Le Sud De France: 4.8: Lipstick on a Pig.

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Sarah Palin, no slouch when it comes to mauling the language, used the phrase “like putting lipstick on a pig”. It’s a rhetorical expression that means making superficial changes-- or just calling something-- by a positive term to disguise its negative qualities.

Oblivious to irony in all its forms, Ms. Palin didn’t notice that in using the term she drew attention to her own lipstick-ed self and her lack of experience. After all she quit being Governor of Alaska for “the good of Alaska” and didn’t even get the irony of that either. But I’ll give her credit for bringing back the lovely old expression of "putting lipstick on a pig.” 

This year for Christmas our present to ourselves was buying a house. As I wrote earlier about house hunting in France you’ve got to do a lot of research work on your own. Then armed with information you find a realtor to show you properties. And for all our research we spent a lot of time traipsing around the French countryside with various realtors (estate agents to our British friends, agent immobiliers here in France). In the course of our journeys we discovered that when it came to putting lipstick on a pig no one is better at it than a realtor. (note: I've changed all the realtors names for my own protection.)

Let me begin with Célèste is a realtor originally from Paris who moved south to live in her husband’s village. She tells us that at first she thought all the villages were very far apart but now she sees they are not. And it is no wonder she feels this way as because she tells us this as she roars down a narrow country road at about 130 kilometers per hour. She’s in a hurry to show us a house in a 1000 year old hill town and despite it being 30 kilometers from her office we indeed are there in no time at all. Having astonishingly arrived safely we park in front of the Mairie and we walk several hundred meters until Célèste stops in front of a small door fitted into a blank wall and rummages through her purse for keys, 

as she cheerily say, “We’re here!” 

By this time we’d already seen a number of “village houses.” Most seemed to have been remodeled by hobbits at the end of the dark ages and occupied over the centuries by a succession of village widows and their sons, the village idiots. But even by those standards this place was a surprise. 

A Roman foundation

Entering the house we found ourselves in a large earthen floored room with a curved stone arch at one end and a stairway opposite it. Célèste looks at this emptiness and happily says,

“This is the original Roman foundation.”

Okay but my idea of a Roman buildings is perhaps more along the lines of those sexy steam baths in a Fellini movie.  Célèste leads us up the stairs and we arrive in what appears to be both the bathroom and the kitchen. I use these terms in a loosely descriptive way because we have come into a space about six meters square with a low wall in its middle. The stairs let out on the “bathroom” side of the wall and the “kitchen” is on the other. 

The bathroom has a stone floor with a drain and a shower head that is rather loosely attached to the wall. Next to it is a toilet placed just out of range of the shower spray. Two steps around the shower is the kitchen which is the size of a closet. It is equipped with a two burner electric stove, a half refrigerator and a sink. Over the sink is a round water tank the size of a 2 liter Coca Cola bottle. I ask Célèste what is it. 

The front door of a village house.

“Oh that’s the hot water heater. My granny had one
in her apartment in Paris,” she says, “But this one is much newer.”

“Does it heat all the water for the whole house?” I ask.

“Of course, “she replies, “and it runs on propane gas. Didn’t you see the tank in the basement? It will fuel the heater for weeks and when it’s empty you just take the tank to the Tabac and get another one.”

Our next realtor is Chuck the Chopper. I call him that because in every house he visited he’d immediately start banging on the walls and saying,

“Great, you can make the place better by knocking down this wall and that one too and maybe that other also.”

Seems he's never met a wall he didn't want to rip down. 

He showed us one house that had last been painted in the late 1940s. It looked and felt like one of those gray tenement apartments on New York’s Lower East Side, the kind that turn up in old gangster movies. Compared to many other places though this one wasn’t that bad but it did have one major problem. After looking around the place for awhile I realized I hadn’t seen a bathroom. So I asked Chuck where one was. “Through the French doors at the end of the hall,” he replied. 

This was hopeful, but when walked through the doors I found myself outside the house on a narrow rooftop terrace. From behind me I heard Chuck say, “The shower and the toilet are to your left. Quite unique isn’t it.”

The dryer is the outdoors.

Yup, at one end of the two meter long terrace was a toilet and a shower both open to the dark blue Herault sky. Chuck came up to me and pointed towards that sky taking it in with a sweep of his arm said, “Think of it you can see the stars at night while showering.”

When he saw me grimace he added, “If you want to, it would be easy to knock down the bedroom wall so you can walk directly out to the terrace to use the toilet.”

The next house he showed us had a very special feature; a bathtub. Few village houses we had seen had had bathtubs. The problem though was that the bathtub was in the basement in the house's garage/ laundry room. Always upbeat Chuck said, “A lot of privacy for bathing with this setup isn’t there? You can even keep an eye on the laundry as you bath.”

Narrow street are walkers not cars

Next we met Jean-Pierre a native of the Herault and proud to be an immobilier. He is also proud to tell us that every house he sells is one that had been owned by someone he has gone to school with or knows personally from his village. These are good friends and he tells us with good friends there is no negotiation of prices. He sells for friends at very fair prices. Of course, the prices he quotes us are way too high for the houses we see; yet he seems unperturbed. Returning from one visit I asked him how just how many houses he has sold in the last year he replied perkily“One.”

But he does have one property he wants to show us where the price is negotiable. It was owned by an English “artist and photographer” and winking at us he says , "You know how it is with the English."

Well we don't but he takes us to a house on a busy street in the middle of a large town. Entering the doorway we once again found ourselves climbing up an ancient spiral stone stairs in semi-darkness. After two long treacherous flights the staircase opened into a small musty room. 

“This is the salon,” Jean-Pierre says as he begins to search for the light switches. It was a stiflingly hot tiny space with no visible windows. On one side of the salon is another stairway that continues up to the next floor and the opposite side a bathroom. A bathroom that was to say the least rather unique. 

It seems that the English artist in a fit of a creative inspiration had built the bathroom's wall out of used Badoit, Perrier and Evian bottles. He had meticulously filled each plastic bottle with colored water and then randomly laid several hundred on their sides in a stack of decorative tiles. 

Jean-Pierre finally reached around behind me and flipped on a light switch. As the lights came on the water filled bottles lit up glowing in a thousand subtle colors. They lit up the salon like a 70s disco and they lit up the bathroom interior which could be seen clearly through the bottles. 

Jean-Pierre stepped back and sighed with pleasure at the sight.  

“Imagine dining with friends in the salon and when someone uses the toilet they won't miss a moment of the conversation. This is really something special.”

Yes, it was a superb case of putting lipstick on a pig!  

Le Sud de France 4.7: Joyeaux Noel a Tous

With Christmas bearing down on us and a lot of the world covered in snow I thought that I'd devote this blog to photos of Christmas in the warm and sunny South of France. I'll let them speak for themselves about the Fete Noels held in late December in most of the villages.

At a Deux Chevaux Citroen Gathering

Eating lunch in the Vineyards at a Winery Nete Noel

 

Celebrations in Beziers, France

Beziers, Fete Noel

  

Le Sud de France 4.6: A Fistful of Euros

The Only Good Euro Is A Chocolate One!!!

You know it’s gotten bad when, instead of talking about kitchen remodeling at a party, the conversation begins with, “So how much longer do you think the Euro will last?”

Despite the hope of unifying the nations of Europe after the brutality of World War II the Euro obviously has not. 16 nations use the Euro and they’ve lost the individual flexibility they once had to adjust the value of their money to deal with economic problems. It makes for a lot of bad feelings between these supposedly united countries and the papers and TV are full of reports about the future of the currency.

The Euro became the single currency in 1999. We were in France then and could see that it wasn’t off to a good start. The French had issued new Francs in 1960 to replace old Francs--a revaluation of the currency--and after forty years people had sort of adjusted to it. Prices were still listed in both the old and new Francs and older folks kept cookie jars stuffed with the old bills-- just in case. 

What I did see a lot of then was how uncomfortable people were with the new currency. When the Euro came along prices were converted into Euros and rounded off--and always upwards. People saw that price hike and resented it. 

Acceptance of the new currency has remained awkward and today after 12 years, prices are still given in both Euros and their equivalent in Francs, and in parts of France you can even use Francs for purchases. 

The Euro coinage is also very confusing and at first many old people would just open their purses or extend a handful of coins to a cashier to let them figure out which coins were needed to pay for a purchase. Sadly I still see that happening today.

How in the world did some EU genius in Brussels, or a committee of geniuses, come up with the idea of having eight different coins for their currency? There are 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 Euro cent coins and the one and two Euro coins. And as you can see in the photo below they were cleverly designed to be similar in color and design. And all the coins are small and that makes them clumsy to handle.

By comparison the US gets along with just four coins in everyday use; the penny (one cent), the nickel (five cents), the dime (ten cents) and the quarter dollar (twenty-five cents) and each is a different enough that it is easy to tell them apart. There are also fifty cent pieces and dollar coins but you rarely see or use them.

The eight Euro coins make it hard to quickly make change for a payment  and it ends up slowing down cashier  lines and such. 

My biggest bugaboo is how hard it is to get rid of the damn things. Every time I'd go shopping it seems that the number of coins in my pocket always increased in number and weight. 

That's because when you pay for something, cashiers generally try to give you back as many coins as possible. It's like the kid's game of "hot potato." Finally I began to fight back with what I call  "the its your change game."

My strategy is to give the cashier the amount of coins first and then the bills. For example, if my purchase is 34.52 Euros, I hand the cashier 52 cents worth of coins, in as many small coins as possible. And then, only after the coins do I hand over the bigger coins like the 1 and 2 Euros. Then I move on to the paper notes. 

It takes practice but it works.

Debussy on top, Euro bridges below.

I personally dislike the look of the Euro currency designs. The coins are lackluster and the bills feature really boring images of “bridges.” To me it is an ugly currency that sadly replaced some of the most beautiful paper around; like this French Franc with its portrait of composer Claude Debussy. 

While no one knows what will happen with the Euro in the future the feelings towards it aren't good. The responses to the question posed at lunch about how long the Euro will last were pretty negative. A British ex-pilot said, “3 or 4 years” while a Dutch engineer responded dryly, “Hardly that.” Later I saw a TV commentator give it 5 months.

In my case, my response is, 'If it goes, I won't miss it."

Sud de France 4.5: All Dat Jazz

My relationship with jazz has been a sometime thing. Growing up in New York I’d take the subway home after late night dates and there’d always be some musicians on the trains. Slouched over their bass cases and trombone bags, tapping their feet to the rhythm of the car wheels, they were going back up to Harlem in the wee hours of the morning. 

Tired and drained after a gig at some midtown hotel dining room or a club in the Village, their fingers  would unconsciously practice a riff on their unreachable fret boards and valves. 

These were the anonymous foot soldiers of jazz. Black musicians who loved to play but never made any real money at it. Every once in a while I’d recognize a face (say was that Miles?) but usually they were the sidemen who supported the big “names” and remained in their shadows. 

It was the late nineteen sixties and I was learning to play guitar. My heroes were another bunch of black musicians; blues men like Bukka White, Son House and Lighting Hopkins. With the anti-War movement and the rise of folk music, the action in Greenwich Village shifted from the Blue Note to the Café Wha and middle class white kids hauling banjos and washtub basses filled Washington Square pretending to be authentic Appalachians singers. 

I stayed in touch with jazz though because my best friend was a jazz enthusiast with a huge collection of vinyl LPs. Pretty regularly I'd get a call to come over and listen to some new record he had just gotten. Or we'd get together and hang out in a tiny Easy Village jazz club. By now I was performing in a folk band made up of college kids and I too was pretending to be a country boy. It didn’t last, there was this war on called Viet Nam and I had to move on leaving the band and New York behind. 

1967 rolled in and I found myself in San Francisco in the heat of the "Summer of Love. It wasn’t the sex, drugs and rock and roll thing the media made it out to be. Instead it was a sad, desperate time with lost kids from places like Topeka, St. Louis or Dallas, running away from the stifling world of Middle America hoping to find something; hoping to find anything, really.

Rock was the theme music of those days  but jazz held on. Groups like Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band and performers like Leon Redbone were rooted in the jazz of the 1920s and musicians like Charles Lloyd with his big old Afro and color splashed batik shirts brought jazz to a new, “hip,” young audience. Jazz stayed very much alive although undervalued and sidelined.

After a year in San Francisco I headed north and for the next couple of decades I was the photographer for Seattle Center, the city's performing arts facility. I shot hundreds of concerts including the small number of jazz performances that were included in the big Labor Day Bumbershoot Arts Festival.

Usually presented in the Center's smaller venues, it meant that I got to meet and hear artists like Ray Charles, Marian McFarland, Buddy Guy and Etta James, in intimate rooms and halls.

In America today the audience for jazz has been aging while here in France it seems the jazz scene is healthy and the audience is young. 

For example, within a few weeks of arriving we were invited to a jazz “house party” in a private house in a nearby, very small village. For 8 Euros you got a glass of wine and some food and then sat down in the living room for an evening of live jazz performed by a local group. 

Pezenas is a renaissance age village in the South of France.

Then other day we were having a meeting with the owner of the house we are hoping to buy when out of the blue he turned to me and said, “I do hope you like jazz.” 

It turns out that Pézenas, the next town to ours, is a hotbed of music. The town’s old train station has been remodeled into a theater and there's a schedule of all sorts of music and art performances (and lots of jazz) throughout the year. 

And for a town of only 7500 people what’s even more surprising is its lively and active music club scene. 

Typical of what I mean is this notice I found in the local paper this morning.

Son du Swing

“At Club Butel (Pézenas) at 20:00. 18 December 2010. Le Son du Swing a collective of musicians based in Southern France who share a common passion for ‘jazz manouche’ or ‘Gypsy Jazz’. The line-up of the group is inspired by and celebrates the 'Quintet du Hot club de France'."  

The thought of all this jazz so close to my new home is heartwarming. In a way for me, it honors the legacy of those hard working musicians I shared all those late night subways with so long time ago. Men and women whose lives were all about all dat jazz.

And, of course, there's always Django.

Sud de France 4.4: Out to Lunch at Béziers’ Au Soleil Restaurant & Salon de Thé. .

Au Soleil Restaurant

I define art as something that surprises and delights me and by that standard “Au Soleil” restaurant is a work of art. It is everything a small eatery should be and more. It is an intimate Salon de Thé, at the heart of a city with a dining area decorated with a minimalist sensibility that makes for clean lines and an airy atmosphere.   

“Au Soleil” (In the Sun) is one of several restaurants on the square between Béziers’ la Madeleine church and “les Halles,” its large indoor public market. 

A Roman statue found in the city.

To me, Béziers is one of the most beautiful cities in France but, like so many places, it is struggling to define its future while simultaneously trying to repair past neglect. 

It was settled in Neolithic times, was a Roman town, then a medieval center and then it finally boomed at the end of the 19^th century (only to have its fortunes dimmed in the 20^th.)


But that 19th century heyday left the city with a legacy of beautiful places. One of my personal  favorites is the “allée Paul Riquet” a several block long, tree lined promenade, with the city’s municipal theater at one end and a delightful English style formal park, the “Plateau des Poètes,” at the other. 

A "Belle Epoque" building in Beziers

The allée itself is surrounded by gorgeous “Belle Époque” buildings replete with lovely terraces and lots of exquisite, intricate ironwork. And it’s just a short walk from Au Soleil, through Béziers’ clothing shop lined streets to the quiet of the allée and the park.

I have photographed and written about food and restaurants for dozens years and I’m pretty jaded about the subject. I’ve been in Michelin star restaurants and in American “Best Places” but for me “Au Soleil” is among my favorites. Simply it is one of the best small restaurants I’ve ever been in. 

At  “Au Soleil” the whole point is the food. We were in the city on some business the other day and decided to have lunch at the restaurant. After settling into our chairs we ordered tea and one of the day’s special, the “La Terroir” plate. Terroir refers to the special nature of the land and this plate is a celebration of the land and autumn. 

Unfortunately when the food arrived I jumped in and started eating, forgetting that I wanted to do some photos first. So please excuse the nibbles I took out of the food in the picture below.

On the plate from left clockwise around you can see a small salad, a duck and potato “parmentier” (which I’ve opened up to reveal the duck), jambon (dried ham) with a red wine confit, a thick autumn vegetable soup (in the glass jar), an onion tart and chicken mousse in pastry (which I cut open too.)

Each of these items was superbly prepared but what really caught my attention was how well their flavors worked together. In my experience the matching of flavors and textures on a plate is one of the hardest tasks for a chef. And as a result I think that you can often judge a chef’s skill by checking out how they've presented the vegetables. 

Most chefs take pride in their main preparation but the vegetables are often an afterthought, put on the plate to provide some color or to fill an empty space. This was not the case  with my “la terroir” plate. The onion tarte was a treat in itself. Moist and light, the egg and onion mixture was hot and perfectly cooked. 

It is not the kind of sensitive and creative care you see every day.

Our lunch cost us about $12 USD each and as I left the restaurant I thought to myself that if “Au Soleil” were in Paris the meal would have easily cost three times as much.

And that’s what is so special about the Herault. It is a region that has been overlooked and bypassed. Undervalued wines and a lack of big name star supporters it lay dormant. But today its the fastest growing region in France, talent and new ideas. With luck in a few years Béziers will become the the Paris or Berlin of Sud de France.

The city hall mural complete with the mayor and the artist.

Sud de France 4.3.2: 10 Tips for House Hunting French Style

Part 2: Driving Miz Crazy

There is nothing more exciting than speeding down a one lane country road while your driver is talking and looking you in the back seat. It’s the fun part of looking for houses with estate agents--realtors. They know the roads and love being out in the French vineyards and sunshine. And since they want to show you several houses in an hour or so, they go as fast as they can between them. 

It adds a touch of danger to house hunting that you won’t find anywhere else.

So if the itch hits you, here are some more tipsfor finding a house in the South of France.

Tip 6. Negotiation. The asking price of a house is usually negotiable but estate agents don’t like lower prices because they cut into their fees. In France as elsewhere owners think their homes are worth more than they are asking for anyway but you need to bargain. The current recession means there’s a surplus of houses and not too many (or any) buyers. It is truly a buyer’s market.

Looks good but it the whole top floor of a house.

Tip 7. Notaire Fees. On top of the price of the home you the buyer has to pay for a “notaire” or a notary to do the paperwork; title searches etc… The notaries represent the French state and not either party in arranging the sale. The work of the notaire takes about two months. It’s all paperwork and grind slowly indeed. The notaire’s fee varies (it’s about 7-9% of the selling price) but it will adds thousands of Euros to the cost of the house. 

Often when buying directly from a seller an under the table payment is negotiated to reduce their taxes and your notaire fee. For example, if the asking price is 175,000 Euros the seller might take 150,000 officially and you’ll give them a separate check for 25,000.

How did this big bed get to the 3rd floor?.

Curiously some notaries will leave the room once the officials papers are signed to "go out for a smoke’.' But it is really so that the extra check can be passed between buyer and seller in private.

Tip 8. Furniture Issues. When buying a village house consider negotiating with the owner to have them include the furniture in the deal. When you see a big bed in a third floor bedroom you have to wonder how it got up very narrow circular stairway. Owners are often happy to avoid having to remove things by including them in the sale.

Tip 9. The Crazy Brits. There are a lot of homes around the South of France that were bought by British people in the last decade or so. They’ve remodeled them and many are now on the market. You can tell a Brit’s home the second you walk into it. They have cut every corner possible and have create a little British village house in the middle of France. Paisley and floral wallpaper (to remove), faux ”oriental” features (to trash) and all sorts of strange tinkering (see photo). The Brits also favor small electric “hobs” with convection no oven to actual stoves.

No stairway to heaven it's the attic access.

My favorite corner cutter is the jet toilet. An ugly, water saving toilet that sounds like a jet plane taking off each time you use it.

Buying a home from a Brit add 10% for the work you’ll need to do to make it a tolerable place to live.

Tip 10. Size Matters. We all grew up on movies like the Three Musketeers with sword fights up and down huge staircases. Well those were Hollywood sets. Rooms in real castles are tiny and a village house can be really very small. When you’re looking for a house in France you need to scale back your size expectations. Our 3 bedroom house in Washington State had 2000 square feet (200+ sq. meters) of living space and was as one realtor put it “kinda small.”  Now that we’ve been in France we are excited when we find  a place with 1100 sq.ft.(120 sq.meters) of living space.

No room for the 3 musketeer fights.

But when you find that place in the village of your choice you’ll find that life takes on a whole different dimension. And after all that’s why you go through the whole exercise in the first place.

Sud de France 4.3: 10 Tips for House Hunting French Style

Part 1. Location, Location, Location.

Man cave circa 500 AD

If was a surprise to see the ruin of a 500 A.D. Roman home, with its vaulted ceiling and stone wash basin, in the garage of the house we were looking at. But while I was amazed at this bit of ancient history in the house’s basement, the realtor shrugged and said that it was no big deal, there were ruins all over the place. 

Things like this make searching for a home in France an eye opening experience. We’ve seen about two or three house a day for eight weeks and are still looking for the right place. We’ve learned a lot along the way and I’ve come up with a list of tips for the prospective home buyer wishing to relocate to a cute little village in the vineyards of Sud de France.

Finding the right village for you is the first thing.

Tip 1. Find a village. Even before you look for a house, look for a village. Spend some time in different villages. Get a feel for them hanging out at the local café or bar and walking the streets. Don’t do this on a Sunday or Monday or during the 12-2 lunch break when most towns are totally shut down. Think about how much village you need. Do you want a very small village with only a tabac and a bakery or do you need a larger, more lively place?

A typical big village house with two faces or sides.

Throughout the South of France from April to September there are village festivals, concerts and activities. Around Christmas even the smallest village will have celebrations. It is up to you to choose the place where there’s just enough activity to suit your tastes.

 Tip 2. Village Center Issues. There are 12^th or 13^th century village every couple of miles around here. The houses at their hearts have been renovated dozens of times over the centuries. They are very small spaces. Hilltop villages are particularly compact with narrow streets you can’t get a car down and there is no parking. Seriously consider how much claustrophobia you can handle.

No place to park is the usual state of affairs.

One person we met bought a village house with a garage only to discover that his 4 meter long car could turn in the three meter wide street to get into the garage.

 Tip 3. Look for “à vendre” signs. One of the best ways to find a house is to walk through a village and look for “à vendre” (For Sale) signs. Lots of people sell homes without an agent to avoid fees and you can save thousands of Euros dealing directly with the owner. Most signs list a phone number and it is perfectly okay to call the owner and say that you are standing outside the house and would like to see it. Another resource for finding private sales is the community bulletin board at an area supermarket or at a local convenience store. 

A terrace hemmed in my the neighbors.

Tip. 4 The Old, the Dead and the Mayor. France is undergoing a population shift and young people are leaving the old villages for job opportunities in the cities. When old people go into a retirement center or die, the families usually wants to get rid of the old house as soon as possible. They need cash to pay taxes and are often willing to lower prices just to get rid of a place. A good way to find a place for sale is to go to the mayor’s office as they know who in the village has died or moved.

Tip 5. “Immobiliers” or real estate agent each have their own distinct listings within a region, there’s no multiple listing service in France. If you want to use an agent, consider dealing with half a dozen to get a wider choice. Realtors work for the seller not for you and their commissions are paid by the seller and can add 5000 to 20000 Euros to price of the house.

Many French people prefer not to work with estate agents.

To be continued….