We just came back from two weeks in the south of France & I am experiencing that mix of emotions I always have after any time abroad. We had done a house exchange with a family in the little village of Cadenet, about a half an hour from Aix-en-Provence and I had a good idea of what I was getting into. Peggy and I had traveled some of those same roads before 18 years ago, sans fille, and had even had one of those perfect moments in the nearby village of Bonnieux. Back then a perfect moment included a bottle of wine and that work-free quiet of the Provencal afternoon. But again, that was before kids and before I quit drinking.
I did not miss the wine (much) and the non-alcoholic beer is better and more accessible there. The quiet is still on tap: the town (pop. 4000) grinds to a complete halt from about 12-2 and Wednesday people take off as well, just because they’re French and they feel like it. You need to adjust your schedule accordingly: if you want a baguette with your lunch, you better get down to one of the village’s four boulangeries before the baker quits for lunch. As our friend Veronique says about the day-to-day French rhythms, in which work takes a back seat to just about everything else, “It forces you to have a life.”
We brought Franny and her cousin Sally (both 14, going on 17) and they got right into it: Each afternoon that we were not exploring any of the more famous, ruin-studded local towns, the girls found what there was of local street life: other teens looking for diversions in a town fairly free of them. What they did was hang out together in cafes & talk & flirt, using what little French and English they shared. The girls were motivated to learn more French, as many girls have been upon visiting France, and the French predilection for PDAs (no, not those damned hand held work handcuffs, but public displays of affection) is still much in evidence.
Though we had internet access in our maison (an old farmhouse just above the town, with ceilings so low I felt like I was visiting Bilbo), I chose not to blog about while I was there: too much like work. Also, there seems to be something about the Provencal soujourn that brings out the worst in writers. I thought Peter Mayle was tiresome until I attempted to read Yvone Lenard’s risible Magic of Provence. I found even MFK Fisher’s Two Towns in Provence tough sledding, sprinkled as it is with fairy dust and commas. There is something about the Mediterannean pace of life there that makes even good writers lose their edge and melt like camembert in the afernoon sun.
Of course you could blame the locals, who for all I know are putting on an act for the benefit of the tourists. After settling on a boulangerie (the French take their bread very seriously — one place had already gone out of business for not being up to snuff — and the the girls practically lived on baguettes) I practiced my baby-talk French on our guy, who was happy to correct me.
“Pains au chocolah,” he corrected me. “In English you go up at the end of a sentence, while in French you go down. When you are done, it is finished. Like in love.”
That’s the kind of line you expect a French baker to lay on you, and maybe in French it really all does go back to romance. That part I like about the French. My mixed feelings had more to do with our return. The surly US customs people seem determined to make you reconsider your citizenship, and upon unloading the luggage at home I confronted a fellow pissing in the sidewalk across the street.
Why I bothered to confront him I couldn’t say. “Do you really have to do that here?” I said. “I live on this block and it stinks up the street.”
“Sorry, man, I live on this block too,” he lied. “But I just couldn’t hold it, you know?”
At which point one of young men from the projects down the street chimed in: “You can piss anywhere you like!”
“Yeah,” said the offending party. “What’s your problem, man? I can piss anywhere I like!”
Liberte. Egalite. Fraternite — Brooklyn style.