Le Franco Phoney

Lots of people think Chamonix is the bee’s knees when it comes to skiing. I’m not one of them simply because I haven’t skied there enough to decide. However, it’s a pretty amazing place in all seasons. Pictured is the view from the rack and pinion train that takes passengers up to la Mer de Glace and back down to town. Chamonix town is nestled in a valley between two massively high mountain ranges. From town, you can see the Aiguille du Midi and the two cable cars to transport people there, and if you look in the other direction, you can see the huge cable car that transports people between two high peaks on the Brévant side. Add in the various trains and car routes and Chamonix provides some of the most picturesque views of nature I’ve ever seen.
Meanwhile, up at la Mar de Glace, there’s more to do than visit the ice cave. The Grand Hotel du Montenvers, built in 1880, is open for meals, drinks and overnight stays, and it even has a museum of history and miniature railways inside. There are loads of walking routes of varying lengths, including one that takes you back down to Chamonix, and if you don’t see any real animals on your walk at the top, you can always pop into the museum of stuffed dead animals ranging from little marmots to large birds. The views from the train are fantastic and this photo just doesn’t do it justice. Chamonix is currently one of my favourite places in France.

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.

Here is a photo of Vernazza, one of the five villages that makes up the Cinque Terre in Italy. I was there last month, walking the paths —  often just some stones raised off the slanting ground to flatten it — between the five villages. I could go on about the pesto, the gelati, the welcoming atmosphere, or the loudness of children, but this is a blog about France, not Italy. So why am I mentioning Italy? Because it’s only through going to a country where none of my (two!) languages are spoken that I realised just how much improvement I’ve made in French. The Cinque Terre itself is full of American tourists even at low season, so getting around the five villages isn’t so difficult (and walking on the paths, you never know whether to say “hello”, “buon giorno”, “hola”, “guten tag” or “bonjour”). However, on the way to the Cinque Terre, I was in a restaurant where I wanted a fruit juice. I know the word in French, but not in Italian. None of the Italian staff knew the English or the French word, so I followed the staff to their drinks fridge and pointed. I ended up with iced tea. Apparently, juice is just not available in some restaurants in Italy. The language frustrations continued right up until we reached the border back to France: we stopped just before the Frejus tunnel to fill up with petrol (there was a petrol strike happening in France at the time). There was some problem with my bank card and the man said something in Italian. I asked if he spoke English. Nope. French? Yes. Result! We managed to establish that the card was fine but the machine’s connection sometimes played up, and fears that he was charging me twice were alleviated when he explained in French what the writing on the first cancelled receipt said. Thanks Italy — for the food, the welcome and for the reassurance that my French has improved more than I realised (but your kids really are very loud).

Friends warned me about Corsica before I left home, from: “They’ll ignore you in shops if you’re not Corsican,” to the rather extreme: “The locals slash tyres of tourist cars: buy a Corsica sticker and put it near your number plate.” Worse still, when I asked my Corsican friends on arrival if I should indeed buy a sticker because I had heard…”Oh yeah,” one friend said, “about the car burnings of cars that aren’t from here. You passed one on the way.” Indeed, we had passed a burnt-out car on a construction site. “So it’s true?” I asked. “No,” the other friend said, “we’re just joking: it’s not true and it doesn’t happen.” They giggled and pushed more local products to sample in my direction. My car remained intact and I found the locals very friendly.

The car-wrecking aspect of Corsican vandalism may be an urban myth, but Corsica does have an ugly side. Pictured is one of many road signs on the island that have had the French spelling vandalised leaving only the Corsican spelling visible. This one seems to have been hit with an air gun as well. The Corsicans are proud of their heritage and perhaps still a little(?) annoyed that, despite becoming a republic in 1755 after a long struggle for independence, the island was sold by the Genoese to France in 1764. A further six years of battle went on before Corsica was finally incorporated as part of France. Apparently, some of the locals are still upset about this, so the signs get the Corsican treatment I’d heard so much about. My joking friends then got serious and told me about the arson attacks on illegally-built houses and businesses close to beach fronts, which they justified using Corsican logic (vendettas). The Good of Corsica definitely outweighs The Bad and The Ugly, but keep a fire extinguisher handy just in case.

A quick visit south last week was my last hope for warm days before winter kicks in, so Corsica seemed like a good place to start. Although the island is closer to Italy, it’s under French governance (after various others including a bout of independence and even a self-made king — King Theodor von Neuhoff). This was handy for me, as I was able to speak to the locals, and this is where The Good comes in. Corsicans do not pull that face that so many Savoyardes pull when they hear my accent: they not only understood me when I opened my mouth, but they often chatted in further detail with me when they were under no obligation to do so. This was the first of many Goods, although this is no doubt considered normal behaviour in many parts of the world

The next Good is the views. Check out the coastline:

If you look closely, you can see buildings perched on the side of the cliff face in the distance. These are likely to fall into the sea one day when the cliff breaks off, joining the other broken bits of cliff pictured in the water. Corsica has a bit of everything: beaches, pretty walks, old bunkers, mountains, ski resorts, and Europe’s largest chestnut tree, which was kind of handy since a few days of rain meant fewer beach-side jaunts and more free time for other activities. In many places, the cows roam free on the roads, and although this could end in tears on dark and stormy nights, it was a pleasure to slow down to get around the slow-moving mooers, like the one pictured, on the mountainous roads. We had just passed this cow’s mum a few metres earlier and there was much mooing going on between the two of them.

The weather in Corsica seems to be very localised. One rain-free morning, we headed for the coast and swam at one of the first beaches we reached. It was only fifteen minutes away from where we were staying in Porto Vecchio, but it rained all day in town while the blue skies continued at the beach. Another Good.

The best Good of all was the Corsican hospitality: staying with friends is always great, but staying with Corsican friends is the best. My friend Jean-Pierre had said for years that I should “come to Corsica: zee most beautifoool island in zee world” and now I understand why. The most beautiful island lived up to its reputation, and much of it would have been missed if JP and his partner hadn’t gone out of their way to be personal tour guides.

And yes, we picked chestnuts from Europe’s largest chestnut tree, which I’ll be roasting some day soon.

Between guzzling glasses of bubbly last weekend in the Champagne region, I visited the lovely Faux de Verzy – a forest of twisted beech trees that have a really magical quality about them. We visited the forest late in the day, making photography difficult (as if my skills aren’t already hampered enough!). Slow-growing and twisted due to a genetic problem, these trees slowly propagate a bit like strawberry plants, with branches touching the ground, rooting, and eventually producing a new twisted trunk. Apparently, some of the trees are more than 1,000 years old, but I have no way of knowing if this is true. The word ‘faux‘ in this case refers to the Latin word for ‘beech’, but faux has many meanings, and another of them is a scythe for cutting grass. Our local friend acting as our tour guide mentioned this as the low light dimmed further and we found ourselves lost in a spooky forest. Blair Witch Project quotes started from various members of our party. It’s not typically what you want to hear when you’re thinking about using your mobile phone as a flash light since the sun has already set. We found the car thanks to our tour guide’s mobile phone with GPS, much to everyone’s relief. Go during the day.

I was lucky enough last weekend to get a personal tour of how champagne is made with champagne maker Philippe Chochina (who makes a very tasty drop and swears it’s impossible to have a hangover with well-made champagne), and I now understand why champagne is so expensive. Making champagne is quite a laborious task, involving two rounds of fermentation and turning bottles five degrees daily. After the initial fermentation in large silos, where the good stuff is then placed into bottles the way it is with wine, the second fermentation begins, and this is where the bubbles begin. Yeast and sugar are added, and the bottle is sealed like beer. When the yeast has consumed all the sugar, it dies, sinking to the bottom of the liquid. The bottle is stored sideways at first, and turned daily and eventually angled so the bottle top is face down, which will pull down any remaining dead yeast floating in the liquid. Eventually, the bottle is reopened to remove the dead yeast, aided by freezing the bottle top to -26°C. Extra alcohol is added to fill the gap and then the bottle is sealed with a big fat cork that starts off with an equal diameter from top to bottom, then gains its shape through the pressure in the bottle.

The entire process of making champagne is very manual. As you can see from this photo (click to enlarge), the grapes are pressed with the aid of people. They’re not stamping on the grapes — indeed, Monsieur Philippe Chochina said with some pride that he has never squashed grapes with his bare feet. That raised semi-circle of metal on each side flattens and lowers to press the grapes until all the juice is extracted into the vat on the right, like a giant orange press. However, after the initial pressing, these two guys get in with pitch forks and lift the grapes from the side, then press them again to squeeze out any remaining juice. The grape skins get added to a mountain of grape skins near one of the local villages rather than used as fertiliser to prevent too many pesticides, stuck to the grape skins, getting into the ground. Philippe did, however, add that this mountain of grape skins is used to make another type of alcohol. Fermented pesticides, anyone?

We also visited the vineyards where Philippe explained that horses are now replacing tractors, with wine-makers reverting to more traditional methods at every stage of the grape-growing and collecting process. We watched some horses being used to walk down each row of grapes, where boxes were placed on sleighs behind the horses — somewhere a tractor could never enter.

The only meals where champagne was not the staple drink were breakfasts, which made me realise just how similar this region of France is to where I live. Instead of talking about cheese and cows and eating some potato/cheese concoction regularly, people in the champagne-producing region of France talk about grapes and horses and drink champagne regularly.

Local French people just don’t understand my excitement when I visit a place like the Mer de Glace in Chamonix. The rounded ‘mountains’ of the Australian Alps are really no comparison to the breathtaking sight of this glacier and its jagged mountainous cradle. That brown on the glacier is dirt and rocks that have fallen from the old banks of the glacier when it was bigger. Getting here was half the fun as it involved taking the Montvers-Mer de Glace rack and pinion railway, which has an additional spiky rail down the centre to keep traction I guess. It weaves up a summit with fantastic views on both sides and the occasional tunnel to protect the track from avalanches in winters. The railway itself was finished in 1909 despite the opposition from locals back in 1905 when work began.

My friends and I were all too excited to have a look around before heading down towards the ice cave. Although there’s a gondola/bubble/eauf (depending on your country) to take you most of the way down, we chose to walk, stopping for a picnic lunch on the way. The walk down involves a lot of steps and signs showing where the glacier used to be more than a hundred years ago and even just three years ago, with its thickness shrinking by up to four metres every year. This means that the staircase opposite the glacier has to be extended down every year, and the ramp to the ice cave works like a plane ramp at an airport gate. Each year, the ice cave is re-drilled because the glacier is of course moving downstream. This one moves up to 120 metres per year at the top. Massive white sheets are placed on top of the ice cave to reflect the sun’s heat and ensure minimal ice loss. One is just visible on in the top right corner of the photo showing the outside entrance to the ice cave. Inside, the cave is not as cold as I expected, and the walls are dimpled, but very smooth. Bubbles of air hundreds of years old are trapped within the ice and I had a strong inclination to lick the wall (which I resisted).

We climbed the 350 steps back to the gondola (when it was build in 1960 and again replaced in 1988, it must have met the ice cave entrance), which we took back to the top to save a very long, steep walk back up the hill. Our late start to the day meant we ran out of time to visit the other attractions at the top, such as the alpine fauna museum, lots of walks with great views of the next valley over, and the museum inside the Montvers Grand hotel, which was built before the railway in 1880. People used to get there via mule transport! So, if you’re interested in going, I suggest you get there early and save yourself the long queue that we endured at the ticket office to maximise your time in this truly amazing place. And with the price of the railway ticket, a picnic lunch really is the way forward.

Pictured is a big round bunker — a bit like a giant Camembert cheese, but made by the Germans rather than the French, and far less desirable to chance upon during World War II. This is Batterie Todt, on the French coastline closest to English land. On the other side of the bunker is a massive hole that once housed a very large gun (more info and some great photos on the construction and history of the bunker here). There were lots of interesting things inside here, such as a motorbike that was parachuted out of planes for the parachuters to use and really innovative contraptions to make the best use of space, time or multi-functionality. The living quarters downstairs were cramped, and the museum of war-time propaganda on the ground floor really made this place worth the visit.

Some relics caught my eye more than others. For instance, check out this baby gas mask below. Freaky or what? Okay, it’s best to be safe and have these available but seeing a fake baby inside this was a bit strange (a real one would have been stranger, obviously!). Note also that there’s a foot pump to keep your baby’s air fresh and flowing. Next in the gallery below is a sausage vest. Okay, maybe it wasn’t used to store sausages, but maybe it was. Why not? Next up is a string vest that wouldn’t look out of place in some parts of big cities today. However, it’s probably the only one that unravels and can be relied upon to get you out of a tree if you happen to parachute out of a plane and land in the wrong spot. Handy eh? Last up is the big canon stationed outside the bunker. This thing was aimed at England, but it never actually bombed its target. Just imagine how things could have turned out had the engineer made a better-designed canon. Thank you, engineer.