Tenez!

The French adore tennis! In fact, the word tennis derives from the word Tenez! which, in the early days of the game, is what the server would call out before starting up the point. In French, it means, loosely, "Take heed!" or "Take that!" This passion for tennis goes back a thousand years when monks in France invented the game of jeu de paume. The aristocratic children sent to monasteries for schooling quickly discovered the fun of the game.

By the 1300s, the ordinary man, and woman, had taken to jeu de paume.

The game proved to be so popular, and disruptive, that in June of 1397, the Provost of Paris banned the playing of jeu de paume every day except Sunday to stop the tradespeople and other commoners from abandoning their obligations on weekdays which was very "prejudicial to good order. "

The other day, during a tournament in Cannes, we got a taste of the unruly behavior, the abandonment of manners, inspired by passion for the game.

The match was scheduled for 3:00 on a Wednesday. I navigated through Le Cannet and the windy streets of Cannes to find the Montfluery Tennis Club, flanked by flowering bushes, hills and palm trees, just in time to see Luke (in red) warming up for his match.

There were two benches, separated by thick brush, next to the court for spectators. A crowd had assembled to cheer on Luke's opponent -- the mother and father (who spent a lot of time smoking and French kissing); an older woman, perhaps an aunt; and a collection of brothers, friends, or cousins. I took a seat on the other side of the bushes after a polite nod. A couple of Luke's buddies from ISP soon joined me, including Igor, a young tennis player from Ukraine. In the U.S., you're not allowed to coach, jeer, taunt, or otherwise interfere with the play of game. [Robyn and I have taken a German father to task for even gesturing to his son during a match.] Apparently, the same rules apply in France, but, according to Igor, no one seems to mind them.

During crossovers between games, the father on the other side of bush had no qualms about crouching down next to his son to give him pointers on this game. And often when a ball was called out, the entire crowd of spectators joined in the following discussion as to the rightness of the call. [The unruly mob pictured below.]

Igor twice shamed Luke's opponent into revoking a bad ball call, and, to compete with the crowd screaming for their player, he continually shouted encouragement at Luke, even if a bit inappropriately on occasion. ("Come on, Luke! This guy's gonna have a mental breakdown soon." This provoked the boy's father to shout back over the bush, in English, "You shut up!")

Luke mostly kept score in French, threw out an Allez! here and there, but the novelty of his being a native English speaker roiled the gathered crowd. After winning a long, challenging rally, Luke shouted, "Come on!"bringing on mocking shouts of "Cahm awn! Cahn awn!" from the boys. They even jeered when Luke missed a ball, although at one point, they became strangely silent.

Luke lost the match (6-7; 6-1; 4-6), but he managed -- for the most part-- to stay cool and focused, despite the circus atmosphere around him.

During the car ride home he said, sheepishly, 'I did something I shouldn't have done on the court today." "Did you call a ball out that should've been called in?" I asked. "No, but when those boys were laughing at me, I flipped them the bird." All right then... that might account for their sudden silence. I didn't have the heart to lecture Luke on court side protocol -- at least not then and there. And his action does give new meaning to the word -- Tenez, indeed!

Valbonne: Our new Bethesda

We've dubbed the village of Valbonne our new Bethesda: less than ten minutes from our house; good shops for clothes, ice cream, books; plenty of street vendors, artists and performers; and places to dine en plein air.
There's a scene in the movie French Kiss, filmed in Valbonne, where Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan make their way down a narrow cobblestone street and she exclaims "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!" That pretty much sums up the town.

Valbonne owes its unique charm to two different orders of monks -- the Chalaisians and the Lerins. The monks from Chalais built an Abby in the Valis Bona in 1199 to have a southern base for their flocks of sheep during the winter months. They expanded rigorously throughout the Dauphine region and Provence, choosing communities where they were "assured supplies of cereal, olive oil and wine" while they tended to the sheep.

But their "religious fervor, saintliness and courage" weren't enough to maintain their far flung empire, and the order disbanded by the beginning of the 14th century. (Perhaps they assured themselves of too much wine?)

By the end of the Middle Ages, war, drought and plague devastated the area. In 1519, the head of the Lerins Abby (on an island just off the coast near Cannes) ordered the monks there to build a village next to the old Abby to repopulate the area. They designed the town in a grid pattern around a square that's now the Place des Arcades, the vibrant heart of the town.

Valbonne is famous for its Friday Market where the streets fill up with carts overflowing with fruits, vegetables, flowers, shoes, carpets, and a variety of saucisson flavors that can make a grown man cry.

Valbonne celebrates the Fete de la St. Blaise, de rasin et des produits du terrior with music, parades, markets and wine from the rare Servan grape in late January of each year. We'll be sure to lift a glass to the Chalaisian monks. And to all of our friends in and around the real Bethesda.

A la Rentree! (The real adventure begins...)

When we lived in Paris, we experienced  our first "Rentree," when summer ends and regular life takes over;  when the rhythms of work and school dictate daily routines again, and the buoyant days of vacation give way to the realism of shopping, cooking, and meeting deadlines. 

 In Paris, it meant a flood of returning holiday-makers, the re-opening of shops and restaurants, and the start of schools.  We wondered what it would mean down here along the Riviera where so many French, German, Dutch and Russian families spend the month of August on vacation. 

In Mougins, at least, it turns out that they celebrate with a Fete de la Rentree!   We just happened to stroll into the old town for dinner with Suzanne and Ken and Sabine as the Fete was winding down, but the restaurants on the main square were filled with revelers, and the entire town was even more festive than usual.   

Despite the celebrations, real life sets in on the Cote d'Azur as it does elsewhere,  with a diminished population along the Croisette in Cannes and a marked increase of cars heading from Valbonne to Sophia-Antipolis in the mornings.   For us, la Rentree marks the start of real life here, too.   Earlier in the summer six-year-old Jessie asked, "Do you think adventures are wonderful?"  "Of course!" I replied, in full-on cheerful aunt mode.  "Adventures are always wonderful."    But now I'm starting to appreciate the complexity of Jessie's questions.  

After all, in one of the most fanciful adventure stories ever written, the heroine has to deal with a fall down a rabbit hole; the inability to control her own body; a series of rude & inhospitable creatures; and a Queen who wants to behead her. Wonderful?  Maybe not, even if the events do take place in Wonderland.     

Our adventure - which takes place in a wonderland of sorts -- entails  immersing ourselves in French life, not always an easy task for foreigners.  We tried to set up a bank account.   Jeff kindly agreed to spare me the tedium of paperwork by spending the first hour alone with Monsieur Le Banker.  But when I returned, ostensibly to counter-sign documents, the banker informed me gravely,  "I have many, many questions, Madame, and it is always very difficult to open a bank account.  Even for French people."  We both sighed.  And decided to put off the paperwork until another day.  After all, we had visitors arriving, and Monsieur had to prepare for his upcoming two-week holiday. 

Being a part of  Luke's school/ tennis academy promises to be an adventure, too.   We learned a few days ago that the students begin the school year with a mandatory two-day "initiation" camping trip.       

After overcoming our initial resistance, we rushed out to buy the requisite sac de couchage, torche, etc. and tried to find out a few details like where they would be going and when they'd return.  On Sunday, we learned that the kids would embark on a 25 K "run 'n bike," sleep in the woods and then spend today careening down the Verdon Gorge.   An Australian woman, whose son is another one of the few native English speakers, confided in me, "The French don't have the same sense of looking after children that we do.   Last year they lost two children in the woods for a few hours."   So while Luke runs, camps and rafts down the Verdon River,  I take a leap of faith... that they'll all make it back, safe & sound, at the alloted hour; that this will have been an exciting and positive experience; and that this particular adventure will turn out to be wonderful. 

P.S.      

The boy returns!   In fact, his group did get lost in the woods and ended up running/biking for an additional 15 K, making for a total of 40 K...  but he says it was an awesome, once-in-a-lifetime experience.   What more could we ask?   

Our House!

After weeks of traveling, we arrived at the villa perched on a hill that will be our home for the next eleven months.  When we initially went to the house to meet our landlady, my first thought was that it was too isolated.  For the past seven years, we've lived in sidewalk neighborhoods where the houses are close together and the people who live next to you help sustain you whether it's to borrow a cup of sugar, go for a dog walk, play tennis, read about the Civil War, or join for a late night glass of wine.   Or produce a documentary, for that matter.  

But the house has its charms, to be sure.   All of the villas here were designed by a French architect who believes that while the floors of a house can be level (lucky for us), "the rest must be movement."   

The houses remind us a bit of Vienna's Hundertwasser.  The architect claims that his staircases are designed so that you can run up and down them all day.  We haven't tried that yet, but Luke and I, with Charlie, have run up and down the terraced garden behind the house where there are fig trees, lavender bushes and a variety of flowers that I can't name yet.  

 There is very little division between inside and outside, thanks to the warm, sunny days and the gardens that were designed as additional living space.  And we're all loving the pool. In DC, we frequently bemoan that it's usually too hot or too cold or too buggy to spend a lot of time in our own beautifully designed garden.  Not so here.  

And we don't have to worry about Hannah's F.F.s.   We usually have breakfast and dinner on the terrace just outside the living room. 

 

The vast expanse of sky behind the house provides a spectacular display of sunsets and an opportunity to track the rise and fall of the moon.   We've already seen a rainbow and even a shooting star!  

After living in a comfortably cozy house for the last six years, our villa here feels rather large to me.   On the other hand, that means that there's lots of room for visitors.   Book your trip!  

Pulpit Rock

The highlight of our trip to Norway was spending time in Stavanger with Luke's friend, Oystein.   Thanks to gmail and Facebook, the boys have been able to stay in touch in a way that wasn't possible when we were young.  "In the old days, we didn't have internet or email and we had to actually write letters to friends we met overseas."   "Did you?"  "Well, no..."  [But I wonder if  Donna, Nancy and I would still be friends with the kids we met in Penang who joined us for Kick-the-Can every evening if we'd been able to friend them on Facebook?  Or the three brother in Cyprus who took the three of us out to a disco?  Hmm.  Maybe just as well we didn't have the internet.]

Oystein took us on a hike up to the Preikestolen, known as the Pulpit Rock in English.  Our guide book warned that it was a rigorous two-hour hike with a heart stopping view, but Oystein assured us that it was easy. 

 "We run up it sometimes," he said, "and, don't worry, even old people can climb it."  Girded by these words, we donned our best climbing shoes and trekked up the mountain.   

It was treacherous in parts as we scrambled up over rocks, steep paths and at one point had to go single file along the edge of a cliff.   After about an hour and a half, we neared the large mountainous rock  protruding out over the Lysefjord.  Luke and Oystein had raced ahead of us all the way up, but suddenly Luke hung back, staring wide-eyed at the precipice.   "I don't want to go any further," he said as we started to venture onto the face of the cliff.  But he took one tentative step and then another until the four of us were right in the middle of the Pulpit Rock.  After a picnic of sandwiches and homemade muffins, thanks to Oystein, we moved closer to the edge and peered over.   My stomach knotted up.

 "Is this as tall as the Empire State Building or the Sears Tower?"  Luke asked.  He and Jeff have been to the top of both of those.  "Even taller."  Pulpit Rock soars 1982 feet into the sky.   Sears Tower boasts 1451 feet, and the Empire State a mere 1250 (not that I'd braved either).   We took our photos and made our way back down, feeling proud of our accomplishment on behalf of old people everywhere.  

The Road to Bergen

The drive from Geilo to Bergen has to rank among the most beautiful in the world.  The road winds up and down steep peaks, rambles across old bridges, burrows deep into miles-long tunnels that cut through the mountains, and then stops abruptly at the edge of a fjord where you drive onto a sturdy no-fuss ferry boat to cross to the other side.   This is not a place for people who suffer from phobias about bridges, tunnels or water.... [ I have to confess that I kept a close watch on how many kilometers we'd already done and how many were left to go during each pass of the really long tunnels.]

We drove past waterfalls and alongside the stillest waters holding incredibly crisp reflections of the mountains.  Luke and I kept up a fairly constant banter urging each other to look and marveling at the beauty around us.   It was hard for  Jeff to concentrate on the narrow windy road with such distracting scenery and driving companions.   

We loved Bergen, Norway's 2nd largest city and the so-called Gateway to the Fjords.

   

 The old city centre is a walkable collection of medieval forts,  colorful wooden buildings from the days of the Hanseatic League, and a funicular that took us up to the top of one of the Seven Mountains that ring the city.  It's a rainy place, but we didn't mind the grey skies.  They fit the slightly melancholic, steeped-in-the-past feel of the place.  

The seagulls who regularly visited the ledge outside our room didn't seem to mind the rain either, especially when Luke kept them happy with chunks of bread and the Pringles from the mini-bar.  

Road trip to Norway

Most people who have just moved to the south of France wouldn't necessarily consider a road trip to Norway, 2,500 km (or 1555 miles) away.  That's about the equivalent of driving from Washington, DC to Colorado. But then most people aren't part of a family that includes a road warrior driver and a maps-obsessed teenager who happens to have a friend in Stavanger, Norway.

Plus, Norway is on The Places, a list we created after visiting Val & Menno and the boys in St. Martin a few years ago.  We started the list shortly after Menno dropped us off at the airport -- by dinghy -- when we started to fantasize about what our version of their sailing adventure would look like.   It was the genesis of our year here. 

So with two weeks before we could move into our house in the south, we headed north to Paris, through Hamburg, two nights in Copenhagen and then over (and through) the Oresund Bridge, the longest highway and railroad bride/tunnel combo in Europe that connects Denmark and Sweden.  We drove up the coast of Sweden to Oslo -- where we swooned over The Scream and other works by Edward Munch -- and then headed across Norway to the fabled fjords of the western coast.  And to Oystein, the Norwegian boy whom Luke befriended two summers ago during a holiday to Crete (also one of The Places).   

We drove across the top of the Hardangervidda, one of Europe's largest mountain plateaus, an oddly lunaresque landscape dotted with the occasional lake but not much more, and stopped in Geilo, about halfway between Oslo and Bergen. 

 Geilo had been billed as Norway's' most popular ski resort, but, to our surprise, the mountains were more Deep Creek Lake than Deer Valley.  Plus, we seemed to be the only people in town who weren't part of a Korean or German tour group, and we were having trouble finding a room.  [I,  planner-in-chief, had made a critical hotel mistake and we ended up fleeing the "rustic" motel that I'd booked in the middle of nowhere.] We finally found a very plain but adequate room and wandered aimlessly, a bit disappointed, until we stepped into an alluring little restaurant, Hallingsteune -- the epitome of the Norwegian word, koselig, the root of our English word, cosy.    We skipped the Reindeer Filet and Sheeps Head, but heartily enjoyed the meat sausage from a local farm, cod and salmon.  We started feeling more kindly towards Geilo... and towards each other.  The restorative power of  good food in a koselig place!