across the border: chivalry, soup and snow

It was my turn to travel last weekend – partly to save Juan 5 hours of driving, but also to catch up with our UK friends, Antje and John. We met at the Yverdon thermal baths and soaked and chatted and sweated, and soaked some more – until we were woozy with the heat, our skin was wrinkled to hell and it was time to retreat to Juan's flat. His first visitors!

I threw together a pasta carbonara, using the floor as a work surface (space is limited). Evidence that we haven't yet joined blue-rinse respectability? We then spent an hour watching "The Fast Show" on a 20 x 15 cm screen on Juan's iPad. No, clearly we have one foot in the grave if we aren't projecting onto the wall and watching with 3D specs...

On the Saturday we went our separate ways, Juan and I enjoying a couple of hours at the little ski resort at Ste Croix.

view towards Bernese Oberland

On Sunday, in Thun (in the German-speaking part of the country) this is what greeted us in the car park:

Yes, in CH men are supposed to be chivalrous, and allow women to park in the spaces nearest the exit. Never mind that in Juan's company, where 40 engineers are employed, not one of them is a woman.

Thun is a rather gorgeous place, stuffed with classy shops. We strolled along the canal that opens onto Lake Thun, past the spot where Brahms stayed during the summers of 1886–8. This is what he would have seen from the house (no longer standing) –  minus the snow, of course:

The Cello Sonata in F major, Violin Sonata in A major, and Piano Trio in C minor were all written in Thun in 1886. Brahms wrote to his future biographer Max Kalbeck, "It's absolutely magnificent here. By the way, I'd also just mention that there's a ton of Biergartens.…".

On a bleak January afternoon Buff's lovely warm Christmas present was purrfect...

The Kunstmuseum, one of the few buildings open, entertained us with some modern Swiss art:

CH continues to baffle – and amuse –  me. At the Kunstmuseum café what was on the menu for lunch? Soup. And only soup. "Es ist gut", said the waiter. Well, ok, could we have two bowls of soup, please...
Juan tells me that the Swiss French for "supper" is "souper". So there you have it – we were all having soup for supper in our medieval pasts...

And there's an intriguing practical trait: the (murderous) two-person T-bars in the ski resorts, which avoid queues building up but are absolutely terrifying to use; the kerbless pavements which give priority to pedestrians without squeezing the traffic (maybe this can only work in a country as rule-abiding as CH).

 man taking photo of ducks...

muddy Sunday walk

A squelchy, nostalgic stroll around the area we lived during our first year in France.

 

rural pursuits 2: completing the big prune

My hysteria has subsided and I am grateful to Juan for providing a "solution" to the car park maintenance debacle. The course of action already determined by the neighbour's chain-sawing, it was just a question of truncating the remaining branches as high as possible. So, this morning, Juan risked life and limb at the top of what looks like a telegraph pole but is in fact the diminished tree (see 12 Jan entry).

last moments for maple "Saccharinum Wieri"

Neighbour Matthieu still took the line that all trees benefit from this massive kick up the butt ("Look at the trees in the forest, they're full of dead wood because they haven't been pruned"). I refrained from comment but am relieved that, once again, we all seem to be interacting like normal human beings.

rural pursuits 1: basket making

The alternative to outdoor challenges in dubious weather and mediocre snow is this, gentler, sociable, community-enriching activity. Hosted by the Pommart farm (where I did my shiatsu workshops in the autumn), with expertise from a local artisan and locally collected willow, basket creation took place over two (very long!) evenings.

Heinz (talented craft carpenter, shiatsu pal, bread maker and agriculteur) chose a challenging project: copying the log basket I bought recently (back right of photo below)...

wrestling with the plait was a two-man job

At the end of the two evenings: my first-ever basket – and I'm thrilled...

a much-needed blast of fresh air: Crête du Brouffier

Sanity was restored by this walk, which took us from our ridiculously warm valley to a kind of winter.
Snow, predicted this week, may restore "normality" but, for now, it looks and feels like April or May...

culture clash?

The year has started badly – I have offended several people for reasons that perhaps come down to a difference in the way the French and English look at the world. Well, either that or I am a very, very bad person.

On Monday I arrived home to find the acer in the car park, co-owned by ourselves and two neighbours, "pruned" (more like felled) to within an inch of its life (it's now around half its initial height). Wildly emotional, I totally phased poor Pascal (he of the unscheduled taxi trip to Chambéry) who had simply been trying to do his best, without the expense of professional intervention. Doing us all a favour, in fact.

The tree is within half a metre of our garden, providing a much-valued screen between us and the road, so it is above all Juan and I who will be impacted by the action. The neighbours see it as routine maintenance. "Growing naturally" isn't considered an option. In company with most French people, their style of gardening is characterised by a strong desire to control. At this time of year the air is alive with the buzz of chain saws amputating limbs old and young. Lock up your daughters...

But in the aftermath of my outburst I feel only regret. Nothing is worse than falling out with the neighbours – I will have to think how to make good the damage.

Control reared its ugly head at Berlitz, too. The facts: on 19 December I agreed with a student that I would phone him if I could get to the centre a little early, knowing that an earlier lesson time would suit us both. For reasons too complicated to relate (I had forgotten that Berlitz might schedule a "unit" with another teacher before mine) it ended up with him arriving late, and several people very confused. But no lasting harm was done.

The reaction in the Lyon office was off the scale, however. I had the Director yelling at me down the phone. I tried to right the wrong – cancelling my evening plans, working unpaid extra time, and sending an apology. But I had set in motion an unstoppable juggernaut. Sure enough, Tuesday this week I had a visitation and a very painful rapping of the knuckles in the form of a formal warning. My basic transgression (contacting a student) is incontestable. But the document was a mass of additional half-truths and mis-representations. I couldn't recognise myself in the exaggerated picture drawn.

Is this a cultural issue or am I simply insensitive to privacy issues? Even with all my humble apologising I can't take my "crime" seriously. Big bloody deal if I contacted a student! But it is a big deal here in France. People don't give out personal details willy nilly. And Berltiz, shocked as they were that I could do something no one in Berlitz has ever done (really? - ed), can't see that it's especially difficult for me to take to heart the "no student contact" rule: in another life, after all, I am a shiatsu practitioner, cheerfully opening my shop window and revealing intimate details, like my phone number. So I just thought I was breaking a silly little rule. Mais non. The foundation of the Berlitz empire has been shaken. And woe to those who don't take that seriously.

the quietest New Year ever?

We could have fêted with friends - but wriggled out of a French celebration, choosing our own company and a simple paella washed down ("Viking!" says Juan) with a bottle of bubbly. I was in bed by 9.30, and Juan by 11.00. (Next year will someone rescue us from this slippery slope?!)

The morning of the 1st we had our local ridge walk almost to ourselves. The sub-zero temperatures of Christmas have been replaced by a balmy, deceptively spring-like climate; deep snow by squelchy mud and gaiters.

The mild, sunny weather continued until the day we had planned to return to the mountains. A forecast of rain put paid to that plan and we have been mooching around chez nous. Highlights have included repairing Juan's jeans, re-oiling the kitchen work surfaces, weeding (yes), eating more puddings than are good for someone of my expanding girth - and going to see the remake of "Belle and Sebastian", where we had fun identifying many of the Alpine locations and I ended up weirdly moved. (It was forty-four years ago that the original was screened in the UK.)