And by other football, I mean soccer. This week Scotland beat France 1-0 in France in a Euro 2008 qualifying match. The Scots are ecstatic. As for me, I’ve been confused all week – should I be happy? (That France lost.) Should I be sad? (That the gloating Scots had some success).
Should I be desolee that they couldn’t both lose?
So, Nicolas Sarkozy, the center-right candidate for President of France, wins. I think for the sake of France, that’s probably a good thing. France must change, it isn’t working anymore, literally. Nice as it is, though.
My random thoughts:
There are some nifty insights into French culture and this election over here at Anglofille. You should read it. Really.
Today is Veteran’s Day, tomorrow is Remembrance Sunday. My husband and I visited Normandy in September and saw the countryside that was filled with paratroops and bombs and bullets and blood. We saw the graves and the twisted metal left behind. I hope it helped me have a tenth of the appreciation I ought to have for those who suffered and sacrificed overseas and at home.
Both my grandfathers were in the Army during WWII, one helping to build the atom bomb and the other fighting in France and Germany. You can read the latter’s story here.
Omaha Beach
The American Cemetery
Memorial tokens left at the British and Commonwealth War Graves in Bayeux, France
Arromanches, Normandy, France – many of the store fronts were decorated with similar messages of appreciation.
I had meant to post about driving in France. After driving in the UK, driving on French roads was like a vacation in itself. UK drivers are extremely agressive and do not keep what I consider safe following distance on motorways (interstates) or any other roads and the roads themselves are not maintained to a super high standard.
Not so in France. Sure, there are bastard French drivers who speed. But on the autoroutes (motorways/interstates), the speed limit is 80 and the roadways are smooth and well maintained. And, of course, they drive on the right in France, which is good, even in my car that’s designed to drive on the left. (Driving a car with a steering wheel on the right and driving on the right makes passing extremely difficult, though. You can’t see around the slow moving tractor unless you pull right over into the opposite lane). I was pleased with my ability to slip easily back into driving on the right – I didn’t mistakenly drive on left once while I was away. Of course, I did have some trouble accomodating myself to driving on wrong side of the road when I got back to the UK. (oops)
And the French road signs were – in the main- excellent, some of them worthy of adopting on US or UK roads.
There are warning signs (at least in Brittany) with signs showing safe following distances based on the outside white line painted on the roadside. Instead of being a continuous white line – it’s broken – and the size and number of strips help to judge following distances. One sign says “1 trait, danger” and second sign says “2 traits, securite” – with a little picture showing what they meant (which was good, because I’m not sure I would have known what trait meant and looking it up in the French-English dictionary might have resulted in danger) People were driving so fast that I’m not sure that keeping two strips between you and the next car really represented securite, but the spirit was absolutely right.
There were many warning signs on the roads, signs warning that the road was a little messed up. And plenty of signs warning “Risque de _______”. Risque was easy enough to figure out, but often I had no idea what exactly the risque was. A common sign we saw was “risque de bouchons” – which we finally deduced meant risk of crashes, as the sign usually appeared before traffic got heavy or there was rapidly merging traffic. Of course, it didn’t actually mean that. Our dictionary said bouchon meant cork or stoppage, so I guess it meant risk of stand-still traffic. Still it made us proceed more carefully. Other “risque” signs were even less clear to us, some were those long French words that I could barely get my head around before the sign was past like “risque de abellissement” (I’m making that word up, but there were words like that). We’d discuss what this possible risk was – usually with fanciful possibilities – anyway, we never experienced abellissement or whatever the real words were.
Many of the roads were toll roads, and that was OK, usually. For long stretches, you’d get a card and then pay for how far you’d travelled when you exited (and that might be 6 or 7 bucks). But occasionally, you’d get toll stations after short distances with small fees – 80 cents or a dollar. I couldn’t figure out if this was due to jurisdictional fee grabbing or a French job creation scheme. This was particularly the case around the Pont de Normande – a most amazing suspension bridge over the bay of the Seine.
And best of all, you know those official brown road signs which advertise coming attractions, like a park or a monument or an historic house? Well, in France, they have those, too, but they’re fancy. They were the road signs I was most impressed with. I didn’t get a picture of them and I can’t find one on the Internet either, but they were fantastic. (Since they were mainly on the autoroutes, I guess it’s hard to get a photo when you’re going 80 or 90.) Not far out of Calais, for example, is the site of the Battle of Crecy (English kicking French butt) – the sign says Bataille de Crecy and there’s a clever drawing of medieval warriors. They didn’t just have a picture of the attraction, but often people interacting with the attraction – like visitors walking across the tidal flats to Mont St Michel. The Omaha Beach sign has soldiers walking onto the beach with their rifles held over the heads – and the artist has conveyed a real sense of the landings. Some areas get more than one sign, Bayeux for example has loads to see, so there are signs for the Bayeux tapestry, the WWII museum and the British war graves.
Most areas get a brown sign, but some are a littled stretched – for example a farming area gets a cool picture of cows (I could see the real cows from the road, you’ve just told me that there’s nothing to see but cows). And the worst of all were “maisons de charactre” – and a picture of a typical, though old, French house. If the best you can come up with is “houses of character”, your village sucks.
The brown coming attractions signs were one of the few things I saw that I thought – “Man, that would really be fantastic in Tennessee.” Tennessee has loads of cool stuff to see. Major cities could have pictures of the Ryman, ducks walking to the Peabody fountain, a choo-choo train or some representation of the Lookout Mountain battle, the ever iconic Sunsphere or fans entering Neyland stadium. You get the idea. Smaller places have plenty of potential, too, for example, an image of Davy Crockett before you turn off to Lawrenceburg, or a Tennessee walking horse for Shelbyville, or whiskey barrells for Lynchburg, or colorful locals placing bets over a cockfighting pit in Newport.
In our last remaining hours in France – we went to see Rodin’s statue The Burghers of Calais. Then we went down to the sea shore to eat the burgers of Calais – real greasy gut bombs – just the kind of thing you want before a potentially rough channel crossing. The Vol-in-Law washed his down with French-brewed tequila flavored beer to prime the load.
The Burg(h)ers of Calais
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Update: The crossing was a bit churny, but there were no ill effects
Read more about the Burghers of Calais and the siege of Calais
More photos of Calais:
It’s our last day in France – and we shall be spending some time in the hypermarkets of Calais – buying wine and beer (and hopefully some French cider) at low, low prices. Our hotel tv picks up British stations since we’re only 20 miles away from England. We watched the news last night – and it really brought home how we’ve not just taken a break from work and London, but also from the war on terror.
Update: The big wine warehouse did not have the festival atmosphere I hoped for, nor were the prices, low, low, low. (Though wine was considerably cheaper than it would have been in the UK). And they didn’t have a big cider selection either.
After our visit to the wine store, we went to a grocery store and stocked up on French sausage and cheese, as well as more cider. We had stopped at a Musee du Cidre – a place you could tour to see how they make cider, Calvados and pommeau. Calvados is kind of like apple whisky and I really don’t care for it, but I love the nice apple-y cider of Brittany and Normandy. Of course, the cider museum wasn’t open, but they were selling cider – so we tried and bought 6 bottles of the “brut” and 6 of the “doux”.
Photo from the ciderie we visited featuring a portable still (a new must-have item for me).
Here’s a site that explains cider making, though not from the place we visited. An article from the LA Times that explains Calvados and includes the line “But making Calvados takes more than an orchard. For starters, the Feds frown on stills on farms”
We’ve left the apple groves and sea shore of Brittany – and are heading northwards toward the ferry port of Calais – famous as a destination for British people looking to buy alcohol and cigarettes with less duty than in the UK. It’s was pitching it down with rain yesterday – so we made less progress than we’d hoped. We got stuck in a monumental traffic jam in Rennes and rather than sit in the car we went
Into a Home Depot/ B and Q type place where I bought a special diffusion waterer type thing that you can screw onto a 2 litre bottle and keep container plants alive. That’s been my only purchase in France thus far. But I’m very excited.
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(Drafted yesterday) I’ve been living next door to France for 10 years and refused to visit because – well, because it’s France. But our little vacation (especially the wallabies) was starting to change my mind. However, this morning we were disappointed twice. First at the musee prehisorique (or some such) which explains the many pre-historic standing stones and monuments in this area. I carefully checked the guide book – but turns out it’s closed on Tuesdays. OK – so we head off to one of the better sites – one with tombs you can go into. Well, it’s open today but access was finished by the time we got there (just before noon) – turns out the staff take a long break for lunch. Well, the Vol-in-Law was pretty pissed and so was I. We snuck around the back to get a better look – and take some pictures. Then in the evening we head off to the alignments close to the town of Carnac. These are lines of megaliths – kind of like Stonehenge – only much, much smaller -in fact they’re more like mini-liths – although a continuation of the alignments are maybe medium-liths. I knew they’d be smaller, but I thought it would be better than Stonehenge where you can’t get anywhere near the rocks. Well, even in Carnac, they’ve got the damn rocks fenced in (kilometers and kilometers wire grill fencing) like they’re going to get away. We discovered that you could go in and walk around the rocks, but only between the months of October and April.
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Before our trip to France – I did a little Internet research – things to do in Brittany. I came across the Parc de Branfrere – where wallabies roam the grounds and the website features pictures of small children holding wallabies. I thought – yeah, I’d like to hold a wallaby. Well, we went to Parc de Branfrere today. And yes, there are wallabies, but the wallabies aren’t really in to being petted quite as much as I would have liked. First of all the wallabies can go anywhere they like, but people have to stay on the designated paths. Wallabies won’t come when called, they are much more interested in eating twigs. But then we worked out that if you find a wallaby NEAR a path, you can get its attention with the special, expensive popcorn (about 2 bucks) the park sells to feed the animals. It has to be very close to the path, because wallabies are very lazy and will not come far -even for food they want. Once they are eating – out of your hand – you can pet them with the other. They have the softest fur and sweetest doe eyes, fringed by the longest lashes. You can touch their ears, their tummies and backs. They are such gentle, sweet cuddly animals. But as soon as the popcorn is gone…they turn their backs and hop away on their powerful giant hind legs. I held back a handful from my bag so I could feed them again after seeing the other animals. We walked around to see the African plains (giraffes and oryx and blue gnus) and lots of other things. It started to rain so we waited in the cafe for a while, but I wasn’t going to leave without going to the petting zoo and seeing the red pandas, so we donned raincoats and raised umbrellas and braved the wet. The red pandas were hiding from the rain, but the precipitation was good for the petting zoo (espace de contact) because all the animals (as well as the few visitors) were huddled under the eaves. You could hardly move for the mini-goats, alpacas and donkeys. The Vol-in-Law wanted some of the remaining popcorn to feed to the alpaca. I couldn’t see the point since, they were right there and would have to flee into the mud and rain to avoid him, plus I knew without food there’d be no more wallaby action, but I relented. No sooner had I given him the popcorn and the alpacas had noticed but the ViL was surrounded by goats – one of whom tore it from his hands and ate the whole lot – plastic bag and all. (Despite our efforts to retrieve the plastic). Well, I was pissed. No popcorn, no wallaby love. I made the ViL walk back to entrance and get me another bag. I found a friendly wallaby and fed him the whole sack – petting him all the while – it took over half an hour for him to finish the popcorn, but I just sat there with my arm around him – the cutest animal ever (photos later) —– Wallabies aside, Parc de Branfere is about the best zoo I’ve been to. The animals seem happy and they have plenty of space. It’s a bit short on carnivores (only a couple of South American wolves) but lots of cool grazing animals, birds and primates. In fact, they have lots of different primates in great habitats that allow them to play and make eye contact with you. They had gibbons, lemurs, tamarinds, capuchins and cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
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We drove South yesterday to the Quiberon peninsula – and the Atlantic beaches. Brittany (and Normandy for that matter) are famous apple growing regions and there are cider presses dotted across the countryside. This isn’t the kind of cider that you can get at Stout’s Orchard in Lawrence County, TN. This is hard cider – about 5 to 6 percent alcohol. Cider popular in the UK – especially among unruly youth and drunks – but it hardly tastes of apple. Occasionally, you can get good French cider in the stores in London, but like much French produce the best is kept in France. We had a fabulous appley cider with our dinner in St Meene, and as we were heading out we saw the sign for the farm and decided to stop to get some. Unfortunately, the place was shut up tighter than a drum. We hope to be able to find a press with cider we like – but each one is so different. Restaurants serve local cider and we’re in a different area now – Morbihan, and the cider we had last night was good, but not as good as the previous night’s.
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The Vol Abroad 