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Everything you always wanted to know about France |
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Rentals-France Newsletter August 25 1999. Number 4. The aim of this newsletter is to give information, advice and personal comments about visiting France.I try to give information and provide links to other sites which are accurate and useful. Please write to me with any comments and let me know if there is a special subject you would like mentioned.
We are trying very hard to make our sites at
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======================= Still available and still with Champagne in the fridge, the fireworks over the Mediterranean at Menton will be beautiful.
http://www.rentals-france.com/accommodation/paraisette/
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SHOP OPENING HOURS The shops, banks, garages and restaurants have opening hours which are very different to many other countries. In my simple way I assumed that if I open a store to serve people, I will keep that store open at the times convenient for my customers. This is not usually the case in villages in the South of France. A PhD in astro-physics would be useful to calculate the opening hours of our village shop. Some days it opens at 8.00 am, others at 8.30 or 9.00, some days it closes at 12.00 others at 12.30, some days it is shut all afternoon, others it reopens at 2.30, 4.00 or 4.30 and finally shuts at 6.00pm, 6.30pm or 8.00 pm. There is a logic to all this and it is not at random, the local villagers always know when it is open or shut but visitors find it impossible to calculate the opening times. To make matters worse, there is a time table in the shop window, but when it is closed, the shutters are closed and you cannot see the opening times. Restaurants are similar, the extreme I once saw was a nice little village cafe with a ' Closed for Lunch ' sign on the door at 1.00pm. French tummies are set by an amazingly accurate atomic clock, you could plan a moon shot with the stomach rumbles of the average Frenchman. At 12.00 noon bars, cafes and restaurants start to fill, by 12.45pm all tables are full and by 1.15pm the meals are all well under way. Your chances of finding anywhere to eat after 1.00 pm are very slim. Lunch is usually over by 2.00pm and then the siestas may start. Many shops and all banks are closed on Mondays, Public holidays, feast days, Saint days, national strikes and football matches all take their toll of opening days and times. The times in Summer are usually different to the times in Winter. The big coastal tourist resorts, the supermarkets and city centers are usually open (not the banks) to suit the visitor, but the country villages and towns keep to their own unique rhythm of life here.
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them. An excellent way to find property for exchange is to use
the services of
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In this part of France, the Midi, when you buy a home you are
buying a life style. My advice is to go slowly from village to
village in the region and sit awhile to ' feel' the atmosphere
of each place. If you look at our site at Nowdays life is quieter and all visitors, even Parisiens, are welcomed. All the people here know that new faces means that the shops, schools, churches and the whole community will be better supported and that village life will continue. The fetes and carnivals will be successful and the Mairie will regularly have ' events' to celebrate with free drinks and snacks (you do have to listen to speeches by the Mayor and all the officials, but it is small price to pay). If you take your time you will find a community which suits you. Some have busy shopping areas, bright noisy cafes and busy streets, others are quiet and the only movement is the sun speckling off the water from the fountain in the ' place.' The Government figures for 1998 show an increase in the volume of sales for homes of over 50%. This coupled with the steady demand from Swiss, German and Northern European buyers has resulted in a shortage of older properties. The French have preferred to sell their ancestral village houses and build new villas just outside the village in a ' lotissement'. Recent large reductions in the taxes paid on buying a home indicate that prices are set to rise sharply. Interestingly the Americans and Australians have been buying the prime wine growing land here for several years, investing in improvements and are an important reason why the wine has dramatically improved recently. Before starting to look at all the property advertised in the papers or in the local ' immobilier's ' windows. You should decide on our absolute ' must have's '. Are you looking for an old property with character, in a town, village or the country, do you want a garden, terrace, garage. How many bedrooms, bathrooms, etc. This sounds obvious, but unless you are thinking of having a house built from scratch. You should be aware that an older property is bound to have been converted many times over the centuries and that kitchen, bathrooms and living areas may have been fitted into strange places to suit the drainage and staircases. Frequently I see typical village houses where you walk off the street into the kitchen then go through the kitchen to the bathroom. To get to the second bedroom you have to pass through the first bedroom to get to the stairs etc. Very few village houses have a garden, some may have a terrace, but planning for new terraces is getting very difficult to obtain now. Garages are often impossible to get anything but a very small car into as the streets are often narrow. If you list the things you must have in your new home, you can save yourself a lot of time by letting the agents or the people advertising know from the outset and insisting they only show you what you are looking for. Buying a house for restoration may be the answer, but do get the advice of at least two local builders for the costs of restoration or conversion. Getting a fixed price from a builder for conversion work may be difficult, most estimates and even ' fixed ' quotations will have a clause saying that unforeseen work will be charged extra. It is very difficult to know what problems you will find once you start digging up floors or knocking holes in walls of these old houses.
================ Last week I mentioned the mystery room we found in our house, you can see this newsletter on our site at http://www.goto-france.com/suissy/archives/three/ Apart from those of you who have stayed here with us, no one got it right. The circular room 10 ft round and 30 ft high with a domed stone ceiling and flagged floor partially underground was an ice house, an ancient refrigerator. It was made around the 15th or 16 century (perhaps earlier) and would have stored the food for the whole village for a year. Big enough to hold the meet from one hundred animals, beef, pork, mutton and goat. Ice was harvested in winter from shallow ponds, and the meat butchered and salted, then layers of ice, meat and straw were put in one on top of the other until it reached the small door half way up. This was then sealed and the room filled to the top and the trap door sealed. The massive stone walls, 10ft thick, gives good insulation and the salted ice could keep the temperature below zero and make the ice house a real freezer. I have no idea when the room stopped being used or why it was nearly filled with rubble or why it was walled up. It will make a perfect wine cellar one day. If I ever keep enough bottles of wine to put there.
================= Everything is getting ready now for the 'vendange', the harvesting of the grapes. The exact date (it is usually around the first week in September here) when the men and machines go into the rows of vines will only be known at the last minute. The cooperatives are preparing the presses and the 'cuve', the large storage vats used in the making of the wine, the local farmers are preparing their trailers with special paints to protect the grapes, the huge vendange machines, looking like crazy robots, or giant children's 'transformers' are being overhauled. There is a lot of tension here at the moment as so much depends on this harvest, the income for many families for the whole year depends on the activities and the weather during the next couple of weeks. It is as if the countryside is holding it's breath.
================= We always try to make pages with helpful information on our web site. There is a page of links on : http://www.rentals-france.com/links/ All the pages have been checked by us and we only add links where the content is interesting useful and relevant. Please let us know if you know of any other sites which can give help and advice to visitors to France.
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