To use a Britishism, I’ve been rubbish at posting lately. Sorry. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been in a writing frenzy. I am trying to complete the revision of my novel and academic work so I can submit my thesis and it is just consuming me. I have found time to go out everyday and walk, drink hot chocolate in cafes and browse the shops, but my life is mostly about writing. I’m leaving my apartment on Tuesday and heading up to Paris for my flight. My time here is nearly finished.
I thought I’d share a photo of what I bought this evening. On my way home from writing in the cafe, I stopped at the boulangerie and fromagerie for an “oh my god I’m leaving France soon” treat. There you can see a baguette and some very soft brie. In the middle there is goat’s cheese covered in dried cranberries (which I just tried — heavenly). And finally a pastry, which was called “sable” with raspberry. [It looks like an enormous pie in this photo, but it's actually a single-serving pastry!] I’ll miss visiting these little food shops, which are an everyday part of life here. In the Anglophone world, we’re mostly stuck with huge supermarkets.
Despite being a small town, there is a big store here that sells books, DVDs, music, electronics, etc. I like to go in there sometimes and browse around. They have some amazing cookbooks that I wish I could buy, including Laduree cookbooks and kits to make macarons. I have also stumbled upon some items that have really made me laugh, such as these two:
La Petite Maison dans La Prairie! I still can’t stop laughing over this.
This American import translated as “Le Bro Code” –
And of course there’s no escaping crap like this:
Ugh. Twilight books and DVDs everywhere. Even the small section for English language books is full of Twilight. [I wonder how Twilight is pronounced in French? Tweee-leeeet?] The store is also filled with Harry Potter and Call of Duty. It’s depressing how much American (and some British) stuff there is. What is wrong with you French people? Resist Anglophone cultural imperialism! Do you really need Le Bro Code?
Happy Thanksgiving to my American peeps! While I won’t be having Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, I am flying back to the States two weeks from Friday and we’re going to have it on Christmas instead. Whoop!
I went for a walk around town today, my lovely Vence, which I will soon be leaving. These photos are not necessarily up to my normal standard, I don’t think (one of my photos of Paris is on the Travel + Leisure website this week!), but it’s the best I can do at the moment. I think I caught the last of the fall foliage. In most of these photos, you can see the old walled city. Vence is on a hill and I am standing on the other side of a gorge, where the river Lubiane runs through. I have actually been living in this town! It’s hard to believe.
I stumbled upon Villa Lorraine today, which I intend to purchase once I win the lottery or rob a bank. It’s not for sale – some German guy owns it, apparently (and rents rooms in it) — but one day it will be mine:
Standing right next to my future home, Villa Lorraine, there is a view of the Mediterranean Sea (it is there – you just have to look for it):
I am over women getting raped at Occupy Wall Street and being quiet about it because they were protecting a movement which is fighting to end the pillaging and raping of the economy and the earth, as if the rape of their bodies was something separate.
This is from Eve Ensler’s excellent HuffPo piece about rape called “Over It” — go read the whole thing.
After what seems like weeks of soul-destroying rain, the sun was out today. I took a walk with my camera. Sorry I haven’t taken many photos since I’ve been here. The rain is part of it, but also, I’m just immersed in work. My body is in the South of France, but my mind is in New York City, where my novel takes place. Anyway, given that I’ll only be here for another month (sniffle), I vow to take more photos to capture the beauty of this place.
This town has a newer part (as seen in the photo above) and then the old town, which is surrounded by a wall. The apartment building I’m living in is more like the one in the photo above. Below is a photo of the old town. People actually live in all these buildings. There’s a small English-language library here, just behind where I’m standing:
Since this town is on a hill, there are many places with panoramic views:
Burning computer questions of the day: Why don’t French keyboards have the @ symbol? Why do you need to press shift to get a period? Oy vey. Give me Qwerty or give me death.
Anyway, on to the story, though I will preface this by saying that some of my most rage-filled computer-related moments have occurred in France, particularly re: the internet. Ahem. Okay, so I don’t have a printer with me, obviously, and today I needed to print out a chunk of my novel so I could edit it on paper (which makes a big difference). Printing is a luxury, since I don’t have a lot of money and won’t be able to print often, given the cost. But today I reached a point where I had to print. I went to an internet cafe I saw advertised in the tourist office, whose ad has American and British flags on it, which means they speak English. I went there, thinking I’d be in and out the door in five minutes. L’ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!
I opened my email account and attempted to open the docx file I had attached, but kept getting error messages, the gist of which seemed to be that the computer software is so out-dated it will not open docx files. It hadn’t occurred to me that an internet cafe would not have computers capable of opening docx files, so I was surprised. I asked for help and when the guy came to help me, he was immediately dismayed. ”Docx? Impossible. That is a brand new type of file. It originated with Microsoft Office 2007.”
“Okay, but it’s 2011 now, so…it’s not brand new.”
“This is just a trick by Microsoft to make more money. You should read about it online.”
“Yes, I know all about docx files. It was annoying when the change was made four years ago, but the world has moved on, non?”
“I refuse to install it on my computers.”
Me, becoming exasperated: “Okay, then what should I do? I need to print this. I’m in a hurry.” (I actually wasn’t in a hurry, just annoyed.)
He said we would open it in OpenOffice, but when he tried it, it wouldn’t work. “Oh la la,” he said, shaking his head. “You should tell the person who created this document to send it as a PDF.”
“I created this document. I could have saved it as a PDF, but it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be able to open docx.”
He then went on, rambling about the evils of Microsoft and I’m thinking, I hate Microsoft as much as the next girl, but listen, old man, you own a flipping internet cafe. You have no choice but to accommodate people using Microsoft. Finally, as he rambled, he came out with this little gem: “Of course, I have the new version of Microsoft on my personal computer,” he said, pointing to his desk.
“Okay, then can I email you my document and you print it out from there?”
“Sure.” It then took him an hour to find a scrap of paper onto which he could write his email address.
Cut to him opening my file and printing it. He hands it to me and it’s in an unreadable font, which looks more like Russian than English. I say, “What is this? I can’t even read it.”
“It must have converted your font into something else. You chose a unique font for your document, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“See, this is why I tell people to use PDFs.” And then he went on about the virtues of PDFs and the evils of docx. Finally I said, “Docx is normale! In Angleterre, everyone has it!”
He looked at me in disbelief. “No, it cannot be so.”
I knew this printing error was going to cost me about 5€, but I had no choice but to ask him to print it again after changing the font and changing the spacing to 1.5 to cut down on pages. He said he could change it to Times, which I said was fine, then he began to have a meltdown over this because he couldn’t get the font to change. Finally, a female coworker took over, practically pushing him out of the way, and as she’s attempting to reformat my document, the two of them are arguing about who knows what.
In the end, he charged me half price for the screwed-up document, which was good news. The bad news? I have to go back there to do all my printing. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere else in town.
Yesterday, at two different times during the day, someone tried to unlock the door to my apartment. The first time it happened was around 7am, when I was still in bed. I awoke to the sound of a key in the lock and someone inserting and re-inserting it very aggressively. I was about to get out of bed, but then whoever it was walked away. The door has no peephole, so I wouldn’t have been able to look into the hallway.
My first thought was that someone had the wrong apartment. For some reason that I cannot understand, apartments in France (from my experience) are not numbered. The doors have no numbers or letters and even the mail goes by the tenant’s name. I lived in four different apartment buildings in Paris and not a single one had numbered apartments, nor does the place where I’m living now. Does anyone know why this is? I have to say, it makes no sense to me. I sublet an apartment in Paris once and on my first day there, I went out to the supermarket and when I came back, I could not find the door to my apartment. I was faced with about 15 doors, each identical and unnumbered. I had to call the owner! Once they guided me to the correct door, I had to remember that it was the fourth on the left or some such.
Anyway, given this quirk of French apartments, I assumed that someone had the wrong apartment when they tried to open my door. But then, strangely enough, it happened again in the late afternoon. I had taken a nap, which was very strange for me, since I don’t usually nap. I was awakened by the sound of someone trying to open the door again. I was about to get up when I heard a man’s voice say something and then a woman responded. The woman, I think, is someone who lives on my floor. My French is pretty rusty, but I thought the man said something like, “I thought they are only here in the summer?”
I came here to the South of France to “get away from it all” and now the place is swarming with world leaders. Obama, the Chinese dude, the European leaders….they’re all meeting 15 miles from here in Cannes for the G20 summit. A black helicopter just flew over my quaint little village. Blech!
I had actually considered a daytrip to Cannes this week, before I knew what was happening. I have decided against it because a] it’s raining this week; and b] I don’t want to get teargassed.
BTW, for any visiting journalists who might be reading this, I have created a list of G20-related headlines that you can feel free to just copy and paste directly into your articles. No need to credit me:
Greece Has Ruined Everything — Die, Greece — Get the Hell out of the Eurozone, Greece — Get the F–k out of Europe, Greece — Cradle of Western Civilization, My Ass!
I went out this afternoon hoping to find a copy of the latest petrol-bomb-tastic issue of Charlie Hebdo, thinking I could make some money by selling it on Ebay, but it seems that others had the same idea. The lady at the newsstand said the issue was sold out by 8 a.m. Drats!
For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, click here. In a nutshell, the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo released an issue this week about the Arab Spring that was “guest edited” by Mohammed and featured a cartoon image of him on the cover. You’d have to have a death wish to do something like that, but Charlie Hebdo did it. You can see the aftermath in the photo above — last night the newspaper’s offices were firebombed and completely destroyed.
In celebration of free speech and the right to blasphemy, please enjoy the following:
