La Ville de l’Araignée (Spider Town)

The passing of our second weekend in France finds us a bit more settled domestically. Most critically, we have delivered a significant blow to the spider population in the house. We had a rather diverse spider community ranging from small, discrete spiders to large, get-out-of-my-way spiders. The spiders in our dining room alone probably outnumbered the human inhabitants in the entire 17-apartment house. Their only rivals on the property, population-wise, seem to be the pigeons, but we won’t go there again.

The spiders don’t bring the problems that the pigeons generate, but at least some of them seem to be rather prolific cobweb creators. When you have 12 foot ceilings in an apartment that hasn’t been lived in for a few weeks, spiders can generate some serious cobweb action.

Along with the 12-foot ceilings came some very heavy 12-foot draperies (think haunted house). I experienced irritating allergy problems when we first arrived, so I asked Mr. Boudoli, the caretaker, to remove the drapes, which for me were simply dust depositories. I’m sure this raised some eyebrows, but since we are strangers here, we may as well be strange.

While I knew that the drapes were loaded with dust, I was surprised to find that they also hid a very significant spider population and, most disturbingly, spider eggs. There was an entire ecosystem living in and behind those drapes. The drapes could best be described as La Ville de l’Araignée, Spider Town.

Even with the removal of the drapes we had a pretty lively spider community. Now, I am not really a spider-killer at heart, and I have often lived harmoniously with spiders. In fact, Marty and I very much enjoyed the little spider family that hatched in our garage in Durham. In this case, however, remnants of La Ville de l’Araignée were thriving and expanding beyond my tolerance levels.

It is with some reluctance that I admit that I likely finished off almost all of the remaining spiders with our newly-purchased vacuum. Marty, to his credit, begged to save the lives of the impressively large spiders that lived in our bathroom window (in their impressively large webs). I had the vacuum in hand, however, and just couldn’t stop myself.

I’m sure that there will be some spiders that come back to weave their webs and capture more dust. Some I will probably let live and some will undoubtedly be vacuum victims. There is a certain randomness to choosing which will live and which will die. The power will no doubt be corrupting.

The removal of the drapes has also brought with it the unanticipated benefit of a great deal more light entering the house. Of course, without the drapes, we are now like fish in an aquarium, so our neighbors can watch the Americans go about their business. Fortunately, we’re not that interesting, except perhaps when Marty exposes himself. But this is France, so we assume even that is not interesting.

During the spider-cide we also learned that the inexpensive vacuum we purchased is like an American vacuum on steroids. This turbo-vacuum, in addition to removing spiders, can also remove wallpaper. Oops.

French Stereotypes

We have all heard the French ungenerously described as "arrogant," "rude" and "bureaucratic." While we have not lived here long enough to be experts on such topics, we can, without hesitation, vouch for the kindness and friendliness of the French that we have encountered as we struggle to find our way in our new life in Toulouse. People have really been delightful. Contrary to the negative stories one hears about French people’s intolerance of poor French and their reluctance to use English, the many, many people we have interacted with in the last week have been more than patient as we mercilessly butcher their language and many have readily offered English words and phrases to help us along.

For example, the lovely woman at France Telecom cheerfully drew us pictures to help us understand the internet, telephone and TV package available to us, which she then explained that we wouldn’t be able to purchase without a bank account. The woman at the post office was also incredibly sweet and apologetic as she explained that we wouldn’t be able to get a bank account at the post office until we had a residency permit. (One can do one’s banking at post offices in France.) The people at the institute where Marty will be working said they can’t sign the form that is required for a residency permit because the individuals who are authorized to sign the form are on vacation for the month (like most of the country). When we tried to get a non-resident account, our post-office friend felt terrible when she had to tell us that our driver’s license and car title showing our address in the U.S. were not good enough to establish our residency there. She even assured us that she would give us an account if she were empowered to do so. We have to have a utility bill to prove our residency in the U.S. Documents issued by the state of New Hampshire are apparently suspect, but, we have since been told, utility bills carry great weight in France.

The young man at the private bank was also patient as he explained that we would have to wait four days to get an appointment to talk with someone about opening a bank account, and, by the way, we will need to have a copy of a pay stub to show we have a monthly income before we will be allowed to open an account. Cash alone is not sufficient to open a bank account. When we returned to French Telecom to explain that there would be significant delay before we could open a bank account and could we simply pay cash in advance for a year of service, the really helpful and sympathetic man there told us it was impossible for them to take cash in advance and we simply couldn’t get telecom service without a bank account.

As you can see, the stereotypes about rudeness and arrogance certainly don’t seem to apply to the Toulousians. They are exceptionally nice. Now about that bureaucracy...we’ll let you know once we get our residency permit, so we will be able to get a bank account, so we can have a telephone, internet access and a working TV – but it’s going to be a while.

News from the Front

There is mixed news on the war front. The good news is that we have an ally in Mr. Boudoli, the caretaker of the property, who, to our delight, cleans the battlefield regularly. The bad news is that we have had a casualty. Georg, our very first dinner guest, got hit by a live hash shell during dinner. We are relieved to report that he seems to have survived the attack without permanent damage. Most disturbingly, he was deep within the Green Zone when the shelling occurred. Clearly the Green Zone isn’t as safe as we initially believed it to be. We suspect the enemy is trying new weaponry that projects further than we anticipated. Georg suggested an umbrella as a defensive weapon. We are inclined toward a solution that is more violent - oops! I mean more definitive.

L’Hash de Pigeons

As those cool fall days approach in New England and give warning to the coming of winter, some of you may be envious of the climate we will be enjoying in southern France. One description I read of Toulouse’s climate was “not too hot, not too cold,” which is simply a modest way of saying “just right.” Like other places with “just right” climates, it’s easy to spend a lot of one’s life outdoors here.

We are especially fortunate that both our kitchen and dining rooms have huge French doors that open up to a lovely patio on which to enjoy the outdoor life of southern France. The patio is tiled, spacious and protected on one side with a hedge that includes a fruiting fig tree. The figs just happen to be perfectly ripe and delicious now, and we have indulged in both the white and black fig varieties that grow on the property. The other side of the patio is partially protected by the attractive brick wall of the house. On the patio we eat meals, watch the comings and goings of our neighbors, enjoy the dahlias that line the driveway and marvel at the property’s ancient ruin that doubles as a garage. (If found elsewhere, this particular building would look like a condemned, derelict of a building, but in southern France, it really does look like an ancient ruin that is worthy of protection and reverence.)

It would be nice to stop here and leave you with this lovely image of paradise. Honesty compels me, however, to tell you that this little bit of paradise also happens to be covered with pigeon “hash.” Hash is an honest-to-goodness French word that can be found in my Larousse French-English dictionary. I will leave you to discern its meaning, but suffice it to say, it certainly does make corned beef hash seem considerably less appetizing.

Likewise, the hash covering our patio certainly makes the outdoor living experience considerably less appealing. When we first arrived at our apartment, our patio was hash-free. Little did we know that this was not its normal state. We got a hint that there was trouble in paradise the next morning when we woke up to a fair amount of hash on the edge of the patio. Believing that in paradise this sort of thing would take care of itself, we chose to ignore it and continued in our bliss. The next morning, however, things got a bit more serious. The hash was building up on the edges and edging out onto the patio chairs. Why hadn’t it washed away automatically during the overnight rainfall? Why hadn’t those cute little lizards that zip around eaten it all up?

By this morning, the hash situation was totally out of hand. We started fearing that there would be live bombings while we ate our breakfast. We obviously had to make a move or we would be buried alive in hash. Our unit mobilized, identified a “Green Zone” on the patio that seemed to be relatively safe from the bombing, and moved the table and chairs accordingly. The unit’s commanders then met in the War Room to discuss the relative strategic value of mopping versus sweeping. We chose mopping for our first offensive. We quickly realized, however, that pigeon hash expresses itself in remarkably different textures that must be addressed with varying strategic maneuvers, so we followed up our mopping offensive by a sweep through.

We now see that we are caught in a war without an exit strategy. We’ve considered escalating the offensive by trying to disarm our opponents. We are investigating whether BB guns are allowed under the Geneva Conventions. In the mean time, the bombing continues. I can actually hear the shelling while I sit in the dining room writing this exposé. C’est la guerre.

We've arrived

After a few days of frantic activity and a long and mostly uneventful trans-Atlantic crossing, we finally arrived in Toulose yesterday morning. Except for one bicycle, everything seems to have arrived intact. Apparently Marty's bike decided to stay in Boston, despite its arrival at Logan many hours in advance of the plane's departure. We hope that it arrives today.

Our apartment location is very cool. We now know why our mailing address seemed peculiar. We don't live on a street; our driveway is off of the bike path next to the Canal du Midi. You literally have to drive on the bike path to get to our driveway. Only residents are allowed to drive on the bike path. Our closest neighbors (besides the ones that live in our building) live on the Canal in boats.

It was a bit sobering when we arrived at our furnished apartment and realized that we didn't have basic household stuff (like toilet paper), we didn't know where the store is, our one bike was in pieces in a box, we didn't have a car and we hadn't slept more than a few winks in the last 24 hours. Fortunately, we had friends. Peter von Ballmoos, who is Swiss, and Georg Weidenspointer, who is German, patiently guided us through the chaos of our first day in France. (Peter and Georg are both colleagues of Marty who, at different times in the past, worked at UNH's Space Science Center.) They picked us up at the airport, negotiated the return of our missing bicyle, translated our meeting with our landlady and her son, and generally got us settled. After we took naps, Georg took us on a shopping spree. (I'm thrilled to report that we now have toilet paper.)

Survivor Episode Toulouse: First Challenge
This morning we found ourselves our own facing our first challenge. We had to get ourselves from our town of Ramonville St. Agne into the center of Toulouse by bus in time for Marty's French class. After a night's rest, our team was ready for the challenge. We found the bus stop, figured out which buses would get us where we needed to be, deciphered the schedule, calculated the cost of the tickets, prepared our money, got on the bus, and purchased a round-trip ticket. We were on a roll, and I was feeling cocky. We were going to win this challenge. Our team would survive. Then it happened.

In France, as in much of Europe, you have to punch your bus ticket to validate it. I knew this and I was ready. I punched one ticket with no problem. I confidently punched the second ticket and, to my horror, a light started flashing and an alarm went off. This was not supposed to happen. It wasn't in the plan.

What do you do when you set off an alarm on the bus, your first day in France? I had left for France prepared. I had read several books. I checked out web sites. I had done my homework. Nothing had prepared me for bus alarms.

Well, I could have conjured up a little French and asked a fellow rider for help. I could have a calmly turned to the bus driver with that clueless, helpless look that one perfects as a foreigner in a country where one has limited language skills. I could have simply tried to re-punch the ticket. Did I exercise any of these perfectly reasonable options? Of course not. I panicked, pretended that I didn't notice the flashing light and buzzing alarm, and started furtively looking for a seat. The bus driver, however, was apparently less inclined to ignore the alarm. He called me back and said something completely incomprehensible in French. This time I was ready. I easily (and quite naturally) conjured up my clueless, helpless look. The bus driver immediately recognized the clueless, helpless look (it's international) and took pity on me. He abandoned oral communication, took the offending ticket and re-punched it for me. We survived our first challenge.

Skype Success!

Hot news: we have successfully used Skype, and it is very cool! You may remember from my previous post about Skype that with this free software you can have free long distance conversations through your computer with other Skype users. With Skype you can also use your computer to call someone's phone. Normally there is a per minute charge for calling someone’s phone, but calls to phones are free until the end of the year. (I’m not sure if this free trial period applies to international calls.)

You can also have conference calls with up to five other Skype users. My brother David and I were chatting using Skype and then used Skype to call regular landline and cell phone numbers of other family members. The conferencing feature was very easy to use, and we were able to add regular phone users to our Skype conversation. (While the technical aspects of creating a conference call were simple, actually managing that many Lamberts talking all at once on the phone is another issue.)

If you are heavy into Skype you can also get the equivalent of a phone number so people can use a regular phone to call your computer. Naturally you can get voicemail on your computer to answer these calls when you are not online. There is a charge for both of these services.

Here are some of the things we learned in our adventures with Skype:

1) It's easy to setup and use.

2) The ringtone is great. Both David and I didn't want to pick up the call because listening to the ring tone was so much fun.

3) We had great clarity. Even my Dad, who is hard of hearing, had no trouble hearing me.

4) It didn't work when my parents had dial-up, but it works fine when we switched them to cable high speed access. (My sister Donna reported in her comment to a previous post that she also had trouble using it with dial-up.)

5) I used it with a $20 Radio Shack headset that I connect to my computer. I only needed the headset for the microphone; my laptop does not have a built-in microphone. The microphone on the headset could pick up Marty’s voice as well, and we were both able to participate in the conversation.

6) My parents used a ~$24 Skype-certified microphone from Radio Shack. This also allowed more than one person to participate in the conversation.

7) My former housemate, Ron, mentioned in a comment to a previous posting that he didn't feel comfortable with Skype because he didn't like talking to his computer. Both the microphones we used were good enough that you could move around the room and still be heard, so you didn't have to talk to the computer. (Plus it allows for multi-tasking, a Lambert compulsion.)

8) If the microphone is too close to the speakers, you get echoes.

9) Someone on an ordinary phone may need to turn up the volume on their phone in order to clearly hear a Skype call.

My nephew, Benjamin, reports that Vonage is better than Skype. I don’t know why. In any case, Skype seems fine for our needs.

I think Skype, like cell phones and blogs, demonstrates for us that the technical aspects of communicating in the twenty-first century are trivial. Anyone who has overheard cell phone conversations (or read this blog!) knows, however, that it’s not always clear that we actually have anything worthwhile to communicate. Unfortunately, Skype doesn't solve this problem.

Where is Toulouse?

Some of you have been asking us where Toulouse is in France. Here is a map to help get you oriented. Toulouse is about six hours by train from Paris. Note that Toulouse is halfway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea along the Canal du Midi, which links the two coasts. There are bike routes that run along the Canal, and last summer Marty and I bicycled from Toulouse to the Mediterranean. (It was about 3.5 days of leisurely cycling to get to the coast.)

By the way, from what we could see during our brief visit to the Mediterranean, no French woman wears a one-piece bathing suit on the beach. I felt like my one-piece suit was the equivalent of waving a flag that said "FOREIGNER!!" It was like showing up at a Little League game in an evening gown; I was definitely overdressed. I am contemplating buying a bikini for beach days, but I'm not sure I can do it. My abdomen hasn't seen the sun since I was about 10 years old. I think my belly could blind our fellow beach goers with its whiteness. Ah, the tortuous dilemmas I face - one piece or two?

In case you are curious, I have not noticed Marty wrestling with the question of whether or not to emulate the French and wear a Speedo on the beach. For those of you who are familiar with Marty's fear of air touching his body ("I might get cold."), you understand that it is highly unlikely that Marty will ever don a bathing suit at all. My vote is that if this improbable event takes place, it won't be in a Speedo. If any Speedo is sighted on his body, you’ll be the first to know.

But I digress, back to geography... Toulouse is south of the Dordogne, a beautiful area famous for its foie gras and the Lascaux Cave, one of the world's most amazing examples of Stone Age art. The actual Lascaux Cave can no longer be visited because the art was deteriorating as a result of visitation. The French painstakingly constructed a reproduction of the cave, which Marty and I went to a few years ago. It was truly humbling to see the artwork of early man; for me it was one of those rare moments when I felt a real connection to the past.

The Pyrenees Mountains and the pilgrimage destination of Lourdes are south of Toulouse. For those of you unfamiliar with Catholic lore, Lourdes is where the 14-year old Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary. I went to Lourdes several years ago and found it beautiful, fascinating and tacky. There were pilgrims from around the world, many in wheelchairs, who go there to be healed by the holy waters. There are also lots of bric-a-brac shops selling Virgin Mary kitsch. A favorite item appeared to be plastic Virgin Mary bottles filled with holy water. Isn’t it nice to know that America doesn’t have the market cornered on tackiness?

Skype: Free International Phone Calls

We will be installing Skype on our computer to allow us to call home for free while we're in France. This free software allows you to "call" other Skype users free over the internet. I believe the only investment you need is a microphone that you can plug into your computer. For more information, see the Skype website at: http://www.skype.com/download/

Some of you may quite reasonably be skeptical of free international calling services. You can read about the downside of Skype at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype Mostly I find the Wikipedia article unintelligible, but the take home message for me is that some folks who know a lot about computer stuff have some concerns about Skype's security and usage of computer resources. Despite these potential pitfalls, there seem to be many millions of people using it without apparent harm.

If any of you are already Skype users, please leave a comment on this blog and let us know about your experiences. Thanks.

More on Fat

I have been feeling a little guilty that in my glibness about the book, French Women Don’t Get Fat, I didn’t really do it justice. My sister Donna more accurately summed up the book’s message in her comment to the posting when she said “It’s the quality over quantity philosophy.” Donna is not unlike those petite French women, so she gets it. I, on the other hand, tried living like a French woman for a few days when I was reading the book, and I found myself declaring to Marty, while furiously stuffing food down my gullet, that “I am not a damn French woman.” Needless to say, quantity still holds power over me.

In the spirit of détente, I offer you this recipe from French Women Don’t Get Fat. It’s very simple, nonfat and very yummy. My nephew, who apparently channels French women, already knew this secret. Perhaps I am the last to know?

Grilled Pineapple
4 1.5 inch-thick slices of pineapple (Marty, our resident fruit aficionado, swears by Golden Pineapples, “They’re well worth the few extra bucks.”)
Juice of 2 lemons
2 teaspoons honey
Freshly ground pepper (if it’s not freshly ground, don’t bother)

Make crisscross slashes with a knife on each slide of pineapple to get a nice presentation after grilling. Broil until the pineapple turns a nice caramel color, but be careful not to burn.
In a small saucepan, boil the lemon juice and honey for 2 to 3 minutes. Let cool, add pepper to taste, and drizzle over the pineapple slices. Serve immediately as is or with a scoop of verbena ice cream. (Who has ever heard of verbena ice cream? Is it some kind of herbal ice cream so you feel virtuous while you chow down a week’s worth of the daily recommended allowance of saturated fat? Perhaps it is a French woman's secret? Marty and I will sacrifice ourselves and do a French ice cream investigation for you. Stay tuned...)

The Skinny on Fat

Here is what I’ve discovered after one day of being a “blogger” (my new, mid-life identity). First, blogging is way more fun than transcribing interview tapes for my research project. This may be obvious to most of you, but I am thrilled to find this diversion. Second, I can ramble on, and no one interrupts. Third, friends and family email me and declare their loyalty to my blog. Well, not exactly, but they do express a willingness to read it once in a while. Surely you people have better things to do with your lives?

The more astute among you may have noticed that I switched from using “we” to using “I” in this particular posting. Here is my first confession: Marty is innocent. He had nothing to do with this. In fact, he is in Utah for the week and when I told him this morning that I started “our blog,” he said, quite characteristically, “What’s a blog?” He is, however, very enthusiastic about it, whatever “it” is.

My topic for today is fat. Now if I was really hip, I would be using the word fat/phat to mean something exceptional, pleasing or desirable. (I had to look that up on a slang web site, because, to tell you the truth, I know I am so uncool that I could screw up and reveal my slang incompetence.) Unfortunately for you, I am using fat in the traditional, uncool meaning of having much flesh. Although it is not a pretty topic to discuss, we need to face the dark side. As we embark on our year in the land of Roquefort cheese, croissants and petit fours, there is a great risk of adding flesh to the list of items we may accumulate.

I pride myself on being prepared for natural disasters of all sorts. I bought a hand-crank radio, so I am ready when the next Hurricane Katrina hits New Hampshire. I keep emergency food supplies. I even have a camp stove. So in the spirit of natural disaster preparedness, I bought a copy of French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano.

I would like to tell you that I learned a fabulous secret that will keep us all safe in the face of heavy cream sauces. I was hoping it was the air in France or perhaps the combination of cheeses, creams and pastries, by some amazing chemical reaction, eliminated calories. Maybe those cute little French dresses massaged away excess flesh. I was ready to benefit from the wisdom of French women.

The truth, however, is ugly. To save you the cost of the book, I will summarize it here:

EAT LESS
eat yogurt
EAT LESS
eat fruit
EAT LESS
drink water
EAT LESS
walk
EAT LESS

I don’t think I need to continue. You get the idea, and it’s not a pretty one. We enter the country of temptation, and this is the best advice they can offer?