This is what we’ve come to expect about EVERYTHING in France!
Because there’s no shortcut, no easy path, no road map, no playbook! Just sink – or swim!
I heard a new term this week – “Cultural Fatigue.” Makes sense to me! When every interaction is accompanied by a sense of “Do I know the right words? Do they understand me? Will it work?,” and being on high alert 100% of the time, it makes you emotionally and physically exhausted!
This is us – every evening!
Vagabond Journey says the continuous course corrections of switching cultures wear you out. “They make you lose your bearings in a place, and it takes energy to find them again. You cannot travel on auto-pilot, you can never just ” act” … you must think first then act, always. Being challenged in what would be the simplest of interactions at home … wears you out. Facing the same challenges day after day creates fatigue.”
After our Visas expired in January (because apparently three months wasn’t enough time for them to do the paperwork we had submitted), and our EXTENDED Visas were issued (and even a French boss from work had to get involved because the French bureaucracy couldn’t get it together), we FINALLY received our Titre de Sejours (long-term foreign residents permits) yesterday – so we can officially travel in and out of France until October 2020. And we were LUCKY! Our permits were randomly issued for three years…several other expats’ permits were granted for only one year and they have to renew it every single year. Same rigamarole. 600 euros later (expatriation isn’t cheap!) and one more thing checked off of our list…
Next on the list….
Speaking of parler le français – it’s coming along…
You try saying that three times very quickly!
All that being said….who gets to do this?
View just around the corner from usView from our terrace
We had a lovely winter day trip with Gilles and Lucienne to Vichy, a beautiful small city not far from us, population ~28,000, that is synonymous with Belle Epoch architecture, thermal healing waters, Napoleon III, 1900’s decadence, and the unoccupied southern French government that colluded with the Nazis in WWII.*
This blog doesn’t intend to cover all of this territory – so if you want the full version, you probably ought to Google it. I’m focusing on the famous Vichy thermal waters (Part One) and the gorgeous architecture of the Belle Epoch (Part Two).
PART ONE – The Waters
This is an important scene at the end of Casablanca ~ Louis realizes that the right thing to do is to join Rick and fight against the Vichy French government that is aligned with the Nazis. He pours himself a glass of water, realizes it’s “Vichy” water, and tosses the bottle into the trash can and kicks it away. I never noticed the significance of this before!
A LITTLE BACKGROUND – Vichy is the Queen of spa towns and was a favorite of Napoleon III during the ‘belle époque.’ It’s a gorgeous small city with fabulous parks and magnificent old houses. Think Savannah, Georgia – but centuries older and even prettier!
Vichy continues to be famous for the quality of the water and has numerous spa facilities for pampering and for medical treatments – with the medical treatments being government subsidized, by the way. YES! Your doctor can prescribe that you need to go to a spa, maybe for WEEKS, and the government will pay for it! (Back to those VERY HIGH TAXES and all that ‘free stuff!’ Oh, my back hurts now. Maybe I can get a prescription to go for a Vichy spa weekend….I’ll have to work on that! Haha!)
There were originally 12 Vichy natural springs, of which six remain available at the Halls des Sources, with the others having been closed or lost. Most of the springs are naturally warm and contain remarkable amounts of bicarbonate of sodium. The water has high concentrations of alkaline salts, magnesium carbonates, and calcium (AND a definite odor of sulfur!). The Vichy waters are believed to help cure digestive disorders, dermatitis, gout, and arthritis. At the spas and the Halls des Sources, you can drink it from fountains, sit in it in whirlpools, and swim in it in beautiful pools.
Drinking fountains from the Halls des Sources todayand yesterday…
And it’s OLD! The Romans knew about and used the Vichy hot springs in previous centuries. The Celestine Monks (as in Celestine water) established a monastery here in 1410. Napoleon I’s mother – which would be Nap III’s great-grandmother? – came to the Vichy springs in 1799, and Napoleon I commissioned the Parc des Sources to be built in 1812. So although the city is greatly indebted to Napoleon I and Napoleon III for their vast investment in infrastructure, Vichy had already been famous for hundreds of years for its ‘healing waters.’
Vichy Grand Spa HallEven the fine details are hydro-focused!
And there are differences in the water from the separate springs — some are available to you and me, as tourists, and some are only accessible if you have the doctor’s prescription! Complete discrimination, if you ask me.
And for you North American hydrophiles? The Vichy bottled water you can buy from Quicktrip when you get your gas is indeed actually from Vichy!
Fun Fact A young Coco Chanel worked at Vichy as a spa attendant handing people towels. It was here that she met the man that would finance her clothing and hat venture and began the enduring fashion house of Chanel.
This hotel has a skywalk over to the spas – don’t get wet unless its with VICHY water!Tanner and Gilles check out the spaElegant, bright, and très chère!
Next time, Part Deux and the drop-dead beautiful architecture!
PS – I cannot write about Vichy, however, and ignore the fact that 75,000 Jewish PEOPLE disappeared in France during WWII, with the French Vichy government either looking away or participating. SEVENTY FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE from this city – poof, evaporated. Hard to even mentally grasp and being here makes it all the more real. For as beautiful as the city is, there is also a dark permanent stain of the evil that was here.
Six of us took the Flix Bus to Lyon for a ‘girls’ day out’ of culture, couture, gastronomy, and a “whole ‘lotta walking.” The Google Maps route said our planned route was a 10 km walk, but since we got a little mixed up [on multiple occasions], I’m SURE it was more than 10 km!
Where ARE we???
Lyon is lovely, even in February. The weather cooperated; we were fortunate and didn’t have to break out the umbrellas once. And bus transportation was the way to go! For about $20 USD roundtrip, you had big roomy seats for a 2 1/2 hour drive each way, plush interior, WIFI, and a plug for cell phone charging. Heaven forbid we get disconnected at any time, you know!
The Festival du Court Métrage is the biggest international film festival dedicated to short films. It is held in February every year in Clermont-Ferrand, and is the second largest film festival after Cannes, in terms of audience and professional attendance. You’ve probably heard of the Cannes film festival, very famous for the artistically enlightened and ‘beautiful people.’ The main difference between the two is that the Festival du Court Métrage in Clermont is open to the public, and Cannes’ festival is by invitation only. (That makes ours better, of course!)
For the 40th anniversary of the festival this week, over 100,000 attendees and 3,500 industry professionals descended on Clermont Ferrand to view, show, or judge international short films, with this year’s highlighted country being Switzerland. Continue reading “Festival du Court Métrage and La Grande Station Jaude 2028”
Bonjour, mes amies ~ let’s leave the city for a bit and talk about medieval castles of strength and grandeur today!
At 3,400 feet above sea level, the Château de Murol is a fantastic journey into a medieval life. We went on Christmas Eve and, being the only people in sight for miles around, the entire castle was our playground. And what a playground it is!
FIELD TRIP!
and
The 
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