Reflections on France II Mostly written in March and April 2006
By Sandra Price
Exercise Classes
I’ve been exercising regularly for years so was glad Larry connected me with a woman named Brigitte who attended a class in the town of Sergy next door. (Sergy got its name from the Sergier family that owned it in centuries past.) The class used to be held in the Fruitiere (see story on words) but has moved to a spanking new “salle de fete” or village activity center. The class meets on Monday and Thursday mornings and there are about 20-30 women who attend. Most are younger since there is a senior class that follows it. I learned when I got a membership card in the mail that the group is part of a nationwide group of local exercise classes. The French seem to promote physical fitness.
I have two goals in the class – one is to exercise and the second is to learn some French in context. I asked instructors in the US to help me learn the words that might be used in an exercise class but none could. So I try to learn one new word each class. So far I’ve gotten most of the one word commands – drink, relax, breathe, right/left. The classes are also fun to watch since I can’t really talk to most of the people. (I have located some of the English-speakers and check with one at the end of the class to see if I missed an announcement -- like that class would be cancelled for two weeks for the schools’ winter break.) The classes at the gym do not start on time. While the teacher is getting set up, the women stand in clusters of two or three chatting. Once we get underway, the class is serious although there are breaks when the chatter level goes up. There is one man in the class who gave me an “oo-la-la” look during one of those times. Yes, people do say “oo-la-la.” In the US I often make the “I think we’ve reached a limit” comment in class but can’t here so I just listen to the complaint level rise. Brigitte, who has spent many years in Britain, pointed out that some women audibly complained when the teacher started to give attention to individuals. But everyone seems to be polite and we all say “bon jour” to each other and “au revoir” when we leave.
I have also found a spinning class at a local gym. Actually the gym is in the middle of a slightly tawdry entertainment center that has bowling and video games and a bar and a dance club and tennis and who know what else. I suspect the setting is one of several reasons it took me five months to actually try the class. I don’t like passing through a smokers’ zone going up to class, but at least no one smokes in the gym Spinning or power pacing, if you don’t know about it, is a biking class. The bikes have knobs that the riders turn to increase or decrease the tension. I’ve done spinning at our YMCA in La Grange since they introduced it maybe six or seven years ago so I’ve had lots of instructors. But not French instructors. They are in charge and you will do what they say at the speed they set or they will call attention to your faults. In one class the instructor told us all to sit after we’d been pedaling standing up. One man said “no” and kept standing. The instructor took his water bottle and squirted the man, who sat down. They may be good friends or something, but I was astonished and in the line of fire. I noticed the next time the man was in my class he came late and sat at the far end of the room. I don’t think that any instructor would react that way at my Y. People in my old classes are always doing their own thing. The mantra is “It’s your ride.” I must be a challenge for the French instructors because I have that attitude and I have an ankle I injured and don’t stand up for most of the class. So far they’ve tolerated my behavior when I point to my ankle or mutter something about a “mauvaise cheville.” That’s one word I made a point to learn. I gather that exercise instructors in France have rigorous training to get licensed so they do have some authority.
The most recent instructor was kind enough to give me some cues in English. I had spoken to him earlier when I was getting a schedule of classes so he knew I was an English-speaker. But he pointed out to me that I did not need to do warm-up stretches because the muscles were tight. I told him that I was used to doing that because it’s part of the practice in the US (although research shows that pre-stretching is not necessary) and that I do very gentle stretches. I guess I’ll stop doing them, but habits are hard to break. I also don’t think they do enough stretching at the end, just hamstrings and quads.
I would like to point out that in terms of the music for exercising, English songs make up for somewhere from a quarter to a third of the music in all my classes. Yesterday I exercised to “If you go to San Francisco” and “Sweet Dreams.” I remember taking an exercise class at the Dole Library in Oak Park in the early 80’s and the music was “Sweet Dreams.” Did you ever listen to the lyrics? I remember thinking then that it was no wonder kids were depressed with music like that. The local English station here, which does carry BBC news, also plays the most depressing pop music. I think I’ve just found the classical music station. Whew. I have deep longings for NPR on my radio. (Note – NPR is going to be on in Berlin. It was a news item in the International Herald Tribune. Imagine - Car Guys on the Autobahn!)
At one class at Sergy I met a French woman names Claude. She has spent most of her life in Nigeria and was eager to speak English with me. We discussed the flap about our new location. The village wants to increase the rent ten-fold and can’t get someone to clean for our class on Monday morning. The hall is often rented over the week-end. I told her it sounded familiar – governments build things and don’t plan for the maintenance. I also told her that a number of other American wives has gotten together to share our experiences. She said “That’s just like Americans, always organizing. French people are so individualistic that they can’t do something like that.” I guess I thought that Americans are individualistic but she has a point.
AWOJ (American Women of the Jura)
The name of the group which now has 10 members is AWOJ – American Women of the Jura although we are not geographically exclusive. All of our husbands are working on experiments that will turn on when CERN completes the LHC or Large Hadron Collider. We meet at each other’s homes every three or four weeks. Mostly we share experiences – here’s where to get a list of doctors who speak English, the best local maps are the blue ones, the best bakery/patisserie is Broccard’s or Paul’s, etc. Larry’s experiment has hired a person to help new arrivals to relocate. We put together 13 unedited pages of things we wished we’d known before we came. The list is available on request. We’ve also taken a hike and visited the pit where Larry’s experiment is being constructed. We may take some day trips when the weather gets better. It’s been helpful and fun to get together. It has also been interesting to see the options for living in the area, all the way from an apartment in a city to “Heidi House” quite a way up the Jura. It makes me content that we chose Thoiry.
Word stuff.
On Fridays I buy the Gessien, a weekly newspaper for the Pays de Gex where we live. My favorite section is the “Fait Divers” or the police blotter albeit the short reports are from all over the “county.” One of my early victories was deciphering a story about a man from the next town who nearly hit a boar with his car. The closing line was “And the boar runs still.” This week, March 3rd, there was another boar story from farther north. The car had to be hauled away and the closing line was “As for the boar, boar was killed by the hunters.” Ellen and I wondered which restaurant would be able to feature boar which is now out of season. (Later note. There was an article on the impact of avian flu on the hunting season which might get cancelled. One hunter mentioned that hunters had killed 500 boars in the Departement of Ain where we live. 500!)
I mentioned “faux amis” or “false friends” before. They are words that I know in English but don’t mean the same thing in French, mostly. For example, there was another story in the paper about avian flu with a headline that began with “La grippe avian fait son apparition.” “Flu makes an apparition”? Doesn’t make sense. But "appartition" means "appearance" except, of course, when, in the context of "fantome," it means "apparition." The rest of the headline ended with “certainement.” I looked up "certainement." It actually means "probably" as in "Did the dead ducks have avian flu? Probably" except when the word is used with "bien sur" it means "certainly." A third story told of the plans of the Sergy town leaders to not renew the lease of a local restaurant and to put in a shopping strip with a café and post office and bakery in the space where the restaurant and what was a fruitiere now stand. Fruitiere with an accent grave means, according to one dictionary, a woman who sells fruits and vegetables. But I checked the word out in the Petit Larousse dictionary, which is not petite, and found that in Switzerland (and presumably here) it means a place to make cheese, as in the Auberge de la Fruitiere, a restaurant in nearby Peron which is situated in what used to be a cheese-making place.
There was a fait diver about people rupturing the gas line as they put up a blind or awning on their balcony. The word for blind or awning is “store.” I'm beginning to think that Japanese with its 27 ways to say "I'm sorry" might be easier. Not really but there certainly are fine distinctions to be made especially when my brain goes into hyperdrive (“I know that word!!!!”) in the midst of a section and stops paying attention to the words that follow. Some
On the other hand, I’m pretty good at context. Larry showed me tonight a website he heard about at rfi.fr that has French lessons. It has a section where people read the news and most of the news is also printed so you can read along. I think I need to do that daily. There are also selections one can listen to and then answer quiz questions. We listened to one which featured an actor reading a speech made by Victor Hugo in 1848 on the death penalty. I understood virtually none of the speech, not quite getting the meaning of “peine du mort” even, but got all of the answers correct, in part because the second question answered the first and because the questions weren’t about the words of the speech but tone and setting. That’s how I’m getting by with plumbers and store clerks, too. Keeps one attentive to the situation.
Travels
We have taken advantage of our location to visit places of interest. We started in the fall with a visit to Preissy, a town nearby in Switzerland on the other side of CERN. Each fall the six wineries in the town have an open house. Ellen, Larry and I went. We each got a wine glass for 6 Swiss francs and traveled from winery to winery, tasting something from each. There was a pot if you did not want to swallow the wine. Each winery also had food for sale. It was delightful – people walking along the road, children running around, dogs wandering about – on a beautiful autumn day. Larry found a local wine he likes which we serve and he calls “cote de CERN.”
Matt and Jeff came for Christmas. After they got over jetlag, we drove out to Chamonix for an afternoon. The setting is breathtaking but what I remember most is the icy sidewalks. I walked very carefully.
Then we drove to the south of France. We had promised them someplace warm but I changed my mind when I realized that would mean going somewhere where people don’t speak French. That might send my French learning back. So we went to a warmer place – Provence. It was not a lot warmer but we had a great time. Pictures are available at www.lsprice.net. We centered ourselves in Avignon and wandered about the town some to see the Winter Market set up in the town square. For day trips, we drove to Pont du Gard, the 2000 year old segment of a Roman aqueduct that graced the cover of my World History book back when I taught it. I wished I’d seen the aqueduct before I used the text. It is amazing, rising high over the Gard River, looking like it could still carry water into Nimes. We noticed that some of the carved blocks that make up the pont had Roman numerals carved in them. Turns out that the stone masons got paid by the block and carved their number as a record of how many pieces they made.
We then drove through miles of vineyards, marveling at the villages on the tops of hills – oppida in Latin – through Provence to Languedoc and Carcassone. The PR at Carcassone says that one should see Carcassone before one dies. It is a restored castle and now small city in southwestern France. Historically it was the last castle to fall when the northern nobility and church leaders conducted a Crusade against what they considered the Cathar heresy in the region. The northern religious leader, when asked how the soldiers could tell the true Christians from the heretics, reportedly said “Kill them all. God will know His own.” You can get a sense of that era from the historical novel Labyrinth by Kate Mosse. Matt likes to play a game centered on the place so that’s why we went. The castle was restored by the same man who led the restoration of Notre Dame in Paris as part of the Romantic era’s fascination with the medieval past. The material explaining the restoration seems to be a bit apologetic in that he may have not been totally historically accurate but it’s still a great place to visit.
The next day we had lunch with friends from before Matt was born who now live in Marseilles. Then in the evening we went to a Christmas Eve service in Les Baux de Provence. (Aluminium or bauxite was discovered there in 1822.) Part of the service was in Provencal, the Languedoc of the region. France once had two languages – Languedoc where “yes” was “oc” and langueoil where “yes” was “oui.” Our region spoke a Franco-Provencal language. It was charming with the angel speaking in French and the shepherds in Provencal, which to Larry’s ear sounded like Spanish. There was a ritual involving a small hayrick pulled by a ram and holding a baby sheep, who bleated part way through the service. The baby sheep was presented to the baby Jesus in the form of a doll. The next day we learned that the people sitting in the front row (you can see the backs of their heads in Larry’s photo) were members of the ruling family of Monaco – Albert and Caroline and kids and their entourage. It turns out the Albert is Marquis of Baux, his family’s reward for being Catholic when the Cathar heresy was suppressed.
We then went on to visit Aix-en-Provence for Christmas dinner and for the rest of the trip drove to the Camargue, the delta at the end of the Rhone, where we saw birds and a large display of santons (see picture), the tourist village of Saintes Maries and another castle town called Aigues Mortes. Some Protestant women were kept in awful conditions in an unheated tower for 38 years. You can still see the word “Resister” on the wall.
On the way home, we stopped a Chateauneuf du Pape, the Avignon popes’ summer home which the Germans graciously blew up on their retreat from the region. We tasted and purchased some wine.
Interesting Facts
The Swiss border guards stop cars if they have snow on their roofs, presumably to keep snow from flying off on the autoroute. Creates long lines.
Driving differences:
The driver on the right has the right of way, even if you are on the main road. That is not true if the driver to the right has a stop or yield sign, which you cannot always see. This is true in Switzerland, too.
If there is a parking space on the opposite side of the street, you can cross the opposite lane and park there. What a liberating feeling!
Clear sight lines do not seem to be a priority.
Young people do not seem to drive around with loud music blaring from their car stereos much although motorcycles make a buzzing noise like a mosquito.
Next Reflection
UU’s
Walk on the rue de Battoirs
Expat life
a week-end in Paris and one in Freiburg/Basel
a day in Burgundy
Stone martens
Cow moving up the hill
Yellow and purple
Dining room table.
World class clouds
Cows moving to higher pasture