Paul Waters at The Cake Shop

Grenoble Life meets Paul Waters, The Cake Shop’s young British pâtissier, to ask him about leaving the UK to make British and American style cakes in France.

Grenoble Life: What’s your job at The Cake Shop?

Paul Waters: My job is a mixture of things – with there only being two other people that work at The Cake Shop and so many things to do the work gets shared around. I mainly design and create the cakes but I also help out in the shop front stocking the shelves and serving clients.

I also get to make the cupcakes and other tasty goodies that you see on display when you come to the store, as well as teaching people my skills and helping to organise events. But I mainly stick to designing and creating cakes. If it’s been made with sugar paste nine times out of 10 it will have been made by me. I literally eat and breathe sugar paste – it’s my life, and a tasty one at that!

GL: How were you recruited and where did you train? 

Paul: I trained at The National Bakery School at South Bank University in London. I intended to do a two-year course there but, due to government funding, it was cut to one year. Nevertheless I left with my Diploma in craft studies. I studied pretty much everything from bread to chocolate.

It was my mother who found the job at The Cake Shop. She was flicking through my Cake magazine when she saw there was a job going for a store in France. At the time I was happily making a mess in the kitchen making something tasty when she approached me with it. I was highly interested and desperate for an adventure, not thinking I would get anywhere because at the time I was only 16 and just starting college, although I have been baking and creating cakes for people since I was eight. But my parents assured me to go for it I distinctly remember them saying “if it doesn’t go anywhere it’s all good experience.”

After sending the email, the following day I received a phone call from the owner, Ariane Zenker, who gave me a mini-interview on the phone. After the call ended I was so excited, my imagination went into overtime as I began to dream of what could happen next. After lots of talk and conversation via email I arranged to go out and see her in February during half term with my mother. After that things just took off and one thing spiralled into another.

GL: Tell us a little bit about your background?

Paul: Well, I grew up in an area called Essex just outside of London, when I was about 11 my parents sold the house brought a smaller one and another one in the south of France. That sparked my love for France and from then on it has been a never-ending love affair, holidays spent with a wall paper scraper in one hand and a paint brush in the other, whilst trying to figure out what ‘plaster’ is in French.

GL: Why did you decide to move to France?

Paul: Well the fact my parents already have a holiday home in the south and they plan to move there permently next year was a big deciding factor. I knew what to expect from my time spent there I had a basic understanding of French life and language. There have also been a lot of problems in my family, a lot of upset; I wanted to get it away from it all as well. The English weather also leaves a lot to be desired.

GL: How have you adapted to life in France?

Paul: I have adapted very well mainly because of my parents having their holiday home in the south but also, because I was so desperate to leave the UK to see the world, determination has kept me going. My advice to anyone moving to this country is to relax, clear your mind and embrace the culture. Do not make comparisons with your home town don’t try to live your life like you normally do, change it to fit the environment.

When I first moved here I was just 17 a lot of people never took me very seriously at first, not to mention the fact that my parents had to sign everything for me as I had no signing power! I couldn’t even take out a phone contract or internet as a result but now at the age of 18 things are a lot better.

I also find the French attitude to being free/open and expressing your self very strange. Paris is a place of art, fashion, the weird, the wonderful, and is filled with some of the most beautiful things. Yet when you come to express yourself through fashion and art you raise a lot of eyebrows and get some very strange looks. It seems the rest of France has no desire to follow in the shadow of Paris; if this has anything to do with French people disliking the Parisians I have yet to find out. 

GL: Tell us about a typical day at The Cake Shop?

Paul: Well I usually arrive at 11:00, Ariane will brief me in on the plan for the day, she will say something along the lines of; “you have that wedding cake to start and the cookie class at 3:00”, “I also got an email from the woman that you did the Princess Cake for, she was very happy”. Then I make a start on my jobs for the day. I could have a long list of cakes to decorate or, if a delivery has just arrived from the UK, it needs unpacking, pricing and being put on display.

I may also get the chance to develop new products or create new classes. I may be teaching people in the evening or doing things on the computer. Every day is completely different – you never quite know what obstacles you will need to overcome or what you are doing. I usually finish about eight in the evening after shutting up the store for the night.

GL: What’s the best thing about your job?

Paul: I love what I do and so many people don’t get the chance nowadays to do what they love. The best thing about my job is it’s so different, I am never bored, never creating the same cake twice, or sat around with nothing do. Working at The Cake Shop can be fun, crazy, hectic and stressful but it’s all worth it in the end.

GL: What are some of the more difficult experiences you have had working at the cake shop?

Paul: Working at The Cake Shop can be very difficult at times – when you have a lot of work to do the pressure is on to meet your deadlines. When things go wrong everything seems to go wrong at once but, because of the nature of my job, some of my worst experiences are also some of my best. For example, you have a cake rapidly melting in the heat and it’s causing the icing to stretch and expand at the sides, you have to act quickly and work out why it went wrong and how to stop it. I will then learn from that and move on, turning it into a good experience.

GL: What do you love about Grenoble?

Paul: I love the way Grenoble is so small yet has lots of big name stores here and nice shops, it gives it a city feel but at heart it has the community of a town. It’s very hard to explain but it makes it a very nice place to be, surrounded by all the mountains. I also love Grenoble’s cosmopolitan feel, the mix of all different nationalities and the students.

GL: What are your plans for the future?

Paul: I would love to take The Cake Shop to Paris; I would love to get back to the buzz of the city, its pulse runs through my blood. I would definitely consider doing my own business in Paris – what would be really good is if I could set up a company in France that manufactures or imports all the products that you can’t get here, all the kinds of things we sell in The Cake Shop. That way people like Ariane wouldn’t be my competitor but my more like a colleague as I would be helping her keep her shop stocked with my products.

The crèche: in safe hands

Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple blogs on his experience with French childcare in Grenoble and the difficulties getting that all-important place at a crèche.

Handing over your baby to complete strangers is not first on our list of desirable experiences but it is an everyday reality for working parents. France has a relatively high proportion of working mothers and an enviably fertile population, but a surprisingly short basic maternity leave. These are just some of the contributing factors that necessitate widely available and affordable childcare, which in turn do their bit to help get the balance right between being a parent and having a career.

The scolaire system

Getting a place at a municipal crèche, however, is notoriously difficult in Grenoble (and probably elsewhere in France). The largest intake of babies is in September when toddlers doff their mortar boards and graduate to Ecole Maternelle (nursery school), freeing up space for the newbies. Thus, unless you are confident of conceiving in accordance with the demands of l’année scolaire, you may find yourself out of luck when your congé de maternité or parental comes to an end. (For your info, nine months of pregnancy added to around three months of post-natal maternity leave - give or take – would make this September a good time to conceive in order for your baby to get into the crèche in September 2011 – you know what to do!).

Such crèches are subsidised by the Mairie, but parents still pay the bill depending on their means: making them affordable to all. The charges are subject deductions from the CAF before you see them, so that there is none of the time-consuming reimbursement admin which affects visits to many doctors. For my wife and I, it amounts to about two euro an hour. What’s more, thereafter, you can declare this expense against your annual income tax obligations (impôts) which sees this figure drop by a further 50%. In short, the piggy bank can be left intact for the time being.

In my experience the crèches are clean, well-equipped and staffed, with fresh meals prepared on the premises and bubbly personnel. At the end of each day I am given a detailed report on my daughter’s food intake, sleep time and number of nappies (couches) filled with unnerving precision. I am always reassured she is in safe hands, free to explore a terrain filled with ludic objects to peruse, which makes a change from her reordering my CD collection or trying to rewire a wall socket chez moi. 

The nanny state

The alternative is a crèche familiale: effectively smaller groups of children cared for at somebody’s home. This is billed as a municipal service and thus subsidised but is closer in spirit to having a private nanny. In our case, we were desperate for the lively atmosphere of the crèche for our daughter, with the different carers and larger number of children. Whereas many people appreciate the crèche familiale, we didn’t feel comfortable leaving our daughter with only one person: a person who wields such an enormous influence in a child’s life yet does so largely away from the scrutiny from her peers.

Although I’m sure the majority of women who work at crèches familiales are professional, I have heard of instances in which they were not. And if you refuse the woman the Mairie offers you, they immediately blacklist you and you have no chance of getting subsidised municipal childcare. It seemed that if we accepted this process, it was a big step into the unknown. Private nannies were also scarce at the time, and among those we met who weren’t fully booked there were some who didn’t seem to even particularly like children. These individuals were also unwilling to accept temporary terms with us while we waited for a place at the crèche to become available, as they wanted a longer commitment.

In my local quartier, the municipal crèche is situated ideally at two minutes walk from our flat, and would have stood as a mocking reminder of what we had missed if we hadn’t got a place there. Finally we resolved to make an arrangement whereby our daughter attended the halte garderie, which is effectively the same as the crèche but only for up to two days maximum. Normally this is organised on an ad hoc basis or, as in our case, with temporary rolling contracts. Luckily we were able to make other arrangements for the remaining hours that we needed but it allowed us to ingratiate ourselves a little with the staff there and secure our position on the waiting list until a place made itself available. This happened in three months.

Baby betrayal

At first our daughter was crestfallen upon being left at the crèche, acting as if having befallen an enormous betrayal. Traitor! she seemed to cry upon being passed to the crèche staff. There is an integration system by which you can leave your child at the crèche for a couple of hours at a time, gradually building up to full days, but babies are an unpredictable bunch. One day you feel a guilty tingle of satisfaction when your baby cries on being handed over to a carer: yes, my baby still loves me best! The next day your child will cry when you come to pick her up. Traitor! you seethe in silence. In the parental logic, the latter is just the baby ‘releasing tension’ at the end of the day.

The inevitable inconvenience to all this contact with other children is what has seemed like an endless loop of spectacular illnesses. The first time you see a baby projectile-vomit (à la L’exorciste), it is terrifying, but it is impressive what one can become inured to. The winter just past has been a hard one: with the somewhat false alarm of swine flu providing unwelcome distraction from the lurid retinue of tummy bugs and gastros doing the rounds. At the crèche, there is no escape from the steep curve towards stronger immune systems, but this has to happen at some point.

The three days a week my daughter spends at the crèche currently provide most of her contact with French, despite the efforts of certain staff members to speak English to me. As my wife and I speak English at home we hope this will be an effective path towards her obtaining bilingualism; but it is interesting to see the different phonemes she manages in her babillage. Among the distinctly Anglophone syllables we have started to identify some impressively rolled Rs. Once she yelled what was clearly a resounding Merde!, but I’m sure she didn’t learn that down at the crèche.

If you want my advice, persistence is key. Where there is will there is a way.

'Retour à Grenoble'. Photo: Loin des yeux

Without wireless in Grenoble? Don’t want to use an internet café or pay to buy a clé USB from SFR or Orange? Read on for sites of reliable and free internet access at various points throughout the city. 

By Anne S.

Pain et Cie
1 bis, rue de Lafayette
Tram: Sainte-Claire les Halles (B)

Pain et Cie is located very close to Place Notre Dame and is a great brunch/lunch/breakfast place. It’s a casual, relaxed spot with long wooden tables and a nice outdoor terrace as well. They have a bunch of tartines and jus de fruits bio and an incontournable spread of brunch items – it’s usually packed on Sunday mornings with everyone from students to families to young couples. They have a good free wireless network (although one or two times it didn’t work for me) and the big tables are excellent working spaces.

Pros: I’ve seen quite a few people working on computers there and the food is really good and reasonably priced. The restaurant as a whole has a nice atmosphere and the people who work there are also very friendly. Definitely my favorite wifi spot in Grenoble proper (excluding the university).

Cons: Pigeons sometimes fly in and out, which is alarming, but has nothing to do with computers. Also, there are only a few outlets, so bring your computer fully charged. 

Université de Grenoble
Saint Martin d’Hères campus
Tram: Bibliothèques Universitares (B/C)

This was my preferred point of Internet connectivity in Grenoble, as I was a part-time student at the university. The Bibliothèque Universitaire has plenty of tables, plugs, and excellent connectivity, as do a number of other sites on campus. The Fac also offers an opportunity for connection that is not a coffee shop or eating establishment, so it is theoretically one of the few “free” hotspots on this list.

Pros: The majority of campus buildings are wireless, and the Internet is fast and reliable.

Cons: You must be enrolled at the university to gain access to the network, if I’m not mistaken. It’s locked unless you have a login from their registrar. 

French Coffee Shop
3 place Claveyson
Tram: Sainte-Clare les Halles (B) or Maison de Tourisme (A/B)

This coffee shop is actually a chain with a number of locations around France. I got the impression that it is modeled after an American-style coffee shop (think Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee, or Tully’s), with blended ice drinks, smoothies, and muffins. It attracts a relatively young clientele, including a considerable amount of foreign (mostly American) students. The wireless network here was secure (password protected) and very reliable, and there are also a number of outlets to plug a power cord.

Pros: Outlets! Comfortable couches! And if you’re not in the mood for pastries, excellent chocolate muffins!

Cons: Do you really want to spend all your days at a place called French Coffee Shop?

Le 5 (Musée de Grenoble)
5 place de Lavalette
Tram: Musée de Grenoble (B)

Le 5 is the restaurant attached to the Musée but, of course, you can eat there with out paying admission to the museum. I’ve sat in there some afternoons with a coffee or a tea doing work on my computer and it’s a nice, quiet place. 

Pros: Quiet place to get things done, nice tables. At the Musée which is a nice change of pace from the average internet cafe. 

Cons: Like all museum restaurants, prices are a little higher. I also felt a little weird using my computer in the restaurant, but in the afternoon (around 4ish) when things were slow and I was lounging around with an espresso it seemed to be fine. 

Casino Géant
76 avenue Gabriel Péri, Saint Martin d’Hères
Tram: Neyrpic Belledone (C)

I’ve never actually tried this one out but I’ve been told that the shopping center here has free wifi. Where you’d use it in a grocery store is beyond me, but that’s that.

Around town

The ville de Grenoble has launched a public wireless access campaign, which gives users access in a variety of public spaces around the centre ville. Right now these spots include Parc Paul Mistral, Place Grenette, Place Saint-Andre, Place Victor Hugo, le Jardin de Ville, and le Jardin des plantes. The network (wifigrenoble or Ville-de-Grenoble) is somewhat reliable, with varying degrees of connectivity depending on where you are, but last time I checked the wifi in Parc Paul Mistral did not allow access to various media sharing sites such as Facebook, Youtube, Hulu.

Pros: Internet is accessible almost anywhere in the centre ville, including cafes or restaurants near the hotspots. I never lived in centre-ville proper, so I wouldn’t know if it is accessible if you live there, but maybe someone else can answer that question.

Cons: Checking your e-mail in Parc Paul Mistral? Really? It’s kind of awkward. Also, I have never seen anyone using a computer in that park, and when it’s sunny you get that whole problem of not being able to see the screen. You’d also run a higher risk of getting your computer stolen as it’s pretty open public place. More information here.

Also, I was told last spring that the Bibliothèque in centre ville was getting wifi, but am not sure if that has happened yet. Can anyone confirm this?

Les Halles Sainte Claire, Grenoble

Grenoble Life’s Christina Rebuffet-Broadus walks Les Halles Sainte Claire, Grenoble’s foremost covered market and former convent, now site to a “divine experience of another kind”.

France wouldn’t be the same without the places that fire the wanderlust of francophiles everywhere. There are the cafés for people-watching and sipping an espresso in the sun. There are the Gothic cathedrals with spires straight out of a Victor Hugo novel. Then there are the open air markets, a sort of grand mass for the foodies of France. Almost every Sunday, I show up for service at Les Halles Sainte Claire for my weekly indulgence.

The Sainte Claire site once offered a divine experience of another kind. From the 15^th century, Clairisse nuns saved the city’s soul from inside the convent that once stood here. As industrialization conquered 19^th century France, the citizens of Grenoble needed physical rather than spiritual nourishment and the city decided to build a modern marketplace—the Halles Saint Claire, in 1874. The Grenoblois have been “going marketing,” as Julia Child would say, at Place Sainte Claire ever since.

Inside the Eiffel-esque glass and metal building, all those things that we expats love about French markets swirl about. There are a few cheese stalls with wide selections of what France does best. A baker offers classic baguettes and an assortment of more sophisticated pains. There are meat, fish, and poultry sellers for the protein. A few stands offer ready to eat delights if you can’t face the stove or wait to get back home to dig in.

There are a few stands that have upped my consumption of certain dishes. I’m almost on a first name basis with the sauerkraut lady (I said almost) of La Fée Maison. This young woman is like my French food fairy godmother. Ever tried to find good take-home choucroute in Grenoble? Well, here it is. This woman hails from the hearty land of Alsace and regularly goes back to select her cabbage farmers. She’ll also help you pick out the meats to serve with all that fermented cabbage—there’s a secret to choosing, but you’ll have to ask the expert.

Al Dente is the other stand that makes mush of my will power. Their homemade gnocchi measures up to the store bought stuff about the same way discount Carrefour glace does to artisanal Italian gelato. They always have a few olives set on the counter for sampling, but it’s the colorful antipasti and dried fruits that will catch your culinary eye.

Les Halles Sainte Claire isn’t just about the food—the sellers are as much a part of the experience as the food they sell. There’s the Harley riding chicken man that invited my husband and I to a rockabilly soirée at a neon-lit biker bar somewhere on the route nationale between Crolles and Chambéry. If you’re looking for a juicy poulet de Bresse or a jumping Teddy Boy joint, he’s your man. Catty corner to the chicken man, there’s the Chesire cat-grinning butcher. This man was born to be a butcher. Not so much for the kooky smile as for the savory paupiettes de veau that he ties up by the dozen. Go early if you plan on picking some up.

In fact, go early period, especially on Saturdays. Like anywhere in France, Saturday is synonymous with shopping crowds and trying to navigate the alley ways with a caddy full of groceries can be an exercise in patience and learning to live without personal space. Accept now that you will be trampled by little old ladies. That’s when it’s time to shop not in the halles, but around the halles.

“Ooh, pour ça il faut voir avec ma femme là-bas, c’est elle qui fait la cuisine et je suis pas encore mort! C’est que c’est pas trop mauvais!”

More brouhaha from the fruit & vegetable man?

Much of the brouhaha outside comes from the vegetable man who converses with his customers as if they all wore hearing aids. That’s how everyone in line learned that the secret of sautéeing buttery chanterelles baffled me. But I got a good recipe from his wife, not to mention a free bouquet of parsley, and a complimentary kiwi before being sent off with a few kilos of fruits and vegetables (my mom would be so proud) for around 10 euros. The quantity of produce carted away always seems to defy the low price and really, who doesn’t love those hollering market sellers?

The market at Les Halles Sainte Claire is convenient as the sellers set up shop every day except Monday, until around 1 p.m. On Fridays and Saturdays, the inside stands even stay open until 7 p.m. so that shoppers can prepare for weekend dinners with friends. Shopping starts as early as 6 a.m., so technically you could pick up some groceries before going to work.

Marketing can be hard fun. After a morning of poring over produce and poultry, you’ll find me at Le Zinc, a postcard of a bistro that usually has a few tables set up just opposite Les Halles. Watching this picturesque part of France from behind a grand crème offers the perfect reward for loading up on all those vegetables.

Sainte Claire, paradoxically, is unique and much like the outdoor markets all over Grenoble. It reminds us of the France that Julia Child loved, the France that M.F.K. Fisher praised, a France that still exists somewhat, defying the million metre carré Carrefours. A France that wants to enjoy grocery shopping as foreplay to a good meal. Customers come to savor the food, not just consume it. The nuns may be gone, but Sainte Claire still serves up a certain spiritual nourishment for the gourmets of Grenoble.

Just landed in Grenoble? Don't worry, there's a club for you. Photo: Guillaume Brialon

Just landed in Grenoble? Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple gives his rough guide to Grenoble’s expat clubs and Anglophone businesses and services.

I have been asked by the French Entrée website to write a post with general advice for expats in Grenoble and the surrounding area, including relevant clubs and associations to join. Where to begin? Maybe you have already heard claims that Grenoble has one of the biggest Anglophone communities of any French city. I’m not sure of the real stats, and I will resist the temptation to invent some here, but suffice to say you stand a good chance of meeting other English-speakers whether you wish to or not.

It can be a bone of contention. Some people get defensive about the expat thing, saying something along the lines of, “I didn’t come to France to meet other [insert relevant English-speaking nationality here], I came to meet French people etc.” I don’t really subscribe to this view. When I lived in the UK, I always gravitated towards people who were very international in their outlook, and counted many cultures among those I called my friends. Just because I came to live in France, doesn’t mean that I should only spend time with French people just to feel good about myself. Among the expat groups and associations listed below, one may find many Anglo-French couples, so-called ‘third culture kids’, and all manner of general pan-European activity that belies the widely held view of what expat communities are.

Most new English-speaking Grenoble residents, particularly those with families, are likely to encounter Open House, the city’s long-established and possibly largest expat association. Among the activities Open House organizes are children’s parties, excursions, wine tastings, lunches, outdoor activities, book groups, coffee meetings and French-English language exchange.

The more student-orientated Happy People 38 organizes intercultural social events and language exchanges. Meanwhile, Celtic Connection promotes Irish and Scottish culture and sport in Grenoble and hosts Hallowe’en and St Patrick’s parties, a Burns’ supper, and summer picnics. Scottish expats and a host of other nationals can also be found at a weekly Knitting Bee at Café Leyritz, Place Vaucanson, every Tuesday afternoon at 2pm.

Although not Anglophone I feel duty-bound to make you aware of the lovely people at Le Club Danemark – Rhône Alpes, who are known to organise Glögg parties, Danish lessons and excursions, including cross country skiing. For more info contact: danemark-rhonealpes@live.com

English Talk Radio, presented by Vivian Draper, is a bi-monthly show on 90.8 Radio Campus Grenoble.  The show talks about film, theatre, finance, restaurants and travel, and has a variety of topical local guests; every Sunday at 12.30pm, and every Wednesday at 7pm on 90.8, Radio Campus Grenoble.

For those expats who want their young children to have plenty of contact with the English language, there are some associations which can help with this, including Communication Café and ABC Anglais. Alternatively, French language classes for adults can be obtained from a variety of institutions and associations outlined in depth here.

If you are looking for American or British style cakes there is The Cake Shop and Bookworm Café. The latter also hosts book and poetry groups, language classes, local artists’ exhibitions and occasional musical performances. They also buy and sell second-hand English books, and have English newspapers and magazines to peruse. Furthermore, if you meet French friends yet to be convinced of the potential merits of American cuisine, Pumpkins might be wise place to convert them.

If you can’t find the book you are looking for at Bookworm Café there are two Anglophone libraries, La Bibliotèque Anglophone de Meylan and the English Library at Babel, which also runs book groups for teenagers and adults. Many municipal libraries also have English-language selections, particularly the International Public Library.

Given the dubious French proclivity for dubbing foreign language films into la langue maternelle, you may want to exercise caution when going to the cinema. Le Club (rue du Phalanstère) and La Nef (boulevard Edouard-Rey) are two theatres with dependably interesting programmes, all in version originale. For more info on the city’s movie theatres and film festivals, check out this comprehensive guide.

For church-goers, members from about 10 different denominations and 15 nationalities are welcome to attend The English Speaking Church of Grenoble, which also has a programme of social activities including dances, crafts nights, family evenings, visits to local attractions and walks.

In terms of professional development, the most dynamic and active association is the Working Women’s Network of Grenoble, which organizes networking lunches, workshops and seminars, and is run by a very helpful and efficient body of women. For opportunities to do volunteer work there is VSArt, an association that brings cultural opportunities to disadvantaged and elderly people. The Grenoble chapter was set up and is run by American Meredith Charreyron.

Grenoble also has a number of amateur English-speaking theatre groups. Students of different ages from Cité Internationale Scolaire de Grenoble participate in an annual pantomime and Upstage, respectively. The latter puts on very high quality plays every year at Ste-Marie-d’en-Bas, a 166-seat theatre off Place Notre Dame. Likewise, students of the English department at Stendhal University put on productions on campus every year. English-speakers are also invited to join a new Grenoble English Theatre Group, run by Nathalie Joshua. Novices welcome. For more information contact her at nathaliejoshua@hotmail.com

For health and well-being, Anglo-style therapeutic massage and aromatherapy can be obtained from Amy Cannata (waterfallwellness@me.com) and Shiatsu massage from Rebecca Skillman.

Finally, of course, I mustn’t forget to mention your very own Grenoble Life, which has articles and practical info for English speaking residents past, present and future. It also includes photo sharing, free classified ads and interviews with prominent members of the Anglophone community.

If I have forgotten any essential clubs or organizations, please use the comments box below to add to the list.

p'tit vélo dans la tete on campus - photo: www.ptitvelo.net

Are you a student or a new arrival and want to know how to live in Grenoble on a budget? Expatriated Brit John Lubbock has learnt the hard way, and has kindly agreed to share his tips and experience with Grenoble Life readers.  

Grenoble is not a bad place to be poor. But, like a tramp with a favourite patch, you have to know your environment; or like a foraging bear, where the best pickings are to be had. You may need to change some of your bad, foreign influenced habits to make the most of your insertion into French culture (beer is expensive apart from Stella, which isn’t one of the best things about French gastronomy, is it?). 

Tourists, as we all know, are naive sponges who deserve to be squeezed dry, so try not to seem like one. People will often poorly attempt to converse with you in English when they realise you are not a native, but insist, “Je suis en France, il faut que je parle en français“, and they won’t despise you as much for usurping their language as the world’s Lingua Franca. It is mostly from lack of better information that tourists agree to pay higher prices, so I intend to give you some information to help you make better spending choices.

Accommodation

If you do not want to spend your first month in France on a sofa or in a hostel, it pays to research accommodation before you arrive. There is an association called OSE Club which you can join for €30 which will find apartments for you in a designated area of the city, if you want to be near to a university. Then there are websites such as www.appartager.com and www.vivastreet.com, which have petites annonces for flats, but these are generally only useful if you pay the €10 fee to see the telephone numbers of the advertisers and call them up directly as they don’t answer messages on the site.

Watch the French film L’Auberge Espagnole before you go to get an exaggerated idea of being interviewed by your future flatmates and the kinds of hilarious European stereotypes you are likely to be cohabiting with. If you are not a student, it is even more important to find a flat quickly, because without a rental agreement, you will not be able to get a French bank account or contract telephone, and will thus be considered a SDF (Sans Domicile Fixe) by the French. This will mean that you are forced to become a baba cool (hippy) and sit in the street with your dogs holding out a frying pan to ask for spare change.  

N.B. If you are staying for less than a year, it is worthwhile getting a contract phone, which will be cheaper than pay as you go, the phone will be nicer, and there’s little they can do about it when you tell them that you’re leaving the country before the contract finishes and close your bank account. But don’t tell anyone I told you.  

If you have never lived in the socialist paradise that is France, you may not be aware of the kinds of social benefits available to people living there. The CAF’s housing benefit system could pay for some of your rent if you are a student or living on a low wage, although like most bureaucratic systems in France it takes about six weeks to get anywhere with it, and since these forms are all in French, it is more like a test of your reading comprehension which you need to pass to gain entry to French society.  

Learning French

If you are (un)lucky enough to be a political refugee, asking at the Préfecture (a big administrative building which makes you feel like Josef K from Kafka’s The Trial, wondering if you’ll ever be told what you’ve done wrong in order to end up there) or at the Conseil Général can get you free French lessons, which can otherwise be obtained by calling the ADATE organisation. I am not sure if you can get lessons with them without being a refugee, but I am considering telling them that I have been forced to flee from the UK as a result of the impending government takeover by a bunch of Tories with accents so posh and annoying that they constitute a form of social oppression. If you have to go to the Préfecture for any annoying bureaucratic reason, like to obtain a carte de séjour, don’t ask anyone which ‘queue’ you should stand in. The French for queue is pronounced like ‘que’, while saying ‘queue’ sounds like the French word for something rude.  

Transport  

When it comes to transport, if you are poor, the bicycle/vélo will become like your husband or wife, or perhaps the god to whom you pray for benevolence. If it works well, you love it and praise it, and if not you curse it. There are three main places I know of to obtain bikes cheaply. Firstly: on the street. I found three bikes lying in crumpled heaps on pavements in the first month I was here. The problem then is to take them to somewhere you can repair them. So either have a bike repair kit (Decathlon, around €15), or go to the second place to get cheap bikes – Un P’tit Vélo Dans La Tete meaning something like ‘A little bit biked in the head’.

This atelier (workshop) sells bikes that have been repaired for between €15-60, or you can go there to fix your own by paying a €15 abonnement (subscription). It is a good place to practice your French, as there are lots of guys who can help you to fix your bike, and they have a handy board on the wall with a picture of a bike and the French names for every part of it indicated. However, fixing bikes takes time, and if you have a second hand bike, or one you bought at P’tit Velo, it will break down roughly every two weeks. On the plus side, you will get very good at repairing bikes. The third option is Métrovélo, who will give you a generic yellow bike for €75 for six months (plus €50 deposit) and repair it for you if it breaks down.  

Of course, you can always chance a free ride on the tram, but getting caught by the officials will land you with a €65 fine, unless you can pretend to be a totally clueless foreigner. The tram tariff is €24 a month for students, but Grenoble is the flattest city centre in France, and waiting for a tram and slumming it with Joe Public are hidden costs not worth paying in my opinion. That’s why liberté comes before egalité and fraternité: because it’s more important.  

If you want to go further that the city limits, go to www.covoiturage.fr and find someone who is making the same journey as you to go with. It will be far cheaper than any other method of transport, and the people I’ve met doing it have all been nice.  

Food  

Although many people come to France for the food, as an impoverished young person, this will likely be one of the areas in which you sacrifice quality in order to live within your means. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, a man who lives within his means has no imagination; but you will likely be finding your culinary options limited by the exigencies of having little money to spend. Ed is a cheap supermarket, and it happens to bear the name of some of my friends, although since the name Edward doesn’t exist in French, they call it “Ee-de”, which sounds much more corporate and less friendly. It is worth taking a notebook around to the supermarkets to write down prices of items you buy regularly, because while vegetables may be cheaper in Ed, Géant may have cheaper milk, for example. Unfortunately, I have just been informed by my collocataire that Ed is closing down – evidently the world of modern commerce is too cruel for such friendly-named businesses – but Lidl is almost identical in that it has hardly any choice of products and brands you have never heard of, but they are all usually cheaper than the Géant/Casino equivalent.  

Yet if one just bought the budget Casino brand pasta/rice/couscous to eat with with vegetables every day, you might end up wanting to kill yourself. So for the minimum luxury of not cooking the food yourself, you can go to a CROUS canteen, near the gare, or in Domaine Universitaire. These are supposed to be for students, but you can just pay the €2.90 it costs for a meal there in cash without showing any student card as well. You get bread, salad or cheese, a main meal of canteen standard chips/pasta/vegetables/etc. and some meat served with customary indifference and a bad attitude by people who look deeply unhappy about serving ungrateful students who could pay their wages with their tuition fees (those who go to an École supérieure anyway).  

Working  

Of course, if you really want to make things easier on yourself financially, you could get a job. “A job? What’s that?” I hear you cry. “I am a student – they don’t work. Then I wouldn’t have time for all the drinking and Facebook which the energy I consume from crisps and Red Bulls goes into”. Well, you could work part time. If you are a native English speaker, you could get employed by a soutien scolaire company, telling kids what they did wrong with their homework. Believe me, it’s satisfying to be on the other end of this after receiving homework corrected in red-teacher-ballpoint ink for 10 or more years. Don’t be put off if you don’t have a TEFL or CELTA qualification, I didn’t find this a hindrance, though it may help to say you have experience of private teaching even if you haven’t.

If there’s one thing I learned looking for jobs here it’s that it doesn’t pay to be honest: always tell them you are available to work, always tell them you have the experience. It took me a while of offering my services to language companies (Grenoble Life already has a useful list here), universities and other places like the Chamber of Commerce and Rectorat before I was employed, but once you have your foot in the door, you will hear about other teaching  jobs that are advertised within teaching circles.  

The Pôle jeunesse on Avenue Agutte Sembat has a useful wall full of job and accommodation offers. But if you have a degree, they will tell you that they can’t help hoity-toity types like you and that you should go instead to AFIJ who have an office at 29 Avenue Felix Viallet near Cour Jean Jaurès. These guys mostly have offers for internships or well paid jobs, so if you are just looking for a petit boulot, the Pôle jeunesse might be more useful.

You could try working in a bar, but the French can be quite snooty if your linguistic skills aren’t up to scratch. This matters less when applying to one of the studenty bars like London Pub or Sun Valley, but you will invariably have to call a Frenchman ‘boss’ (and thereby lose all the nationalistic self-respect you have built up living in your own great land), and traipse around the campus putting up flyers just for the pleasure of sacrificing most of your evenings for €9 an hour. There are also lots of agencies you can work for who hire waiters and other restauration workers for company or other private functions, but I personally found them somewhat useless, though Adecco is worth a try. Then you can try the listings in Pôle Emploi, which is like the JobCentre in the UK, but with more paperwork.  

Of course one of the reasons why you came to Grenoble is to ski, so if you are a student, join the École de Glisse, and try to obtain some cheap equipment from one of the second hand ski places like Boite aux Skis. There is no way of getting around that skiing is expensive however you do it, but hopefully you will have saved enough money in other areas to afford the silly ski-pass prices. And if you injure yourself, just remember to have your European Health Card handy. Good luck, mes amis.

Freebox: Photo Martin Menu

Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple has one piece of advice for readers hoping to set up an internet connection in France: don’t use Free. Here’s why.

One of the first considerations when setting up home in a new country is getting an internet connection, nowadays almost as essential a utility as gas, electricity and water. When I arrived, one company dominated combined phone and internet packages: Free - seemingly the only good value alternative to France Telecom at the time. Now there are better value options on the market, but extricating yourself from your contract with Free is not as simple as it should be, to say the least.

Customer service in France often leaves a lot to be desired, but Free goes beyond the normal depersonalised call centre experience to seemingly deliberate efforts to overcharge and stonewall customers that have spawned large internet communities of unhappy punters and consumer associations, but has not apparently done enough to make Free contemplate their reputation.

A Free account is relatively easy to set up, but when you want to cancel your contract, they require you to return the Freebox router by post. All very well, except for the fact that – in our case, and that of many others – receipt of the box is not acknowledged, even if you have paid for a registered delivery service which enables you to track the package by internet to its destination. Free don’t receive the boxes themselves, but subcontract this task to a logistics company.

When Free disputed receipt of the box, our enquiries at the Post office were met with the response (or something to this effect) “Free do this all the time.” Angry consumers in numerous web forums support this, as does the existence of an association named Freeks, dedicated to helping customers untangle themselves from unpleasant disputes with Free, among other internet companies, and who list ‘mediation’ with Free as one of their services. This leads one to suspect Free are quite aware of the situation many of its customers find themselves in, and it is not just a case of logistical inefficiency.

Having claimed that they never received the box, Free then demand that you send them proof of dispatch (i.e., the receipt for registered post) by fax. That’s right, an internet service provider who communicate by fax - everybody’s favourite  21st century means of contact. It gets worse. There is evidently only one fax machine, apparently located at a call centre in Eastern Europe, which is engaged for large periods of the day. As if people don’t have better things to do than spend entire working days trying to send the equivalent of cyber bog roll to the other side of the continent.

Further still, the company insist that you call them within two hours of having sent the fax (assuming you have been able to get through), on a premium rate number. Finally, when we reached the call centre by phone, the operator was both vague and reluctant as to whether they had received the fax – maybe try again tomorrow? (another day loitering by the fax machine, more premium rate numbers). Only on being pressed did the unhelpful operator admit to receiving all the pages of the fax, but claimed it was illegible. Of course it’s illegible, it’s a fax! … we wanted to scream.

It’s a Catch-22, for if we hadn’t rung the bank to halt the direct debit we would probably still be in some daily fax-rage limbo while we almost certainly continued to pay for a service that we are not receiving, and have no wish to receive. We have written to complain to Free’s Customer Services, a postal-only service in France, and they have accepted the end of the contract, but not receipt of the box. They are demanding payment for a additional month’s subscription, and are still asking for the box back, which apparently costs around 400 euro.

Unfortunately you can fight with your principles but short of getting the consumer associations interested, you run the risk that Free will sell the debt on to debt-collection agencies, which really isn’t funny. It’s all over the web, from customers in the same situation as me, to those who never received the box in the first place, and have been paying for a product that was never delivered.

Thus, if you are a new arrival to the country hoping to choose an internet supplier, I strongly recommend that you opt for one of the alternatives. For example Numéricable, the optic fibre cable company, offer a faster connection and a basic telephone and internet package which costs around 20 euro a month, at the time of writing 10 euro less than Free. Numéricable at least have offices in Grenoble with human beings to whom you can speak face to face – which is reassuring – and send a technician to install and remove the router. I haven’t had the pleasure of having to close a Numéricable account, but it can’t be worse than my experience with Free.

Please use the comments box below to share your experiences, good and bad, with internet and phone providers. I hope that this word of warning might help other customers avoid falling into the same trap.

Loving life with the kids

Felicity Lodge is a financial planner with The Spectrum IFA Group, offering independent financial planning advice for expatriates in France. Felicity is based in Grenoble and works with English speaking expats the Alps region.  Here is her guide to some of the personal finance considerations for those making the move to France.

Moving to a new country can be a stressful time – changing jobs, finding somewhere to live, moving schools – and all this in a foreign language. In the midst of all this, financial issues get overlooked. People often assume that because their savings and pensions are well arranged in their home country, they can leave things as they are when they are living in France. In fact, all countries have different tax systems and what is tax efficient in one country may not necessarily be as suitable when you become French resident.

A common way of saving in the UK is with an ISA. Whilst you can continue to hold (but not contribute to) existing ISAs if you are non-resident in the UK, many people do not realize that an ISA is not tax exempt in France and any interest, dividends and capital gains must be declared on your annual tax return. If you will be moving back to the UK it may be worth holding onto your ISAs anyway – this will depend on your personal circumstances. Another popular way of saving in the UK is with the Post Office through National Savings and Premium Bonds. These are also not tax exempt in France and any interest or winnings will be taxable (since you can get your money back, Premium Bonds, wins are considered as interest not as lottery winnings). Some people place their money in offshore banks thinking they will not have to pay tax, however, a French tax return requires you to declare all worldwide income, including interest, and all accounts. Paying withholding tax does not remove the obligation of disclosure.

Bank Savings Accounts

Luckily, as a French resident you have other options available – different but equally valuable. Your first stop will be your bank for savings accounts (compte epargne), specifically a Livret A and a Livret Development Durable (LDD). These should both be offered by your bank and allow you to save a significant amount without tax. However, the interest rates at the moment are not very enticing, so while these accounts are good for holding emergency funds or money you will need in the immediate future, in the long-term your savings run the risk of being depreciated by inflation.

People today are aware of the risk of loosing some of their savings if a bank collapses. France has a compensation scheme that covers up to 70,000 € of a depositor’s net deposits per banking group. The UK scheme covers £50,000 per banking group. People are less aware that the biggest threat to your savings is that the return may not keep pace with inflation, eroding purchasing power in real terms.

Long-Term Savings

For money that you have no plans for in the near-future you might want to have some exposure to bonds or shares, to try to improve long-term returns. The safest way to do this is by investing through funds, since this way you have the expertise of a fund manager and his team and also, since your money is pooled with that of many other investors, your money will be invested in a wider range of shares, which reduces risk compared to holding shares in a few individual companies.

There are two main ways to do this tax efficiently in France. The first is through a Plan Epargne Actions (PEA) which is an account in which you can hold shares and funds. There are tax advantages, but these are combined with restrictions. You can only hold funds or shares that are based in and invested in companies in the European Economic Area (EEA). This is quite a severe restriction and means that you cannot fully diversify and take advantages of growth in other parts of the world. In addition, you cannot continue to hold a PEA if you cease to be French resident.

An alternative and less restrictive option is to hold funds in a life insurance bond. A French approved life insurance bond (Assurance Vie) is similar to a PEA in that it is an account with tax advantages in which you can hold funds. Funds held in an Assurance Vie must be based in the EEA but can invest anywhere in the world. Assurance Vie policies are widely held by French people for long-term savings and to supplement retirement income, since personal pensions in France are not as developed as in the UK and have quite strict requirements on when and how you can take your money. An Assurance Vie is much more flexible: for full tax advantages you must hold the policy for eight years although you can continue to hold it for as long as you wish and you have access to your money at all times.

Holding your savings in an Assurance Vie offers a number of advantages, particularly in France where the tax treatment of an Assurance Vie is very favourable. No tax is due on any asset held within the Assurance Vie whilst it remains in the policy and funds can be bought and sold within the policy with no tax payable, which means that the policy grows tax free. Tax is only payable when money is withdrawn from the Assurance Vie, and this is at extremely beneficial rates after the policy has been held for eight years.

In addition, there are benefits with regard to succession. The policy can be left to whomever the holder wishes, currently with a considerable tax free allowance and a comparatively low rate on any excess. Holding assets together in an Assurance Vie also simplifies your paperwork, tax treatment and asset management. The policy can be kept if you leave France, in which case the tax regulations of your new country of residence will apply.

Assurance Vie policies are not all made equal. Those offered by your bank are often expensive and have little choice of what to invest in. Some are available online with very low charges and a wide range of funds (supports) offered, but for this route you must be comfortable with a DIY approach. If you consult a financial planner, they will be able to find the best policy to match your needs and help you tailor the investment to your risk profile and to changing personal circumstances as your life changes. An Assurance Vie can be a lifetime investment that evolves with you.

Mortgages

Buying a property in France is highly regulated.  The amount you can borrow is controlled so loan payments and any other regular obligations cannot be more than 33% of your monthly income (net of social charges). This amount must be sufficient to cover any existing financial commitments, your new mortgage payments and the associated life insurance cover (which French banks insist on). The same rule applies if you are renting accommodation. French people tend to use fixed rate mortgages, but other options are available and are becoming more common. Re-mortgaging is more difficult in France, so choosing the most suitable mortgage in the first place is essential.

Succession

Inheritance law in France is very different to in the UK and other countries. French succession law applies to properties in France, even if the owners are not French resident, and to worldwide assets if you are. Under French succession law you are not able to leave your assets to anyone you please. Protected heirs (usually your children) are entitled to a portion of your estate and you are not able to leave the total of your assets to anyone you please. Inheritance tax, especially for non-related beneficiaries, is severe.

If you have a complicated family situation or have a will that does not agree with French law, it is vital that you consult with a notaire and a financial planner.

If you have not yet moved to France, professional guidance is essential since there are tax advantages to making some arrangements before you are French resident. If you are already resident in France, trying to understand the details of your different options can be a nightmare, especially when everything is written in a language you do not fully understand. A financial planner can help you to work out the best route to achieving your personal and financial goals within the French system.

Felicity Lodge, based in Grenoble, is a financial planner with The Spectrum IFA Group. For a free, no-obligation consultation please contact felicity.lodge (at) spectrum-ifa.com

Euros. Photo: Zempt

Kate Daligault is a financial advisor at Banque Rhône-Alpes in Grenoble. She talks to Grenoble Life about the banking culture in France, getting financial advice in English, and what new residents need in order to open an account.

Grenoble Life: What is your role at Banque Rhône-Alpes?

Kate: I work with international clients, guiding them through the pitfalls of the French banking system and hopefully making their lives in France easier. I can also help with tax returns and financial planning – even the French find these difficult!

GL: Banque Rhône-Alpes has produced a lot of practical advice about its services in English, why?

Kate: Most of our clients do not speak French or simply feel more comfortable talking about their personal finances in English – the French banks use a lot of technical jargon which can be daunting. We also have part of our website in English, a corporate brochure on Banque Rhône-Alpes, means of payment and different types of accounts in France, and several product brochures as well.

GL: Tell us a little about your background and where you come from.

Kate: My passport is British, but I think I’m what you call one of these third culture people. I was born in the States, and travelled mainly in Europe during my childhood years, due to my father’s career, learning to speak French in Switzerland. I first went to England when I was 12 years old and completed my secondary school and university studies there, and then went to work in The City, London, for Natwest Bank. For my first permanent position, they sent me to France, and I’ve been here ever since.

GL: Why did you come to Grenoble originally?

Kate: Like everyone else – because of my husband’s job! We used to live in the Southwest of France and he was transferred to his company Head Office in Grenoble in 2004, following a promotion.

GL: When did you start working at Banque Rhône-Alpes and what kind of training did you need for the job?

Kate: I’ve been with Banque-Rhône-Alpes for just over a year now, and although I’m a qualified UK Financial Advisor, have a degree in Banking & International Finance, and have been advising expats in France for over 12 years now, I still had to go through the in-house Private Account Officer training! This consisted of four separate weeks of training, spread over three months at the Head Office in Paris. It was difficult to go back to full-day lessons, but very worthwhile.

GL: How can new residents to Grenoble get face to face financial advice in English?

Kate: The best way is to contact me on 04 38 02 38 81 or kate.daligault (at) banque-rhone-alpes.fr and arrange for an appointment. Our branch is right next to Chavant cinema, in the centre of town.

GL: How has the banking culture in France changed since you arrived in the country?

Kate: The main difference has been the introduction of online banking and call centres. Although these provide greater ease of access for clients, they tend to dehumanise banks and make clients feel anonymous. I feel that one of Banque Rhône-Alpes’ great strengths is to move away from this commercial banking model and retain personal contact with clients – I know all my clients by name and see them at least once a year.

GL: How does the banking culture differ from that in your native country?

Kate: Ever wonder why you have debit interest to pay, but your account was never overdrawn? This is due to the French value-dating system, which means that for a cheque for 1,000 € deposited on day one, the funds are not available until day three. Therefore if you write a cheque before that date, you may be overdrawn in value terms.

The other big difference is the legal status of cheques in France. Writing a cheque without having sufficient funds or a pre-arranged overdraft is a misdemeanour, as is bouncing a cheque. This results in being blacklisted by the Banque de France for five years and will affect your credit rating. You will not be able to obtain credit until you have cleared your previous liabilities.

GL: What advice would you give new residents looking to set up an account in France?

Kate: The main difficulty when you first arrive in France is that you cannot open a bank account because you don’t have a fixed address yet, but estate agents will not let you sign a rental agreement if you cannot provide details of a French bank account … it’s Catch 22. At Banque Rhone-Alpes, we have over 20 years’ experience in dealing with new arrivals, and all you need to provide is:

• a valid passport or national identity card if you are from within the EU
• proof of employment / studies in France
• a valid address

Bikes, St Laurent. Photo: James Dalrymple

New resident Shonah Kennedy – aka Miss Shonah – gets around Grenoble en vélo. She encourages you to do the same. Here is her guide to enjoying and surviving your daily bicycle commute in the Capital of the Alps.

by Shonah Kennedy

Did you know Grenoble is the flattest city in France? This is a statement that I have heard on more than one occasion in my two short months here – and it has indeed been verified by my favourite search engine! What does this fact mean for the residents of Grenoble and its surrounds – Get on your bike(s)!

What better way to commute in the flattest city in France than from the luxury of your own two-wheeler, two-leg-powered machine and – as an added bonus – breathing in the fresh air of the mountainous surrounds?  So, you want to commute by bicycle … there are a few essentials before you peddle off.

Essential 1: A Bike

You can go to the usual suspects – Decathlon, Go Sport etc. or you could try viable alternatives.  Quite by mistake I bought my bike from Carrefour – not even being aware that you could get bikes – and bikes of decent quality with any service – there.  However, my vélo de ville is strong, road-ready, equipped with a cute basket and warrantee to boot! There was even a very helpful bike technician there to tighten a few nuts and bolts before I rolled it through the cash register!

If you wanted to try to commute en velo, but without committing to a bike immediately – Métrovélo can help.  They are very informative and give assistance readily (they also have insider information on where is best to buy second hand bikes, if this is something you want to consider) and you can hire a bike from them for one day or one year!

Essential 2: Protection

So, now you have your machine of choice – be sure to be well equipped! When you drive, or catch a bus or tram to commute – you can run directly from your warm and cosy house into a warm and cosy vehicle (or, of course in the summer months, air-conditioned bliss). There is a layer of vehicle between you and the sometimes inclement mountain weather. Sadly, a bike does not offer this protection so you need to B.Y.O.

Therefore (and from experience of not donning these items) gloves, jacket, head gear and very thick socks will make your commute a more enjoyable experience.  And really, need more be said – it is cold out there (now) and all extremities are vulnerable. It is always better to be able to take layers off than be so cold you can’t operate your machine properly!

With regards to a helmet – there is no question, get one!  It is the only item that will stop you from hitting your head on anything harder than your head in the case of any type of accident. When sitting parallel to a big monster truck, or bus, human insignificance seems to be magnified and these moments make you realise that helmets are good ideas!

Thanks to daylight savings and another Northern Hemisphere winter quickly approaching, it is getting very dark “out there” very early – BE VISIBLE! Yes, look like the “stop/go person” at road works, get more lights than are necessary. Imagine a rolling Christmas tree and this should give you some indication of the level of illumination you need on the roads after dark – or pre-light depending on the hour you need to start commuting.

Essential 3: Know where you are going

There are over 280 kilometres of bike paths in Grenoble.  Not only does this make commuting extremely easy to do, it also allows for many opportunities to get lost! From the Tourist office, Métrovélo, or many online sites you can get a simple map and pre-plan your daily commute, until it becomes as easy and as simple as jumping on the bus.

Now you have your essentials – get on your bike! This is an exciting moment, so considering the following will make it really fun!

Enjoy your daily commute!

**Leave yourself plenty of time to get all your gear on (layers take time to put on and take off!).  Cycle at a steady pace (you don’t want to get to work everyday looking akin to “Mr Messy” because you had to cycle like crazy to get there on time!). For timing purposes I once tried to chase a bus. This little riding experiment resulted in the conclusion that it takes approximately the same amount of time to ride a bike as it does to take the bus. So, to be safe – as I was really pushing the leg power to its limits – perhaps a little extra time should be factored in!

**The road can be a veritable mine-field. There are cars, trucks and buses coming from all directions.  Once you are in town there are trams and pedestrian traffic to contend with. Wherever there is a bike path there are traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, one way streets, Give Way and Stop signs, puddles that cars will always run into just at the precise moment as to splash onto your newly ironed trousers – so all I can say is take it easy. Don’t get bike rage. Take a breather on the footpath and be aware that you and your bike are probably the most insignificant things using the road. The wonderful thing about commuting by bike is that you can go at exactly the speed you want. You want to stop and take a photo – there is no ringing the little green button, just put on the brakes!

**Know your limits.  The other day – in the pouring rain – I saw one brave soul riding along with her umbrella open. This is an absolute personal choice – however when it is a torrential downpour I am on any form of public transport that keeps me dry!

Remember – if it is difficult and you feel out of breath and the cars are just plain ignoring you and all the lights seem to be red – you are doing a wonderful thing for your own well-being, getting to see the city in a whole new light and also you are being very kind to the precious environment! So what are you waiting for – Get on your bike(s)!

Chillis. photo: u m a m i

The French are not known for their love of spices - difficult for Grenoble’s British expats such as Hannah Dee, who comes from multicultural Leeds. Here is her guide to Grenoble Spice: the specialist food stores that hold those treasured, hard to find exotic ingredients.

Coming to Grenoble from a fairly multicultural part of the UK one of the things I found myself missing was the range of foodstuff available. Don’t get me wrong: I think French food is fantastic. The quality of the ingredients here, in particular the vegetables, far outstrips anything you can find in normal shops and markets in the UK. At the local markets you can get truly fresh local produce - cheap, plentiful, and advertising the origin of their produce in terms of département rather than country… Marvellous stuff. No more rooting around Leeds City markets looking at signs saying “Tomatoes (Holland)” or “Beans (Egypt)”.

But what you don’t get is the range of produce, and particularly not the spices. In UK supermarkets you can now get pretty much any vegetable or spice you want, any day of the year. Here in Grenoble, you have to go to a specialist shop (or one of the really HUGE supermarkets) to get fresh chillis and coriander. In urban areas of the UK, they’re in every corner shop. So with that in mind, here is a brief guide to the various specialist food stores I’ve found in Grenoble.

Saïgon Store, 6 Rue Doudart de Lagrée 38000 Grenoble has a range of mostly Vietnamese products – good range of noodles, some fresh exotic vegetables and some frozen stuff, and a huge range of spices. You can get decent hot chillis here and stuff like lemongrass, galangal, and other Southeast Asian vegetables and spices.

Carrefour Asiatique, 88 Cours Berriat, 38000 Grenoble has a similar range to the Saïgon Store, and is handily right next to tram stop St Bruno on the A and B lines.

Rajah Bazar, 15 Avenue Felix Viallet, 38000 Grenoble is a small, packed and friendly store with a huge range of spices and a fairly impressive alcohol selection. They also open late (indeed, there is even a Facebook fan page calling them the “Oasis nocturne de Grenoble“).

World Market, 24 Avenue Felix Viallet, 38000 Grenoble is another small and packed shop, selling food from all over the world. A good range of Pataks curry sauces, Thai and Viet and Japanese and Chinese food, manioc flour, couscous, hummus, falafel… They even have instant “Pão do queijo” packet mixes if you’re after a cheesy Brazilian junkfood snack. And a surprisingly impressive line in hair extensions.

Indian Bazar (Wahey Guru Di Kirpa), Cours Berriat by the junction with Jean Jaures has a small range of Indian foodstuffs – all the dried spices you could want, dried goods, and some chutneys and pickles. This shop doesn’t have the largest range of stock, and isn’t very cheap. But they do have lots of spice!

Supermarché Siam Bangkok, 38, Avenue La Bruyère, 38100 Grenoble is a slightly out of town (on the A tram, stop La Bruyère) supermarket, which claims to be a Thai supermarket but is actually much more international, stocking fufu flour and couscous and a lot of other stuff I don’t know what to do with. The range is similar to that of the World Food Store, but the floorspace is larger and there seems to be an awful lot of dried fish. This one is a little run-down, but still an interesting place to browse.

It’s worth finishing with a mention that the Géant Casino at St Martin d’Heres has a reasonably good section of international food in tins and jars (including Marmite, yeah!) – presumably because of the international nature of the student population.

But what about you? Are there any ingredients you’ve not managed to find? Or any shops that I haven’t mentioned? Do leave a comment if so!

Struggling to find accomodation? photo: michaeluyttersp

Shonah Kennedy shares her experience about relocating to Grenoble, and interviews Isabelle and Julie of LC Mobility, the agency that helped her find accommodation and deal with the trickier aspects of setting up life in a French city.

When my fiancé and I found out we were coming to live in Grenoble, for an extended period of time, we were very excited and started to plan immediately. We thought we had plenty of time to find accommodation, look for a language school, open a bank account, find an Internet plan, and all the really “fun” aspects of moving to a new city in a foreign country (the “romantic notion” of living in a foreign country comes after the organisation!).

Now, we were not totally inexperienced with this process, as we had been living in Paris for over a year. However, there are certain aspects that are always daunting, such as: finding a quality place to live, having enough French to understand your rights, insurance, internet connection with everything you need in the plan and … the list is not exhaustive!

We started to get a little concerned, when a month out we still had no place to live!  Then, salvation!

Out of the blue, we received an email from a company called LC mobility who assist foreign researchers (which is the category my fiancé falls under) and students to settle in Grenoble. Julie asked for specific details from us and within a week we had a place to live!  Below I interview Isabelle and Julie who are LC Mobility in Grenoble.

Shonah Kennedy: How did you start LC mobility?

Isabelle and Julie (LC Mobility): When Julie was doing her bachelor’s degree, she did an internship in Montreal and benefited from the services of a company that helped her to find her internship, find accommodation, welcome her at the airport and help her with social security in Canada.

Considering the market in Grenoble for accommodation and the fact that French people don’t speak English very well, especially in administration (such as the Prefecture), we thought that foreign students might need some help from French people to settle in Grenoble. So, at first we created an offer for students only, and then we realised that even researchers could use this help …

Shonah: When did you start LC mobility?

LC Mobility We started LC Mobility in February 2008, during our last year of our studies (Masters level).

Shonah: Why did you start LC mobility?

LC Mobility: We started LC Mobility because we did our studies in Management, and specialised in entrepreneurship. So, at first we just wanted to create a company together, for the challenge and the independence. We chose to create this company because it matched a need, and it was something that we can do and would like to do (because we know how helpful these kinds of services can be when you have just arrived in a new country!).

Shonah: Who is LC mobility?

LC Mobility: We are two girls: Isabelle and Julie. We both received our masters degrees at IAE Grenoble, in entrepreneurship (where we met).

We have very different tempers, so we work very well together, we are complementary!

Shonah: Who are your main target clientele?

LC Mobility Our target clientele are students, PhD students, and more and more researchers. We also help French people to settle in, when they come from a distant city (such as Bordeaux or Lille).

Shonah: What do you do?

LC Mobility: We help people to settle in Grenoble and Lyon in three steps:

1. Find their accommodation (most of the time before their arrival)
2. We welcome them at the station and accompany them to their accommodation
3. We realise for (or with) them all procedures to settle in. Such as: opening a bank account, getting a residence permit, getting Internet access, cell phones, insurance etc.

Shonah: Are there any plans for expansion?

LC Mobility: We are developing the company in Lyon. We have already welcomed a few people there, so in November Julie will move to Lyon and be there permanently!

Shonah: Are there fees for your services?

LC Mobility: Yes, there are fees that are available to view on our website.  We also offer services in packages.

For more information, or to talk to these friendly approachable girls you can find all their contact details on the contact portal at Contact LC Mobility – Isabelle and Julie.

Kelly Rigotti writes Almost Frugal, a blog about being smart with your spending, saving and money goals. As probably the only American living in France writing about frugal living, we invited her to share her personal finance tips for her adopted home town of Grenoble. Part I in the series is about food.

by Kelly Rigotti

Although I’ve been writing about frugality and learning how to be frugal since late 2007, this is the first time I’m writing a post about frugality from a local perspective. My blog is called Almost Frugal and most of my readers live in English-speaking countries, especially the United States. I’m American and I’ve lived in Grenoble since January 2000 and I think it’s safe to say that I’m the only American blogging about personal finance and frugality in Grenoble. I could be wrong, but I bet I have the niche covered!

Although I do talk about living in France and the challenges of trying to handle money as an expat (especially paying back my American student loans, most of the topics I cover on Almost Frugal are general enough that anyone can relate to them, no matter where they live. I’m really excited though, to finally be able to talk about frugality and living frugally in my (adopted) city, Grenoble. Today I’ll be talking about the best places to spend less on groceries.

Groceries can make up a significant part of any household’s budget. Certain French grocery chains, such as Lidl or ED are relatively inexpensive, but they don’t always have the best quality food (although I’ve never gone wrong with their canned goods, juice or wine selections). I prefer to take advantage of fidelity programs from stores like Carrefour, Géant or LeClerc. The fidelity programs from all three of these stores are free to join, and if you don’t mind your personal shopping habits being mined by the stores for information, you can recoup significant discounts on your grocery shopping.

Carrefour’s fidelity program offers discounts of 5% on their store brand products, as well as other discounts on time-limited promotions. Often these promotions don’t give the best, cheapest option, but every once in a while Carrefour will have a doozy of a sale – buy one get two free and so on. Carrefour does not put the store credit on your card, instead it mails you a fidelity check at the end of every month, good for use on your next shopping trip.

Géant is the most expensive of the three stores I’m talking about here, and in my opinion, the one with the worst customer service. But it does have one of the best selections of expat foods (Campell soup, anyone) and so I brave the high prices and rude salespeople every once in a while to stock up. Like most grocery stores, Géant will often have loss leaders: products priced quite low to get you in the store to buy everything else. As a side note, did you know that it is illegal in France for supermarkets to price products below cost? Supermarkets are not allowed to lose money on their stock. This is why you won’t find any true bargains at a French supermarket- it would be illegal.

The best supermarket, in my opinion, for customer discounts, is the LeClerc supermarket in the Espace Comboire shopping center in the town of Echirolles. Unlike Carrefour or Géant, which are both chain stores, LeClerc is a series of licensed franchises. This means that the discounts and promotional offers found at one store might not necessarily be found at another.

The LeClerc in Espace Comboire has a series of great, ongoing promotions, a different one for every day of the week. The best is Thursday’s, when, for every €50 of goods purchased you get €5 in store credit on your fidelity card. Combined with other in-store promotions, I often manage to save €20 or more per shopping trip.

Unlike the United States, France is not big on coupons. You will find them every once in a while, either on your register receipt at the grocery store, or as a manufacturer’s coupon, but there isn’t the overwhelming coupon mentality here as in the United States.

Another excellent way to save money in your grocery bill is by buying online – this way you can keep an eye on your total as you go and save money on gas. Both Carrefour (called Ooshop) and the Intermarché in Seyssins have online delivery services. Depending on where you live the delivery charge can be free to quite expensive.

If you’re looking for bio (organic) or locally sourced food, then there are two good online options, neither of which is very expensive and both of which deliver. The first is called The Label Bio and sells a variety of organic and local food. I like them because they sell preselected baskets (panniers) of a variety of food – whatever is in season for €12 to €55 depending on the size and selection of the contents. The second is called The Pannier de Johanna and although they don’t sell preselected baskets of food, they have a wide variety of products to choose from, from patés to flour, all locally sourced or organic.

Here are some of my favorite posts on Almost Frugal on saving money, food and frugality:

Food Shopping and Menu Planning
Stretch Your Food Budget
Your Favorite Frugal Food

Bio: Kelly Rigotti is American and has lived in France for a lot longer than she thought she would when she first arrived. As well as writing about frugality at Almost Frugal, she has a day job as a marketing and communication consultant. In her spare time, she attempts to ride herd over her three children, four cats and handsome French frog of a husband. You can follow her at Almost Frugal, on Facebook or on Twitter.

Pumpkins

Bob and Sylvie Tharinger own and operate Pumpkins (33 rue d’Alembert), Grenoble’s only authentically American restaurant. Christina Rebuffet-Broadus of Grenoble Life talks with them about showing the French that American cooking is much more than McDo has led them to believe.

Grenoble Life: Could you tell us a little about yourselves? It seems every Franco-Anglo-American couple has a story. What’s yours?

Bob: I had traveled around the world, had already been to Grenoble once, and came back here to work. This is where I met Sylvie, then we lived a while in the United States, where our son was born. But finally, we settled down in Grenoble in 1978. We came back because Sylvie wanted to return to Grenoble.

Sylvie: I’m not originally from here, but have family in Grenoble. For me, it was more that I didn’t want to live in southern France than I wanted to come back to Grenoble. I would have liked to live in one of the Scandinavian countries, with their Nordic landscapes. Grenoble was sort of a compromise for us.

GL: How long has Pumpkins existed?

Bob: We opened in September 2004. We bought the place in June of the same year, but of course had to do some work beforehand. It’s been almost five years, unbelievable!

Bob and Sylvie

GL: We all know the French people’s reticence towards American food. How did you get the idea to open an American restaurant?

Bob: We’ve always done a lot of cooking, often for our friends, often a lot of American dishes. We both like to cook and eat, and realized that people didn’t really know the variety of things you can eat in the United States. Unfortunately, the French tend to have a very fast-food idea of American cuisine. They would never believe the food you can get in the United States.

Where I’m from in Minnesota, we noticed restaurants do a lot of different things, there are all kinds of influences. So we figured we could probably do anything we wanted and call it American cooking, but we didn’t really want to call it “American” for fear that people would run in the other direction. So we just called it Pumpkins.

Sylvie: We got tired of people saying “American cooking … beurk!” We wanted to show people that real American cooking exists. Plus we didn’t want to put “American” in the name because it could sound a bit snobbish or exclusive, like not everyone was welcome. But we also didn’t want to use “American” because of a certain image that the French had of Americans, especially at the time of the opening because of the political situation. We just wanted everyone to feel comfortable, not like Pumpkins was just a place for Anglophones.

Bob behind the bar

GL: How did you come up with the name “Pumpkins”?

Bob: Sylvie just had the idea the one day! And I thought it was great because it’s very visual and something people remember easily.

Sylvie: I thought it sounded convivial. It made me think of the pumpkin patches in the American east coast at the end of summer when we used to visit. Plus Pumpkins sounded good and was easy to pronounce for us French.

GL: Now, for the good stuff. Tell us a little about your menu. What kinds of American food can your guests find at Pumpkins?

Bob: We really try to offer a sampling of the United States’ regional cooking. We have family all over the northern U.S., plus both of us like southern food — barbecue, seafood, and especially African-American cuisine, which in itself is extremely varied. There’s also a Jewish delicatessen influence, something relatively unknown in France. And if you go to the northwest region of the United States, there’s a great mix of Chinese, Japanese, and Native American cuisines based on the abundance of good, local products. More or less, we try to do a little of all this.

One of the hardest things is to do meat like in the United States. Lucky for us, we found a French butcher who lived and worked in San Francisco, but now he’s right on rue Nicolas Chorier. It’s great because he knows American cuts of meat. He knows what an American pork chop is and can cut a sirloin steak if we want. He even helps us to do real corned beef, which is practically impossible to find around here.

Sylvie: Every two weeks, we change one dish on the dinner menu. There are some things that we always have. We’ll always have the burger. At lunch, we always have chili on the menu, but we change the presentation — one week the chili will be in a tortilla, another it’ll be with guacamole. Once we had a couple come in and they both ordered the same dish, so I gave each one different sides. That way they could taste everything!

Downstairs dining room

GL: Pumpkins also does brunches. When are they held and where did that idea come from?

Bob: We’ve been doing the brunches for two or three years now. Our brunches are typically midwest-American. We wanted to host a brunch much like the Sunday brunch that I knew when I was a kid — eggs, bacon, sausage, plus some extras. We would like to do a real family-style brunch, with a self-serve buffet, but here we don’t really have enough room.

With all the families that come in, it would be hard for people to serve themselves with the strollers and the children and I don’t want to lose that family atmosphere by doing a buffet. It’s fantastic to see the people at the brunches — they’re relaxed, happy, even if they have to wait sometimes for their food,  they don’t care. They come in and have a good time.

It’s so successful that we have to turn down almost as many people as we accept for the brunches. We do just one service per brunch, that way the people can come and stay as long as they like. We want them to feel at home.

Sylvie: From a culinary point of view, I think we do the only real brunch in Grenoble. Our brunch is “made in Minnesota” — it’s not French, it’s not Spanish, it’s not Dutch. When we were younger, all the kids in Bob’s extended family knew they could go to his dad’s house on Sunday morning and be greeted with the smell of bacon grilling, eggs scrambling and the whole family got together. That’s the brunch we try to recreate, that family-get-together atmosphere.

Bob: In the 1960s and 1970s, my father would host these fantastic brunches and people would just stop by. Family members, friends passing through the area, and the ambiance was simply extraordinary. That’s part of the reason why we created this restaurant and really wanted to host the brunch.

GL: That’s a heartwarming story, wanting to recreate the family ambiance that you knew growing up at your dad’s. Speaking of family get togethers, does Pumpkins do anything special for American holidays?

Bob: We would like to do something for the 4^th of July, but since we’re in the city, it’s unfortunately impossible to do a backyard barbecue. Thanksgiving, however, is enormous. Last year, we had 60 kilos of turkey and I think in all we served around 150 Thanksgiving dinners, but I’m not sure. It got to the point where we stopped counting.

We also did a Christmas brunch, again with a lot of midwestern, German-American influences. We had German-American style pastries among other things because in the past, many German and Scandinavian immigrants settled in that region.

The idea behind all our dishes is family cooking. For all our meals we create a plate like if you were eating in an American family situation—all the food’s on the table and you help yourself to everything. Except we put the plate together in the kitchen, recreating that American plate, with the meat, sides, sauces and relishes all in the same plate.

GL: To finish, I’m going to ask you the impossible. How would you describe American cooking in a few words?

Bob: (with Sylvie, laughs) I remember our first cook, who was a very competent cook mind you, told us, “OK, I get it: just add sugar and hot sauce and it’s American cooking.”

There’s not just one American cuisine, there are lots of American cuisines, just like in France — the food varies enormously between the regions.  The cuisine of the southwest has touches of Mexican influence and is completely different from the cooking of the northeast where you’ll find chowders and baked beans. That cuisine has nothing to do with the cooking of New Orleans, which also has a totally different taste from the growing Cuban-American cuisine. There are lots, lots of different American cuisines.

But we’ll always have a hamburger on the menu for the French who don’t want to be disappointed and the Americans who want a real home-style burger.

Although the menu changes often, at the time of this interview, Pumpkins was serving Cajun catfish, a blue cheese burger, tortilla wrapped chili, and Los Angeles Fire Department-style chicken wings. Dinner dishes cost around 10-15 euros, desserts such as cheesecake, pecan pie, and sundaes cost 5-6 euros.

Pumpkins (33, Rue D’alembert, 38000 Grenoble) is open for lunch on Thursday and Friday; for dinner Wednesday through Saturday. Brunches are every other Sunday. Call ahead to reserve: 04 76 29 48 21

You can also sign up for the Pumpkins newsletter with the season’s brunch dates emailed in advance. Email pumpkins.restaurant@wanadoo.fr

Tag bus in action! Photo: Ambrosiana Pictures (G)

In previous article for Grenoble Life I bemoaned France’s rather particular brand of service culture, in some instances comparing it unfavourably to the UK. However, there are certain aspects of life in France in which the nation seems to defeat us Brits with an effortless and dismissive Gallic slap: transport. Whether it be the gleaming speedways they call les autoroutes, the super-fast TGV trains or local bus networks that operate with the kind of clockwork, almost Teutonic punctuality - getting around in France can make Britain seem grimly backward in comparison. 

When people ask me about life in France I always answer that one quickly assimilates the positive aspects in a culture but the negative ones obviously take longer to get used to. But one thing that I have quickly integrated is France’s bus network and meaningful time tables. In England we seem incapable of developing a timetable that takes into account the vagaries of the traffic at a given time of day. In London such timetables are mere token gestures that serve no apparent function – and it has been a long time since I have seen anyone try to use one.

In the last ten years LED displays have been introduced to London bus stops to serve you the latest bus arrival times. It is not clear if these are operated by GPS satellite or crystal ball (I suspect they are simply based on the original, obsolete timetables) but they do little to expedite your journey. Instead they serve to heighten your expectation and thus your disappointment too - buses listed as ‘due’ frequently vanish from the radar, never to arrive.

To have, in Grenoble, a bus timetable that you can obtain online and as a leaflet, and plan your journey accordingly, still strikes me as a minor miracle. For someone who has grown up with buses arriving ostensibly au hasard, I still find myself delighted in France that using such transport needn’t be fraught with anxiety. On buses in France I am always at my jubilant best – full of optimism for modern life: in idiotically open-mouthed awe that a bus could actually arrive at the stated time. I suppose I ought to get out more.

Grenoble’s buses are not just efficient but clean. London buses rarely seem to receive more than a cursory rinse around the edges, with chicken wings, apple cores and sodden newspapers often to be found pressure-hosed into a paste around the top deck drainage holes. Not so here, where local operator Tag (Transports de l’Agglomération Grenobloise) circulates buses that positively gleam.

In London bus drivers are not to be bothered with questions or even the smallest of favours. “Well you thought wrong!” one snapped at me after I was foolish enough to query the route destination. Worse even is that many London bus drivers, under instructions not to take passengers except at the official stops, seem to take a sadistic pleasure in ignoring the pleas of sprinting commuters, or even abandoning young women in deserted streets late at night as they didn’t get to the designated stop in time.

I have seen Grenoble’s bus drivers communicating via klaxon to help passengers make their connection – almost unthinkable in London – and wait for running passengers rather than speeding away from them. When I see this happen I get misty eyed about this brave new world where drivers actually conspire to help their passengers reach their destination! “Don’t take it out on us!” says the latest advertising slogan protecting London bus drivers from the kind of abuse enraged commuters often serve up in the rush home, the “it” presumably being a totally miserable journey home, every day.

Maybe bus drivers in London have a demoralising job with less than pleasant conditions but often one is made to feel an enemy rather than a customer. While in France the reception from bus drivers is hardly chaleureux, there seems to be an unwritten contract between driver and passenger to say bonjour and merci, au revoir at the beginning and end of each trip. A wave of thanks on disembarking is always seemingly acknowledged by an appreciative nod in the rear view mirror. French bus drivers probably get a better deal. Considering the number of strikes they have called in the last few years I wouldn’t be surprised.

The main crime of the Tag and Transisère bus companies is not to run a service after half past eight, effectively cutting off Grenoble’s suburbs and neighbouring towns from the city’s night life. As someone who lives in Meylan I can say with some certainty that drink driving is endemic in France. I am apparently the only adult in the ‘burbs who elects to use the single, hourly night Navette from Grand Sablon to Meylan – the only way to get home from Grenoble on Friday and Saturday night without walking or driving.

Packed with carless drunk teenagers from the wealthier parts of Grenoble’s agglomeration, taking the Navette is quite an experience. It is often seen helmed by Marie-Noëlle, the beleaguered and tiny-voiced conductrice who seems comically incapable of controlling the raucous adolescents. “On est perdu!” they scream and sing as Marie-Noëlle wearily navigates the winding back streets of Corenc.

A French friend of mine in London told me she was surprised by the grim acquiescence of Londoners regarding the state of the bus service. One might wait 20 minutes in the rain for a bus only for it to neglect to stop for passengers. The English suffer in silence while the French, she said, would be up in arms remonstrating. She put this down to national temperament, that strangely generous French stereotype of the British (unknown on the other side of the channel it seems) that the Brits are bastions of calm in the midst of chaos.

However, I put this tacit acceptance of inefficiency down to the fact that the Brits simply don’t know any better. Many haven’t experienced a clean and reliable bus system, and don’t expect one. See you on the 6020 to Chavant!

Photo: mikeandanna

Last Saturday evening was an important occasion for my wife and I. Not only were we celebrating our second wedding anniversary but it was our first evening out since the birth of our daughter, now three months old, who was kindly being babysat ber grandparents. Now I may have Scottish ancestry (albeit watered down through several generations – but hey! I still have the tartan surname) but I don’t mind pushing the boat out once and awhile and spending a little extra on a quality restaurant.

Where I live we are not exactly spoilt for choice, but there is one Michelin guide-recommended restaurant on the border of Meylan and Corenc called Restaurant Le Provence, so we made a reservation there. Just to put it into perspective, there is a restaurant in the same street – not without a decent reputation but which ought to remain nameless here – whose owners have an enormous and very shaggy German Shepherd which I have seen loitering in the kitchen.

Having made our reservation for Le Provence with little difficulty less than one week before, we were pleased when we arrived to be warmly greeted by a bustling, professional waiting staff. Modern and informal, the young, all-female team led by Danielle Gaggio, the chef’s wife, made a refreshing change from the surly owners and disinterested career waiters one often finds in Grenoble.

In fact I noted that the service was not only exclusively female and young, but all conspicuously Mediterranean in appearance: no men or blondes serving table at Le Provence. There was an annonce for a vacancy in this capacity – so I’d be curious to see how applications from anyone male or gold of locks would fare as a candidate. Luckily I already have a job, as I would be particularly disadvantaged on both counts.

We were ushered into a pleasantly lit courtyard of aromatic trees and plants which was quickly filling up with diners. This outdoor dining space, which has a retractable canvas roof, is the perfect ambience in which to fully appreciate Le Provence’s beautifully prepared fresh fish dishes garnished with carefully selected Mediterranean ingredients.

Having ummed and ahhed for a period over which menu to take, we finally opted for the three-course Privilège. At 35 euros, it was the cheaper choice (I am a Scot by name after all!) of the three, the most expensive of which was in the environs of 50 euro and had to be ordered in advance. I chose Foie Gras with a Provençal-sytle salad for a starter; my wife a tartine with roasted Meditterranean vegetables and Serrano ham.

For the main course we both had a Plancha of tuna with a light potato mousse, grilled veg and a kind of cuttlefish chutney. Despite the sensational variety of flavour and texture to indulge in, it was never too busy or rich – a harmonious spirit of Provençal cuisine ran throughout. While certainly gastronomic, the dishes were not pretentious, remaining faithful to Mediterranean ingredients.

Unfortunately we had to rush our equally delicious dessert in order to return to our hungry baby, so were unable to linger in the courtyard as long as we would have liked. But we did have the pleasure of meeting the highly personable chef, Eric Gaggio, as we paid at the reception on the way out. Simlultaneously smart and modern but informal and unpretentious, Le Provence is by some distance the best restaurant I have tried in the Grenoble area. Check out their informative website, where you can find information on the menus and prices but also cookery courses, their range of olive oils and catering options.

Restaurant Le Provence
28 avenue du Grésivaudan
38700 Corenc
04 76 90 03 38

English is increasingly common in Grenoble, not least in graffiti !

I used to wonder why, very often, when I tried to speak French in a restaurant, shop, post office or market, for example, the reply would come back to me in English. Given that I am at least semi-competent in French, I couldn’t help feel offended at being treated as a tourist in the country I called home. I don’t think it would be presumptuous to say that I am not alone in this experience. When I first arrived in Grenoble I made a school-boyish but pardonable error in asking: Est-ce que vous avez du bière? at a café, having not quite nailed down the gender of that favourite English beverage. The waitress looked at me as if I was from out of space, before replying “Not bière”.

However, what has become increasingly apparent to me is that my linguistic skills are not being spontaneously judged and deemed unfit but rather that the French are grabbing an opportunity to practice their English. The look of the woman in the café was probably not one of complete incomprehension but one masking certain grammatical computations, for what it was worth. It is probably a look I wear myself quite often as my brain lags doggedly behind my tongue during an experiment with, say, the French Subjonctif.

On the bus yesterday I was very amused to hear a group of nine or ten primary school children singing in unison, “I like English! I like English!” before a musical rendition of the alphabet that faultered every time they negotiated the obstacle course that is “L-M-N-O-P”. “Yes, it is! No, it isn’t!”, I left them chanting ecstatically, presumably in recollection of their English classes, quietly wishing to myself that I had adult students with such unbridled enthusiasm about their training.

This morning I was delighted to be greeted at the boulangerie by a welcome new face. As I have mentioned in a previous post about Grenoble’s service culture, trips to my local shops have sometimes been fraught with peur et tremblement. Today, however, I was greeted by something extraordinary, a new face whose defining characteristic was a smile from ear to ear. Surveying the empty shelves I asked, “Vous n’avez plus de croissants?“, to which the smiling face replied, amiably and in no poor accent, “Not any more!”. In such situations I prefer to persevere in French while remaining friendly enough to show that I don’t mind a conversation in two languages. As he handed me my change with the kind of extraordinary deference reserved for a foreign dignitary (a half bow, and a “thank you, goodbye”), I didn’t even care that I had no viennoiseries to bring back to my wife on Mother’s Day.

Such exchanges are not always as pleasant, I had an interesting experience at the market in Aiguinards a few weeks back. I was at the fromagerie when a man struck up conversation with me, at first curious about my five week old daughter in a baby carrier: generally a guaranteed way to attract attention in France, for better or worse. Realising I was British, he then used the occasion to practise his English, even though I persevered in French. He told me he had spent time studying in the UK, before complaining about the “Shitty weather”. He went on to add that the “food was really Shitty in England, absolutely disgusting! The food was so Shitty it was the first time in my life that I lost weight. There’s probably more cheese here [gesturing at admittedly fantastic selection on the market stall] than in the whole of Britain”. “I don’t mean to offend you”, he added. Charming!

So, despite the best efforts of the Académie française, English seems to be permeating French culture. At my school the other day I had to evaluate the level in English of a number of employees sent by their company. For many of these, it was their first job and they had just recently completed their studies. Furthermore many had taken the opportunity to live and work in the UK to learn English. The impression I am getting is that while the French are proactively and pragmatically studying English, the Brits have become lazy and complacent about studying languages since English became so internationalised.

Tant pis!, the Brits might say (if they knew how to), except that, as reported in the Guardian, companies in the UK are increasingly turning to foreign nationals for jobs that require more than one language. The article shows how second language study has declined in Britain since the Labour government stopped making it obligatory at GCSE, a serious error in the view of many, myself included. I remember one frustrated colleague when I worked in London reacting to a telephone conversation in stilted English with a counterpart from a French museum with the angry exclamation, “I hate it when people can’t speak English!”. Perhaps the wind of change has already come.

Cours Berriat in the good ol' days, when it was very easy to get your baby's picture taken

For now my daughter is uniquely a French citizen. British citizenship – and hand-cramp inducing paperwork that involves – will have to come later, preferably with me excused from block capital inscribing duties, since it seems I have long forgotten how to use a pen. As my wife and I were planning to take our daughter to the UK for a holiday this summer (OK, it’s not so much a summer, but the notionally warmer period that sometimes takes place, probably for around two weeks, between July and August). we have set ourselves up for the administrative rigmarole of applying for her carte d’identité in a relative hurry. Easier than getting a passport, the bureaucratic requirements didn’t seem so exigent on paper, but necessitated the usual documentative suspects that have become a regular feature of my administrative life in France: both the mother’s and baby’s copie integrale de l’acte de naissance *; photos taken by officially designated photographer; and a recent bill as proof of address.

It all seemed so suspiciously easy, but alarm bells started to ring when our casual enquiry about where such photographs should be taken was met by a bureaucratic stonewalling: would the town hall give us some tips where the official photo should be taken? No, of course they wouldn’t. Fools us for having the gall to ask. Apparently photomaton booths no longer exist, and in the digital era only photos numériques suffice these days for such purposes, despite the ease with which they can be manipulated. No matter: a five week old baby girl could hardly operate a photo booth anyway, considering how much trouble they can give certain 31 year old men (ahem).

Without enormous difficulty we located an appropriate place of business, at the somewhat dingy and conspicuously non-air-conditioned K’Store on Cours Bérriat. When we arrived we were surprised to find only a small photo developing counter in the middle of the mall where a young woman both serves customers and develops the photos herself (I am developing a totally unscientific theory that the much-fabled French productivity may be the result of sacrificing service, or at least combining service into a job which would perhaps be done in another country by a separate person – not unlike those bossy owner-waiters in restaurants who seem so displeased to see you). To be fair, the woman was making the best of a difficult juggling act: it was surprising how much business this little photo lab was doing at half past three on a Tuesday afternoon.

However, there was one major spanner in the works. For a carte d’identité, the baby’s eyes must be open, which seems ridiculous given that her eye colour is bound to change in the coming months, not to mention the fact that her entire appearance is transforming with every passing moment. Furthermore, my daughter has a curious defence mechanism when in the company of strangers, and that is to retreat completely into herself like a hedgehog, either feigning or genuinely falling into a deep and unshakeable sleep. Normally this is a blessing – we have even managed to take her to a restaurant and she has slept peacefully and angelically without interruption, attracting appreciative glances from other diners (yes, that’s right! It’s only been five weeks and we’ve already nailed this parenthood business!). On this prematurely sticky May day, however, the blessing became a curse. We tried to wake our daughter up but she wasn’t having any of it, despite us employing our full arsenal of tickles and noisy toys.

All this was taking place with increasing desperation as I had to periodically run out to the street to top up the parking metre and the photo shop lady, camera tripod at the ready, had to attend to customers. During a small window of open-eyed opportunity, she managed to take a couple of shots, but these proved too blurry given that we were doing our utmost to jolt some life into our daughter at the time. Stubbornly, she fell back to sleep with a swiftness that might lead you to suspect that she was toying with us. Another sweaty dash to the parking metre later and we intensified our efforts to rouse her in full view of bemused onlookers, starting to feel oddly abusive to this ostensibly peaceful little baby, knowing full well that she would choose to ‘release the tension of the day’ as soon as we set foot in our apartment.

Finally we were reduced to undressing her to just her body suit, and after a generous amount of begging and bouncing she awoke with a startle and promptly vomited over herself. As any parent knows, a baby being sick is no exceptional occurrence, but the next few moments were tense as we tried to position my daughter decently in the camera’s line of sight, her mouth working languidly as if ready to be sick again. (Once, in her first couple of weeks, she vomited so spectacularly it was like the detonation of a milk-filled grenade. One moment my wife was cradling her, the next moment both mother and baby were covered in regurgitated milk. It was a like a scene from Ghostbusters: She slimed me!).

The photo, taken seconds later, managed to transform my once beautiful baby into a slavering Shrek-like creature; or more precisely Phil Mitchell from Eastenders. Not a big deal until you realise that this will be her identity card photo for the next ten years. On the other hand, the application is yet to be approved – which is touch and go considering the fact that she appears nearly diagonally in the photo, and is meant to be completely upright – we could have to do it all over again!

*Copie integrale de l’acte de naissance is a copy of the official birth registry that can be obtained from the Hôtel de Ville or Mairie of your home town. This is only required for the carte d’indentité application when one parent is a foreign national.

Attractive watering hole for a thirsty Englishman - or is it?

As an Anglophone in Grenoble you may, like me, have had something of an adjustment period regarding the service culture in France. There are several deeply instilled beliefs that you may have to abandon like the hardest of bad habits, for instance the not necessarily culturally-translatable motto “the customer is always right”. The customer and server are altogether different beasts from those ‘back home’, wherever that may be, with service ranging from a brutal efficiency that sometimes borders on the violent (I’ve been served in restaurants where the laying of table should be conducted with the warning “keep your limbs inside the vehicle at all times’), to active disinterest (there are occasions in Paquet Jardin where I have practically had to beg to be served) and, occasionally, downright hostility.

Dealing with the first two forms is less problematic, it is easy to put a surly career waiter down to experience, and as shoppers from the UK’s chain-store ridden retail universe can attest, active disinterest is not such a shock to the system. The third variety is, I confess, a rather unpleasant novelty for me. I have become convinced, rather irrationally, that the staff in my local boulangerie hate me. Going there to part with my hard-earneds – which I have done sheepishly for nearly two years – has become a source of dread to me. Not only have I failed to engage in any kind of meaningful banter (more on that later) with the proprietors, but I have become convinced that they deliberately select the poorest quality bread to give me as a way of warning off my future custom. Other customers, especially those with kids it seems, are greeted with the kind of bonhomie that leaves me feeling envious and inadequate, while I am not granted even a flicker of recognition for my loyal custom.

My experience at the baker is born in part, I believe, with my inability as a banterer. While my French improves, my capacity for making casual but engaging small talk remains null. All attempts in this area have ended in shame and self-loathing. It was my brother-in-law, a native of Grenoble, who explained the bantering concept to me. Service is not a given in France, relationships with shop keepers must be forged and tended like fledgling plants: nothing must be taken for granted. If you are fundamentally bantering-averse, like myself, you are severely handicapped in such transactions. From the Lands of the Bottom Line (i.e., the British isles and westwards), where money matters most, this is almost incomprehensible. Furthermore, whereas in the UK I am familiar with facing surly adolescents in shops, in France such casual employment is harder to encounter – owing to high social security contributions made by companies on behalf of their employees – and more often than not it is the shop keeper him or herself who is serving you (with or without enthusiasm). In these apparent crisis times it’s something of a mystery that shopkeepers feel they can afford to be disinterested to your custom; suffice to say that service simply is not in the French blood.

I am exaggerating, of course, but a couple of more extreme examples add a little bite to this fluffy commentary. Once I gave several camera lenses to a camera shop in Grenoble to sell second hand on my behalf. When we finally came to retrieve them, unsold, the owner was apparently unable to locate one of them, which was worth une centaine d’euro. Rather than accepting responsibility, the shop owner lied and turned us away on several occasions in ever more aggressive terms along the lines of ‘you’re wasting my time’. Finally we pleaded with a sympathetic assistant during the owner’s holiday, who secreted the lens out of the shop for us claiming that the boss ‘was often doing things like this’ and implying that he was a difficult and unpredictable man. In fact, the lens had been broken, but there seems to be no small claims court procedure that I am aware of in France to pursue such occurences. Most people’s
uncertain advice was to go to the police.

On another occasion my pregnant wife was shouted at for having the temerity to ask the fish monger to weigh the fish before adding more to the scales. We vowed to take our custom elsewhere, only to discover there was no local elsewhere to take our custom to, something that suggests a lack of open competition may well be a defining factor. As a teacher in a private institute competing with a number of rivals, service is imperative, and I fancy that our students are sometimes shocked with pleasure at how welcoming we are in comparison to, say, their taciturn local butcher.

Given my aversion to the more OTT, notionally American, end of service culture – for instance being complemented on my self-evidently wanting dress sense as I enter a Gap clothes store – maybe I am being too demanding. Service is a subtle art arguably performed poorly by the majority, no matter the nation. But I’m jealous of Japanese diners, who can call waitresses guilt-free at the press of a button (literally, a button on the table), and of the consumer wonderland Denmark is reputed to be. But if France doesn’t immediately turn out to be the postcard provincial Shangri-la that you were expecting, then some s’habituer will be required. There must, after all, be some catch to all this abundant cheap wine, delicious fresh bread and fantastic-quality produce at arms reach in nearly every district. Grenoble, a city pinched in by mountains – the capital of the Alps – is after all known in part for the reticence and even coldness of its inhabitants. I may continue, for the moment, to feel like a slightly unwelcome party guest in places of business, but I’m not taking it too personally for I’ve even heard French friends from other parts of France make similar complaints. One thing is certain, regional identity is too important in France to make a sweeping generalisation. Let me know your feelings, or experiences, in the comment box below.