Today was a very exciting day. I discovered Jim's British Market. While I have never understood people who go on holiday to a Greek island and seek out the obligatory ex-pat-run Olde English Pubbe or O'Doherty's Irish Bar - surely a large part of the point of going on holiday is to explore and enjoy a new culture, instead of resorting to watching the football on a giant TV screen in an unconvincing replica of a traditional British pub? - I am not on holiday. And besides, so far we have really been enjoying lapping up the French culture and, with the exception of some decaf teabags and Heinz baked beans that we brought out with us, I haven't missed many home comforts. Disregarding the frogs legs and the snails, the proliferation of tripe and the penchant for horse steak and veal, the French way of eating isn't really so different from our own.
But as Christmas approaches, I've noticed a few gaping holes. For a start, the French don't really do Plain Flour. They do flour for cakes, flour for brioche, flour for pastries, flour for quiches, flour for baguettes and flour for country bread, but they don't do plain old plain flour. Neither do they really do wholemeal flour, except in some of the bigger stores, and even then it's not always available. So when I made some shortbread the other night for the CERN Christmas Fair (yes, my WI halo continues to glow), using my foolproof Bero recipe (since you ask, it's 3oz sugar, 6oz butter, 9oz flour and just mix together until you can roll out then bake for 15-20 mins at 190oC) and just about the plainest of the flours I could find on the French shelves, it came out flaky. When I started moaning about this to another CERN wife the next day, she said: 'Ah, you need to go to Jim's British Market. He has everything.'
She wasn't wrong. I called in to the shop in St Genis this afternoon and came out a very happy lady. Not only did I get my plain flour, but I also got the ingredients for our Christmas cake. That's another thing about the French - they don't really use very much dried fruit in their cooking, so when it comes to buying raisins, sultanas and the like, they sell them in tiny little packages. It would take four of five of these tiny packages of raisins to make a decent Christmas cake, by which point the charming homemade aspect of the cake would start to be rather undermined by the sheer cost of it. Slice of extremely expensive dehydrated fruit mixed with incorrect flour anyone? But Jim had big bags of raisins, big bags of sultanas, big bags of currants and even - wait for this - tiny pots of mixed peel and glace cherries. The Christmas elves would be most pleased.
I had to restrain myself from going a bit mad in the shop to be honest. As well as the obvious items - Cadbury's chocolate, McVities biscuits, Hellmann's mayonnaise, wedges of cheddar and stilton - he also sells things like bacon (which the French don't eat - mon dieu!), suet, porridge oats, and proper British ales. Since I've been keeping down my caffeine intake while pregnant, I've been getting people visiting from the UK to ship in decaf teabags by the bucketload, but no more: Jim sells PG Tips Decaf. They also stock English greetings cards - which I think my family will be pleased to hear about, as I fear that the novelty of me sending French ones is starting to wear a little thin - and the cute tea shop attached to the shop sells cream teas, tea cakes and full English breakfasts. The only snag is that because all this produce is imported, the costs are at least double what they might be in the UK. So my bag of plain old plain flour came in at a whopping 4.50 euros - roughly four quid for one of the world's most staple food items. So I'm not sure that one big bag of raisins will work out much cheaper than several little French ones after all. If I happen to offer you a slice of Christmas cake in the coming months, please accept it and tell me how delicious it is: short of going to Fortnum and Mason's, it is probably the most expensive Christmas cake you'll ever eat.
Thursday, 29 November 2012
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Buckley's Tourist Trails: Part one
We had our first visitor staying with us from Thursday to Tuesday, and on Friday we headed into Geneva so I could show her the sights. I'll be honest: I hadn't done my research. My few visits into the city so far have all ended in coffee shops, and we've been a bit lazy about seeing the sights since we moved here. Fortunately, we had a beautiful crisp winter's day, so the city did most of the work for me.
First up, we took a walk along the lake towards the Bain des Paquis, from where you get a beautiful view of the lake, the city and the snow-capped mountains in the distance. There were swans-a-swimming, boats-a-rocking and even a very brave swimmer who launched into the freezing cold lake in nothing but his speedos. A lovely cafe for that obligatory coffee stop completes the idyll. In the summer, I'm told the jetty is crowded with swimmers and bathers making the most of the crystal-clear water, and the rare chance to get something for free in Geneva.
From there we walked up to Geneva's old town, which surrounds the cathedral and overlooks the modern city below. Along the way, Nikki asked things like: 'What's that monument?' and 'Where's the famous jet d'Eau'?' To which I shrugged unhelpfully and sheepishly proffered my little Thomas Cook guidebook. (There isn't a Time Out guide to Geneva, for some inexplicable reason, and I can't help feeling that the Thomas Cook guidebook is a little biased - everything is wonderful, beautiful, amazing, with absolutely no hint that you'll have to pay a fortune to enjoy it all. The 'cheap' restaurants they recommend start from 50 CHF for a meal for one.) As it turned out, I wasn't being entirely thick: the jet d'Eau wasn't doing its thing that day, so it wasn't that I had entirely failed to see the 450-foot high fountain of water.
After lugging my increasingly large bulk up the hill to the old town, we stopped for more sustenance at one of the many cafes on the pretty leafy square. Although it is a beautiful part of the city, so different to the gleaming boutiques and grand hotels elsewhere, it takes all of five minutes to walk around the old town and unless you want to buy expensive art or equally expensive chocolate, there's not a lot to see beyond the main square.
After lunch we met up with another friend and popped into the cathedral. Very much like Durham Cathedral, although not nearly as big, it is quite a sparse and unadorned building, but the real intrigue lies below. Recent excavations revealed the remains of three - yes, three - former cathedrals buried beneath the current building, dating back as far as the Roman Empire. And what remains is remarkably intact: in this huge underground labyrinth you can still see the extraordinary mosaics covering the floor of the Bishop's reception room, see the buried skeleton of an Allobrogian chieftan, around whom the first churches were originally built, and clearly discern the different layers of building materials that were laid down as the buildings morphed over the centuries. The only disappointment for me was that they didn't actually explain why these former buildings were buried by the current one...
Sadly, the weather turned for the worse at the weekend, and non-stop torrential rain rather limited our tourist options, so on Saturday afternoon we went along to Carouge - a suburb of Geneva filled with independent craft shops and cute cafes. It used to belong to the King of Sardinia, and the Mediterranean feel survives in the colourful shop fronts and narrow streets. Although we were too late for the market which takes place every Saturday morning, we stopped at a patisserie (of course) for a late lunch and Andy made a bee-line for the only climbing shop in Geneva (until this point I expect you were wondering how I managed to drag him along).
Sunday took us to Luzern to hook up with an old school friend. Beneath the pouring rain and the mist, it was still clear that it's a stunningly beautiful place, although I'm afraid my photos don't do justice to it. Unlike Geneva where the mountains are visible in the distance, in Luzern the mountains tower over the town, and being in the German region of the country, the buildings are more reminiscent of the chocolate-box style towns in southern Germany than the grandiosity of the Genevan banking districts.
Thanks to the rain, we saw a lot more of the inside of cafes than we did of the town itself, but this did give me the chance to have a go at understanding the bizarre Swiss-German dialect they use here. As a semi-decent German speaker, I was looking forward to impressing Nikki with my multi-lingual skills, but I have to say I was flummoxed. They could understand me fine, but I haven't a clue what they were saying. It was unlike any kind of German I've ever heard before, and apparently it's only spoken and not written down. Nikki was seriously unimpressed with the fact that a single country - and not even a big one at that - should be so divided linguistically and culturally, and suggested that Switzerland should just give the French bit back to France, the German bit back to Germany and the Italian bit back to Italy. Surely a popular suggestion with the Swiss, no? It is a slightly bizarre set-up for a major European country, one in which you are driving along the motorway and the road exit signs change suddenly from 'Sortie' to 'Ausgang' without any warning. I'm told the Swiss call this dividing line the Röstigraben, which translates literally as the 'rösti ditch'. In other words, the Swiss divide their country according to the way they cook their potatoes. Seems like a sensible geographical policy to me.
First up, we took a walk along the lake towards the Bain des Paquis, from where you get a beautiful view of the lake, the city and the snow-capped mountains in the distance. There were swans-a-swimming, boats-a-rocking and even a very brave swimmer who launched into the freezing cold lake in nothing but his speedos. A lovely cafe for that obligatory coffee stop completes the idyll. In the summer, I'm told the jetty is crowded with swimmers and bathers making the most of the crystal-clear water, and the rare chance to get something for free in Geneva.
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| The harbour from the Bain des Paquis |
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| The lighthouse at the end of the jetty |
After lugging my increasingly large bulk up the hill to the old town, we stopped for more sustenance at one of the many cafes on the pretty leafy square. Although it is a beautiful part of the city, so different to the gleaming boutiques and grand hotels elsewhere, it takes all of five minutes to walk around the old town and unless you want to buy expensive art or equally expensive chocolate, there's not a lot to see beyond the main square.
After lunch we met up with another friend and popped into the cathedral. Very much like Durham Cathedral, although not nearly as big, it is quite a sparse and unadorned building, but the real intrigue lies below. Recent excavations revealed the remains of three - yes, three - former cathedrals buried beneath the current building, dating back as far as the Roman Empire. And what remains is remarkably intact: in this huge underground labyrinth you can still see the extraordinary mosaics covering the floor of the Bishop's reception room, see the buried skeleton of an Allobrogian chieftan, around whom the first churches were originally built, and clearly discern the different layers of building materials that were laid down as the buildings morphed over the centuries. The only disappointment for me was that they didn't actually explain why these former buildings were buried by the current one...
Sadly, the weather turned for the worse at the weekend, and non-stop torrential rain rather limited our tourist options, so on Saturday afternoon we went along to Carouge - a suburb of Geneva filled with independent craft shops and cute cafes. It used to belong to the King of Sardinia, and the Mediterranean feel survives in the colourful shop fronts and narrow streets. Although we were too late for the market which takes place every Saturday morning, we stopped at a patisserie (of course) for a late lunch and Andy made a bee-line for the only climbing shop in Geneva (until this point I expect you were wondering how I managed to drag him along).
Sunday took us to Luzern to hook up with an old school friend. Beneath the pouring rain and the mist, it was still clear that it's a stunningly beautiful place, although I'm afraid my photos don't do justice to it. Unlike Geneva where the mountains are visible in the distance, in Luzern the mountains tower over the town, and being in the German region of the country, the buildings are more reminiscent of the chocolate-box style towns in southern Germany than the grandiosity of the Genevan banking districts.
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| Looking across the lake as it cuts through Luzern |
Thanks to the rain, we saw a lot more of the inside of cafes than we did of the town itself, but this did give me the chance to have a go at understanding the bizarre Swiss-German dialect they use here. As a semi-decent German speaker, I was looking forward to impressing Nikki with my multi-lingual skills, but I have to say I was flummoxed. They could understand me fine, but I haven't a clue what they were saying. It was unlike any kind of German I've ever heard before, and apparently it's only spoken and not written down. Nikki was seriously unimpressed with the fact that a single country - and not even a big one at that - should be so divided linguistically and culturally, and suggested that Switzerland should just give the French bit back to France, the German bit back to Germany and the Italian bit back to Italy. Surely a popular suggestion with the Swiss, no? It is a slightly bizarre set-up for a major European country, one in which you are driving along the motorway and the road exit signs change suddenly from 'Sortie' to 'Ausgang' without any warning. I'm told the Swiss call this dividing line the Röstigraben, which translates literally as the 'rösti ditch'. In other words, the Swiss divide their country according to the way they cook their potatoes. Seems like a sensible geographical policy to me.
Wednesday, 7 November 2012
Someone save me. I'm making bunting...
One of the things I was determined to do during my few months as a lady of leisure was to learn how to use my sewing machine. I've had it for four years now and, with the exception of one angry afternoon when I swore loudly at it while attempting to make a failed cushion cover, I've never used it. It was a second anniversary present from Andy. In case you're thinking that doesn't sound very romantic, and in fact suggests Andy was suggesting I should become more domesticated and regress to some kind of wartime ideal where I spend my evening darning his socks and mending his clothes, he bought it at my request.
We do the themed anniversary presents thing. Although it sounds a bit corny, it actually makes life more interesting and saves each of you having to think up something hugely romantic and meaningful every year. That said, I don't think we'll ever quite surpass our first anniversary, when we approached it with gusto. The theme for your first year is paper, so Andy bought me the complete 7 hardback volumes of the Oxford History of Western Music and I commissioned him a painting of Durham, the place we lived when we got married. Ah, very romantic I know. Things go downhill from here...
The second year the theme was cotton - I got the aforementioned sewing machine and Andy got... well, he got a power kite which may or may not have had some cotton involved in some of the stitching somewhere along the way. Year three was leather, but before your mind starts racing I'll tell you that I got a lovely leather bag which I still use every day and Andy got some kneepads to go with the aforementioned power kite (I've omitted to mention that the kite and the kneepads were actually bought at the same time, because it took us a whole year to get round to buying the 2nd anniversary present). Year four... Well, things start to get complicated around then because there are so many varied themes for anniversaries these days, that we started to pick and choose the ones that we liked. If you look up fourth anniversaries it says linen and silk, or fruit and flowers - or the 'modern option', electrical goods. Quite a wide choice. I would have asked for a fruit tree but I'd just bought myself some of these when we moved into our new house, so instead Andy bought me a little bay tree which sits outside the front of the house - you know the kind, with the little ball-shaped head that posh people have on either side of their giant porches (we don't have a giant porch). And Andy... well, I can't actually remember what I bought him that year (you can sense the enthusiasm in the idea fading can't you?). This year was our fifth anniversary for which the theme is wood. I bought Andy a big splitting axe. Because nothing says I love you like a giant axe. He actually hasn't bought me anything yet (our anniversary was in July), nor in fact have I had a birthday present either (except the two pairs of slippers - yes, really), but he owes me a carved wooden bowl.
Anyway, back to the sewing machine. Mum bought me two beginners books on how to use my sewing machine for my birthday (for some reason all my birthday presents seem to have come in twos this year), and on Sunday I set about making friends with it. I was very diligent and sat down reading through the introductory chapters about finding the right space, setting up your machine, getting the right equipment etc etc... After an hour or so I had managed to thread the machine and sew a few straight lines without any swearing. Not a bad effort.
I had the idea that because we can't decorate the baby's room in the house we're renting here, I would make some bunting to hang up and make the room more colourful. So I found a kit online from a great website called Clothkits, who make all sorts of easy-to-make kits for clothes, toys, dolls etc. It was actually surprisingly difficult to find bunting kits online which were suitable for a baby's room but which were not either pink or blue. Since we don't know what we're having, and in any case I object to the pink and blue thing, I chose a really brightly-coloured kit, which I must admit turned out to be a bit brighter than even I had intended when it arrived. I had also assumed all the triangles would be cut out for me and I would literally just have to sew them on to the line and hey presto: bunting. But in the event it was more work than that, but also more rewarding as a result. The fabric arrived in long strips which I had to measure and cut up into triangles.
Then you have to pin the triangles together, sew them up inside-out, turn them out the right way and press them, before you can attach them all to the bias binding and finally have some bunting. It took me a fair few hours' work but I'm really chuffed with the result, given that before I started I didn't know my bobbin from my feed dogs. And it turns out that actually the sewing is the quick and easy part - it's the measuring, cutting and pinning bits that take some time and care to get right. It takes a bit of patience, and I don't have much of that, but I'm inspired to try something a bit trickier next time, maybe even some curtains... I wonder if the baby will appreciate the effort?
We do the themed anniversary presents thing. Although it sounds a bit corny, it actually makes life more interesting and saves each of you having to think up something hugely romantic and meaningful every year. That said, I don't think we'll ever quite surpass our first anniversary, when we approached it with gusto. The theme for your first year is paper, so Andy bought me the complete 7 hardback volumes of the Oxford History of Western Music and I commissioned him a painting of Durham, the place we lived when we got married. Ah, very romantic I know. Things go downhill from here...
The second year the theme was cotton - I got the aforementioned sewing machine and Andy got... well, he got a power kite which may or may not have had some cotton involved in some of the stitching somewhere along the way. Year three was leather, but before your mind starts racing I'll tell you that I got a lovely leather bag which I still use every day and Andy got some kneepads to go with the aforementioned power kite (I've omitted to mention that the kite and the kneepads were actually bought at the same time, because it took us a whole year to get round to buying the 2nd anniversary present). Year four... Well, things start to get complicated around then because there are so many varied themes for anniversaries these days, that we started to pick and choose the ones that we liked. If you look up fourth anniversaries it says linen and silk, or fruit and flowers - or the 'modern option', electrical goods. Quite a wide choice. I would have asked for a fruit tree but I'd just bought myself some of these when we moved into our new house, so instead Andy bought me a little bay tree which sits outside the front of the house - you know the kind, with the little ball-shaped head that posh people have on either side of their giant porches (we don't have a giant porch). And Andy... well, I can't actually remember what I bought him that year (you can sense the enthusiasm in the idea fading can't you?). This year was our fifth anniversary for which the theme is wood. I bought Andy a big splitting axe. Because nothing says I love you like a giant axe. He actually hasn't bought me anything yet (our anniversary was in July), nor in fact have I had a birthday present either (except the two pairs of slippers - yes, really), but he owes me a carved wooden bowl.
Anyway, back to the sewing machine. Mum bought me two beginners books on how to use my sewing machine for my birthday (for some reason all my birthday presents seem to have come in twos this year), and on Sunday I set about making friends with it. I was very diligent and sat down reading through the introductory chapters about finding the right space, setting up your machine, getting the right equipment etc etc... After an hour or so I had managed to thread the machine and sew a few straight lines without any swearing. Not a bad effort.
I had the idea that because we can't decorate the baby's room in the house we're renting here, I would make some bunting to hang up and make the room more colourful. So I found a kit online from a great website called Clothkits, who make all sorts of easy-to-make kits for clothes, toys, dolls etc. It was actually surprisingly difficult to find bunting kits online which were suitable for a baby's room but which were not either pink or blue. Since we don't know what we're having, and in any case I object to the pink and blue thing, I chose a really brightly-coloured kit, which I must admit turned out to be a bit brighter than even I had intended when it arrived. I had also assumed all the triangles would be cut out for me and I would literally just have to sew them on to the line and hey presto: bunting. But in the event it was more work than that, but also more rewarding as a result. The fabric arrived in long strips which I had to measure and cut up into triangles.
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| From long strips of material... |
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| ...to nice neat triangles, pinned ready for sewing... |
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| ...with a little 'help' from Bella |
Saturday, 27 October 2012
Want to meet people? Get pregnant.
It turns out that being pregnant is a great way to meet people. It also helps to be the wife of a physicist. Who'd have thought it? I'd always assumed that being the size of a blimp and spending too much time with science geeks would be a sure way to ward of new friends. But since arriving in France I've been lucky to meet lots of new folk. It helps that Geneva is only 50% populated by Swiss people - I've nothing against them at all, but it means that the other 50% that also live in the city have created a brilliant network for getting to know people. Making new friends since moving here has been a strange kind of chain reaction, leading me from one new set of people to the next, each overlapping slightly with the previous in one way or another.
Being pregnant helps. There are lots of networks for new mums and expectant mums in the area, and when I arrived in Geneva a friend from back in the UK, currently living in Geneva, recommended a great MeetUp network called Geneva Mums, Tots and Bumps which, as the name suggests, links up mums with babies and ladies with bumps for a whole range of useful things. Aside from the website, which has a really useful discussion forum for asking questions and sharing information, they also organise meetups, playdates, activities, nights out and lots more, as well as simply allowing mums to be in touch with each other to arrange their own activities if they wish. Not forgetting dads - who are also catered for with nights out. Every month the group organises a 'Sushi and Sucklings' event, so-named because its geared towards parents with babies under 6 months old and expectant mums, and we meet at a sushi restaurant in central Geneva. I went along to the lunch in September for the first time and although the location was a little puzzling - you're not recommended to eat sushi in pregnancy (but there are noodles and rice dishes on the menu too) - it was great to meet other ladies in the same position, to share worries, and to hear reassuring birth stories from those whose little bundles have already arrived. At CERN there is also a toddler group that meets on Tuesdays and Fridays, and although I got a few odd looks for turning up without a toddler (who knew there are entry requirements?), there are also a few mums among them who are expecting their second (or third) child soon, so it's been nice to meet other CERN wives in a similar position.
The toddler group is run as an off-shoot of the 'Cernoises', the wonderful name for the Women's Club at CERN, which is largely made up of CERN wives and which serves as an umbrella organisation for a whole range of other activities. My weekly French classes are run by the Women's Club, and they also run classes in embroidery, art, music, gymnastics and yoga - as well as running monthly coffee mornings. It sounds pretty old-fashioned - and it is - but it's brilliant having a network of people who are so welcoming of newbies. Somehow, I've been coerced into doing some baking and jam-making for the Christmas Fair in late November, so as you can see my career as a full-time lady of leisure and budding WI member is blossoming.
In fact, that's not all. I've also joined a knitting group. Strictly speaking it's a needlework group, because we're not all knitters - there are embroiderers, patchwork makers, people who crochet and so on - but we get together once a week to make our own things and have a chat over a cup of tea. Very 1950s. I've only been to one meeting so far but I took home-made shortbread (can you see my WI halo glowing?) which went down rather well, so I think I'll be welcomed back. The knitting group came about through another new acquaintance, albeit a slightly random one. I answered a query on the CERN Market - a kind of advertising board for people who want to announce flats to let, cars to sell, baby equipment to give away and all manner of other activities or opportunities - from someone looking to organise a Come and Sing Messiah at CERN. I emailed to say I'd like to take part and received a reply saying that as well as looking for singers they were also looking for people to help organise it... Despite my best intentions I revealed my former career as a Freelance Arts Manager. Needless to say, I'm now organising it. The lady who emailed originally also happens to live in my village, and goes along to the knitting group - and so another link in the chain was added...
But the people in the knitting group surpassed themselves. That night, after my first visit to the group, I received an email which had been sent out to 'the ladies of Logras'. It turns out that the lady who hosts the knitting group knows pretty much all the ex-pats in my village and took it upon herself to announce the arrival of Jo Buckley in the village. I felt a bit like royalty. 'Please get in touch with Jo and meet up with her, she'd love that', the email said. The very next morning, two emails arrived in my inbox inviting me to two separate parties within the next week. My social life is being coordinated for me! The shortbread must have been really good.
Being pregnant helps. There are lots of networks for new mums and expectant mums in the area, and when I arrived in Geneva a friend from back in the UK, currently living in Geneva, recommended a great MeetUp network called Geneva Mums, Tots and Bumps which, as the name suggests, links up mums with babies and ladies with bumps for a whole range of useful things. Aside from the website, which has a really useful discussion forum for asking questions and sharing information, they also organise meetups, playdates, activities, nights out and lots more, as well as simply allowing mums to be in touch with each other to arrange their own activities if they wish. Not forgetting dads - who are also catered for with nights out. Every month the group organises a 'Sushi and Sucklings' event, so-named because its geared towards parents with babies under 6 months old and expectant mums, and we meet at a sushi restaurant in central Geneva. I went along to the lunch in September for the first time and although the location was a little puzzling - you're not recommended to eat sushi in pregnancy (but there are noodles and rice dishes on the menu too) - it was great to meet other ladies in the same position, to share worries, and to hear reassuring birth stories from those whose little bundles have already arrived. At CERN there is also a toddler group that meets on Tuesdays and Fridays, and although I got a few odd looks for turning up without a toddler (who knew there are entry requirements?), there are also a few mums among them who are expecting their second (or third) child soon, so it's been nice to meet other CERN wives in a similar position.
The toddler group is run as an off-shoot of the 'Cernoises', the wonderful name for the Women's Club at CERN, which is largely made up of CERN wives and which serves as an umbrella organisation for a whole range of other activities. My weekly French classes are run by the Women's Club, and they also run classes in embroidery, art, music, gymnastics and yoga - as well as running monthly coffee mornings. It sounds pretty old-fashioned - and it is - but it's brilliant having a network of people who are so welcoming of newbies. Somehow, I've been coerced into doing some baking and jam-making for the Christmas Fair in late November, so as you can see my career as a full-time lady of leisure and budding WI member is blossoming.
In fact, that's not all. I've also joined a knitting group. Strictly speaking it's a needlework group, because we're not all knitters - there are embroiderers, patchwork makers, people who crochet and so on - but we get together once a week to make our own things and have a chat over a cup of tea. Very 1950s. I've only been to one meeting so far but I took home-made shortbread (can you see my WI halo glowing?) which went down rather well, so I think I'll be welcomed back. The knitting group came about through another new acquaintance, albeit a slightly random one. I answered a query on the CERN Market - a kind of advertising board for people who want to announce flats to let, cars to sell, baby equipment to give away and all manner of other activities or opportunities - from someone looking to organise a Come and Sing Messiah at CERN. I emailed to say I'd like to take part and received a reply saying that as well as looking for singers they were also looking for people to help organise it... Despite my best intentions I revealed my former career as a Freelance Arts Manager. Needless to say, I'm now organising it. The lady who emailed originally also happens to live in my village, and goes along to the knitting group - and so another link in the chain was added...
But the people in the knitting group surpassed themselves. That night, after my first visit to the group, I received an email which had been sent out to 'the ladies of Logras'. It turns out that the lady who hosts the knitting group knows pretty much all the ex-pats in my village and took it upon herself to announce the arrival of Jo Buckley in the village. I felt a bit like royalty. 'Please get in touch with Jo and meet up with her, she'd love that', the email said. The very next morning, two emails arrived in my inbox inviting me to two separate parties within the next week. My social life is being coordinated for me! The shortbread must have been really good.
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Beautiful Annecy
We've been waiting for a nice day to take a trip to Annecy, and yesterday we finally got it. Blue skies, sunshine and 20 degrees - even in mid-October - it was perfect and we had a lovely day out. Andy played squash first thing in the morning while I took the rabbit to the vets (she's very much on the mend, described by the vet as 'the perfect patient'), and after the customary Saturday-morning-croissant, we set off for Annecy around 11.30am. Our sat-nav, affectionately known as Shaun (as many of you who have met him will know), excelled in taking us up the most weird and windy back-roads to avoid the expensive Geneva-Annecy toll road, which despite the short distance will set you back 20 euros for a return trip.
Annecy is known for its beautiful crystal-clear lake, the canal that runs through the old town and its picturesque old buildings, and it certainly didn't disappoint. It's a stunningly beautiful place, very fairytale-esque, and with such good weather we had one of the nicest days we've had since coming here. One of the most famous views of the town is that of the old prison, which floats in the middle of the canal, flanked by colourful old houses and cafes on either side. A swan obligingly swam up the canal for us just as I was capturing this lovely vista:
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| The canal and the old prison (left) |
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| Tartiflette: totally delicious and absolutely no calories |
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| Sometimes your mouth just isn't big enough... |
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| YUM |
We were pretty lazy tourists, it has to be said. We looked up and admired the castle, but decided against taking the steep climb up to see it properly. Instead, we walked off our lunch with a saunter around the pretty old town with its many shops and cafes, and then headed out to see the lake.
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| Bump goes to Annecy |
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| Old town streets |
Aside from the clear blue water, the lake is striking for being flanked by some amazing cliffs which Andy spent a while gazing at longingly, trying to work out how accessible they might be for climbing.
It's pretty rare for me to convince Andy to spend a day wandering aimlessly around a pretty place, as good weather usually = climbing. But his little legs were worn out from his squash matches of the last few days so I made the most of our day of unhurried wandering, and we made a detour on the way home to visit the Gorges du Fier. This huge river gorge features some impressive rock erosion, and gets extra points for a big sign advertising 'Marmite du Geant' - not to be confused with the giant's jar of yeast extract, it's actually a huge hole in the rocks, named after a giant's cooking pot. Sadly the bridge that takes you around the rocks and across the gorge was closed for the winter, but what we saw from the entrance looked fairly impressive. One to take bump to next spring I think.
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| Gorges du Fier |
Thursday, 18 October 2012
The times they are a changing...
Today something terrible happened. I was browsing the condiments aisle in Migros, when I heard something awful coming over the in-store radio. A Christmas song. Not just any Christmas song, but some dreadful modern arrangement of Little Drummer Boy, sung as a duet with the girl warbling away with X Factor-esque trills and squawks. This is my least favourite of all the Christmas songs in any case (closely followed by The Pogues - I'm sorry, I just can't stand it) but on 18th October? I know we moan about Christmas being thrust down our throats too early in the UK but I'm pretty sure this is the earliest I've ever heard festive music being piped over the airwaves. There are Lebkuchen in the shops too, along with candy canes, Santa chocolates and other Christmassy things. I'm not sure I'm ready yet. Christmas means 8 months pregnant and the imminent arrival of a noisy little bundle - I need more sleep first.
On the plus side, the season changing has some other, much nicer, repercussions. We were away in Belfast over the weekend to visit Andy's parents and when we returned, the stretch of the Alps that we can see from here had become noticeably whiter. Usually it is just Mont Blanc that glows big and white on the horizon, with the rest of the mountain chain alongside it looking, well, brown and rocky. But now it is all noticeably snowier, and Andy is starting to get that worrying 'ooh, winter climbing' glint in his eye. This snowy spectacle is a little dangerous for drivers though: I'm sure there must be several accidents every year caused by people just gazing up at these amazing big mountains as they rattle along the dual carriageway.
The Jura mountains aren't high enough to have a snow dusting yet, but they too are changing. Carpeted from top to bottom in thick green forest, the Jura are now steadily turning golden as autumn sets in. It's hard to believe that less than two weeks ago we were sat outside in shorts and t-shirts having a barbeque, as the temperature has suddenly dropped. The days are still warm enough - around 16 degrees or so most days - but at night the temperature is hovering around freezing and there was a deep frost on Tuesday morning that didn't lift until lunchtime.
Now, I must deal with an important bit of other business. In my last blog I waxed lyrical about the food in France, essentially giving the impression that it's all fine patisserie and nice markets and that the French could do no wrong when it comes to food. I need to clarify the situation, because in the days after posting that, we experienced some of the worst food that Europe - never mind France - has ever seen. We went to stay in a hotel in Autrans, just outside Grenoble, for a couple of days, where Andy was attending a physics workshop and I was... well, tagging along for the ride. Aside from the fact that the hotel looked rather too much like it was once used as a Nazi mountain hideaway (built in 1939 too...), it had a swimming pool that I seemed to have to myself, cows clanging away in the fields and beautiful mountain scenery. The food, however, was categorically awful. Dinner on the first night was a piece of cremated meat and some stodgy pasta. No sauce. For lunch on the second day we were served some kind of pungent (i.e. on the wrong side of ripe) overcooked fish with a bizarre curry-esque sauce and cauliflower so over-boiled it was reduced to piles of mush. We couldn't wait to leave and promised ourselves that we'd get away that evening in enough time to stop at a nice restaurant on the way home to re-stock our bodies with nutrients. Unfortunately, Grenoble was too traffic-heavy to consider stopping so we ploughed onwards and had hit the motorway before we had managed to find anywhere. Becoming increasingly ravenous and grumpy with it, I insisted we stop at a motorway service station just outside Chambery. Surely the French, of all people, know how to do motorway services properly?
I will never speak ill of service station food in the UK again. Andy ordered a macaroni cheese and was presented with a dish of dry, brown tubes, all the life completely sucked out of them. I ordered a burger, which to be fair was cooked freshly for me, but which was served with totally disgusting, overboiled and totally inedible 'mixed vegetables'. We paid 20 euros for the privilege. When Andy plucked up the courage to take his macaroni back, trying to work out how to explain in French that he simply couldn't eat it, he began by saying, 'I'm sorry it's....' At which point the lady jumped in and said 'awful, I know. What would you like instead?'
Unfortunately, the evening got worse before it got better. We missed our turning on the way home and ended up at a Swiss border we didn't have permission to cross, or else we would end up on the Swiss motorway without a pass. On the approach, we were flashed by a speed camera. We then did an illegal u-turn in front of the police and had to drive 10km in the wrong direction before we could turn around and head for the correct turning. In turn, this meant we had to pay the motorway toll (péage) in both directions for 20km of road we didn't intend to travel upon. We're interested to see if the Swiss motorway authorities manage to track our car down to our UK address to send us the speeding ticket... Andy says, 'Of course they will. They're Swiss.'
On the plus side, the season changing has some other, much nicer, repercussions. We were away in Belfast over the weekend to visit Andy's parents and when we returned, the stretch of the Alps that we can see from here had become noticeably whiter. Usually it is just Mont Blanc that glows big and white on the horizon, with the rest of the mountain chain alongside it looking, well, brown and rocky. But now it is all noticeably snowier, and Andy is starting to get that worrying 'ooh, winter climbing' glint in his eye. This snowy spectacle is a little dangerous for drivers though: I'm sure there must be several accidents every year caused by people just gazing up at these amazing big mountains as they rattle along the dual carriageway.
The Jura mountains aren't high enough to have a snow dusting yet, but they too are changing. Carpeted from top to bottom in thick green forest, the Jura are now steadily turning golden as autumn sets in. It's hard to believe that less than two weeks ago we were sat outside in shorts and t-shirts having a barbeque, as the temperature has suddenly dropped. The days are still warm enough - around 16 degrees or so most days - but at night the temperature is hovering around freezing and there was a deep frost on Tuesday morning that didn't lift until lunchtime.
Now, I must deal with an important bit of other business. In my last blog I waxed lyrical about the food in France, essentially giving the impression that it's all fine patisserie and nice markets and that the French could do no wrong when it comes to food. I need to clarify the situation, because in the days after posting that, we experienced some of the worst food that Europe - never mind France - has ever seen. We went to stay in a hotel in Autrans, just outside Grenoble, for a couple of days, where Andy was attending a physics workshop and I was... well, tagging along for the ride. Aside from the fact that the hotel looked rather too much like it was once used as a Nazi mountain hideaway (built in 1939 too...), it had a swimming pool that I seemed to have to myself, cows clanging away in the fields and beautiful mountain scenery. The food, however, was categorically awful. Dinner on the first night was a piece of cremated meat and some stodgy pasta. No sauce. For lunch on the second day we were served some kind of pungent (i.e. on the wrong side of ripe) overcooked fish with a bizarre curry-esque sauce and cauliflower so over-boiled it was reduced to piles of mush. We couldn't wait to leave and promised ourselves that we'd get away that evening in enough time to stop at a nice restaurant on the way home to re-stock our bodies with nutrients. Unfortunately, Grenoble was too traffic-heavy to consider stopping so we ploughed onwards and had hit the motorway before we had managed to find anywhere. Becoming increasingly ravenous and grumpy with it, I insisted we stop at a motorway service station just outside Chambery. Surely the French, of all people, know how to do motorway services properly?
I will never speak ill of service station food in the UK again. Andy ordered a macaroni cheese and was presented with a dish of dry, brown tubes, all the life completely sucked out of them. I ordered a burger, which to be fair was cooked freshly for me, but which was served with totally disgusting, overboiled and totally inedible 'mixed vegetables'. We paid 20 euros for the privilege. When Andy plucked up the courage to take his macaroni back, trying to work out how to explain in French that he simply couldn't eat it, he began by saying, 'I'm sorry it's....' At which point the lady jumped in and said 'awful, I know. What would you like instead?'
Unfortunately, the evening got worse before it got better. We missed our turning on the way home and ended up at a Swiss border we didn't have permission to cross, or else we would end up on the Swiss motorway without a pass. On the approach, we were flashed by a speed camera. We then did an illegal u-turn in front of the police and had to drive 10km in the wrong direction before we could turn around and head for the correct turning. In turn, this meant we had to pay the motorway toll (péage) in both directions for 20km of road we didn't intend to travel upon. We're interested to see if the Swiss motorway authorities manage to track our car down to our UK address to send us the speeding ticket... Andy says, 'Of course they will. They're Swiss.'
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Fromage and financiers: Food in France
I had fairly high expectations about the food in France. I pictured myself cycling along to the local market and coming back with the basket laden with fresh vegetables, smelly cheeses, cured meats and of course the obligatory baguette sticking out at a jaunty angle. Breakfasts would be grabbed from the local patisserie and we would eat our dinner on the terrace each evening, making the most of the late evening sunshine, savouring the delicious salads and fresh quiche I had conjured up during my leisurely day at home, before finishing the meal off with a tart made with fruit from the garden.
To some extent, the food here has definitely lived up to my expectations. The fruit and vegetables here are a world apart form what we get in the UK. The melons taste amazing, so sweet that they are almost pungent, and the tomatoes are so good that you need very little else in a salad. It's all incredibly fresh and even though it's now October, the shops and markets are still full of what I would consider summer produce. I have made a few cakes with fruit from the garden and I think there has been one homemade quiche. But it's not all fromage and financiers. My first wake up call came with my first visit to the market in Thoiry one Sunday morning, where I was greeted with stall after stall of stinky cheese, heaps of the local cured sausages, and butchers selling amazing cuts of steak. It looked wonderful.
Lesson number one: all of the above are off the menu for pregnant ladies. True, you can have a steak if you like, but it needs to be well-done - and what's the point in massacring a good piece of meat? Cheese is fine, but not the stinky soft kind. And cured meats are only to be eaten if cooked, not savoured as part of a nice cold platter (also comprising the afore-mentioned cheeses) with a little glass of vin (also forbidden, bien sûr). It is actually pretty tough being pregnant in France. Of course, the French are quite laissez-faire about the whole thing: 'Wat eez ze problem weez a bit of toxoplasmosis fur yur bébé?' But in the UK we're a bit more strict, and I can't help feeling that I must do everything I can to keep the little octopus inside me safe and well.
All of which makes eating out quite difficult too. One Friday evening we decided we'd throw caution to the wind and venture out of our little village for a meal in a restaurant. Eating out costs roughly twice what it does in the UK, so it's not something we are doing very often. Expect to pay at least £20 for a run-of-the-mill pizza; a nice but not particularly special three-course meal with wine for one will set you back around 80-90 euros. We considered our options: steak restaurant, steak restaurant, steak restaurant... oh and a few places that do pizza. Some of the steak restaurants do have a few other items on the menu: goat's cheese salad (forbidden), foie gras (forbidden) and horse (not forbidden but no thanks). Unfortunately for Andy, for the next 4 months it's pizza all the way.
Lesson number two: the French only eat lunch between 12-2pm. Turn up at 1.45pm expecting a late lunch and you will be turned away and left to starve. We found this out to our cost the day we drove all the way up to the top of a mountain at 2.30pm only for them to turn away a ravenous pregnant lady without so much as a bit of baguette. But today we decided to try our luck again and ventured out to Gex in the hope that a bigger town might have more options for a leisurely Sunday lunch, and we got lucky. We chanced upon a lovely restaurant called Le Convivial, where Andy had the biggest steak tartare I've ever seen:
I had a delicious plate of guinea fowl with wild mushrooms, decorated with wild flowers. Sadly the camera didn't pick up just how colourful the plate was:
There were desserts too - pain perdu with caramelised pears for me and some tiny cakes called cannelés, which we'd never come across before, for Andy. They were both scrummy, but we scoffed them too quickly for me to get pictures.
Lesson number three: you are never more than two minutes walk from a patisserie. Really. How the French stay so slim is a mystery to me, given that every village is filled with the sweet smell of freshly-baked pastries. And in Saint Genis, just a short distance from CERN, they have one of the best patisseries around: Sebastien Brocard. So good it's won awards. This is how happy I was when Andy took me there on our first day:
Row upon row of beautifully-crafted little financiers, tartlets, macarons and exquisite celebration cakes.
And it doesn't say anything in the books about endangering your baby with one too many macarons.
To some extent, the food here has definitely lived up to my expectations. The fruit and vegetables here are a world apart form what we get in the UK. The melons taste amazing, so sweet that they are almost pungent, and the tomatoes are so good that you need very little else in a salad. It's all incredibly fresh and even though it's now October, the shops and markets are still full of what I would consider summer produce. I have made a few cakes with fruit from the garden and I think there has been one homemade quiche. But it's not all fromage and financiers. My first wake up call came with my first visit to the market in Thoiry one Sunday morning, where I was greeted with stall after stall of stinky cheese, heaps of the local cured sausages, and butchers selling amazing cuts of steak. It looked wonderful.
 |
| The market at Thoiry |
Lesson number one: all of the above are off the menu for pregnant ladies. True, you can have a steak if you like, but it needs to be well-done - and what's the point in massacring a good piece of meat? Cheese is fine, but not the stinky soft kind. And cured meats are only to be eaten if cooked, not savoured as part of a nice cold platter (also comprising the afore-mentioned cheeses) with a little glass of vin (also forbidden, bien sûr). It is actually pretty tough being pregnant in France. Of course, the French are quite laissez-faire about the whole thing: 'Wat eez ze problem weez a bit of toxoplasmosis fur yur bébé?' But in the UK we're a bit more strict, and I can't help feeling that I must do everything I can to keep the little octopus inside me safe and well.
All of which makes eating out quite difficult too. One Friday evening we decided we'd throw caution to the wind and venture out of our little village for a meal in a restaurant. Eating out costs roughly twice what it does in the UK, so it's not something we are doing very often. Expect to pay at least £20 for a run-of-the-mill pizza; a nice but not particularly special three-course meal with wine for one will set you back around 80-90 euros. We considered our options: steak restaurant, steak restaurant, steak restaurant... oh and a few places that do pizza. Some of the steak restaurants do have a few other items on the menu: goat's cheese salad (forbidden), foie gras (forbidden) and horse (not forbidden but no thanks). Unfortunately for Andy, for the next 4 months it's pizza all the way.
Lesson number two: the French only eat lunch between 12-2pm. Turn up at 1.45pm expecting a late lunch and you will be turned away and left to starve. We found this out to our cost the day we drove all the way up to the top of a mountain at 2.30pm only for them to turn away a ravenous pregnant lady without so much as a bit of baguette. But today we decided to try our luck again and ventured out to Gex in the hope that a bigger town might have more options for a leisurely Sunday lunch, and we got lucky. We chanced upon a lovely restaurant called Le Convivial, where Andy had the biggest steak tartare I've ever seen:
I had a delicious plate of guinea fowl with wild mushrooms, decorated with wild flowers. Sadly the camera didn't pick up just how colourful the plate was:
There were desserts too - pain perdu with caramelised pears for me and some tiny cakes called cannelés, which we'd never come across before, for Andy. They were both scrummy, but we scoffed them too quickly for me to get pictures.
Lesson number three: you are never more than two minutes walk from a patisserie. Really. How the French stay so slim is a mystery to me, given that every village is filled with the sweet smell of freshly-baked pastries. And in Saint Genis, just a short distance from CERN, they have one of the best patisseries around: Sebastien Brocard. So good it's won awards. This is how happy I was when Andy took me there on our first day:
 |
| Oh my... I'll take one of everything. |
Row upon row of beautifully-crafted little financiers, tartlets, macarons and exquisite celebration cakes.
And it doesn't say anything in the books about endangering your baby with one too many macarons.
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