Les chemins

One thing that can make me anxious in less than five minutes in the South of France is to get an address to someone's home that begins "Chemin de la...."   I usually think of a chemin as a country road, as a route leading to a farm or something.  For example, I took a chemin today with a friend to pick up her produce box (look how beautiful these are right now with the new grapes and peppers and tomatoes), and for once, I got just what I expected. Yet, I can't even count anymore how many times I've gone off confidently to visit a new acquaintance or take my kids to a birthday party in our car only to find myself essentially still within city limits, turning off the route departementale or nationale and suddenly bouncing along on a pot-holed, gravelly, ever-narrow, what-I-would-call logging road (I grew up in a logging town in the Pacific NW so I know what these are), wondering if I made a wrong turn and if I will have room to let an oncoming car by me.  Often, my navigator app on my phone urges me to continue on this seemingly remote road, and sometimes I do, despite having to reverse or somehow squeeze by an occasional car coming towards me.  Other times, I stop and phone my host to double-check, like last week when my son said, 'Mom, no way, this CAN'T be right!'.  Yet EVERY time, I am surprised to find myself eventually at a tall, often forbidding gate that when opened remotely, takes me down a rough driveway that ends up at......a gorgeous French home.  And all the other gates along the crazy road I've just driven down lead to similar homes.  I've never seen anything like this anywhere!  A French friend tells me that this may be a bit particular to the south.  I don't know yet what to call the phenomenon, but I still find it so surprising.

What is it about the forbidding routes to residential homes?  I've decided these are the result of shrewd calculations about impression management, coupled with perhaps a greater French tolerance for discomfort.  Or, maybe there is some stinginess too?  First impressions and packaging are very important to the French, when it comes to public encounters and outward appearances.  People dress well here, especially in town like the woman I saw in Aix today walking her dog in the highest, spikiest heels I could imagine for the job.  Gifts and pastries all arrive pretty in boxes, with even single pastries laboriously packaged, such as l'opéra that I enjoyed myself one night recently.  But, family homes are much more private here than in many other places; they hide behind high walls and gated driveways.  Earlier, I suggested that this is in part  for reasons of privacy and concerns about security (see Maisons and chateaux, November 2012).  Popping over to borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbor might not be that common here, because popping over would mean exiting one's gate, ringing the buzzer on the neighbor's, and that puts pressure on the neighbors to keep up appearances and manage impressions.  Perhaps because family and home lives seem to be more private here, people may be less compelled to make the effort to create a beautiful, comfortable entry road to one's home.  It also seems to be true that the French tolerate personal discomforts to a degree that many others might not (eg. bathroom facilities, indoor heating...), even tolerating unhappiness more than most (see Contentement, May 2013).   Bouncing along on a ungroomed, unpaved, uneven, tiny road to get to and from work or school each day may just not be a big deal to many people here.  Or, maybe some are simply not willing to fork out the money to improve the roads to their homes?  Is this another one of those instances where if the public interest isn't there, no one will take care of a bumpy situation?

Maisons et chateaux

Chateau Chenonceau on the Cher river

Our past weekend in la vallée de la Loire (Loire Valley) was one in which we caught a glimpse of the former and current lifestyles of the rich and famous.  At Chateau Chenonceau, (pictured here) we walked through the opulent bedrooms and the large kitchen and servants' dining room (think Downton Abbey), and we saw how Catherine de Medici competed with her husband's 'favorite' mistress Diane de Poitiers for the most elegant bedroom and prettiest garden and eventually, the ownership of the castle.  At Chateau du Clos Lucé, we walked through the Leonardo da Vinci's retirement lodgings and the gorgeous gardens, and at Chateaux Cheverny, we were treated to photos of the current Marquis and his young family who reside on the upper floor and who open their home year-round to the tourists who want to see how the elite live.  (This marquis apparently hunts, as the castle grounds include kennels for a pack of hounds.)

Seeing the insides of French maisons et chateaux (homes and castles) can be so revealing about a people and their society, but most of the time, the French are extremely guarded about their private homes, treating them almost like real fortresses that are NOT open to public viewing.  Many single dwelling homes in France and the yards around them are surrounded by tall iron fences or stone walls, with locked gates controlling access to driveways.  We have not noticed many neighborhoods where casual passers-by can see inhabitants watching television in their living rooms, or preparing food in their kitchens, or sprucing up their gardens.  With the locked gated entries, door-to-door soliciting is virtually impossible as is trick-or-treating (which is not a tradition here anyway), and going on a walk in Aix is often a bit frustrating for me.  I'm always a little bit of a voyeur, peeking through holes in the fences or looking to see what I can see as gates open and close.  The French also use their wooden (or electric) window shutters regularly, at night or in the heat or extreme cold, and often even during the day, which can have the effect of closing up homes and buildings to the outside world.  On our drives to castles and towns across the eastern part of the Loire Valley last weekend, the effect was rather depressing; it seemed as if all of the houses were painted the same non-descript white-ish color and on many of them, the dingy windows shutters were tightly closed.  (The shutters and homes in some towns, in the south especially, do have a little more color.)  But where were all the people in central France, in the lieu-dits (tiny localities) and villages, and what were they doing? 

Because we rented a holiday house this past weekend, a gîte as these are called, (pronounced 'jeet'), we were able to see a little bit of life from the inside of high stone walls and iron gates.  Our owners lived in the adjacent white manoir (manorhouse) which had unusually bright blue shutters, and we saw when they were out and about, leaving for the Saturday market or wherever, and we caught a glimpse of one of them working at their computer.  These are the kinds of things we normally see in our community in the U.S.  If I were to walk to the store from my Seattle house, I would pass by the fronts of all of my neighbors' houses, and it would be unusual not to exchange a quick wave with a resident in her kitchen or a child in the front yard.  Not only that, in this same house I can talk on the telephone at the window in my living room and gesticulate to my neighbor across the street who can see me from her living room window as she answers my call on her phone.  And, the houses in our Seattle neighborhood are green, blue, red, taupe, yellow.  Some do have have shutters beside the windows but these are purely decorative, and most front yards are not fenced in, nor are driveways closed off.  Our cars are parked on the public street, across from our neighbors' cars and we often see each other as we come and go.   

Perhaps the differences between how the French live and how we live is related to the different valuations of privacy and security.  (Earlier I wrote about French privacy in regard to first names, see Noms et prenoms, Sept. 2012.)  The English saying about a man's house being his castle does speak to the idea that privacy and security are important values, and these seem to be valued here on the other side of the Channel as well.  Just recently, I ran into a French employee at a local frame shop whom I recognized as my eye-level neighbor.  (She and her family live in the building across a street and a courtyard from us, on the same floor as we do, and I recognized her face from having seen her at her window occasionally in the spring and summer.)  The woman and her co-worker were startled when I asked her if she lived on a certain street and then suggested we might be neighbors, that perhaps we had seen each other across the street?  Perhaps I was being too forward, invading her privacy.  On the other hand, the French do seem to focus a great deal on property crime and perhaps she felt a bit vulnerable.  The French go to great lengths to protect their things, with the barricades around private family homes, the shutters, the iron bars, and for us apartment dwellers, the ubiquitous buzzers at our building entrances.  Perhaps she was feeling protective of both her privacy and personal security.  In any case, I was relieved to discover a few weeks later that this French neighbor and I actually aren't all that different.  On a very stormy day in which torrents of rain were creating rivers out of the old town streets of Aix, both she and our family were drawn to our windows at exactly the same moment, to watch the amazing weather.  Astonishingly, she waved to us, so we waved back, and then, I pointed to the street and gestured with my hands to show how deep the water was.  She smiled and nodded, et voilà! We had ourselves a normal, friendly neighborly interaction.

What we see most days looking out our windows