Le Sud de France 6.0: And then the Indian Cried.

Maurice, a driver of long haul, refrigerator trucks, was sitting across from me at dinner when he began to tap his fork against his wine glass to get everyone’s attention. Standing up he announced, “Yesterday was my last day of work. As of today I am retired.”

Amidst smiles and laughter, all of us around the long, outdoor table raised our glasses and said, “à votre santé!” When he sat down, I leaned over and asked him, “Maurice, what are you going to do now that you are retired?”

He looked at me, grinned, and said, “Make love.”

My jaw dropped and he looked at me quizzically. Pointing to his crotch he added, “Well, why not, it still works?” Then he hugged his wife who smiled shyly.

Welcome to the South of France, to the Looking Glass world, where, as the comedy group, the Firesign Theater, used to say, “everything you think you know is wrong.”

Retirement for Americans is all about moving from one area of accomplishment and competition to another. Things like playing golf, visiting the grandkids, building a second home or travel become the new goals. Making love? Not so much.

a happy guy

Yet, this is what is at the heart of our experience of moving to France. We are learning to see the world anew and we are discovering that it is possible to be happy.

Happy. What a strange word that is? We didn’t move here to be happy. As adults, we had more rational reasons; things like the cost of living, the quality of the food and the temperate climate. How could we have even told friends and family that we were leaving the United States to be "happy" when we ourselves were unaware of what "happy" is.

Sitting under the evening Midi sky, the breezes from the Med rapidly cooling off the day’s heat, sipping wine and listening to Maurice tell jokes about Andorra and Belgium--that I only half understood--for this small moment all the frustrations and trials of moving and resettling didn’t matter. I was just happy.

Proust wrote « N’allez pas trop vite. » (“don’t go too fast.”) What I think he meant, was that we need to take pleasure in our lives in the moment and not to go so fast to the next thing, that we end up not actually living our lives. That is what we’ve begun to do here. We’ve slowed down and are tasting happy.

Ironically though, in Proustian terms, we've done it, in part, by falling in with a very fast crowd.

in the Looking Glass World

I’m talking about bikers, “Les Motos d’Espoir” or Motorcycles for Hope. An association of motorcycle riders who raise money for kids with special needs. In June, they had a big gathering and some friends invited us to join them there.

Arriving at the rally we once again stepped through the Looking Glass. Suddenly, it was as though we were back in the US of A. 
There were American and Confederate flags all over, bandana wearing bikers in Harley-Davidson jackets and tunes like “Oh Diana” and “Folsom Prison Blues” booming over the sound system.

However, we were still in France, the bikers here drank tea and espresso, and had brought along their extremely cute kids--the girls dressed in frilly sundresses, the boys in half shorts--who ran around the grounds laughing and giggling. A very sweet version of biker life.

There was a distinct lack of big beer bellies  and, oddly enough, a lack of actual “chopped’ Harleys. “They are too expensive and too noisy for France,” one biker told me.

Motorcycles clubs are an hommage to American culture rather than an anti-establishment movement. This is a lifestyle of “l’amité” centered around a deep love for all things American. Whenever I hear a French person sing an old Elvis song or a long forgotten Broadway show tune, it makes me think that the French may cherish American culture more we Americans do.

Towards late afternoon, several motorcyclists lined up to give spectators rides around the village on their bikes. One of the kids who they were raising funds for was lifted up onto the back seat of a big three wheeler. It was driven by a guy with long hair, lots of tattoos and a German WWII style helmet. When the boy was secure on the bike, the guy turned around and gave him a big "high five". The boy "high five'd" back and I was quick enough to get a photo of the two of them smiling at the gesture.

Now let me fast-forward ahead about two weeks. I’m sitting at our village café with some of the Motos when who drives up but the longhaired guy. Except today he is in full American Indian regalia. We are introduced to each other and start to talk.

l'indien

His name is Jerry but everyone calls him, “l’indien” --the Indian--a nickname he got because he had lived for six years in a teepee, high in the Ardèche mountains, raising horses and living simply off the land like a North American Plains Indian. French TV did a documentary about l’indien and it made him famous, but it didn’t change him. He still wears his handmade Indian clothing; Cheyenne necklaces and bracelets, a loose deer skin leather shirt and a bison horned, fur covered motorcycle helmet.

It is the Looking Glass world again.

Here I am in a tiny French village, wearing my black cowboy hat and drinking Marseilles pastis with a guy --from Belgium--dressed like a Cheyenne Indian, surrounded by leather jacketed motorcyclists. It is a surreal moment, like something out of a Fellini movie or perhaps, an acid trip, yet the whole scene is infused with that odd glow of “happy.”

We live close to the café and after awhile, I excused myself and went home to get an 8x10 print I had made of the “high five” moment. Returning to the café I gave it to l’indien. ‘Pour vous. Avec plaisir” I said. He smiled, and looked at the print of himself and the little boy.

I turned away for a moment and when I looked back, I saw him wiping his eyes. My photo had touched his big heart. The Indian had cried and then, I cried too.

Happy tears I think.

Happy tears.






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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!  

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….

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 3.1: Operation Escargot

Today is the big national strike against Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to “reform” France’s retirement laws. What is most striking about the strike is that it illustrates just how different the French are from Americans.

The backbone of the strike, which in French is called a “grève,” is made up of the teamster unions who through a deliberate slowdown called “Opération escargot” they’ve disrupted gasoline supplies around the country. Their activities focused too on closing refineries and blocking jet fuel to the nation’s airports. It’s caused the cancellation of 30-50% of the Air France’s flights. Gasoline for autos has been less hard hit, so far, because France is dipping into its national reserves to make up for the shortages. Here in the Herault some stations have signs up saying that they are out of gasoline. 

Rupture means broken up or simply 'no gas.'

But here’s what points out the difference between our two countries. The truck drivers aren’t affected by the reforms. They can retire at 55 because of a special law exempting them from the retirement rules. They have no ‘skin in the game.’ They could sit out this one out.

So why are they participating? One simple answer is that the French have grèves the way Americans have tailgate parties; there’s usually one every couple of weeks. It’s in their blood and the unions support each other. That’s called solidarity. Also France has the lowest poverty rate in the EU, (12%) and there is concern that the “reform” will impoverish some people. The strikers seem to have the idea that it a nation’s responsibility to take care of its people and help keep them out of poverty. Something unheard of in the US or at least that hasn’t been heard since LBJ’s “War on Poverty.” 

But there’s yet another reason for the strikes that should sound awfully familiar to Americans and doesn’t get much play in the foreign media. There’s a tax, like our estate tax, that affects only the very wealthiest in France. Sarkozy wants to eliminate it even though it brings in billions of Euros each year. Ending it means that Sarko needs to cut government spending to keep the deficit under control. And what sort of cuts do you think he’s come up with? He’s “reforming” the retirement system to make up for the lost revenue from taxes on the rich.

Agree or disagree with the need for reform at least the French aren’t taking this kind of chicanery sitting down. They’ve kept the issue alive and personal by mobilizing the nation. Over 71% of the people support the strikes despite the gas lines and shortages. 

The graffiti reads, "When the state violates your rights, insurrection is your sacred right."

Here in France they still believe that you have go out into the streets and fight for your rights. We used to do that in the USA but it’s a lesson we seem to have forgotten.

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer

Sud de France 2.3: En attendant les Américains

Summer faded into fall and fall was nipping at winter’s nose as we waited at the Cafe des Vente for the Americans. They had left Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at 7:30 AM and by any reckoning should be in the l’Herault seven hours later or by about 3:30PM.

It was now 6:30PM.

But let’s rewind for a moment to get the whole story. Our landlord had rented a village house to an American couple. Then she suddenly had to go up to the U.K. on business and could not meet these folks as planned. This put her in a bind. Then she put two and two together and came up with us. Since we speak English and are American too, she asked us to help and being nice people or just foolish we agreed.

Having just arrived in France ourselves we had yet to get French mobile phones we ended up dealing with the Americans via email. So far so good.

It was a setting out to be a stormy, windy day across France when this we got a buoyant email early in the morning.

“We’ve arrived. It is 7:30 AM and we are leaving Charles de Gaulle.” By leaving they meant getting into their rental car and driving from Paris to the Herault a trip of roughly 300 miles. Now this is pure American. In a country with a TGV that gets you that distance in three hours or where $27 gets you a Ryan air flight to here in 90 minutes, choosing to drive for about seven hours after a ten hour flight through six time zones and paying about $140 between gas and tolls was, well, very American. But look we are still red, white and blue (it’s only been four days in France) so our attitude was “you want to drive-okay drive.”

The folks at the online Michelin site say the drive at legal speeds takes seven hours. So leave Charles de Gaulle (CDG) at 8 AM add seven hours of driving and you get here at 3 PM.

Okay, the plan then is to get to the bar at 2:30, drink some coffee and be the happy “Bienvenue et Aloha y’all” greeters.

We get to des Vente, order our coffee and wait under an awning protected from the afternoon rain.

3 PM and the rain subsides, but no Americans.

4 PM the sky clears and it gets a bit colder. Still no Americans.

5 PM and still no Americans.

Let me digress about one of the lovely things about France. For $3, we got two espressos and the right to sit in the café for the rest of our natural lives. The waiters don’t make funny eyes at you or wipe your table every two minutes or ask if your coffee is cold.

The space is yours.

Finally at 6:30 we write a note and ask the bartender to pass it on to any bleary eyed and lost Americans who appear at his door. The note said simply: “eMail or Skype when you arrive.”

Ten we got  home, started dinner and just as we are to sit down to eat--at about 7:30--guess what?

That familiar voice whispered through the evening silence and said “You have mail”

An email from THEM, “Hi, we are at des Vente. Having a drink, see you when you get here. Take your time”

Okay, let me be honest here. This was a moment when I was ready to throw my fellow countrymen under the bus. After waiting around without a word or email at the bar for four hours, I had been all ready to settle into a quiet evening, watch the sunset over the pool and have a nice cold Vodka tonic and bore myself to death with British TV.

Okay we are new here in France. Recently gone from the US of A and I certainly don’t want to disparage my fellow countrymen. But people this was not cool. These were the Weakest Link.

But we did our duty as we had sworn to and went back to town and escorted them to their new digs. After a few ‘bye-byes’ and ‘we’ll see you soons’ we drove off.

And I had to wonder where had they been for those extra four hours?

I was annoyed and then annoyance turned to fear.

Just yesterday I had read that the U.S. State Department had issued a terrorist warning for Europe. It said that the Ben Laden Traveling Circus was up to something and everyone should be extra cautious.

Could these seemingly ordinary Americans actually have been secret agents? Or worse, part of a sleeper cell?

And is that what they did? Did they stop on the road to sleep?

Oh my god!!!

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer