We have a house…

18 July 2011

Last week was the week to get everything ready for the house we are renting. No, rather… get everyone else to get it ready.

Monday we had to sign the lease at an office in the very modern La Défense area. The person we signed with was a very friendly young Frenchman. He could speak some English and explained the contract to us. We are situated next to a golf course and included in the contract is a whole book of what we’re NOT allowed to do there. We are not part of the golf course, so we cannot climb over the fence and play, we cannot hang our washing there and we cannot build anything there.  : ) Things like that is in our contract. I assume we are allowed to keep all the balls. We already found 7 in our back garden!

Tuesday we were at the house for the inspection and to get the keys. Another friendly young man, but he couldn’t speak English. Luckily we still have the friendly lady from ‘A good start in France’ that organise everything for us. They were going through the house for two hours and made a note of every little crack and hole and anything not working properly.

Wednesday I had to be here at 8 am to open for the water people to switch on the water. I was five minutes late and the plumber was not happy at all, and he was an older ‘not-so-friendly’ Frenchman. He could not speak English. They did something for a minute and he told me he will be back ‘dix heure’ and I must be here. He did say ‘sorry’ when he only came after 11 and not at 10 as he said. But then something was wrong and he said ‘quatorze heure’ and I must be here! Well at three ‘A good start’ phoned to say the drain is blocked and I must wait. Then another friendly young Frenchman with no English came.  He asked what’s wrong and I had no French to tell him. So, it worked like this: I phone ‘A good start’ and let them explain to him what’s wrong. This young man worked here in the drains on his own till 6 and then told me ‘c’est bon’, with a thumbs up!

Thursday was Bastille Day, which I will write about in a next post. All I should say here is that we got to bed after 2am and I had to leave before 7 again the next morning…

Friday I had to be at the house again at 8am for the electricity people, who said they will come between 8 and 12! They arrived at 10 and quickly switched the electricity on. I had to ask them if they have replaced the meter, but the one guy just asked his friend ‘tu parles anglais?’, he said ‘non’ and off they went with no answer.

Well the week was over and we had the keys, water, electricity and 7 golf balls in our new house in Courdimanche, part of Cergy-Pontoise! Half an hour from Paris.

Bicarbonate de soude

10 July 2011

We were invited for a braai with Anelle and Pieter today. They are from South Africa, and moved here about two months ago after three years in England. Pieter works at the same company as Danie.
They stay in Ville D’Avray, closer to Paris centre. We had a lovely day and came back with enough leftovers for tomorrow and books to read and magazines, and…  That’s Anelle, she loves to help and share… She was ready to pack all we need for our house while we still wait for our container. : )
Yesterday I decided to make malva pudding to take with. Ok, to buy flour is the first challenge. It does not help you to know its farine in french. There are different farine for all different things you can bake : )  I will still have to research and translate the whole farine thing. But what I bought did work…  there was a photo of cake on the packaging… that helped.
The second challenge was bicarb. I could not find it anywhere and had no idea then what it was in french. I had to come back and after the help of the internet knew this: You do get it packed for baking, but not all shops stock it. You could find 5kg buckets in the swimmingpool isle. : ) And at the pharmacy you can buy smaller quantities, used to clean
teeth.
My malva pudding tasted fine, baked with the teeth whitening bicarbonate de soude and we had it with English cream, as custard is called here.
But… Voilà!  … tjops, wors, potato salad and malva pudding with custard in Ville D’Avray!

A walk through Parc des Impressionistes…
 

Driving and working in France

9 July 2011

Danie started work on Monday. There everyone is very relaxed. They start at 9, which is nice that you don’t have to leave home so early. Then just after 12 someone blows a vuvuzela (yes, one of the frenchmen bought one last year in SA) and then they all walk around to the Microsoft building where they have lunch.
We are still looking for the best train route. Now its bus from the hotel, RER train, a short metro trip and RER again. It takes an hour and a bit to work, but at least he can sit and read in the train, or do sudoko, as he is doing now. : )

We fetched our new car on Friday. Not new, secondhand, but new for us. An Opel Zafira. So we decided to celebrate that and ended at a Buffalo Grill. The kids thought a burger could be nice for a change (but said afterwards that the spur is much better). At least we were on the banks of the Seine…

if you look through the trees…
 

America in Paris…

And driving…
Well, I was lucky to be a passenger for two weeks. I could get used to being on the wrong side of the road before I had to drive. It does not feel wrong any more to look to the left at a circle or to turn short when you go right, etc. Only for the first two days you kept on grabbing the door when you have to change a gear. And we don’t always walk to the wrong side of the car anymore.
But you still concentrate all the time. Some roads are really narrow. The robots has only one light on your right, not one on every corner of the crossing as we are used to. The worst is their rule that someone coming from a T-junction has priority. There is no stop for you, but you have to just see if someone wants to turn in and give them a chance. But, we will get used to it…

French cuisine and french cars

30 June 2011

Thursday evening we were spoiled with real French cuisine. Hartman and his daughter took us out for dinner. We went to Le Clocher Voltaire in Puteaux. Luckily we had a translator to explain the menu… But lovely food, starting with aperitifs and all the way through to desserts.

Did I mention that we bought a car today? An Opel Zafira… We walked into AutoPro and only one man is in their office. He showed us the cars, we decided to buy and only when he started filling in the forms he told us that he is actually not the salesman. He only works on the internet. But what a blessing, because his english was very good and when the real salesman came back later, he could not speak a word of english.
We will get the car next Friday.

Today we took our Ford back to Charles de Gaul and rented a smaller Opel Corsa till next Friday. Unfortunately we forgot the Ford’s ‘luggage cover’ at the hotel and Danie had to just drive all the way back to the airport to take that back to SIXT. But the driving on the wrong side is now going so well. You just switch on the GPS and do everything the afrikaans lady tells you.

But… from tomorrow I must tackle the driving.

Atravi Residence Hotel

1 July 2011

This is where we are staying for our first month in France. A beautiful building.

 
 

They don’t cater for families of six, so we have two flats. The kids are in one and we have one. Not too bad inside, a bit bigger kitchen could be nice, and a microwave, and a toaster.

Since our airfreight arrived on Thursday it is now really full. And now we also wonder why we brought so much extra clothes and things.

The sun only going down after 10pm makes it really difficult for us to get to bed early. You just don’t feel tired or you eat supper and realised its 10pm already. And then there is still Atravi’s thin walls. When its finally dark after 11pm and we are in bed, our neighbours have their daily conversation for I don’t know how long! But luckily we are still on holiday and can sleep late.

Sacre Coeur

25 June 2011

We had to go to centre Paris again. You can’t be so close and not go… This time we took the car to La Defense to save on RER tickets, but end up paying 15 euro for parking. Ok, a new plan for the next time.

After croissants and an orange juice, we went to Sacre Coeur. Next thing we realise: Paris on a Saturday is not good. It is also European summer holidays now. The metros were packed, so many people at Sacre Coeur and queues for metro tickets .But we still spend eight hours in Paris, which was enough to make us stay home for the next three days!

The highlight for the kids: a visit to FNAC, the large store for anything electronic… all technology… anything with a screen. The big one at Montparnasse. Now they know what they want to save for.

At Sacre Coeur they were setting up a ramp for a world record attempt that will happen Saturday 8 July. I think a guy will jump off there with roller blades and land somewhere down the slope. I saw Jaco and Pieter said on the facebook event they’re attending… with 4 million other people! Maybe they will rather watch it on YouTube…

Where will we stay

20 – 22 June 2011

Monday was the day for fetching our bank cards, buying sim cards for the phones and buying a GPS.
Tuesday and Wednesday we drove around with our GPS telling us in afrikaans where to go. We still waited for the relocation company to look for houses.

      

And on Thursday after seeing small houses, old houses and more small houses we found a house in Cergy. Very nice on the inside, but a disappointing outside… But here is the photo anyway. The area is nice and quiet, next to a golf course… we will definitely get golf balls in our backyard.

our rented Ford S-max parked in the driveway…

Eiffel Tower and hotdogs

19 June 2011

On Sunday we had to go to the eiffel tower. You can’t be in Paris and not see the Eiffel Tower…
We still need to work out some things. We took the RER from Sartrouville to La Defense. Then the metro into Paris. That worked out a small fortune for a family of six.
The next thing was the hungry people again. We saw hotdogs for sale and thought that could work well, but we paid 6 euro a hotdog! I have to say that was the best hotdogs ever. A baquette cut open on the top, with two nice sausages inside. Then they put it in a toaster. Not bad for a hotdog. But remember next time to pack something to eat…
Maybe one day we’ll get to french cuisine…

and Barbe à papa for dessert…

Arriving in Europe

18 June 2011

We landed in Amsterdam. Browsed around the shops and unfortunately have to say that we had McDonalds for lunch… safest if you don’t know where to go. We did have our first croissants later.

the bags give it away… these kids are from South Africa…

its been a long day…

After four hours in Amsterdam, we left with Air France to Paris. Coming from winter in South Africa we were looking forward to summer in Europe. But we landed in Paris in the rain and the pilot’s remark was: “its 16 degrees in Paris which is not enough.”

Then the part started which we’ve been planning for a while. Danie and Mandi took the rented car with all the luggage… six people with luggage don’t really fit in one car. The four of us took the RER to Sartrouville. That went ok, accept that when we arrived we needed tickets (which we had, but did not work…) to get out of the station. Later Pieter asked a non-english-understanding frenchman for help and he jumped over a gate and opened another gate for us. Don’t think that was a legal move.

As we suspected, Danie and Mandi got lost a bit… driving only with a map, no GPS. But they arrived eventually at the station, two hours after we got there. At that stage we had no cellphones that work in France… That was a long wait.

At last at Atravi Residence Hotel at 10pm, but still light in this European summer. And again, because of extreme hunger amongst some of us… we drove to the McDonalds we passed on the way for a very late supper.