Another Reason to Appreciate French Trains

I love the romance of train stations, the rush of people dashing for departing cars, the embraces on arrival. I like the lofty iron canopies of the old stations and the sleek glass walls of the new ones. But in winter and during the holidays with everyone on the move, standing in crowds and drafts? Not so much. So I was happy to find this very nifty site put up by SNCF, Gare en Mouvement, a virtual station that lets you check on possible delays before you head for the station. There's all kinds of useful info.  You can check arrivals and departures, whether the station has WiFi, the location of parking around the station, train connections -- and you can do it for stations all over the country in five languages.  (Drawing from the charming Paris Sketchbook of British animation artist Matt Jones)

Auto-Entrepreneur, One Year Later

The French may have given us the word "entrepreneur" but for years they were one of the least favorable nations in Western Europe for start-up companies and talented people with big ideas wanting to start new businesses.  French companies complained of being burdened with expensive red tape imposed by a government hostile to business and tax laws that created insurmountable hurdles to success.  As young people fled to seek opportunities abroad, London came to be called France's fourth largest city.

Despite widespread dislike for French President Nicholas Sarkozy and consistently his low ratings in national polls, since Sarko was elected the French parliament did fulfill his campaign promise to "modernize the economy" by sweeping away many restrictions and encouraging greater entrepreneurship through a program of "auto-entrepreneur" and "auto-entreprises." The creation of the new fiscal status -- which allowed business to not have to pay taxes until they started making money -- unleashed a torrent of small business activity. Between the start of this year when the law took effect and the end of September, nearly 425,000 new businesses had been created throughout France. September 2009 saw a record high of 57,548 new businesses created in France, an increase of 36.8% over the previous month and more than half of these were auto-enterprise.  The trend continued in October.

Students, salaried employees, retired people, just about anyone can simply fill out a declaration, wait and start working.  They must make sure their earnings don't exceed a certain amount.  None of this is simple to understand, even if your French is pretty good. but a number of people are available to help sort it out.   Last March, someone names Allison Morton -- who I've never met -- did a commendable job of translating the whole darned law, all 43 pages of which are available here.   If you are serious about working in France, it's worth the paper and ink to print it out and keep it on file.

Jean Taquet, a Frenchman who is married to an American and who lived in LA for several years, has published a terrific, inexpensive book of practical tips for expatriates and can advise on the lastest changes to the law.  And I ran across this Web site set up by a French woman who saw a business in helping people set up new businesses -- how entrepreneurial!   I cannot vouch for her, but if you Google on auto-entrepreneur, you'll undoubtedly find many sources of information on your own.  One thing is clear.  Over the past year, and despite the recession, for expats living in France, setting up a small business has never been easier.

Christmas Pumpkin

It's only a few weeks before Christmas and some lucky lady in the United States won this today at auction.  I don't know if she's keeping it or giving it as a gift, but it is a gift just getting to look at it online. Who knew there were so many colors in orange or that a pumpkin could be so sexy?

Racing the Rain

It's raining hard today and getting cold, but despite the falling temperature and the occasional, terrifying bolt of lightening, men are out all over the valley rushing to bring in the last of the grapes. The usual leisurely pace of life here has a charged undercurrent as everyone races to complete the harvest before the real cold arrives. And this rain is a reminder of the need to hurry. Driving to Vaison-la-Romain, Vinsobres, Nyons, Gigondas, you must budget extra time because there will undoubtedly be a long line of cars following a giant harvester moving between fields. And little tractors in brilliant blue and green, looking like toys belonging to the children of giants, pull wagons loaded with shiny grapes. The life of this entire valley rests on those delicate purple pearls and everyone knows it. So if a few tractors slow you down on your way to work, it seems like a small price to pay.

The word is that the 2009 Cotes du Rhone will be good, but not great. Too dry. Too hot.

These pictures were shot on my bicycle ride a few days ago -- back when people were still stopping for lunch.

A true test of character

I can tell a lot about the character of a French person by the way they react to my pathetic efforts to speak French. There are those who are impatient and the second I open my mouth they roll their eyes and tap their feet. There are the mean ones who, even though they can easily understand what I'm saying, arrange their faces in the strained expression of someone utterly mystified by the mutterings of the village idiot. There are others who view life as a continuous opportunity, so when I ask a question in French they take the opportunity to practice their English. And there are the one I like best, those who are spiritually inclined and feel gratitude in all their human interactions -- they appreciate my effort to speak (and are even more grateful when I stop).

To be fair, although I have an excellent vocabulary, I speak like someone who grew up in Texas and didn't learn to speak the language until she was well into her 30's. Grammatically speaking, I don't. And I often take the long way around, constructing sentences that if translated would be something like, "Could you tell me, please, if it might be possible to travel from here to the next village by car in less than a half an hour?" rather than, "Is it far?" Perhaps I try too hard. This can be fixed.

But there is just really not that much I can do about the accent. I have been practicing lately the phrase for turtleneck as it is getting chilly and I've been buying a few winter clothes. Turtleneck is "col roulé" and this "o-u" sound gives me a headache. I simply cannot hear the subtle difference between "roulé," "rue," and "roue." The result is that sometimes when I try to say "sweater" I actually say "chicken" ("pull" versus "poule"). So if I'm dressed a little funny this winter, you'll know why.

For whom the bell tolls

I have to say, I feel vindicated. This is a very small village and everyone who lives here describes it as très tranquille. In fact, without any shops and only about 125 houses, the loudest thing when I moved in was the sound of the fountain splashing on the small place one house away.

So imagine my surprise when the I arrived last summer to discover the village had fixed the bell in the tower just a few short yards from my front door. Although it appears quite delicate in its little wrought iron frame, this isn't some puny, feminine little tinkle, this is a proud, powerful gong meant to be heard by workers in the vinyards that surround town. This is an explosion-on-the-hour that rattles the windows 24 hours a day. And we're not talking a single ring, either. This bell gongs on the hour, then again three minutes later (in case you were in a coma and missed it the first time) and then gongs a single time on the half-hour to remind you to put in your earplugs and prepare for the next assault. At midnight, you get 24 full gongs -- and each time the bell rings it is preceded by a flurry of extremely loud clicks like a giant deck of cards being shuffled. This is the sound of the electronic controls that keep the clock tower in sync with a satellite circling above. In my opinion, whoever fixed the bell meant for it to be heard on that satellite.

Last summer, I gently brought up the matter of the extreme loudness of the town bell, or cloche, to Madame Leblanc, the mayor. "I was very surprised by the bell," I said nicely. "It certainly is loud." Ignoring my obvious attempt at a faint complaint, she replied, "Yes, everyone is very happy to have the bell back. Everyone missed it." Not everyone.

She then followed up, as everyone does at the mention of the bell, with a rather long history of the importance of the bell in the Middle Ages when no one had watches or clocks and the entire life of the village -- when to rise, when to return from the fields, when to attend mass or a wedding or funeral -- everything was guided by the sounding of the bell. Apparently, people felt tremendous affection for their town bells, great towers were erected to house them and several phrases still in use come from the days when town bells were of such great importance - phrases like "death knell." I'd be a lot more interested in this charming story if I could stay awake to hear it. Unhappily, I'm not getting that much sleep.

But last night, I was invited for drinks with four ladies from the village -- Dominique, Marie-Helene and les deux Eveylin -- and all of them complained about the amazingly loud bell. Marie-Helene, who for 20 years has been coming down from Paris each September to her home here and who lives right next door, said she had finally resorted to ear plugs after five sleepless nights. Evelyn added that she has become used to it, but if she spends a night somewhere else it takes her about a week to stop hearing the chime in the middle of the night. There was a lot of giggling around the subject of the bell, and the more wine Dominque poured the greater the giggling. There was some small attempt to address ways to fix the problem, but in the end everyone agreed that perhaps it was best to just close the windows and hope the winter is long.

September in Provence

Throughout the village, the pavement is littered with the remains of heavy brown figs and the leaves on the trees and vines look exhausted. The air is so soft that it is hard to recall the heat of only a month ago and the days call to you to go for a walk, ride a bike or, as I will do this Sunday, drive over with the windows down to see the work of this marvelous artist Julian Merrow-Smith, who's elegant figs are pictured here.

A walk in the vines

So let's just skip ahead and admit we finalized the purchase of my lovely little house a full year ago and I've blogged only one single time since -- although I'll likely go back and share some of the lessons learned in the first year. Frankly, there was so much to do when we first moved in that there wasn't really much time left for sitting in front of a laptop and clicking away. And then, of course, there was a year-long battle with France Telecom and its evil ISP sister Orange.fr. so that I couldn't even get online to blog if I'd wanted to. It is worth mentioning before moving on the extreme pleasure of having my sister, brother-in-law Saint Peter and long-suffering son with me the first time I inserted an ancient key in a rusty lock that was finally all mine. And on that first, fabulous trip they all earned the right to call the house their own by painting, helping me scrub a century of grime off the living room tile floor and moving furniture from one room to another, and back again.

Now though, a year later, I'm doing exactly as planned -- traveling back and forth between Austin and Provence and enjoying every delicious moment of village life when I'm there.

One of the joys of my village is the verdant, vine-filled countryside all around that presents constant opportunities for hiking and little adventures. The village overlooks a long broad valley filled with vines, that runs all the way to massive Mt. Ventoux. Not far away are the dramatic peaks of the Dentelles de Montmirail, where great hiking trails begin and end in the wine village of Gigondas.

Or you can just walk a few minutes to where the pavement ends and take a walk in the vines. Any excuse will do. Yesterday, the excuse was Ravi.

My friend Patricia -- a size 0 blonde who is as kind as she is lovely -- runs a luxurious B&B a minute from my house. Behind the main house she used to keep her pet donkey, Ravi ("delighted" in French). This worked pretty well for awhile, but a couple of summers back, Ravi decided he'd had quite enough of the pen, was lonely and thought the vines beyond the fence looked especially appetizing, indeed. Over several months, he kept inventing new ways to escape, and Patricia would spot him at the top of a distant hill munching grapevines and thoroughly enjoying the outing. Rounding Ravi up inevitably involved an hour or more of Patricia chasing him up one row and down the other. Great fun.... for Ravi.

So last year Ravi was sent to live a few miles away at a rudimentary stable owned by Pierre-David, a jovial, retired boulanger who has packed on a few pound in his later years but whose youth was spent as a horseback acrobat in the circus. Patricia walks a couple of miles through the vines to see Ravi several times a week and she sometimes invites me to go along.

The circus and horses were Pierre-David's two great loves, but when you are French and come from a long line of bakers, there's really not a lot to discuss. For 40 years, Pierre-David baked baguettes in the village of Tullette. His reward in retirement is a one-room shack at the end of a dirt road where he has built pens and can indulge his love of animals -- and escape his wife and daughter in town. Ravi has a spacious pen and seems to like the arrangement. He's well fed. He has friends -- beside Pierre-David, there's an ancient, molting mule, a Clydesdale pony with a missing ear and a passel of rescued hunting dogs. Pierre-David seems equally content. Inside his shack, displayed floor-to-ceiling on the dark wooden walls are technicolor pin-ups of naked women from Penthouse and Playboy, a cluttered card table and a refrigerator stocked with Cote du Rhone Rose, all the essentials.

Ravi was delighted to see us and even more delighted with the hard baguettes and carrots we brought for his snack. Pierre-David was delighted to have guests with whom to share a bottle of wine and a sunset. Patricia was content hugging the neck of Ravi and whispering endearments in his furry ears. And I was delighted there was a full moon for the walk back through the vines after all the wine and amusement.

(Painting of donkey -- a little darker than Ravi but in the same spirit -- by Debra Sisson.)

A l'etude

I signed everything I could for the house before I left in early August, and charged French Help Services with signing the final contract for sale in November. The signings took me to an anonymous little building in grim little village along the Autoroute to the office of the Notaire.

The Notaire is the public official in France responsible for receiving all “actes” and contracts to which parties wish to confer the seal of authenticity. Notaires oversee settlements between husbands and wives, wills, inheritances and have a monopoly in matters related to the purchase of property, which prevents almost any subsequent litigation concerning property contracts.

The roughly 8,000 Notaires spread across France are under the authority of the Minister of Justice and, like lawyers in France, are referred to as “Maître,” roughly equivalent to “Esquire.” Notaire’s practice where they live, in offices called “Etudes,” but can oversee property transactions regardless of the location.

Notaires hold a rather grand position, and are viewed as the knowledgeable, impartial guardians of ethics and business morality in the transactions over which they preside. Notaires are directly responsible for the deeds they receive and for the sums of money, like deposits on homes, with which they are entrusted.

The Notaire does not work for either buyer or seller and, traditionally, there was only one per transaction. Today, things are more complicated and often both the buyer and seller each hire their own Notaire. My purchase was pretty simple and I had other, experienced outside counsel so I opted to pass on the additional expense of hiring my own Notaire.

“Our” Notaire, a middle-age and balding businessman in khaki trousers and a pastel striped shirt, wore his mantle of authority with a certain, self-deprecating charm. He welcomed us all, chatted with the sellers about the weather and asked me if I was happy with the home I’d found. Sitting in a upholstered chair before his carved wooden desk, I watched him draw out the purchase agreement to be signed and listened as he explained his role -- slowly for my benefit, stopping all along the way to see if I had questions. He explained each section of the contract, and everyone waited patiently while I read through every word of every paragraph on every page. I told him my father had been a lawyer and had taught me to never sign anything I had not completely read. He told me my father was wise. I felt no pressure, but a lot of friendly, slightly amused, support. I was relieved to find there was nothing I could not understand, and the few points on which I had questions were patiently answered. The experience was friendly, painless and over in about 90 minutes. Done.

The Notaires de France website is available in both French and English and offers a search facility to help you find a Notaires Office by entering in department number, you can also search for an English speaking Notaire.
http://www.notaires.fr