Did you know...?

You can extend the life of an opened bottle of champagne in the fridge if you place a metal teaspoon into the bottle (handle inside and spoon sticking out).  A good amount bubbliness lasts for a day or two; however,  a much better recommendation is to finish the champagne when you open it.

Cheers!

Tired

I realized the other day that my crankiness was caused by something more than being awakened at 6:30 AM by our hostess rummaging and banging around in the room next door.  I'm tired.  I'm not just talking about the kind of fatigue that comes from doing manual labor and struggling to put together comprehensible French sentences at the dinner table.  I'm deeply tired...tired of searching; tired of living in other people's homes and laboring for their benefit; tired of eating when and what my host chooses; tired of being managed by people who have no business being managers; tired of living without a personal space or boundaries; tired of sharing the very private lives of people who we wouldn't necessarily choose as friends, much less roommates and tired of starting projects that we'll never see to fruition and starting plants we'll never see growing. Ok, so it's not  the kind of stress - kids, work (or lack of it), mortgage, finances, etc - that most people have, but even so, I think we still deserve the opportunity to vent once in a while.

Yet, despite our complaints, we are still convinced that volunteering through HelpX is still the best way for us to reach our goal.  So though our personalities (especially mine) may not be particularly well suited to living communally and having little control over our daily lives, we persevere.

Fortunately, we are (cautiously) optimistic about finding a (predominantly) perfect place here in France.  There are countless, charming little towns and plenty of opportunities to find out-of-the-way spots with land and a house (though it may be in ruins).  Being in France has made us aware (by contrast to Spain) how much we missed trees and green and there seems to be no problem finding a place with lots of both.  It doesn't hurt either that Spring has arrived and with it, a profusion of daffodils, wild flowers and blossoming trees...so we keep on finding reasons to smile.

En France avec beaucoup de stress

A terrifically stressful journey from the Netherlands ended successfully yesterday afternoon with our arrival in Southern France at our first French HelpX host. We left Michiel's dad's house in the darkness of early morning but I hadn't really factored in enough time to de-ice the car so poor papa had to race to get us to the train station in time.

We made it, but the high speed train to Paris had so many mechanical and personnel delays that we arrived one hour and 15 minutes late and missed our connecting train. The Thalys train company was very helpful by apologizing profusely and announcing in three languages that we could get some reimbursement and assistance in the station. The train representative stamped our onward train tickets with "authorization" to change trains to one leaving in a half an hour from a different train station.

We quickly navigated the ridiculously chaotic metro area and took a long journey across town to the Montparnasse Station. With just minutes to spare, we ran through the station, found our train and hopped on. Next hurdle - explaining to the conductor why we had no reservation for the TGV (high speed (read SUPER expensive) train) we were riding on and why he should honor the cheap tickets we had purchased for a slow train. Perhaps he took pity on us or perhaps (more likely) it was just too much hassle for him. Greatly relieved, we settled in for our 5 hour ride towards Toulouse.

The day's series of adrenaline rushes had completely worn us out, but we had to do our best to greet our hostess cheerfully. We got off to a great start with a trip to the supermarket where she purchased everything we desired (we were very modest) and we got a chance to see that even in a fairly small village, the supermarket had a good variety of ethnic food ingredients (at least Mexican, Chinese and Italian) and peanut butter (well...if you consider Skippy peanut butter). The real treat was the mind boggling selection and quantity of wine. It's a good first impression!!

Emigration Fair

Back in Holland, we attended the annual emigration fair.  Such an event sounds a little strange, but the Dutch love to travel and so many decide to leave their little country for good, that there´s always a big attendance.  

We were already planning on going to mid-southern France next but thought we might take a peek at what other countries had on offer.  The exhibition halls were full of stalls representing various countries, housing developments, moving companies, insurances and other services.  We had been warned to watch out for the Finns.  Michiel´s sister told us that in the past, they were so eager to have Dutch people re-populate the emptying small villages that if you passed by their stall, they´d nearly grab you and pull you in for a conversation.  This year, the torch had apparently been handed over to the Swedes, who stepped into the aisle, looked Michiel in the face and said "would you like to live in Sweden?"  We escaped quickly.  I´m sure Sweden is beautiful but we are looking for a place with a climate less like Alaska´s.

If that´s the case, why did we stop in at the Norwegian stall?  Was it because we´ve been watching a silly reality program with famous Dutch and Flemish TV stars competing against each other to reach 71 degrees latitude in Norway?  Well....not really....but we DO love Alaska and really miss the nature, the long summer days, the wilderness and the space.  We also have a feeling that in terms of culture and mentality, the Norwegians are probably more of what we´re looking for than small-town Frenchmen or Spaniards.  But to choose to live in one of the most expensive countries in the world and learn a difficult language that is spoken by only 5 million people and has NO official spoken form (meaning everyone speaks a local dialect) is a little nuts.  However, it was hard to deny the very upbeat, energetic young Dutch woman staffing the stall, whose sole job is to encourage and assist Dutch people in moving to and getting started in a region of Norway called Telemark (where that type of skiing originates).  To make our resistance even weaker, she enticed us with a seemingly perfect opportunity - running an operational hostel with a view to increasing appeal to foreigners and adding guided tours and other extras.  It sounded right up our alley.  Sadly, the business owner was already in discussions with 2 other couples who had started to learn Norwegian.  Easy come - easy go.

Elsewhere at the fair, the Massif Central area of France was very well represented and had an impressive offer for people looking to relocate there.  They have a dedicated English-speaking representative who can assist matching up businesses for sale with appropriate buyers.  They also offer free lodging and financial assistance to people who are coming to the region to seriously look for homes or businesses to buy.  We took copies of the abundant literature available on the region and noted down web addresses, etc. so that when we head off to our first host in France, we´ll know what´s available and where we should focus our energies.