A Day in Our Life in Aix

The wealth of Aix was plentiful and varied: friendly people, a warm ambiance and relaxed culture, delicious food, plentiful wine, vibrant cafes, sophisticated restaurants, an abundant natural environment, exquisite art, elegant buildings, charming museums, Roman ruins, and thousands of years of history. But the standard script of our every day remained constant; our life in Aix was rewarding, sweet and simple.

Every morning at 5:45, we’re awakened by the chartreuse-uniformed workman who hoses down the rue Frédéric Mistral two floors below the bedroom window of our modern pied-à-terre. He power washes the street, as they do all over Aix, leaving it scrubbed and ready for the waves of day-tripping visitors that will soon swarm the town. Five minutes later, the church bells chime (inexplicably, at ten minutes before the hour) and I stumble out of bed while Joe sleeps in.

I put on the coffee, open the living room window and push open the heavy wooden shutters. Incessant birdsong greets me in the soft light of morning, the bold Provençal sun not yet having risen. I grab a yogurt from the fridge, sit down at the kitchen table, quickly check my emails and then review my homework for French class. I read what’s à la une -- in the headlines -- of L’Express online, find an interesting story I can share in class, carefully read it several times and scribble brief summary notes. By 7:30, the buzzing of the motocyclettes whizzing by on the street below has become consistent, marking the arousal of the waking city. I lean out the window, see that the sun has risen, creating sharp-lined shadows on the pale yellow walls and blue-gray shutters of the building juste en face – on the opposite side of the narrow street. By 8:00, Joe joins me for breakfast and we review our plans for the day.

At 8:40, I grab a water bottle and a piece of fruit and Joe walks me to school. It’s a beautiful walk and while we occasionally vary our route, we most often head straight across the Cours Mirabeau, through the Passage Agard that cuts through the row of golden hôtels particuliers and into the square of the Palais de Justice. We slowly weave our way through the open-air morning market, inhaling and ogling the irresistible offerings. We turn right on the rue Portalis which leads us to the Cours des Arts et Métiers and where I spend my mornings at IS Aix-en-Provence. The school is lodged in a two-storied building with tall thick-paned windows, small, cozy classrooms and creaky old wooden floors. Classes start at 9 and for the next three and a half hours I converse with my engaging teacher and nine interesting classmates. I revel in knowing I am the luckiest person in the world as I continue my French education.

On his way back to our apartment, Joe lingers in the markets, buying fresh produce from a list I’ve prepared and whatever else appeals to him. We’ll make our lunch from the bags of hand-wrapped goodies he’s brought home. On alternate days, he runs through Aix, doing his best to stick to the shaded parks including La Promenade de la Torse along the southeastern flank of town.

At 12:30 I say à demain to my teacher and classmates and head home, my head filled with new vocabulary and expressions I’m anxious to try on the locals. I amble down the pedestrian lanes and stop at our regular boulangerie to pick up une fournée, our new favorite variety of French bread. While all French baguettes are delicious, this particular loaf is made from whole-wheat flour, is especially crunchy on the outside and deliciously yeasty on the inside. Warm fournée tucked under my arm, I turn left down the rue Frédéric Mistral, ring the bell outside our apartment and Joe buzzes me in.

We spread out our lunch and dine deliciously on fresh Provençal fare as we fill in each other on our mornings. By this time the sun has climbed high in the sky, warming our unairconditioned space beyond comfort but our industrial strength fan manages to keep us cool.

Our afternoon itineraries vary but if there is no school excursion scheduled, they often include wandering around town to take in a museum, find a new park, watch the local men play boules or look for new, interesting restaurants. We pass by the luscious displays of fruit tarts and cream-filled pastries in pâtisserie windows (gorgeous to the eye but the way my palate swings, I more often yearn for creamy goat cheese on a toasted tartine). July is the month for huge clothing sales -- les soldes - in France, but since I have no more room in my suitcase and no more euros in my wallet, I can only fais du lèche-vitrine (window shop). I am so ready to burn my clothes, having worn the same things for 11 months, and I can barely even look at them no less put them on, but shopping will have to wait until we’re once again employed.

By late afternoon it’s time to slow down and we often stop at a Cours Mirabeau cafe to enjoy a cocktail and watch the parade of passersby. While I love the look of the brightly colored drinks (tinted with mint & grenadine syrups) the French enjoy over ice in summer, I have no desire to try them. We stick to sipping kirs or rosé to pass the time before dinner. The days are long with the sun burning late into the evening. It remains light until 10 pm so eating at 8:00 feels premature, even for early diners like us. There is never a rush while eating out in France – you essentially own your table’s real estate until you take your leave – and the bill is never presented until requested. And so we enjoy our dinners leisurely, accompanied by heartfelt conversation, always under the stars.

We stroll home, hand-in-hand, during l’heure bleue, that romantic French expression for the twilight time between day and night when it’s not yet dark but no longer light. The daily tourists have disappeared and the town is back in the hands of the locals and the very-lucky temporary residents. The marché nocturne -- the evening market – is in full swing, but we’ve done our shopping for the day and will save any new purchases for the following morning. We turn on the télé and watch an hour of les JO – les Jeux Olympiques – broadcast live from London. Yet again we hear the energized announcer pronounce Michael Phelps, with a thick French accent, “un champion exceptionnel!”

The sun sets on another day in our life in Aix. I watch the aerial evening dance of the swallows, take a moment and listen to the thin strains of their cries before I secure the shutters, drop into bed and close my eyes. It’s been one more day in paradise.

Pictures of our adventures: http://gapyeargirlgoestoeurope.shutterfly.com

A Wide-Eyed Schoolgirl

I swear I was born in the wrong country. There must have been some mistake. But then again, if I’d been born in France, surely my passion for all things French wouldn’t be as ardent. The romantic euphony of the language is what I would have grown up with and the beautiful, fluid succession of words would simply be an everyday sound. Some other country’s language and culture would have consumed and pleased me, so perhaps -- just perhaps -- it’s fortuitous that my birthplace was Indiana and not Paris.

Passions are essential to a rewarding life. Whether it’s running, photography, travel, cats, fashion or the local baseball team, passions make the world a smaller place – a place one can deal with on a human scale. When you “care passionately about something, it whittles the world down to a more manageable size,” as Susan Orlean writes in The Orchid Thief. The notion is also related to the old maxim: if there are too many choices, you just never choose. Too many choices are too overwhelming so you simply walk away. Passions break this vast world of ours into wieldy little pieces of our own, like a fragrant garden of perennials in the backyard or a perfect patch of green lawn in the front – they are our own pieces of the world to love and nurture and over which we hold sway. Think about the Trekkies who follow their trail of delight around the country and sometimes the world, convention after convention. Or the intrepid mountaineers who have tackled every “fourteener” in the US. Much different passions but they give shape to those individuals’ worlds. My passion for French (and why I love French in particular is one of those essential mysteries I’ll never fully understand) has drawn us to travel to specific destinations, as has Joe’s for European history, and we’ve met interesting people and taught each other so much as we’ve pursued them.

And so my linguistic fervor landed us in Aix where I continued to follow my bliss with a month of conversation classes. It also gave Joe some much-appreciated time to start looking for a job and explore the cafe culture on his own. We chose the charming location for two reasons: first, it’s long been a university town infused with the energy of its young residents and second, it’s home to a wonderful French language school for foreigners: IS Aix-en-Provence.

A daily go-to-school routine helped us feel like resident members of the community, an attachment we hadn’t truly experienced during the rest of our trip.

I love being a student of French, no matter what my age, but on my first day at school I was predictably, as I’ve been on day one of any school year, nervous. I chose the least shabby clothes of those I’ve toted around for a year and laid them out the night before. Where was my freshly ironed plaid uniform, crisp white blouse, just-purchased navy knee socks with the tags still attached and my newly polished oxfords when I needed them? Joe packed my lunch, as if I were in grammar school (un sandwich jambon/fromage, un Perrier et une pêche), and I was ready to go. My giddy, much younger self comes out the minute I walk into a French classroom where I become, once again, a wide-eyed schoolgirl eagerly poised over her blank notebook, pencil in hand and her passion for the subject on her sleeve.

My class of ten included students from Australia, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, none of us youngsters (we were all over 40) and all on an educational vacation in lovely Aix. When it came time to introduce myself, I stumbled a bit on the choice of tense. I was fine in terms of my French; the question was more fundamental. Should I use the present or the future tense of “to be?” Do I affirm that I am a French teacher or do I demur and say that I will be a French teacher soon? I made the right choice and opted for the former, asserting I am a French teacher – Je suis prof de français. It bolstered my confidence, gave me a little frisson of pride and sounded right to my novice teacher ears. For the next several weeks I once again experienced the euphoria that comes along with improving how I express myself in French and absorbing the nuances of this lyrical language. We were bombarded with new vocabulary, especially those words and expressions that are part of everyday parlance but are difficult to find in a dictionary. The more I know, the more I realize I have yet to learn; more than enough to keep me happily a French student for the rest of my life.

The French often turn long words into short ones by dropping the final syllables and in some cases, adding an “o.” Apéro, McDo and resto have long been staples of my French vocabulary (the truncated forms of apéritif, McDonald’s and restaurant), but thanks to my classes, I’ve now added other abbreviated words to my repertoire: les actus (the news), accro (hooked on), un ado (adolescent), bio (organic), un dico (dictionary), perso (personal), and my favorite, Sarko (Nicolas Sarkozy). Each week in class, we had to prepare a brief presentation about an item in les actus and I did one on social media. "Twitter" and "blogger," I’m happy to report, have now entered the daily lexicon as regular "er" verbs. We learned the quirky French term for walkie-talkie (talkie-walkie), that the expression vachement bien (amazingly good) that was used ubiquitously 30 years ago is much less in vogue nowadays and that it is très chic to say "super!" (su pehr -- accent on the su), especially if you’re a woman. The cafe was "super-bon;" your dress is "super-chic;" he looks "super." I imagine the French language police, the Académie Française, must be super-fâché (very angry) about all the new Franglais.

I had a variety of excellent profs during my month at IS Aix, but my favorite was Céline who was particularly warm and taught me so much. She was beautiful, funny and it was obvious she cared deeply about her students. I so wished I could be like Céline – une jolie française who spoke lovely French. Walking home from class that day it hit me once again, like it had so many times before: no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I practice, no matter how fiercely I study, I’ll never be French. I’ll never sound like Céline. I will always be on the outside looking in, my face and palms pressed against the glass. It plunged me momentarily into a micro-flash of depression. It was like being the most avid opera aficionado in the world who realizes she’ll never be able to do justice to her favorite aria <sigh>. But I managed to move on, content to have a passion that so enriches my life.

Much has changed in France over the past 35 years. There’s a new generation in a changed country with kind attitudes, a customer service orientation and lots of English being spoken. It's difficult for me to have an exchange in French sometimes because everyone lapses into English. The outlook in France is so unlike that of the days of yore. Everyone wants to speak English but I want to speak French (bolstered by Joe who loves to hear me speak the language) so we have these uneven, lopsided exchanges:

Good evening, Madame.

Bonsoir, Monsieur.

Would you like an apéritif?

Oui, je prends un kir, s’il vous plaît.

Very good, and you sir?

Un kir aussi, merci.

It’s a little disconcerting but they usually get the point and eventually give us what we want: French! We really do appreciate that they’re trying to be accommodating, are eager to practice their English skills and are proud of the level they’ve attained. If only Americans could exhibit the same passion for acquiring other languages. It’s one of my eternal wishes.

Pictures of our adventures: http://gapyeargirlgoestoeurope.shutterfly.com

On Language

Is it possible to overstate the importance of language in forging friendships across borders? I don’t think so.

The trip from Grindelwald to Chamonix required five different trains and one bus. As the crow flies, the distance isn’t that far, but getting through the Alps can be a multi-legged, many-houred proposition. On one of the middle trains, we watched as a Japanese couple took their places across from a Swiss gentleman in the seats diagonal to ours. While helping them with their luggage, he began a conversation in Japanese. The look of pure, unadulterated joy on the couple’s faces lit up the train. They were on their own, so far from home, and the serendipity of having selected seats next to someone who spoke their language was priceless. Animated conversation among the fast friends continued for the half hour the Swiss gentleman was seated across from them. He pointed out features of the surrounding peaks as our train proceeded down the valley. They laughed and smiled together, heads nodding and smiles widening as I imagined the talk turning to families, travel and Japan. As the train slowed for the gentleman’s stop, they exchanged cards and with hands at their sides, gave each other the quick bows of goodbye. It was a heartening and heartwarming scene.

During our stay in Grindelwald, we met a couple that lived outside Dresden in the former East Germany who spoke passable English. They told us that nowadays, all schoolchildren are taught English from an early age but that they hadn’t taken it up until they were adults; Russian had been the requirement when they were growing up. It took me aback at first, but then I understood that of course that’s the language they were taught. The subjugators demanded that the subjugated learn their language – a sweeping power play, most certainly.

Language is such a delicate art. We’ve been amused on occasion by the charming use of English by some of the people we’ve encountered. I overheard an Italian traveler in Rome triumphantly exclaim, “The bull has already entered in the china store,” and our guide in Dubrovnik, after she asked us if we were familiar with an anecdote she’d shared about St. Blaize asked, “Is that bell not ringing?” Such endearing errors highlight the delicate nature of language and translations but should never inhibit us from giving another language our best efforts. Learning foreign languages has always helped me listen to English so much more carefully and pay close attention to all the expressions and constructions that might be a bit difficult for non-native speakers to understand.

Ah, languages – we’ll soon be back in the land of the quintessential romance language – my beloved French. I may at times speak it like a bull that’s entered the china store, but le français has always helped keep my bell ringing.

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Pictures of our adventures: http://gapyeargirlgoestoeurope.shutterfly.com