The situation this morning

One the radio a few minutes ago, a reporter said there are about 6,000 people who commute to work daily from Orléans to Paris and back. Normally, there are 10 trains in the morning, and as many coming back in the evening. This morning there were two.

Some pictures I took at the Arc de Triomphe in September.
This high-relief sculpture is called « Triomphe de 1810 ».

The reporter said a lot of people had arrived early at the train station in the north suburbs of Orléans to try to get a train. A lot of them had come by bicycle, thinking they might need their bikes in Paris if they got there.

Detail of « La Paix »

When I rode the train from Paris to Saint-Aignan one evening in September, the train made a stop at that station, which is called Les Aubrais. A group of about a dozen people, aged 25 to 40 I would say, were sitting together and engaged in lively conversation. They joked and laughed with each other, and were obviously really enjoying each others' company. Then they all got off the train together. They must have been some of the 6,000 people who live in Orléans, work in Paris, and commute by train.

« Départ des Volontaires en 1792 »
(also known as « La Marseillaise »)

Radio reports say there are no regional trains at all running today in many areas, including around Lyons and in Normandy. The A and B lines of the RER « n'ont pas démarré », according to France Inter radio — they didn't start up this morning. That means no RER trains at all are running between CDG airport in Roissy and central Paris, or on what used to be called the Ligne de Sceaux. Also, none are running across Paris east-west out to La Défense, where tens of thousands work, and to the eastern suburbs.

« La Résistance »

It's still early and details are just coming in. Car traffic around La Défense and on the expressways between Roissy and Paris is fairly normal, they said on the radio. I think a lot of people have decided not to drive today. A couple of years ago my mother was here and we went to Paris by car. It was a day when there was a big strike and the city turned out to be quiet and fairly empty, not choked with cars. We were able to drive all around and find parking with not a problem that day. You just never know.

A couple of cherubs

I just heard that trains are running on 10 metro lines in Paris, but in reduced numbers. When you think that hundreds of thousands of passengers ride the metro every day, you can imagine how crowded those few trains that are running will be.

The only TGV train of the morning from Marseilles to Paris left at 7:31 a.m., the radio says. It had exactly 27 passengers on it. I guess people who would otherwise have gone to Paris today changed their minds, given the transit situation in the capital.

« La Paix »

Meanwhile, Nicolas and Cécilia Sarkozy have started divorce proceedings. She went to court Monday night, they say, to talk to a family law judge. The judge went to see Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée Palace on Tuesday. If they go through with it, this will be the first time a French president has gotten a divorce while in office.

Detail of « La Résistance »

Years ago, President François Mitterrand, who was in office from 1981 to 1995, lived separately from his wife Danielle and had a long-term relationship and a child with another woman. Many in the press knew about the Mitterrands back then, but it was never made public. People's private lives are rigidly protected in France, even by the press. Or they were. The first the public knew about Mitterrand's second family was when his "illegitimate" daughter was seen among the other mourners at his funeral.

The Sarkozys seem to have chosen a less secretive way of doing things. Some would say they are being less hypocritical about their family life.

France will be France...

In other words, the labor unions have announced a big strike for tomorrow, Oct. 18. This will be the first test of France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, on the labor relations front. Negotiations have been going on for weeks, but the strike is still on. For commuters and travelers, tomorrow could turn out to be a very trying day, especially in and around Paris.

Fall dahlias at La Renaudière

For the first time since 1995, the eight labor unions that represent workers in the national train system (the SNCF) and the six unions that represent those in the Paris mass transit system (the RATP) support the strike tomorrow unanimously. The Minister of Transportation in Sarkozy's government has said there will probably be virtually no trains, metros, or buses running tomorrow. The strike will start tonight at 8:00 p.m. and end on Friday at 8:00 a.m. — unless it is extended.

Autumn chores: pruning an apple tree

The SNCF is asking people who need to travel by train to do so today or wait until Friday evening. Even after the strike ends, it takes a few hours to get the whole system up and running again. Local trains, like the ones that stop at Saint-Aignan on their way from Tours to Vierzon, will be hard hit. Authorities are predicting that only 50 of the scheduled 800 TGV trains will run on Thursday.

Fall colors in the vineyard

Why is the strike being called? It's because President Sarkozy wants to implement reforms in the transit workers' retirement pension system, including requiring workers to have put in 40 years of service to get full benefits rather than the 37½ years required today. Transit workers benefit from "special regimes" compared to other civil servants when it comes to retirement, and the government says it wants to get everybody on the same plan.

Meanwhile, there are likely to be sympathy strikes among teachers and utility and airport workers. One of the unspoken reasons the transit workers are calling this strike now is that another of the government's plans is to institute what is called a « service minimum » plan for strike days. In other words, unions will be required to keep a minimum number of trains, metros, and buses running even on strike days, so that people can get to work and otherwise move around the country. For some, such a plan goes against the whole right of workers to strike, making it impossible for them to express their displeasure effectively. But according to polls, 75% of the French think the service minimum is a good idea.

In Paris especially, and around the country, a lot of people who commute to work will just take the day off tomorrow. Others who can will walk to work, or drive — but there might be massive traffic jams, especially in the Paris region if too many people choose that option. The new "public bicycles" in Paris and other cities will probably be put to good use by people who need to move around the city faster than they could if they just walked.

More dahlias, the last of the season

There might be a party atmosphere in parts of Paris, where workers will get together to demonstrate against the pension reforms, and especially if the weather is nice. There were big strikes, mostly among students, when Walt and I were in Paris in April 2006. They were protesting the government's new employment programs. I posted pictures and commentary here. It might give you an idea of the atmosphere.

Autumn mushrooms growing big under an apple tree.
I looked them up and they don't appear to be edible.

Meanwhile, some in the press are saying that President Sarkozy's marriage is on the rocks. Already, during the election campaign last year, there was talk that they had split up. Then Cécilia Sarkozy came back and it seemed things were patched up. Recently, however, some thought she snubbed George and Laura Bush when the Sarkozys were on vacation in New Hampshire and they were invited to spend the day at Kennebunkport. He went, but she begged off. Now they are saying Cécilia has decided not to accompany President Sarkozy on an upcoming state visit to Morocco. Is she on the outs with her husband, or is she just trying to change the role traditionally played by French first ladies? Time will tell.

Another gratin with potatoes

I've never heard of Jansson's Temptation, but I'll look for recipes. Meanwhile, here's another classic French way to make potatoes au gratin. It's called Pommes Boulangère.

Instead of milk and cheese, you use broth and onions. Cut the potatoes into the same thin slices, and slice two or three onions. Make layers of potatoes and sliced onions in the oiled baking dish. Put a couple of bay leaves or some other herbs between the layers. Salt and pepper everything. Then barely cover the potatoes with hot broth: chicken, beef, or vegetable.

Fall scenes out in the vineyard

You can start it in the microwave or directly in the conventional oven. Let it cook for about an hour, lowering the heat as necessary so that it doesn't burn on the top but giving all the liquid a chance to evaporate. Actually, if there's a tiny bit left, tant mieux. The main thing is that the top layer needs to be golden brown.

Fall colors

Boulangère means the baker's wife. Why are these potatoes named after her? Because people didn't have ovens in their homes, and they would take their lunch dishes to the bakery to have them cooked in the hot oven after the day's bread finished baking. Or the baker's wife would cook her food this way. A lot of villages also used to have a community oven, called un four banal, which people could use to cook their roasts, casseroles, cakes, and pies — usually for a fee.

Wonder why these leaves are bright red,
while the others are yellow?

The weather here in Saint-Aignan is nice this week. It's fairly warm, sunny, and breezy. Good for drying the laundry on the clothesline outdoors, and good for doing gardening work. Walt is working on trimming the hedge around our yard, all 100 meters of it. I'm doing cleanup from all that clipping and starting to rip the plants out of the vegetable garden. It feels good.

In less than two weeks, I leave for my next trip to the U.S. I'll be spending three weeks in the Southeast, mostly in North Carolina. Hey, Miss Monet in San José, do you have any N.C. travel plans?

Les Gratins de pommes de terre

Yesterday I realized I had a bag of little red potatoes of the variety called Roseline (a variant of the Roseval type) that I needed to cook. They were big enough that they were easy to peel. I had cooked some of them before so I knew they were the firm, waxy, not-too-starchy kind of potatoes I needed to make what is sometimes called a Gratin Dauphinois.

A gratin is a dish that is cooked in the oven until it develops a nice golden crust on top. It's often topped with cheese, but not always. In the case of the Gratin Dauphinois, a standard French potato dish, the recipe comes from the Dauphiné area around Grenoble in the Alps, where milk and what we call Swiss cheeses — Gruyère, Emmental, Comté, and Beaufort — are plentiful. (Purists will tell you that you shouldn't put in any cheese at all or, if you do, call the dish a Gratin Savoyard.)

Peel and slice some potatoes. Grate some cheese.

To make a gratin like this, you take about a kilogram of potatoes, peel them, and wash them. Then cut them into pretty thin slices. The French recipes in books I have, depending on when they were published, say to cut slices of the thickness of a two-franc or five-franc coin. That might not help you much. What you want is slices that are thin but not paper-thin. You don't need to wash the slices, but you can if you want. Some people say not to wash them because the residual starch will thicken up the milk you are going to cook them in.

Layer potatoes in a baking dish and season with salt,
pepper, and nutmeg. Add some bay leaves if you want, and
then, optionally, put on a layer of grated Swiss-type cheese.

Rub an earthenware baking dish with a cut piece of garlic, or mash a small garlic clove and put it in the bottom of the pan with some melted butter or vegetable oil. Separately, put about three cups of milk on to simmer but don't let it boil. You can use skim or whole milk, or even half-and-half. Or a mixture of milk and cream. Start making layers of potatoes and (if using) cheese in the dish.

This just finished its first cooking in the microwave.

I used Comté cheese because it's one of my favorites but any Swiss-type cheese will work. Make a layer of potato slices, sprinkle salt, pepper, and a little grated nutmeg over it, and then put on a layer of grated cheese. Make another layer of potato slices, which you season the same way. Two layers is enough though you can make more. Don't yet put any cheese on the very top.

Add on the top layer of cheese before
baking the dish for an hour or more.

When the potatoes and cheese are layered in the dish, pour the hot milk into the pan. You should have just enough to cover the potatoes, so that the top slices are just barely covered. Cover the dish with a lid or with plastic wrap and put it in the microwave on medium for 20 minutes or so to give the cooking process a quick start.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC). Take the dish of potatoes out of the microwave, uncover it, and , if you want, layer on enough grated cheese to cover the top. Put the dish in the preheated oven and let it cook for at least 60 minutes, and preferably 90. Watch it and if the top starts to brown too much, keep lowering the oven temperature. Cover it with foil or a lid if necessary. You want the potatoes completely cooked, of course, and you want pretty much all of the liquid to evaporate.

Le Gratin Dauphinois (au fromage)

Be sure to let the dish rest outside the oven for 10 or 15 minutes before you eat it so that you don't burn your tongue. With it, have roast chicken, a steak, a pork or lamb chop, or just a green salad. Bread and wine are not optional.

La Renaudière en octobre

For this Sunday morning, here are just a few pictures of the weather and environment around Saint-Aignan in October. If you haven't been here, you'll be discovering it. If you have been here, I hope these pictures will bring back some good memories.

Callie starting her morning walk out into the vineyard

Just out our back gate, where all those apples are piling up, is where the paved road ends, giving way to a gravel tractor path that runs out into the vineyard. It joins up with another paved road about a mile out. That road is the Route Touristique du Vignoble de la Touraine. We walk our dog a couple of times a day out in the vineyard and along this gravel road.

Leaves on the vines along the gravel road are turning yellow

Here's another view, a little farther out, of the road that runs through the Renaudie vineyards. You can see that the leaves on the grapevines are starting to show their fall colors now. It's been foggy nearly every morning for a week or so now. The fog hangs in there until noontime, and then the sun finally breaks through. We've been able to get our garden work done on those sunny afternoons.

Le cabanon de jardin et ses quelques dahlias

Out near our back gate, we have a garden shed where we store the lawn mower, the rototiller, the weed-eater, and our wheelbarrows and other gardening tools. She shutters desperately need painting, but it didn't get done this year. Maybe next year. Any volunteers want to come and do the job? The door is a new one that we had hung after we got here in 2003.

One of the newer houses at La Renaudière — ours

Our hamlet, called La Renaudière, is made up of nine houses. Several of them are 200 to 250 years old. Others have been built over the past 50 years, since the neighborhood got electricity, telephones, and running water. Last year all our houses were hooked up to the village sewer system for the first time. We are located about two miles (3 km) from the center of our village and about the same distance from the center of the town of Saint-Aignan. Because the paved road ends here, we have almost no traffic except the neighbors' cars and the tractors of the vineyard owners.

A clump of mushrooms growing under our biggest apple tree

The average age of the people who live at La Renaudière is about 60. Only five of the nine houses here are lived in year-round. The other four are occupied only during the summer months. Three of these are owned by people who live in the Paris area, and one is owned by a family whose principal residence is Blois, 25 miles north of Saint-Aignan.

Callie the collie

Callie is the border collie that we adopted last May. She will be 8 months old in a few days. She looks just like her father, whose name is Vince. She's very playful and loves to chew on everything still. Walt thinks she is nearly full grown, but I think she will get bigger. I hope she will calm down over the winter and stop chewing on everything.

Buried under apples

Anybody feeling sad or sorry about our not getting many tomatoes out of our vegetable garden this past "summer" should re-focus those feelings on our over-abundance of apples. Around Saint-Aignan, from July through October, we are buried under piles of them. There are apple trees all around. We have five. Our neighbors across the street have at least that many. The other neighbors out back have a small orchard with half a dozen or more apple trees in it. We all pick some, but mostly the apples just fall to the ground and rot away.

Apples under the tree, mostly hidden in
the grass, as well as on the gravel path

In our yard, the biggest apple tree produces a ton of apples one year, and then far fewer the next year. This was a banner year, and all the more so because the weather was cool and rainy. The apples had a chance to get big and fat, and you could just sit out back and listen to them fall to the ground with a loud thud all day long. Well, you could sit out back when it wasn't raining, which was just once in a while.

Callie offering, I thought, to help me pick
up the apples that had fallen on the path

I've said it before: Walt made quarts of applesauce last year, and I made quarts of apple jelly. We are still working on consuming all that. Walt has "requested" that I not make any more jelly, jam, or preserves. After the 10 kilos of peaches we turned into preserves in 2005, the 10 or more kilos of apples I made into jelly in 2006, and the 20 kilos or so of plums I made into jam in 2006 and 2007, our pantry runneth over. Oh, did I forget the six quarts of quince jelly I made in 2004?

Callie got bored pretty fast, so I had to do the work by myself.

I think I've discovered a good way to work on the stock of applesauce. It will be good to eat with the boudin noir antillais that Madame Doudouille sells at the Saint-Aignan market on Saturday mornings. Boudin noir is black pudding, or blood sausage, and Walt thought he didn't like it until he tried the antillais, or Caribbean, version. It's hot and spicy. And applesauce will be the ideal side dish to serve with it.

Callie shows up at the end and says: "What did you do with
all my apples?" She has been eating at least one apple a day.

And there are always applesauce cakes. Those are good too, especially during the winter when fresh fruit isn't that good.

I hope we have a good year for cherries and plums again next year, but not if it means having weeks rainy weather. We are due for a dry, hot summer. But first we have to get through the winter. Nobody knows whether this winter will be cold and snowy, like 2005-06, or mild and damp, like 2006-07. I'm kind of hoping for cold and snowy, because that might bring us a dry, hot summer in 2008. Cross your fingers.

These are the apples we picked up and dumped in a community
compost pile outside our back gate. The others we picked up are in
a second, private compost pile behind our garden shed.

I said yesterday that we had recently picked up between 15 and 20 wheelbarrow-loads of apples for composting. Well, I picked up and hauled away another five wheelbarrow-loads today. Those were just the ones that had fallen on the rocky allée that runs down the middle of the back yard. Not only do we have more apples than we can possible eat, but we have more than our own compost pile can accommodate.

A clean path, with just the garden hoses to
be brought in before the first freeze

Before yesterday, we had already picked all the apples that were hidden in the too-tall grass growing right under the apple trees. So Walt was finally able to mow the grass today. Any other apples that fall from here on out will just rot on the ground over the winter.

More Notre-Dame pictures

In two weeks, I'll be going back to Paris again. This time, Paris will be a stopover on my way to the U.S. That weekend, I'll fly to Atlanta with a friend and spend a few days visiting some other friends (Evelyn and her husband) who live in northern Alabama. Then I'll fly on to the North Carolina coast for nearly three weeks with my family there, returning to France just before Thanksgiving.

Notre-Dame and its flying buttresses

In Paris, I'm planning to have dinner with some people I have never met before. One of them participates in an Internet forum I spend time on. They are a couple from California who have actually met some people that I do know personally, and given my friends' recommendations I'm sure I will have a good time.

Candles burning at Notre-Dame

Right now I'm exchanging e-mails with the couple from California — they are already in Paris. We are trying to decide where to have dinner, and leaning toward a place called Aux Lyonnais near the Paris Stock Exchange, in the Rue Saint-Marc. It's a restaurant that is part of the Alain Ducasse group. It doesn't appear to be too expensive, and the food should be excellent.

A stained-glass window in Notre-Dame cathedral

Over the past few years, Walt and I have met quite a few people via the Internet. Some are people who've contacted me because of this blog for one reason or another, but most are participants in Internet discussion forums where Americans and British people who ofen travel to (or who live in) France exchange information and opinions.

I can't identify all these figures carved into the façade of Notre-
Dame, but I think the one holding his own head must be Saint Denis.
He is said to have walked north several miles after being beheaded,
and a great church was built where he finally dropped,
just north of Paris.

For the past few weeks, I've felt a little like Saint Denis myself. My head, even if still on my shoulders, was not screwed on straight because of the bout of bronchitis I lived through. I'm better now. Yesterday Walt and I picked up apples again — about eight wheelbarrow-loads. That makes at least 15 wheelbarrow-loads we have picked up over the past week, and maybe 20. Nearly all the apples go directly into the compost pile.

A row of kings carved into the façade at Notre-Dame

People have suggested that we sell all these apples, or at least give them away. The problem is, everybody here seems to have several apple trees. We have five of them, and all our neighbors have at least as many. The fact is, the apples we have the most of, since they grow on our largest apple tree, are not that good to eat. We can make good applesauce with them, and I've made very good apple jelly out of them, but we already have more applesauce in the freezer and more apple jelly in the pantry than we know what to do with.

Unidentified figure at Notre-Dame

Now that the apples are cleaned up, Walt can mow the grass one last time before wintertime weather sets in. Over the next two weeks before I leave for my trip to the U.S., we still have to get the vegetable garden cleaned up, which means pulling out all the tomato, eggplant, pepper, and zucchini plants and tilling up the soil with the rototiller. Then we'll be in good shape for next year's gardening season. We are hoping that next year's garden will be more productive than this year's was.

The center of Paris

Did you know that they've started uncovering the Tour Saint-Jacques again? It's been covered in scaffolding and big white tarps for what seems like years. Last month, I noticed that the top of the tower is again visible.

The Tour Saint-Jacques near the Place du Châtelet

There's nothing nicer to do on a sunny warm afternoon than walk along the quais de la Seine in the middle of Paris, enjoying the displays of old books and posters put out by the bouquinistes as well as views of the river and the surrounding monuments, neighborhoods, and streets.

Bouquinistes along the Seine

The booksellers have not just old books and magazines, but also posters, maps, and prints of all kinds. They sell sheet music and even little Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame souvenir trinkets.

An old map of Paris, showing the main monuments...

...and sheet music for an old wedding ditty

The word gai in French is used in several contexts that would be unusual in English. A individual who has a sunny disposition is called « gai ». Wine can make you gai. Somebody who is a "happy drunk" is said to have le vin gai, as opposed to le vin triste.

And gai ! is used as an interjection, as in the title of the song « Gai-gai, marions-nous ». Allons, gai ! means something like, "Come on, get happy!" As in the old song:

Forget your troubles come on get happy
You better chase all your cares away
Sing Hallelujah come on get happy
Get ready for the judgement day

The sun is shining come on get happy
The Lord is waiting to take your hand
Shout Hallelujah come on get happy
We're going to the Promised Land

Window shutters

I like the shuttered windows of Paris and of France in general. I especially like the white shutters you see on the Ile Saint-Louis.

South-facing apartments on the Ile Saint-Louis

When I see these fantastic apartments with big terraces and windows overlooking the Seine, I try to imagine who might live in them. Maybe this one belongs to the Pompidou family — Mme Claude Pompidou, widow of the late French president Georges P., lived for decades on the island. Maybe the one with the big white awning was her apartment. She passed away recently at the age of 94.

Notre-Dame de Paris

Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris

Notre-Dame was our last stop in Paris on September 21. Well, not really — we also went to a big shopping center at the Place d'Italie on our way back to our hotel. Notre-Dame was our last sightseeing stop, along with a walk down the main street on the Ile Saint-Louis.

Sunlit artwork in one of the side chapels

I've been trying to remember the last time I actually went into Notre-Dame. It might have been in 1988, when Walt and I spent a week in Paris after having gone six years without any trips to France at all. One of the things we did on that trip was to go up to the top of the cathredral towers, for the views. Again, I don't know if I had ever done that before, and I know I haven't been up there since then.

The south-facing rose window

Maybe I went into Notre-Dame in 1997 when I was in Paris with my mother and my niece, but I can't remember. This time, my sister decided to sit this one out. I was carrying a shoulder bag with our jackets (we didn't need to wear them) and some of our purchases in it, and you aren't allowed to take bags like that into the church. So Joanna volunteered to sit outside in the nice weather and keep the bag so that Janice and I could go into Notre-Dame.

Glass above the chancel

It was crowded but not as crowded as I thought it might be. I believe it is the most-visited tourist sight in Paris, ahead of the Eiffel Tower. I read that somewhere. There's usually a line to get through the front doors, but it moved pretty fast on this Friday afternoon. There is a separate line for people who want to climb up into the towers. It doesn't move fast, and we didn't do that. We had been up to the top of the Eiffel Tower earlier in the day, after all.

One of the best places for good views of the center of Paris used to be the rooftop café-restaurant of the Samaritaine department store at the north end of the Pont Neuf. Unfortunately, the Samaritaine has been closed for a year or two now. Inspectors said that the building itself, an Art Nouveau masterpiece built in the early 20th century, was unsafe and ordered it closed. I haven't heard whether work to reinforce and refurbish it is under way. It's a real shame. It was a great store, and it had a great observation deck.

Notre-Dame cathedral much, much older, of course. It was built in the 12th and 13th centuries. It has been restored and refurbished many times over the centuries — most notably by Viollet-le-Duc in the mid-1800s — and restoration work continues today. The building itself is described in the Michelin green guide as "one of the supreme masterpieces of French art," and it can accommodate a congregation of 9,000. In the 1970s, the building itself was cleaned, removing a layer of black grime and soot that had built up over the decades and centuries and giving it its current fresh look.