Nice!

On Monday, Willa and I went into Nice and spent the night. It was amazing. We stayed at a hostel and quickly made friends with a guy from Germany and two guys traveling together from Turkey. Both of us being city people (although I grew up in the middle of nowhere, I feel much more at home in the city, and have been living in urban areas for the last six school years), we felt a sort of relief in going to restaurants, talking to strangers, navigating the crowds, using public transportation, etc.

Our preparations for our one-night trip were extensive. The day before we made lists of what we would bring. We actually made our lists separately, and I think it’s a testament to the strength and appropriateness of our friendship: not only can we cook together in peace and harmony, but we both find extreme joy in making neurotically meticulous lists before we pack even for the shortest trips. We then discussed in avid detail our toilette for the day of the trip. It involved lots of eye make-up, which made me literally giddy, and we tried on every single dress that we owned between us (Willa’s are all short and black, mine are all short and flowery) before deciding exactly which dresses and shoes we would wear for each part of our trip. Then we packed. The next day, we worked in the morning, and ate lunch in our dirty clothes. After lunch, we took over the bathroom. We both took showers, and Willa blow dried her hair. We spent half an hour putting on make-up and lotion and plucking out various hairs. Then we put on our city clothes, packed our toothbrushes, and climbed into Claude’s beat-up farmer van. Willa, who sat in the back (where there are no seats) on the way down, brought a towel with her to sit on so that she wouldn’t damage her clothes. I hope plenty of people noticed the moment, two hours later, when two young ladies with curled eyelashes and fancy shoes climbed out of Claude’s rickety van at a stoplight.

The first thing we did after we found our hostel was go make-up shopping. We just needed to get it out of our system, and it seemed to be a message from (a clearly capitalist) god that there was a Sephora less than a block away from our hostel. Then we found a restaurant with outdoor seating and a cute host (who thought I was Belgian when I spoke to him in French!!!!!) and got french-fries and beers. I had to ask them to bring us ketchup. Afterwards, we got ice-cream at a place called Fénocchio, which, for those of you who have been there, is actually better (and about half the price) of Ici in Berkeley. I got one scoop of ginger and one scoop of orange blossom, and Willa got one pastis and one rose. Then we went back to our hostel, I put on dress number two – I brought a total of two pairs of shoes, three dresses, and five pairs of earrings with me – and we invited our Turkish and German friends to come to a restaurant. Needless to say, I wasn’t very hungry, but I wasn’t going to pass up the restaurant experience for anything.

For those of you who are not foodies, just skip this paragraph. Mama, this is dedicated to you: I ordered ratatouille as an entrée, lasagna as my main dish, and chocolate mousse for dessert. Willa (and our new international friends) got an entrée of fried fish, farsil for a main dish (niçois zucchinis and tomatoes stuffed with ground beef and vegetables) and tiramisu for dessert. The ratatouille was absolutely perfect. No vegetable overwhelmed the flavor of the others, and nothing was overcooked or crunchy. It had plenty of olive oil. My lasagna was lacking, in my opinion, on tomato sauce, and honestly I prefer my mother’s, but that’s not to say it wasn’t good. The cheese was bubbling on top when it was served, and all the ingredients were clearly high quality. It was also served in a cute little glass dish that it had been baked in which made me like it more. My chocolate mousse had an awesome flavor, and the whipped cream on top was of course made from real cream, although the texture was just the tiniest bit grainy. The real success of the meal was the tiramisu. It wasn’t overwhelmed by the texture of soggy bread, as tiramisu so often is. Instead, it was creamy and delicate, and it had a good strong espresso flavor that wasn’t ruined with too much sugar. I didn’t try the farsil (too much ground beef for me) or the fried fish, due to my beer+ice-cream+french-fry apéritif.

Dinner conversation was great too. It turned out that all of us had interest and varying degrees of knowledge about international relations and current events. We were all too leftist for the charts, and it’s so much more fun to agree with people you don’t know well than to argue with them. I was most interested in hearing the German and the Turks talk about why Turkey has not been accepted into the European Union (turns out, Turkey has a huge population and would overtake Germany for the most government seats in the EU were it to be accepted). But it was also pretty exciting to hear one of the Turkish guys talk about his experience at Obama’s inauguration (it was freezing, but pretty cool nonetheless).

After dinner, we went to a bar which wasn’t too touristy and we told everyone all our stories about life on the farm. They were appropriately impressed. Then we took a walk on the beach, got wet up to our thighs sort of accidentally, and went back to the youth hostel where we were accosted for an hour by the bored concierge from England who told us all about his Dutch girlfriend who he had followed to Nice, and showed us videos of himself doing snowboarding stunts.

On Tuesday morning, we woke up early, ate breakfast in the hostel, and met Claude.

And that was it. After less than 24 hours of adventure, we were back on the farm, and now I miss the city more than ever. No, it’s not always hanging out with fun foreign people and eating out, but there is always something to do, somewhere to go, and new people to see. And I realized in the day since I’ve been back that the hardest thing for me about being here is the feeling that I can’t leave. For somebody who ran off to boarding school at 14 years old, 2,000 miles away from her family’s home, the ability to leave places is important. It’s not at all that I’m not allowed. It’s just that it’s not really feasible. There’s a bus from Puget-Théniers for one Euro that goes to Nice, but I have no way of getting to Puget-Théniers, half an hour away by car. I could hitchhike, which is what Kin and his friends do, but I don’t feel like I know the people who live around here well enough. Claude, though generous with everything else, is not generous with giving car rides. He doesn’t like to leave the farm, and in fact doesn’t ever leave, except for doctor’s appointments (that’s why he went to Nice on Monday and Tuesday) and the market. And although the market is in Puget-Théniers, and I could easily hop on a bus to Nice on Saturday afternoon, how would I get back to the farm?

So I’m stuck here, going a little stir crazy, but only for another two and a half weeks. And then I’m in Paris!

French, french, french, french, french. In the past two days, I've had exhaustive debates (in French) about the American education system, the American loan system, the American health system, religion in the United States, racism in the U.S. vs. cultural chauvinism in France, imperialism in Africa, art as imperialism, and -- the longest -- the genius (or not) of Picasso. I've started rereading my New Yorker just to savor the ease of my maternal language.

Life on the farm is still great. I've got a nice shorts tan line and my legs are covered in insect and spider bites. I'm a real paysanne according to Claude. Which, coming from him, says a lot, as he's been doing this for 25 years and as I found out a little while ago that my nickname before I even got here was princesse. After I found that out, I tried to be facetious and said "Pourquoi pas déesse?" (why not goddess?). I spent an unfortunate evening being called princesse déesse.

The last four or five days we've had at least 11 people at any given meal. Not like it means any more work for us here; in fact, the visiters often help out in the garden, and always bring lots of food with them, do all the cooking AND all the dishes. We eat every meal outside, so there isn't much of a mess to clean up anyway. In fact, I'm rarely indoors here apart from sleeping.

We have our third market coming up this Saturday. Each week, about eight farmers get together and sell communally whatever it is they produce. Claude brings the bulk of the vegetables, and there's also goat cheese, sausage, bread, honey, olives/olive oil, eggs, and wheatberries. It's held in the old gendarmerie (police station, essentially), which I think is appropriately subversive. The first market, Claude stole the key to the prison. Although the idea of this market is wonderful, the execution is -- I suppose I'm a cultural chauvinist -- horribly French. The first week, we arranged the vegetables in three different rooms before deciding to put them outside. No one can figure out an efficiant way to keep track of who has sold what, and the various systems that have been tried are always complicated by the bartering between farmers that always happens and the constant nibbling on the cheese and olives. The first week, about eight customers arrived before the farmer with key to unlock all the doors. The customers' response: "I'll wait. C'est le sud." Dorothy, you are not in Kansas anymore -- or in any other state, for that matter. We Americans don't wait well. That said, the market has been going very well. Claude has been selling most of his vegetables each week, and the other farmers seem pleased as well. And I like my once-a-week excursion into civilization.

In about a week, another American WWOOFer arrives. Although it means that I'll speak less French, I'm pretty excited to meet her (and speak in English a little). And it'll be nice to have someone else to help me explain that actually pizza is American (I have stubbornly explained and re-explained that there are two sorts of pizza, one American and one Italian, but everyone just laughs) and cheesecake is delicious.

Salut!
I'm finally at the WWOOF farm! Claude met me at the bus station yesterday before dinner, and we drove about 45 minutes through a narrow, slightly virtiginous road through the alps (I couldn't help thinking of Idaho) until arriving at their house. For those of you who have been there, the whole set-up here is quite a bit like Challis. Everything is hand-made, with uneven steps and doors branching off to various rooms added on to the original house (which still has it's original stone floor). There was a thunderstorm last night and the roof leaked a little, and everyone seemed delighted that I was used to things like that. I tried to explain that I was just glad to have indoor plumbing and that in Challis the shower shares space with the toolshed (but it's great, Papa), but they were a little incredulous.

French is going pretty well here. I have had little trouble expressing myself, and everyone seems to think my miming and mispronunciations are highly entertaining -- which is exactly what I had hoped. I understand pretty well, but when they have cigarettes between their lips (sorry Grandma Sharon, but Claude chain smokes, nothing I can do, I won't start smoking) and are talking fast I have to ask them to repeat. But this family is extremely kind and generous and has a great sense of humor. And I eat meat here! It's only been one day, but last night's stir fry had ground beef in it, and I just...ate it. I was starving, and it was completely fine. And I kind of liked the sausage we ate with bread before dinner...yikes.

Gettting here was a real adventure. I was supposed to fly out of Paris, the Orly airport, and arrive in Nice at 10:30. I had a reservation at a youth hostel and then was going to spend the morning exploring Nice and get on a bus for Puget-Theniers at 5 in the afternoon. I got to Orly 4 minutes before boarding closed, raced to my gate, and was told that weather was bad and they didn't know when we'd leave. So I sat there for three hours, made friends with a French guy and an Italian girl who studies in Paris (I made friends in French!!) and then we were told to get on buses to go to Charles de Gaule, the other Paris airport, where we'd leave at 12:30 am for Nice. We sat on the buses for an hour before leaving (it was now past 12:30) and when we finally did make it to Charles de Gaule were told we'd be leaving at 7 in the morning. A near riot broke out. We could sleep in the airport, or we could go to a hotel an hour away where we would have to trust that buses would come and get us in the morning and take us to the airport on time. I stayed in the airport. The French guy and Italian girl and I added a Canadian guy to our group, we all had sleeping bags (fortunately) and actually enjoyed ourselves pretty well making fun of the airline, etc. It was my first real totally-in-French social experience -- in Paris, Guillaume always spoke in English, but here the only language the four of us had in common was French -- and it went pretty well! Also, the french guy was good at being pushy and French and getting us the information we needed, which I wouldn't have been able to do on my own.

I finally did get to Nice, and after getting breakfast, pretty much just slept and read for 4 hrs in the bus station. But now I'm here!!