July 7, 2013
A Medieval Day: The Cathedral of Carcassonne; Michael Lonsdale at the Cistercian Abbey of Villelongue
Perhaps it was fitting that today, Sunday, was devoted to medieval influences. Of course, Languedoc-Roussillon is jam-packed with medieval churches, abbeys and cathedrals, but it can be overwhelming to try to tackle that world, which resembles our own so little. I have held off visiting the famous towns --Castelnaudary, and Albi, to mention two-- because staring at stones to stare at stones held less appeal than cycing or driving through the countryside.
However, on Sundays I go to Mass, so I thought I would go in Carcassonne, to Saint Michel, the Cathedral at Carcassonne's center, and the town's largest church after Saint Nazaire, the church built inside the Cité, the walled city.
Entering the cathedral a few minutes before the start of the 11 o'clock Mass, a little girl in a white caplet handed me a program. I sat in one of the forward pews to get a better view. All around me were walls and tall columns painted with stenciled repeats of the Cross of Rousillon-Languedoc and other symbols. The painted symbols stood out against deeply-hued painted backgrounds, each column with a different motif: column beside column, pattern beside pattern. The sight reminded me that, contrary to our vision of medieval castle interiors as being grey, medieval splendor contemplated bright color, even if the palette was limited to colors derived from vegetable and sources.
The young woman in the caplet was one of several companions to "Elisabeth", a young girl who was celebrating her First Communion today. The church was packed with people, several generations of families, children of retirement age escorting ancient parents, long-married couples. I saw a Tahitian couple across the aisle, and behind me sat a Haitian couple, but most of the parishoners were from l'Hexagone.
The church was not particularly noisy, but noisy enough that, a few minutes before the start of the service, the celebrant, a young priest wearing a black cassock, walked up to the microphone and uttered a long "Shhhhhhhhh....", and then another. The church immediately became still.
The procession down the main aisle began almost immediately after, with the priest (now in vestments) following the group of girls associated with the First Communion. Everyone sat down and the service began. Today marked a change in the liturgy: the mention of Saint Joseph, father of Jesus, who had been overlooked until now. Otherwise, the Mass was like any other.
Except that just before the homily, the priest said "And the children will now withdraw."
And every child in the church --about twenty in all-- stood up and left their pews, accompanied by a Sunday school teacher. The homily over, the children returned for the eucharistic celebration.
The priest was assisted by two acolytes, who shadowed the priest at the altar. The choreography was exact: all three bowed together, genuflected together, rose together. The priest was handed a censer by one of the altar boys: he swung the censer twice to the left, twice in the center and twice to the right, then walked around the front of the altar table and repeated the motion, bathing the altar table in incense. As the smoke rose, I was reminded that incense was purifying. (Perhaps that is the origin of our exclamation "Holy smoke!") This priest --serious, thin, and dark-eyed, his hair razored at the sides as if tonsured-- served the most perfectly choreographed Mass I have ever attended. Watching him, I was reminded of an observation about the medieval world's dependence on display and symbols: in a largely illiterate world, dress and gestures stood in for words. Even if the medieval parishioner could not read or understand the Bible, the panoply of the Church on display at Mass inspired awe.
After the Mass, people gathered in the plaza outside the Cathedral, where the priest, his duties now completed, relaxed and chatted amiably with his flock. Before I turned and left, I saw a woman of about sixty-five or more put a helmet on and throw a leg over motorbike. I do not think she is unusual: the French love practical things --from freezing ice in plastic bottles (see yesterday's post) to motorbikes, and older people in France do not like making concessions to their age.
After Mass I planned to spend the afternoon and part of the evening at Villelongue abbey. Walking through Carcassonne last week, I saw a poster for a reading inspired by "Of Gods and Men", the film about the 1996 murder of seven Cistercian Trappist monks in their abbey at Tibhirine, Algiers during that country's last civil war. Michael Lonsdale, who played Brother Luc, the doctor who ran the clinic at the abbey serving the Algerian community, would be reading, accompanied on the piano by Nicolas Celoro.
I had to attend this performance: Michael Lonsdale --or Michel Lonsdale, as he is known in France-- is an actor whose films I grew up with: Lebel in Day of the Jackal, Hugo Drax in Moonraker, the hatter with the buttocks-exposing pants Buñuel's La Fantôme de la Liberté, Papa in Munich. In Souvenir, with Christopher Plummer, he played the Mayor of Oradour-sur-Glane, the site of a Nazi massacre of the town's citizens in retaliation for a Resistance incursion; in Remains of the Day he was Dupont D'Ivry, a French politician attending a conference aimed at preventing World War II. In 2010 he won a César (the French equivalent of an Academy Award) for his performance in Of Gods and Men. He is an actor incapable of giving a frivolous performance.
I gave myself more than enough time to drive to the abbey, which is now not only a tourist destination but a small inn. I was the first to arrive, three hours before the performance. After I paid for my ticket (15 Euros, about $20 USD), I entered the abbey. To the right of me were a group of diners enjoying their lunch. At the head of the table was Michael Lonsdale. I did not ask for his autograph, and I did not say a word, although I saw him register my entrance. Later I found out from the abbey proprietor that a group of visitors to the abbey (which had not yet closed in anticipation of the performance) had interrupted his lunch, asking Lonsdale for autographs and pictures. "After that, he went into his room, and won't be out until the performance" she told me.
The performance was held in the ruined chapel of the abbey. About two hundred people attended, many of them snapping pictures. (My camera conked out as soon as Michael Lonsdale made his appearance on stage.) Each of the eight readings --from Saint John and Saint Luke's Gospels, from the letters of one of the martyred monks, from the superior of Cistercian order--was associated to a piece of music by Liszt or Nicolas Celoro, who writes in a florid, pianistic style. (Earlier Celoro told me his music was opposed to the ugly contemporary music created by Arnold Schonberg and his disciples, which he called brutisme -noise-music.)
Lonsdale was Lonsdale: shambling, wise, quiet. A devout, life-long Catholic, he has lent his talents to raise money to help maintain monasteries and monks. Born in 1931 in Paris, he was first raised in Jersey and London. His family had relocated to Morocco (where his father planned to start a business), when France fell on September 1, 1939. He only returned to Paris after the war, when, after a few years studying art, he switched to acting. In 1962, Orson Welles cast him as the Priest in his film of Kafka's The Trial and he never stopped working since. In 2012 he even lent his voice to a video game, 007 Legends, which reprised his role as Hugo Drax.
Present for the performance were two Cistercian priests, slender young men in cream colored robes, as well as a French nun in a blue habit. Seats were reserved by row, rather than individual seat; the earliest to reserve were seated closest to the stage. There was a main aisle in the center which was kept clear.
I had a good seat on the aisle in Row H, which became even better when out of nowhere a brindled Staffordshire terrier walked down the aisle and sat beside me. The dog's heavy breathing was inadvertently comic: I stroked its head several times (as did the man in the aisle seat opposite), hoping it would not pant so. The dog, of course, could not help himself, and after a short rest, got up and walked down the aisle as the piano played, walked right up to Michael Lonsdale --and then turned right and left the building. The tone of the performance was unaffected, although I know Lonsdale saw the dog.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Saturday, July 6, 2013
France on Holiday; The Tour de France; The Ride of My Life
July 6, 2013
France on Holiday
Today is the day after the end of the school year in France, and the start of the summer vacation period so beloved of the French. From today until the end of August, 22 million Frenchmen will take the road in pursuit of recreation in the sun. One out of every two will vacation during these eight weeks. Due to the poor economic situation, only 30% will take foreign vacations. The majority of these will be in Spain, Portugal and Greece, which are the cheapest places in Europe now.
The remaining 70% will relax in-country, 10% of them opting for the hospitality of their parents or grandparents. The average budget for a week's vacation for a French household this year is 1,240 Euros, about $1600 USD, down from last year. Renting a trailer, strapping some bicycles on the back and driving to seashore campsites on the Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts is popular this year, as well as renting a small cottage in a campsite in the woods, for those who prefer the mountains.
Trains will be packed, and woe betide those who did not make reservations well in advance. In Paris, many south-bound travelers waiting at the Gare de Lyon had taken the precaution of setting out for the station several hours before their trains were to depart, to avoid missing a train due to traffic.
It is said that the French holiday period is such a focus of life here that whatever issue might have been roiling French politics before, it fades from memory until the fall, as if it, too, were taking a holiday. As with most things in France, it is important to know the history.
Until the Popular Front government of Leon Blum was elected in 1936 and the Matignon Agreements were signed between the leading trade unions and the French state, French workers worked without a right to any vacation. In June 1936, following the terms of the Matignon Agreements, the French Senate legislated a mandatory two-week vacation for all French employees.
Since then the lot of French workers has improved to the point that French workers receive five weeks of paid vacation a year, plus holidays. With so much free time, planning vacations naturally becomes a major focus of French life. As summer approaches, vacation planning edges out considerations of politics, which -the French do not seem to think has much point. when one's vacation is imminent.
The Tour de France
I erred earlier when I mentioned that the Tour de France is celebrating its 99th year. This is actually the centennial of the race. Today's stage, 195 kilometers from Castres, not far from here, took the riders through Revel, Castelnauraday, Limoux, and Quilland, before ending at Ax les Thermes in the Pyrenées, a grinding climb. Christopher Froome, born in Nairobi 28 years ago and a U.K. citizen, won the stage in 5 hours 3 minutes and 18 seconds. He is also the overall leader . Today's hill climbing stage began the sorting out of riders that will only intensify as the race goes on. Froome is one to watch.
The Ride Of My Life
Being on my own for the next few days, I have naturally wanted to catch up on my cycling, which has lagged on account of the need to show visitors around. Awaking to the tweet-tweet of the birds early this morning, I got myself out on the bicycle by 9:00 a.m. The thing about cycling here that is exciting to me is the sense that I can set my route and track the landscape, each time learning something more about the geography of the Minervois area.
I had already been to Homps and Olonzac, about twelve miles away, and a pleasant ride, so I set out in that direction. However, by the time I got to Olonzac, it was still early, and I did not want to ride home just yet. Which is when the idea of pedaling to Minerve took hold of me.
As I have already said, Minerve was the site of a famous battle during the Albigensian crusade, a battle made all the more dramatic to those who have been there and seen Minerve's location between two mountain gorges. Minerve is a sort of Shangri-La, a place that time forgot, which ought to be seen more than once. So I decided I would cycle to Minerve.
Nominally, the distance between Caunes-Minervois and Minerve is about fifty kilometers. However, much of the road to Minerve once you leave Olonzac is on an upward slope. I was undaunted by that because I was riding early in the day, before the sun was at its height. I reached Azillanet, where the road winds upward; by combining riding and walking, I was able to make it to Minerve by noon. Where my first trip to Minerve was a nerve-wracking experience, this time I felt like an old hand, and I could take in the town from all angles. After walking into the village for some water and an ice cream cone, I turned around and retraced my steps, stopping at the ladies' room as a precaution.
Inside I applied more sunblock, while a middle-aged woman holding the bathroom stall door open for her elderly mother watched.
Avez-vous de l'eau? (Do you have water?)
I said I had already drunk more than a liter of water, but she insisted that I should have water with me on the road. She wanted to give me a plastic bottle that had been filled with water and frozen.
--C'est pratique (It's practical), she said. She did this all the time, to make sure that she and her passengers had enough water on trips, she said. After helping her mother out to the waiting car, she got me one.
I knew when I accepted the water that it would not do: only the largest water bottles fit the bottled water clamp on my bicycle. So I drank the liquified portion and put the bottle with the ice into a trash can. My return to Caunes would not follow the route I took to get to Minerve, but a route with fewer hills that would take me through Cesseras, then on to Trausse and finally Caunes.
By now the heat was blazing, but I managed to get myself to the crossroads for Cesseras, located high in the mountains. This is where the ride, already memorable, became spectacular. The road to Cesseras is a cyclist's dream, one endless, easily curving descent that took ten minutes to make. I could have been on a motorbike, the bicycle was moving so swiftly and smoothly through the landscape. Cesseras, at the very bottom, was surrounded by vineyards on all sides.
I wasn't home yet, though. I had to keep riding, and by now I was starting to flag. I made it to Pepieux, a village of no particular distinction, where I stopped to enter a bar where six people were eating and chatting noisily. One of them, a sixtyish man with a head of silver hair, a cataract in one of his hazel eyes and black glasses, went behind the bar and asked what I would like. I asked whether there was draft beer and he said only bottles, so I said I would take water.
We got into a conversation about the need for riders to drink water and keep their body temperatures low on days like this one. How many times had he seen cyclists near death because they had not bothered to keep water with them. Once, driving along the road, he saw an abandoned bicycle and found a Dutch rider in the bushes, practically unconscious, incapable of speech. Raymond (that was his name), quickly got out the water bottles he had in the back and ran over to the cyclist, pouring the ice water over his head.
I still felt pretty good, but if Raymond would be so kind as to offer me some cold water from the tap, I would pour it over my head, I said. Nothing easier, said Raymond, and handed me a large metal bowl full of ice cubes and water. I gave my name and thanked him, saying that I would perform the ritual just outside the bar, so as not to make a mess inside. Before I did so, Raymond offered me a bottle of his frozen water. Like the woman at Minerve, he too, took out a small bottle of frozen water from his freezer in the back.
This time, I turned down the offer.
--Vous le regretterai (you will regret it), he insisted.
I explained that I could not accept the water bottle, because the clasp on the bicycle was not small enough for it to keep from falling out. Perhaps they could Scotch tape it to the clasp?
Mais on trouvera un autre, plus grand! (But we'll find a bigger bottle!)
And indeed, he and another man walked over to the freezer and rifled through it until they found a plastic bottle large enough to fit the clasp. I offered to pay for the bottle, but Raymond said I'd already paid for the earlier mineral water and there was no need.
Like the woman who gave me the smaller bottle, Raymond saved the bottles after they were drunk to fill them and have them handy for cyclists.
It was now time for the dousing with ice water. I walked outside, and in full view of everyone, poured a tub of ice water over myself. We all laughed about it, and after thanking them, I took off.
Raymond had explained that I was still on the highland, and I would be near Caunes before the road descended. Raymond directed me to ride straight through, not turning off onto any of the side roads at the rotaries or crossroads, straight through to Caunes.
It was more difficult than I thought it would be: by now it was two o'clock and the sun was at its height. I pedaled through fields and fields of vines, an endless green sea. At one point I wondered when I would ever see a road marker. When I did, it said I had 10 kilometers to go to Caunes. I took the ice water out of the clamp, drank some and poured the rest of the melted water over m head. There was still a block of ice in the bottle to get me to Caunes. Raymond had been right: without the extra water to throw over my head to bring my body temperature down, I would have had heat stroke.
I passed one more marker: 2.3 kilometers to Caunes. Walking and cycling, I made it to Caunes' outskirts.
Barely inside the village's limits, a slender young man wearing the cycling jersey serious (and sometimes pretenious) cyclers wear, said hello, as he passed me slowly.
-Antoine! he said, identifying himself.
-Marta! I said, from my end.
I guess I looked like I was serious about cycling.
I
France on Holiday
Today is the day after the end of the school year in France, and the start of the summer vacation period so beloved of the French. From today until the end of August, 22 million Frenchmen will take the road in pursuit of recreation in the sun. One out of every two will vacation during these eight weeks. Due to the poor economic situation, only 30% will take foreign vacations. The majority of these will be in Spain, Portugal and Greece, which are the cheapest places in Europe now.
The remaining 70% will relax in-country, 10% of them opting for the hospitality of their parents or grandparents. The average budget for a week's vacation for a French household this year is 1,240 Euros, about $1600 USD, down from last year. Renting a trailer, strapping some bicycles on the back and driving to seashore campsites on the Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts is popular this year, as well as renting a small cottage in a campsite in the woods, for those who prefer the mountains.
Trains will be packed, and woe betide those who did not make reservations well in advance. In Paris, many south-bound travelers waiting at the Gare de Lyon had taken the precaution of setting out for the station several hours before their trains were to depart, to avoid missing a train due to traffic.
It is said that the French holiday period is such a focus of life here that whatever issue might have been roiling French politics before, it fades from memory until the fall, as if it, too, were taking a holiday. As with most things in France, it is important to know the history.
Until the Popular Front government of Leon Blum was elected in 1936 and the Matignon Agreements were signed between the leading trade unions and the French state, French workers worked without a right to any vacation. In June 1936, following the terms of the Matignon Agreements, the French Senate legislated a mandatory two-week vacation for all French employees.
Since then the lot of French workers has improved to the point that French workers receive five weeks of paid vacation a year, plus holidays. With so much free time, planning vacations naturally becomes a major focus of French life. As summer approaches, vacation planning edges out considerations of politics, which -the French do not seem to think has much point. when one's vacation is imminent.
The Tour de France
I erred earlier when I mentioned that the Tour de France is celebrating its 99th year. This is actually the centennial of the race. Today's stage, 195 kilometers from Castres, not far from here, took the riders through Revel, Castelnauraday, Limoux, and Quilland, before ending at Ax les Thermes in the Pyrenées, a grinding climb. Christopher Froome, born in Nairobi 28 years ago and a U.K. citizen, won the stage in 5 hours 3 minutes and 18 seconds. He is also the overall leader . Today's hill climbing stage began the sorting out of riders that will only intensify as the race goes on. Froome is one to watch.
The Ride Of My Life
Being on my own for the next few days, I have naturally wanted to catch up on my cycling, which has lagged on account of the need to show visitors around. Awaking to the tweet-tweet of the birds early this morning, I got myself out on the bicycle by 9:00 a.m. The thing about cycling here that is exciting to me is the sense that I can set my route and track the landscape, each time learning something more about the geography of the Minervois area.
I had already been to Homps and Olonzac, about twelve miles away, and a pleasant ride, so I set out in that direction. However, by the time I got to Olonzac, it was still early, and I did not want to ride home just yet. Which is when the idea of pedaling to Minerve took hold of me.
As I have already said, Minerve was the site of a famous battle during the Albigensian crusade, a battle made all the more dramatic to those who have been there and seen Minerve's location between two mountain gorges. Minerve is a sort of Shangri-La, a place that time forgot, which ought to be seen more than once. So I decided I would cycle to Minerve.
Nominally, the distance between Caunes-Minervois and Minerve is about fifty kilometers. However, much of the road to Minerve once you leave Olonzac is on an upward slope. I was undaunted by that because I was riding early in the day, before the sun was at its height. I reached Azillanet, where the road winds upward; by combining riding and walking, I was able to make it to Minerve by noon. Where my first trip to Minerve was a nerve-wracking experience, this time I felt like an old hand, and I could take in the town from all angles. After walking into the village for some water and an ice cream cone, I turned around and retraced my steps, stopping at the ladies' room as a precaution.
Inside I applied more sunblock, while a middle-aged woman holding the bathroom stall door open for her elderly mother watched.
Avez-vous de l'eau? (Do you have water?)
I said I had already drunk more than a liter of water, but she insisted that I should have water with me on the road. She wanted to give me a plastic bottle that had been filled with water and frozen.
--C'est pratique (It's practical), she said. She did this all the time, to make sure that she and her passengers had enough water on trips, she said. After helping her mother out to the waiting car, she got me one.
I knew when I accepted the water that it would not do: only the largest water bottles fit the bottled water clamp on my bicycle. So I drank the liquified portion and put the bottle with the ice into a trash can. My return to Caunes would not follow the route I took to get to Minerve, but a route with fewer hills that would take me through Cesseras, then on to Trausse and finally Caunes.
By now the heat was blazing, but I managed to get myself to the crossroads for Cesseras, located high in the mountains. This is where the ride, already memorable, became spectacular. The road to Cesseras is a cyclist's dream, one endless, easily curving descent that took ten minutes to make. I could have been on a motorbike, the bicycle was moving so swiftly and smoothly through the landscape. Cesseras, at the very bottom, was surrounded by vineyards on all sides.
I wasn't home yet, though. I had to keep riding, and by now I was starting to flag. I made it to Pepieux, a village of no particular distinction, where I stopped to enter a bar where six people were eating and chatting noisily. One of them, a sixtyish man with a head of silver hair, a cataract in one of his hazel eyes and black glasses, went behind the bar and asked what I would like. I asked whether there was draft beer and he said only bottles, so I said I would take water.
We got into a conversation about the need for riders to drink water and keep their body temperatures low on days like this one. How many times had he seen cyclists near death because they had not bothered to keep water with them. Once, driving along the road, he saw an abandoned bicycle and found a Dutch rider in the bushes, practically unconscious, incapable of speech. Raymond (that was his name), quickly got out the water bottles he had in the back and ran over to the cyclist, pouring the ice water over his head.
I still felt pretty good, but if Raymond would be so kind as to offer me some cold water from the tap, I would pour it over my head, I said. Nothing easier, said Raymond, and handed me a large metal bowl full of ice cubes and water. I gave my name and thanked him, saying that I would perform the ritual just outside the bar, so as not to make a mess inside. Before I did so, Raymond offered me a bottle of his frozen water. Like the woman at Minerve, he too, took out a small bottle of frozen water from his freezer in the back.
This time, I turned down the offer.
--Vous le regretterai (you will regret it), he insisted.
I explained that I could not accept the water bottle, because the clasp on the bicycle was not small enough for it to keep from falling out. Perhaps they could Scotch tape it to the clasp?
Mais on trouvera un autre, plus grand! (But we'll find a bigger bottle!)
And indeed, he and another man walked over to the freezer and rifled through it until they found a plastic bottle large enough to fit the clasp. I offered to pay for the bottle, but Raymond said I'd already paid for the earlier mineral water and there was no need.
Like the woman who gave me the smaller bottle, Raymond saved the bottles after they were drunk to fill them and have them handy for cyclists.
It was now time for the dousing with ice water. I walked outside, and in full view of everyone, poured a tub of ice water over myself. We all laughed about it, and after thanking them, I took off.
Raymond had explained that I was still on the highland, and I would be near Caunes before the road descended. Raymond directed me to ride straight through, not turning off onto any of the side roads at the rotaries or crossroads, straight through to Caunes.
It was more difficult than I thought it would be: by now it was two o'clock and the sun was at its height. I pedaled through fields and fields of vines, an endless green sea. At one point I wondered when I would ever see a road marker. When I did, it said I had 10 kilometers to go to Caunes. I took the ice water out of the clamp, drank some and poured the rest of the melted water over m head. There was still a block of ice in the bottle to get me to Caunes. Raymond had been right: without the extra water to throw over my head to bring my body temperature down, I would have had heat stroke.
I passed one more marker: 2.3 kilometers to Caunes. Walking and cycling, I made it to Caunes' outskirts.
Barely inside the village's limits, a slender young man wearing the cycling jersey serious (and sometimes pretenious) cyclers wear, said hello, as he passed me slowly.
-Antoine! he said, identifying himself.
-Marta! I said, from my end.
I guess I looked like I was serious about cycling.
I
Friday, July 5, 2013
Wash on the line; buying a house in France
July 5, 2013
Wash on the line; buying a house in France
Up early to run an errand in Carcassonne, I start the laundry just before I leave, so I can hang it out when I return in about an hour. Today is the first day of full sun, all day, a washerwoman's paradise. Indeed, I hang the wash on two clotheslines suspended over the green plastic dining table and chairs set up in the small courtyard between the front gate and the door to the house. The set up is not the best if you plan to eat outside, but it is great for drying clothes.
When I was a girl my mother would put laundry on a line. We have all seen television advertisements for laundry detergent highlighting whites drying on a line in a sun-filled field. While my two long rows of clothespinned items are not all white, and not uniform in any sense, nevertheless the sight of clothes drying on the line in the sun is somehow cheering.
The temperature is so hot that I dry two loads of sheets and towels on the lines in a morning. Taken off the line, the whites do look brighter. The towels smell and feel inviting. So long as the good weather this summer lasts, everyone in Caunes-Minervois will dry the wash on the line.
***
I have been active organizing a possible purchase of a house on the outskirts of Caunes. The procedures are quite different from those in the United States. For one, there is only one attorney handling the transaction for both parties, le notaire. This might seem odd, particularly as the French say to foreign purchasers that the notaire is impartial, and that he protects the buyer's interests.
The concept is fundamental to the French legal system, which likes the idea of a single expert with an official affiliation to the government, rather than two private adversaries each representing a client, as in Anglo-Saxon legal systems. For instance, in criminal proceedings, there is an investigation by a magistrate as to whether the facts are sufficient to bring charges. The attorney for the defendant only comes into the picture after the magistrate presents his conclusions to the court and recommends sanction. The defense attorney's job is to point out the deficiencies in the magistrate's report to the criminal court.
In real estate transactions, the notaire drafts the documents, determines whether there are any outstanding liens on the property, or any environmental problems with the land. At the closing, the notaire is responsible for registering the new deed and disbursing the purchase price to the sellers, as well as calculating the taxes on the transfer. The notaire is a government official appointed by decree of the Minister of Justice and his fees are paid by the buyer.
Stories of notaires using their thorough knowledge of an area to do prospective purchasers out of a land or house purchase are legion in French literature. With all this knowledge of real estate transactions, and what property is for sale in an area, it is not surprising that many notaires are also real estate developers. Of course, this is not a conflict of interest.
If you go to a French bank for a loan to buy your house, the bank will only lend against an easily-seizable and guaranteed stream of income in France. A bank will not make you a loan against a first house in France, or assets outside of France. The bank will determine the length of the loan term by looking at your age, the average loan term being ten years.
If you are able to meet these standards, you will be offered a loan at a low rate of interest, say 2.85% fixed rate with a pre-payment penalty of 3%. You may take out a variable rate loan at 3% with no pre-payment penalty. Before the closing, you will be asked to take out a life insurance policy in favor of the bank, the cost of which will be borne by you.
This aspect of the transaction illustrates how risk-averse French banks are: if you die with the mortgage still outstanding, the bank does not seize the house or have to execute the mortgage against the assets of the estate, but gets paid immediately by the life insurance company. It is also good for the life insurance business. (A similar rule in the U.K. was struck down a few years ago.)
Finally, the bank wants to know who your next-of-kin are. The reason for this is that no one other than next-of-kin can inherit real property in France. This restriction on free alienability of property is absolute: even if you detest your relatives, they will get the property if you own it when you die, whether you die without a will or make a will leaving the property to a non-family member or a charity as part of your estate. In theory, the goal of the law is to protect the children of a marriage, but in operation, the results can be onerous, as where the children of a first marriage take, forcing the second wife out of the house; or, where a property was jointly owned by a couple and on the death of the first spouse, the survivor remarries, bringing the new spouse to live in the house. Any children of the second marriage are without rights to any part of the house, whatever the couple's wishes. If the parent from the first marriage dies before his second spouse, his children take, while the wife and the children of the second marriage do not.
In case you are having trouble keeping these rules straight, it may be comforting to know that in France when a child is born a livret de famille is created to certify which children are whose, and of what marriage. This facilitates keeping real property in the hands of one "family", defined as a husband and wife and the children of that marriage. It also makes bigamy difficult, as the livret de famille is an important identity document, along with the national identity card (which should be carried on one's person at all time). In a real estate transaction, the contents of the livret de famille are incorporated into the record of the real estate transaction.
In a sense, this obsession with maintaining the original outlines of a family structure by mandating descent through a restricted bloodline illustrates the difference between the French way of thinking and the American: the French believe that the family unit takes precedence over the individual's intention; they also want property to stay in the hands of people who are likely to be French and likely to internalize the mentalité of the community into which the original husband and wife settled. Later spouses and children are, because of their remoteness from the marriage that spawned the purchase of the family home at issue, "new" relatives, and implicitly suspect.
Of course, the French are no stranger to multiple marriages. There is even a term, la famille recomposée --the reorganized family-- that encapsulates the reality of multiple marriages and children. Former President Nicolas Sarozy --married three times, with children from each marriage, is the pre-eminent paterfamilias of the famille recomposèe. It is one more reason to dislike him, in French eyes.
On the other hand, François Hollande, who never married his compagne (companion) and the mother of his children, Ségolène Royale, is now in a relationship with Valerie Trierweiler, a twice-married divorcée and the mother of three children. (Hollande's children with Ségolene Royal were legitimized by Hollande's formal acknowledgement of them as his.) Hollande's romantic triangulation --Trierweiler covered both Royal and Hollande as a journalist-- made barely a ripple during Hollande's succesful presidential campaign against Sarkozy.
The Hollande-Trierweiler relationship does not a famille recomposée make, but it does reflect a trend in France, the increasing reluctance to marry or re-marry of many. In the case of those who have lived together for many years but never married, as retirement age approaches, many tie the knot to protect each other's pension rights. However, many couples live together as husband and wife without ever marrying. Inheritance rights are set by law and cannot be superseded by a will --which is why few are made in France. There is also no reason, after divorce or bereavement, to wed the new compagne. Anyway, the idea of "living in sin" is an oxymoron from the French point of view.
This can lead to gaffes, as when an American assumes that the lovely lady working side-by-side in the butcher shop with the butcher is his wife and speaks to her of votre mari (your husband). One hundred years ago, Bostonian Henry James wrote many novels about Americans flummoxed by the subtleties of European morés. The crux of the elaborate architecture of deception and surface James revealed so strikingly was always property: in France, it still is.
Wash on the line; buying a house in France
Up early to run an errand in Carcassonne, I start the laundry just before I leave, so I can hang it out when I return in about an hour. Today is the first day of full sun, all day, a washerwoman's paradise. Indeed, I hang the wash on two clotheslines suspended over the green plastic dining table and chairs set up in the small courtyard between the front gate and the door to the house. The set up is not the best if you plan to eat outside, but it is great for drying clothes.
When I was a girl my mother would put laundry on a line. We have all seen television advertisements for laundry detergent highlighting whites drying on a line in a sun-filled field. While my two long rows of clothespinned items are not all white, and not uniform in any sense, nevertheless the sight of clothes drying on the line in the sun is somehow cheering.
The temperature is so hot that I dry two loads of sheets and towels on the lines in a morning. Taken off the line, the whites do look brighter. The towels smell and feel inviting. So long as the good weather this summer lasts, everyone in Caunes-Minervois will dry the wash on the line.
***
I have been active organizing a possible purchase of a house on the outskirts of Caunes. The procedures are quite different from those in the United States. For one, there is only one attorney handling the transaction for both parties, le notaire. This might seem odd, particularly as the French say to foreign purchasers that the notaire is impartial, and that he protects the buyer's interests.
The concept is fundamental to the French legal system, which likes the idea of a single expert with an official affiliation to the government, rather than two private adversaries each representing a client, as in Anglo-Saxon legal systems. For instance, in criminal proceedings, there is an investigation by a magistrate as to whether the facts are sufficient to bring charges. The attorney for the defendant only comes into the picture after the magistrate presents his conclusions to the court and recommends sanction. The defense attorney's job is to point out the deficiencies in the magistrate's report to the criminal court.
In real estate transactions, the notaire drafts the documents, determines whether there are any outstanding liens on the property, or any environmental problems with the land. At the closing, the notaire is responsible for registering the new deed and disbursing the purchase price to the sellers, as well as calculating the taxes on the transfer. The notaire is a government official appointed by decree of the Minister of Justice and his fees are paid by the buyer.
Stories of notaires using their thorough knowledge of an area to do prospective purchasers out of a land or house purchase are legion in French literature. With all this knowledge of real estate transactions, and what property is for sale in an area, it is not surprising that many notaires are also real estate developers. Of course, this is not a conflict of interest.
If you go to a French bank for a loan to buy your house, the bank will only lend against an easily-seizable and guaranteed stream of income in France. A bank will not make you a loan against a first house in France, or assets outside of France. The bank will determine the length of the loan term by looking at your age, the average loan term being ten years.
If you are able to meet these standards, you will be offered a loan at a low rate of interest, say 2.85% fixed rate with a pre-payment penalty of 3%. You may take out a variable rate loan at 3% with no pre-payment penalty. Before the closing, you will be asked to take out a life insurance policy in favor of the bank, the cost of which will be borne by you.
This aspect of the transaction illustrates how risk-averse French banks are: if you die with the mortgage still outstanding, the bank does not seize the house or have to execute the mortgage against the assets of the estate, but gets paid immediately by the life insurance company. It is also good for the life insurance business. (A similar rule in the U.K. was struck down a few years ago.)
Finally, the bank wants to know who your next-of-kin are. The reason for this is that no one other than next-of-kin can inherit real property in France. This restriction on free alienability of property is absolute: even if you detest your relatives, they will get the property if you own it when you die, whether you die without a will or make a will leaving the property to a non-family member or a charity as part of your estate. In theory, the goal of the law is to protect the children of a marriage, but in operation, the results can be onerous, as where the children of a first marriage take, forcing the second wife out of the house; or, where a property was jointly owned by a couple and on the death of the first spouse, the survivor remarries, bringing the new spouse to live in the house. Any children of the second marriage are without rights to any part of the house, whatever the couple's wishes. If the parent from the first marriage dies before his second spouse, his children take, while the wife and the children of the second marriage do not.
In case you are having trouble keeping these rules straight, it may be comforting to know that in France when a child is born a livret de famille is created to certify which children are whose, and of what marriage. This facilitates keeping real property in the hands of one "family", defined as a husband and wife and the children of that marriage. It also makes bigamy difficult, as the livret de famille is an important identity document, along with the national identity card (which should be carried on one's person at all time). In a real estate transaction, the contents of the livret de famille are incorporated into the record of the real estate transaction.
In a sense, this obsession with maintaining the original outlines of a family structure by mandating descent through a restricted bloodline illustrates the difference between the French way of thinking and the American: the French believe that the family unit takes precedence over the individual's intention; they also want property to stay in the hands of people who are likely to be French and likely to internalize the mentalité of the community into which the original husband and wife settled. Later spouses and children are, because of their remoteness from the marriage that spawned the purchase of the family home at issue, "new" relatives, and implicitly suspect.
Of course, the French are no stranger to multiple marriages. There is even a term, la famille recomposée --the reorganized family-- that encapsulates the reality of multiple marriages and children. Former President Nicolas Sarozy --married three times, with children from each marriage, is the pre-eminent paterfamilias of the famille recomposèe. It is one more reason to dislike him, in French eyes.
On the other hand, François Hollande, who never married his compagne (companion) and the mother of his children, Ségolène Royale, is now in a relationship with Valerie Trierweiler, a twice-married divorcée and the mother of three children. (Hollande's children with Ségolene Royal were legitimized by Hollande's formal acknowledgement of them as his.) Hollande's romantic triangulation --Trierweiler covered both Royal and Hollande as a journalist-- made barely a ripple during Hollande's succesful presidential campaign against Sarkozy.
The Hollande-Trierweiler relationship does not a famille recomposée make, but it does reflect a trend in France, the increasing reluctance to marry or re-marry of many. In the case of those who have lived together for many years but never married, as retirement age approaches, many tie the knot to protect each other's pension rights. However, many couples live together as husband and wife without ever marrying. Inheritance rights are set by law and cannot be superseded by a will --which is why few are made in France. There is also no reason, after divorce or bereavement, to wed the new compagne. Anyway, the idea of "living in sin" is an oxymoron from the French point of view.
This can lead to gaffes, as when an American assumes that the lovely lady working side-by-side in the butcher shop with the butcher is his wife and speaks to her of votre mari (your husband). One hundred years ago, Bostonian Henry James wrote many novels about Americans flummoxed by the subtleties of European morés. The crux of the elaborate architecture of deception and surface James revealed so strikingly was always property: in France, it still is.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
To Toulouse For The Fun Of It; The Heights of Caunes-Minervois
July 4, 2013
To Toulouse For The Fun Of It; The Heights of Caunes-Minervois
My sister is coming to visit on Tuesday, and is arriving at Blagnac airport in greater Toulouse, in the Midi-Pyrénées region. It is her first trip to France, not counting the border crossing from Portbou, Spain to Cerbère, France we made with our parents in the summer of 1965. To make it easier on her after a trans-Atlantic flight and a connection from Charles de Gaulle to Blagnac, I am picking her up, rather than have her continue by train to Carcassonne. That means I want to make sure that my road trip Tuesday is smoother than the one I made two weeks ago, which lasted far too long, thanks to problems with the GPS.
This time I don't use the GPS, but go directly onto the péage at the entrance near Carcassonne. I have no problems getting to Blagnac. After a pit stop for a sandwich, I turn around and get on the péage in the direction from where I came.
However, I do not get off at the Carcassonne exit, thinking there is probably an exit closer to Caunes-Minervois a bit further on: wrong! There is no exit until Lézignan-Corbières. "Yes!" Lezignan-Corbières, where my Clio #4 was towed two weeks ago, and where I had to drive the Seat Lion to drop it off, before picking up the Clio #4 with a new battery inside. There is a website, Les Plus Beaux Villages de France --The Most Beautiful Villages in France, but none for the ugliest, Les Plus Moches Villages de France. After two visits under duress, I nominate Lezignan-Corbières, in the "Towns" category.
I make it back to Caunes-Minervois by late afternoon, driving via Homps on the Canal du Midi. Now that summer is in full swing, there are many river campers docked at Homps and all the cafés are open. I drive to La Redorte, where I turn in the direction of Rieux and Peyriac, two villages over from Caunes-Minervois. Rieux and Peyriac are my nominees for ugliest villages in France, with Rieux taking the prize on points, its narrow, lightless main road edging out Peyriac, which has at least taken the trouble to put in flower plantings and stylish lamps at each of the town. What makes an agglomeration in a country as conscious of aesthetic values as France as indifferent as these three places --thereby hangs a tale.
I change into my cycling shorts and go out for a ride to shake off the long drive's kinks, turning onto the road towards Carcassonne. I reach the second exit for Caunes after riding for about twenty minutes on the flat road, passing field after field of vines. I turn into the exit and come back into Caunes ultimately reaching the fountain in town that marks the top of the triangle formed by the two sides of the fields on the village's outskirts.
With about forty-five more minutes of cycling possible before it is too dark to pedal easily, I take a road to the right of the fountain, and find myself standing at a fork in the road at which a niche stands, a large one with a figure of the Pietà made of Caunes marble carved in the middle. The left fork is a road called Route des Carmes, Route of the Carmelites, undoubtedly a reference to a time when a Carmelite order of nuns lived in Caunes.
I cycle up the Route, pushing myself to make it up the hill about a mile beyond. I am rewarded for doing so by a spectacular view of the Black Mountains all around me. I am the only person on the road, which lies between two fields of vines.
I cycle back down the road to the fountain in the village where I started out. With some time left, I take the second road on the left, which leads me to a development called Les Hauts du Roc. Here the houses are large and detached, with about an acre of land around them. They are part of a development that contemplates the building of fourteen houses, in two rows of seven, not very unlike residential developments built on a grid plan in the United States. This is where the affluent Caunois live, far away from the cramped houses in the village foreigners find so quaint.
The so-called "new cemetery" is in this area: I see the cypresses (found in every French cemetery) from afar, and am able to find a path to the cemetery entrance. It looks like an old cemetery, though; built, if not in the nineteenth century, very early in the twentieth. Which makes me think of the story I heard yesterday about the negligent disinterrals. That story is still being told in the twenty-first century, but something tells me that its origins --and the reasons for its telling-- are much, much older than the cemetery in Les Hauts du Roc.
To Toulouse For The Fun Of It; The Heights of Caunes-Minervois
My sister is coming to visit on Tuesday, and is arriving at Blagnac airport in greater Toulouse, in the Midi-Pyrénées region. It is her first trip to France, not counting the border crossing from Portbou, Spain to Cerbère, France we made with our parents in the summer of 1965. To make it easier on her after a trans-Atlantic flight and a connection from Charles de Gaulle to Blagnac, I am picking her up, rather than have her continue by train to Carcassonne. That means I want to make sure that my road trip Tuesday is smoother than the one I made two weeks ago, which lasted far too long, thanks to problems with the GPS.
This time I don't use the GPS, but go directly onto the péage at the entrance near Carcassonne. I have no problems getting to Blagnac. After a pit stop for a sandwich, I turn around and get on the péage in the direction from where I came.
However, I do not get off at the Carcassonne exit, thinking there is probably an exit closer to Caunes-Minervois a bit further on: wrong! There is no exit until Lézignan-Corbières. "Yes!" Lezignan-Corbières, where my Clio #4 was towed two weeks ago, and where I had to drive the Seat Lion to drop it off, before picking up the Clio #4 with a new battery inside. There is a website, Les Plus Beaux Villages de France --The Most Beautiful Villages in France, but none for the ugliest, Les Plus Moches Villages de France. After two visits under duress, I nominate Lezignan-Corbières, in the "Towns" category.
I make it back to Caunes-Minervois by late afternoon, driving via Homps on the Canal du Midi. Now that summer is in full swing, there are many river campers docked at Homps and all the cafés are open. I drive to La Redorte, where I turn in the direction of Rieux and Peyriac, two villages over from Caunes-Minervois. Rieux and Peyriac are my nominees for ugliest villages in France, with Rieux taking the prize on points, its narrow, lightless main road edging out Peyriac, which has at least taken the trouble to put in flower plantings and stylish lamps at each of the town. What makes an agglomeration in a country as conscious of aesthetic values as France as indifferent as these three places --thereby hangs a tale.
I change into my cycling shorts and go out for a ride to shake off the long drive's kinks, turning onto the road towards Carcassonne. I reach the second exit for Caunes after riding for about twenty minutes on the flat road, passing field after field of vines. I turn into the exit and come back into Caunes ultimately reaching the fountain in town that marks the top of the triangle formed by the two sides of the fields on the village's outskirts.
With about forty-five more minutes of cycling possible before it is too dark to pedal easily, I take a road to the right of the fountain, and find myself standing at a fork in the road at which a niche stands, a large one with a figure of the Pietà made of Caunes marble carved in the middle. The left fork is a road called Route des Carmes, Route of the Carmelites, undoubtedly a reference to a time when a Carmelite order of nuns lived in Caunes.
I cycle up the Route, pushing myself to make it up the hill about a mile beyond. I am rewarded for doing so by a spectacular view of the Black Mountains all around me. I am the only person on the road, which lies between two fields of vines.
I cycle back down the road to the fountain in the village where I started out. With some time left, I take the second road on the left, which leads me to a development called Les Hauts du Roc. Here the houses are large and detached, with about an acre of land around them. They are part of a development that contemplates the building of fourteen houses, in two rows of seven, not very unlike residential developments built on a grid plan in the United States. This is where the affluent Caunois live, far away from the cramped houses in the village foreigners find so quaint.
The so-called "new cemetery" is in this area: I see the cypresses (found in every French cemetery) from afar, and am able to find a path to the cemetery entrance. It looks like an old cemetery, though; built, if not in the nineteenth century, very early in the twentieth. Which makes me think of the story I heard yesterday about the negligent disinterrals. That story is still being told in the twenty-first century, but something tells me that its origins --and the reasons for its telling-- are much, much older than the cemetery in Les Hauts du Roc.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Minerve; Lot Casserot in Caunes-Minervois
July 3, 2013
Minerve: Lot Casserot in Caunes-Minervois
Two things generally known about Languedoc-Rousillon are 1. that it is an area known for its reliance on animal fat, rather than butter (as in Normandy and the Île de France); or, olive oil (as in Provence); and, 2. that in the twelfth century it was the center of the Albigensian heresy and the twenty-year crusade against it.
While the marvelous products (meat pâtés, fish pies called tielles, Minervois wine) made by local producers are easily digested, the crusade against the Cathars, as the heretics of Languedoc-Roussilon were called, less so. Briefly, those local lords and their dependents became convinced of a teaching that rejected the validity, not of the soul, but of the body, preaching radical abstinence in reaction to the perceived excesses of the Roman papacy.
While the history of the extirpation of the Cathars is testament to the ruthlessness and zeal with which one man, Simon de Montfort, pursued them, as a modern, it is hard to appreciate the temper of the times without seeing the ruins of Minerve, (which was wiped out); or, the church of Saint Nazaraire in Carcassonne, where Saint Dominic preached against the Albigensian heresy.
A joke about a Dominican who meets a Jesuit (rival orders with long histories) has the Dominican boasting that his order brought the Albigensian heretics back to the Church. The Jesuit, on the other hand, says that his order brought the Protestants heretics back to the church.
The Dominican responds, "Do you see any Albigensians around here?"
Minerve, today a hamlet of one hundred and twenty people, is not just any village in Languedoc-Rousillon. Placed between deep gorges reminiscent of the Grand Canyon, Minerve is located at the very end of a limestone plateau, rock on all sides of its parameters. It is an eerie place, particularly when you know that on July 22, 1210, after six weeks of bombardment by Simon de Montfort's forces, Minerve capitulated. Capitulation meant renouncing Catharism and adhering to the Catholic faith, abandoning the Counts of Toulouse (the local powers in the region) and accepting the authority of the Capetians of northern France. It also meant a secondary role for Occitan, the language of the region, an offshoot of Catalan. In Minerve, one hundred forty villagers refused and were burnt at the stake, a collective immolation memorialized in Minerve by a column dedicated to their resistance to the Crusaders.
Today, Minerve, the drive to which is a test of will and nerves , is a must-see for knowledgeable visitors to l'Aude. Completely isolated, a few dedicated artists, a bookseller (with an enormous selection of books in French), and a few winegrowers planting on the plateau, keep the village going. While in the summer Minerve is awe-inspiring witness to human will, in the winter the weather must make the bones shake. Three-hundred-and-fifty out of three-hundred-sixty-five days a year, the wind blows in l'Aude, but in Minerve, it must have the force of a Crusader army.
I ask one of the artists, Jean Laffitte, a painter and sculptor who moved to Minerve from Caunes, what it is like in the winter.
"Very quiet", he says with a smile. "That is when I produce the work you see around you."
***
Minerve is not the only place in l'Aude whose history gives one pause. Caunes-Minervois, the lovely village with the Benedictine abbey, had a strange thing happen there. The story is related to the old cemetery, formerly located up the hill off avenue des Minervois in an area called Lot Casserot. Apparently, at some point, the local authorities decided that the old cemetery was no longer appropriate to the purpose and the hill ought to be developed for new homes. The remains of the interred were disinterred and transferred to a new cemetery outside Caunes-Minervois.
The only problem was that those who actually removed the dead from their resting places didn't do so carefully enough. For years after, village dogs would bring home bones and skulls they dug up at Lot Casserot.
Minerve: Lot Casserot in Caunes-Minervois
Two things generally known about Languedoc-Rousillon are 1. that it is an area known for its reliance on animal fat, rather than butter (as in Normandy and the Île de France); or, olive oil (as in Provence); and, 2. that in the twelfth century it was the center of the Albigensian heresy and the twenty-year crusade against it.
While the marvelous products (meat pâtés, fish pies called tielles, Minervois wine) made by local producers are easily digested, the crusade against the Cathars, as the heretics of Languedoc-Roussilon were called, less so. Briefly, those local lords and their dependents became convinced of a teaching that rejected the validity, not of the soul, but of the body, preaching radical abstinence in reaction to the perceived excesses of the Roman papacy.
While the history of the extirpation of the Cathars is testament to the ruthlessness and zeal with which one man, Simon de Montfort, pursued them, as a modern, it is hard to appreciate the temper of the times without seeing the ruins of Minerve, (which was wiped out); or, the church of Saint Nazaraire in Carcassonne, where Saint Dominic preached against the Albigensian heresy.
A joke about a Dominican who meets a Jesuit (rival orders with long histories) has the Dominican boasting that his order brought the Albigensian heretics back to the Church. The Jesuit, on the other hand, says that his order brought the Protestants heretics back to the church.
The Dominican responds, "Do you see any Albigensians around here?"
Minerve, today a hamlet of one hundred and twenty people, is not just any village in Languedoc-Rousillon. Placed between deep gorges reminiscent of the Grand Canyon, Minerve is located at the very end of a limestone plateau, rock on all sides of its parameters. It is an eerie place, particularly when you know that on July 22, 1210, after six weeks of bombardment by Simon de Montfort's forces, Minerve capitulated. Capitulation meant renouncing Catharism and adhering to the Catholic faith, abandoning the Counts of Toulouse (the local powers in the region) and accepting the authority of the Capetians of northern France. It also meant a secondary role for Occitan, the language of the region, an offshoot of Catalan. In Minerve, one hundred forty villagers refused and were burnt at the stake, a collective immolation memorialized in Minerve by a column dedicated to their resistance to the Crusaders.
Today, Minerve, the drive to which is a test of will and nerves , is a must-see for knowledgeable visitors to l'Aude. Completely isolated, a few dedicated artists, a bookseller (with an enormous selection of books in French), and a few winegrowers planting on the plateau, keep the village going. While in the summer Minerve is awe-inspiring witness to human will, in the winter the weather must make the bones shake. Three-hundred-and-fifty out of three-hundred-sixty-five days a year, the wind blows in l'Aude, but in Minerve, it must have the force of a Crusader army.
I ask one of the artists, Jean Laffitte, a painter and sculptor who moved to Minerve from Caunes, what it is like in the winter.
"Very quiet", he says with a smile. "That is when I produce the work you see around you."
***
Minerve is not the only place in l'Aude whose history gives one pause. Caunes-Minervois, the lovely village with the Benedictine abbey, had a strange thing happen there. The story is related to the old cemetery, formerly located up the hill off avenue des Minervois in an area called Lot Casserot. Apparently, at some point, the local authorities decided that the old cemetery was no longer appropriate to the purpose and the hill ought to be developed for new homes. The remains of the interred were disinterred and transferred to a new cemetery outside Caunes-Minervois.
The only problem was that those who actually removed the dead from their resting places didn't do so carefully enough. For years after, village dogs would bring home bones and skulls they dug up at Lot Casserot.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Ecological Toilets; The "Pissoir" Is Not Dead
July 2, 2013
The Pissoir Is Not Dead; Ecological Toilets;
Chanticleers and Naked Necks
There is something elemental about life here in l'Aude that, however sophisticated the French image around the world may be, is belied by Audois' fidelity to some of the more basic aspects of life and traditional approaches to them. I speak of toilets, or, to be more specific, pissoirs, those pieces of white enamel with platforms the size of the largest shoes and a hole in the middle of the footrests that are France's answer to sanitation in public places. The term pissoir is also used to describe urinals, but true pissoirs are equal-opportunity comfort stations.
Any American born in the 1950s or earlier taken to France as a child will remember, with a mixture of horror and nostalgia, the first time he was faced with having to use a pissoir. If you were a child and had to use one, the memory is probably comingled with a memory of abject fear only assuaged by the presence of a caring female relative with an ample supply of Kleenex.
The good news is that pissoirs are still around. The bad news is that they still don't have Kleenex.
At the Carcassonne railroad station, I needed to use the WC, as it is called in France, and was directed to a pissoir inside a module of contemporary design at one end of the main platform. Waiting to use it were a group of ten-year old girls on a school trip, with a teacher holding the door open while each of the girls made use of the latrine. The girls were dressed in a preppy style called bon chic bon genre, although the easy slouch of their bodies and the contrasting liveliness of their facial expressions as they talked --their moués-- could never be mistaken for those of junior Ivy Leaguers.
For these young girls, having to use a public toilet at a train station, and having to pay to do so, was a new experience. One young woman --a girl after my own heart-- finding out that there is a 30 centimes charge for the use of the public toilet at the Carcassonne station, said to her teacher,
Et maintenant, il faut payer pour pisser?
("And now, it's necessary to pay to piss?")
***
Those living in France who are environmentally-minded don't have to install pissoirs in their homes, they can put in ecological toilets. These flush toilets look and work just like the model pioneered by Englishman Thomas Crapper, which eliminated the "night men" and brought public santiation out of the Dark Ages. However, you don't put the paper in the toilet when you are done, you put it in the plastic bag in the nearby wastebasket --if you remember.
***
Another aspect of day-to-day life in Caunes-Minervois which illustrates French attachment to the old ways of doing things, is the existence of at least two coops for chickens kept for the eggs they produce. One coop is kept at the bottom of a declivity between the end of rue de l'Abbaye and the Porte de Narbonne, the other on a rise of unpaved path off the beginning of avenue des Minervois, the principal street in Caunes-Minervois.
The first coop is kept by two tall young men with long hair and identical blue eyes that signal they are brothers. "We're many in the house, so we get our eggs this way", one of them tells me. They have nine hens who lay about an egg a day. They are inseminated by a strutting chanticleer who crows constantly. I have not met the owners of the second coop, but it is worth noting that the hens kept in it look like a cross between a turkey and a chicken. Indeed, they are an old European breed known as naked neck chickens, and come in a variety of colors. Here is a picture of one:
Apparently, anyone in France who wants to raise chickens for his personal use may do so. I meet and greet the young men again later in the evening on a walk through Caunes' narrow streets. With their easy smiles, long hair and plaid shirts, they look more like members of a rock band than farmers.
The Pissoir Is Not Dead; Ecological Toilets;
Chanticleers and Naked Necks
There is something elemental about life here in l'Aude that, however sophisticated the French image around the world may be, is belied by Audois' fidelity to some of the more basic aspects of life and traditional approaches to them. I speak of toilets, or, to be more specific, pissoirs, those pieces of white enamel with platforms the size of the largest shoes and a hole in the middle of the footrests that are France's answer to sanitation in public places. The term pissoir is also used to describe urinals, but true pissoirs are equal-opportunity comfort stations.
Any American born in the 1950s or earlier taken to France as a child will remember, with a mixture of horror and nostalgia, the first time he was faced with having to use a pissoir. If you were a child and had to use one, the memory is probably comingled with a memory of abject fear only assuaged by the presence of a caring female relative with an ample supply of Kleenex.
The good news is that pissoirs are still around. The bad news is that they still don't have Kleenex.
At the Carcassonne railroad station, I needed to use the WC, as it is called in France, and was directed to a pissoir inside a module of contemporary design at one end of the main platform. Waiting to use it were a group of ten-year old girls on a school trip, with a teacher holding the door open while each of the girls made use of the latrine. The girls were dressed in a preppy style called bon chic bon genre, although the easy slouch of their bodies and the contrasting liveliness of their facial expressions as they talked --their moués-- could never be mistaken for those of junior Ivy Leaguers.
For these young girls, having to use a public toilet at a train station, and having to pay to do so, was a new experience. One young woman --a girl after my own heart-- finding out that there is a 30 centimes charge for the use of the public toilet at the Carcassonne station, said to her teacher,
Et maintenant, il faut payer pour pisser?
("And now, it's necessary to pay to piss?")
***
Those living in France who are environmentally-minded don't have to install pissoirs in their homes, they can put in ecological toilets. These flush toilets look and work just like the model pioneered by Englishman Thomas Crapper, which eliminated the "night men" and brought public santiation out of the Dark Ages. However, you don't put the paper in the toilet when you are done, you put it in the plastic bag in the nearby wastebasket --if you remember.
***
Another aspect of day-to-day life in Caunes-Minervois which illustrates French attachment to the old ways of doing things, is the existence of at least two coops for chickens kept for the eggs they produce. One coop is kept at the bottom of a declivity between the end of rue de l'Abbaye and the Porte de Narbonne, the other on a rise of unpaved path off the beginning of avenue des Minervois, the principal street in Caunes-Minervois.
The first coop is kept by two tall young men with long hair and identical blue eyes that signal they are brothers. "We're many in the house, so we get our eggs this way", one of them tells me. They have nine hens who lay about an egg a day. They are inseminated by a strutting chanticleer who crows constantly. I have not met the owners of the second coop, but it is worth noting that the hens kept in it look like a cross between a turkey and a chicken. Indeed, they are an old European breed known as naked neck chickens, and come in a variety of colors. Here is a picture of one:
Apparently, anyone in France who wants to raise chickens for his personal use may do so. I meet and greet the young men again later in the evening on a walk through Caunes' narrow streets. With their easy smiles, long hair and plaid shirts, they look more like members of a rock band than farmers.
Monday, July 1, 2013
July 1, 2013; Ex-pats
July 1, 2013
Ex-pats
I have met many ex-patriates over the last month, both in Mèze and in Caunes-Minervois. All are retired, with the exception of a punked-out, good looking man in his late 30s who was sketching at an outdoor café off the beaten track in Pézenas. His hair had in it what is known in the trade as "product", which gave his short, blonde crop a smooth shine. He boasted an earring and a football player's build, as well as a cleanliness that immediately identifies the American. Indeed, his father lives in France and he was raised in the South of France. What could have led to him living a life so exotic, I never found out, although I have all sorts of guesses: his father is a painter; his father is an art dealer; his father served in the American Army in WWII, studied in France on the G.I. bill and, not wanting to leave, cobbled together a career, marrying a French wife in the process.
Funnily enough, such a scenario is not that unusual for the French. There are many people living in the South of France whose parents and grandparents lived in Algeria or Morocco or Tunisia. They were called pieds noirs, a derogatory term that referred to the blackening of the settlers' feet as a result of their absence from European France. Yet Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia were all part of what is known as Metropolitan France, that is, indisputably French territory, with all born there holding French passports. When France gave up its lands in North Africa, the piers noirs were compelled to return to a country that had decidedly ambivalent feelings about not only its colonial past, but about the French citizens who had called these lands home. Some of them had intermarried with locals, who were legally citizens of France, whether they were native Algerian or Moroccan or Tunisian. The children of this blend were raised in post-colonial France, internalizing both cultures. Among French actors, some notable ones are products of this métissage: Danny Boon (French/Kabylye-Algerian) Gad Elmalah (Jewish-Mrooccan-French); Jamel Debbouze (French-Moroccan).
In contrast, the ex-pats I meet are voluntary transplants. One, a Danish woman who lives most of the year in Deauville but keeps an apartment in Mèze, where she vacations with her husband (--who lives in Paris!), is out for sun, a rare commodity in Denmark, at the best of times. An Englishwoman has just sold her house in the U.K. and has moved here to develop the business she started last year: running wine tours of the Minervois. A few years ago another started a catering business with her husband and this year opened a restaurant as well.
Many of the English ex-pats live here solely interacting with the English colony. Their children visit, or they pick their grandchildren up at the airport and tend them while their children get some time away with their spouses. You know the English on sight, before they have opened their mouths, because they tend to be taller and bigger and more boisterous than the French, who are stocky and inclined to greater reserve in public. Older English women here wear their hair long and casually styled. French women of the same age wear shorter hair, and bikinis, whatever the state of their bodies: Englishwomen wear decorous one-piece suits.
The idea of leaving home to live in a foreign country was considered, for a very long time, something that only very wealthy, very bohemian or very pursued people did. Yet in recent years, and in large measure to the existence of a European passport that is the right of anyone from one of the 28 member countries, small colonies of ex-pats have sprung up all over the European Union. If you cannot afford France, you can go to Croatia, which became an EU member today. You don't need to speak the language much, because most of your relationships are with others also from wherever you once called home, and the locals are glad for the business you bring, even if you can't do more than point to what you want to buy.
We are not talking Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald or Hemingway here, let alone Gertrude Stein or Virgil Thompson, the composer, to name a few famous American ex-patriates. The desire to leave Main Street plays only the smallest part, if any, in the decision to put down roots in France. More pertinently, real estate is cheaper here, food you pay through the nose for in restaurants at home, is readily available through local producers at prices everyone pays --ex-pats buying where natives do. If along the way you pick up some of the language, that's gravy.
Ex-pats
I have met many ex-patriates over the last month, both in Mèze and in Caunes-Minervois. All are retired, with the exception of a punked-out, good looking man in his late 30s who was sketching at an outdoor café off the beaten track in Pézenas. His hair had in it what is known in the trade as "product", which gave his short, blonde crop a smooth shine. He boasted an earring and a football player's build, as well as a cleanliness that immediately identifies the American. Indeed, his father lives in France and he was raised in the South of France. What could have led to him living a life so exotic, I never found out, although I have all sorts of guesses: his father is a painter; his father is an art dealer; his father served in the American Army in WWII, studied in France on the G.I. bill and, not wanting to leave, cobbled together a career, marrying a French wife in the process.
Funnily enough, such a scenario is not that unusual for the French. There are many people living in the South of France whose parents and grandparents lived in Algeria or Morocco or Tunisia. They were called pieds noirs, a derogatory term that referred to the blackening of the settlers' feet as a result of their absence from European France. Yet Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia were all part of what is known as Metropolitan France, that is, indisputably French territory, with all born there holding French passports. When France gave up its lands in North Africa, the piers noirs were compelled to return to a country that had decidedly ambivalent feelings about not only its colonial past, but about the French citizens who had called these lands home. Some of them had intermarried with locals, who were legally citizens of France, whether they were native Algerian or Moroccan or Tunisian. The children of this blend were raised in post-colonial France, internalizing both cultures. Among French actors, some notable ones are products of this métissage: Danny Boon (French/Kabylye-Algerian) Gad Elmalah (Jewish-Mrooccan-French); Jamel Debbouze (French-Moroccan).
In contrast, the ex-pats I meet are voluntary transplants. One, a Danish woman who lives most of the year in Deauville but keeps an apartment in Mèze, where she vacations with her husband (--who lives in Paris!), is out for sun, a rare commodity in Denmark, at the best of times. An Englishwoman has just sold her house in the U.K. and has moved here to develop the business she started last year: running wine tours of the Minervois. A few years ago another started a catering business with her husband and this year opened a restaurant as well.
Many of the English ex-pats live here solely interacting with the English colony. Their children visit, or they pick their grandchildren up at the airport and tend them while their children get some time away with their spouses. You know the English on sight, before they have opened their mouths, because they tend to be taller and bigger and more boisterous than the French, who are stocky and inclined to greater reserve in public. Older English women here wear their hair long and casually styled. French women of the same age wear shorter hair, and bikinis, whatever the state of their bodies: Englishwomen wear decorous one-piece suits.
The idea of leaving home to live in a foreign country was considered, for a very long time, something that only very wealthy, very bohemian or very pursued people did. Yet in recent years, and in large measure to the existence of a European passport that is the right of anyone from one of the 28 member countries, small colonies of ex-pats have sprung up all over the European Union. If you cannot afford France, you can go to Croatia, which became an EU member today. You don't need to speak the language much, because most of your relationships are with others also from wherever you once called home, and the locals are glad for the business you bring, even if you can't do more than point to what you want to buy.
We are not talking Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald or Hemingway here, let alone Gertrude Stein or Virgil Thompson, the composer, to name a few famous American ex-patriates. The desire to leave Main Street plays only the smallest part, if any, in the decision to put down roots in France. More pertinently, real estate is cheaper here, food you pay through the nose for in restaurants at home, is readily available through local producers at prices everyone pays --ex-pats buying where natives do. If along the way you pick up some of the language, that's gravy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)