French Pervs and Renaissance Faires

Have you ever had something happen that made you wonder "what the heck just happened there?" Last Saturday was the annual Rennaisance Festival in "Old Lyon." It was wonderful to see all the gorgeous costumes, and everyone was speaking French, a European language, so it all seemed a bit more authentic than the ones we have at home. Okay, maybe not more "authentic" but at least more "exotic." There was music in the streets, food stands, a King and Queen holding court, and bands parading about town as locals and tourists alike sat at outdoor restaurants enjoying the good food, the better wine, the gorgeous sun, and the goings on. It really was a lovely day. We felt like we had been transfered to a different world as we ate lunch on our little benchs and table on a cobble stone-street and an "old Scottish couple" ambled by having a very loud marital quarrel, with on-lookers (following close behind gathering juicy tidbits for the next morning's gossip at the wash bins) muttering and cheering as the old man or woman each dealt some pretty impressive verbal blows.



After our lunchtime entertainment, we walked the streets licking gelato off of cones and our fingers, and shopped a bit in boutiques all sporting their medieval wares. I was almost inspired to finally buy myself a medieval costume for future events, but decide not too, again.



As we headed home, Dave discovered the "game court" where jesters and bar men hosted old-fashioned games on wooden board with stone and metal pieces. Cool, Dave exclaimed. A kid could actually get hurt with these pieces! He couldn't resist watching the games and joining in the cheering as young children struggled to win little gold pieces for their toil. About a half hour in, I realized I had completely lost Dave for the afternoon, so I decide to sit on a bench and read a book I had handily carried with me in my purse. I put on my big straw hat to protect me from the sun and headed to a bench near the "bowling" sandbox. On the way, I passed a group of older Frenchmen all dressed in their Renaissance finery, and smiled at their fabulous costumes. However, I realized that was a mistake immediately as one of the men stared and grinned back. Oops!! I blew it again! I REALLY REALLY need to learn to not smile at Frenchmen!

To try to recover, I sat on the bench, and stared straight down at my book, so that all anyone could see on that bench was basically a big straw hat and blue jean. Okay, I felt safe now. But within minutes some man was lifting my hat and fire hosing me with French exclamations. He wasn't drunk, but he had an accent so I couldn't understand a word he was saying. But he was very animatedly exclaiming something. As I sat there baffled, I thought this couldn’t be happening. Old men are supposed to be safe. What are they doing?! One of the costumed men sat very close to me, put his arm around me and had a friend take a picture. This was my "what the heck just happened there" moment. How many times do you go to a fair NOT dressed in costume and have people who ARE in costume want to take a picture with YOU? Isn't that backwards? But now all the men were getting into it. They sat around me laughing and talking and taking tons of pictures with this woman in a blue t-shirt and jeans. What the hell?!!!! Are these guys crazy?

Finally, one of the men put his arm out gallantly and asked if he could show me around the fair. I pointed at Dave and told them my husband would show me around. As soon as they realized I had a husband, they sobered up. "Au revoir Madame!" they exclaimed, now on their most formal behavior. "Bon Journee!" And they slipped out into the crowd. What the hell?! Now that I have a husband they are more respectful? They couldn't have been that way before? Didn't they notice the huge fake ring on my finger? FRENCHMEN!!!! No matter what age they are, they are all just PERVS!

Our new new place

We still had not found a good apartment and were beginning to get discouraged. We had seen some very nice places but they were not going to be empty for another month or so. After one experience where the owner changed her mind and decided not to move out, I was not going to risk somebody backing out again and us losing a couple of months. Then, on Thursday morning of the week we had pledged we were going to make a decision or *else*, we made a mistake and visited a place with an agent. I called the agent and asked if we had to pay before we saw the place? No, we only pay if we choose it. Oh well, it can't hurt to look, right? The place turned out to be gorgeous, right in the heart of a great downtown neighboorhood. It reminded me of Versailles with very high ceilings, heavy woodwork, parquet floors, and the eerie feeling that all the furniture had been stolen. It was also double the size of our current place and at $1400 a month we'd save $600 each month. The downsides were the agent fee of $1500, the owners lived in Italy, and it needed a little work and a little furnishing. So, despite the fee we basically told the agent we wanted it and would decide for sure by the weekend.



The next day we looked at a place I had earlier scratched because it was 4'th floor/no elevator. However it appeared to be in a great location, so Monica asked that I put it back on the list. So, one final place to look at and we're done. It turned out to be in an even better location than yesterday's place! It was also only $800 a month and no fee. That would leave more money for travelling... The owners spoke English and were really helpful and local. It even had a great (but tiny) layout. Basically, it was perfect except for the stairs. Now we were in the reverse position - we couldn't decide between two great places! We spent the weekend saying "I wish we hadn't seen that one place. Then the choice would be easy."



In the end, we decided on the Versailles place (as you might have guessed from the pictures). Laurent from work helped us drive all our stuff over. My dad and stepmom arrived the next night and they actually saw both places since we spent the last night at the old place (with a sofabed) and then Eloise at work loaned us a mattress for the new place. It was really nice having French-speaking T+T with us since they could help Monica during the day with the apartment boot sequence. Fortunately, the Lyonnaise are very nice and although everything gets messed up, they expect that (perhaps it's an integral part of the massive social employment system and the fact the nobody can ever be fired) and cheerfully fix the mistakes others made. Generally we figure everything takes two tries and one level of escalation on average. But to our surprise, our 3-in-1 internet/TV/phone installation which we dreaded was going to be torture turned out fine on the first try! The good-looking young guy sent over to drill and string cable never stopped bouncing up and down and had the thickest country accent ever. It was like trying to understand a heavy Irish accent. Thea's French is the best so he ended up talking to her the most. She struggled, but she was grinning from ear to ear the whole time - he was just so cute.



It's interesting seeing how these old places keep up. There are fireplaces in every room for heat originally I guess. These have been superceded by "modern" radiators and pipes which run along the baseboards, sometimes looping up to the ceiling to get around a door. Our cable guy ran the wiring outside the walls. Well, I guess for reliability it is better to be either really new and have everything in the walls done right or really old and have everything outside the walls where you can service it. Speaking of wiring. I don't know how many times I have passed this statue before I caught it spewing mist from the horse's nostrils on the hour! The statue looks super old (and it is humongous), but that has to be a modern addition!

Our little place

When we first planned our trip out here we figured we'd first stay at a residence-hotel while we looked for a place to stay. However, it can be pretty tempting to just stay where you are when the place comes with maid-service, towels, internet, etc. While in San Jose I had asked about rents in Lyon and people said about $800 for a T1-T2. What's a T1? Nobody is sure, but it comes with 1 or 2 bedrooms. It took 2 months of living here to find someone who knew what the difference was between T1 and F1 - I just knew the F place was bigger. Turns out we were staying in a T1 - a one bedroom with attached kitchenette (as opposed to the F series with a separate kitchen - aha!). To this day nobody has explained what the T or F stands for. I figured out the T1bis is a studio - some are only 12 square meters. Well at $2000 a month we knew we could probably find someplace cheaper if we had the time to look. Plus, we also knew we wanted to be in the center of the old city and not on the edge.

Our initial poking around determined that we had, in fact, found the cheapest residence-hotel. In fact it cost triple to get one in the center or even off in the boondocks in an area called cité-international. This area we had visited when we went to an American club meeting. It's a whole bunch of shiny Hilton's and antiseptic shops I guess designed to look like anything BUT France. So, triple the price, far from everything, and not at all French... I think we'll pass! Our place is really cute. We might have ended up staying in our 35 m^2 place forever, but after the internet failed to work reliably for 3 months and then the elevator stopped working (we were on the 7'th floor) we got a little more motivated to look for someplace else.



Since I'm what my family calls "work impaired," meaning I have this pesky thing called a job that takes up my day, Monica had to do most of the work at first. She started with English sites and American owners. We found 2 places that were tantalizing - huge (3 bedrooms), located in fashionable neighborhoods, furnished, and cheaper than our current place. But things didn't work out with either one and we realized we were going to be forced to use French systems and make French phone calls.

Our first attempt was French websites. The ads were basically lifted from print including many mysterious abbreviations. I wrote a form letter email and we sent it out to tons of people. Monica called me at work the next day to see if our week was now filled with appointments to see apartments. "What do you mean?" I responded, "NOBODY has replied." We're not in Silicon Valley anymore it seems. Slowly we got responses from people with the weirdest requests like they wanted to rent their place for April, June-October, and December. Huh? We're supposed to move out in between? Soon I had notes on around 100 places which I would update as we got an occasional email or phone call or sometimes even a chance to visit. A lot of places listed a month's rent as "Hono." Eloïse at the office told me that is the agent fee, so we should avoid those. Well that was most of them! We called one woman who had several nice listings, 2 of which were definite possibilities and she had no Hono, just $200 FA (whatever that is).



We arrived at her office with our list and asked if we could see the 3 places we had circled. First, she had us fill out a form which was basically a paper version of our search criteria. We had listed 2 neighborhoods and a price range and sure enough after she had entered the data and printed the search results our places were there. So, can we go SEE one of them now? Nope, we have to pay the $200 fee before we can even look! What!? "Yes, all these other listings have the same thing, and my fee is the lowest." She was right, but we both get that "I am about to become a sucker" feeling. Well, we haven't had much luck on our own and if this works out we'll be happy and the other fees are indeed higher... So, although it's probably a mistake we pay. OK, she prints our list again - this time with names and phone numbers. She suggests we call our #3 choice first as he speaks some English (she does not). He's a nice old man and asks how long we are staying. He's fine with us leaving at year's end, in fact, he has another apartment we might like too. Hello? Why don't these people advertise? We're supposed to find these by word of mouth or something? Ok, we can come by tonight. After hanging up, our helpful agent crosses off our #1 and #2 choices - What?! Noooo! "Oh, this woman only wants tenants for longer than 1 year." Gee, I wish we'd known that before we paid our money! Her service now complete we are free to go and use our code on the website to access our list in the future. Just call the owners directly. Buh bye! Gee, what great service! Think it couldn't get worse? Later I went to the site to browse for more listings and to see what they have in the 6'th district. I click on search and there is the list we already have, but to change our search fields we have to "contact your local agent during business hours." That's ridiculous, but I call her the next day and ask if she can just add the 6'th and raise our top price a little. No, she can't do it on the phone. I have to fax her my request. Groan! "But be sure this is what you want because you can only change 3 times." Oh my god! I am going to be so glad to see these old fashioned companies put out of business by the web! When I told my dad and stepmom this story, they just smiled as sympathetic victims (they too lived in France for a while) "That is just so typically French!"

A friend in Monica's French class paid over $800 to an agency to find an apartment and they haven't had any luck (or maybe they haven't tried very hard?). Maybe we were lucky to escape with only $200 lost.



We had just about given up hope of finding a good place - we had lots of OK places - when our luck had a sudden reversal... I'll cover that next time. Included in this blog are pictures of our first place. It has a kitchen/living area and bathroom downstairs with a sofabed and upstairs is our bedroom and office area with a little balcony outside. Monica was so proud that we managed to fit our entire lives into this little place.

In the meantime, here's a picture of an outdoor cafe by us