegies and attempting to eat it. I imagine the waiters would have a hard time bringing it out to the table too. No problem — you can order “Coco - curry of St Jacques to zucchinis”. Again, what?

Obviously, a restaurant modern enough to have a separate English(?) menu offers more than the regional specialties. Wok dishes are available too. What delights await us? Who can resist “Noodles jumped to the gambas and crunching vegetables”? Are the noodles crunching the vegetables after jumping to the gambas? I have an image of noodles in karate outfits bouncing all over the place, with thinly sliced vegetables breaking under their weight.

Meahwhile, the “Specailities” section offers something extra special: although orders are for a minimum of two people, the menu also announces: “price by anybody”! Great! I’ll just order my favourite dish, even though I’m not sharing it with anyone, and charge myself a Euro twice. Bargain for two! I might avoid the dodgy-sounding “jumped spotted potatoes” and the “Molten with the farm reblechon”: a stove is hard enough, but an entire farm named after a misspelt cheese is too much for anyone.

I’m a little concerned for the butchers of La Clusaz, as the “Meats” section offers “Rib steack of the butcher”. Ouch! And “Paving of beef”. What’s that all about?

LIke any great meal, the highlight is the dessert. This menu lives up to my expectations. I could have “Greedy coffee”, which comes with a description: “coffee and his preciousness”. Not convinced his preciousness was for me, I found another option: “Ministrone of vanilla fresh fruits, jelly of barley water”. Now, if I could just figure out what vanilla fresh fruits are. Someone “spilt” the almonds on the “Strawberry melba” (double points if you can guess what’s wrong with this dessert name). Alternatively, you can buy “2 balls” in a variety of flavours. I think I might give the balls a miss.

From my place, I can hear the mountain bikers zooming down a green piste in summer. But have I ever tried mountain biking? No. I almost hired a bike a few months ago, but I would have been out with two very experienced, competitive boys, so I chickened out and let them go off without me holding them up.

You see, even on the ’summer luge’ (a couple of metal toboggan tracks on a hill), I used my brakes constantly and watched three of my friends go past me in the faster track next to me. I am cautious. I don’t like hurting myself. I am a wimp.

So, I was very pleased when a girl I met recently asked me if I’d like to go mountain biking with her. She had been a couple of times, but felt like she was holding up the boys she’d ridden with, and preferred to go with someone, well, wimpy, like me.

Yesterday was the big day. We got driven to the top of a green piste, then, after one small incline, it was a gentle decline. At least, on a snowboard or skis, it’s a gentle decline. On a mountain bike, it felt more like an out-of-control roller coaster that just got faster and lower. I hadn’t ridden a bike down a hill since I was a kid, and yesterday I felt that gravity and age were both against me. We skidded over slippery, wet tree trunks, small and large stones, and piles of autumn leaves that sheltered hidden traps such as holes, creeks, and more stones. I did see one stone jutting out loosely on the piste and tried my hardest to miss it, but of course, no matter how hard I aimed away from it, my bike was drawn to it and I was grateful I didn’t fall. I was going at around the same pace as a power walker and the stone was maybe 15cm high, so it’s hardly surprising that I wasn’t catapulted into the air. But at the time, the rock was ten feet tall and I was going faster than an English car on a French toll road. For wimpy me, it was a moment.

Good news for the girl I went mountain biking with: I think my constant braking and howling has given her much more confidence and proved that there is, indeed, someone much slower than her.

There are lots of cool stories about wildlife in the alps, like the dahu, pictured to the left. The dahu, now extinct, had four legs and looked a bit like a mountain goat, but it had one important difference. As it grew to full size, two of its legs grew longer than the other two, allowing it to walk on steep mountains and stay completely upright. They became extinct because they were too easy to catch. The French folk loved the taste of the dahu, so they would creep up behind one and say, “Dahu, dahu…” and the dahu would hear its name and turn around. However, with the two longer legs now being the uphill legs, it would fall over straight away, allowing the hunters to catch them very easily!

By now, you may have guessed that the dahu is not a real animal. It’s a legendary story, but sadly just a story about a mythical creature that never existed. There’s even a piste here in La Clusaz called ‘Dahu’, which is odd, as it’s a pretty flat access track.

And then there’s the marmot. Now, I first learnt of the marmot during my first season as a ski bum. I had seen these plush soft toys in the shops that looked like an American gopher, and just presumed that’s what they were. Then people started talking about marmots. They sleep through the cold part of winter, waking up in April to bask in the sun on the rocks re-emerging from the melting snow. I spent four seasons looking for a marmot. I heard they hung out under one of the chairlifts in Meribel, and I checked each rock beneath the chair every time I was on it. I never saw a marmot.

By my fifth season, I was well and truly convinced that the marmot was a made-up animal — a marketing ploy by the French tourism board to sell plush toys (see photo to the right, above) to unsuspecting tourists who were destined never to see a marmot in real life, since they didn’t actually exist.

And then, it happened. I saw a marmot. Actually, I saw two! Some friends and I had headed over to Chamonix late in the season. When we stopped for lunch, one of them pointed out the marmots, busily arranging some scraps of food that the chef must have left for them. They were a level below our outdoor eating area, which was surrounded by perspex. So, I tried to take a photo. The result, sadly, is lacking clarity due to reflection and distance, but here it is (pictured to the right). I decided it needs this red star around the marmot just to make it clear.

So, last summer, I decided to go on a marmot mission. I put my walking shoes on and armed myself with my (pre-SLR) instant camera and food supplies and I walked to the hills! I walked and walked and never saw a marmot. I sat on a rock and ate my packed lunch, waiting for a marmot to poke its head out. Nothing. I had already waited for a few hours and I was getting bored. Lots of other people were wandering around so I presumed that the marmots had gone into hiding until everyone went away. Resigned to not seeing a marmot, I descended the rocks and hills. And then — in the distance — I saw one! It hadn’t seen me and it was sitting on a rock right next to a path. My luck was in! I got my camera out and took a photo from afar. Alas, the zoom on my old instant digital camera was hopeless and I knew the photo would be like a Loch Ness monster sighting — kind of small and blotchy and a little bit blurry (see photo to the left). Taking small, slow steps, I honed in on the marmot. Too late! It saw me and scurried under a rock. “No worries,” I thought, “I can wait a bit longer: it’s a sunny day.” So I sat on a close-by rock and waited. And waited. And waited. The camera was propped by my eye so I didn’t have to make any sudden movements when it did return. Finally, its little nose emerged, followed by the rest of its body. And just as it did, a family of tourists approached. It was a catch-22: if I had asked them to wait, the marmot would have heard me and run away again, and if they got any closer, the marmot would have heard them and run away again. And it did. So, I sat and I waited again. And I waited. My arm muscles grew sore from holding my camera by my eye, so I put my arm down for a moment. And of course, the marmot returned before I had put the camera back near my eye. I moved my arm slightly, in an effort to fluke a photo without it being by my eye, and the marmot saw and ran back in. So I gave up and went home.

I decided today that I would not let the marmot beat me. I wanted to take a proper photo of a marmot now that I had a proper camera and a few hours to spare. So, I set off late in the afternoon and headed for a different area, which is normally a lovely piste on the way down from the La Balme ski area. I passed some cows that were roaming un-fenced near their farm and watched as a dog herded them. The cows were running to avoid his wrath and I continued up the hill. I passed some giant, man-made rock sculpture. I spotted a gardening glove — odd for an area of rocks and cattle, but perhaps it was a left-over the man-made rock sculpting. I spotted a disposable camera. I guess someone fell over in the snow during winter and lost it. I stepped over a variety of types of poo. I spotted a bone, which to me, looked like the remains of a goat’s tail bone. Perhaps one of the wolves I’ve heard about had eaten it when it strayed from its herd. I had reached as far as I wanted to go and still hadn’t seen a marmot. I decided to return home, defeated again by the marmot. As I walked towards a rise, a little red-brown slinky thing appeared from the other side of the rise. A marmot! We both froze and stared at each other. As I raised my camera, the marmot turned around and slinked away to another rock and watched me cautiously. There was grass in the way and it was much further away than the other marmot had been, but I snapped a photo as it contemplated climbing another rock (see dodgy photo to the right). As soon as I did, it ran out of sight. I went past the rock it had been on and found one to sit on, hoping it would emerge. Alas, the marmot stayed in hiding and I eventually gave up again.

So, that’s three photos which all look a bit like the dodgy Lock Ness monster photos we’ve all seen. If I hadn’t seen the little buggers scurrying around each time I took my dodgy photos, I would still be thinking a marmot is as mythical as the dahu or just a French marketing ploy to sell plush animals to tourists. And of all my friends who have seen marmots, none of them have photos. Coincidence? I think not. Google has images of marmots. Here’s one of them (see left). But Google also produced images of dahus and they never really lived. So, the marmot: fake or real? Judge for yourself.

So…Candide Thovex. He’s a local hero here in La Clusaz, having won many freestyle skiing competitions and attaining the title of world champion a few years ago. He’s been holding the Candide Invitational freestyle competition — four days of bling, baggy-panted riders and wannabees taking over the otherwise sleepy French family-style resort of La Clusaz — for the past six years. But will he be holding it here this year? The Tourist Office’s calendar doesn’t mention a date, and when I asked them, they said that no date has been decided. So I asked them if it had been cancelled and their rather cagey response was: “No decision has been made yet. Sorry.” So, are the rumours that Candide fell out with the La Clusaz authorities during the last event true? And is that why I haven’t seen his face featured in any of the tourist brochures or on the La Clusaz winter website, even though he featured prominently in past winters?

Candide is a genuinely nice guy (he let me jump in front of him in the chairlift queue last year, not to mention the YouTube video showing him saving a girl from falling off a chairlift) and almost every kid in town loves him. Almost every female in town would like to love him. It would be a shame if the Candide Invitational did not happen this winter; and besides, it’s the only time in La Clusaz that I can check out the pro-riders to see what ridiculous patterns, colours and/or styles of clothing they think they can get away with.