Beyond Le Mer

           

The 4th of July at Chez Hinson/Gunia

  

            For the past week or so, the temperatures here have been in the high 80's and low 90's (high 20's, low 30's if you're reading in Celsius) and the last thing I've felt like doing is putting an old MacBook on my lap. But we've been here 10 months so now might be a good time for a summary and progress report.

Chiens

                

                 The idea of cleaning up after dogs does not seem to have caught on here. Although Bordeaux isn’t as bad as Toulouse (which our friends blame on the Socialist mayor) there's enough dog shit on the sidewalks here that you have to pay constant attention to an area no more than about 6 feet in front of where you're walking. On top of all this, career panhandlers that are always accompanied by two or more huge dogs inhabit every French city we've ever been to and Bordeaux is no exception. They congregate in busy pedestrian areas and are probably using these dogs for sympathy from the easily touched but it seems to me that cute lap dogs would be more effective than a breed that reminds you of the unpleasantness of 1940-44.  Needless to say, these things leave log-sized turds all over the place and it never fails that the instant my guard drops I’m skating on brown ice. 

 

                  Like Americans and their kids, there doesn’t seem to be any place a French person will not take a dog. Unlike American kids, most of the dogs we’ve encountered have been well behaved and obedient. Many of the shops have a resident dog and it’s common to pass a café or pub where a basket at the end of the bar contains a sleeping cat.

 

             Last Sunday we drove to a little town that was holding its annual vide grenier, or emptying the attic – a yard sale. (Incidentally, the shit French people are trying to get rid of doesn’t look any better than the shit Americans are trying to get rid of.) Stopping for lunch in a little restaurant in Cadillac (no mention of the car that bears it’s name) we found most of the tables around us had small dogs beneath them. All of them sat patiently waiting for whatever it is dogs wait for, although one of them would occasionally bark at dogs passing on the street outside. Other than that we didn’t hear a peep out of them.  After he’d eaten his lunch, the guy with the occasional barker gave it his plate to lick, which wigged us out a bit since you’re never sure how well the dishes get cleaned. This same guy had also helped his tablemate drain a bottle and a half of rosé so this dog was probably used to a slightly longer leash when his owner’s judgment is impaired.

          I’ve had a strained relationship with dogs the past few years, in part because I’ve lived next door to a family of douchebags who sometimes had as many as six barky dogs running around. When we first moved in, the old guy across the street was already so fed up he had taken to shouting "Shut those god-damned dogs up" through a bullhorn. The first time I asked for a little consideration, what I heard was, “It’s only for a couple of minutes, it’s what dogs do.” Sorry is never a word in these types of people’s vocabulary.  All in all, I think I’ve seen enough here to feel that France may help put me back on dogs again.

 

          Before I go much farther, I should probably make some kind of disclaimer to the effect that, at this point, the conclusions and opinions about my new home are all subject to the possibility that I could be completely full of shit. I’ve heard people who’d spent a couple of weeks outside the U.S. make broad, sweeping pronouncement about the places from which they’ve just returned-places they probably experienced from the comfort of a tour bus or for a couple of hours near where the boat stopped. So everything I say in these early days might be subject to later revision but I think I’m right about the dogs. Now, if someone could just get their owners to use pooper-scoopers.

In France, a dachshund is called a teckel and this one was just sitting there outside a shop watching the world go by.

We meet the French Mr. Drysdale

            One of the first things we’d planned to do once we landed was to open a bank account, which turned out to have been a good idea since you can’t get much done around here without one. To buy a cell phone, rent an apartment, in fact, most major transactions require you to produce your relevé d’identité bancaire, or R.I.B. – a little slip of paper that proves you have a bank account. As near as I’ve been able to figure, the laws of France tend to favor consumers, and not just a little, so this handy little document gives creditors a leg up on where to start recouping their losses from mauvais payeurs. (As far as I know, this means deadbeat, but it might not. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been really irritated by writers that throw foreign words and phrases around without any translations. Fortunately, my pathetic French will keep this to a minimum.) 

 

            The Tuesday after we arrived in Bordeaux, we appeared at the local branch of Barclay’s to arrange for our accounts. We'd chosen Barclay's for it's international character (the one that doesn't lose billions of pounds) and because our friends know one of it's regional kahunas.  We were met by a very nice bank official who ushered us into his office where he began to explain the various account options available. Maybe any Americans he'd dealt with were well heeled or possibly he knew our friend was the president of the local Aston-Martin club, but it was obvious from what he was showing us that he figured we had a shitload of money. This impression didn’t last long.

 

            The number of documents required to open this account approached what I needed to get into the FBI. In fact Barclays might now know more about me financially than the Bureau ever did, but at that initial meeting we came up short. We had to have some proof that we had actually lived at our U.S. address. Why, I don’t know.  My bet is that France, like the U.S., probably came up with a bunch of ideas to keep criminals from easily laundering money but end up only make it more difficult for everybody else.  Fortunately for us, French customs officials wanted the same thing so we happened to have a copy of our latest St.Pete water bill, conveniently sitting inside another folder of documents back at the apartment. 

 

            So it took two meetings to get our bank account and by the time we’d finished the only thing I hadn’t done was turn my head and cough. We still had to wait a week before we were notified that Barclay’s was now ready to accept our euros, which brings up another point. All of our income has to be converted to euros. Not surprisingly, having our account set up to let Barclay’s convert our dollars (which, after gaining or holding against the euro all year, began to sink almost as soon as we got here) royally screws us. Well, maybe not royally but going through a currency broker gives us a better exchange rate. Now we’ll see if all the figuring Cynthia did before we decided this little adventure can keep us from ending up in the streets, which brings me to the subject of dogs.

 

             Last time I mentioned I was going to go off about dog shit, however, I’ve decided maybe I should do a whole post on the subject of dogs in France, or at least my observations, anyway. Sorry if you were really looking forward to hearing about it. In fact, if that’s the case, I recommend counseling. À bientot, TTFN.