Lazy weekend in France

June 28, 12:45 PMSF International Living ExaminerPatrick Mattimore

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Lazy weekend in France. Rather than search for a hike that we hadn’t done before, my wife Jean and I decided to stay closer to home and go to our local market days. Sunday was that day in our neighboring town of Divonne Les Bains. Welcome.
 

Divonne is a stone’s throw from the Swiss border- less if you are at the border in Divonne but you’ll need Steve Young and a tag team of stone throwers from where I snapped these pictures of Lake Divonne.

So forget the stone stuff. Anyway, Divonne attracts a big weekend crowd to the market and the beach. International, in fact, since a bunch of Swiss intrude. One of my favorite market games is playing “What language will I hear next?”. I was caught off guard by the first contestants- a mixed group of whites and Asians that broke out a distinct NY. It went downhill from there as I then caught German and some Asian dialect or other. I gave up and just concentrated on my French which was apparently none too good since I ordered a poulet gros ordinaire (big chicken- not farm ecological or whatever) and added aucun jus ou pommes de terres (no juice or potatoes) and the guy began to package two big chickens with healthy helpings of juice (which always seeps through the bag). Particularly discouraging since I had bought a chicken (same order) on Saturday from the same guy in Gex, at our local market.

Speaking of my crummy accent. I ordered my monthly (mensuel) bus pass on Friday asking (I thought) for the day after my current bus pass expires and helpfully showing Madame my current pass. Apparently, not helpfully enough, as she dated the new pass to begin a week later than I wanted. I know my accent sucks but I figure juin (June) and juillet (July) are sufficiently distinct that even I can’t screw them up, particularly when I’ve got the point thing going at the same time. Mais non, mon accent sucks.

I can only imagine what the poor souls (les ames) not to be confused with les anes (donkeys' butts) heard when I began to get into a spirited discussion Saturday at my local bookstore where we were twenty strong or so participating in a psycho cafe about “Avons-nous une ame?” (Have we a soul?). The discussion was led by a philosophe and a psychologue. I pointed out that the soul question wasn’t really something that psychologists would normally be interested in since it can’t be tested empirically. Actually, I'm pretty sure that I didn't use the word "empirically" or even anything that means remotely the same thing in French since when I get animated speaking French I tend to throw in a lot of Americanisms that I hope will mean roughly the same thing in French.  Anyway, I think I got my point across that, Je ne suis pas en accord (I think this is bs) but everyone was able to ignore moi fairly effectively. Of course, if I don’t get invited back again I’ll at least be comforted in knowing that I’m learning to make myself understood in French. Here’s the website (or something close to it) for our local Gex bookstore where I may or may not now be persona non grata. However, if you decide to write or visit it probably would not be a good idea to mention your connection to me. Oh, and for those persons who may worry that I'm propagating the "ugly American" image over here, no problem. I wear my Canadian t-shirt all the time and throw in a bunch of "ays' at the end of my French sentences. Even without that I'm pretty sure that my French is bad enough that they guess I'm from Quebec.
www.qype.co.uk/place/615094-Archipel-des-Mots-L-Gex