Bureaucracy? What bureaucracy?

Hi, everyone! Our lives have been pretty full for the past few months, with a trip to Nice in February and various interesting encounters with the French government.

Spring is definitely on its way here. Last week was wonderful, with warm sunny days almost all week. This week has been cold and gray and rainy, though, as if winter wasn't ready to give up yet. Apparently this is normal March weather – sunny days alternating with rainy ones. The days are getting longer, and it stays light until after 8:30 pm now that we’re on daylight savings time.

Nice was nice!














Our trip to Nice, on the Mediterranean Sea, in February was…dare I say it…nice. What you see above is a view of the harbor.


















It was warmer and sunnier than in Brittany (we even ate outside a few times!)...















We took gorgeous walks along the fabulous Cote d’Azur (what we call the Riviera in English).















We took trips into the nearby countryside to hill villages like Vence and St. Paul de Vence...









...and we spent part of a day in Monaco, looking at the palace of the Grimaldis and the outside of the casino at Monte Carlo. Bob’s planning to post a blog entry about the trip sometime soon, so I’ll leave that to him.

Finally, we're legal...

We finally received our French residency cards in January, after a wait of nine months…only to find out that less than three months later we would have to start the renewal process! Of course, we will have to supply current versions of most of the same dozen or so documents we had to submit to get the first residency card…

Or maybe not...

We've also found out that once we've been officially living in France for a year, it'll no longer be legal for us to drive with our American and/or international driver's licenses. After that, we're considered to be driving without a license and our car insurance becomes invalid. If we get caught, we could be fined as much as 15,000 Euros. Yikes!

Our year will be up on May 15. Since Georgia doesn't have a reciprocity agreement with France (some states in the U.S. do), my only choice is to take (and pass) the French driver's license tests, both theoretical and practical. And do all this by May 15 if at all possible. (Bob may have other options, as you’ll see in a moment)

This doesn't sound like a big deal, but the tests here are hard, the paperwork is convoluted, and you have to take the practical exam in a car with dual controls. Since such cars are usually only to be found in driving schools (a big business here), you have to sign up with a school if you want to take the test.















So that's what I've done. The school is taking care of the paperwork for me, which alone is worth the price of admission. The first step was to apply for permission to take the tests for the license (yes, you have to apply for permission from the government before you can even take the test!). That took six weeks to come through.

I'm scheduled to take the theoretical test on April 13. I'm studying like a madwoman. You're probably saying to yourself, "Aw, come on. How hard can a test like that be?" Believe me, you have no idea! Out of 40 multiple choice questions, you have to get 35 right answers. You have only 20-25 seconds to answer each question, and there may be more than one right answer. If you miss even one of the possible right answers on a question, you get the whole question wrong.














All the questions are in the form of a photo taken through the windshield of a car. You're asked what you should and/or could do in the given situation: stop, slow down, pass, not pass, wait, go, yield, not yield, park, not park, turn on your low beams, turn on your high beams, etc. And there are often trick questions that are designed to trip you up. (the answer to the question above, by the way, is "non")














And to top it off, some of the practice tests I've been taking to prepare for the exam use the favorite French pedagogical techniques of mocking and humiliation. ("You saw two no-entry signs and you still thought it was OK to drive into that street? What would it take to convince you? A third no-entry sign?!?!")

To be fair, all this studying is actually making me a better, more attentive driver, and the challenge appeals to me when I'm not feeling terminally frustrated. And now I know what ALL the traffic signs mean, which I didn't before. What irritates me is that now that I know the rules, I realize just how often French drivers break them!

Once I pass the theoretical test, there's the practical test. This isn't just driving but also knowing various facts about the car itself (just where is the reservoir for the brake fluid, anyway?). I'm not even thinking about that right now! At this rate, I might just barely be able to get my French license by the time our year runs out. If not, we'll be doing a lot of walking. Wish me luck!

This year the French get a new president (when will it be our turn?)











On another cultural front, this is the year of the French presidential elections. They come every five years. Election day will be in early May, and it's interesting watching the show. It's easier to observe the goings-on here because I don't have the emotional investment that I would in the U.S.

Basically, the contest is between Nicolas Sarkozy, who's sort of the political heir to Jacques Chirac, and Segolene Royal, who's a socialist. Of course, being France, there are all kinds of fringe candidates whose names will be on the ballot too. Everything from the man running on a platform of ecologically-friendly canoeing to ultra-rightist racist candidates.

Neither of the two frontrunners is God's gift to France, but I think I prefer Sarkozy, who's got a better grasp of the economic realities France is facing and the sacrifices it's going to take to meet those realities. Royal is still in the business of promising everything to everyone, pledging to lower taxes and increase services, things like that.

Still trying to speak French properly...

My French continues to improve, although still not as fast as I'd like. But I've stopped thinking about it so much. I've made so much progress that it's starting to be second nature to operate in French.

Generally life is easier -- I can understand nearly all of what people say to me in face-to-face conversations and I'm able to talk on the phone without missing half of what's being said. I can watch TV and follow at least 75% of the dialogue (at least some of the shows).

As for movies, some of them are 100% comprehensible to me and others have dialogue that's very hard to follow. Sometimes it's best to opt for a foreign movie in a language I don't understand. Then I can read the French subtitles!

Will work for food

We're starting to reap even more rewards from some of my volunteer activities here, most of which are already inherently rewarding. For example, one thing I'm doing is helping people develop their own websites. Often this ends up with my creating their websites for them after they struggle for a while with the software and don't make the headway they'd like. Most of these sites are for vacation rentals, since we're in a popular seaside vacation area here.

For a recovering workaholic like me, having something useful and productive to do, something people need and are grateful for, is a real gift. But in addition to the warm fuzzies, sometimes there are tangible rewards!

One of the people I've been helping with website-building has a big vegetable garden and chickens and geese. I've been getting regular gifts of fresh herbs, leeks, and free-range eggs from her that are fabulous (I've never seen such intensely yellow yolks). I've been promised asparagus, radishes and green beans when the season comes, as well as goose eggs when the goose decides to lay.

And what do you do with all those vegetables?










The leeks go into something I've learned to make here: gratin of leeks. This is serious French comfort food: braised leeks rolled in thin slices of ham and covered with a cheese sauce (made from genuine Swiss gruyere from the grocery store), sprinkled with more cheese and baked until browned and bubbly. Yum!

The "kig ha farz"

I've also been taught how to make a classic Breton dish called Kig ha farz. I had heard about this, and then I had lunch with some friends at their house and they happened to be having it so I got to see it made.

It's essentially boiled beef and salted pork with vegetables, simmered gently for hours on the stove. The Breton twist in this dish is the "farz", a sort of rich buckwheat crepe batter that you pour into a small, heavy cotton bag with a tight closure at the top. You put the bag in the pot with the meat and veg and broth. It firms up and becomes a sort of giant dumpling.

When it's done you roll the bag on a bread board with your hands to break up the contents, and you put the resulting crumbles into a dish and then crumble them up further with a fork until the texture is something like couscous.

It sounds weird and, let's face it, just plain wrong. But it's actually really tasty and goes well with the meat and veg. I didn't have a bag when I wanted to try it, so I improvised one from the cut-off sleeve of an old shirt of Bob's (I got this idea from a recipe website). It worked great!

Where are we going next, you ask?

This coming Monday (April 2) we leave for ten days in Belgium. We'll be visiting the medieval city of Bruges, the World War I sites near Ypres, and of course Brussels. Bob's excited about visiting the numerous examples of Art Nouveau architecture in Brussels, many of them the work of an architect named Victor Horta. Grist for another blog entry! A bientôt!