Guessing Game: My Top Five Getaways

Getaway Number 1

My daughter is on two-week winter break already, and she's only been back at school for five weeks since Christmas. It's a pity I don't have any time off, because I'm feeling cabin-feverish.

If the weather cooperates next weekend, though, we hope to pull a little getaway. I'm looking for a new place, and have a nice idea thanks to Loulou.

In the meantime, here are some photos of my top five getaways. My ranking combined two criteria: how much I like a place, and how often I manage to get there.

Getaway Number 2

So this is not exactly a list of "my favorite places to go" or "the most beautiful sites I've ever visited." They're just places I get to on a somewhat regular basis, for various reasons, and that always perk me up and give me the feeling I've had a nice break from the everyday routine.

Getaway Number 3

Most of these locales are not that far-flung. My/our stays there range from day trips to weekends to short holidays. One is a city I go to for work, and I always come back rejuvenated and more aware of the world outside Aveyron.

Getaway Number 4

Convenience is a major factor in these getaway destinations. I always chuckle when friends back in the States tell me "oh, living in France, you must just go to Italy all the time!" or "I looked on the map and I see you're just a hop, skip and a jump from Provence!"

Getaway Number 5

They are always shocked when I tell them that I have never been to Italy, and that while Provence is within reach, it's a little out of my driving comfort zone considering the limited time I have available to travel around France.

Do you recognize any of my getaways?

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(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

February, or it's been a long winter

This is the view from my home office window this morning, the first day of February.

I made no attempt to take a good picture, nor crop it, or even take it again. And no effort will be made to write a perky post today either.

That's just how February makes me feel. The best thing I can say about this month is that it's blissfully short.

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(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau. Click on it to enlarge.)

The calm after the storm

(All photos by Thierry Jouanneteau. Click on them to enlarge.)

I imagine everybody in the expat blogging circles is posting about the storm that hit France yesterday. Here in our part of Aveyron, we experienced a mix of rain, flooding and windstorms followed by a blizzard, leaving in their wake surreal scenes like the one above.

The French media says that 1.7 million homes lost power during yesterday's storm. All trains in and out of Rodez were cancelled. Here in Aveyron, the papers say the lights went out in 17,000 homes at about 6pm yesterday. I noticed the lights flicker at precisely that time...there but for the grace of God...

My husband and I actually had braved the elements Saturday afternoon and gone into Rodez, not really knowing that roof tiles and even major hunks of scaffolding from the cathedral were flying around the city. The BBC reports:

"Another reader, Simon Ritchie, witnessed the damage wrought by the storm in the French town of Rodez.

'This morning, I awoke to the sound of very strong winds and lashing rain or hail,' he said.

'I looked out of my kitchen's skylight window to see scaffolding and sheets or corrugated iron blowing of the adjacent cathedral. One such sheet blew about 50 yards from the tower and landed on a car below, smashing it in completely.'

'People were screaming on the street below, and bits of masonry and scaffolding continued to fall,' he added.

We drove home from town in blizzard conditions, still with no real knowledge of everything that had been happening on le piton, as the town center of Rodez is called.


This morning, things looked so peaceful in our area that no one would have suspected that snow had been whipping vertically against village homes and buildings throughout the previous afternoon.


We didn't get the worst of this storm. We were lucky.

Wordless Wednesday 45, posted on Friday, but you'll see why...

When the Ship Comes In, Part 2

Well over two months ago, I held my breath and published my last post before the election: When the Ship Comes In. It consisted of nothing more than the first part of the lyrics to the famous Bob Dylan song.

Never had a song spoken out to me more; I had listened to it over and over for days before the election, and it is the one my daughter and I chose to blare out of the car as we triumphantly drove into Rodez the morning after, honking our horn and each raising an arm through the car window into the pouring rain.

At the time I didn't dare post the rest of the lyrics. First, it seemed so appropriate to finish with the line "the whole wide world is watchin'." Second, victory was not certain, and although the whole song uses the future tense, I couldn't quite bear to go so far as "you'll be conquered."

Of course Obama, in his laudable "let's work together" mentality, is certainly a better person than I am, for I cannot shake my rage over what Americans have gone through the past eight years. In spite of all the joy and hope in the USA now, I cannot forget that there were-- and still are -- foes.

And we finally beat them.

Oh the foes will rise
With the sleep still in their eyes
And they'll jerk from their beds and think they're dreamin'.
But they'll pinch themselves and squeal
And know that it's for real,
The hour when the ship comes in.

Then they'll raise their hands,
Sayin' we'll meet all your demands,
But we'll shout from the bow your days are numbered.
And like Pharaoh's tribe,
They'll be drownded in the tide,
And like Goliath, they'll be conquered.

(Extract from "When the Ship Comes In" by Bob Dylan)

Découvrez Bob Dylan!

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(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

L'hiver à la Gare de Rodez

It was freezing and snowy all over France last week -- even on the Riviera, where snowfall in Provence and the Marseille region stranded thousands of travellers and commuters.

Here in Rodez, we got only a few centimeters of the white stuff on Wednesday, but they came at the worst possible time -- between five and seven pm, right as employees were leaving work AND as alarmed shoppers, who had come into Rodez for the first day of the official winter sales, decided to flee the town center.

That evening, it took me an hour and twenty minutes to do my usual twenty-minute commute, but at least I didn't end up in a field as I had a few years back when the area was struck by an evening snowstorm.

The next day, I didn't have class, so I decided not to risk early morning driving and to go into work a little late -- at least in daylight hours. Since I was in no rush, I stopped to take a few shots of the ever-fascinating Rodez train station.

This is one of my favorite places in Rodez. I hope it will never be subject to a smart modern renovation.

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Going, going...Le Grand LeClerc

Yesterday, after an outing to Rodez on a brilliantly sunny afternoon, my husband came home and told me "I took some great pictures that you'll want to use on your blog."

Without missing a beat, I guessed that they would be of the Rodez area's latest destruction site: the old LeClerc hypermarket.

Weird minds think alike, I guess. I couldn't have been happier had he brought home his usual photos of pastoral peace, or crazy countryside scenes.

I myself had almost stopped to shoot several times, as I drive by the demolition scene almost daily. But I hadn't quite dared get up close and personal. In fact, the old parking garage kind of scared me even when it was still in use:


Le Grand LeClerc, as the locals called it, must have seemed grand indeed when it was built, perhaps in the 1970s. The architecture below is the result of a renovation done in the past ten years, but somehow even the new look didn't cut it:



By the way, neither of us know what that tree is doing there, so don't bother to ask.

And yes, as you can see, tagging and graffiti strike abandoned sites even here in the heart of La France Profonde.

Now grocery shoppers flock to le Nouveau LeClerc, complete with a mini-mall, a Flunch, and a fitness center.

But apparently the old site still welcomes us, at least for a few more days:

In its own way:

(All photos courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau. Click on them to enlarge.)

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Happy New Year!
Bonne année 2009!

(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau -- click on it to enlarge. I promise it's worth the trouble.)

La France Profonde: Three years and three hundred posts!

A few of the guests at La France Profonde's third anniversary party

Today I am celebrating La France Profonde's third anniversary -- and my 300th France Profonde post.

I'm a few days late, as I actually started this blog on December 23, 2008. But I thought it would be nice to coincide with the 300th post. Plus, after three years, what's a day or two?

For this significant event, I took a look back over some old posts as well as my comment history.

First, what has been the most commented-on post on La France Profonde? I thought it would be this one, but actually it was:

Is life really a bitch without big chocolate chips?

So I guess among my readers, food wins out over politics any time.

I also made a list of a few of my favorites posts, in no particular order:

Traces of cafés past

Good-bye little bird -- and don't forget to fly home

An Odd Couple

La Gare de Rodez at Dawn

Old reflects against new

The latter post also contains what may be my favorite photo -- at least among those that I've taken:


After that, I also took a rather quick look at my early comments. I had been writing this blog for over a month before I got a comment that just "came in" from somebody I didn't know: on February 4, 2006, on a post about the local Bosch factory, I received a comment from Stéphan R., who kept up the Toulouse, One Day, One Photo blog very nicely for almost two years before disappearing from the blogosphere in May 2007.

I often wonder what happened to Stéphan, and I suspect if I went back carefully over my comments, I would find plenty of bloggers that I was in touch with for months before either their blog or our communication dwindled down to nothing.

But for now, I'm here, and La France Profonde is going into its fourth year with no plans to change much of anything.

Un grand merci to all of my readers for your comments and support!

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Happy Holidays!

Looking up, things are

These photos of Notre Dame de Rodez won't put a song in your heart, but they reflect a certain mood that she can get in -- a decidedly chilly one.

We've been through quite a cold snap, and Wednesday my daughter and I went into town for lunch. I was struck by the difference between the weather "up there" and "down below" on the sidewalks. It was certainly cold both places, but where we were walking, it was totally clear with no sign of fog.

But the Rodez cathedral can be in a totally different weather dimension from the city it dominates. The bell tower is 85 meters, or nearly 280 feet, high -- and this can mean a real difference in atmospheric conditions.

To give you an idea of how ethereal the cathedral can appear compared to the world below; my crystal clear Wordless Wednesday photo this week was taken only a few minutes earlier and only a few streets away.

Notre Dame de Rodez has often been described as "brooding." Perhaps these photos can help illustrate that image.

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Rodez: a basic street scene. What do you see?

I have so many photos of Rodez on my computer that I think it would take me a lifetime to post them.

When trying to capture the spirit of Rodez, I often put up scenic shots, or quirky takes. But I am also stocking a mounting collection of photos like this one that I don't quite know what to do with. It seemed interesting at the time, but...why again?

Now that I take a closer look, there are a few intriguing details:

• The two very pale pink buildings are what stand out the most to me. That's a color which is fairly frequent in Rodez, but yet is never really associated with the town.
  
• The street is empty, even though the shot was taken during the afternoon. You can find plenty of empty streets in the center of Rodez if you get away from the rues commerçantes.
• The photo is marred, of course, by the big cable running between two buildings. What are those all about, anyway? I see them everywhere, but don't know why they still exist. I'm sure one of my readers can offer a cogent explanation -- I'm not much of an electricity geek.
  
• The curved roof on the bottom right house is intriguing, and not very typical of the area.

What do you see?

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(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau)

An open message to the French media : He's black. (And white.) Get over it.

This post has been a long time coming. Bits and pieces of it can be found on inspired comments I left on other people's blogs, but it took some distance from the election to put my thoughts together on how unbearably annoying the French coverage of Barack Obama's campaign and election was to me.

It takes a lot to get my husband to turn off France Inter, one of France's public radio stations, but a few days before the election, even he couldn't take it anymore. "Le candidat noir, le candidat noir, le candidat noir..." The two words had become a collocation in the French press, one rarely appearing without the other.

Click. Sound over. We were free to discuss the real issues going on in the US election.

But it was perhaps that day, a few weeks before the election, when one of my colleagues (all of whom supported Obama and supported me throughout the stressful electoral process, I must add) sat down and grimly announced that he "had heard on TV that the polls were all wrong." He then proceeded to give a highly simplistic interpretation of the Bradley effect.

I took a deep breath and explained precisely why the Bradley effect was most likely not applicable to this election (hoping against hope I would be right) and my colleagues remarked that they wondered if they were really getting the full picture from French TV.

Now I cannot pretend to have kept up with ALL French media coverage and ALL American coverage of the 2008 presidential election -- who can? But I can say that while France was clearly in the grips of a type of Obama-mania, its citizens also couldn't get past the concept that Obama was, above all, le candidat noir. On the other hand, even when I gritted my teeth and watched Fox news from time to time, I got the feeling the US media were by and large ignoring race by the end of the campaign.

So what's the deal? Why, in the country of liberté, égalité et fraternité, was Obama's race constantly an issue?

For one thing, I have noticed that many French people are -- or were, hehe! -- extremely fond of pontificating about American racism. Nowhere is this more present than in the national school programs, where French schoolchildren spend what seems to me an inordinate amount of time studying Rosa Parks, the March on Washington, and the Ku Klux Klan.

Now don't get me wrong. These are worthy subjects and we can admire the fact that the French educational system cares so much to delve so far into American history. I'm sure that stateside, the same number of hours aren't spent on the 2005 French race riots or the presence of Jean-Marie LePen as a final candidate in France's less-than-glorious 2002 presidential race.

The image of a racist America died hard in France. Only days before the election, Télérama, a left-wing cultural magazine, issued a "Special USA Edition." Among the feature articles: Il n'y a pas de littérature noire! and Universités d'Alabama: la ségrégation toujours dans les têtes (original title from the magazine version.)

The articles proved more measured than their sensationalistic titles, but I couldn't help but think that the journalists were grasping at straws and just couldn't resist taking one last stab at their precious image of the USA as a bastion of racism.

Now French writers, especially schoolbook authors, can start to construct new chapters about race relations in America, preferably chapters that deal with events after 1963. They've got some catching up to do. And I hope when they do it, they will also be capable of occasionally disconnecting the word président from the word noir.

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C'est fini!

Thirty days and thirty posts (spread over my three blogs.) Technically that parenthetical detail may disqualify me as a NaBloPoMo survivor, but it counts in my book.

Posting daily didn't actually change that much for me here at La France Profonde, but it did give my two other blogs, Cuisine Quotidienne and And So Forth, a boost.

And although I didn't get into the social networking or post-uploading aspect of the event at all, I did make one great blogging buddy who encouraged me and vice versa: Le Laquet of chez le laquet! I suspect we will stay in bloggy touch.

We will now return to our regular programming.

The end is near...

It is November the 28th. I am going to make it through NaBloPoMo.

To manage the daunting task of posting to (one of my three) blogs every day, I even set up an editorial calendar. I can hear your awe from here.

Today's blogging task was noted as "FP Tag from "Je ne regrette rien."

I must admit that when Non, je ne... tagged me or awarded me or whatever her Marie Antoinette eat my cake post was about, I thought it was pretty cool because she has a new banner photo of the Millau viaduct and I had just driven over it about an hour before.

That's all, folks.

Link to my Thanksgiving post

I know to some of my fellow expats, Thanksgiving is a big deal. You either go home for it, or you somehow manage to cook a turkey and all the trimmings during the workweek.

I don't do that. But I did write a Thanksgiving post, and you can find it here.

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An American dream coming true

My daughter is fitting into American high school life to a tee. She got invited to her school's Homecoming dance (above) and was also lucky enough to be invited to a neighboring high school's Homecoming too:


Not to mention Halloween. She has always loved that holiday and our house here in France felt pretty empty that night without her traditional Halloween party. But she was able to participate in a Jack-o-lantern cutting session with a friend, and go to a party afterwards:

BEFORE

AFTER

Notice that only the pumpkin's expression has changed.

My daughter was thrilled to report to me that "Halloween is SUCH a big deal here!"

She's also been in her first high school choir concert. I had forgotten about those choir robes. Doesn't she look serious?

But that mood apparently didn't last too long!

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C'est ma fête!

November the 17th is Sainte Elisabeth day in France, so one could legitimately tell me today "C'est ta fête!" And in fact two people did, and that is one of the first times anyone has bothered to recognize this event.

I also learned today that my husband had no idea when my saint's day was...

I've never really understood these French saint's day "fêtes" anyway. Are they cause for celebration? Gift-giving? Or just saying "Bonne fête?"

(By the way, I of course know when my husband's is....)

Paris: a jumbled view

Today I'm taking advantage of Blogger's time warp to get my daily post up before midnight on Friday the 14th! I sure didn't have much blogging time on that date here in France, as I flew up to Paris for work and was lucky to get home on my scheduled flight.

One-day work trips to Paris are not times when I get to see a lot of the city, but I always take my camera and try to get s shot of something.

This was the view from the 4th floor conference room of the Maison des Universités. Like many views out of the back side of Paris buildings, it was a jumble -- but an ever-fascinating one.

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(Photo courtesy of Thierry Jouanneteau; click on it to enlarge)

Plowing through NaBloPoMo

I knew that after the election, I would either be full of energy or need a place to bitch, moan, wail, and gnash my teeth for at least a month. (Fortunately, we find ourselves in the former scenario.)

So on November 1st, I thought what better time to sign up for NaBloPoMo?

Since I'm a triple blogger, my goal is to post at least once a day to ONE of my blogs. Once a day to each would be superhuman.

I've made it through the first nine days, and hope to cross the finish line!

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Overwhelmed and overjoyed

My email inboxes are overflowing, my Facebook page is a maze of comments and congratulations, and even my little-used cell phone text message inbox is full.

I'm just savoring every moment, as I know so many of you are.

When the ship comes in

Oh the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin'.
Like the stillness in the wind
'Fore the hurricane begins,
The hour when the ship comes in.

Oh the seas will split
And the ship will hit
And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking.
Then the tide will sound
And the wind will pound
And the morning will be breaking.

Oh the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they'll be smiling.
And the rocks on the sand
Will proudly stand,
The hour that the ship comes in.

And the words that are used
For to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they're spoken.
For the chains of the sea
Will have busted in the night
And will be buried at the bottom of the ocean.

A song will lift
As the mainsail shifts
And the boat drifts on to the shoreline.
And the sun will respect
Every face on the deck,
The hour that the ship comes in.

Then the sands will roll
Out a carpet of gold
For your weary toes to be a-touchin'.
And the ship's wise men
Will remind you once again
That the whole wide world is watchin'....

(Extract from "When the ship comes in" by Bob Dylan)

Palin fakes her way through prank phone call from "Sarkozy"

With only a few more days to go in this stressful (for some of us) American presidential campaign, now for some comic relief.

Sarah Palin was the victim of a prank phone call from a Montreal comedy team, Les justiciers masqués, and fell for it hook, line and sinker. (This is true; her campaign has already reacted to the incident, saying "C'est la vie.")

Listen to the hilatious audio here, or on the above site.

Some can consider this questionable journalism, but do I feel sorry for her? With all the unproven garbage she's slinging at Obama? Not one bit!

And I find her inability to pick up on, and react to, the strange tone and content of the conversation pretty frightenin'.

Her answers actually reminded me of the now famous Katie Couric interviews, and I'm not alone in this analysis.

Except this time the questions were utterly ridiculous; Palin doesn't seem to get the difference, blithely blathering away and giggling like a schoolgirl who's been called by her celebrity idol through most of the "interview."

Anyway, enough of that -- time to channel some pro-Obama energy.

This may be my last pre-election political post on La France Profonde. If any of my expat readers want to join in on my virtual election night (morning) chat event, hook up with me on Facebook.

I wish I could go party it up in Toulouse, but I have eight hours of class on Wednesday the 5th! God knows what state I will be in! Coherent enough to teach, I hope...