Mushroom hunting

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This is a favorite pastime of frenchies far and wide.  Unfortunately, it is also an activity that they keep totally secret so for the amateur trying to figure out where to find some good mushrooms there is pretty much zero information.  Some friends + the husband and I decided to go last weekend armed with a mushroom guide and the knowledge that you find them in forests.  We found a total of three.  Not sure if they're edible but one of the cool things I did discover in my research about mushroom hunting is that pharmacists in France are trained to identify mushrooms so you can take your findings into most pharmacies and have them tell you if they're edible or not.  I haven't done that yet as I'm somewhat embarrassed about our pitiful results.

Customer Service

One thing that takes a little getting used to in France is the "different" approach to customer service.  You do come across people that are extremely helpful but for the most part you are treated with mild indifference at best.  Today at Monoprix we waited to buy some things while 3 cashiers stood next to us shooting the shit and examining some spreadsheets - when Marc alerted them to our presence they responded with an unenthusiastic "oh we didn't see you".  I hardly even notice this sort of interaction anymore.  At the worst we were talked OUT of buying bikes by the salesperson - to the point where I almost got in a real argument with the guy.  On the other hand I have heard from friends working in the service profession here that customers are particularly finicky as well, often describing some abstract concept that you are expected to find for them eg; "I'm looking for an outfit that will go nicely with my understanding of postmodern thought" thus making service professionals somewhat more irritable.  Sometimes I enjoy the feeling that the world here does not revolve around the exchange of money, other times, it just irritates the crap out of me. 

driving

One of the challenges I face living in France is driving.  Namely, I don't know how to do it.  Drive stick that is.  We recently (and by that I mean in january, which now is not particularly recent) bought a Yaris - yes right before that whole recall thing - and I am sloooooooooowly learning how to drive it.  It is going so slowly partly because Marc is the person charged with the task of teaching me and he is usually working, partly because I have no real need for it.  I bike or walk or take the bus or train pretty much everywhere I go and when marc and I go places on the weekends Marc drives. One day, however, I hope to obtain  this mysterious and elusive thing known as a french drivers license.  France has an agreement with certain states in the US so that you can exchange your American drivers license for a French one.  California is not one of these states.  In fact I think they chose the states based on the likelihood that residants of these states would actually end up in France.  That is, the lower the likelihood residants of a certain state would immigrate to France, the higher the likelihood France has an exchange agreement with that state.  Come on Arkansas? Kentucky? Kansas?  I guess I will just have to do it the old fashioned way and re-take the written and driving portion, a process that is likely to be challenging and expensive.

yoga

I like it.  I'm trying to do more of it.  One day I'd like to do a teacher training but thus far have not been able to find something worthwhile that will take me less than two years and isn't in Paris.  For now I'm doing a lot of this:

yogatoday.com

Chateauneuf-du-Pape!

So since we've been living here, I've been wanting to go to chateauneuf-du-pape as it is extremely close and full of wine! Somehow though, life gets in the way and every time we're thinking of things to do on a saturday afternoon it never comes to mind.  Fortunately Alex and Dave came to visit and, as Alex loves wine, I thought we should head to Chateauneuf.  Marc needed the car that day so I looked into alternative transportation methods.  You would think that in one of the most popular tourist towns in France (Avignon), during the most heavily visited time of year (July, partly because it's summer, partly becasue of the theater festival), there would be transportation options to one of the best and most well-known wine regions in France (Chateauneuf-du-pape) seeing as how it's only 15km away.  You would be wrong.  Because we are in the period of "vacances scolaires" (school vacation) there is only one bus a day.  Otherwise you have to take a bus to Orange and then wait for one of the two or three buses they have a day leaving from there - making the trip about an hour and a half each way.  Because the only bus of the day left at something like 6:30 pm we thought, why don't we just bike?  We rented a bike for Dave (a bit of a challenge since he's 6'6" or so) got some bike maps and headed out.  The trip ended up being lovely - all back roads through the countryside - but much longer than we had anticipated.  We ended up doing about 30km on the way there!  We made it just in time because when we sat down for lunch the skies opened up and dumped tons of rain.  We ended up going to two domaines: Juliette Avril and Chateau Fargueirol.  They were both lovely.  We went to Fargueirol as a friend of a friend's uncle runs the place - and we tasted a few very nice wines and had a lovely chat about motorcycles.  Juliette Avril was across the street so we figured why not?  The wines there were absolutely delicious including a delicious white, a rare find for the region.  The man who ran the tasting seemed to be very excited to show off his English to Alex and Dave and thus may have made my record for longest tasting session ever.  In my post-tasting stupor and in an effort to get out of there before he went off on another tangent, I accidentally left my credit card.  Fortunately our host was kind enough to mail it to me a few days later.  My favorite wine:

Cuvée Maxence
Châteauneuf-du-Pape Red

Soil: Argilo-calcareous

Surface area: located on the Farguerol plateau.

Grape varieties: Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre.

Harvest
From September 10th to 15th depending on grape maturity.
Manual picking and selection.

Vinification
Traditional vinification with partial stripping.
Temperature-controlled fermentation for at least 12 days in 100-hl stainless steel tanks.
Slight plate filtration during the bottling operation, as required.
Storage in demi-muid barrels for 12 months.

Lenght ot storage
10- 15 years

Red 2008
A highly expressive cuvée, built around aromas of well-ripened red fruit, offering a slight smoked note with a nearly ideal equilibrium between tannins and alcohol. The suppleness gained through maturing in oak casks allows the terroir to harmoniously express itself, between power and refinement.

Accompaniment and serving suggestions: Small game stews, meats in sauce, matured cheeses are wise choices.

Pour en Finir avec Berenice

On the other end of the spectrum of trust was "pour en finir avec Berenice" (to finish with Berenice).  It wasn't the worst play I've ever seen in my life but it does not rank among the best.  I had high hopes for this one as it was described as a Congolese interpretation of Berenice (a play by Racine) complete with music and dance, etc.  This was all true, sort of, but the result was a painfully slow, disjointed mess.  The dance mainly consisted of the director writhing around on the floor in his underwear and having what appeared to be seizures, yes we get it, you're tortured, while physically impressive, amazing even, I can't say it added a whole lot of meaning to the play.  The message as I interpreted it was that the Congo's relationship with Belgium is much like that of Berenice and Titus - basically Titus and Berenice are in love but Berenice is a foreigner and is not wanted as queen of Rome, titus has to decide between his loyalties to his people and his love for Berenice and ultimately chooses not to marry Berenice.  Berenice leaves rome with a tragic outlook and basically waits for death.  So in this interpretation Belgium is Titus and while he has a brief and passionate love affair with the Congo the Congo is never fully regarded as part of belgiulm - it remains the foreigner, the other.  Congo wants its independence from Belgium but also feels abandoned and more or less left to collapse through civil wars etc.  The director of this play also put on the traditional Berenice at the comedie francaise so this newer piece is apparently a reflection on how challenging and torturous this process was, how does an Congolese director present a theatrical tradgedy when life in his country is a tradgedy? or something along those lines.  Anyway, there were some interesting points and the music was great though totally incongruous, but on the whole I can't say I was terribly impressed.  On a side note - I'm not sure how to feel about black actors in white face.

Trust

As relatively new residents of Avignon, Marc and I needed to experience "the festival", a month-long theater festival that takes place every july.  Trust was the fifth or sixth play we saw together and is part of the "In".  It was in German with a few random rants and songs in English and supertitles in French.  While I don't highly reccomend seeing a play with supertitles, as it makes it very difficult to catch all the action, this was by far my favorite play so far. It consisted of about 3 or 4 couples ranting at eachother and various movements people were constantly melting and falling and fighting and hugging, supporting eachother and pulling eachother down.  It was sort of a meditation on relationships and the economy, codependence and capitalism.  It was sort of depressing but moving and powerful. It made me think about relationships and change and stagnation.  It's hard to explain.  It puts into question our relationship to the economy, how money is everywhere and nowhere the motivation for almost everything and yet lacking any substance or inherent value, how we put all of our faith and hopes into a system that collapses upon itself and betrays us.  Our relationships to others are the same, superficial self-serving and yet unfulfilling, we are constantly seeking novelty and to fill some void, even the happiest most stable of relationships eventually become background noise.  Anyway, I'm not doing a great job explaining it, but it was definitely worth seeing.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-xETzEoQZc

Wine on ice

While I'm no wine connoisseur (or I guess connaissuese would be more correct) I like to drink wine and living near California wine country for most of my life means that I know a little bit about what I like and don't like. In fact, one of the reasons I was particularly excited about living in Avignon was its location smack dab in the middle of Côtes du Rhône country. In my experience, rosé wines are considered only a step up from white zinfandel on the quality spectrum, that is to say, not so good. However, when it's 35C (95F) and higher most days, a glass of cold (emphasis on the cold) rosé goes quite nicely with a meal or an evening on the patio. It seems to be the most popular summer drink here. But the way the french drink it struck me as peculiar...

I have been accused of being a snob or even "outfrenching the french" but I refuse to put ice cubes in my wine! Here, however, it seems to be the norm, the expectation even. Servers in restaurants bring you a bowl of ice cubes to add to your glass, if you are invited for a drink in a french home ice cubes are dropped directly into your glass without question. At first this seemed shocking to me for a couple of reasons: 1. As someone from a family with perhaps some culinary and oenological snob-like tendencies, this practice violates one of the main purposes of drinking wine; it dilutes the flavor! 2. Again maybe somewhat snobbish, but this is always something I viewed as low-class - a bit trashy, something people do when they don't know any better, something you'd expect of say, your 19 year-old cousin in college, not an adult. 3. Building upon the first two reasons, the French are viewed by Americans as not just connoisseurs of anything wine related but wine worshippers. The French are also known by Americans as the people for whom the word "snob" was invented - to see the french expect that rosé be served with ice has just blown all my former beliefs to shreds. Confident in my snobbish self, I have thus far carried on with my refusal to drink wine with ice cubes in it except when it is served to me that way or if my only options are to drink warm wine or wine with ice in it. Now however, I'm starting to wonder. The more I drink rosé sans ice, the more I feel that it is slightly too acid, too concentrated somehow, almost as if it is meant to be drunk diluted, with a little bit of ice in it. What to do?

Found: boots

Little Bo Peep

stops to tie her shoe

authentic Bock flavor

passage

The villagers slept

While the alien overlords watched from above

Patio

This morning I woke up at about 4am to the sound of conversation. I first thought it was our next door neighbors, who enter their place through the back door. But then I thought, no that sounds much closer than that. I realized there were people on our patio, which as it is a private patio in a closed residence, was a little bizarre. I tried to wake Marc up "there's people on our patio!" to which Marc responded sleepily "I guess that's okay" and then went right back into deep sleep. I went into our kitchen to find two women probably my age sitting on our porch having a smoke and a conversation. I turned on the light and they were ready to bolt like startled animals, but then thought better of it. I opened the door and probably more than a little gruffly said "uh, we're sleeping" they smiled sweetly, apologized politely and left.

A taxi ride to remember

Because of the aforementioned snow, Marc and I finally decided that we need a car. We went to pick it up monday morning and because the buses weren't running (à cause de la neige) we decided to take a cab. Or more accurately we hitched a ride in a cab with a new friend we'd met the day before. This whole process was crazy. It was bumper to bumper traffic since no one knows how to drive in the snow in Avignon, the buses weren't running and the sidewalks had not been cleared of snow so the majority of people were walking in the middle of the street causing traffic to slow even further. At one point the driver sees a woman he knows walking in the street and stops to say hi. The next thing we know, the aforementioned woman has hopped into the passenger seat and is shooting the shit with our driver. The driver proceeds to flirt shamelessly and persistently with the woman for the next half hour without a thought for his customers - the french business model at work! An hour or so after our departure we finally end up at the car dealership and our very own transportation device.

Snow

I never thought I would miss much about Boston (aside from friends, and really I'd probably like them all more if they didn't live in Boston) and I can't say that I really do, however the snow that struck Avignon last week made me miss the efficiency with which Boston deals with snow. The first day was cool, Marc didn't have to go to work (neither did anyone else), snowmen were built, playing was done, it was pretty, etc. After that first day the snow hardened into ice and none of it was cleared. For FIVE days. Sidewalks were pretty impossible to navigate, none of the buses ran, the mail didn't come, meetings were canceled, à cause de la neige. Finally on thursday (it snowed last friday) there was a lone city employee shoveling one of the sidewalks near our house.