Wednesday 1st September 2010.

In a previous post I said there were no soft cushions in this apartment, well I just found one! And a cozy red blanket. And I am sitting out on the balcony all wrapped up at 8am. The sun is shining but it’s still cool here in the shade. I can hear church bells ringing, traffic in the distance and the sound of metal blinds being raised. There is also the odd dog barking. The Italians seem to love their dogs almost as much as the French, although I haven’t seen them in the restaurants here yet.

 

We’re leaving Torino today, to travel to Nice, to another airbnb home. There’ll be no rushing today, just a leisurely spin to the south of France! Torino has been a lovely experience, built on a grid system, it’s hard to get lost wandering around.

As usual on our last day leaving a place I am pensive, and I like to remember the bits I loved. So the bits I love about Torino:

 

The People:
They are warm and friendly, even when you’re wasting their time! I had a serious need to do some sewing yesterday so while I was in the city I found a wool shop and bought some embroidery thread and needles. The lady had very little English but she was willing to use it, so I decided to ask her for directions to a material shop. Lots of picking up a piece of my skirt and pointing to outside and she got it and she gave me directions. Against all the odds I found the shop. Inside was an Aladdin’s cave of bolts of material. Shelves lined three walls and each bolt was wrapped in brown paper with only the end of the material visible. I was definitely going to ask her if I could take a photo, but circumstances didn’t allow for that.

The owner was serving another lady and was taking down loads of bolts but none seem to be right. Finally the customer said something to indicate that she could serve me. I was looking for some felt material, it’s used for making little sewing projects like decorations or cat toys. So I did my best to describe felt and she went straight for a section of bolts with many colours – great, I wanted lots of colours.

She took down a pink one and began to unwrap it from its brown paper parcel. Then she brought out a measuring stick and asked how much I wanted. I indicated a quarter of a metre. She went off I presumed to get a scissors but instead returned with a pen and pad. She wrote down a number, it was 32,00 and she said “euro”. I looked at it for a moment before it dawned on me that it was the price – €32! I was expecting €3.99, or €5 max. She must have noticed my face falling because she said something else and then crossed out the 32,00 and wrote 30,00. Oh, no she thinks I’m haggling! I was stepping back from the material and saying (in English, making no helpful gestures, due to shock) “no that’s too much for me, I don’t…. I’m sorry.. thank you… I’m sorry”. She was saying “that’s okay, it’s very fine material”. I was saying “si, si, of course, I’m sorry, grazie… Arrivederci”. And I moved toward and out the door as fast as was possible with all eyes on me. And I had wanted at least three different colours – €96! For a cat toy!

But what was lovely about her was that at no time did I get the sense that she was annoyed with me. She seemed to accept that I didn’t understand and she willingly helped me understand. She did not judge me, and she was still nodding and smiling as I backed out the door! Needless to say there are no pictures!

 

The Metro:
On Monday afternoon I went into the centre of Torino to have a look. There is a Metro (underground) station beside the cinema up the road from here, so off I went to negotiate that. Now, I’ve been on the Paris underground and the London underground but I’ve never been on them alone. All those intersecting coloured line are supposed to help you find your way? They look more like a pattern for a patchwork quilt, in fact maybe….

Anyway, as Denis was working, I would need to find my way all by myself. So I did some research on Google and with some trepidation I set off on my journey. Turns out there was nothing to worry about. The Metro here was built for the Olympics in 2006 (winter), so it’s very new and easy. The ticket machine has an “English” button and if you choose it all the instructions are in English. From my research I knew I needed a suburban ticket. Oh yes, there was a map with coloured lines on it but I don’t know why – they’ve only completed one train line!

I follow the signs for the train to Porto Nuova and when the train comes I get on and sit at the front. And not behind the driver, front, but the very, very front, because there is no driver! All the trains are run by computer! I was very happily sitting up there until I noticed a sign, helpfully translated into English, saying “these seats are intended for children”. I pretended I couldn’t read and enjoyed zooming through tunnels, in the front for a change.

 

 

The Porticos: From the train station all along the Via Roma to the main square there are covered porticos (archways) so that you never need to be out in the hot sun. When I took the bus tour I learned that these porticos were created to keep the royals and the noblemen out of the rain and that there are ten miles of them around the city. (I may have the numbers wrong because this bus tour wasn’t as exciting as the one in Reims and I dropped off a few times.)

 

So with some sadness we leave Torino and start a new journey.

Tuesday 31st August 2010.

 

I got up early yesterday morning and after posting my blogs, I was hungry for breakfast but we had no food :-(. Never mind, I’d go out into the wide world. So I headed down the street.

We’re not in the centre of Torino, we’re in the suburbs. The street we’re staying on is made up of houses with two, three or four apartments in them and then there are some apartment blocks. There are four apartments in this house with a communal entrance hall, where the bike is. We’re on the third floor, again:) It’s a very manly (!) apartment – marble floors and no comfy cushions! But it has air conditioning (joy oh joy) and a washing machine which I can tell you is very useful after hand washing every day for 10 days! And something I don’t appreciate enough at home – lots and lots of huge towels!

About a ten minute walk away there is the Metro station and a cinema, a cafe or two and restaurants and a Holiday Inn hotel. When we went for our pizza on Sunday night we didn’t see any supermarkets or mini-markets, so I wasn’t really sure if I’d find food! But of course, I did.

I was inside the door of a small grocery shop before I realised I couldn’t just pick up what I wanted, I had to ask for it because this was a tiny over the counter kind of shop.

Well, if you’ve been following my language fluency situation you won’t be surprised to learn that I’m not fluent in Italian. I didn’t do it in school or college or as a night class. I’ve seen some sub-titled Italian movies at the Mermaid (cinema), so I know how to say hello, Bon Journo; thank you, Gratze (by the way I don’t know how to spell any of these!); okay, prego; please, per favor; yes, si.

There was a lady serving or chatting with (how would I know which?) another woman as I arrived. Great, time to spot the things I need to point to, but no they stopped everything to welcome me, “Bon Journo!” they both said in anticipation of my needs. So I smiled and went “ah, bon journo (you know in that whispered way you use when you’re not sure what you’re saying?)”, and at the same time spotted bread and pointed and said “du pain”. Oh my God no, now I’m using French, where was it in France! But it’s ok the shop lady says “panne” so I say “si, panne” and smile, a lot, really a lot. And she smiled too, okay… this is fine, we’re connecting.

While I’m on a roll I decide to look around and spot the fridge, it’s on my side of the counter and I point to some milk. So she says “latte”, I forgot I knew that word too! But there are three different coloured cartons and I wanted low-fat. (If you’re wondering why I care what type of milk I get when I may screw this up and get no milk, I am asking myself the same question! But at the time I wanted low-fat milk…) I searched the writing on the cartons for anything to do with fat or cream, but nothing. By now the friend and the shopkeeper and I are standing around looking into the open door of the fridge. I’m searching for a way to communicate my request for low-fat milk.

For those males reading this you will be at a disadvantage to use this little tip I’m about to give you but all females have this in their armour.

I pinched a section of my (now ample, with all the great food) midriff and shook my head while saying “no”. Well, you’d have thought we were friends for life, the laughing, the touching of arms (in a friendly gesture!), the smiling, the meaningful nods, the Italian words (no clue…). There was connection happening here and it looked like I was going to get milk!

And the rest was easy. Each time I would point to something the shopkeeper lady would pick it down or her friend would say the word and like a pupil in school I would repeat it and they would look proudly at me smiling all the time. It was a truly joyous experience! Finally, I was done and I said “gratze, gratze, gratze” and again they smiled and said “multo gratze” and I repeated that “multo gratze”. When I left that shop there were three smiling people and I don’t think I’m being too boastful in saying I think I made an impact!

(I’m so sorry I didn’t get a picture of us three friends but here’s the food!)

 

Monday 30th August 2010.

Well, we finally made it to Torino (the Italian for Turin). It was a long and tiring journey across the Alps and through the Alps! The tunnels are long, one lasted 20 minutes, and are a little boring for a pillion passenger who can only see to her left and her right! But as you come out the most spectacular scenery awaits you. It is truly breathtaking. Imagine it well because we couldn’t stop to take pictures for the most beautiful bits!

We didn’t stop much at all because we needed to be in Torino for 5pm to meet with Marco the father of our next host, to collect our keys for our 3 nights in Torino. We left Luzern at 11am and arrived at Marco’s door at 5pm and we had stopped only three times for a total of one hour. That is a sure-fire way to fall out with your passenger! We were very tired and smelly when we arrived and tried to stay up wind as a beautifully coiffed and sweet-smelling Marco welcomed us into his home!

He also welcomed the bike into his entrance hall. This is the best secure parking it’s ever had!

When we washed and changed we were starving so off we went to the nearest pizza place. We chose the one with the most Italians outside and were not disappointed. The pizza, mushroom for me and gorgonzola (yuck) for Denis were lovely (well mine was lovely, I don’t know how Denis can eat that blue stuff!) and we succumbed to a very tasty tiramisu. The whole bill came to €30 and there was a 1/2 litre of wine and another of water included. This’ll be easy!

Friday 27th August 2010.

The first day I left the house and went into the town of Munster I took a key for the front door. But after a couple of more outings I realised the front door is never shut during the day (I’m not sure it’s shut at night either!) Didn’t we used to do that in Ireland at one time?

We’re leaving this beautiful town tomorrow morning early (the plan is 7.30am – I’ll let you know!) and heading for Switzerland via Germany. We’ll be staying at another airbnb apartment (in Lucerne) for one night and then off to Turin for three nights.

Alsace is very different to the other parts of France we’ve been in. The houses look Swiss or German. The churches spires are square, where they tend to be round elsewhere. The second language on signs is German. There are hills and green forests. Except for the houses (and the language and the driving on the wrong side of the road!) you could be in County Wicklow.

The things I will miss about Munster are many. The examples of the slow pace of life – there are vegetable patches everywhere, people taking the time to grow their own food; Gab’s (our host) father makes his own bread; the bottle of “our own homemade” apple juice that Gab gave us on our first day; the small fruit called Mirabeau (I think) growing in the garden, Gab gave us a bowlful; going to the market; looking out the window, any of the windows! ; cooking, well…assembling dinner; walking to get groceries, to provide sustenance.

Friday 27th August 2010.

 

 

(Stork Postcard)

One Christmas when Ciara was little she wanted a farm set so Santa brought her one. It was made by Play Mobil, which I now think must be a French company. The farm was part construction toy and part make-believe toy. But since Ciara wasn’t interested in construction, the job of putting the farm buildings together fell to Denis or at a push to me. Anyway, one part of it always confused me.

Now I understand….

The farm set was made up of a two story barn with pulley system for lifting bags of grain; a farm house attached to the barn; a hen house and pens for the animals. There were cows, hens, sheep, a cat, a dog and two storks. There were window boxes and flowers to go into them. The thing that confused me was a wheel on the roof of the barn. It didn’t do anything. There was a little hook sticking up from it but I searched the instructions for details of what this might be for, to no avail. I couldn’t understand what a wheel would be doing on top of a barn. Turns out Ciara knew all along!

 

(Storks on top of the Mayor’s house in Munster)

She discovered that one stork could fit onto the little hook and she used to put him up there. A stork on a wheel on top of a barn – crazy. Well, here in Munster there’s lots of storks and they build their nests on top of big wheels on barns and tall buildings!!

Go Ciara!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday 27th August.

On Tuesday it was raining in the morning but I wanted to get bread and croissants so I put on my rain mac and went to see Munster. It’s not very far to the shops and restaurants (as per our priorities) but there are lots of little streets to cross. I hadn’t gone very far when I started to feel uneasy. I couldn’t work out what it was, but it was getting worse the closer I got to the town. And then I realised…it was the traffic! The traffic was on the wrong side of the road!

 

(Traffic in Munster)
I’m not kidding (or stupid ;-?), I always knew the French drove on the right but knowing it and KNOWING it are two different things. I know traffic, I grew up in Cashel, the seat of the kings of Munster (the other one), a town that had traffic jams in the 60’s (when Cork were playing in Thurles or Croke Park). On the main Cork to Dublin road every truck delivery between the two cities had to pass through our town. It could take me 10 minutes at the age of 8 to get across the road to the pub to buy loose mikado (biscuits, not drink!) and another 10 to get back. All that waiting and looking and false starting taught me well. Every part of the experience was ingrained in my psyche so that today I can cross any road with just a quick glance to check. Not here!

 

And I think I know why….

When we learn something we use previous learned experiences to build on and thus we don’t have to learn every task from the beginning again. We make assumptions and then build on them. So I learned and now assume that when I face a road the cars closest to me come from the right. I learned to look right first and if that was clear look left and if that was clear start to walk while paying most attention towards my right until the middle of the road and then shifting my attention to the left when I had reached the mid-point. By the age of nine I was probably doing this automatically.

But here in France I am using the same old assumption and it is just not working! No wonder I feel disturbed! But now that I know, it should be fine, right? Well not yet….

 

When I stop to cross the road I automatically look right and I’m assuming if a car is coming on that side it will be coming towards me, but no, if there is a car on that side then it is moving away from me.

In the end I kept saying to myself “Look left! Look left!”

I was looking at a video about a guy who studies brains and computers. He says the measure for intelligence is not behaviour. He says the measure of a brain’s intelligence is its ability to predict what might happen next. I think that’s why I was feeling uneasy. I am uneasy because my prediction about where the traffic is coming from is incorrect! I cannot predict the next moment in regard to this road crossing experience. My brain is no longer intelligent in this situation. So… I’m going to take my time and look both ways and maybe ask a small child to help me cross!

Thursday 16th August 2010

 

(On the way to the Eco Muse)
On Wednesday we went to the Eco Muse, an outdoor park of old skills and crafts, a bit like Bunratty Park in Co. Clare. Because it’s outdoor, it reminded me of a different motorcycle trip where we visited the Atlantic Wall World War 2 site, in Belgium. An area along the coast that had been held by the Germans in the second world war. Very interesting but very uncomfortable for me. Not because of the topic, although that was a bit disturbing too, but because we had arrived by bike and I wore my bike gear all around the wall for the two hour trip in hot sun! But as always I had learned from this experience and vowed to never repeat an outdoor site visit in bike gear.

So yesterday we drove to Ungersheim (the towns around here sound more German that French, because the area has been owned by Germany, Switzerland and France at different times through history) where the Eco Musee is situated. We arrived about 5pm and the park closes about 9pm (or so we thought…) I put my helmet in the left pannier, my jacket in the right pannier and took my skirt and shoes from the top box and off we went. Denis doesn’t remember the Atlantic Wall episode in the same way as I do so he wore his bike gear.

 

(Before changing out of my bike gear)
We arrived at the ticket desk, but just before it there were some toilets so I went in to change. Denis had got a call so he was outside on his phone. I took off my heavy boots, my socks and then my protection filled trousers and put on my skirt and my crocs. Phew, but now I was ready for the walking and the heat, this was going to be a different experience. And it was….

When I came out Denis was just finishing his call, so we went over to the ticket desk. I asked for “billets pour deux person, s’il vous plait”, and she said something that I wasn’t expecting…

I need to explain. With my very limited language skills, I tend to use my other skills to aid in communication. I guess what someone might be saying! So, if I ask for “two tickets please”, I expect the next thing they will say is the price. And since I’ve already checked the price I expect they’re saying the amount (in French) that I have in my head! It, works really, really well most times. But it wasn’t working here… So, I said “pardon?” while raising my eyebrows in an upturned V. She said the same thing again and it still wasn’t the French equivalent of €26! Meanwhile, Denis who never paid attention in French class in school and has a far smaller vocabulary than I have, had started to converse with the lady… in French!

And then he explained to me – they were closed! I know the word “ferme”- did she say it? Yep, she did, there, she said it again. Here I was, in my cool skirt and my comfortable crocs and there was nowhere to go. I was crest fallen (I am thinking of another phrase but that will do). Denis tried to persuade her that we only wanted a little visit, but she was quite insistent.

There was nothing to do but return to the toilets and change back into my bike gear. We took the scenic route home, through beautiful little villages and narrow winding tall pine tree bordered roads and by the time we arrived I felt much better. Who needs to see how they build the half-timbered houses or make cheese from raw milk, anyway. Well… me, I’d love to see it 😦 Maybe we’ll try again tomorrow….

Ps. We went today 🙂 It was beautiful. Tours only in French and German but a lovely place to be.

(Interesting looking talk about Oxen.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday 25th August 2010.

Yesterday I went out to get our breakfast croissants and there was a market in the square. I love markets and they always make me nostalgic for the slower pace of life. Like I imagine it was in my Grandmother’s time? Where each day you went out for your groceries for that day. You went to the butcher for the meat, the greengrocer for the fruit and vegetables and the bakery for the bread.

Well it seems to me that the French still live like that. Or at least the older ones do. So I was very excited to get an experience of it. I bought tomatoes and lettuce and cucumber from the vegetable stall. And half a cooked chicken (with a ladle of chicken fat poured over, oops) from the rotisserie van. And some nougat from the sweet stall! And then I went to the boulangiere for bread and the croissants. And finally I went to the shop where you get pâte and got some! My bags were full, my arms were aching and I was content.

In that one delightful experience breakfast was sorted (croissants),

lunch was sorted (salad, bread and pate) and dinner was sorted (cold chicken with a dribble of yummy chicken fat, salad and bread).

Could this be why food in France tastes so good? Is it possible I may come to like cooking?

Wednesday 25th August 2010.

 

(More Cobbles)

Yesterday I woke very early, as I usually do for the first night in a new place. We’ll be staying here for five nights so I’ll get plenty of full night’s sleep. As usual also, when I can’t sleep I write, sometimes it invigorates me, sometimes it makes me sleepy, either way it seems the natural thing to do.

I think it’s also a release. During my waking hours I talk to myself a lot, about what I see and what I want to do next and what I “must tell” someone. So it’s quite full in my head. Then I write and it all flows onto the page and it meets other thoughts that were stuck behind shopping lists and “have to” lists and “should do” lists. When they meet they have baby thoughts and more to say. Then they get a bit organised and I go “oh, ok I get it, isn’t that interesting”. So I guess I write to tidy my head.

 

(The rabbit – A Street performer)

I used to believe that it was very important to be thinking all the time. To make sure I knew what was going on, what might be going on, what might go on next, what might happen if ….. It was exhausting. So I stopped doing that… (well, some of the time!) Maybe it would be more accurate to say I didn’t stop thinking, I just stopped paying attention to the thoughts. I stopped believing they were important, that they had to be listened to, so I began to ignore them! But there are some useful thoughts going around in my head and when I write they pop out.

 

(French socket)

Of course I think everyone should write but if I was told I “should” write I’d never be able to pick up a pen. I only write when it’s the most natural thing in the world to be doing. Then my back relaxes, my head feels warm and fuzzy and my stomach becomes as soft as a squishy pillow! My breathing stills and it all flows. It becomes easy. So I think everyone would want to get the opportunity to feel like this.

Here in the Alsace region of France on the third floor looking out on the cute little town of Munster, writing is the most natural thing in the world for me to be doing.

 

(French grating)

When I return to the east coast region of Ireland to the ground floor kitchen, looking out on some empty flower pots (unless Ciara has been watering them – “…every day Ciara, every day!) I may need to give myself a little nudge to remind myself that I love to write.

From sunny Munster to wherever you are can I give you a little nudge to do that thing that you love to do. Then when I get home you can give me a little nudge. Wouldn’t that be great? We’d all be relaxed and fuzzy and squishy! Note to self: You do know it’s so much easier to put out the bins and clean up the dog poo and wash the dishes when you’re relaxed and fuzzy and squishy, don’t you?

(Cobble Stones peeping through the tarmac in Reims – for Sheldon)