tofranceandback.com

C’est Fini!

After 2 years, 9 months and 4 days, we are finally getting to the “AND BACK” part of the #tofranceandback blog…I opened the windows to the fresh air (no screens) this morning on our fifth floor apartment, heard the church bells ringing the time, the city sounds, the movement and energy below, and thought…this is special. And change is coming!

The bureaucracy of repatriating is almost as excruciating as the expatriating.  No visa issues, thankfully, because we are American citizens returning home.  But the litany of issues is complex and a full-time occupation for a while!  And the COVID-19 doesn’t help matters.

I did find a wonderful old tiled kitchen table yesterday that we’re going to try hauling to the apartment in the rental car on Saturday to use as a sewing table in our new house – one last treasure!

In my current mood of reflection, I think that France is a complex, beautiful country that has some of the most gorgeous terrain in the world that is packed into the size of two Colorados – majestic Alps, deep gorges, miles of coast, rolling hills, oceans, broad vistas, big cities, and provincial villages.  There are historical sites from antiquity throughout the ages at every turn, sidewalk cafes, long sacred lunches, mass transportation readily available, bakeries with fresh bread every day, farm fresh produce readily available, and a sense of decorum and protocol.

Now, it’s also maddeningly slow, bureaucratic, abrupt, argumentative, narrowly-focused, difficult, antiquated, has no customer service and a complexity that is completely self-induced…as you know from my emails to you!

In a sweeping generalization, the French marvel at Americans’ ability to ‘get it done,’ chafe at our ‘get to the point’ manner (notwithstanding point #1), and they all think Los Angeles is the dream USA destination.  SAY WHAT?  Yes, it’s true – too much tv myth!  We are, indeed, cowboys.

We have loved our French life overall (well…sometimes it’s love/hate – haha), and change is hard.  We were just getting so comfortable with our language skills, our cultural adaptation, the rhythm and flow.  Et voila! Time to say à bientôt!  So many new relationships and friends…the goodbyes have been bittersweet.

So then, I’m off to finish dismantling our current life and prepare to jet into a new one at 204 Allegheny Run, Simpsonville, SC 29681.  We’ve come a long way, baby – from Paris to Simpsonville.  I hear that shoes are optional there.  🙂

What we’re looking forward to is understanding everything that everyone says (no matter how quickly they speak), speed limits that don’t change every half mile, Mexican food, and, most of all, seeing YOU! 

Our most recent hike to the cascades de Vaucoux

See you on the other side, after quarantine~

Bisous,

Mindy

Simple statement, but some days, it just hits me in the face.

This morning I opened the French doors in our hotel room in the city of Le Puy en Velay, and saw the men at the cafe across the street drinking their expresso, smoking their cigarettes, reading Le Monde on quintessentially French cane chairs…listening to the delivery trucks bringing fresh produce from the nearby farms to the small restaurants…reading the French signs of directions to the 14th century Cathedrale down the street…et voilà! It strikes me all over again that we live in FRANCE.

In our apartment, we think English, speak English, read in English, and are Americans in our dress and mannerisms. (No matter how hard I try to ‘blend in’ with the locals, I just don’t quite look French. Maybe it’s the fair skin and freckles, you think?) I don’t eat with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other.  But when we leave town…oh yes, this is truly FRANCE and we truly LIVE HERE. After two years, it’s still hard to grasp.

Two years this month! Unbelievable! The first year was just all struggle – and heart surgeries and bureaucracy and frustration. Year two was exploration, settling in, getting comfortable, making friends. And soon it will be the beginning of year three…and we’ll be like seniors in high school. You are still in high school, but you have one foot straddling the line of ‘what’s next’ and your next future you. We have already started to think about ‘when, where, how.’

Another adjustment – and I just started to be really comfortable with this one!  And it may not be ‘year three.’  It may be ‘year two and a half….’  but maybe not! We can’t see in our crystal ball, so we’ll take it as it comes.  Every day’s a winner.

And speaking of anniversaries, very happy 4th anniversaire de mariage to Robert and Leslie! Here’s to 76 more!!!! 🙂

So I’m writing one more blog today about this city, and then I’m off to find my own cafe to découvrir la France before it slips by….

A bientôt, mes amis!

Bisous,

Mindy

Today I will hike up a volcanic spit 270 ft. high on 268 uneven, small rough-hewn stairs to get to the top of a chapel build in the year 969.  (My knees started to hurt just typing this. hahaha) Answer me this – how did “THEY” get the stones and building materials and yes, even a stained glass, up a needle-nosed mountain spike in 969?  No calculators, no CAD designs.  People were smart.

Le rocher et la Chapelle St. Michel is a fascinating chapel that still has the frescoes painted on the walls of St. Michael throwing the devil into the pit.  It is one of the beginning points of the pilgrimage journey of 1,000 miles to St. Jacques de Compostelle in Spain, the alleged burial site of the Biblical apostle St. James.  People still walk the 1,000 miles today and come to Le Puy en Velay to have their walking sticks blessed before starting.

And let’s talk about LACE!  If you watch the first two minutes of this video of three sisters, aged 75-85, you will understand the complexity of this ‘lost art.’  (Common’, watch it – click here.) Their fingers fly like a shell game! There is actually still a vocational school of lace-making in Le Puy en Velay so that the art of bobbin lace-making is not lost – and a really interesting history about the whole evolution of French lace-making on this link – click here.  It’s fascinating! Such a piece of culture and history … today I’m in search of ‘something lace’ to bring home!

And LEMON VERBENA! Who knew flowers could taste so good? Le Puy en Velay is well known internationally for producing and distilling Verveine du Velay, a liquor derived from lemon verbena grown in part by the Carmelite nuns nearby. The liquor also includes juniper berries and 30 other herbs and spices in a closely guarded secret recipe. The plants give it a distinctive beautiful green color and it is combined with Auvergne honey, sugar and cognac.

There was a small museum and teeny tiny samples were included. 🙂

The distillery in 1929 — and today, still operating across from our hotel, in 2019!

• Green (the best known, with 55% alcohol),
• Gold (a softer blend, 40%),
• Extra (with added cognac and matured for two years, 40%)
• La Petite (weaker, 18%).

Side Note – In my experiences in western Europe, history appears to be documented for what it is – not rewritten (i.e., hidden or laundered) because it was sordid or racist or inhumane. The stories – and monuments, statues, and art – tell the good, the bad, and the ugly. Statues of warriors, insurrectionists, and kings still stand as a testament of what really happened, regardless of the political intolerance and revisionist edits of today’s historians. We as a human race need to know what happened – where – and why, so that we can UNDERSTAND and OVERCOME. Rewriting our own US history distorts our understanding and prevents us from comprehending the circumstances in which events took place and just how far we’ve come or why our actions may have been necessary in context.

Ay-yi-yi, I’m getting off my soapbox now and heading outside! Ha ha, can’t help myself. 🙂

Enjoy the day!

Mindy

PS – it was a glorious day…Autumn is the ‘richest’ season of the year!

Jardin Henri Venay was perfect for a walk!

BEAUNE EST BON[Say “Bone eh Bone.”  Except swallow the hard ‘n,’ in a typical French style!] The city of Beaune is good!

The Bourgogne is an area of France that Americans call “Burgundy.” It’s about a three hour drive from Clermont-Ferrand, through the mountains and Lyon, in the east-central region of France. Not only are Burgundy wines grown and bottled there, thousands of vineyards of pinot noirs, Chardonnay, Chablis, and Beaujolais are all in this climat as well.

And the châteaux! Incredible! They are very, very beautiful, on gorgeous estates that are straight out of French postcards. And don’t forget about the extraordinary cellars: the vaulted cellar beneath Château de Meursault, where we sampled the goods, is superb and the largest in Burgundy. 

Did we sample? Oh, yeah. Nice. Although I personally prefer a hearty Bordeaux (another French wine region trip, still to be taken) or a Pouilly Fusse (a Chardonnay), the burgundy wines of the côte de Beaune are amazing!

You know, it just doesn’t make sense NOT drink the wine in France, when the glass of wine at the brasserie or cafe costs less than a glass of Coca-Cola! #nobrainer

And the VOCABULARY…we’ve been learning a whole new set of adjectives to apply to wine, in English and in French. Wine can taste like or be: jammy, graphite, diesel, fruity, smoky, astringent, pears, petroleum, green pepper, black pepper, thin, angular, zippy, austere, opulent, fleshy, buttery, fleshy, exotic, clean, granular, powerful, and chewy! CHEWY? Yes, Chewy!

And did you know there are not ONE but THREE ‘noses?’ Upon the pour, you smell the wine in the glass – before you oxygenate it – then you swirl the wine in the glass and breathe in deeply again. The third ‘nose’ is after the wine is gone – and you literally inhale the aroma again to compare against the first two noses!

Please don’t do this in your local cafe – but if you are at a tasting, it is perfectly acceptable and customary to take the first mouthful, swish the wine around your mouth, and spit into the receptacle. You may laugh, but I had to turn around and spit with my back to the group – I just couldn’t bring myself to SPIT in front of all those people!!! My mama taught me SOME Southern manners!

We also had a picture perfect lunch at an outdoor cafe, straight out of a French countryside daydream. L’ambiance, tranquil dogs lying under tables, awnings with French names of the family proprietors proudly displayed – so wonderfully shishi. And it included a new vocabulary lesson for me on what carpaccio means – which I found out after I agreed to have the ‘plat du jour’ without knowing what it was. 18 months ago I wouldn’t be caught dead having this for lunch. I should get points for being able to eat about half of it.

If you want to see the pictures of Beaune and the region Bourgogne, you can click here.

Wishing you a wonderful day,

Mindy

PS – Happy, happy birthday, Lisa! And many more, person!

*When Tanner and I were going through the craziness of preparing to move to France in July 2017, every single moving-related-person told us that FRANCE – as in, the nation – goes on vacation for the month of August. We couldn’t comprehend that.  It sounded like they had just said something in Chinese.  What?  Say that again?  And we didn’t believe it.  There’s no way that a NATION shuts down for 1/12 of a year.  Is there?

Oh yes, my dear…it’s true. Completely true.  It’s not a European universal, but VACANCE is a part of your RIGHTS in France.  CLOSE UP. SHUT DOWN.  FINI. THE END.

The Grande Vacance!  It’s technically three – or four – weeks in August – but there’s the two weeks leading up to it, which some people take, too, and others who leave early because the school holidays begin in July…  and everyone is busy getting READY for vacance, so not much work going on…a dear friend of mine even had a funeral in the family take 9 days to schedule, because it is the end of July.  Of course!   

So we are looking at a shutdown of all production from about July 10 until September…really.  I mean it.  Hard to wrap your American head around that, isn’t it?  

Even The Local media comments on it – (Click on the link here, as you wish).  “Workers in France are granted more paid holidays than anywhere else in the world, but they want more it seems. According to a new study by travel site Expedia, the French feel feel more “holiday-deprived” than any other nationality.”

The grocery stores are still open, and self-serve gas stations, and banks and large department stores, although the hours are reduced (from what we already call ‘reduced,’ a 32-hour work week.  It took me four days just to schedule a phone call with the bank – no tellers, no walk in).  After all, it’s VACANCE!  Kind of like Christmas in July.  The dry cleaner lady told me today to return for my pants at the beginning of September.  And the four hour trip to the beaches in the south of France averages about 12 hours right now – so says my friend who lived it! 

Cafes, daycares, bakeries.  Closed.  Doctors’ offices, restaurants, dry cleaners.  Gone.  I think the mail still gets delivered but I’m sure it takes an extra 10 days – on top of the three weeks it already takes…

The good news is no one is leaving a lot of work for you to catch up on – your emails aren’t piling up – you don’t have to worry about people in the office talking about you – and IF you are around, there’s plenty of parking!

As for us, next Tuesday, we’re hanging out our shingle.

Happy vacation!

Mindy