Just Put Your Lips Together and Blow

Val and I ate dinner at a new place in town, just down the road from where we live.  We each had a glass of wine and shared a third.  No big deal.

Or so we thought.

On the drive home we came to a roadblock where the police were putting drivers through a sobriety test.  In France, this means blowing into a tube attached to a machine that tests your blood alcohol level.  Val has been doing all the driving because of my broken wrist, so she got to take the test.

I thought this was would be easy but then found out that Val was “feeling the wine just a little bit.”  Hm, I guess she had more of that third glass than I thought.

She told me later that she was afraid she might be handcuffed and hauled off to jail.  This made her so nervous that her usually reliable French went right out the window.

To make it worse, she had no idea how a French Breathalyzer works or what she was supposed to do.  This made for some interesting back and forth.

First, the cop told her to blow into the tube.  Val understood “blow” but not “into the tube.”  So she sort of puffed in the general direction of the tube.

The cop was not amused.

Then he told Val to do it again, kind of pantomiming with the machine how it worked.  This time she understood.

But Val didn’t know that every driver gets a fresh, new tube.  She figured that other people had been using it before her.  And there’s no way she was putting that icky thing in her mouth.  So she just got closer to the tube and blew harder.

Now the cop was getting agitated.  And he had a gun.

Finally, after more gesturing and pantomiming, Val understood what to do and reluctantly blew in the tube.  The cop looked at the machine, very seriously at first, then smiled and said “parfait !” and sent us on our way.  I think he was glad to be rid of us.

I found the whole thing hilarious.  Val, mmm, not so much.  And she’s told me in no uncertain terms that next time I’ll be driving.

KVS

Inoubliable

Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

We had been planning to go with Sara and Christian to the Chateauneuf-du-Pape wine fair on Sunday, and then have a picnic in the vineyards.  But our plans changed, and kept on changing.

First my doctor invited us to a private tasting at his friend’s winery, so we decided to skip the fair.   We figured the tasting would take about an hour, so we could do that and then have our picnic.

Then the weather turned rainy, so we decided to have the picnic indoors at Sara and Christian’s instead of in the vineyards.

Then on Sunday morning, when we got to Sara and Christian’s, they told us they had decided to grill lamb for lunch.  So much for all that picnic food we had brought.

Then we all drove to Chateauneuf-du-Pape and met my doctor, ready for our private tasting. Instead, he handed us tickets to the wine fair, so in we went.  We weren’t sure what was happening with the private tasting.  Maybe we would just taste the wines at the fair?

Then, after a couple of hours of tasting many different wines, none of which were from the winery with the private tasting, my doctor invited us to lunch.  But what about the lunch at Sara’s?  Ok, another change of plans.  Lamb for dinner sounds good!

Then, when we finished lunch, my doctor said he had to leave.  Soooo…now what?  And then voila!  It was time for our private tasting.

Despite its twists and turns, the day turned out to be great.  The wine fair was better than expected, with every winemaker from Chateauneuf-du-Pape participating - all 90 of them.  You got a glass at the front door and went from table to table, tasting wine after fabulous wine. 

It was fascinating to taste all these wines and really understand their differences.  I was like a kid in a candy store, but this was way better than gumballs and licorice whips, believe me.

As we worked our way through the fair we kept being introduced to people - my doctor’s family, his friends, his friends’ friends, various winemakers, people from the village, it just went on and on.  We even met the lady who owns the local distillery, who gave us a tour last year.  It was kisses all around when we saw each other.

But the best part by far was the private tasting.  It was just Val, Sara, Christian and I with Françoise, the president of the winery and its winemaker.  She is the seventh generation to run the winery, as well as the president of the local women’s winemaker’s association. 

For someone so talented and accomplished, she was remarkably warm and humble.  And so generous with her time!  She spent several hours with us.

First she drove us to her winemaking facility, several miles outside of town.  We got a tour and explanation of every step of the process, from the picking of the grapes to the shipping of the finished bottles. 

She answered all of our many questions, sharing her obvious enthusiasm for winemaking.  And she explained the business side as well.  She told us how 25 years ago, she and her father made an enormous bet by taking on huge debt and buying a bunch of new land.  She said that servicing that debt was a real burden until just a few years ago.

Then the best part - we did a barrel tasting.   I was in heaven!  She pulled barrel samples for different grapes and different parcels so we could compare.  Trust me, 2015 is going to be one helluva year.  And the grenache from Le Crau – o la la !  I was transported.

After all this, Francoise drove us back into town to her tasting room and spent another hour leading us through a flight of wines from earlier years.

It was after 6:00 when we finally got back to the car and rescued poor Mica.  We had brought her along because we thought it would just be an hour or so of wine tasting.  We figured she could hang in the car, then go back to Sara’s and play with her boyfriend Ugo.  Hm, slight miscalculation.

When we got to Sara’s, Mica and Ugo played while we had our delicious dinner (with more wine, of course).  Christian is an enthusiastic chef and so it was appetizers, then a salad of shrimp and grapefruit, then lamb with flageolets, then salad and cheese, then dessert, then coffee.  Ok, I’ll admit that was better than the picnic we had originally planned. 

It was after 11:00 when we finally made it home and crashed.  We realized that it had been an entire day of speaking French.  That and a glass or two (or twelve…) will really do you in.

But what a wonderful day!  It was really unforgettable.  It was one of those magical days that comes around all too rarely in life.

KVS

So much wine, so little time

In the cave with Françoise

Lovely parting gifts

Hands Across the Sea

For the last couple of days we have been dealing with follow-up care for my broken wrist.  My doctor in California advised me to get an X-ray and see a hand specialist here to make sure everything is healing properly, and then start physical therapy. 

Because this was all to happen soon after we arrived in France, I had to make arrangements from the US.  But…how do you find specialists in another country?  And how do you know which physical therapists are good?

Happily, our friends here helped me out.  Stéphane told me about a hand specialist he had once used and then Sara called to make an appointment.  Gisèle recommended her physical therapist and scheduled an appointment.  I can’t tell you how much that all helped.

The meeting with the doctor was first and we got to the clinic right on time, only to learn that we had to go to another department and wait in line for an X-ray.  That took an hour but everyone was very nice. And they were curious to know what the heck two Americans were doing in a French hand clinic. 

The only sour note was the X-ray technician who rather coldly corrected my French.  I learned that I had not broken the “end” of my radius but rather the “extremity.”  Good to know!

Then we met the doctor and it did not start out well.  In the old days in the US, doctors were kind of like gods.  They told you what to do and you did it.  You never questioned a doctor and you certainly didn’t suggest things based on your Internet research.

It’s still like that in France – Me important doctor, You lowly patient.  So the doctor started by brusquely asking a bunch of questions, so quickly that I had trouble following him: “How did this happen?  Why did you do that? When was your accident? No – exactly when? Why didn’t you have surgery, you fool?”

After I answered in a suitably deferential fashion and showed that I could sort of speak French, he started to mellow.  We asked him about the artwork he had in his office, mostly sculptures of hands, and won style points when we correctly identified one as a copy of a Rodin. 

Then he asked a question I never expected: “How many US states have you visited?” 

It turns out he is a huge fan of the US and has visited 41 states.  He took part in a summer exchange program when he was in high school and fell in love with our country.  He vacations in the US practically every year.

This means that he speaks English much better than I speak French.  So I could have avoided a lot of heartburn if he had just conducted his little interview in English.  I think he was messing with me.

We talked about California and he told us he likes San Francisco for the wine.  When I told him we love the wines of France, especially the southern Rhone region, he looked thoughtful and said, “Well, you know, I have a friend…”

Turns out that this friend owns a winery in Chateauneuf-du-Pape and the next thing we knew we were invited to a private tasting there on Sunday.  Chateauneuf-du-Pape!  My favorite wine!  Sara and Christian will join us, as will the doctor. You just never know how one thing will lead to another.

My physical therapist, by contrast, was friendly from the start, just one of those people you like right away.  And he really doesn’t speak English, so it will be a chance to have a little language lesson every week.

I told him about my bike accident and how a kamikaze squirrel had attacked me.  He looked very serious and told me to watch out for French squirrels.  “Maybe,” he said, “the bad squirrel in America told his friends here to finish the job.”

KVS

Yass Sir!

Our friends Nick and Hanni and their son Michael came down from Switzerland for Easter weekend.  Nick and I worked together at Silicon Graphics and later Nick and Val both worked for the Swiss government, so it was kind of old home week.  We’ve kept in touch over the years and this is the second time the family has stayed with us in Provence.

Another former Silicon Graphics colleague has a home in the area so we invited him and his wife for dinner, plus Sara and Christian.

We’d been here barely a week and we were already hosting a dinner for nine?  What were we thinking?

Luckily, everyone got along famously.  And it was quite the international affair, with citizens of France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and the US around the table.  The common language was French so that’s what we spoke, though I realized quickly that mine is still a bit rusty.  Good thing wine is an excellent lubricant.

During the dinner, Christian mentioned that he is a sculptor and the next thing we knew, Nick and Hanni had bought one of his works!  You never know what will happen when you introduce friends to each other.

The next day we went with Nick, Hanni and Michael to the big Sunday market at L’isle-sur-la-Sorgue, then came home and got down to the important stuff – Jass.

Jass is the national card game of Switzerland and the Swiss take it very, very seriously.  One day in Switzerland we had a snack at a café and some old guys were playing at the table next to us.  We must have interrupted them at one point because the looks they gave us could have frozen the Matterhorn.  

We’d played Jass before but forgotten the rules, so Nick gave us a quick tutorial.  More importantly, he explained strategy. 

Unlike some card games that reward patience and the slow building of a winning hand, Jass is a game of aggression.  You attack immediately and keep on attacking, trying to crush your opponent.  There is no mercy in Jass.

I guess we never realized this about the Swiss when we lived there – what fierce hearts hid behind those placid exteriors.  Maybe Jass provides an outlet, a way to channel aggression.  It's certainly better than invading your neighbors. 

Nick taught us how to keep score in what can only be described as a secret code.  You make different types of squiggles on the page for different types of scores, then you total these up in your head.  Unless you are good at mental math it is not always clear who is ahead.  It’s kind of like working with Roman numerals, but harder.

Happily, the Nick/Keith team beat the Michael/Val team.  Or at least that’s what Nick told us.  But I wonder if maybe he snuck us a few extra squiggles when no one was looking.

After our friends left and got home to Switzerland, they sent us an email saying they would like buy another of Christian’s sculptures.   Oh, and would we mind bringing it when we come to Switzerland at the end of our stay?  And, by the way, it weighs well over 100 pounds.

Christian and I decided to discuss the shipping logistics when we meet at the Chateauneuf-du-Pape wine fair this weekend.  A glass or two of the good stuff should help our creative thinking.

KVS

Working up an appetite

In the kitchen

At the table

 Fine Swiss chocolates!