My New Shoes work, and It's a Good Thing

Breaking News - Headline! Colossal Squid caught TODAY!

It's funny - Last time I posted, I thought I had two full blog posts of stuff to write about. One for the hospital visit, a second for the shoe hunt... But in reality, the shoe hunt was startlingly minimal. We visited Chausseland, a French shoe mega-store, and managed to find exactly four pairs of shoes in the entire store that were my size, 47-48. One pair were running shoes, and resembled nothing so much as giant tentacled amoebas trying to wrap themselves around a colorful neon sign. When did running shoes get so weird? I would have been happy with plain white "tennis shoes"; I don't really want to pay an extra 40 € to have 3" thick rubber bubbly soles and more slathered-on cladding than a mid-80's Pontiac.

Anyway, long story short, one of the pairs of shoes that fit was an excellent plain pair of brown leather walking shoes. I assume from their designation that I am not allowed to run in them, so I will try my best to be steady and non-stressful in my locomotion. It's strange to think that my feet have enlarged since moving to France. I thought it was only my waistline! But, alas, for whatever reason (I personally wonder if it isn't some sort of "foot spread" brought on by five years of life in a house and workshop with a tiled concrete floor), I no longer fit my American shoes. It's a little eerily symbolic, that - as if now it's time to drop the old American shoes completely and start contacting the ground in real French shoes........Never mind that all pairs in question were almost certainly made in China!

I also got myself a set of arch supports in the process. I'm flat-footed as your average duck, and I don't think the cement workshop has done much to improve matters, so we'll see if some artificial enhancements will help a bit. The new shoes got their first big test almost immediately this week, when we had a visit from an old friend of Emily's for several days. We decided to take the time off together, and go and see a bit of the countryside, so for the past three days I've been walking the length and breadth of Nantes, Guérande, Vannes, La Roche-Bernard, Carnac, and a little slice of the Quiberon coastline. My cheerful new French shoes took it all well, and I'm happy to report that I didn't get even a single blister, unlike the painful toe-abrasions that had started occurring every time I put my old shoes on. It was a great visit, probably the most fun one we've had so far, with nary a disaster to be had, and lots of beautiful sights and good company and great eating all around. We had the opportunity to marvel at our own total adaptation to French navigation when we purposefully flung ourselves through Nantes with no map at all (Really, it's easy! Just follow the signs!). Five years ago we were petrified, trying to spot the tiny road signs and know where to turn. Today, we ignore the road signs altogether and just relax and go towards "centre ville" or "direction: Rennes".

In closing, here are some pics from our adventures of the past three days:


Here, Emily and Emily wander the cobblestone streets of Guérande in the rain. Of course, in the rain.










Dinner at Herbignac's restaurant "La Bigouden". When we arrived, it was one of the best crèpèries around. Then, it changed owners. Luckily, it has now changed owners again, and is once more quite good. I even had an andouille crepe and it was delicious - That's how good it is. My first andouille. This coupled with French shoes is positively unsettling...

For those who don't know us, that's our friend Emily B on the left, and my wife Emily Emily on the right (in both pics).



Here they are out rock-climbing at La Roche Bernard. Absolutely beautiful day.












Hide and Seek at Carnac. These two are very silly when they get together!

Grocery Wars

Yeah, that's me, from a photo taken in 2000 while I waited at our old house for Halloween trick-or-treaters. Sad that I can't pull this stuff on French children, but I'd probably leave them scarred for life...

I posted a quick article on BlueVicar.com over the weekend and thought it was worth copying over here too, just for entertainment value. The discussion topic was grocery stores, and how the shopping experience differs here from everyone's various homelands. For once this was an easy question to answer, because hordes of French people in big stores can just be astoundingly rude until you learn to play the game their way. And so:


Trever Talbert Says:
September 25th, 2006 at 8:14 pm

I relish grocery store trips as an anger release. Seriously!

On arrival here four years ago, my wife and I were both terribly put off by the sheer rudeness of French behavior in grocery stores, especially as they got more crowded. The people walking right into you, standing two inches behind you, squeezing directly in between you and the shelf you are obviously staring at just to stand there and stare themselves…. the whole American “body bubble” was terribly lacking and basic manners nonexistent. My wife still finds such trips annoying and frustrating, and gets easily offended by the rudeness of others.

I, however, have accepted that this lack of manners isn’t deliberate rudeness, it’s simply culturally-ingrained that it’s perfectly OK to shove, push, etc, and isn’t personal….. so I take a delightfully malicious thrill in shoving right back. Yes, I’ll stand there in the middle of the aisle blocking the carts. When the old lady behind me in line shoves against me, I shove her right back and give her my best, “I am a psycho foreigner, do you want me to gnaw your arms off?”-glare. If someone steps in front of me when I’m looking at something, I’ll reach over their head and knock off their cap to get what I want, or just shove around them. I don’t step aside when walking down the aisles, as my American politeness would dictate.

I love it. There’s a wonderfully vicious thrill in just going, “To hell with polite behavior. GRAGHH!!” I think my ultimate dream now would be to go shopping at Super-U during the holidays, carrying something like a really long rake or shovel around the aisles, just for the fun of ‘accidentally’ whacking annoying people with it as I turn this way and that.

The secret of adaptation - making your fun where you can find it

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!

Get your French munchies here!

A very, very quick note today for our US friends. I was just browsing through the new Amazon.com listings for food, after learning that they were now moving heavily into dry goods to compete with the big supermarkets. Popcorn, obviously, was my motivation, but I discovered in the process that they have some really interesting sections on ethnic foods, and even a decent selection of French stuff.

(And yes, I know this sounds like a commercial, but unlike with my AdSense ads and book account, I don't get paid jack for this - I just wanted to post it for the interest of our francophile visitors who might not otherwise know that they can buy Brittany caramels from Amazon!)

These caramels, shown in the pic, are terrific. We can find them all over our immediate area but I never expected to encounter such a cardboard-boxed, homemade-looking candy on Ye Internet Megamart. If anyone wants a little taste of Brittany, there you are. Another very local item is this selection of Guérande sea salt, which is harvested by hundreds of salt flat workers not fifteen minutes to the south of our house. I've heard many chefs say it is the best cooking salt on the planet. Our friend Claudie's parents have their own stretch of salt farm in the marshes - I think I even posted a bunch of pics from our visit there sometime in the past, though now I can't remember for sure.

Madeleines have a special place in our hearts because they were our staple food for the first six months that we lived here. We found out early that they were plentiful, inexpensive, and we could eat them without suffering the upset stomach that nearly all French food gave us during our first year of adaptation. I can't say they're especially good snacks, and I don't think I ever want to eat another one myself personally, but they are an integral part of our "French Experience".

I don't eat a lot of foie gras because A) our budget doesn't allow it, and B) it is so rich (the good stuff, anyway) that I simply can't consume a lot of it without rolling into the floor. This foie gras with truffles, however, sounds tempting. I am, however, most likely spoiled forever on eating storebought foie gras because I've had the good fortune to be able to have some homemade by a French master chef. Marie-Blanche, if you're reading this, tell Marcel we want more! :)

Of course, for the genuine French family meal experience, there is Nutella. I read an amusing account on another expat's blog once about her encounter with a scolding French teacher, who told her that she was ruining her child's health by sending him to school with peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. He was supposed to be eating that healthy Nutella instead! The French revulsion for peanut butter is charming and funny - I can only hope they feel the same about my reactions to andouille sausage...

Adventurous souls can try rolling their own crépes using this buckwheat flour. From what I have seen, making crépes at home (of the non-microwave variety) is something akin to conducting a symphony under the duress that, if you miss a note, your orchestra players will begin burning to briquettes.

It is a strange world today, when Americans are ordering Breton caramels from Amazon while I, sitting in Brittany, shop for crates of Orville's Ultimate Butter Popcorn...

Popcorn Quest Continued, and Weird American "Food"

..... And I do mean to put quotes on "food", as some of what I will mention is pretty questionable (especially if one defines food as something needed for nutritional value). But first, a word on the popcorn quest. For three years now, Emily and I have depended on the kindness and forebearance of friends and family to send us the microwave popcorn that we couldn't find here. I can't imagine how tired they are of us begging for popcorn, and I'm certainly weary of bothering people, so we've recently launched a concerted effort to find our own sources of popcorn in Europe. Thanks to a very helpful friend in FumeursdePipe, we were pointed to the German website "United Lifestyles" - an online business catering to the strange and twisted tastes of British and American expats residing in mainland Europe. Suddenly, I can order beer online! (This was a really strange concept for an American - being able to visit any number of online wine & alcohol shops and purchase wines from all over France via the net... an unheard-of concept for the US, where alcohol sales are strictly controlled). UF has microwave popcorn, and our first order is on the way. Time will tell.

Unwilling to pin our long-term popcorn plans on one source, however, we valiantly pursued other avenues, and eventually found the two models of hot air popcorn poppers that were available in France. One visit to Boutique Plus and 25 euros later, we now have a real popcorn popper to try out (Seen in the photo above, along with all the other essentials of life for an expat abroad - caramel liqueor, giant bottles of Texas Pete, Pez, and a mead horn). We can get popcorn in kernel form here - just not the instant microwave bags that are so beloved of lazy Americans. Still, popping our own has its charm, and it is great fun to watch the thing firing hot popcorn randomly all over the kitchen. Makes movietime a lot more festive than just sticking something in the microwave, even if we'll miss all the amazing and sometimes-frightening flavors that our US friends have sent over to us. If our French and European friends are curious to see just how exotic the American snack food fixation can get, have a look at these links:

Orville's Pre-popped Chocolate Drizzler Popcorn
Orville's Cinnabon Cinnamon Butter Popcorn
Orville's Kettle Korn
Orville's Caramel Corn
Orville's Honey Butter Corn
Orville's Pour-Over Butter Popcorn
Orville's Pour-Over Cheddar Popcorn
Orville's Movie Theater Butter Popcorn
Orville's Ultimate Butter Popcorn
Orville's Corn-on-the-Cob Popcorn
Orville's Tender White Popcorn

And this is just a fraction of the variety produced by one brand! That doesn't even touch on the truly eccentric (to les francais) exotica such as microwave pork rinds, peanut butter cups, S'Mores, buffalo wings, not to mention our national fixation on really intense hot sauces.

Our French friends often ask us what are typical American "cultural" foods. I never know how to answer this question, because Americans don't really define ourselves culturally through cuisine - We tend to base our sense of cultural identity on accomplishments rather than regional dishes (This is probably a good thing), and most of the foods that I think of as uniquely American (hamburgers, chilidogs, corndogs, hot wings, etc) aren't the sort of "cultural" foods that I'm being asked about (Though personally speaking, I would just as soon have a really delicious county fairground corndog, dripping with grease, and some crunchy fresh onion rings to some of the haute cuisine we've encountered in our travels). So, si vous me demandez un example de cuisine americaine, don't be surprised if I look a bit confused and have to think for a while... especially since the inquiring person is thinking of something like gallettes avec fruits de mer and I am likely thinking of something like Chewy Sweet Tarts...

If any of our French or European friends ever get curious to try cooking some very "American" foods (and can translate recipes into metric), here are some good recipes:
Chili Cheese Dog
Chili Dog Chili
Pork Burritos
Cornbread
(Cornbread is essential. If one ever tries to cook Southern food, Ye will be Judged by thine cornbread)
And of course, plenty of other dishes I grew up with.