Le Franco Phoney

My Australian friends who brought us news of the 24-hour milk vending machine in Annecy have since moved to a village with a bread vending machine. A baguette is a highly-valued food item here in France, with baguette deals sometimes offered at the petrol bowser. It’s therefore surprising that the typical Parisian baguette vending machine has been snubbed for this machine with big round loaves. My friend Suzanne is impressed with both the bread and the machine, saying:

It is wonderful and the bread seems to be a little different to normal bread. It is much heavier and somewhat rustic.  When I stopped the other day the machine was a little steamy as the bread was still warm.  Yum.

WHAT? Still warm? The bread could be made from the worst recipe in the world and still be saved by that homely smell of fresh-baked bread. Is there a better smell and taste in the world than warm bread? This bread is no doubt tasty even once cooled, and I’m looking forward to buying a loaf next time I’m visiting.

Unless, of course, my friends move to a village that has a 24-hour chocolate pudding vending machine…

The eternal shopper in me enjoys exploring foreign supermarkets for local products and cultural differences, and supermarkets here in the French Alps have pleasantly wide aisles to accommodate most busy times. When I first moved here, I appreciated the extra space after years of cursing the often overcrowded, narrow-aisled supermarkets in England. However, returning to an English supermarket last weekend, I can now appreciate how much better it can be.

More than one supermarket in Annecy has some staff on rollerblades who can help customers quickly. Handy eh? Yeah, except customers also must weigh and price their own fruit and veg, and if you forget to weigh something, don’t expect a rollerblader to help. You must run back to weigh the offending item, much to the huffing of those in the queue behind you. And that’s not where the fruit and veg problems end. This summer, checkout staff have questioned me over (my correct) pricing of grapes, lettuces and a watermelon. The results were more sighs from the queue as the inevitable long and pointless discussion in French began about each item.

Speaking of queues, one French supermarket introduced “La ligne bleu” — a thin blue sticker that runs the length of the shop just a few metres from the checkouts. If a checkout queue ends up beyond the blue line, more checkouts will be opened — except they never are. The line is now cracked and disappearing and presumably abandoned from the start. But then, maybe the French aren’t so bothered about queuing — or at least that’s what one couple in front of me thought, when after bagging their items (because the staff merely throw things in your direction after scanning them, leaving you to bag as quickly as they throw or face smashed eggs as the next item is flung), they couldn’t pay, so one ran off to get money. After 20 minutes, the other one explained that her boyfriend had driven home to get some money and might be a while. Who does that? I was buying just a few items, but with no express checkouts, I had no choice but to pick up my items again and join the back of another queue — which extended beyond la ligne bleu of course.

Meanwhile back in England, the checkout boy apologised for keeping me waiting (just three minutes while he took payment from the only other customer). He scanned and priced my fruit correctly and bagged it up for me, adding points to my loyalty card for bringing my own bags. If only English supermarkets would deliver to where I am in France. God knows the French ones don’t.

Before you study this photo, look at the logo for my blog. A beret-wearing cow with a curly moustache, holding wine and a baguette. It’s missing a bike and a stripy top, but it’s pretty stereotypical of the French. I did once see a man in a stripy top riding a bike with a baguette in his backpack, but only once. I’ve done a mean thing and embraced an unfair stereotype about the French.

Now, let me rewind a little. When I first arrived in France and spoke only English, the most I could explain to people was “Australian”, complete with full Aussie accent and a finger pointing back at myself. Those who finally figured it out would usually say “Ahh, kangourou” (because the French do spell it differently), and just in case I didn’t understand the exact same pronunciation, they would often mimic a kangaroo with their hands pulled up near their chest. I love this aspect of human nature, and I’ve used a variety of hand gestures to mimic various words I don’t know in French when trying to communicate.

However, none of those French people ever said “Ahh cactus” for a reason.

I can only guess that some French man with no moustache who doesn’t like bread, refuses to own a bike and prefers soft drink to wine whilst wearing only solid colours without lines has got his revenge on at least one nation who keeps the French stereotypes alive. I can hear him now: “Bof! Zeez or-strah-lianz sink zhey are so smart. I will make up a stupit stereotype about zhem.”

And so, here is an American native plant stuck next to a sign about kangaroos. Good work, Jean-Michele (or Jean-Paul, or Jean-Philippe or Jean-Pierre or whatever his double-barrelled name is). I, for one, deserve it.

Last weekend, the town of Alex held a Vide Grenier — a giant garage sale where the locals bring all sorts of odd things to sell. I had to go: I love these events! Bizarre offerings included a variety of champagne bottle tops, a four-poster bed (assembled) and a monoski in excellent condition. The usual household goodies were on sale as well, and needing rustic-looking containers for the garden, I asked a woman how much for the two baskets in my arms that she was selling. She said €5 and I handed over the money without the French haggle. Haggling seems to be an important part of the process, and I felt like a fool for not trying to get her down to €4. No worries: I accidentally haggled over something else: I asked a man how much a large metal pot was and he said it was €10. I said ‘no thanks’ and he asked how much I would pay. I said €5, and something resembling the beard-buying scene from The Life of Brian followed.

“€5 for that? Look at the quality. You must be joking,” he said in French to me.

“It’s just for the garden,” I explained.

“But it’s for making jam!” he said indignantly. “You can’t put it in the garden.”

“I’m terrible in the kitchen, but good in the garden,” I joked.

“Okay, €5,” he said. “And a cherry each for you and your friend.”

Success! Without ever thinking he’d give it to me for €5, I scored a lovely jam pan which will never see jam again (now happily filled with petunia) and couple of tasty fresh cherries, and I’ve learnt the art of the French haggle to boot.

Shopping in Annecy the other day, a child no older than twelve approached me and pushed a clipboard towards me. On the clipboard was a piece of paper to donate to a deafness foundation, complete with the symbol of the foundation in one corner and some signatures from people who had donated up to €20. A couple of things seemed odd to me. Firstly, this wasn’t like a read-a-thon where he was gaining sponsorship for challenging himself to something: this was out-and-out hassling people for money, as you see paid university students do with big bibs or t-shirts on to identify them as charity workers. Secondly, he had no bib or t-shirt (and was dressed in a dodgy tracksuit). Thirdly, he wasn’t old enough to work. Fourthly, he was in a rather posh kitchen and homewares shop where the staff are frosty at the best of times: I’m guessing they wouldn’t let someone into their shop to hassle people for money under most circumstances. And finally, the paper didn’t look all that authentic, as the signatures from that day were in different colours, but he had just one pen in his hand.

So, I asked him for some identification. He pointed to his ears to and moved his fingers as if he were signing, and perhaps he was, but wouldn’t he be able to lip read by that age? I repeated myself, motioned in different ways to suggest an ID card, and eventually showed him my own, but he just shook his head and shrugged.

I said sorry and shook my head back, then walked away. I felt guilty and annoyed in equal parts: guilty for not giving money to someone who seemed to be collecting money for a charity, but annoyed that he expected me to believe him. Would a deafness foundation really send kids out to collect money for the charity they benefit from on a schoolday? But then, I’m basing this on the values I grew up with in Australia and my experience as an adult seeing people scam others. Maybe things are different in France, and I find those cultural unknowns hard to learn and adjust to. Was I in the wrong? Was he bonafide? Should I have donated?

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.

Recently, I had an issue with the French post office which accepted a tube-shaped package to be sent to England, but after I paid for it, they sent it back to me as a rejected item and expected me to pay for it again, chocked up so it couldn’t roll. I took the item back to the UK the following week and reposted it without a problem, but it’s sparked a bizarre chain of events. At the same time, I posted a present to my mum from the UK post office, saving me room in my suitcase for my favourite British goodies that I can’t get in France. Ten days later, it turned up in my letterbox in France: Royal Mail has sent it to the clearly marked “Sender” address instead of the one on the front of the package (also clearly marked), next to their big stamp. I’ve now filled out the form and hoping for a reimbursement.

Meanwhile, the French post office has warmed my heart after last month’s frustration: the man who accepted the tube-shaped parcel was working when I took in more parcels with my mum’s. After joking that Royal Mail are worse than La Poste, he made a point of saying he’d found nothing in his regulations book against sending tube packages overseas, then insisted on paying for one of my small packages by way of apology for the first mess-up. How kind is that? Now I regret all that stress and anger that I released in my other blog entry, although from the reactions of my friends, it’s clear that I’ve been one of the lucky ones.

Pictured is one of two cylindrical parcels I took to the post office last week. Each contained a kitty toy for friends’ cats. Rather than wrap them in any old thing, I thought I’d do the right thing and provide properly packaged parcels that the post office would appreciate. One parcel made it as far as Annecy after four working days (La Poste has a tracking system on items sent around France: this item is not going to Annecy) and one made it to my letter box. The reason? Cylinders are not allowed to be posted anymore. So how did one get through? The post office man, upon seeing the parcels last week, explained that they roll, making it hard to scan the postcode. He said it wasn’t a problem for overseas items, but that the cylinder going to France would need to have chunks added to it to stop it from rolling. He even offered to do it — what a nice man. I thanked him after asking if he was sure and he said no problems – it was quiet and he was bored. Clearly, the parcel for overseas was a problem as that was the one that ended up back at my door.

Thinking the mix-up was purely down to someone reading the sender address instead of the destination address, I took the item back to the post office. The goth lady was working instead so I explained that the post office had accidentally sent the item back to me and could it please be resent. No, not now, she said.  It cannot be sent while it is a cylinder. She said I would need to change the shape so it wouldn’t roll. I asked if I could just drop it off after I’d made the manual change (thinking at the time it would have been easier just to do a bodge job with some bubble wrap and brown paper). She said no because I’d need to pay for it again. Er what? The postage was already more than the cost of the cat toy and she wanted me to pay again? The man last week accepted it so how was this my fault? She agreed but wouldn’t budge. It might only be a small amount of money, but it’s not the amount in question: it’s the way La Poste want me to pay for their mistake and inflexibility. The country renowned for its red tape really does live up to its reputation at times. Outstandingly bad for something as simple as sending a cat toy to a friend.

Thankfully, I’m going to England this weekend, so if I don’t see the man who served me last week before then to hassle him about it, I’ll take the package back with me. Extremely frustrated, I spouted off about it to friends. These are the reactions I got in just one afternoon:

1. French friend: “Yes, it’s stupid. I’ve lived with it all my life so I don’t know any different. I’m used to it. I can’t be angry.”

2. Australian friend: “Remember the string story! Parcel packaged up old style, brown paper with string. Post lady says no, string is ‘interdit’ (not allowed) but then 2 seconds later says yes it’s okay, it’ll just cost more!!! How is this possible? I said, you choose it’s either interdit or it’s not.”

3. American friend: “French customs held all of my household goods from the US ‘hostage’ and tried to make me pay 19.5% tax on stuff that I already OWNED…like my grandmother’s china….until my French boyfriend called them up and said, ‘This is France, not Nigeria’.”

4. British friend: “We were on holiday in Hossegor, sent a parcel to California, recorded, & guess what when we got back home (Bozel) it was waiting here! We took it to La Poste in Bozel & they said we had to go to the post office where it was sent from 700km to get our money back!!!!”

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.

I used this simple phrase the other day when I was in a giant stationery shop: “Je cherche les sacs en papier“. Okay, I should have said “des” not “les” but this basically means: “I’m looking for paper bags”. I wasn’t looking for anything fancy, such as this designer number pictured. No, I’d just like to have some brown paper bags to hold some seeds for the garden over winter and to see if putting my geraniums in paper bags from autumn will indeed keep them alive until next spring. So, after waiting patiently for at least five minutes while the only person serving anyone finished serving the previous customer, then faffed around looking for some important pen, then finally found it and bonjoured me. I asked the paper bag question and got a blank stare. Actually, I tell a lie: her face contorted as she raised one side of her lip and frowned while she jerked her neck back in shock. She didn’t open her mouth so I repeated my request to the contorted face, which remained contorted.

You may have guessed by now that this is another rant. I’m sorry. As often as I find a fantastic French person who is patient, friendly and generous with his or her time while I converse in my accent-ridden French, I find at least one who, like this woman, makes bad facial expressions, or huffs or rolls eyes or just walks away as soon a I start speaking. I know my French isn’t too bad because some French people, such as the mechanic (see previous post) who fixed my car told me when I picked it up that my French is great, and I was able to chat for five minutes or so with him about my car, mutual friends and how his sister lives in Australia. Sydney, in fact. She loves it. He dreams of going there one day and seeing the Great Barrier Reef.

Back to the shop. My French friend standing next to me understood me, so he repeated my request to which she immediately replied — looking at him only, of course, rather than that stupid etranger who was disdainfully taking up space with her presence.

If there’s one thing that wears me down and crushes my spirit, it’s that look on someone’s face when they hear my accent and shut off completely. However, an English friend has come up with an explanation. She reckons that English speakers are used to all sorts of accents because so many people revert to English to communicate with people who don’t speak their language. Of course, it’s a generalisation, but maybe all these contorted faces are happening because the French speakers are only tuned into French accents. This would certainly explain the subtitles on TV if someone from Haiti (a country where French is spoken) is speaking French. I mean it’s the same language!

Anyway, the woman explained to my French friend that they have plastic bags and material bags but no paper bags, so it looks like I’ll have to use the large roll of paper that I bought from the very same shop months ago to create my own paper bags.