And how wold you like that microwaved? Rare, medium or radioactive?

Tonight Christophe and I decided to go out for some dinner, he was too tired to cook and I had quite a craving for Chinese food so off we went. We decided to go to a Chinese place we tried once which was good but when we arrived we discovered it had been turned into a Hawaiian pizza cocktail bar (this sounds good in theory, in practice, NO!). Over the road however was another Chinese restaurant. We decided to give it a go. As soon as we sat down, we realised we’d made a grave mistake.

First of all, the waiter didn’t even say bonsoir. He seemed to be mute. I mentally tried to cut him some slack thinking that maybe his French wasn’t that good, although even if his French was as bad as mine surely he could have mustered a simple ‘bonsoir’ in reply. The chairs were the most uncomfortable restaurant chairs I’ve ever been in, digging into my back, and since Christophe’s back is already in a bad state it wasn’t good at all. When Christophe got back from the bathroom (he always washes his hands before eating, a very good habit) he was less than impressed with the gross and soapless toilets. Nevertheless we ordered. The waiter silently took our orders and left. It was then it dawned on us that this guy was completely alone in the restaurant. Customer wise it was us and another couple who seemed to have just arrived as well. This guy seemed literally to be alone without chef or any kitchen staff. Waiter and chef all in one. Not a good sign. When we heard the ‘ding’ of a microwave go off we fled before he came back with our microwaved entree!

Seriously…microwaving food? I can make my own damn nems at home if I have to. Except even better than a microwave, we use an oven! I don’t go out to eat at a restaurant to eat fast food I can make myself. There are Vietnamese fast food restaurants in Metz that use microwaves and that’s fine..it’s out in the open and the price is adjusted accordingly. It’s not restaurant fare and it doesn’t pretend to be. If you’re going to use a microwave don’t put up a sign that says ‘restaurant’ and try to fake your way through it. I’m sure a lot of restaurants use microwaves to an extent but since this guy was alone that first little ding only spelt doom and food poisoning for the rest of the meal..

So….. we bolted and went across the street to the Indian restaurant which managed to serve us non microwaved food prepared by an actual chef for the same freakin price. The chicken vindaloo was excellent and the naan fromage was freshly made. Oh, and the waiter said ‘bonsoir’, ‘can I take your order’, ‘how was your food?’ and ‘can I get you anything else?’. You know…the bare minimum one would expect from a restaurant.

Walking out of the Chinese restaurant kind of felt the same way when you walk out of a movie, only more powerful. I always get a thrill when I leave a bad movie, like I’m taking a huge stand reclaiming an hour of my life back which this bad movie would have stolen had I stayed and suffered through. More difficult from leaving a movie though is confronting bad service and bad restaurant experiences head on, it’s awkward and no one likes to do it. Maybe we chickened out by not telling the guy that microwaving our food was unacceptable (maybe the chef was sick and he was trying to make do?), all the same though, I loved not being polite for the sake of not making myself and others uncomfortable. I know I put myself in a lot of dumb situations because I’m afraid to speak up for myself and demand something better so it felt good!!

Warning= Carrying Paint Tins Up Three Flights of Stairs May Cause Injury

Yesterday Christophe threw his back out carrying our second giant can of paint up three flights of stairs. Apart from a lot of pain for Christophe, this also means that our actual official moving date is up in the air.

He went to the doctor today who prescribed him some drugs and a special back supporting belt and he’s having x-rays on Thursday. It’s not too serious, but he seems to throw his back out fairly regularly so we need to get it resolved as soon as possible. Bad timing though but I must say I was kind of expecting it and dreading how the hell he was going to carry his speakers up the stairs, so it was kind of a case of it having happened sooner rather than later. His friends are apparently going to help us move but they are all pretty puny like him so I’m a little concerned. I’d love to hire professional movers but that doesn’t seem the done thing here at all and Christophe seems to think they would cost a fortune (which I suppose they would if it’s not a common occurance for people to hire them).

As for the bricolage, I’m almost done with the second coats of paint. Textured wallpaper is tough work. Please take my advice and never, ever, ever use textured wallpaper. People say it’s to hide imperfections in the walls, which may be true for some cases but it also seems to be a longlasting fad in France. It’s a bitch to paint and it makes everything look so dated, so I don’t get the appeal. In Brico Depot today I saw two girls happily carrying paint and two rolls of heavily textured wallpaper home. I wanted to run after them and convince them to leave the wallpaper at the store. They are going to have a nasty surprise once that paint hits the paper.

So we’ll see what happens about the move. From my point of view, as soon as the hot water is on (Friday) and the bed is put together (Wednesday) and the mattress is bought (Thursday?) I’m staying!

Feminist

Yesterday when I excitedly told Christophe that a friend of mine had met Germaine Greer recently, his response was an innocent “Who’s that?”. I groaned with disbelief. Although perhaps he feels the same way every time he mentions some obscure free jazz musician or punk band from the 80s I don’t know about.

Well, maybe Greer wasn’t that famous in France? I see that amazon.fr doesn’t even have The Female Eunuch translated into French which really surprises me. Or maybe it doesn’t surprise me considering in the 1960s women still had to have their fathers or husbands open bank accounts for them.

France’s own feminist thought is something that I’d love to know more about and which I am really quite ignorant of. Aside from a few chapters out of Beauvoir’s The Second Sex I’ve read almost nothing by French feminists. If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations for authors or particular texts I would be most interested.

Away for Bricolage

Frenzy

For the first time since I stopped teaching I’m actually tired as a result of work! I must say cleaning a bathroom all day long is a hell of a lot more pleasant experience than teaching small children!!

We got the keys to the apartment on Monday and met with the landlords and the realtor to go through the apartment and note all the flaws. The landlords are very friendly, so nice in fact, they told us we didn’t need to pay rent for August since we are painting and fixing up the joint! We couldn’t be happier with that outcome. We also discovered that we have our own cellar (which is big!) and there is also a bike shed, so if and when I get myself a bicycle I won’t be clogging up our doorways.

I really want us to start painting this weekend since Friday is a public holiday and Christophe doesn’t have to work on Saturday for a change, so we should take full advantage of the fact. I wasted no time beginning the cleaning, rocking up at the apartment today at 8.30am with a stash of cds to keep me going (cleaning music recommendations include the Gossip and Veruca Salt) and an army supply of cleaning products.

I decided to start with the bathroom and surprisingly I wasn’t finished by the time Christophe picked me up after work at 6pm (I got there at 8.30am). The bathroom is in pretty good condition, but because we haven’t moved anything in yet, I just want it to be perfect for when we officially start living there. I spent a lot of time getting rid of various stubborn mould stains, scrubbing in between the tiles vigoriously until my hands hurt and I couldn’t go on. Somehow all of this took hours and hours. You know when a bathroom looks clean but then you look closer and you realise all the little things? Once I started I couldn’t stop and I had to fix EVERYTHING. But hey, it’s worth it. And I’m pretty proud of my efforts too.

Tomorrow I commence cleaning the pigeon shit off the balcony (I caught a big fat devil in the act today!) and then the kitchen. Since the bathroom took me an entire day, I’m guessing the kitchen will take 2? Maybe I can beat my own personal cleaning record.

I never thought I’d ever get excited about cleaning, but there you go!

Go to the mattresses!

Today Christophe and I went shopping for mattresses. Two big stores were having mattress sales, and while we plan to buy our new mattress online (so much cheaper!) we obviously needed to test some out to find out what we wanted.

For reasons that elude me, the two stores having the big mattress sales, decided to set up mini ’show rooms’ outside in plastic tents. Yesterday, and today, we’ve experienced torrential rains. It’s really been kind of like tropical rain minus the heat.

So if you put mattresses outside in a badly put together plastic tent and add torrential rains, you get wet, yucky mattresses.

When we went to the first place we didn’t actually realise that the mattresses were wet. The floor was wet but it wasn’t until we tested out a mattress (at the encouragement of the salesmen) and got up feeling damp that we realised the mattresses were soaked! It brought back memories of reading Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and the Irish ‘damp’.

We were sorry to see that the second store had also suffered the same fate as the first. But I mean, really..how stupid do you have to be? Mattresses and outdoors do not mix!

So, I guess we’ll just have to wait to get a new mattress to go with our new bed (which is being delivered next Tuesday). I’m really super partial to futon mattresses and loved every minute that I slept on a queen futon but everytime Christophe came to visit in Australia he woke up with a sore back so tant pis!

One of the weirdest )best?) things about having a new bed in a new apartment is that we have the opportunity to pick new sides to sleep on!

August Rush

If you live in France and you decided to depart for your holidays last weekend, then you most likely would have experienced this situation:

Last Saturday, motorways in France experienced a total of 434 miles of traffic jams. It makes you wonder if the August rush is worth it. Surely by the time you have a nervous breakdown in traffic and get to your holiday destination, recover from the nervous breakdown and then get back on the motorway and have another nervous breakdown because you’re trapped in a traffic jam of holiday makers doing the return….wouldn’t it be wiser to take your holidays at another time of the year?

Misdirected Politeness

In the corner of the lounge room of Christophe’s parents house sits a revolting lamp. Standing at over one metre tall it is big and bulky, made of wood and brassy metal. The top of it resembles that dish which the Olympic flame sits in (anyone know what the name of that is?).

It is a ridiculous object and Christophe’s parents hate it, but instead of shuttling it off to the garage to gather dust they keep it in view because it was a gift. Christophe can point out various other abominations around the house which were also gifts and which his parents felt obligated to display with false pride in their living quarters.

Keeping things that people have given me that I don’t like has never really been much of a problem for me. I stopped feeling sensitive to keeping those kinds of gifts when my parents gave me a framed poster of two baby wolves. I think people should make it a personal rule that unless they know a person’s taste very, very well, they should never give clothes or home wares as gifts.

What is a problem for me, is the way in which I find myself agreeing to do things I don’t want to in social situations, in order not to be impolite or make others feel bad.

Take my language exchange partner for example. I would like to end our sessions together because it’s not an enjoyable experience for me, it’s become a chore. I could go into more details but basically, in my mind a language exchange is something two people do casually, having conversation over coffee, which is the opposite of my experience right now (although I should point out my language exchange partner is 60). I have tried quitting a few times but she can be quite pushy about making appointments as she’s retired and has a lot of time on her hands. I’ve tried telling her I’m busy but she always ends up ringing me and pushing for a date so not wanting to be rude I give in. I’m not a good liar I guess. Especially in another language.

Last week I got Christophe to ring her and tell her I couldn’t come for a few weeks because of of the vacance bus schedule making it too inconvienient. She agreed but then rang back when I was alone and told me her husband would drive me home. Out of politeness I agreed even though I despise her husband and do not want to be in a car with him (he’s not dangerous or anything like that, just seems really strange).

The language exchange is a recent example of my inability to just say no, but there are some other people I find myself doing this with as well. There are only so many excuses one can muster before either cutting all correspondence or just saying ‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to spend time with you. I don’t like how I feel around you’.

I feel that if I don’t agree to things then I’m a bad person or that I’m just too critical and I should try to like others more. Maybe it’s also a fear of being alone if I’m too choosey with my company. Although, admittedly, I’d rather be alone than with bad company. I always feel more lonely in a group of people I cannot even begin to relate to in any shape or form, then when I’m alone.

For the most part, Christophe’s friends have grown on me quite a bit. The last few times we’ve been out with them I’ve had a good time. I don’t know whether they are nicer because they know me better, or it’s easier because I understand more, or that I’m just a happier version of myself these days, but overall I’m enjoying spending time with them these days. It makes me feel like less of a misanthropist at least.

Life is too short to spend it doing things you don’t like doing, seeing people you don’t like seeing, or displaying ugly lamps around the house.

One of my September New Year’s Resolutions will be:

“To stop doing things I do not like for the sake of being polite”

At least the paperwork is moving.

The lease is finally signed!

Just another week and a half before it’s bye bye to the crop fields!

L’eglise Notre-Dame de Metz

Often I have walked past the beautiful blue doors of L’eglise Notre-Dame in Metz but never gone inside as it always appeared from the outside as if it were closed. In fact it’s not closed, it just opens very strangely from a side door rather than a usual main entrance. When I finally took the opportunity to go inside, it was really quite surprising. Such a beautiful and seemingly undiscovered gem in the middle of Metz! L’eglise Notre-Dame is an incredibly old, very well preserved church that brought to my mind the aesthetics of Versailles. Surprisingly, both times I have been in, it has been virtually empty. The tourist office seems to have neglected to tell people about this beautiful church for some reason.

I tried taking photographs inside the church but unfortunately it was much too dark in there for them to turn out. Too bad as I’ve never been good at giving good descriptions! The church has a lot of paintings, a huge and beautiful organ, gorgeous tiled floors, and wonderful statues, in particular behind the alter a almost nymph like statue of Mary. It’s really nice that this small city is still offering up different surprises!

Notre-Dame Church, rue de la Chevre, was built between 1665 and 1741 by Jean de Vilers in the Jesuit style: a wide facade, narrowing in it’s higher part and topped by a decorated pediment. A decoration of intertwining arabesques softens the otherwise slightly austere fascade. It was damaged during the Revolution, and only the higher part of it remains. The stained glass windows were created by Marechal during the 19th century. This church retains the memory of an important moment in the life of the French Monarchy. After the illness and recovery at Metz of Louis the XVth in August 1744, during a Te Deum giving thanks, the canon Jauffret expressed the Messin’s love for the king, giving him the name of “Louis the Beloved”, which he kept for posterity. The two columns surrounding the potral of the presbytery on the left of the church come from the Roman amphitheater.

I just found out that the 129 year old hotel where Christophe and I had our wedding is going to undergo a 45 million dollar refurbishment, the inside is going to be completely gutted and as the developers said, it will be “completely unrecognizable”. This made me really sad. 129 years in Australian terms if very old and the hotel was beautiful as it was, a real historical landmark in Melbourne. Nothing ever seems to be preserved for long in Australia, with the exception of natural heritage rainforest areas and the like. I think in a decade or so Melbourne will just look exactly like Singapore…all skyscrapers and no history. I like the fact that France has taken so many measures to preserve it’s historical monuments and quarters.

I took this photograph last winter, as you can tell by the man’s clothing!