France: Day 2

I was channel surfing this morning while getting ready and one of the news stories was coverage of a strike day in Paris hospitals. We'll see how much the French/Striking stereotype holds up over time but let's just consider that I'm on day 2 at this point, folks.

Anyway, on to Another Goose Chase!

Ok, there is a certain very fixed order of operations for some things in France. If you mix up that order or forget a step, prepare yourself for pain.

Today's mission was to book apartment viewings. To view the apartments we needed to make phone contact. To make phone contact we needed a phone that worked since everyone has cells and there are very few public phones. Even our vacation rental apartment does not have a telephone. So we needed a phone. So step 1, after breakfast, was to zip to Orange to get a SIM card for our phone to make phone calls to book apartments. Simple, yes?

Ha!

Ha ha ha ha!

We, in our jet-lagged and culture-shocked state, went in asking for a SIM card for our phone. When the employee asked if we meant we were looking for a plan, we foolishly said yes. This was foolish because what we really wanted was a pre-paid SIM card. We didn't want a phone plan yet. Here's why...

- To get a plan, you need a bank account.

- To get a bank account, you need 2 proofs of residence.

- To get two proofs of residence, you need a permanent apartment. Permanent as in some place for which you pay at least the insurance bill. (Renter's insurance is mandatory, by the way.) Merely a signed lease and an insurance bill will suffice.

But where we hiccuped on this was...
- To get those bills, we needed to have an apartment.

- To find that apartment, we needed to schedule some viewings.

- To schedule those viewings, WE NEEDED ACCESS TO A PHONE AND EMAIL!!!

Are you still with me?

We also figured out these steps by walking literal steps from Orange, to the Visitor's Centre, to a bank which was supposed to be open but wasn't, back to the Visitor's Centre for maps (no phone/internet, remember?) and again to another bank.

The really irritating part of this is that I KNEW this! I'd researched and read about this! But I'd forgotten until after about an hour and a half into our pavement-pounding... probably because I was exhausted and it took that long to finish waking up instead of just following along through the streets of Aix in a semi-zombie-like coma.

We took a break from the phone mission to drive back to the airport to switch cars, ate lunch, regrouped, then went back out in search of a pre-paid phone card.

By the by, this Burger King was the very first storefront I saw in France.
And yes, that is corn in with the tomato slice and lettuce salad.

We eventually got the precious SIM card at the first Orange we'd visited so we could book some viewings in order to not be on the streets at the end of June.

Learn from our mistakes: unless you have a permanent place to live IN FRANCE and a bank account IN FRANCE, ask for a pre-paid SIM card. A vacation apartment or "location saisonnière" doesn't count. And give the coffee time to kick in before heading out.

... I think the back of my neck is sunburned.

All-in-all, the day got better. Things got sorted and what needed doing got done. A good supper and a half-bottle of wine can cure a multitude of complaints.

And blister band-aids are a wonderful, wonderful thing.

It's Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day! 

A very few links of Canadian hilariousness to brighten your day - song, speech, and story.

Don't TL/DR that last link. Take the time to read. It's such a funny tale.

Canada is awesome.  I'll think of you today as I enjoy my wine and cheese.

France, Day 1

After surviving a harrowing drive into town and a bit of a goose chase in trying to make contact with our landlord to get into our apartment since we had no phone or internet to reach him, we eventually managed to get in, drop our stuff, and get out to look around.

Language lesson – French:

In response to saying merci (thank you) people will respond, in no particular order, with one of the following:

• Je vous en prie. (Literally: I pray of you or I beg of you. I don't get it either... yet.)
• Ce n'est pas de quoi (More or less means “It's nothing.”)
• C'n'est pas (an abbreviated version of the previous phrase.)
• De rien (“It's nothing” or “no problem” it's a more casual version of the previous two.)

What you will NOT hear in response to merci is “bienvenue” which directly translated means welcome. I had occasion to chat with a local and that came up. He seemed to find it a rather funny and odd idea to answer merci with bienvenue.

While I would love to regale you with tales of sumptuous multi-course menus from chic french bistros, we were exhausted, famished, and the littles were fussy so we frequented the Monoprix around the block instead. It's sort of a Loblaws type store with groceries and some home goods as well as clothing, make up, and accessories. There, we studied the aisles to scavenge for supper and scout out future eat-in meals. Easing in to our new environs, we went home with a carton of gaspacho, ham, boursin cheese, baguette, wine, vanilla yogurt, and peaches. Honestly, it was a perfectly lovely meal, if a lot on the safe side.

To keep us conscious until a more bedtime-like hour, we went sightseeing after dinner.

France - Getting There, Part 3

As I said last time, we did make it to our apartment in the end. Here is a tour of our cozy little nest lovingly nicknamed The Shoebox:

Using the 12” floor tiles as a guide, the main living area is roughly 9'6” by 10'6”. There is a decently sized closet. The hallway is 8'6” by 3' with a small kitchen area and a door to a washroom of decent size.

Tangent: This is not the first time I encounter this. What magic do these people possess that they can shower without shower curtains? What's the trick?? I don't get it!!!

Shower? Oui!
Shower Curtain/Door? Euh, quoi?

Anyway, the room is a perfectly nice, workable size for one or two adults, which we are except that we also have a toddler and a baby with us. Necessity is the mother of invention and since no other option was really going to work, check out our sleeping arrangement: set up to sleep across them. This provides us with a bed roughly the length of a double and the width of a king. After the first night, we lashed the two mattresses together with the bungee cords since my rear kept sinking between the two mats. It's a glamorous life, y'all.

We have unpacked only the few hot-weather things we brought since there is a bit difference between an average temp of 22C and variable and an average temp of 28C and sunny. The suitcases are on the floor under the bedframes.

The window doesn't have a screen. We've kept it open quite a bit to let the air flow and haven't had any flying-bug issues yet. (Real time edit: We had a bee/hornet thing in the bathroom two days ago. That's all so far.) There's an oscillating fan to help keep us cool. One of the balconies across the street has palm trees on it. The sidewalk below is cobblestoned. There are lots of trees.

All in all, I call it many things, such as: an appreciation for the house I have back home; a motivation to not procrastinate on apartment hunting; a crash course in keeping a place cleaner than I usually would; a motivation to get out and about each day; a de-conditioning from North American concepts of what is small and what is spacious. After this month, I suspect that 5 or 600 sq ft for a family of 4 will indeed feel quite sufficiently spacious!

France - Getting There, Part 2.

We picked up our rental car and drove to Aix-en-Provence. Everything is the same, but different.

We made it to our hotel/apartment in the end, but driving in France – especially in a standard vehicle with the reverse gear on the LEFT SIDE of the gears while navigating unfamiliar, ancient, narrow, twisty, winding downtown cores full of roundabouts with indistinct lanes and streets with lights of miscellaneous heights, occasionally occluded by foliage, that you stop AT instead of ACROSS THE INTERSECTION FROM – is insanely terrifying. I mean a mild, left-side-of-the-chest-pain-inducing level of terrifying. 

That last sentence is not hyperbole.

That is all.

France - Getting There, Part 1

The adventure to France begins!

We flew a 7 hour flight Ottawa to Frankfurt followed by a 2 hour hop from Frankfurt to Marseille with two littles – a 3 year old and a 7 month old. Honestly, it couldn't have gone better; they both fell asleep during the beginning of takeoff! Sure, there was some wakefulness mid-flight but nothing some kids' shows and baby bouncing couldn't handle, then they both drifted off again before landing. Heavenly.

Some observations:
It would appear that when you're going to Europe, Air Canada actually feeds you! There was a green bean and cabbage salad, chicken and rice for hubby and pasta with smoky, cheesy tomato sauce and for me, a bread roll, a slice of chocolate cake and – get this – complimentary wine! Two individual bottles each. Talk about a dramatic difference from domestic travel, my goodness.

After dinner, I cuddled up with the complimentary blanket and pillow and watched tv with the complimentary earbuds.

Also, the recent remake of Annie deserves to be watched with a much better sound system than that provided by complimentary earbuds.

Hubs and I each got an hour or two of sleep.

We landed in Frankfurt airport - which we were warned would be crazy -  around 7am local time.

It was crazy, but in a very organized way. We somehow got through customs, security again, and to our gate in time to change into fresh clothes (to give ourselves the illusion of starting a new day, psychology and all) before boarding a bus across the tarmac to our plane.

As if the language barrier wasn't enough, we got our first indications that we weren't in Canada anymore. Near our gate, we passed a glassed-in smoking room (with excellent seals/ventilation/whatnot, I must say) and a coffee shop serving coffees with the option of alcoholic add-ins (coffee and brandy anyone?) or bottles of beer along with assorted pastries.

On the Lufthansa airplane, I was surprised to be handed a small red thing with the friendly comment of “I'm sure you know how to use this” and the stewardess seemed equally surprised to find that I had no idea what she was talking about and that I'd never encountered any such thing flying in Canada! It was a small child's seat belt that attached to my seat belt.

Obviously not my photo. Borrowed from a web search.
No copyright infringement intended,

We were also provided with differently designed life vests for the wee ones in advance (just in case) along with a diaper and a jar of apple baby food for the li'l Velociraptor, as well as some chocolate and Haribo gummies for the li'l Monkey to chew on during takeoff and landing.

Label and ingredients roughly translate at follows:
Milk Pudding - Semolina [and] Fruits
No Added Sugar
After 4 months
Ingredients: Milk Preparation (Milk 35%, Water, Corn Oil),
Fruits (Low-acid Apple Juice from Concentrate, Pear Juice
from Concentrate, Apples, Pears), Wheat Semolina 5%, Rice
Starch, Wholegrain Cereals (1%) (?) (Wheat, Spelt, Oats),
Calcium Carbonate, Vitamin B1, Vitamin A, Vitamin D.
Note: Gluten

Once in the air, we grown-ups were also provided with something to nosh. I had a half sandwich of turkey salami and some sort of quark-remoulade spread which was new to me but tasty - like something between mayo and cream cheese with spices and chopped bell pepper. Hubby had a prepackaged bowl of muesli. Beverages offered included the option of wine. We both had coffee. It was delicious.

Today's language lesson: German.

Erd = earth

Nuss = nut

Beere = berry

Erdnuss = ground/earth nut = peanut (bad)

Erdbeere = ground berry = strawberry! (yum!)

I was also quite proud of myself for riddling out the meaning of a few words, such as sonnenblumenkerne. Any guesses?

Hint: German has a lot of compound words.

We landed in Marseille around 10am local time. 4am to us. Thank goodness for coffee, copious sunlight, and naps!

Goodbye Canada - Our last meal(s)

In no particular order, our final meals in the Great White North included a poutine, a Harvey's bacon poutine, lots of pizza, a cheeseburger, a “Christmas on a bun” sandwich (cranberries and turkey are North American, after all) and some wines.

We shared a glass of Ontario's Bodacious white wine, which for a sweeter Riesling/Gewurztraminer/German wine type like me is really a very nice sip, period. The single digit price point is a bonus. (The Bodacious red is good too, but we didn't have any that night.)

Next up was a bottle of Niagara's fine Kittling Ridge Premium Vidal Icewine (2011) which I will preface by mentioning that my palate and nose are completely untrained in wine-tasting before saying that it smelled like apple juice and latex paint but tasted much better than it smelled.

Very sweet and syrupy, a little went a long way. In the end we drank it on ice. I wonder if it would have been much different if we'd let it breathe longer. It went well with strawberries. Personally, I found the Bodacious easier to drink. No, I was not hungover the next day.

Thank goodness!