Many people in Oz spend Sunday mornings listening to ABC Radio, a show called Australia All Over presented by Ian McNamara. One of the regular segments of the show is a piece called, “Why I Live Where I Live”. People write in and describe where they live and tell why they love it so much. I don’t know that I could do it but I will tell all now.
For the past seven and a half years our address has been “A Caravan Somewhere”. People have asked us what we could possibly find to do day after day living in a caravan. We usually respond by asking, “What do you do living in the same house in the same street of the same suburb day after day?” However, we also point out that we spend a lot of time moving about the country visiting new and sometime exciting places, but more importantly, making new friendships. Take for example a couple of days after we arrived back from our European adventure. I walked up to the rubbish bins in the park where we were staying and, while there, started talking to a couple parked nearby. Within a half hour we had shown them through our “home” (they had never seen anything like it in Europe), had exchanged names, telephone numbers, addresses and email addresses and promised that next time we visited Europe we would spend time with them at their home in The Netherlands. Pretty simple really, but, that’s why we live where we live.
I have already written about our time in Norway and of the wonderful friendship we developed with Christian and Tonjé and little Nina which resulted from a chance meeting in Katherine NT. This French portion of our European adventure revolves around a young couple we met in Broome, WA. We pulled into a site in Roebuck Bay Caravan Park and a couple of days later were joined next door by a young Parisian couple, Ariane Girouard and Sébastien Dubail. They were camping in a tent like structure that fitted on the roof of their Toyota Landcruiser. This was a great arrangement while they were on the move but a little inconvenient when doing local tours. We took them with us on a couple of occasions, hence the start of a new and wonderful friendship.
Since our time in Broome, we have followed their rollercoaster life. Initially it was through an internet site that Sébastien had established to record the details of their 10 month world tour. Both he and Ariane are keen photographers and Sébastien is an IT specialist. We went through the excitement of their move from Paris to Massongy, a little village in France about 20kms from Geneva where they had obtained new jobs, the joy of Ariane’s pregnancy, the ecstasy at the arrival of their beautiful baby boy, Aloïs and finally the saddening news of their separation.
In the meantime Rob had started planning our holiday and arranged to visit them. Because both assured us we should not cancel that plan the new arrangement became that we stay in the house in Massongy with Sébastien and he would take us to visit Ariane in the nearby town of Thonon les Bains where she now lives in a small apartment. They both arranged time off work for our visit.
Whilst in Broome I thought I would impress Ariane with my knowledge of French. I said to her, “Je suis que je suis mais je ne suis pas que je suis”. She seemed somewhat bewildered so I explained that it was from a picture of a man walking behind a donkey. She was finally able to decipher that with an Australian accent I was trying to say in French, “I am what I am but I am not what I follow”. Her response was, “Very impressive Brian, but hardly practical”. A bit of a letdown really!!
Sébastien told us he would meet us at the train station on our arrival in Geneva. When we got off the train there were many, many people around so we started walking through the station until we found ourselves on the footpath. We stood there feeling pretty lost when suddenly from behind us we heard, “Hello!! Sorry I did not catch you inside. I saw you passing through but was helping someone buy a train ticket.” It was Sébastien being a Good Samaritan. He sounds somewhat like Maurice Chevalier whose accent turned women’s legs to rubber and made blokes cranky that they couldn’t talk like him.
Sébastien was looking after Aloïs for a couple of days but because he had been working before picking us up, the little fella was in day-care. Before picking him up however, we went for a sightseeing tour of the city. Being on the shores of Lake Geneva and with the backdrop of beautiful mountains, the city is very picturesque. Our city walk took us through some lovely parkland on the shore of the lake, to a lookout spot to view the magnificent in-lake fountain that plumes 50 metres into the air, up through the embassies area with the flags of many countries flying, past the cathedral then back to the car.
At one stage, we had thought of hiring a car for our tripping around Europe. However, after watching the traffic as we walked around, we were very pleased we didn’t do it. Sébastien drove us around for a bit more of a look at the area before heading off over the border into France and a short time later to the day-care centre where we at last met up with Aloïs. Ariane had pre warned us that we had to be careful of him as, in her words, “he’s the most adorable kid you’ve ever met, you’ll fall in love.” Yes, he is adorable and yes, we did fall in love.
We drove home from the day care centre where Sébastien bathed and fed Aloïs and after a little play/get to know you time, put him to bed. He is also a good little boy because he went to bed without any fuss at all.
Our first big surprise after meeting up with and spending some time with Sébastien was just how easy it was to converse with him. We remembered from Broome that he was fairly quiet and his English was not all that strong. However, since that time and possibly because of the new job, he spoke very good English and conversation flowed very easily. Our next surprise was at dinner. Instead of ordering takeaways like I would have done in the circumstances, he announced that he would make us a typical French dinner. He did and it was delicious. It consisted of potatoes, bacon, onion and cream. He then took a full, round French cheese, sliced it through the centre and placed it, cut sides down, on top of the potatoes, etc and top baked it under the griller. My mouth waters even now when I think of it. The cheese is not one that you can buy, or even bring into Oz as it is made with unpasteurised milk; however, as Sébastien said, that makes the best cheeses. Our final surprise of the evening was when we realised Sébastien had given up his room for us. The house had only two bedrooms so he gave us his and slept in a single bed in Aloïs’s room. How kind was that!!
Next morning after a fantastic breakfast of fresh French bread, croissants - brioche that Sébastien had been to the bakery to buy even before we awoke, he took us for a drive through the countryside. We called into two beautiful little villages on the shore of Lake Geneva, Nernier and Yvoire. One of the houses we saw had a stone engraved with the year of construction, 1635. There is a picture of it in the French section of Rob’s photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/rovin.richos. The balconies and window sills of many of the houses were adorned with window boxes featuring the most vibrant colourful flowers. The streets were all cobble stoned. Being there was like walking back in time. Our final stop of the morning was at Ariane’s place at Thonon les Bains where she was waiting to take us to lunch at a restaurant chosen in my honour. It is called, “Ma femme est formidable”. She assured us it stands for “My wife is beautiful”. Formidable and beautiful are two words that do not fit together easily in the English language. I looked up the thesaurus for synonyms and came up with words such as “terrifying”, “fearsome”, “frightening” and “dreadful”. I could understand that but “beautiful”? Anyway, after dropping us off, Sébastien headed back to Geneva to work. Whatever the name of the restaurant, the food was fabulous.
The four of us, Ariane, Aloïs, Rob and I had a truly wonderful afternoon together catching up on each others news and admiring the magnificent view of the snow covered French Alps that could easily be seen from Arian’s balcony. I must admit, I did my usual thing and had an OPS (old persons sleep) while Aloïs had his YPS. Eventually it was time for us to go so Ariane drove us back to Massongy where Sébastien was busy preparing our dinner, salmon parcels followed by a coffee cream desert, bread and cheese. If ever he decided to get out of IT/banking, I’m sure he could get a job anywhere as chef.
As an aside, the three males in the places where we stayed, Christian, Andreas and now Sébastien were all champion cooks. Really, I felt quite at home with them all after having been to cooking lessons a couple of times just before we left on the trip. The main thing I remembered after becoming a fully qualified chef was how to say the “F” word with conviction. In the unlikely event that one of my dishes did not turn out perfectly, I can now say it without compunction.
Although they were becoming fairly regular, we never did get used to the sad farewells and saying goodbye to Ariane and Aloïs before they headed home to Thonon les Bains was another such situation.
Anyway, tomorrow would be our time to leave on our onward European journey. Before we left however, Sébastien had a further surprise for us. After another beaut French breakfast he took us to have a look at the ruins of a 5th century castle perched atop a mountain overlooking the lake. As was the case in Gelterkinden, we had to walk the last few hundred metres to the top. Before the castle was a monastery and church dedicated to St Francois de Sales. It appeared to be fairly remote and although very old, was still operational. We paid a visit to the church and then continued a short way to the ruins. Again, as in Gelterkinden, as we climbed to the top of the structure we were greeted with a most magnificent view of the lake and of the little villages and towns that adorn its shores. It is clear why these castles were built where they were. Not only were the views spectacular but also the approach of any would be interloper was very obvious. With high walls that were around six feet thick, the castle would appear to have been impenetrable. However, it seems that the last occupant, in the 17th century, destroyed it before vacating to ensure that it could not be used by his enemies. The history of these places is truly enthralling.
After the castle we meandered down the hill to the car and returned home to Massongy where Sébastien fed us lunch before driving us to the Geneva train station to catch our next (very fast) train that would deliver us to Nice on our way to Rome or, as we would be Europeans prefer to call it, Roma – Roma Termini to be precise. Sébastien had been a truly wonderful host who made us feel completely at home. Thank goodness it was to be our last sad goodbye!!