Tour de France

The tour was in town today, and we went over to Amy and Marks' place to watch them all go by. There was a late start because of protests by farmers (or at least the threat of protests), but eventually we saw them all come by. Just by chance, I was in Paris in 1991 on the day that the tour finished, and again in 2003. The first time, my friend Keith and I were finishing our post high school Eurotour, and saw all kinds of barricades and police nationale. In very broken french, I asked one of the cops what was going on, and he told me that the tour was coming through, so we waited at the underpass right next
to the Louvre and watched Lemond go whooshing by. In 2003, I was in Paris bouldering (at Fontainebleau) and visiting my friend Glen, and happened to be talking to a Parisian friend of his about where the best place to watch the tour was. I always had assumed it was the Champs Elysees, but he told me that it was actually the corner that Keith and I had stumbled upon by accident more than ten years earlier! The reason is simply that the riders have to slow down because of the hard left turn and cobblestones, and they go by several times. So I was happy to be seeing the tour again, having never summoned the motivation to battle the hordes to see the tour go up Alpe d'huez!

As I was panning my binoculars down blvd. eduard rey, I happened to see a flash of red white an blue. Wondering if it had been an optical illusion, I started looking searching and was pretty surprised to see a guy in a big cowboy hat, blue jeans, and a shirt made in an american flag print like this:


Anyway, the first to appear was the promotional caravan, which provides a lot of the revenue for the Tour, then team cars, then the riders, then more team cars. We bought little tour de france shirts and caps for 15 euro.

Touring

I took Sue and Jon on a little driving tour of the drome, stopping first at Mazenc to walk around the old town. There's not too much to see there, but there is an interesting old communal bread oven. From there, we started driving south to Grignan. Along the way, we saw signs for goats cheese, which we dutifully followed and ended up at a newish looking farm house with... no one home. We turned the opel around and on our way out, a sleepy looking guy followed by a border collie came out of a house and flagged us down. It turned out that he was the cheese guy, and he led us back to the cheese barn, told us which door to go in, and appeared 5 minutes later smartly dressed in a lab coat, gloves and boots. He also was carrying three large trays full of goats cheeses in varying states of "ripeness". After talking to him for a while and buying a box full of cheese, he took us to see his herd of goats, which were apparently of Swiss origin. He also told us that some Americans from Colorado had been out to his farm earlier in the year to see his set up, since they were interested in trying to make their own goats cheese. We got a scary call from Chloes mom about "not flying", but the phone reception cut out before we could determine what was happening. A few minutes of french radio brought the news of the simultaneous attacks on the London subways and buses. Our mood a bit depressed, we continued on to Grignan, and walked along the ramparts, had coffee, and then hit the road again. We pulled into "Domaine de Lumian", and tasted their full range of wines several of which were excellent. From there, we made one final stop near Nyons for olive oil, which Jon and Sue bought us a bottle of as a present, and excellent olives. After a failed attempt to buy goats cheese at a small farm (the same place that had supplied the excellent cheeses to the Gite), we drove back to the gite.

Poet Laval, Nyons, etc

Today we had a lazy day exploring the surrounding villages in the Drome. We started off the day by getting buzzed by GIGANTIC wasps called fro-something in french:

that's my finger next to it for scale.

We drove south to Poet Laval (one of the official "Plus Beaux Villages de France"), wandered around for a bit



through the narrow alleys and then up to the chateau.

Near the top there's a fancy looking hotel restaurant called Les Hospitaliers.


We continued south, through Dieulefit (unremarkable) and stopped in Roche St. Secret, where we bought some Lavender and Oak honey. By now, our stomachs were growling, but we held on until Le Pegue, a pretty small town with no open restaurants. By the time we passed the beautiful villages of Rousset les vignes, we were too hungry to even stop and continued on into Nyons. In Nyons we found a nice pizzeria where I had a pretty unique pizza with tapenade, mozzarella, zucchini and eggplant.

Allow me to go off on a little tangent about a little experience I had in the restaurant. In many places in the world, people install what is essentially a glorified hole in the ground in place of a toilet. In fancier establishments, this might be a ceramic hole in the ground, perhaps even connected to a water source, but a hole in the ground nonetheless. The pizza restaurant had one of these in the mens bathroom (not in the woman's bathroom, Chloe has informed me). As it turned out, the little sprayer which dumps water into the hole in the ground was a bit over-tuned, and when I pressed the button, my feet, sandals and shins were sprayed with water of questionable provenance. There were no obvious clues regarding the path that the water had taken, but you can imagine my horror at the possibilities. At this point I panicked and actually considered flushing again as a rinsing procedure but quickly decided against it. I walked out of the toilet room and into the ante room with the sink, high stepped to the counter, and began soaping up my feet under the faucet. Then, hopping on one foot, I looked for paper towels, but discovered that the bathroom was only equipped with one of those useless air dryers. I leaned back and pulled a big section of toilet paper, and managed to dry off one foot and then began sponging down my sandals with pure liquid soap. During this time, I was nervously trying to keep my back or other foot against the door, since there was no lock and I didn't want to have to explain why the toilet room was inundated with "water" or why my foot was jammed under the faucet, or for that matter why my hands were filled with balled up toilet paper. I finally managed to wash everything off satisfactorily, but now the ante room was covered in water from my dripping feet, which I quickly mopped up with more toilet paper. Despite the soapy cleansing, my sandals were still speckled with water, which made it look like I had peed all over them. After a little more hesitation about how to avoid being seen exiting the bathroom with urine stains all over my sandals, I gave up and quickly and surreptitiously slipped back to the table. It was all pretty exhausting.

After all that bathroom excitement, we walked to the Roman bridge,

past a restaurant called "the cat drawer"

then up to the Tour Randonne,

which looks like a fort with a chapel stuck on top because that's essentially what it is. The placard indicated that it was first built in 1280 by la Baronne de Montauban as a dungeon, but was later converted into a Chapel. It's got a charming little enclosed garden with dense shade trees and benches which look out over the miniature ramparts over Nyons and the valley.
. Strangely enough, the local authorities haven't really put much effort into preserving the profound sense of history that comes with such a building and have installed basketball courts, low income housing and seagull murals right below the chapel


We bought some supplies for the Gite (gites don't come with toilet paper!) at a grocery store, and continued to our next destination: the impressive Trente Pas gorge.


From there, we continued north to Crupies to see the lovely Chapelle St. Jean. Yes they have a web site!, despite its being kind of in the middle of nowhere. The Colors of the rock that they used to construct it and its proportions blend in well with its surroundings.


We continued on to Bourdeaux to see the ruined castles



and wander through the old town, with very interestingly shaped buildings



and then hit the road for our final stop of the day: Poet Celard.

This is another hilltop fort which had been various peoples property including a Belgian lawyer (!) but is now owned and managed by an association devoted to its restoration.



after a modest dinner, we headed back to Grenoble, where I managed to park our car in probably the smallest space I have ever seen

oh yeah.

Pont-de-Barret II

I was a little over tired, so I ended up sleeping late today. After a late start we headed up to the cliff and got on some nice routes on the left side of the cliff.
We had dinner at L'Oiseau Sur La Branche, in Saou

where we had a perfect meal in the warm dusk weather under huge sycamores while an acordian player/chanteuse and a bass player serenaded.

I had an interesting menu which focused on oils from the region (Nyons is famous for its olive oil),


foie gras (yes, I'm going to die of a heart attack) and apples, seared steak with very buttery and sweet mashed potatoes and finally a pistachio whipped cream with white chocolate discs.

Last time we came back late to the gite we had seen a wild boar, so in preparation we had the camera out this time. Unfortunately, although the boar was there, the puny flash on our camera couldn't illuminate him.

Pont-de-Barret

Chloes dad and step mom have rented the same gite that chloe and I stayed at in May, but won't be arriving until tuesday, so we went down to get the keys etc. On the way down we saw a big reconstruction of the rocket from Destination Moon, which was a favorite from my childhood

We stopped at a roadside fruit stand which had great peaches and apricots. Right next to it was a field full of strange plants

Our friends Laurent and Vero came as well, with their son Thomas, and we did a little climbing at Pont de Barret.

polish plumber

I saw this story in the New York Times (pasted in -- hope the NYtimes doesn't mind!). I find the whole thing a little exasperating, considering (as the article mentions) how impossible it is to get ahold of plumbers in France. Here in Grenoble, you are lucky to get anything but a pair of delinquent teens to begrudgingly install a new water heater. And you can count on them simultaneously destroying a wall, toilet and floor in the process. But oh no, we wouldn't want access to an *actual* plumber if they're foreign! Also, today our on site cafeteria workers were on strike.

June 26, 2005


Unlikely Hero in Europe's Spat: The 'Polish Plumber'

By ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS, June 25 - Blond, buffed and blow-dried, a come-hither half-smile on his face, the man in the travel ad grips the tools of his trade as he beckons visitors to Poland.

"I'm staying in Poland," the man says, a set of strategically placed pipes in one hand, a metal-cutter in the other. "Lots of you should come."

He is the "Polish plumber," a mythical figure who became a central actor in the debate in France over the European Union constitution, which was roundly rejected by French voters last month. Portrayed as a predator who would move to France and steal jobs by working for less pay, this "plumber" has come to personify French fears about the future.

Now the Polish Tourism Bureau is using the character to try to allay French fears and attract visitors at the same time.

"With all the bad publicity about the 'Polish plumber,' we thought why not have a sense of humor and make him work for us?" Krzysztof Turowski, the creator of an ad on the bureau's Web site, said in a telephone interview from Warsaw.

"We picked someone handsome and clean with a sexy look in his eyes - to get the French to come to our beautiful country."

Next week the tourist office will offer Paris a firsthand look at Piotr Adamski, the 21-year-old model, who will also pose at the Eiffel Tower in the same green overalls and Stanley Kowalski T-shirt he wore in the ad.

Mr. Adamski has become such an overnight sensation that even Poland's former president, Lech Walesa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Solidarity labor movement, offered him advice for his Paris trip.

"I suggest that he ask the French why the heck for so many years they encouraged Poles to build capitalism when as it turns out they are Communists themselves," Mr. Walesa, an electrician by trade, said in an interview published Friday in the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. He added, "Piotr probably won't have the chance to say this, so he should at least publicize Poland well in Paris."

The ad campaign blends humor with a more serious message. At a moment when France is suffering from an unemployment rate of more than 10 percent, and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is waging what he calls a 100-day battle to combat it, it is an effort to assure the French that Polish workers have no intention of stealing their jobs.

Even if they wanted to, they could not. Under the treaty that allowed Poland and nine other countries to join the European Union last year, older members of the union can restrict access to their labor markets for up to seven years. Only Britain, Ireland and Sweden have allowed in workers from the new members.

But labor has always been one of Poland's most important exports. In a sense, the "Polish plumber" is much more than that, because in most cases he is also an electrician and sometimes even a mason, carpenter, painter and roofer as well

"It's ridiculous, truly bizarre to say Polish plumbers are dangerous for France," said Wieslaw Zieba, 55, who has worked in France as a plumber and electrician for 25 years. "Some of the things that have been said by political figures border on the xenophobic. This is a country that desperately needs more plumbers. But it's not a noble profession that everyone wants to follow. You have to clean up after flooding and unblock toilets."

Indeed, according to the French plumbing union, there is a shortage of 6,000 plumbers, and there are only about 150 Polish plumbers in France.

When Mr. Zieba first came to Paris, he said, he had no friends, knew no French and slept in the Metro. He now has dual Polish-French citizenship and runs a thriving business that also does masonry, carpentry, plumbing and electrical work.

But the fear of cheap imported labor in France is so profound that it has dominated the discourse about the troubled French economy.

The term "Polish plumber" was coined in March by Philippe de Villiers, the head of the right-wing Movement for France party, in response to a European Union proposal known as the Bolkestein directive, which would make it easier for workers to live in other member countries and receive the same salaries and benefits as if they had never left home.

The thinking behind the directive was that if goods could move freely across the borders of European Union countries, why not services?

The directive "will permit a Polish plumber to come to work in France with a salary and social protection of his country of origin," Mr. de Villiers said. He also expressed worries about the "Latvian mason" and the "Estonian gardener."

At a news conference in April, Frits Bolkestein, a former Dutch member of the European Commission, used the term himself, saying he was looking forward to the arrival of "Polish plumbers to do work, because it is difficult to find an electrician or a plumber where I live in the north of France." He said he hoped that "Czech nannies" and "Slovenian accountants" would find work in France as well.

The next week, a band of rogue electricians from the state-owned utility EDF cut off the power supply to his country home in the village of Ramousies (population 248).

Opponents of the European Union constitution, meanwhile, urged voters to reject the document, arguing falsely that it would facilitate the invasion of the Polish plumber.

The issue became so serious that Poland's president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, brought it up during an official visit to France just days before the referendum. "I know that the argument about the Polish plumber is very often used, or exploited, in France, but I must tell you that this is really exaggerated," he said. "It's not true that low-wage workers from the new members of the European Union have flooded the other countries."

Meanwhile, Mr. Adamski, the model, is getting used to his newfound fame, boasting that he spent several days installing the hot and cold water faucets in his Warsaw apartment. "I'm very pleased to be the postcard for my country," he said in a telephone interview from Warsaw.

But for a real-life Polish plumber like Mr. Zieba, who is 5 feet 4, wears old jeans and hides his belly under a multipocketed work vest, plumbers just do not look like that. Mr. Zieba noted that in the ad, Mr. Adamski is carrying the wrong cutter for the plastic and metal pipes he is holding.

"He's too lacquered, too handsome and too clean to be on a work site," Mr. Zieba said of Mr. Adamski. "He looks like something out of an X-rated fantasy film about women who are waiting for the plumber to come."
But then, he added, "I wasn't so bad when I was his age."
Helene Fouquet contributed reporting for this article.

Japanese Snack Roundup

My parents sent me some japanese snacks from Japan, which I thought I would start reviewing (see my review of party time crabs). I won't bother with the conventional things like modifications on the Pocky theme, but there are a few that are worth discussion. The first is a WAKAME variation:

And although I like wakame, pickled seaweed isn't really what I expect to find in a little resealable snack pack, complete with a toothpick. Actually, I was thinking that maybe it was candy that looked like wakame, but no, its actually seaweed

I wasn't let down by the promise of "Natural Deliciousness" (conspicuously the only english on the package). It was indeed tasty, but seems to score low with western palates like chloe's, who spat it out upon contact with her tongue.

Next up, one of my favorites, and not new to me: crazy sour things.

These are little sugary drops, coated with what must be pure citric acid. They are REALLY sour at first, but relent into a kind of gummy sweetness. I've noticed that your tongue actually starts to physically hurt after eating too many of these.

Finally, Choco Baby.

In the land of fancy chocolates, I haven't been able to bring myself to open these yet, because they look like little chocolate flavored wax pellets. I envision a huge extruding machine where the plastic waste of tokyo, and some small molecule which tricks your brain into thinking "chocolate!" are fed into one end, and little pellets are fired out of the other end. I won't be tasting these unless I get very, very hungry.