Author: Steve

I write stuff and I live in France.

Categories
Culture France memoir

Je Vais à Disneyland !

This is the plaza outside the entrance to Disney Parks, Paris photo by the author

That picture was taken on January 7, 2024, 25 kilometers East of Paris Centre-Ville. Yep, Disneyland Paris (and Walt Disney Studios) in January. Had a pretty good time, considering the weather, which kept getting colder as time passed. The feels like temperature got as low as 18.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Our puffy, cold-climate worthy coats never arrived from Nevada. Lined raincoats are good, but maybe not good enough. At least I had earmuffs!

It was the final day of the Holidays at Disney

his tree is just inside Disneyland, or was, that is. Disneyland is the same place, only different. Have another picture or two:

Top: Main Street; Bottom Frontierland

You’ll notice the Thunder Mountain Railroad in Frontierland. There is also a Mississippi steamboat, a really lame walk-through called “The Real Wild West,” restaurants, and maybe in summer those canoes, but I can’t say for sure. On Main Street you’re looking at the Emporium, which will be familiar if you’ve ever been to a Disneyland Magic Kingdom.

Amazingly, this park is 30 years old as of last year. (Guess that makes it 31 years old this year, huh?)

For lunch we found a place serving turkey legs with frites (fries, sorry) and soft drinks, and we ate outside. A bit cool, but not bad yet.

We got there at about noon, so after lunch we went on “It’s a Small World.”

I thought that the French were experts with topiary. This is one of the exhibits outside of the “Small World” entrance. Maybe I was wrong?

It hasn’t changed much since 1965, but here there is a small “American” section, consisting of a couple of NFL fans and the Hollywood sign in a high alcove. The default language, as in all of this park, is of course French. Most attractions also present in English.

This was the first Disney attraction I ever rode on, in 1965, Flushing Meadows, New York. It still gets me every time because it makes me feel the way I felt in 1965, which was excellent, and born of sheer naiveté. After this, we went looking for Tomorrowland.
Which isn’t there. Instead, we found Discoveryland, a Jules Verne themed area.

You can put Deepl/Google away. It says, “Whatever is within the limits of possibility is and will be accomplished.” It’s been trendy of late to credit Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, with inventing Science Fiction, but hers was more of speculative/fantasy. Verne was an educator, and you can learn the state of scientific knowledge of his time by reading his books. He invented classical Science Fiction, later developed by Asimov, Heinlein, and their peers. France is justly proud of what he accomplished.

Here’s an photo of Discoveryland:

It has Hyperspace Mountain, a Spiderman web-shooting ride, and some things that looked frankly worthy of le vomit!

Well, we were back the next day, and it was 5 below zero Celsius, which is 23 degrees Fahrenheit, which is too cold for a lined raincoat, but that’s what we had. We spent the morning on a couple of attractions, including a roller coaster in the dark (bad idea for an old guy) and a space adventure ride (Star Tours, for which they made a new script, bless them.)

That’s the roller coaster in the dark, Avengers themed. Heck, go for it

We went back to the hotel and sat in a hot tub for a couple of hours, coming back for dinner at Captain Jack’s, right next to Pirates of the Caribbean. Same song, a bit longer ride. Captain Jack’s serves good seafood, and takes a couple of hours to do it. Hey, it is a French restaurant!

Pirates of the Carribean is longer, but still has Captain Sparrow in it. It has not been edited to fit contemporary American tastes, so the wife sale is still on.

Captain Jack’s. Note how those people are dressed. They did a good business in character themed fuzzy hats!

After that we went back to the hotel. On the way our, we caught a bit of the final Holiday Parade of the season:

The next day, tired of freezing in Disney, we went into the city (Paris) and discovered that we needed to have advance tickets for Saint Chappelle, so to stop freezing in Paris, we had a most excellent steak dinner for lunch, went back to the hotel, and ate complementary beverages and snacks until it was time to return to the station to catch our train (more or less) home. I leave you with the following photograph of what was happening weather-wise as we waited for the shuttle to the station:

The snow stuck to the streets, even. It did not snow in Lizant until the next afternoon. It all melted the day after that.

One big difference between France and the US is that we live five hours by car (on excellent roads with 80 mph speed limits) from Disneyland Paris, but the train from Poitiers gets there in about two hours. Nice. (Yeah, Poitiers is an hour away, but that’s still two hours faster, innit?) If you like Disney stuff, I recommend these parks. But, if we go back, it will most likely be in May or October. I’m tired of being cold, folks!

Categories
France language

Parlay Voo?

If you think he can’t talk, you never met a beagle

The proper spelling is parlez-vous, in case you wondered. I do mean speak French, of course. Do you? I’ve been able to speak French for a while, now. What is relatively recent for me is the ability to understand French when it is spoken to me. There were scattered bits of comprehension for a year or more, then last October I made a call and got somebody’s voice mail, in French. I was amazed to hear, in French, The person you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please leave a message after the beep. Yep, beep. Bip, I suppose. It went on to say how I could leave a number if I wanted to. If that message sounds familiar, that means that you’ve heard people’s voicemail before. Voicemail is messagerie vocale, by the way. Since that day, I have had moments of temporary lucidity in my comprehension, and generally, I am finding it easier as time passes. I wonder if this is because I’m getting used to the Poitou accent, or just have practiced enough that it is starting to sink in. Whatever, I like it. I was able to translate something for Tami a couple of days ago. No one was more surprised than I was.

So, if you plan on spending more than a week or two in France, here’s my advice. Learn more French than you need to just be a tourist. You may need to ask for a jump start when leave the lights on in your rental car. You may want to look for brown sugar in a supermarket. You may need to know where the bank is. All sorts of things can come up, and you’ll need to know how to ask for help with them. Several years ago I had to ask a French gentleman to use his credit card for us at a gas station and I’d reimburse him in cash. My French was pretty weak, but he was great, and we were saved, so to speak. Weak, but not entirely lacking in the useful words needed to ask for that sort of help. I highly recommend that you get to at least that level of French if you’re going to be here longer than a casual tourist. (In Europe, that would probably be known as level A2. A1 being tourist French.) And, I can’t stress this enough, practice listening to French being spoken. It is a musical language, where rhythm and cadence are important. Quite a few syllables are not important, so it can be confusing. So listen, listen, listen.

There are French language movies available on Netflix and Amazon Prime that can be configured to display French subtitles. Why French? Why not English? Simple. I learned recently that when you know two languages, both are active all the time. The trick is to suppress the one you are not using, which can’t be done in this case if you’re reading English words. In fact, reading the English words tends to suppress your French. French subtitles (les soutitres français) reinforce your French, allowing you to keep your English down to, well, maybe a mild roar? Whatever, it helps a lot, and I write from experience.

Well, that’s this week’s French lesson, the first of 2024. Hope you enjoyed it, and remember, practice, practice, pratique!

Au revoir!

Categories
info

Happy Holidays

Categories
Food France

French Food @ Home

Our Local Bakery

We live in the sticks, really. It’s ten kilometers to the nearest town with any normal facilities, such as supermarkets, hospitals, movie theaters, etc, and both towns at that distance are still very small. But, the bakery pictured is two blocks from our house in a commune of 400 people. Bakeries are, I’m saying, common in France, and the bread is very good. The food you buy in France to take home and prepare is all good, actually, so it’s really just a matter of deciding what you’re hungry for this week, or today. You can buy most familiar things in a supermarket in France, if you know what to call them. Most things. However, Molasses is iffy, truly hot sauce can be tricky, refried beans are mostly unheard of, although there are places to get them because some restaurants use them. Without salsa, but still. Powdered sugar, eh, you may need to make your own. Tami did find brown sugar, which is sugar and molasses mixed together. There may be other things that are harder to find (Fritos Original!) but that mostly covers it. Besides those things, which can be worked around, you can buy whatever you need to use at home. And, it will be better than what you buy in the US.

I’ll use wine for a quick example. All French wine for sale is at least good. Maybe not top shelf, but good. This is generally true of anything you find for sale in France. The butter is all good, and some of it is excellent indeed. Meats are fresh and tasty, never having been dosed with antibiotics to fatten them up, yet still fatty good. (French people don’t worry about fats. A quick rule of thumb, if you’re not sure of something you’re cooking, add butter.) There are no factory farms in France, so the chances of contamination with e-coli or other bacteria are considerably lower. Another rule of thumb is that a person weighs ten pounds less in France than in the United States, and this without excessive worry about weight. Hmmm. Legumes (all vegetables) are fresh and seasonal. Right now, for example, cauliflower is over eight Euros per kilogram, which would be outrageous during the harvest season. This is different from the US, although thanks to our Southern neighbors in Spain and Italy one can get pretty much anything pretty much any time.

So, in sum, there are a few frustrations to cooking at home in France, but whatever you cook will be made with high quality ingredients. Not so bad, really.

Categories
Culture Food France

French Food

MENU

  • French Bread
  • French Fries
  • French Dressing
  • French Toast

Joke aside, French Fries are just called “fries” and anyway they’re originally Belgian. This week I’m writing about restaurants. Nothing specific, just in general. You can get fast food here. within an hour of where I sit, ten minutes in the case of McDonalds, you can find McDo (as it’s called locally), Burger King, and KFC. Unfortunately, it’s not a great McDo, as they rarely do the fries right. But I want to discuss “real” restaurants, which are anything but fast.

One thing an American will notice about a French restaurant is that they do not play background music. I believe that originally this was supposed to calm customers, but I think that these days it may serve to help in turnover. That is, it raises the noise level and makes it less pleasant to sit in the dining room. This is true even in upscale restaurants. In France, restaurants are supposed to be quiet enough for a table to converse without raising their voices. With nobody raising voices, this actually works. However, the noisiest restaurant I’ve been to in Paris was made noisy by a table full of drunken Parisians. So, I’m talking general guidelines here, not hard fast rules. As an American visiting France, be aware that we Americans do talk loudly when dining out and, you know, don’t.

There is a rule to remember: Keep Your Hands Visible above the table. This runs counter to American etiquette, so beware. You can even rest on your elbows, but avoid hiding your hands. If your hands aren’t visible, people will wonder what you’re up to. (Insert joke here.)

Nobody will ever hover around making a fuss and asking you if everything is okay. In fact, if you want service, you have to wave down your server. I’ll be honest, I prefer the French method, although it can be frustrating if your server is out of the room, which they sometimes are, of course. You will be seated normally and given menus, and likely asked what you’d like to drink. There’s nothing unusual about the drinks selection, except there aren’t free refills, which has never been a problem for me, but worth remembering. Your server will bring the drinks and ask if you’re ready to order. (So far the same, huh?) Often the Plat du Jour is worth looking at. We’ve had some great meals with the dish of the day. But, order whatever you want. In touristy areas you’ll probably get a menu in English that you may not even have to ask for. Once you’ve ordered, your server will disappear, maybe dropping off some bread. You may get an entree (starter) then other pre-main course items, depending on what you order. But, it may take a while between courses. We had lunch in a nearby village last week and were there almost two hours. But the food was delicious.

Delicious, but not spicy hot. French people prefer subtle flavors to spicy dishes. We had amazingly bland Mexican one time in Paris. Excellent otherwise, but begging for some Pace Picante. (There are some places to get authentic Indian, Mexican (Qudoba no less), and Middle Eastern food.)

Take your time eating. You’ll be left alone to enjoy your meal. Servers in France are considered professionals and paid a living wage. They have no need to grovel for tips. They’re off doing their job serving others at different phases of their meals, and are available to you any time you call them over. Traditionally, a cheese course follows the main course and precedes dessert. It’s a free country, you don’t have to take the cheese, but there are some excellent ones around and, as a tourist, you might want to try a few. For me, I go straight to dessert, which is usually excellent. Most recently I had a créme brulé, which is custard with sugar sprinkled on top which is then scorched with a small blowtorch. You think I’m kidding? Ask your server. They will have pastry, custards, maybe tartes (pies) all in smaller portions than you may be used to, but usually very good.

Speaking of those smaller portions, you will rarely be given too much food. In the US it’s common to have portions dripping off of the plate, which doesn’t happen in France, in my experience. But the food will be delicious. I’ve had excellent steaks, what are scalloped potatoes, vegetables of various sorts, some wonderful desserts, top-notch entrées (appetizers) and, sad to say, occasionally some lousy food, but that’s rare.

The big difference between eating out in the US and in France is that in France, even in a crowded restaurant, one can usually have a conversation using ones “inside” voice. In fact, that’s generally expected. And, the meal is never rushed. You can, of course, eat in a hurry and rush off, but that will surprise everybody. (If perchance you do have to eat in a hurry, tell your server as you’re seated, and you will be accommodated, at least in my experience.) And the portions will be what you can eat, not set up to appear as massive as possible. Contrary to what I’ve read elsewhere, boxes are provided if you can’t finish it all anyway. So, allow a couple of hours (French people do), use a quiet voice, remember to call your server over if you need service (even to get the bill, or addition.) In tourist-frequented areas (Paris for sure) you can probably get a menu in British English (close enough) and the server will probably know at least enough English to do their job in that language.

And, above all, enjoy the food!
If you liked the service, leave a Euro or two on the table. Forget 20%!

Categories
Culture Food France

Pardonnez Moi!

Really. What happened is that our stuff (most of it) arrived and I’ve been busy unpacking and sorting and putting away. Which means France has been looking pretty much like our old place, except that we’re taking things out of boxes instead of putting things into boxes. But, on to something topical.

It’s the holidays in France, and it’s looking a lot like Christmas. In fact, the word Christmas comes up surprisingly often, considering that here the occasion is known as NOEL. As in Joyeaux Noel et bonne année. To top it off, I found a display of Reeses’ Peanut Butter Cup Xmas Trees, the real thing, made in the US of A, in a store that’s a little hard to describe. It carries things like a Big Lots, sort of. Anyway, we also bought some decor there, and the Xmas trees were delicious as always.

France is different, no doubt about it. “Bacon” means cured meat, probably pork porc, which includes smoked pork belly poitrine fumée which, when I have the butcher slice it thin, turns out to be what an American would call bacon. Mmmmmm! Bacon! Homer could maybe survive here. Food differences certainly exist. At a restaurant you have to call for service. Nobody comes around to interrupt your meal and ask if everything is okay. If everything isn’t okay, any French person would complain to their server, so “okay” may be assumed. Also, servers do not live on tips. You can put a Euro or two on the table if you really liked the service, but it’s neither required, nor even expected. It’s just a bonus, and a lot of servers deserve it. But they can live on their salary, and service at a restaurant is considered an honorable profession. How’s that for a difference? On the other hand, while brands may differ, and you need to know what to ask the butcher to do if you want, say, a strip steak, you can generally get the ingredients to make whatever you want to make, including Mexican style food with actual spice in it. (The French don’t believe in spicy food, but prefer delicately prepared, subtly flavored fare.)

In other food news, France consumes more pizza per capita than any country other than the US. They have McDonalds (even in Tahiti, I recently learned.) There is a KFC near Angouleme. It’s different, but it’s not that different. Myself, I make diner style eggs, hash browns, toast, and bacon on Sunday mornings. It isn’t difficult, and I really like that stuff. So, even though it’s different here, I still get to eat my favorite foods, and drink my favorite drinks, and, this may be sad, as my wife pointed out recently, they’re “becoming more like the United States all the time.”

Hmmm. Hopefully not in terms of political discourse. Until next time, Au revoir!

Categories
France language

Psst! Wanna Learn Some French?

I wrote this review a while back. I don’t say anything about my French these days, for the record. I just try to use it so long as it’s working. Anyway, here’s a review of a good place to get a foundation in the language.

Learn French with Paul Noble Reviewed

This review is of the entire series, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Here’s a story. Recently, our rental car was very low on fuel when we pulled into Angouleme. We found a station, but as we had lost our credit card on the first day of vacation, we had no way to pay. (The pumps didn’t take debit cards.) There was a kiosk where one could in theory deposit money and retrieve a ticket with which to buy fuel, but it was not working. It was raining hard to boot. I looked around and saw only French people. So, I asked a man at the next pump, “Comprendez-vous anglais?” To which he replied “non.” Then, I dug deep, deep within myself to find all of Paul’s French lessons and advice, and, much to my amazement, I was able to explain our situation, and ask him if he could use his card for us, and I’d reimburse him in cash. He said “Oui,” and even didn’t stop the pump short of the fifty Euros I’d given him, which I told him to do. He actually put in Euros 50.01. I called him every nice thing I could think of in French and shook his hand. Amazingly, that amount exactly filled our tank.

I have two take-aways from the experience. One is that the French reputation for being nasty is pretty stupid and wrong (I do say “bonjour” to everyone, hint hint.) The second is that Paul French’s audiobooks (on CD or Audible, I believe) are extremely effective in teaching French. He loves language. Not any particular language, but language itself, as do I. My French is still pretty crude, although as I say, “tour le jour, un peu meilleur.” I like the rhyme. It’s French! Ahem. Anyway, if this story doesn’t convince you, try the first book in the series and see how useful it is. You’ll be glad you did!

Categories
Culture France

Differences

A view of the village of Bitche

This is a view of the village where my grandfather was born. It’s called Bitche, which is from the Latin for “fort on a hill” and not about dogs.
I still haven’t gotten my copy of WordPress to upload new photos, so I can’t do a picture of my own village, which is smaller.

This is just about a few more differences that I’ve noted. Not social ones this time, rather physical differences between France and the US. First, although I’m sorry I can’t use a photo of my own street, you will note the materials used in the houses in that picture. Stone, tile, and concrete are the usual building materials employed for residential construction. This has implications for how long your house is going to last. For example, portions of our house are over a century old, and aside from a few cracks in plaster from a recent earthquake (nothing serious) is still completely intact. We do, of course, want to upgrade all of the windows, but some of them already are double paned and reasonably good at keeping the outside out.

Something you would notice if I could post a better picture is that the houses sometimes are not up to what you might call “Homeowners’ Association standards.” That’s because there are no such associations. In fact, there is no zoning, and each case for a business is decided by the commune’s council, chaired by the Maire (surely you can translate that word.) Part of our house used to be a Fish and Chips shop, for example. We plan to make it into an en suite bedroom, but the approval for it being a shop came from the commune, not a zoning board. Basically, one can put a business anywhere if one can build a case for it. The local bar is connected to the owners’ house.

Sidewalks. This is an odd one, because while they exist, the sidewalks are mostly narrow and sometimes have light poles right in the middle of them. What to do? Walk in the street, of course! It seems there are also no laws about jaywalking. In fact, in the US, such laws were first promulgated at the urging of the automobile industry. In France, anyone needing to use the street has the right to do so. If someone is walking there, drivers are expected to respect that person’s right to the street and drive accordingly. It is illegal to block a street, though, which makes sense. One thing that is illegal nationwide is parking on the sidewalk. I read that described as the least enforced law in France. I hope so, because I’m parked on the sidewalk out front, as are a number of my neighbors. You can walk past the cars on the building side, usually, so nobody is forced into the street. Usually.

And, of course, those old buildings look old. There is moss and mold growing on them, vines too. In as many as nine centuries a place can accumulate a lot of growth. And the corners don’t stay sharp for the better part of a millennium, either. Add the common roman tile roof, and you get that quaint, sometimes medieval looking, village that tourists like to rave about. Just remember, we do have electricity, high speed Internet, computers, phones, and all that other modern stuff. Mostly inside, of course.

Categories
Culture Food France

Normalcy

No, I didn’t take this one, but it’s public domain

I tried to upload a picture I took of a baseball game, but apparently WordPress is remaining obstinate. Anyway, I was in the supermarche yesterday when I realized that the way they kept everything made sense to me. Same with the brocolage (DIY) store. Nothing they did made sense when I first got here, or at all until recently. Now, what the heck, I’d find the organization of a US grocery store to be odd. Which got me to thinking about what constitutes “normal” situations.

It appears that “normal” has more to do with what you’re used to than anything else. When I was shopping at a Kroger outlet (Smith’s) I could figure out fairly well where they would put any given item. Of course, in France, some of the items are different, but even if they’d been the same (as some, such as Heinz Ketchup, are) I didn’t find them in the expected place. Dairy and eggs, in particular are stored in a manner that seems entirely wrong to an American. They both are simply put out on the shelf like pasta or soup in a can, where you pick them up, take them home, and don’t need to refrigerate them (unless it’s one of those really hot hot spells we seem to get these days.) I even know why this is so.

Eggs emerge from the chicken covered with slime. The FDA decided some years ago that the slime should be removed for sanitary reasons. Without the slime, the eggs will absorb oxygen and rot forthwith. You may have smelled the result? With the slime, the pores in the eggshell are sealed, which is why the European agency equivalent to the FDA decided that the slime should remain on for sanitary reasons. I don’t advocate anything, I just report stuff. You can refrigerate your eggs if you want to, but then you have to keep them cold or face the smelly consequences.

Milk is pasteurized in the US. In Europe it is irradiated and sterile. This means that it is probably immortal in the bottle, and needs refrigeration only after the bottle is opened. There are some brands of milk in the US that are ultra pasteurized, but some say that they taste off. The milk in France is not pasteurized at all, but irradiated, which kills anything alive in it (the stuff that makes it curdle and spoil) but so far as I can tell leaves the milk as it was formed. This is handy, as I buy six-packs of liter bottles, put them in the cupboard, and only refrigerate whichever one I’m going to open next. I’ve never had milk turn, although it is certainly possible once you crack the seal on the bottle. Also, I drink it up fairly quickly. Sealed up, milk has a use by date of four months from the day it was bottled. I’ve never had any around that long, but I imagine it would last even longer than that.

But, is that better? Heck, I don’t know, but all of a sudden that seems normal. I’ve thought for years that a good idea to prevent salmonella and similar infections would be to irradiate meat. France doesn’t do that, either, but then France also doesn’t have huge industrial sized feedlots, so maybe they don’t need to.

It’s odd when I think that, after three months here last year, and five months now living here full-time, my normal has shifted. I’m fine with it, just as I’d be fine with normal in the US if I moved back. After a few months, at least. Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever had your “normal” shift on you.

Categories
Food France

Lo Phat?

Due to something I haven’t yet been able to correct, no pictures for a while. Hope that’s okay with everyone!

I want to say some more about food. French, and American. There are plenty of fat people in France, but it’s not the norm, as it is in the US. And, I believe, the American obsession with low fat foods is largely to blame. (I’m stealing ideas left and right here, but they are public domain ideas.) Sometime, I think in the current century even, researchers experimenting with dogs demonstrated that fat has a flavor. If that sounds gross, well, don’t eat this post and you should be fine. I’m pretty sure that is true, and furthermore, fat is a good flavor. And, I suppose that all fat isn’t created equal, I’ll have to grant that. Milkfat (butterfat) buffers the effects of sugar ingestion. At the University of Minnesota in the 80s they were experimenting with foods that cause a sugar rush. Honey was, they said at the time, the best (or worst, if you don’t like sugar rushes.) The food that they could never get anyone’s blood sugar to spike with was ice cream. This was good news for Minnesota’s dairy industry. The reason was good old milkfat. Other fats don’t do that. Crisco and sugar is about as good as sugar for making a sugar rush happen. And, yummy, huh?

Recently (within a few years) it has come out that the US sugar industry paid researchers to find things that made fat bad for us. Some of it may have been real, some of it they actually did make up. But, fat tastes good, and if you take it out of food you lose a lot of good flavor. So, to make the stuff palatable, you add, what else? Sugar! Sugar does taste good. I eat the stuff, but not in the amounts in which I was eating it in the US. Because in France, fat is okay. The main base underneath a lot of French cooking is butter. Not margarine, but butter. Fatty, slippery, gooey, tasty butter! And butter contains what? Contains? It mostly is milkfat. Which is, in fact good for you and tastes good too. French people eat a lot of butter, but they aren’t as frequently obese as Americans, who tend to use low-fat alternatives. Think about that. Whole milk and butter taste really good, they help you stay thinner, and they reduce the need to add sugar to everything.

And added sugar in everything is the problem. Read the ingredients label on the food you buy. Most of it has sugar in it. It can be very difficult to avoid sugar in the US, unless you’re rich enough to afford Whole Foods! In France, the sort of thing Whole Foods sells is just what they sell in most supermarkets. And it isn’t expensive, either.

I’m not trying to preach; I’m just trying to lay out some reality. The rule of thumb is that you weigh ten pounds less in Europe than you do in America. I think I know why that is. Sweets, anyone?