Sud de France 3.6: Tips for the Foreign Driver in France

Even a sedate farmer will speed up going home at the end of a day

Since I hope that some of my readers might want to visit or live in France one day  I’d like to offer these tips to make your driving--and parking--experiences more pleasant and less life threatening. Take these tips to heart and perhaps they will help you keep that heart in one piece. 

Sang Froid: Driving in France requires Sang Froid or cold blooded-ness. You cannot let anything that happens on the road shake your cool. For example, the other day I was behind  a car turning left. I slowed down and after he turned drove on. But, aha, the guy behind me had driven up on the sidewalk on my right to pass me. Did I blink at the sight of him suddenly there on my right? Zuts alor never! My sang froid held.

Small cars and Manual Transmissions: Cars in France are mostly small and have manual transmissions for good reason. They are small to fit the limited parking spaces and have manual transmissions to help you keep your mind on your driving. Never rent a big car with an auto transmission. You might be lucky enough live to regret it and then again you might not. 

Speed Limits: Speed limit signs say “Rappel” or “reminder the speed here is.” Most drivers are happy to be reminded of the speed limit just before they drive off as fast as possible.

On Passing: Everyone in France passes and often it's just for the hell of it. It is a communal pastime. German cars, like the Mercedes, Audi and BMW are required to pass all other cars at all times. 
You may be doing 150 kph (90mph) on a road marked 70 (42mph) only to look in your rear view mirror and see a Mercedes crawling up your tailpipe, flashing its lights and proceeding to pass you at over 200 (120mph). 
Don’t get angry, it doesn't pay, just get out of the way.

Freestyle parking: Parallel parking and angle parking are all options of choice on a French street. Park on either side pointed in any direction you want. Also freely mix angle parking with parallel parking as needed.

Parking lots: There are lots of lots and you’d think that it would make parking your car a breeze. Well yeah if you have a Mini Cooper, Smart Car or Fiat Uno. Built well over thirty years ago most lots have spaces sized for the tiny Citroen Deux Chevaux. Even an American compact like a Honda Civic would be too big for a typical French parking space. But at least let me offer this trick to help in a parking in a lot. Look for end spaces near side walls. Then park as far from the wall as you can. This assures you can get back in the car to leave. Parking in the middle of a row you will always be parked in on both sides and be unable to get into your vehicle  for days.

Boulangerie Parking: In front of any Boulangerie it is totally legal to double park or triple park or to simply stop your car in the street and run in to get you baguettes. No one honks or gets angry. Since the Revolution, the French have had the right to stop anywhere, at any time to get their pastries. 

The driver of this van parked as close as possible to his favorite boulangerie.

Speed Bumps: French mayors like to plant speed bumps the way vineyrons farmers like to plant grapes, as often and as much as they can. Often the speed bumps go unmarked and it can make for a bone jarring driving moment right in front of City Hall. Speed bumps are the fastest growing traffic control in France. What fun!

Roundabouts: The French love roundabouts. They are cheap and take up little land so they are all over the place. A friend of mine believes that there is a top secret factory in Lyon that stamps out roundabouts for shipment around the country. Since they are so prevalent you might consider practice driving in your a roundabouts before coming to France.

Narrow Streets: The Belle Époque construction boom was well over when the automobile arrived. Consequently many city and town streets are seriously narrow--think goat cart wide or horse and rider wide. Putting a big car like an Escalade on a village street reminds me of feeding a fly to a Venus Fly trap. After a few happy seconds of eating Fly Trap nectar--Squash!

This is a wide street in France

Never Drive In Paris: Finally the most important tip of all. Paris is the worst city on the planet to drive in. I have been with grizzled old Paris cabbies who now resort to GPS and onboard computers to help them figure out how to get around. And until you have been surrounded by two dozen cars in total gridlock haven’t really experienced driving.

None of these tips should discourage the brave from visiting France. It is a beautiful country and it is really worthwhile to have a car to travel through its lovely villages and countryside. Just be ready for some strange and unexpected driving experiences.

Photos and text ©2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 3.5: The Storms of October

The Tramontane has been roaring out of the North now for three days. It’s a cold dry wind that comes down out of the Atlantic and squeezes through the Pyrenees and over Massif Central into the Languedoc. Historically it’s known to last for days. 

A tree uprooted by the Tramontane

The Tramontane gusts often to about 30-40 mph (70 kpm) like a tropical storm but not too many trees are toppled and there isn’t a lot of building damage. But it’s the days of this wind’s roaring sound that can drive you crazy.

In the Herault the Tramontane is one of the three winds that scour the region. The other two are the Mistral and the Sirocco, known locally as the Marin. The Mistral comes out of the Northwest, rolls down the Rhone Valley against the Massif Central and mainly affects Provence and the Camargue. The Marin comes out of the Southwest--it begins in North Africa—and arrives warm and wet having picked up its moisture as it crosses the Mediterranean. 



Locals know that the Marin is followed by warmer, rainy days and the Tramontane by clear sparkling colder ones.

This year, the Tramontane is clearly on the on the side of the French anti-reform protesters. Last week the garbage collectors joined the strikers and in cities across France garbage has piled up. In most places though, the garbage had been neatly stacked around neighborhood collection points and maintaining the civic order. The French are very tidy about their garbage. They neatly sort and package their garbage, separating and setting aside recycling and separately wrapping compostable matter. 

Our garbage neatly sorted and packaged

But then like a spoilt child throwing a tantrum the Tramontane blew in from out of the North and began scattering the refuse all about. The windblown garbage is unsettling to everyone’s sense of order as well as to their noses.

But despite the scattered garbage piles, persistent gas shortages, post office and railway slow downs, most people still support the anti-reformists.

And there’s a strange kind twist to the story. 

Garbage that makes a pretty good photo

 In conversation with people and on TV folks are saying that Sarkozy was elected because he was tougher than the other candidates and they felt he would get needed reforms passed. They didn’t like him but his opponent Ségolène Royal, a woman AND a socialist couldn’t be expected to fix things—she was just too nice and caring.

Sarko is short and brusque and unpleasant. He snarls rather than speaks and doesn’t seem to like ordinary people very much. What I think happened is that the French expected Sarko would move reforms along but in a decidedly French way. That is there would be a lot of zuts alors! and merde! and posturing followed by lots of small compromises and face saving gestures along the way to reform. What they didn’t take into account is his intransience and unwillingness to even talk to the other side. Sarko is in his style, very much a European version of a TEA party-er.  

Organizing for the October 28th demonstrations

In the US, President Obama was elected to take over a government driven to the economic brink by the former administration. Tough steps were needed and everyone thought that this professorial guy would be just the one to do it. But Americans like Obama because he is nice. He has a great smile that shines across his face and can light up a room. People would say how tired they were of the squabbling in Washington and wanted a conciliatory “now kids I want you all to shake hands and clean up your room” kind of leader.

The French went with a thug to do the tough job and hoped that he would clean up the neighborhood without breaking too many windows.The Americans wanted a nice guy who wouldn't lose his temper and break the dishes. No one seems happy with what they got.

I think that the right, groups like the TEA party, would love a guy like Sarko. He’s nasty and blunt like a street fighter and always on the edge of anger. He has hissy fits in public and often seems uncomfortable and near the breaking point.

But unlike TEA party hopefuls he’s already IN power. 

That’s the scary part. He is in power but not in control and it pisses him off. For Sarko the unions and strikers don’t have a different idea of how things should be done. For him they are “scum” and “dangerous” and almost traitors.

For now the French government claims that everything is calming down. But tomorrow the 28^th is another day of national strikes. Although the government has adopted a “move along folks there’s nothing to see here” attitude, people do see the strikes every day. You can’t avoid the closed gas stations, the cancelled flights and the students sitting in front of schools.

And most of all you can’t avoid the garbage.
The garbage my friends that’s blowing in the wind. 

The garbage gauntlet

Photos and text ©2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 3.4: Something’s Fishy Here in France

Something fishy here in the Herault and I don’t mean the smell form a week’s accumulation of garbage as the refuse collectors join the anti-retirement reform movement. I’m talking about real fish and it’s real fishy.

Just a few of the fish available in a French market

Since college cooking has been my way of relaxing at the end of the day. Over time I’ve accumulated a good sized collection of cookbooks. These cookbooks are by the stars of chef-dom, Pepin, Puck, Child, Hazan and the like. But I’ve come to I realize that these tomes are just fairy tale storybooks. This may be a hard to swallow for Rachel Ray’s viewers but it’s true.

This hit me like a lead sinker when I started trying to buy fish at the local fishmongers. While my cookbooks contained dozens of recipes for salmon and sole, shrimp and crab, here in rural France I’m encountering fish capelan, sar noir, merlu, gobie, dorade, dorade royal, baudroie, lotte, rouget, polpi, raie, anchovies, sardines and cornets.

And these are not exotic fish but the everyday fish that dominate the local fish stands and that home cooks and restaurant chefs seem to buy and cook very well. But I’ve never seen them before and for all my cookbooks I’m at a loss to know what to do.

And I’m not happy about it.

When we lived in in Gig Harbor outside Seattle the town called itself a “maritime city.” Considering it was surrounded by Puget Sound and the Pacific you’d have thought we’d have had tons of fish in our markets. But hell, while we had our fishing fleet we didn’t have a single fish stand. The boats went up to Alaska fish each summer caught tons of fish but not an ounce made it to the Harbor. Adding insult to injury most of the salmon you could buy came from the Atlantic. What was up with that?? Throw in farm raised fish from Southeast Asia or the Mexican catch and the Pacific Northwest looks like a fish wasteland. Talk buying cheap products from overseas.  

Sea urchins and more

What was craziest was that my cookbook never mentioned any the fish I see every day in the markets. I’m sure that a few of the star chefs and food writer’s must have seen these fish and been curious about them. But you wouldn’t know it from the cookbooks. I can’t explain these omissions except to think that offering recipes for fish you can’t buy in America may not be a good marketing strategy. 

But you know America once had abundant supplies and a wider variety of fresh fish. I know because I grew up in the Bronx and in the 1950s my grandmother would buy live carp for making gefilte fish. She’d toss them in her bathtub until she was ready to make them into delicate yummy fish patties. As a kid I remember being fascinated by the carp as I'd watch them swimming in her fifth floor bathtub. 

Today in the States you don’t see live fish or even whole fish, just slabs of white or red meat that taste about as good as cardboard.  

The sign reads "None of the fish at this stand is farm raised."

And making it worse is that not only is diversity gone but the big fish--salmon, cod, halibut, crab and tuna--the ones we eat, are at the top of the food chain eating up the diversity. They consume lots of smaller fish, and they’ll even eat each other. In every bite of salmon you are eating pounds of other fish. The little fish in the French markets are  lower down on the food chain and learning to eat fish like lotte (monkfish) and dorade (John Dory) doesn’t just widen my choices but it’s makes it easier on the marine environment.

So I’m tossing out my old cookbooks and giving up on these tired food writers who can’t see beyond a salmon mouse. All they’ve accomplished has been the  numbing down of our pallets.

This is the uncollected garbage and its smelling pretty bad

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 3.3: The Forgetting Machine

I was in Villeneuvette again to photograph the ruins of the town’s once prosperous textile factory. (See Sud de France 2.2 for my first visit here.) For over four hundred years Villeneuvette fabrics were known throughout the world and the town was a Royal Manufacturer for the King. 

It was a prosperous hard working place so much so that the words “Honor through Work” are etched over the entrance to the town. But the town died because of wars and cheaper products made in other countries. The mills and factories are now empty shells and the town is struggling to rebuild itself on the strength as a crafts and art center.

Wandering around the ruins reminded me of a conversation I had a few days ago with some British friends over dinner. We were talking about the recent protests against raising the retirement age and one of them, Liam, said the cause of the problems were, 

“There’s a real difference between Northern and Southern Europeans is that the south is just lazy. Just look at where all the economic trouble is Greece, France, Italy, Spain.”

I was surprised to hear this because Liam seemed to be selectively forgetting that just a week ago his own British government announced Draconian reforms to cut its deficit. More severe reforms than the French passed. Ones so severe that had they been passed in France it would have really blown the country apart. 

What was going on I think is what I call the “The Forgetting Machine.” That wonderful mechanism in our brains that selectively edits reality to fit our personal world views. Liam was stereotyping the people he lives amongst in such a smooth and natural way he doesn’t even realize that he’s doing it, he simply holds his “truths” to be self-evident.

The “laziness” of the Southerners discounts the fact that just a few years ago the Spanish, Italian and Greek economies were rapidly growing and the envy of the Northern nations. Then came the economic recession and it turned the world upside down. But was the recession caused by Greek laziness or by Wall Street shenanigans? By the French retirement system or by banks reselling risky mortgages? Wasn’t the economic recession caused by the North and not the South?

The funny thing is that Liam is forgetting that what he is really talking about is the division between Europe's Protestant North and Catholic South. A divide that's hundreds of years old. He’s now in the laid back Catholic South and it's a bit uncomfortable for him. 

“The French are just not entrepreneurial" Liam says. " They prefer to spend time at home with their families than to work a little longer to make more.”

I was surprised to hear that putting family before work was a bad thing. 

In response I pointed out t him that we were sitting in a new restaurant in the heart of Clermont run by a couple of young French guys. (The food here is wonderful, a modern reworking of traditional French dishes done with the lightest of touches. For example, for dessert I had a crème brûlée with just the hint of fresh ginger and a small side dish of granulated coffee sorbert.)
So weren't these two young Fenchmen entrepreneurial?  

I'd say that what the French may lack is not an entrepreneurial spirit but the ruthless competitiveness of the North (and of the US.)

But Liam is right when he says that the French put their personal lives ahead of their work lives.  I have yet to meet a French person who works two jobs. They do work long hours but when they are not working, they are NOT working. 

If enjoying life is a crime then I think that the Southern Europeans are guilty as charged.

There's also an irony here. Liam within a few kilometers of Villeneuvette and its stone buildings. These  stand as a silent reminder that even in the sunny, soft, Sud de France an awful lot of people have worked very, very hard to earn their daily baguette. 

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 3.2: Flaubert’s Q-Tips.

 I hit something hard and crunchy when I bit into my croissant this morning.  It was a dark brown chocolate bar stuck in the middle of the pastry. Zuts alors, the lovely redheaded boulanger’s wife had mistakenly given me a croissant “au chocolat” instead of a croissant “beurre.”The two types of croissant look identical and you can only tell them apart by their delicious names. 

It made me think about words and the great French writer Gustave Flaubert, who wrote Madame Bovary. Flaubert was known as a slow writer because he spent a lot of time searching for the “bon mot,” for just the right word. He’d take weeks writing a single paragraph over and over. He wanted to find that one word that once in its place would fit so perfectly that the sentence would become simply unchangeable. Just perfect. 

A young Gustave Flaubert circa 1850-60

His efforts produced some of the finest novels ever written. As an artist he struggled with his words because he understood that even ordinary words contain powerful implications and textures.

And this isn’t an  “out there” idea. I think that names and words are always affecting our ordinary lives. Here’s a very simple example of what I mean. I ran out of Q-Tips today. I had brought a couple of dozen with me from the States but now they were all used up.  

So I put Q-Tips on my shopping list and later in the day went off the supermarket. When I got there I realized I had no idea what the damn things were called in French.    

I asked one of the supermarket staff,” S’il vous plait. Ou est les Queue Teeeps?” She stared at me for a moment with that “Oh, Monsieur is a moron from space” look in her eyes and shrugged. 

Left alone I began to think to myself, “If I were a French Q-Tip what would I be called?”

English creeping into France

Having no good answer to this deep question, I simply began a methodical aisle by aisle search of the store. Starting in first aid products working my way through shampoos, air fresheners, soaps, toothpaste, skin crèmes and finally makeup. Nothing. I moved on to tissues and paper supplies and was about to give up when there on a bottom shelf, half hidden by bags of cotton pads, I saw a familiar blue packages. There were the Q-Tips or as the package called them in French “bâtonettes ouatés.”

“Bâtonettes ouatés” translates as “little sticks of cotton wool.” Now that’s a lovely name for Q-Tips. Bâtonettes! That works for me because Q-Tips absolutely look like drum majorette batons, scaled down for mice.

And this was a very Flaubert moment because it points out how French differs from English in subtle ways.  

Look at “Q-Tips,” it is a very sterile name, very impersonal and industrial. Do we even know what the Q stand for? Bâtonettes ouatés on the other hand is descriptive of what the item is and has a sweetness to it.

There are other examples. In America we drive cars. Drive has a pushy sound to it like driving a herd of cattle over the edge of a cliff. In France one “conduire le voiture” or conducts the car. You escorting the car get to a place, much gentler than driving. 

Give way

 At traffic roundabouts signs here say “cedez le passage” which means “give way” as opposed to the American “Yield!” The French are struggling as English slips into their language. When new things come along they try to create new French words that retain a descriptive quality, a French identity. 

For instance, since email means enamel in French they’ve taken the words for electronic mail--courrier electronique—and shortened them to courriele. A word with rolling Rs that’s not quite as corporate and hard as email. I like this softness in the language as much as I like the way the French find workarounds to get along. 

More english in France

Flaubert wanted to write realistic novels devoid of the flowery language and “higher emotions” of the literature of his day. In his search for the bon mot he created works that soar with emotive power and that shaped the French language forever.

I’d like to think that not so long age someone who had read and loved Flaubert had been the one to give Q-Tips a French name of bon mots like bâtonettes ouatés.

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer