Tag: France

Life in France

He had what, where?

A colorful caleçon collection
A colorful caleçon collection

There are 3 regional newspapers that include Carcassonne in their coverage. This morning a headline that caught both of us by surprise included the line “du sh*t dans le caleçon” except the paper did not substitute an asterisk for the vowel. OK, then, what does that mean?

The story was about a driver who habitually ran through the toll gate on the highway leading into Spain without ever paying, 38 times alone in October. When the police arrested him he gave them four false names and was never able to provide a driver’s license so they added those charges to the primary one of avoiding the tolls. But what about that “stuff” in his underwear/pants (le caleçon)? Did they scare it out of him? Can you be arrested in France if they do?

Continue reading “He had what, where?”

Unknown's avatarBob
Life in France

No wonder we’re confused

Books to learn French
Books to learn French

This morning I was listening to a song where the lyrics included “I don’t want to be apart from you” which is clear enough to native English speakers, especially when you can see it in writing. As an exercise, I often try to translate in my head phrases that I hear. It went fine until I got to the word “from” which many of you will know in French is de that also means “of” plus at least half a dozen other words in English. Continue reading “No wonder we’re confused”

Unknown's avatarBob
Travel in France & beyond

Now you see us…

Watermill and fish market, Bayeux, France
Watermill and fish market, Bayeux, France

Did you ever see the movie The Forgotten or one of the similar stories where the main character grieves a dead relative but no one else seems to remember this person ever existing? Even the photographs of the family have a mysterious gap where someone’s smiling face might have been. That’s how I felt today when looking at Google maps. Continue reading “Now you see us…”

Unknown's avatarBob3 Comments
Life in France

The electric vampire

French electrical outlet
French electrical outlet

This morning I was in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee when I heard Bill talking. I knew that it was way too early for him to have telephoned anyone so naturally I was curious. When I walked back to the office he was there in front of the computer talking to it. What?? You may remember that a few weeks ago we got a new large laptop computer to replace a smaller one that was on its last legs plus our big desktop, neither of which were going to go with us to France. The new machine has Windows 10 with your own personal assistant called Cortana that understands spoken commands. (Yes, yes, Apple users, Siri was years ahead.)

When I asked Bill if he were talking to me he replied, “No, I was asking Cortana to turn on the computer and open up the email. I didn’t want to have to push a button.” Continue reading “The electric vampire”

Unknown's avatarBob2 Comments
Before leaving the US

Here, you need this

Bill bought me a Fitbit®. Do you think that he was trying to tell me something? Actually we’d been talking about wanting some way to track our activity, or lack of, since we anticipate walking a whole lot more than we do now once we move to Carcassonne. Considering that we won’t have a car it should be a relatively easy goal to achieve of the recommended 10,000 steps a day.

But just how far is that? It’s about 5 miles. I read that a sedentary person takes between 1,000 and 3,000 steps a day so you really do have to make a conscious effort to get up to make it up to the much higher level. If we make daily trips to the bakery, cafe, market, etc., and long walks along the Aude river and the Canal-du-Midi with Heather then we shouldn’t have any problem. Continue reading “Here, you need this”

Unknown's avatarBob