Les boules de neige

Like boules de neige (snowballs) that get bigger and denser the more snow you pack into them, the ski resorts in France are getting more and more crowded in this second week of les vacances scolaires (school holidays). French school 'districts' are divided into three zones (Aix schools fall into zone B), and the school winter and spring holidays are staggered by zone so that holiday locales can adequately meet the domestic demand for accommodations and space. Each year a different zone begins the holiday cycle; last year zone B had the last winter and spring holidays, occurring in mid-March and early May, respectively, while this year zone B starts off the cycle. Unfortunately, we could not get away the first week, so our zone B family's stay at a little 10-room hotel aptly called La boule de neige, in the ski resort at Serre Chevalier, near Briançon, overlaps with a zone A family's, from Lyon. (The Parisians of zone C arrive one week later by which time our kids will be back in school.)

The crowding and the scheduling of the family ski day seems to be especially attuned to mealtimes, which is of course especially French (even if not all that different from family ski days at resorts in other parts of the world). Ski lifts open at 9 here in the southern Alps, and the télésiège (chairlift) and télécabine (gondola) lines are heavy by 10:30, after the leisurely petit déjeuners (breakfasts) with chocolat chauds (hot chocolates) and croissants have been eaten. The activity on the slopes quiets down considerably during the sacrosanct midday mealtime (except at the mountain and village restaurants!), and then again, after 5 pm, when one begins to see bunches of baguettes under the arms of ski parkas in the village. By this time, the last chairlifts stop running and families prepare for goûters and apéros (snacks and cocktails), before the evening meal around 7 or 8 pm.

Interestingly, we've met several adults without kids, French and foreigners alike, who are or were vacationing here at this same time as all of these French families with schoolchildren. If I were an avid skier and a parent without children at home (I am neither), I think I would avoid this particularly crowded time. One would think the accommodations would be cheaper and more widely available, and the village less boisterous (there's a carousel and marching band in ours, and a Wednesday evening super-spectacle complete with torch-bearing skiers and a fireworks display!), while the lines would be virtually non-existent and the snow would be as good and powdery even a few weeks on either side of the school holidays. We were in the Haute Savoie last Easter, outside of the school holiday times and had good snow, very short chairlift lines, and lots of fin de saison (end of ski season) sales on ski gear. (I mentioned this trip in a post in April 2012 called Département 13.). I'm sure the local hotel and restaurant proprietors appreciate the extended and less frenetic holiday times, but for many guests, I suppose part of the charm of alpine skiing is the lively aprés-ski scene. Without the hustle and bustle of vacationing families in the villages, the excitement and energy of the social environment after skiing is likely much lower, weaker, or might we say, softer, just like snowballs made of snow too early or too late in the season.

Gemütlichkeit

Back in the 1700s, one Tobias Smollett traveled from England to France and then Italy, and in the letters he wrote back home, he complained quite a bit about travelers' lodgings and the auberges (roadside inns) in France, finding them in general dirty, uncomfortable, and exceedingly expensive.  (He was quite a curmudgeon, but many of his observations seem to remain relevant today.)  These were not like tourist spots of today but rather simple stops along the road where travelers could get food and rest while exchanging horses for the next leg of their trips.  Perhaps the most appropriate modern day equivalent might be the aires (or rest areas) along the French highways, and I'm afraid there is still some room for improvement 250 years later.  These rest stops are run by private companies and typically feature full service gas stations, toilets, and a range of dining options, but I wouldn't describe them as terribly clean or inexpensive or of good quality.  To be fair, this is generally true of rest areas in many places around the world.  On the other hand, in 21st century France, one can still take care of private business in many of these aires standing up, using the simple but primitive hole in the floor!  As for overnight accommodations, our experiences have been limited to Paris, Lyon and northern and eastern France, where we've stayed generally in teeny, tiny hotel rooms or generic hotel chain rooms and one condominium.  Overall, comfort and exceptional cleanliness aren't at the top of the list of adjectives I'd use to describe these mid-range accommodations.  (I know that there are many more impressive luxury holiday rentals, especially here in the South of France, but then we veer into a price range quite outside ours.)  Within our budget range, we haven't slept on many comfortable French hotel beds or enjoyed sparkling and well-supplied hotel bathrooms.  Sometimes the service seems a little begrudging too.

Perhaps this is one reason that we choose to spend some of our holidays in Germany; we truly appreciate the gemütlichkeit (a German word denoting comfort, coziness, friendliness).  We enjoy the friendly greetings and generous service, the airy down comforters and comfortable beds, and the exceptionally clean and bright furnishings.  For our recent summer holiday earlier this month, we stayed within the German-speaking world, opting for Austria, with some side trips to Germany.  In our limited experience, we unanimously award the gold medal for the best mid-range holiday accommodations...to Austria!  We rented a holiday flat for a week, adding two days to our original agreement almost immediately when we realized that this was going to be an excellent stay.  We had space, we had comfort, we had super clean windows, linens and floors, gorgeous petunias in overflowing flower boxes on our terrace, and a dishwasher that literally sparkled after its cycles.  We had free bicycles for the entire week, free secure parking, free use of tennis courts, pingpong, and swimming pool.  We had access to hiking trails and swam in an alpine lake not far from our flat and shopped in the nearby village.  Fresh rolls were delivered to our front door each morning, and when we weren't eating in, we had some delicious meals for almost half of what we'd pay in France.  (We did eat a lot of heavy meals, with meat and potatoes and apple strudel and beer, rather than the fresh produce we enjoy here in the South of France, but one can eat like that while on vacation, right?)  To us, the level of service and the accommodations seemed exceptionally generous but to the Austrians providing these, this was all very normal.  

Yet, I suppose one seeks different things from different places.  For our Austrian sojourn, we were seeking greenery, alpine views, cooler temperatures and we were even open to some rain, and we got those things and more.  In France, we look for different things.  One isn't going to find the same kind of gemütlichkeit and good beer as in Germany or Austria, but here we have Paris, we enjoy wonderful food and wine, we have seen amazing collections of art.  In the South, we appreciate the amazing climate and the wonderful Mediterranean.  In the 18th century, Smollett was seeking a cure for his physical ills, and despite his negative experiences at the French inns along the way, he was restored by his stay in the South (he stopped in Nimes, Montpellier and ended up in Nice).  Likewise, while we certainly enjoyed our brisk and uncrowded alpine lake swim in the Austrian alps the week before, we continue to seek the pleasures provided by the turquoise seawater, the warm sand, and the beach atmosphere of the Med.  So do thousands of others who visit our part of France each year.  Here is a small portion of them at the beach at Ste Croix near Marseille this past Assumption Day (August 15). 

source:
Smollett, Tobias. 2010. [1776.] Travels Through France and Italy. London: Tauris Park Paperbacks.

Une semaine en Espagne

One of the occupational hazards of being a sociologist, especially a sociologist who has studied tourism from a sociological perspective (for a dissertation on post-Soviet change in the Baltics), is that I have a hard time just being a tourist.  Instead, I see manufactured sights, events, and experiences all around me, existing in suspended, somewhat artificial states designed primarily for touristic consumption.  There are few genuine, 'real' experiences while one is a tourist; most of what we see and do while on vacation has been crafted for our viewing, entertainment or consumption as tourists.  I recently had the excellent opportunity to view the touristic enterprise sociologically as our family joined over a dozen Seattle families on a soccer tournament tour package that brought us to Spain's northeast coastal region and to Barcelona. 

We stayed for a week on the tourist strip in Malgrat de Mar on the Costa Brava where low-budget all-inclusive hotels were interpersed with cheap food joints advertising British food and Dutch food, tourist nightclubs, and dozens of tourist shops with made-in-China kitsch and knock-off sports jerseys.  The beach was parallel to us, and seemed to be enjoyed mostly by the tourists staying in the hotels. This tourist location is designed to bring thousands of visitors in and out, and the tourism industry has crafted the 'inexpensive beach holiday on the Spanish Mediterranean,' complete with mass-produced food, cheap shopping opportunities, and what might best be called cheesy evening musical entertainment on the hotel pool decks or at the discos on the strip. (Our hotel featured Simon Grant! From England! ...and singing cheerleaders from the Czech Republic.)  We tried to venture out beyond the strip, to try to get a more authentic experience of local life, local food and the local language, Catalan.  After all, we were in Spain, or more specifically Catalonia, but so far, it was not the Spain that most Spaniards know. 

The soccer tournament that we had come for took place a short distance inland, in the middle of agricultural fields.  There, our son's team played against French, Italian, Polish and U.S. teams.  The international nature of the competition was obviously the selling point of the tournament, and this was heavily promoted at the opening ceremony, where we experienced a raucous pep rally fashioned on an Olympic opening ceremony, complete with the parade of flags, the playing of national anthems of each country represented, and even the lighting of a torch inside the gymnasium!  As it turned out, the achievement of the spirit of international friendship and understanding through athletic competition was relatively limited.  My son reported speaking briefly to some French players, and the team had some interesting international exchanges with an inconsistent Spanish referee and an Italian team with suspiciously large boys.  We also saw a fight after one match between the obviously over-engaged parents of two other teams, while our boys exchanged most of their jerseys and trinkets with another U.S.team. (Go Cleveland!)  When it comes down to it, you can manufacture an international experience by creating an international tournament and an international opening ceremony, but you can't force moments of true international understanding.  Those have to come about organically.

The tour package included optional events in Barcelona, one of which was a visit to the FC Barcelona stadium, Camp Nou, home of the reigning World Cup Football champions.  In the sports museum and the stadium tour, we could take photos of ourselves standing alongside photos of former and current players (almost as if meeting them in person, non?) and photos in front of the field or montages of the field (almost as if standing on the hallowed grounds of the football team, n'est-ce pas?).  We were also given ample opportunity to shop for 'official' jerseys and other gear at the retail shop, so that we could outfit ourselves just like the football champs themselves.  The 'Camp Nou experience' was yet another example of a socially constructed touristic experience.

Thinking about tourism in this way, as a series of manufactured experiences, does tend to deflate what others might think of as amazing and novel sights and events.  Sociologically-speaking though, made-for-tourist locales, sports tourism events, and museums all reflect attempts by one group of people (those who comprise the various actors in the tourism industry) to create products, views, and events for the consumption of other people (those people that buy the touristic product).  Tourism is a simply another socially constructed endeavor. 

Does this mean that I don't enjoy myself on vacations?  No, I do enjoy going on holiday, but when I do, my family generally tries to stay off the well-beaten track of hotels and tourist strips.  We opt instead for rental condos or pensions where we might actually be in a typical residential area, with local grocery stores, or where we might interact with local hosts more personally.  I don't want to see people's dirty laundry necessarily, but I actually like to see how the locals live, while I am vacationing.  (We stayed in a rental flat in a residential quarter in Barcelona on our last night, and I got my look at some Spanish laundry in the photo here.)  I do appreciate views of stunning beach sunsets and amazing buildings (to the left of my Spanish laundry view, just beyond the frame of the photo, was an outstanding view of the unfinished Sagrada Familia church).  I also enjoy museum visits, to sports fields and to historical sights, and I enjoy taking my children (and even their soccer friends) on swimming excursions at the beach or in the pool.  Ultimately though I still find such views and experiences much more interesting when I am surrounded by locals and can witness a little the ways they live their lives.