Say Quoi?

Coby (see entry 10 May) had invited us and Manuela out to the country house she is living in this year with a promise of lunch and a swim in the pool. It’s in a little town (isn’t everything) called Tavernes about an hour’s drive east of Aix. Lunch was set for 12:30 so we decided to use the morning as a sightseeing opportunity. Michael (Suisse) had recommended visiting the Gorges du Verdon, and by our tour guide’s reckoning we had time to do a nice loop drive. Unfortunately all those squiggly little lines on the map equate to road speeds of 20-50km/h so we had a much abridged visit. At one end of the Gorges there is a picturesque town called Moustiers Ste-Marie which we visited briefly. There is a lot of spontaneously interesting art amongst the tourist shops.

An old Vespa covered in tiles

From there we headed to the first view point up the gorge. This gave us great views of Lac de Ste-Croix along the way, and a lovely view up the first part of the gorge.

Needless to say we ended up being late to Coby’s, and the phone number she gave seemed to belong to someone else (we later discovered that we were missing the Dutch country code) who taught me how to say you’ve called the wrong number in French – tu as faite une erreur (literally ‘’you’ve made a mistake’’ for anyone who can’t work it out). We followed the instructions to what we assumed would be Coby’s house, but in fact was just the start of a long street. After some driving back and forward and asking people along the way, Coby appeared and flagged us down: disaster averted.

Coby and her husband Roelof have retired and are spending the year living in Provence. They want to see how they enjoy living in the region and are considering buying une petite maison. In the meantime they are living in this wonderful house with a pool and three terraces that are perfect for eating outdoors during summer. From each of these terraces you get lovely views of the Provencale country side. Next door is a small plantation of olive trees and there are also a number of olive trees in their garden. Coby and Roelof are eagerly awaiting next January when their olives will be picked and taken into the village to be miraculously converted into olive oil (like water into wine) by the local cooperative. They are doing a wonderful job of looking after the impressive garden, which has a number of plants that are not really suited to the region.

Coby, Manuela, Roelof and David at the sencond course table

We stayed for a number of hours and Dale and I swam twice, once before lunch and once after. Manuela swam before lunch and slept by the pool after lunch – the petite suisse!!! Coby and Roelof are very good cooks. Entree included a wheel of camembert wrapped in pastry and herbs. Bad for my arteries but DELICIOUS. For main course we enjoyed a Thai beef salad based on a recipe that Coby was given by a friend of her son’s in Melbourne. Naturally all the food was accompanied by some glorious Provencale rose.

This is how to spend a year in Provence


We’d missed having Coby on our class for the 2nd fortnight so it was lovely to catch up with her and to meet Roelof. He recommended a scenic route for our drive back to Aix. It certainly was scenic and we stopped to take staxxx of photos of poppies by the road at dusk. We arrived back in Aix quite late, exhausted by an eventful day (including getting to Tavernes) and good food and company.

Our last day at the language school was a little bit of an anti climax as our normal teacher had to stay at home with her sick child. We had a replacement teacher who was very nice but we really wanted to spend our final lesson with one of the teachers that we’d spent a lot of time with.
On Friday night we went to see a movie with Sandra (also see entry 10 May) and her partner Susan, who arrived for Sandra’s final week in Aix. We went to see an English language film with French sub-titles. Surprisingly, you can easily read the French sub titles as well if the film is in your mother tongue. Manuela also went to see the film and she said that she could only really focus on the English since her mother tongue is Swiss German. The film was Un Marriage du Reve (Easy Virtue) and was an enjoyable bit of fluff.

Now – I’m going to divert on to the topic of seeing films in French – but I will come back to Sandra and Susan. Un marriage du Reve was actually the only movie we saw in English. There are kinda funny stories associated with the other 3 films. The first one was with Manuela and at her suggestion. It all started with a text from her that read “Je vais voir un film avec Un Autre Homme. Avez vouz envie?” Now the text came to me so Dale is placing all blame on me for the subsequent course of events. Manuela’s text read to me in English as “I’m going to see a film with Another Man. Are you jealous?” Now Manuela was being cheeky because the name of the film was Un Autre Homme – and to be fair she did capitalise it in the SMS. But secondly I did not know what ‘’envie’’ meant and because English and French are pretty closely related I assumed that it meant envy or jealousy. But, as the French say, it is a faux amis (a false friend) and it actually means interest. Dale then texted back a response – which is why I think his blame is a little unfairly placed – saying that it depended on who the man was. Anyway you had to be there but we were all very amused when we realised what had happened. The film is a Swiss French film so it was entirely in French and I could not understand anything. I was a little depressed about this except for the fact that the film was CRAP and we all had difficulty understanding what was going on. Manuela understood the most spoken French but Dale seemed to be able to piece more of the film together between his understanding of the French and the visual clues. Needless to say it made for interesting conversation afterwards over a few glasses of red wine.


For our next French movie we selected the latest Star Trek movie. I like Star Trek and Dale loves everything about every version that has ever been created – so we naively thought that this might help our comprehension. As you might guess, it didn’t. We did understand more than Un Autre Homme and I did get the odd phrase here and there (like ‘Cherchez les mondes nouveaux’’, ‘’Allez ou ne personne est alle avant’’ and ‘’longue vie et prosper’’) and I was a little more familiar with the form but I really didn’t understand that much. As result of these experiences we decided to buy some DVDs in French that at least have French sub titles. We find that we can read better than we can hear. We’ve watched a couple and it’s still hard work but it is achievable. I’ve never felt so exhausted after one half hour episode of Weeds.


But wait there’s more. Manuela told us that she’d been to see the latest Pedro Almodovar movie in Spanish with French sub titles. So we thought that would be worth a try since it had French sub titles except that we went to the wrong cinema and got the version dubbed in French. Does anyone still dub movies? Yes the French do and they do it a lot so we should have known better. The positive side of this story is that we both understood substantially more than we had of the previous movies. We even think that between us we’ve understood the plot but we REALLY REALLY want to see it in Spanish with English sub titles to work out exactly what was going on.


Now back to our Friday night out with Sandra and Susan. After the movie Sandra took us out for a couple of Bellinis at Cafe L’Unic. Sandra and Susan told us the distressing story about hearing some kittens miaowing while they were having breakfast and thinking that this was very sweet. However they then realised that the kittens were actually howling and they discovered that one of the neighbours was throwing 3 kittens over the fence into their yard. They had managed to scramble back under the fence and were thrown over again. Sandra and Susan rescued the kittens and fed them. Fortunately they were OK. One was limping a little but was alright by the next morning. The mother also followed the kittens into their yard.
Sandra’s land lady was away so they couldn’t talk to her about looking after the kittens in the longer term. They spoke to another neighbour who said that kittens were quite cute but that she didn’t like cats and wasn’t interested in looking after them. They also tried calling local animal shelters but without a car they couldn’t actually get them to the shelters. Susan also felt that the French animal shelters were very dog focussed. Sandra has emailed us that on their last day they gave the kittens a big breakfast of yoghurt and that the landlady was returning the following day so hopefully they have survived. Without Sandra and Susan they probably wouldn’t have any chance.


That said, we do come across lots of content looking cats here in France. Here’s the current favourite photo taken at Vauvernagues