The Lighter Side of La Roche

Despite (or perhaps because of?) its resemblance to the village of the Burgermeister Meisterburger, La Roche-Bernard was probably one of the nicest, if not the nicest, little towns that we regularly visited. It's true that it was extremely scenic, and had a beautiful view from the river docks, but what we most often enjoyed was the hidden park walkway that wound around the town. Side streets that looked like back alleys would actually take you behind the buildings and into a rambling footpath that wove all through the town and took you in and out of gardens, parks, and old ruins - it was very much a hidden world, a la "The Secret Garden". It was pleasant all year round, but as my favorite time for going out walking is in the fall, that's when most of our photos and sketches were done. Here is Emily, relaxing on a bench on a cool Autumn day with a crisp breeze from the river blowing the dead leaves across the cobblestone pathway.

La Roche-Bernard

I've been going back through our Brittany photos and tweaking them a bit, trying to capture more of the emotional feel of the places rather than the literal photographic versions. Here's the first halfway tolerable result of much fiddling, a street scene from the little town of La Roche-Bernard, which was not far north of Herbignac. The photo texture was taken from a multi-exposure of all our La Roche photos, to help give the picture the spirit of the town, literally. I'm generally pleased with the result, for an early attempt, and I think it captures the "feel" of a small Breton town, at least in terms of my reactions.

The Good Side of Brittany

Emily thought my last post was quite hard on Brittany. I have little sympathy for the place - Brittany was quite hard on us, and I do not intend to sugarcoat my reflections on the difficulty of our lives there. But it wasn't all a horror, and I thought I'd put together another post to share the lighter side of seven years of hell...

(Click for larger versions)

La Chambre des Morts

Here in Brittany, we are currently deep in the grey rainy darkness of winter, when we get all the fun of week after week of overcast skies and heavy rain, but no snow. This winter has been sunnier than usual, however, so I'm thankful for small wonders. Today's pic is another photo from Carnac, this one suitable for use as desktop wallpaper. And if you're wondering where all these links suddenly came from, I've started using the Firefox blogging add-on Zemanta, which is proving to be very useful so far. Zemanta scans typed text and suggests one-click Wikipedia links for recognized terms, so in future our visitors will be able to handily look up things I might reference in posts. It also adds some handy sidebars to the Blogger window that allow me to search image hosting sites for publicly-available pics of whatever I need to show a pic of, for example, Godzilla:

Image via Wikipedia

So, mark this as one tiny step forward for the blog. But to get back to my intro about being mired in the bleak Breton winter, there just isn't a lot to do out here except stay in, TRY to stay warm, and keep the DVD player spinning with good movies. I've been going out of my way lately to hunt down a decent selection of French films, and I intend to try my hand at reviewing a few for this blog, starting today with "La Chambre des Morts".

Clarification: At the risk of being pronounced an artless heathen, I will say that the term "French film" did not initially carry a positive connotation for me. If I thought "French film", the mental image that sprung to mind was an arthouse movie filled with miserable couples who spend the entire running time sitting in cafés smoking and screwing each other's spouses while dourly pontificating on the emptiness of life. Films for Woody Allen fans, in other words. For myself, however, I want to see a good thriller, or horror film, or comedy, or basically anything that has a story and doesn't leave me wanting to slit my wrists by the end of it. Call me Ishmael.

I suspect I am not alone in the above impression of French films, which is why living here was a small revelation regarding the quality and range of French cinema, especially in regard to many of my favorite genres. Today, France is quickly on the way to toppling Japan & Asia as King of the Modern Horror Film - French shockers are starting to come out faster and faster, bringing a French cultural sensibility that breathes new life into even the most tired of genre styles. But today's review isn't really a horror film; it's more of a mystery/thriller, despite being called "the French Silence of the Lambs". Voila, let's talk about:

La Chambre des Morts




Plot - Joyriding jerks accidentally kill a man carrying a huge cash ransom to pay off the kidnapper of his daughter. The daughter is killed by her captor as a result. These events set off a complex suspense thriller about a young female detective (Herself traumatized by a childhood abduction experience) trying to catch the insane killer, who has abducted a new victim, while simultaneously the joyriders must deal with the fallout of their actions and their sudden acquisition of a bag of cash. Very creepy finale when all the storylines converge at the lair of the murderer.

It's somewhat fair to call it a "Lambs" clone, but compared to Silence it was less gory, slower-paced, more realistic, and with less focus on the "serial killer as superhero" theme. The killer was no genius madman, but just a thoroughly messed-up individual... yet to the movie's credit, not that much less frightening than Lector. We enjoyed the film very much. It only has a rating of 6 on IMDB but I'd put it much higher - It had well-developed characters and a creeping sense of escalation that were very enjoyable. It does NOT have action happening every three minutes, graphic gore, or shakycam - instead, the mystery unfolds quite gradually as the main storylines crisscross, and we really come to root for our heroine (played with all the same smarts, deduction, and insecurity of Jodie Foster's agent). If the "feel" of the film reminded me of anything, I'd say it was more similar to a 70's thriller than a modern one, at least right up to the climactic adventure in the killer's lair (which resembles more the good parts of Silent Hill). I'd definitely recommend this one to anyone looking to do some international cross-cultural movie sampling of films that AREN'T annoying arthouse fap. Oh, and for inexplicable reasons, the film is on DVD in the states as "Melody's Smile" - an odd title change from the much more accurate, original "Room of the Dead".

I'll be posting comments in future blogs on a variety of other Frenchie flicks, including La Moustache, A L'Interieur (said to possibly be the most horrifying film ever made), Jet Lag (Decolage Horaire), Ils, Malefique, Sheitan, L'Auberge Espangol, Les Poupées Russes, Fauteils d'Orchestre, Apres Vous, and a number of others in a multitude of genres.

.......................... But what I really would like to see is a French kaiju film...

Herbignac in Spring, and the Ultimate Hotdog/Hamburger

Before I get to the pics, I really must post this link to the ultimate hotdog/hamburger combination creation. People always ask what we miss about the states, and when I answer, "Willful over the top insanity", they usually don't understand because they don't seem to have a culture here of things like restaurant chicken wings that are so hot that you get a free meal if you can eat just one. I am SO going to have to bug Emily into trying making some hamdogs as that recipe describes - the lure of a deep-fried chili-cheese hotdog wrapped in hamburger beef and topped with a fried egg is too potent to resist...

Now that it's sunny, we've been making a point to get out and take some pictures, so voila! (Note that while it is sunny, it is still cold, ergo our multiple sweaters and coats)



Anyone want to buy a butcher shop & home combination in the village center?



Busy downtown:



And nicely scenic:



The downtown cathedral never gets any less cool, even with bits of it blown off since the war:





Your humble narrator bids adieu!

The Quimiac coast in March

One of my various resolutions this year was to make a point to LEAVE THE DAMNED HOUSE during those rare days when the sun actually showed in the winter season, and yesterday was one of them. This is the problem of being self-employed and working at home in a land where it rains 60% of the year - We just get totally home-bound for long periods and it's easy to forget that we haven't left the house or workshop for two solid weeks except to walk across the street to buy groceries. Here are a few shots of the sunny coast on a VERY windy day.





I love the composition of this windsurfer shot:





The stone walkway above made a nice path for those who wanted to walk the beachfront without getting their shoes filled with sand (me).



Turned up a rather freaky discovery, too - a thoroughly torn and mauled heavy jacket, which we were not the slightest bit inclined to touch or investigate further!



Eventually and inevitably, the sunshine went away and Brittany quietly returned to its more accustomed winter seasonal color tones....

Knox Visit

A very quick post - Emily's long-time family friends, the Knoxes, visited for a few days in September. I've posted a little web gallery here, and there are also a couple of tiny videos:

Public Healthcare breeds Terrorists

We had a little surprise visitor in the workshop.

I have nothing of the slightest importance to say today, except to pass along a soon-to-be-classic example of how utterly insane Fox News is, "National Healthcare: Breeding ground for terror?"

Yes, truly, putting a question mark at the end of your inane headlines really makes it serious journalism instead of rank tabloid-ism, oh yes... "Fox News: Run by Marmits?"

Fortunately the strange-looking muppet they chose to be their talking head manages to dissolve any hope he had of making a point simply by how silly he looks. His babbling statements aside, who would look at that guy and think, "Here's someone with an opinion the nation should hear"?

My other laugh this week came from Charles Bremner's blog entry, "Jogging is not French, Mister President". The French are upset that our new president goes jogging. I quote Mr. Bremner: "As a correspondent, you try to avoid reinforcing national stereotypes but sometimes the French don't let us. Where else, for example, would people argue that jogging is a capitalist pastime that is designed to undermine serious thought and democracy? "

I find humanity endlessly entertaining! :D

In local news, I've just posted a gallery of pics taken from the air of our area. Enjoy!

Scenes from a Beach

Lunch today on the cliffs overlooking Pen-Bé. This remains one of our favorite little "nook" spots around here to have picnic meals at. I'll keep the comments to a minimum and just post some of the pics we took on this glorious summer day. In this first pic, the clarity and color of the ocean really stands out, especially as there are hardly any waves.








On a clear day, one can see across the bay to the far shore of Brittany, the area known as the Morbihan.




Emily rummages in our handy collapsible cooler bag - It actually keeps drinks cold. Oh, the miracles of technology!



She can't keep her feet out of the water, which was quite warm.



I am amazed that I managed to get the above shot framed so nicely. Our digital camera lacks a real viewfinder lens, having only the display screen. This is fine in most circumstances, but on bright sunny days the screen washes out to the point that it's illegible - I simply have to point the thing in the general direction of what I'm hoping to shoot and hope for the best. I managed to get the hovering bird just seconds before it dove down on its prey.

Emily: Standard Beach View. We need lots of friends with children who collect shells, to send our Breton seashells to, before they overwhelm the whole house.

Finally, I shot three tiny videos:

Emily wanders into one of the many cliffside cave-nooks

A panning view from the top of the cliff

Emily waves hi!

Digital Art

My recent graphical work on the computer caused me to stumble over a previously-unknown (to me) feature of Google's Picasa - the ability to create multi-exposure pictures. One simply chooses the photos to combine, and Picasa melds them seamlessly into one image of shared exposure. This is a fun toy, and it led me to wonder what sorts of modern digital art I could create via multi-exposing some of my photo collections. This is the first multi-exposure of a set of pipe photos, the Talbert Briars and Mortas of 2003. It's a neat effect.

Following on from that, here are some images of France from our travel photos. It's interesting how each collection of (sometimes fifty or more) photos of the different locales lends each place a distinctly unique character in the final image.

The beach and coastline of Quimiac, not far from here, where we enjoy taking picnic lunches in the summer:



The stone, grey, ancient Breton riverside port of La Roche-Bernard, a short ten minute drive to our north:



The city of Nantes, in its somewhat nervous glory:



And, finally, our village of Herbignac in autumn:

Picture Packs

This post is pretty much dedicated exclusively to those friends and family who have fussed because Emily and I are never both in the same picture, since one of us is always doing the photography. Emily B sent us the scans of all her photos from her visit, and voila! Multiple Trever & Emily pics. In this one, we are giving each other rabbit ears for the camera, except that apparently Emily seems to believe that my head must grow out of the center of my back. For more photos of Brittany and our immediate area than anyone could possibly want, I've uploaded two zipped files to my web server.

Click HERE for our compressed file of digital cam pics.

Click HERE for Emily B's compressed file of scanned photos. Yes, she still uses film. Isn't that strange? Do they even make film anymore? Anyway, this is the photo pack which has all the T&E shots.

Dam! We meet the fish ladder, and ignore it

Today's post will be largely photos, all taken a couple of weeks ago when we visited the Barrage d'Arzal (the Arzal dam) and went to the fair. To the left, c'est moi on the walkway that crosses the river to the drawbridge. I must point out that white socks and sneakers, worn by Americans, look cool and adventurous, unlike the brown/black socks and sandal combnations that so many British seem to prefer, which instead look staggeringly nerdy. That's my obligatory teasing of the British for the day.

Here is a nice photo of the entire bridge and drawbridge section:


There's an interesting contraption in the left foreground that is part of a "fish ladder" (direct translation) - It helps the fish transition from the salt water just downriver to the fresh water on this side of the bridge, plus keeps them out of heavy traffic areas. How this works, I have no idea - there were some complex illustrations and explanations in French, but we were too distracted by the pretty sights to try and figure it out. I am left forever with the mental image of an under-bridge conveyor belt lifting fish and dumping them off on the other side.

There were cormorants everywhere:


I could kick myself for not getting all of the main mast into this colorful picture:


That's all for now, but I'll try and post more pics soon.

Edit: Late-Breaking News!! The McFlurry is now hedgehog-friendly! Go, go, British hedgehog preservation society :)

Riding the Ghost Train

Overhead, the plastic banner crackles in the evening breeze, advertising, "Nouveau! Train Fantome - SPOOKY". We're at Luna Parc, a traveling amusement park that sets up near Guérande in July and August, looking for all the world like some misplaced cutting of American culture that's been broken off and dropped wholesale into the French countryside without any alteration.

But that isn't entirely true, as it turns out. You see, French "county fairs" aren't quite like US fairs... They're better.

Our car starts forward with a lurch and the carnie man gives us a doleful, "Au Revoir" as we bump open the doors leading into darkness. We're the only ones on the ride ... It's early yet, the fair doesn't open until 9pm and we arrived at 8:30, accustomed to US fairs that run all day. Lights flash in the dark and strange monsters appear, lunging at us half-glimpsed from every shadowy corner. The car jerks and twists, speeding us around the tight black maze. Beasties keep flashing up in a constant stream, barely lit and timed to the flickering strobe, when we round a corner and my eye catches sight of something odd. Yes! Yes, that's no mechanical thingie, that's a man! I have only a second to realize this as a black-garbed figure melts out of a corner shadow behind us. There's a yell and we both jump - a glowing green face is trailing our car. We laugh and turn away, but a few seconds later Emily squeals again as green fingers wriggle in her hair. Something grabs my shoulder and I jump, twirling around to see that our ghoul is happily chasing our car and flapping his painted fingers at the backs of our heads and necks. He pursues us past a couple of motorized monsters before finally giving it up, and we burst out into the evening sunset blinking and laughing.

A few minutes later, we realize we've been touched, a very strange experience. When I watched Amelie, I'd assumed the fairground ghost scene was purposefully overdone, drawn as surreal as the rest of the film, but we've just had an encounter nearly as physical. This would never have happened in the US, where any physical contact during a ride would almost certainly generate one of two responses:

"Aiii! He touched me! I can't believe he touched me! I'll sue! I'll sue for distress - I'll bankrupt this carnival!!"

...or...

"Shee-it, that sumbitch just laid his hands on me, I'm gonna hafta go whup his ass now!"

But the French aren't as litigious as Americans - A Frenchman who trips and breaks his nose is more likely to make a joke of it to tell his family than to sue the sidewalk construction company for negligence. And they're certainly not as violent. These traits benefit an amusement park in some very fun ways...... The rides are longer, MUCH more dramatic and scary/rough/wild, and you can buy malt whiskey at the concession booths if you really want to test your projectile-vomiting range on the rollercoaster. We got lost in the multi-level mirror maze for about a half hour, bumping our way through the mix of glass panes and reflections and strobe lights and sudden near-darkness until we finally emerged nearly as freaked and dizzy as Miss Foley in "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (Possibly the best 'autumn fair' movie ever....)

There was one odd loss - they have cotton candy, candied apples, and of course chi-chi's, but there were no caramel apples in sight. A curious ommision, considering the French passion for all things caramel. Are caramel apples another puzzling non-entity in France, or was it just this one fair that lacked them?

I will close by posting a selection of photos from the fair, but first I wanted to mention two local cafés of note. In my last article, "Beware the Murky Frogpits", I was pretty (deservedly) harsh on the rather dank and nasty village cafés scattered all around here, that supposedly serve as local "fast food", but there are exceptions. The pirate café by the Barrage (dam) d'Arzal was great fun, with a young staff who greeted us on entry and a waiter who turned up promptly and actually smiled . The decor was fun, the food was good, and overall it was a drastic improvement over our usual "village café" experiences. Another nice spot for a semi-fast bite is Herbignac's own "Bar Roseau", a tavern that doubles as a tasty sandwich shop. It does tend to have a bit of the "locals staring like frozen guppies" effect, but it's minimal by comparison. Now, on to the pics!


This is the three-story Funhouse, filled with all manner of bizarre devices including a top-to-bottom spiral tube slide, huge whirling grabbers that will sieze you and fling you through what resembles a car wash buffer, and many other semi-lethal tricks and traps that would never be allowed in NC because, well, "somebody would get sued"....


Emily becomes, on her very first try, the only human being I have ever known who actually won something from one of those fairground "pick up" machines. And she got a Nemo, no less!


I'll sign off of this blog entry from the front of the Mirror Maze, snacking on my chi-chi's. A bientot!

Beware the Murky Frogpits

This is me up near the river dam at Arzal. For once I have a lot to write - yesterday we visited the dam for the first time and got a lot of good pics, and last night we went to Luna Parc, a traveling fair that stops here in the summers. It's a lot like a US county fair, but it's actually better in a few key ways.

That isn't today's post, though! :D

I thought this was worth an article after talking with our friend Marie-Blanche about the lack of fast food outlets in France. We often find ourselves missing easy fast food - There are only three McDonald's joints scattered across our entire region, and only one alternative chicken place. Ergo, when we find ourselves out running errands and we're hungry on the road, it isn't possible to just pull over somewhere for a quick bite. Everyone turns their noses up at fast food, but the lack of it can be a real nuisance on a very busy day.

Except that, according to our friend, it isn't lacking..... We just aren't seeing it. In France, she says, fast food is at cafés, not glittery McDo's, and if we want a quick bite we can just stop at any café for a sandwich. Unfortunately, trying to drag Emily to these places is like trying to get an iguana untangled from a fishing net - ever time you get one claw unstuck, another one hooks in, and when all is said and done, you've just wasted a lot of time and energy annoying the iguana.

Why the resistance? French cafés are scary. Emily is a lot more bothered by them than I am (bolstered by years of male restroom conditioning, where one often sees bacteria the size of Border Collies loping around). I'll try to relate our typical experiences so far.

Imagine if you will.....

You've just run errands to several different places and spent the afternoon driving through roughly thirty-five idyllic little stone towns filled with thatched roofs and all named 'Ker-something'. You're starving, and you spot a sign saying, "BAR - CAFE - SANDWICHES" (There are places like this in virtually every little village). You think, "Ahh, food!" and pull over. But the horror begins to set in quickly...

The creaking wooden front door hasn't been painted since the 70's, and when you open it, you're rewarded with several popping sounds as various bar tenants explode into dust from their first exposure to sunlight in years. The interior is dank, musty, shadowy, and no matter where you go, there are always at least four or five half-sodden locals lurking at the bar looking unshaven and disreputable. If you've ever wanted the "Cowboy enters the saloon" experience, this is the place, because all conversation will inevitably stop dead as these sullen characters all turn to inspect you. Except, of course, the owner/barkeep, to whom you do not exist, as his family has not known yours for generations.

Dare to pursue the experience further, and find a wooden chair. Your table is decorated with an unemptied ashtray containing the fuminous remnants of eighty-seven Gaulloises, and you are the center of attention for the room. France doesn't seem to have the, "It's rude to stare" code of conduct that the US has, as the locals will simply sit and openly goggle at you for as long as you're there. You may as well be wearing a motorized neon beanie for the attention you'll get. No smiles, no welcomes, nothing to suggest friendliness, just sulky glowering.

Of course, you don't know what to expect... Do you sit and wait for a waiter? Do you go to the bar and ask for a menu? Do you actually want to eat anything that is cooked here? Regardless of what you do, you're stuck, because a good thirty minutes will pass before the barkeep peels himself away from deep conversations on village incest to come and ask what you want. The choice is pretty limited, typically... You're not getting curly fries and BBQ roast beef sandwiches here, your options are more like: Sandwich. Beer. Fries.

If you haven't run shrieking by this point, you'll eventually (roughly 45 minutes later, after enough time for all the regulars to spit in your food) be served some sort of mystery meat in a foot-long bun of the most durable bread you've ever encountered. Chewing doesn't work, biting doesn't work - you're eventually forced to hold the thing in both hands and saw your incisors into it, really using your neck muscles to tear loose rough chunks, which you then chew for the next ten minutes.

And after a couple of these experiences, you'll never, ever want to go back to one of these joints again, and if you even start considering another try, your wife will threaten to set fire to you in your sleep because she is so repulsed.

So, that's been our experience with using cafés as "fast food". Why do I love American fast food places? Let me count the ways:

*Reliability. I can go to a Wendy's in North Carolina or Michigan, and know I'll get the same food.

*Variety! Hey, some of us like sourdoughbread hamburgers...

*Cleanliness. I've been in some dingy fast food joints, but no McDo I've ever seen even begins to compare to the Innsmouth-esque quality of some of the small-village cafés I've visited.

*Prices. Hamburger, fries, and a coke - $6. Mystery meat sandwich, frites, and..... Ugh.... "Zee Coka, monsieur?? You would not prefer un whisky wizh your lunch?" - 9 euros

*Speed. Go in, stand in line five minutes, get your food, eat. At café, go in, sit, wait fifteen to thirty minutes before your existence is acknowledged (if you're lucky, that is, and you don't look too British, in which case you may truly Never Be Served....), then another thirty minutes while they kill the animal in the back room, add the "foreigner's exxtra spice", and finally bring it to you. Tack on an extra fifteen minutes when you're done for trying to get the bill.


Maybe I'm being paranoid, but there's just something about having five unshaven, obviously drunken guys at a bar (at noon!!) watching you eat with all the rapt fascination you'd give to assembling a $3K home stereo system, that just puts me off a bit...

This has run a little long, so I'll wrap up here, with another part soon. We have found a couple of cafés that are....well, OK...even pretty nice... and they'll get their due in the next post!

Piper at the Gates of.... La Turballe?

""In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
- JRR Tolkein, The Hobbit

Somehow I doubt that this hole is quite so comfortable! I have no idea where this is - I've never been there, though it can't be too far from here, as our friends Beate & crew stopped by there on their vacation in Brittany. Still, I doubt our old house in the states will look quite so good after a couple thousand years...

But this has nothing to do with the title!


We saw this fellow on our way to the Marie-Gallant restaurant down in La Turballe. He's playing an instrument called a Veuze, or Breton bagpipe. These things are local to Brittany, along with the accompanying flute-type things, called Bombardes. I know nothing about either of them, apart from them being traditional instruments and also ungodly loud when they get going (though I don't believe they are as skull-splittingly insane as Scottish bagpipes at close range). B&M were even kind enough to shoot this little video for us, as I had forgotten our camera and left it at home.

That's about it for the moment, not much interesting to write about. Most of our time has been devoted to improving our money situation lately, so this summer is pretty much a write-off already as far as fun activities go... Besides, we do our best not to leave the house in August, when the beaches are infested with tourists. September, however, should be very nice indeed...