prolong the French visa?

This is sort of in the realm of a record-keeping post, for posterity.

Originally when we planned this trip, we travelled to Vancouver to apply for a one-year visa at the French Embassy. It seems there's no way to get this visa except for travelling to Vancouver or Ottawa for it.

That was in 2015. Then Yarrow's father decided to make a royal mess out of everything for us, seemingly maliciously, and we got delayed until March 2016. Meanwhile, Yarrow and his father stopped having anything to do with each other (the good thing about this is, I think that Yarrow made the decision about this feeling empowered about it, so, well, best case scenario in a bad situation).

And in the meantime we lived in Banff, Alberta, which was at least an adventure but no, I don't see that "everything turns out for the best," at least, not yet. In the delay, our homeschooling plans got mangled (Still working to sort them out into organization, hoping we'll get a fresh start next year). Our van's paperwork expired while it was in storage. And our chance at the French visa expired. To re-apply, we would have had to travel to Vancouver again, and wait longer. I didn't have the energy for it. So we came to France with nothing, which as Canadians means we can stay in the whole of the Schengen area for just 3 months out of every 6 months.

I thought for sure we'd be able to prolong it when we got here. Nope. I haven't found a way to do that (went to four offices on the mainland and got laughed at in every one), so we are off to Britain in a month. The good part about this is that we will probably spend a month in Edinburgh, a place I've always wanted to spend more time. We might see Cornwall and maybe Wales, and we might spend a month on a shared holiday with Steven Payne in Yorkshire. All very exciting plans!

But we do prefer France. :) And would rather stay in Europe. Hopefully if we're meant to stay, we'll figure out a way the next three-month period.

May 8 late-published post from our Irish Mothers' Day with lots of pictures at end

July 30 -- I've picked up some work -- great! I've re-picked-up my procrastination habits too. Sigh. Which means that, hurray, I've been cleaning up the desktop and see I missed posting this. Here it is, not quite three months late. :) 

Sunday May 8

A very satisfying Mother's Day.

First, the cats woke us up at ridiculous o'clock in the morning. So then we tried to sleep some more. I moved up to the big bed in the loft with Yarrow because frankly 3 or 4 nights in the child's bunk bed has not resulted in a rested Christa. I'm getting the loft bed tonight.

We went to town in time to see the hurling practice in Whitegate (there was a proper game on yesterday, but Yarrow hadn't been with me). Then we carried on down the road toward the car boot sale, where our intention was to eliminate more stuff from our stash. We're really paring down now, since we're vehicle-less. So we caught a lift with two nice English people who have moved here. As it happened they were going to the car boot sale anyway, or at least the husband was but the wife was planning to stay in the car. She's had enough of car boot sales.

Anyway we found a nice lady, about 70 or so, who had things out to sell, and offered her the extra clothes we had decided to cull, for free, and she said yes, thank you. So that's that done. Then we had a sausage baguette, which was very nice (millions of times nicer than processed-bread-processed-hot-dog that's common in N. America), and vegetable soup with brown bread, and tea, and Coke. I've been letting Young Man drink too much Coke lately, but Ireland is not high on nutrition. I'm definitely missing Conrad's excellent vegetarian lunches at Creagh Castle. He would cook us curries and ragouts and all sorts of yummy very vegetably healthy things. 

I managed to buy a bag of salad at the car boot sale and I'll be very glad to munch on the greens here so I will (you can get lots of vegetables at this wwoofing place, as long as all you want is potatoes). Actually I'd say pretty much what you can get here for food is potatoes, with a little bit (very little bit) of extras. However, we've been spending a lot of time down at the pub, an expensive option for the week but a sanity-saving one. We've figured out how to make it slightly less expensive by sharing a steak sandwich for dinner. It's a great steak sandwich. They also have delicious pavlova. I am absolutely mad for pavlova and the Irish make delicious ones.

If you don't know what it is, it's cream on top of a meringue with fruit on top.

Hitch-hiking back again, we stopped for a while in Mount Shannon, which has this lovely park with this interesting rock work and lots of history. 

Then we met up with Desi (friendly local who offered us a hike) at the Half Barrel Pub in Whitegate and he took us for a half hour walk that took about 6 hours. He knows everybody in every house along the way, and we rambled through fields to get to the top of hills (on top of rock walls!) to see views over the River Shannon, and then we (he and I, Yarrow decided to stay on shore) went out to rescue some Germans who'd run their rental boat into a rock in the middle of the lake. Desi had been watching them not move while we had our tea break. Apparently he does that quite a bit. In fact we didn't end up doing anything but providing reassurance they weren't alone until the big strong boat from the rental company came. That and I got lovely views from the lake.

It was a very splendid, very beautiful day.

And we ended it by playing shadow puppets on the wall in the cabin where we stay at Aidan's place.

Belle, Belle Ile

July 15, 2016

Bastille Day + 1

On the kindness of the BelleIleois

Belle Ile is an island and it's a marvellous, marvellous place. Because there are few people here normally, people just make things happen and help each other out all the time!  (I have heard 4,000 or 5,000 permanent residents, and 40,000 to 50,000 from Bastille Day until the end of August.)

This island, according to Google, is 86 square kilometres -- about a quarter the size of Quadra Island, which I used to live on. 

I have mainly been posting my photos and ideas on facebook for the last six weeks... it's just so much easier and quicker than Blogger. So there aren't really enough photos in this post, but it's a taste, anyway.

Let me give you a little orientation: there are four larger villages (i.e. large enough to have a store and a pub or two): Le Palais, Sauzon, Bangor, and Locmaria. We love them all, in different ways. 

Le Palais is the main town, where the ferry docks and there's a hospital and larger grocery stores and a market every weekday morning. There are several bars where you can get a rosé or a coffee (well, or other drinks too, but most people drink rosé here). Yesterday I went into the café that we call "the starey café" because the first several times we went there we got stared at, but now we get greeted and chatted to by the patrons instead. :) The owners have always been super-lovely, which explains why we frequent it. (For those of you who don't know me that well, we/I spend a lot of time in cafés writing/working, or making Yarrow write/work.)

Yesterday we went into the starey café and I asked the barman/owner if I should have a coffee or a rosé because I couldn't decide, and he said, "well, the rosé is cheaper..." and I said exactly and had one of those. There is a bakery beside the starey café and you can bring your food to eat with your drinks, no problem. They usually have the horse races showing (which also explains the occasional stareyness, there are some Irish-style gamblers about, but not as many, but the people who bet on the horses here, few though they be, go to the starey café.)

Another café, called Le Poisson Rouge, has a great view and is down by the port on main street ... but also tourist prices. The Starey Cafe doesn't have tourist prices. :) And from there you can see HUGE boats going through the tiny lock/drawbridges to unload at the warehouses. Also very pleasing.

Many of the businesses in Le Palais have punny names, like "Belle Il et Elle" (cosmetics), Le Palais au Marin, (a shop for mariners to get their stuff), Le Fourn Ile (a fournil is a bakery). Also, many signs are hand-lettered, which I love. This place is just so honest and not corporatized.



Another cool thing about Palais is the city walls and fortifications, done in Louis XIV's time by his special fortification dude, Vauban.

The photo above is from the "enceinte" of the city. I think that's hilarious because it's the same word as pregnant... anyway, it certainly does surround and protect! Multiple layers of walls. They have parties in between them, and also courts to play boules! Yay, boules. We just got the balls for it yesterday, though we learned it at Conrad's place (Castle Creagh) in Ireland.

Sauzon

Sauzon is also an enchanting little place, with a harbour that reminds me of St. John's, Newfoundland (though smaller of course).  We went there to try to find Acadian things on the 251 anniversary of Acadians coming back to Belle Ile (yes, immigration FROM Canada), but we didn't find any Acadian events that day but we found a school fundraiser which was a lot of fun.

The formula for parties seems pretty standard here on Belle Ile:

1. The smartest thing: you get your beer/wine/soft drink in a souvenir cup that costs 1 Euro, and you keep your cup and reuse it. So smart. So much better than all those wasted plastic cups!! Drinks include rosé, vin blanc, or vin rouge, or kir, which is white wine with fruit syrup in it (yep, I tried it -- yeck. In Ireland I was smart enough not to try the blackberry syrup in the stout but here I got crazy and tried it, well, now I know!) or "softs" -- orange juice, Orangina, Breton cola.

2. There's music. At the school thing in Sauzon it was kind of traditional music (by a DJ) but there are some good DeeJays on the island too.

3. There are sausages and French bread, and/or crepes.

The first time we went to Sauzon, when we had the car, we went to a seaside-y touristy hotel place (locals were there too, the first six weeks we were here, there weren't many tourists to speak of) that had chairs by the water. There is a seafood stand there where you can get all range of strange things, spider crabs and other crabs and oysters and some other stuff and these tiny little shrimp. Yarrow got some, but they give you like a hundred in a saucer (like a teacup saucer) and they take ages to eat. We watched the locals doing it enthusiastically but usually 3 or 4 people shared the saucerful, to cut down on the munching time. Strange snack if you ask me. I had oysters.

Sauzon is a boaty place (well, aren't just about all of the coastal towns here, but Sauzon especially).
Here's a mural on the side of a building.

I posted this one on my Facebook page, and one clever friend wondered if that wasn't rather a lot of sails for such a wee boat. Another clever friend (Very boaty himself) said the name of those ships and that they were often used by pirates as they're so fast. :)

Speaking of pirates and boats, you also find military fortifications all over this place. Once the English won possession of this island for three years, but the French got it back again. Pesky English.

Locmaria

Locmaria was the first place we had a dinner invitation, from a couple I met at the beach. It has two nice swimming beaches, and a creperie, and an old lady bar (owned by an old lady, that is, an old lady who I like but Yarrow's not entirely fond of), and a friendly bicycle seller-renter guy. (When the car got a little hole in the oil pan, we thought of buying bicycles, and the guy in LocMaria suggested we might find more variety with the guy in Palais. Ha ha ha. The guy in Palais didn't really want to sell us any bicycles. When we went in to ask, he started ranting about some woman at the mayor's office who had bought a bicycle from him and didn't like it. He told us to go buy the bicycle from her. So we went to the mayor's office and tried to find this woman with a bicycle she didn't like, but nobody there had any idea at all what we were talking about. :) It was funny. We decided we didn't really want bikes anyway, hitch-hiking is so easy.

Anyway Locmaria also has many great parties in the street. There were the Euro Cup footie watching parties, there are dance parties, all kinds of things. The church in LocMaria is special for some reason, I don't remember why. First one on the island or last one of its type or some such. Anyway I really like it there.

Bangor

Bangor has a market on Sunday (the weekdays it's all Palais, and Helena told me there'll be some more evening markets soon too) and it's on the way to Kervilouen, where the music is. They have a bar there with lots of tables outside and a grocery store beside it. When they (defiantly) are in the hours when they aren't serving food, or even if they are, you can bring your own food and eat it at the tables and buy your drinks there. I really like that place because of the way the town square kind of  hugs in.

Bangor also has a dance/concert hall, where a man took me for one folk dancing club evening (and danced with someone else until the last song, urg), and then Yarrow and I went another time for a folkdancing night and it was really fun. Everybody dances, I mean like everybody. One lady who recognized us from hitch-hiking pulled us into the dance one time and another time when she saw we had joined but had no clue, she came to stand beside us to count out the steps. We had mostly gone to listen to the music (it was the same crowd as I see at the Kervi on Sundays), but dance studying happened too. :)

And then there are several other awesome places.

Kervilouen is probably my favourite other place because it's where the music happens, at the restaurant there, which is called Le Kervi. If I was going to pick a place to live here on the island, I think it might be that village.

Also, our friend Helena (see photo)

lives there and has her candy-making kitchen there, so we visit Kervilouen a lot. As you can see, she laughs a lot. She also is very passionate about her food, like Yarrow is. She's a lot of fun and very very kind. She has a daughter (she was a single mom) who lives in Belgium, and the daughter is very very happily married and has a daughter too. That's good news that kids of single moms can get happily married, isn't it?

(note: the photo actually shows her in Palais on Bastille Day, with her market setup for selling marshmallows, not in Kervilouen)

Close to Kervilouen there are Port Goulphar and Port Coton, which I think probably make up the most gorgeous of coastal walks that I've discovered so far, though it's a tight race. There are coastal walks all the way around the entire island.

Yes, the entire island. Through extreme intelligence and wisdom,  the island authorities have limited/almost forbidden big splashy development. There are a couple of larger hotels at Port Goulphar (one is Castel Clara and the other one is "The Grand Large Hotel," which makes more sense after someone translated for us –"large" means a big vista, which The Grand Large certainly has!), but mostly all the houses have to follow the same template.  Like this photo:

 

There are no large obnoxious mansions. There are a few smaller older mansions close to Palais, but seriously only a handful, that sneaked in before the regulations to make everything the same. Overall, it's been a good move. Since some people add sunrooms or large patio doors, I think I could totally live with it too. Pretty small problem really. People seem happier here with the smaller houses than the material-obsessed people with their massive houses in North America. Sure, you don't have as much housing choice, but you have street parties and friendly people and the feeling that you can make happen, whatever you like.

There are also a handful of houses made out of the old windmills. The sails aren't on them any more, but they must have been an amazing sight, when they were!

Another common place for me to go is Port Salio on the way to the closest beach... which just happens to be past the beer-making place. ! Yay craft beer. It's fairly decent too, I like the amber one. Le Morgat, it's called. But rosé is way cheaper to drink so I usually have that or coffee when I'm out. But today to finish writing this blog, I went to Le Morgat (closest place to sit down for a drink to our farm). Now I'm in  Bangor with Yarrow and we'll soon go to the piano concert.

I don't particularly want to leave here, but I am conscious of time passing (we've been here six weeks already), and that we are going to need to go to Nantes on the continent to try to get an extension on  our standard 3-month-stay visa. I hope they give it to us easily. I've tried telephone and e-mail, but no luck. So, we'll go to the OFII office and hopefully the door won't be summer-vacation-locked! If it is, we'll take a 3-month sojourn to Britain and try again in the fall. (insert Gallic shrug here)

The many blessings of the car being broken (but we'd really like it back soon, please!)

Still waiting (5 weeks and counting) for the mechanic to get around to fixing our car. She got a tiny hole in her oil pan in our first week here due to a rock on the way to Herlin beach. (Update: July 16, he actually took the car out of the yard where we are staying -- progress! He said "peut-etre" it would be done Samedi. Our neighbour lady and Yarrow both are betting on Monday.)

That sounds  crazy to anyone off-island, doesn't it? It sounds crazy here, too, but in a way it has been a blessing, too. Hitch-hiking here is very very easy (usually the first, second, or third car, and many people will go out of their way to deposit you exactly where you are going), and because we have hitch-hiked so much, we've made even more new friends. Walking here is also gorgeous, and distances are so small (the island is only 19 km by 9 km) it is possible to walk supposing we didn't get a lift (though we always do, unless we decide not to). It's not horrible like being without a car would be in Alberta.

They even have special little turnouts on the road for hitch-hiking, affirming to all and sundry that it's an approved activity here.

Here's another one, with two French hitch-hiker girls (notice the stripes on the one on the right! Yay stripes) and a sign telling me I missed a horse show this morning. Rats. I love those handwritten signs but sometimes they should put them up earlier!!

Sometimes people even stop to offer you a lift if you don't have your thumb out! It's a really lucky feeling when someone does that. You just sort of count up your blessings when interacting with people on Belle Ile. (Another guy, who I met at music but who also gave us a lift, is one of the other wwoofing hosts, and he is very kind. He invites us along when there are things going on (such as story night at the goat farm), gave us a tour of the goat milking and cheese making, and arranged a "stage" (learning period) for Yarrow with the vet. So kind!!

Oh, I just casually tossed out "music" there -- there is traditional music Sundays (and it turns out, most evenings too, at the Kervi... also I wouldn't have known about that except that someone I met hitch-hiking, who later made us crepes and took me along to the folk dancing, mentioned the music.

Also due to hitch-hiking, word gets around that there are Canadians at Kerourdé (that's the name of the small village where we are staying). One morning, a guy walked up from Locmaria (one of the larger villages, down south) because he'd heard through the grapevine there was a Canadian there. He just sat down and chatted for an hour -- it turned out that he had taught at Brooks Composite High School, in Alberta, ten years before I did. This is pretty funny as there are not very many people at all who even know where Brooks is, never mind who have taught at the high school!

Another benefit that any hitch-hiker knows about is the randomness factor. One day we decided we would go to Donnant, Yarrow's favourite swimming beach (and the most dangerous -- the big waves mean dangerous currents to the unwary, but the surfers love it). We caught a lift with some people who were going a little farther, near Petit Donnant, to the Apothecarie. The beach there turned out to be not-so-swimmable, so we had a splendid, splendid walk on the cliffs all around the north end of the island, a splendid lunch, and eventually, at the end of the day, discovered a swimming beach (Which, miraculously, also did not have any jellyfish, as most of the beaches seem to right now). We watched a giant white jellyfish from the clifftops, and we discovered a merveille of hydrangeas that had clearly been planted decades or centuries ago and have spread, well, marvellously. This photo shows maybe a third or a quarter of what was there.

Magical days sometimes only happen by surprise.

Evening views when hitch-hiking home, for example from watching the Euro footy match in LocMaria, are also extremely pleasant. I mean, honestly, every where I look on this island is a feast for the eyes.

Here are some more nice pictures from my hiking-hitching around today (Saturday, July 16, 2016).

Ireland vs. Belle Ile when they drink beer

At Bastille Day here yesterday,
the scene reminded me much of one sunny day in Galway.

There were groups of people sitting enjoying the sun on the pier by the harbour. People everywhere, enjoying the sun.

Here on Belle Ile, several of the people held the one-Euro plastic glasses that you can buy beer in (so smart! No waste!), but I saw no drunk people.  Note: everyone COULD have gone and bought full bottles of wine and cases of beer and drunk them on the pier, legally, but I saw no person or group of people doing so. People contented themselves with a little very good beer (from the local brasserie on the island, Le Morgat) instead of tons of cheap crap.

In Galway,  on that sunny day, most of the groups seemed to have cases (as in often more than one case) of beer with them. By the afternoon, I was uncomfortable with the level of drunkenness and felt slightly unsafe.

Here on Belle Ile, a large group of people sat near us while we waited for the fireworks and they were happy, and rowdy. They sang... things like the Marseillaise, correctly, and in tune. They were full of bonhomie and joie de vivre, and chatting to many other people around them, and... not at all scarily drunk. A family came along and sat their small children down very close to them.

In Ireland, you could often speak to people, and they would usually speak back. You approach with more optimism than you would in Canada, where your chances of friendly response would be lower.  But here in France, or at least on Belle Ile, people are really truly polite and kind to each other. I am trying to learn to remember the niceties, e.g. greeting people before asking for a coffee, saying bonjour on the street, saying good-bye and bonne journee at least twice, and so on. You can't hurry people up, because all the right words have to be said.

It's not made up. People just genuinely enjoy each other. The whole entire energy of it is completely different.

I'm reminded of one of our favourite British TV shows through the last long winter, "Escape to the Country." House buyers often commented that they did not want to be able to see or hear their neighbours. I grew up with that ethic, too, that other people were a "bother" to be avoided. However, here in France, as I noted and loved when I lived in Montreal, people seem to actually enjoy each other. Of course there are crankpots and jerks, but I would say that the overwhelming characteristic of interactions here on Belle Ile is KINDNESS. It's kind of a paradise that way for me.

Hitch-hiking here on Belle Ile is also even better than Ireland. Usually, the first, second, or third car will pick us up. I'm not saying that everything about France is better than everything  in Ireland. I know for a fact that hitch-hiking is not this good everywhere in France. But Belle Ile is an amazing, old fashioned, wonderful little place.

A teacher from the Alps on her holiday sat beside me in the cafe this week and struck up a conversation. She noted that because mass tourism hasn't really poisoned the place, it's delightfully preserved. I agreed with her. People here wear a lot of striped shirts, not for the tourist industry but because they just do. They help each other and cooperate. They stop by each others' houses instead of phoning. They have a bylaw that you can only build the old-fashioned template house, so all the houses on the island (With very few exceptions, like one handful) look about the same.  I can see how this could drive a person a bit nuts (though don't worry, some people have lovely big sunrooms and/or large patio doors on the standard ancient designs).

Belle Ile is also similar to Ireland in that Ireland has Gaelic on the signs, and in Bretagne, there is the Breton language on the signs. (I think I just used French and then English spelling there... never mind).

Oh, here's another difference I love. You can sit in a cafe for hours after your coffee is drunk and they honestly don't bug you at all. In Doneraile, if we sat in the café past about a half hour, the twitchy waitresses would start shooting me dark looks (the pub was okay, but not the café).

Oh, and the way French people wear their clothes! I love that too. I can't put my finger on why, but there just seems to be something more pleasing about it. Of course, the fabrics and the cut of the clothes are often better. People are more fit, though not perfectly shaped. But there's just some sort of comfort and intimacy in the way they dress. North Americans often seem to be self-conscious in their clothes -- the poison of the media and the colder way of being? French people seem to be conscious, but not in the embarrassed way that we often are.

I should do a little photo series of all the variations on striped shirts! I love the traditional striped shirts here. I finally decided to get myself one today and feel much more like I belong on the street. :)

I suppose I could sum it all up by saying that I feel more accepted here. More acceptable. But then, I also accept and respect the way people are here, more.  The parenting is much more sensible -- if you know me, you know how I have railed at the idiocy of so many North American parenting strategies these days. Here, kids are WITH parents -- at the pub, at the concert, at the party, with friends, wherever. So they grow up more mature and happier and better-mannered. That's how I raised my kid and it makes more sense to me.

I suppose if there's one thing that still doesn't make sense, it's this: why are they still smoking so much? Sure does cut down on the pool of kissable men! :)