Two Weeks Living in France and Now We’re Experts
Quite possibly the most untrue thing I’ve ever written. No, I am reminded daily that I don’t understand anything about how things work here, but I’m doing my best to figure it out. Every day, every interaction, every step is an opportunity to fail and thereby learn something new. As I am knocked down over and over it does give me a spectacular view looking up at the silver linings.
What do I mean by knocked down? If something could go wrong, it has. A vast collection of small mistakes and failures that collectively create the feeling of being a child again. As if I don’t understand how the world works any longer and as a result, I am developing an interaction phobia.
It’s all simple, dumb things. For example, when you send yourself a package from the USA, or if someone else does, the French postal service will open it and assess a tax on the value of those items, payable in cash in the lobby of your building if you want your stuff. Apparently, everyone here knows this, except us. And you better watch it when you go to the supermarket or you might get double charged for the steak you just bought, but you won’t know that until you get home and read your receipt. (Why not double charge me on the .69 salt? Must it be the steak?) Or when the repairman comes for the third time to fix the same problem, and he’s Tunisian and doesn’t speak any English, your French is going to be put to the test. So, you might not understand that when he’s called you to tell you that he is outside the door of your building, you should probably go downstairs and let him in versus sitting back down on your couch while wondering exactly what time he said he was coming today. Then when the doorbell rings fifteen minutes later and there he is at your apartment door not looking so happy, you’ll suddenly get that he was actually telling you NOW. Thankfully the neighbor recognized him and let him up. How about those sheets you bought that are definitely not the right size and neither is the duvet, regardless of your efforts to measure before you left to buy them. You should probably plan on going to every store twice until you get it all straight. You weigh your fruits and vegetables at this supermarket, but not that one. But you do check out yourself at this one, however the machine will still call the security guy multiple times while you are scanning your items because you obviously do not know how to put things in a bag correctly. After his third visit he will ask you in English and somewhat under his breath, “What is the problem here?” and you will think, “Obviously, I am. Merci.”
I could go on, but I won’t. I’ll just finish by saying it’s been something like this multiple times, every day.
The French are experts at relaxing
However, it hasn’t been all bad. Let me list out some of the cool things that have happened in the past couple of weeks. We took the tram from the stop only a couple blocks from our apartment all the way to IKEA where it let us off at the front entrance. IKEA here is massive and includes a giant restaurant. We brought our rolling shopping cart, le chariot, and filled it with the things we needed that could fit and then rode the tram home. It’s amazing what we’ve been able to accomplish here with no car. That was one of our big goals in moving to France, and it’s very satisfying to conduct life on your two feet. Living life from this perspective is far richer because there is so much more to see and hear than from a highway going 75 mph.
We had no way to make coffee, so we went to a kitchen store here called TOC, which stands for Trouble Obsessionelle Culinaire, translated into English as Culinary Obsessive Disorder. I just think that is the greatest name ever. They sold me a coffee grinder made by Peugeot that I have to hand crank, along with a French press, pointing out that I would be using neither electricity nor paper filters to make my coffee (What about that hot water?) The young woman who helped me was under thirty and spoke beautiful English. I’ve learned in two weeks that if I look for young people to interact with, I will be okay with the communications because they speak better English than I do French, and they don’t ever seem to mind that that my French is rough. At another store I bought a bookcase and an office desk, and again, the young woman that helped me was absolutely fluent in English. So, I understood her perfectly when she explained to me that I wouldn’t be seeing my furniture delivery until June. Of course, I wouldn’t. C’est la France.
The French are always tres chic
Wandering the old city
Chien-hui is utterly unfazed by any of it. I am getting better at letting go. Here are two things that are improving for me since arriving: One, I am becoming patient, and two, my neurons are making entirely new connections. My brain is getting far more use than I think it did back in the states. At least it feels that way. Moreover, my legs are getting kilometers of steps in every day and I am cooking nearly every night now, too.
So, our nascent routines are emerging and that feels good. I went out photographing by myself this week and I’m happy with the images I returned with. Everything here looks fresh and inspires me visually. It’s a colorful playground, and around every corner I turn, there is something, or someone, that grabs my eye.
The Mediterranean blue
The market at Cours Saleya
Gare de Nice Ville only two blocks away can take us to Italy, or anywhere
As for my other great passion, I’ve discovered several wine shops in Nice. There are a lot of them. Damn, poor me. I struck up conversations with two of the proprietors this week. One shop sells French wine. but also a little bit of Italian wine, which is nearly impossible to find here. He told me that he is half Italian and half French. (I can only imagine the internal battles that rage inside of him.) He also told me if that if I really want Italian wines then I need to get on the train and go to Ventimiglia, in Italy, which is about 25 minutes from Nice, just across the border, and I can buy all I want there. It’s funny, but he was dead serious. He also has a little Pomeranian dog named Lupo (Wolf, in Italian) that took a real shine to Chien-hui.
The other shop I went to has a great selection of French wines, which, again, seems to be more the norm in France. Quelle surprise. The man who owns that shop went out of his way to explain to me why some of his wines were “expensive.” To my American mind they weren’t, but I need to remember that in France an expensive bottle of wine is anything over €17, and he had bottles that were above €20 and up into the €70s. He expended some effort to explain to me how a bottle I spotted was made, and by whom, and this justified its €21 price. I don’t really let on that I have decades of experience with wine because I can learn more about his philosophy of wine and what kinds of wines he is bringing in by just shutting up and letting the man do his thing. He was very passionate about wine and I really admired this. He pointed me to some of the underground wines he had and I felt kind of special that he had pointed me to them. Not everyone would understand their value, but he must have thought I would. Mostly, I valued that I could build a relationship with him as he gets to know my preferences and palate. Back and forth in English and French, we traded wine words, our common language. It sure went a long way to make my exasperating week a lot better.
I especially enjoyed his positive reaction to learning that I now lived in Nice, and I wasn’t just a visitor. In fact, this has happened a few times here. We have seen recently on YouTube how the Spanish or the Portuguese are reacting (understandably) to the Americans that are moving to their countries and driving the prices up. In some cases, the locals are reacting quite poorly hoping to drive away expats and tourists both. The French on the other hand seem rather surprised or maybe even delighted that we live here. It’s almost as if we have paid them the greatest compliment by choosing to move to France. Nobody has mentioned our President, the tariffs, or anything else political. They just want to know why we chose Nice and if we like it. To this we say, “Mais Oui, bien sûr. Comment ne pas le faire?” (But, yes, of course. How can we not?)
The frequent but minor frustrations aside since our arrival, there have been a couple of occasions that I have looked at Chien-hui wide-eyed and said disbelieving, “We live in France.” And she replies, “Can you believe it?” I am beginning to.