It's been twelve years since we sold out in the USofA and made our permanent move to France. In the modern world, that's the equivalent of three jobs, two marriages, or the time it will take to get the taste of Trump out of our mouths. In our case, having retired and remained married for 54 years, it's enough time to have settled into our new home, tried some things out, and decided what works and what doesn't. If nothing changes, there's no growth. Here's our list. Yours may differ.
As the t-shirt proclaims, only bikers know why dogs stick their heads out of car windows. And I logged tens of thousands of kilometers on my last two-wheeler in the three years before we moved to France. I tend to drive cars the way I rode motorcycles, as reasonably fast as road conditions allow. Never an accident, on either two or four wheels, except for a blown rear tire at speed just before moving to France that put me on the ground, broke a toe, and ruined a pair of jeans. So after hundreds of thousands of miles on American roads, wide lanes with ample verges, I enjoyed testing my new (used) French car during my first couple of years navigating our local narrow two-lane blacktops. I have slowed down for two reasons. First, packs of cyclists, the tractors of vignerons working the vines, ambling tourists navigating their wide-bodied campers in unfamiliar territory, all make passing on the curvy, narrow and hilly back roads that I routinely travel a dodgy proposition. Not worth the frustration and tension. But more importantly, I have taken to heart something that I said in passing to Cathey early on. "If I ever fail to see the beauty that surrounds us while driving through it, stick a fork in me. I'm cooked." I've slowed down.
I EAT LESS CHEESE
Le Centre National Interprofessionnel de l'Economie Laitière cites over 1,200 varieties of French cheeses and there could be several hundred more if of you count every minor regional variety. Tasting as many as possible was an early goal. A cheese plate arrived for every lunch on the terrace and at the end of every dinner party. Isn't morbier interesting with its thin black line denoting the difference between evening and morning milkings? Have you ever smelled a cheese as nasty as livarot? Can you taste the barnyard in Tomme de Savoie? So much fun. So much calcium. And so, after 20 years, a second attack of kidney stones. And so, another story to tell at parties, a story about a nurse with long, black rubber gloves who looked like Rosa Klebb as I sat watching her approach with my feet in the stirrups thinking "I'm not in Kansas any more."
WE BUY ONLINE MORE
We moved from the third largest metro area in Pennsylvania to a rural French village of 1,800 souls without a gas station or an ATM. Even with grocers and a small hardware store in the next town over, and even with the small cities of Narbonne and Beziers within about 25km, you can't always get what you want. (But if we try, sometimes, we find we get what we need. But only sometimes.) And then there's Amazon. Big vans navigate our narrow village streets daily. How else are we expected to find hypoallergenic kitty treats? Or inexpensive knockoff water filters for our Samsung fridge? Or a replacement cable for a portable hard drive at least twenty years old? So, we download the app and we find what we need and what we need appears in our mailbox in a day or two. Yes, when we can, we buy local. Always. In small villages with diminishing populations because the kids are drawn to the jobs and the life of the cities, patronizing local merchants becomes a survival mechanism. But I still can't believe that that obscure cable showed up in 24 hours and saved the 5,000 tunes I'd archived on my old drive.
Back in the States, I drank lots of flavored waters and diet sodas. (I know. Mea culpa.) Now I'm in France. Wine is the daily beverage of choice, although it's recently been reported that young folks are turning to beer. Sacrilege. When we arrived, friends recommended two or three local wineries and they were perfectly suitable for our needs. Tasty and inexpensive. Rosé for the equivalent of 5USD or so a bottle. What's not to like? But the truth is, in our Department of Hérault, an area about the size of Delaware, there are as many as 600 wineries, from boutiques producing only a few thousand bottles to large cooperatives that measure liters by the millions. And Hérault is only one of five departments in our wine-producing region. First by word of mouth, then thanks to new friends who established a wine exporting business based in our village, our cellar expanded to include bottles from wineries far and near, Finally, we discovered vrac, bulk wine that the co-ops sell for under 2USD per liter and dispense through contraptions like gas pumps. The result? Not a single diet soda in 12 years.
Check out PART 2 coming soon to a theater near you.
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