Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?

A week ago, at this time of night, I was eating a quintessentially French dish in the dining room of a 200 year old estate house in Auvergne, France. Classical music on the record player, a fire roaring in an immense fireplace, and three old friends completed a fabulous evening.

France! What fun! I thought I was going to Dijon last week when I boarded the Thalys train in Rotterdam, and indeed, that's where the trains eventually ended. The trip actually covered much more distance - but by car, a mode of transportation which has somehow become foreign to me!

I was met at the station by my old roommates Amie, Steve and Mathilde, and Mathilde's very sweet beau, Julien. Mathilde et Julien do live in Dijon, but shortly after I arived, we headed out to her parents' farm in Montceaux l'Etoiles (sp?), a village about 2 hours south of Dijon. We were very well hosted from sunday night to Tuesday morning by Mathilde's family, and since they don't speak much English, I was doing my best to dredge up my high school French. Although I still couldn't have a conversation, by the end of the visit I was pleased I could come up with the odd sentence which actually made some sense. Mathilde's mom obviously had more confidence in my French than I, and kept trying to engage me in conversation, but alas, I stared at her in rapt incomprehension more often than I replied coherently.

While at Montceaux l'Etoiles, we went to an outside market. Though I've become accustomed to such markets here, this one had a novel feature: live animals. Turkeys, ducks, chickens, bunnies, various furry rodents, colourful squaucky birds and even goats were carried off by a variety of customers. Steve took a picture of a fellow holding a toddler with one hand and the legs of a flapping turkey in the other. I hope he didn't have far to go!

The other highlight of our time in Montceaux l'Etoiles was a bike ride. When Mathilde mentioned bike rides, I thought "great! I like bike rides!" When she said "16 km", I thought "heck! I can do 60km easy!" When she said "forest", I thought "Oho! Paths through the forest! How lovely!"

Right. Except for a couple things. First, I neglected to remember that the landscape was hilly. Very hilly. Everywhere. Second, I forget that I was going with Amie and Steve, the two most athletic and energetic people I know. (Mathilde's no slouch, either!) Amie was a national-winning skier. Steve is one of the top amateur soccer players in Edmonton. Mathilde is very fit and grew up biking in this area.

I, on the other hand, am me. At my best level of fitness (which is not now!) I can't even begin to rival this crew at their worst. It's a good thing they were patient.

This 16km ride was tough. I've never biked a hill in my life, prairie girl that I am. Going uphill was painful, and though we had geared mountain bikes, I never did quite figure out which settings were which - and I realized afterwards that my setting was not the right one. Ooops. After about 4 pedal strokes, I ended up walking up every single hill. The rest of them did a lot of waiting.

You'd think going downhill would be great in comparison. But instead of being tough on my legs and lungs, it was tough on my arms and heart. Either we were whizzing down a reasonably smooth road at uncomfortably (for me) high speeds, or we were hurtling down a very rutted and rather steep mountain path which required a whole lot of evasive steering and plenty of braking. Oh, and did I mention we didn't have helmets? Yikes.

At one point, we crossed a little creek on a footbridge and were riding on a stone wall maybe two feet wide and three feet tall - essentially an overgrown ramp for the bridge. There was brush on one side and either water or a couple feet of grassy bank on the other. For some reason, Mathilde stopped suddenly, and Amie stopped suddenly, and I followed suit by falling over. Into the bush, fortunately. Further on there was barbed wire to land on, and earlier there had been nettles, so I picked a good location. The lack of helmet turned out to be okay in this instance as I landed on my well-padded rear end - it's still bruised, but no other damage, happily. So there I was: sprawled in the brush, bicycle on top, laughing so hysterically I was crying. Yes, this is how I keep up with athletic types. I got Amie and Steve to take a picture for posterity and when they return from Europe in a month or so I'll try to remember to post it.

Still, we did survive, and the country was gorgeous, when I remembered to look at it. We also drove around a fair amount and wandered around parklands and churches and monasteries and lots of pretty places.

Tuesday morning we piled into the car and headed out to Mathilde's grandparents' aforementioned summer house outside of St. Flour, another 3 hours southwest-ish in Auvergne. More incredibly beautiful territory! It was pretty cold that day so we wandered around St. Flour and area for a while and then retired to the house to make a roaring fire and hot supper. It was a tremendously neat experience staying at that place - I'm regretting not taking more pictures of the inside. Maybe we'll get to go back and I'll take the opportunity then. The house was full of incredible old furniture and the whole place would be a museum if it were in Canada, but to Mathilde's family, it's just the place they go in the summer.

We spent a few hours on Wednesday climbing one of the volcanos in Auvergne. Very old and or course dormant, they provided some pretty striking views. Mathilde figured the one we climbed was around 1900m and that we'd started at 1200 or 1300m. I've been living at sea level for the last year and a half - and I did notice the difference. We ate lunch halfway back down the mountain in the shelter of some rocks: baguette and cheese, tomatoes and salami with fresh strawberries, pears and chocolate. Yummy. We ate a lot of cheese on this trip. A lot.

Wednesday afternoon we dropped Amie and Steve off at a rental car in Clermont-Ferrand and headed back to Dijon with a stop off at Mathilde's parents' for supper. I knew I'd been living in the Netherlands too long when I commented to my mom that we drove a long long way and she laughed at the distance.

Thursday morning I wandered around Dijon's old town and hopped on my first train home at noon. Three trains, a subway ride and a short walk later and I was home after one truly awesome trip. I loved the French countryside - thank you Mathilde for showing it to me!

Things I'm Going to Miss

This post is quite premature, I know. We're not going back to the old country for another 7 months, but we've been discussing our destination so much that it seems our departure is much closer. Consequently, I've been getting antsy to go: discussing all the things (and people) I'm looking forward to in Canada has not been great for getting me to appreciate this experience while I'm living it. So, in an effort to know what I've got before it's gone, here are some things I really like about this place:

-the flowers. Spring starts in February and everything's covered in flowers and green stuff until about November. Even then, we did see some very hardy window baskets and such in December and January. The Netherlands also grows about 90% of the world's flowers so we have flower markets every Saturday selling tulips and roses at about 10 eurocents a stem. That's about 15 cents Canadian. Not that you buy them in stems - usually you get them 50 for 5 euros. We had to buy several vases just so we could put 50 tulips in water.

-the proximity to everything. We live a 5 minute walk from 3 grocery stores, a 15 minute walk from the central area of town and the train station and a max 30 minute bike ride to the edge of town.

-the green zones between towns. Federal legislation here mandates a green belt between every city/village and the next. As a result, we can go for a ride through green fields (and yes, they're pretty much always green - they do a first cut of hay here in May) and canals and trees with minimal trouble.

-the bike infrastructure. There are bike lanes and lights and even long distance routes all over the country. It's magnificent. My only complaints about them are that we share with some pretty powerful scooters and that some riders and just inconsiderate.

-nice architechture. Most of the buildings I see here are pleasant to look at: they've got archways, tiled detailing, stained glass windows and just generally have been built with some concern for their appearance. That's a lovely change fromt he neo-brutalist style so often used in western Canada.

-really good public transit. This is definately made easier by the size of the country, but it's pretty doable to never own a car here because the trains and buses make a reasonably efficient and comprehensive system.

-Dutch cheese. Most of what we get would be called Gouda back home but the price and the quality of it here seem to put it in a different category altogether. Flavourful and reasonably priced, we've used Dutch cheese to replace cheddar and mozza quite happily. It's soooo good.

Queen's Day

Saturday was Konninginnedag. That mouthful of a word means Queen's Day: theoretically, this holiday is a celebration of the Dutch Monarchy, the house of Orange. While the Queen does visit two different towns each year, in most places, Queen's Day is a combination outdoor flea market and party. It really starts the evening before, as people stake out sidewalk and street space in the center of towns all over the country. By 6pm, the designated areas of town are packed with sellers of junk of all sorts and Dutchies in search of a bargain. While in recent years commercial marketers have become more common, the old-school sellers are just residents cleaning out their accumulated stuff. Usually, even private "stuff" sales are taxed here, but on Queen's Day it's a Vrij Markt, or free market - no taxes necessary. Consequently, most Dutchies get their garage sale fix this one day of the year.

The domestic area of the market starts at the end of our street, about 3 buildings away. The sales drop off when it gets dark and then the street party takes over. In addition to the selling, plenty of stages are set up in front of business and houses featuring actual bands, karaoke, recorded music and lip synchers. Other people drag out couches and coolers and have private parties on the sidewalks in front of their houses. There are beer and food sales but people seem to be pretty well behaved, as a rule. Friday night's party went on until about 1:30, and the only problem I noted was the humungous mess people left behind. They set up porta-potties, barricades and signs directing people around but they really out to set up more garbage cans: these partiers are not neat people.

Anyways, we wandered around for a few hours on each of Friday night and Saturday afternoon and picked up the following items:
-blue juice jug
-purple sweater for me
-coffee maker pot (and likely broken maker) - we broke the one downstairs.
-impossible 1000 piece forest puzzle, still in the plastic
-250 Magic the Gathering cards (for Rem)
-necktie
-Janet Evanovich book #1

All this for the bargain total of about 11 euros. Pretty good, eh? Last year we bought a lot more stuff - glasses and tables and chairs and whatnot, but we're pretty well stocked for household stuff this year and mostly trying to not buy things we can't take home.

Anyways, I took a bunch of pictures of the event and if I get my butt in gear and arrange them, I'll post them on Rem's site someday.