Corsica and Fontainebleau, France - July-September 2008
FRANCE | Tuesday, 30 September 2008 | Views [110] | Comments [1]
Arriving from London into Paris, I had no idea what to expect. If anything, my lessons from Au Pair Life in London taught me to expect nothing and have an open mind about what the next two months of my life would be like.
Bruno and Debbie Allais live 60kms south of Paris in a village Montigny sur Loing, on the outskirts of a big town Fontainebleau. Fontainebleau is famous for many things, most importantly the Château de Fontainebleau, one of the biggest of the royal château’s in France. The town itself lies amongst the biggest Forest in Europe – Fontainebleau Forest. The area is then popular for horse riding, horse hunts and also rock climbing – there are cliffs out in the forest that are world famous in the world of rock climbing, apparently. The forest is pretty amazing and there are areas and clearings that you come across where there is sand under foot. The area is believed to have all been under the sea many thousands of years ago. Fontainebleau has a bi-lingual school where Louis, Margot and Hugo can learn English as well as their normal lessons in French. This makes the area popular with expats and multi-lingual families. There is also an International Business School in Fontainebleau INSEAD and that again attracts many expat, or English speaking companies and people.
The first thing that struck me about France was driving on the other side of the road. I kept going to get in the other side of the car. My first French meal is what I will always remember as an example of the passion that the French have for their food and the way that a meal is always shared. It is so important that crap food such as McDonald’s or takeaway Pizzas are just not part of their diet. It is something that became my own interest after two months living in France. This meal was a lunch with several of Deb and Bruno’s friends and this included two French husbands and their South African and Australian wives. The conversation was an easy flow between English and French. That was the second thing about France. The language. I cannot say I tried my best to learn French whilst I was there. I can say that I did try and the arrogance the French have towards their own language, the attitude that “if you can’t say it properly, don’t try it at all” as one Frenchman told me, was enough to put me off. Plus I thought it was kind of nice for Debs to have a kiwi accent to speak English with as much as possible.
My first week with the Allais family was spent organizing the house for the Russian family that would rent it whilst we were in Corsica. One day Debs and I took the train to Paris, a 50 minute trip to Gare de Lyon. I was free to explore and I instantly liked what I found. Wondering around the Champs Lysees, the Jardin de Tuileries and the Louvre I found Paris beautiful and classy.
The next week we began our journey to Corsica. An eight hour drive to Aix en Province in the South of France took us to the most amazing estate. The Marquis, whom Debs had been a private nurse for some years earlier, was visiting the property with her husband. La Chera is the name of the estate and it is AMAZING! I can remember the heat of the day being so stifling, after our drive we all dived straight into the pool. The estate consists of extensive gardens, orchards, tennis court, pool, pool house and then the actual house. The cook and the guy, whom I guess is a butler, told me to just have the kids ready for dinner at 6, the bell rung and dinner was served. Unreal. Once the kids were in bed I was free to explore. I ate nectarines and plums from the trees. I was lucky to escape the formal dinner that the other adults were having. To be honest being an Au Pair is a little weird. It is like you are in between that of a child and an adult. You are also in between being the help and part of the family. You can’t really feel bad about not being asked to things, because really I didn’t really want to sit in silence, as I would do for so so many evenings in the months to come, whilst eating our dinner, with the entire table speaking French.
That night, once the heat had let me sleep, I was woken at 2am by Debs. We had been burgled. The two cars that we had been travelling down in, packed to the brim with our gear was strewn about the car park area. My bag had been ripped and everything was thrown in a big heap. The thing that upset me the most was the kids toys lying everywhere. I was lucky to have had all my valuables in my carry bag that I had in my room. Unfortunately and frustratingly they had taken 10 boxes of Champagne that belonged to a friend, Louis laptop, both GPS, Ipods, all the new linen and food that we had bought for the two months in Corsica. Gutted. There is nothing like feeling really far from New Zealand and anyone I knew, as I did that night.
After a quick repack and another day by the pool, we headed to Toulon, where we took the ferry to Corsica. This ferry is an overnight ferry, with it arriving into Bastia at 7am the next morning.
Cosica is French territory and mainly French speaking. There is a big population of Italians there as well and they have their two own dialects – Bonifacian and Corsician.
Corsicans however are staunchly Corsican. They are an incredibly abrupt, suspicious kind of people. The people that I got to know were predominantly mainland French originally.
We travelled from Bastia in the North of Corsica to the very southern tip of Corsica, Bonifacio. Bonifacio is a famous port town, popular with the luxury yacht cruise types and is famous for its old High Town, a walled city that has been around for centuries. The straits of Bonifacio (Bouches de Bonifacio) are famous for the year round wind – 300 days of wind a year. Corsica is also very Mediterranean. The blue of the sea, the blue of the sky, the colour of the sunsets and the colour of the sand I don’t think I can ever forget.
My normal day consisted of up around 7.30, breakfast with Debs, Bruno and the kids before they headed to work. The kids and I then decided which beach we wanted to go to for the morning. Most days we were at the beach by 9.30 -10. If we didn’t swim we built sand castles or the kids would play with the rocks and play all sorts of games that would last for days, whilst I read. Back home for lunch with Debs and Bruno and then back to the beach for the afternoon, before cooking the kid’s dinner around 6 and bed time at 8. We then ate around 8.30 -9.
Some weeks the kids had wind surf lessons in the mornings or afternoons and after the first 3 weeks, there was a steady stream of guests, families with the kids friends until the last 2 weeks. This was great for the kids, to have other people to play with. I cannot speak highly enough of Louis, Margot and Hugo, they were so well behaved and got on so well, playing together from sun up to sun down. They rarely asked to watch TV and read for some time out.
The other side of my days were the evenings where Debs and I were constantly in the kitchen – the bane of every French mothers life! I learnt so much about cooking, French food and recipes from this culinary master and confessed foodie, that by the end of my 3 months with the Allais’ I could tell when there wasn’t enough nutmeg in the mashed potato! Such was the guest flow within the houses were we stayed that we calculated that on average we had 9 adults a day for lunch and dinner. Menu rotation and food shops were painful by the end of the 8 weeks!! I was lucky in that many of the visiting guests were friends of Debs and Brunos who included at least one English speaking parent. Stefan and Bridgette the first French couple were very sweet and kind to me, the day they left the Schmidts arrived. Robyn is South African and so everyone can speak English and French and that was a welcome relief. Her daughter Katherine and I even ventured out on Republic Day 14 July for the fireworks and a few drinks. After a couple of days respite 3 families arrived for 3 weeks break – Penny and her 3 older children, Rebecca and Paul and their 4 youngsters with 21 year old nanny Frederica and Christina and Bill and their 3 youngsters. A lunch for 20, no problem! But it was lovely to have some people to speak English with. Frederica and I had many nights out and it was lovely having that time out. We ventured to Sardinia for the day, lucky for me, as Frederica is Italian (and speaks French, English and German!) so we had real Italian pizza, coffee and gelato!
In between times my mum and dad had arrived for 2 short days on a whirl wind trip of Europe. It was lovely to see them and to spend some time with them just catching up on things I had missed, including my grandfathers funeral. It certainly broke up the count down I had going until Quinn arrived on the 1st of October.
The last of the guests to arrive included Brunos Brother, his nephew and another good family friend Louis and Cecille and their son Gaston – who had an appendictitis whilst in Corsica!
So it would be hard to imagine, going to the beach everyday, why at times I was so bitterly lonely. I don’t think I can explain what went through my head whilst spending hours at the beach, or just literally on my own. I see now that it was the best thing I could have done for myself in my year out of “real life”. Something I couldn’t have done had I travelled with anyone else.
The average temperature for the summer months of July and August in Corsica is between 25 – 35 degrees, so I had plenty of work on the tan. Corsica and Bonifacio are very popular summer holiday destinations for the French and Italians. After a relatively quiet first 3 weeks at the beaches, they were suddenly packed with holidaying families, topless ladies and speedo wearing dads. They stayed packed, as did the tiny town of Bonifacio, for the next 4 weeks. The very last day in Corsica I remember having a swim at 9.30am and the having the beach to ourselves! I had two days off a week and spent these catching up on emails and telephone calls to Quinn, friends and family. I had a tradition of going to a specific café and buying my café au lait (white coffee) and pain au chocolat (Chocolate Croissant) and listening to my ipod and writing in my travel journal. The first weeks, when in a new place are always the hardest, especially when my cell phone decided to stop receiving and sending texts to Quinn – my one life line in a time when otherwise I had no internet or phone available. One day off was spent on a boat trip with the family around the Lavezzi Islands in between Corsica and Sardinia, a breathtakingly beautiful area.
The second month of our time in Corsica we stayed in a huge white house built in the 70s. It still had the original furniture from this time, which of course would again be considered the fashion. The house was huge and had all sorts of wildlife, geckos in the kitchen, bats in the gardens, and my bathroom I shared with a resident scorpion.
So as with anything in life, I got really used to the routine we had in Corsica and learnt, that in spite of being so far from Quinn, I had to enjoy everyday in this paradise as soon enough I would be back in New Zealand and lying on a beach would seem like a long lost memory! I had one moment of deja vu in Corsica and it was then that I was certain I had dreamt of being in that exact spot a year earlier whilst in Queenstown. I guess you could say I knew at that point I had made the right decisions, however hard the journey had sometimes been.
We made the same trip back to France – driving three hours to Bastia, taking the overnight ferry to Toulon, driving all the way back to Fontainebleau, arriving at 7pm.
I had arranged to head away the next day on the Eurostar to London for a few days. There was something magic about going back to London – to begin with everyone spoke ENGLISH!! Also I think going back being familiar with how to get around and staying with Andi and Toby and just being with friends was brilliant. I had a great time just catching up with Brit, Andi and Toby and my auntie Trish. I returned to Fontainebleau for the month of September to help Debs paint the living room and one of the bedrooms. It was the most amazing weather the month of September – it was starting to get cooler and the trees of the Forest were changing colour, but it was the most calm, sunny days that it was a lovely way to ease into the winter.
I learnt a lot about painting and thanks to my auntie who schooled me up in London, I didn’t feel too useless to begin with. Debs and I spent a lot of time together doing the painting, chatting away the days. We did manage a few more trips into Paris, in which Debs showed me the public biking systems that operate around Paris. The Parisian council has set up bike stands around the city, in which you can hire the bike using your credit card and then bike to where you want to go and click it back into another bike stand and you pay for the time that you used the bike for. It is brilliant and something that came in so handy when Quinn and I were in Paris. Debs and I had some amazing laughs and I couldn’t help but feel that in leaving at the end of the month, I was leaving not only a great family, but a wonderful friend also.
So as the end of September rolled around, with Quinn’s arrival eminent, I was both excited and sad to be leaving all that had become so familiar about living in France. The things I miss the most, aside from Debs and the Allais family, would have to be the French lifestyle; The morning bread bought from the bakery together with a crossiant and café au lait at the café whilst reading the paper; the church bells that rung on the hour at every church in every village; the passion with which a meal is created and then the enjoyment of sharing that meal with good friends and good wine.
Comments
Add your comments
