10 December, 2000

We've moved into a new apartment in downtown Cannes. It's far better than our last place. There's a picture at the bottom of this page, from a postcard, showing the location. Althought the weather here is nice, it's not like this summer postcard, so don't get all envious. I'll put up some winter pictures as soon as we get the film developed.

Out apartment is on the 5th floor, which the French refer to as the 4th stage. The ground floor is the 0th stage. It has French (naturally) doors on two sides of the livingroom and in the master bedroom, and is very light. Also, all the fittings and appliances work really well. Someone has obviously lived here and put some thought into making it a good place to stay. Our last place had never been lived in by the owner, and most of the accoutrements didn't really function well.

When we moved in, we were really excited. The real estate agent brought us to it, and gave us the keys, and showed us around. Then she left and we started to make ourselves comfortable. After about 1/2 hour, Gia went to wash her hands and discovered that there was no water. We assumed that it just hadn't been turned on, so we looked in all the cabinets, etc. etc. No luck at all. (This is a Friday afternoon/evening). We called the agent, Veronique, and she said to look in all the cabinets, which we'd already done. She came over around 6-ish to help us. We discovered the hot water heater in the back bedroom in the top of a closet. When we twisted some taps, water came out of the faucets, so Veronique left. After about 10 minutes, the water didn't work anymore. I think that all we did was drain the hot water heater. Saturday morning, we called Veronique, and Fred called a plumber. Before the plumber arrived, we heard noises in the stairwell, and found an Italian couple who come occasionally to the apartment below ours. They told us how to turn the water on. There's a panel at the top of the stairs, by the 6th floor, that has faucets for all the apartments. We would never have found it, because there are about 100 panels of different sorts in the stairwell. We had water! We were so excited, until we discovered that none of it was hot. We called Veronique, Fred, etc. We tried every switch in the circuit box, etc. etc. no luck. We timed the little wheel on the electric meter to see which switches caused an increase in electrical current. All to no avail. Saturday afternoon, an electrican came, and after fussing around a little with the circuit breakers, and measuring current to the heater, announced that it was fixed. Great! Then, while Fred was over visiting a couple of hours later, we noticed that there was a pall of smoke in our hallway. We turned off all the electricity and called another electrician. I'm going to abbreviate the rest of the story, but he basically did the same thing as the first one, and left telling us that everything was okay. Again, a pall of smoke. A side note. There are two breakers that say, in red ink "Ne Pas Allumer" very emphatically, which means do not turn on. Both electricians completely disregarded this note. That night I discovered the source of the smoke -- in the darkness, with a flashlight, it was easy to see the smoke, and the direction from which it came. There was a mysterious gray box in the ceiling which was smoking. I turned off the electricty for the night, to be safe. Finally, the next day I decided to turn off every single breaker and then turn them on one by one and see which one caused smoke. Naturally it was the ones that said "ne pas allumer", but the hot water worked fine. Since then, no problem.

In other news, we had to replace the clutch on the car. I took it to a mechanic in the middle of November. Our mechanic is named Hassan, and he works mostly on Ferraris and Rolls Royces. It is an experience to walk into his garage. He's quite friendly and normal, and he comes highly recommended. However, he is also very popular and it took two weeks just to get an appointment. Then, it took another week and a half to get the new clutch from Audi, so we've been basically stationary for the last month. It's been a little depressing, because we were stuck in a little apartment far from the town.

Now, all that is over. We've gotten the car back, and our apartment is two blocks from the market and all the shops. We used to be out of luck if we hadn't planned our shopping properly, but now it's easy to pop out for eggs etc. This is good because the nearest parking for the car is about 20 blocks away.

Yesterday we went for a boat ride with Fred, his wife Atsumi, and their children George and Leina. We went at the end of the day to a couple of islands off the coast, and got very wet in the process. It was really fun. For those of you who've been to our house at the Cape, his boat is almost identical to Joe Atwood's. We'll have pictures in a week. Meanwhile, here are pictures of Fred and Atsumi from Fred's web site. Fred is much less diabolical in person, and Atsumi is much more beautiful:


 


One of the most amusing things about living here are all the times we see things that are not written in English, but look as if they could have been. Here are a few examples:

1. McDonald's ad on German TV with giant headline reading "Extra Gross!"

2. Store in St. Martin with 30 ft. long sign reading "Deviations for Kids"

3. Pizza shop in Cannes specializing in the Jewish community, called "Pizza Dick"

Also, one of the favorite advertising slogans here is "Non-Stop". Probably I'm the only one who thinks it's funny, but you see it everywhere. Finally, there are signs that are in French, but make us smile when translated. Particularly amusing to me is the use of "maison de" and "salle de" which means "House of" and "Room of". In the U.S., you think of House of Pancakes. Here you frequently see shops with names like "House of Motorcycles" and "Room of Oxygen Respirators!"

Another thing that is interesting about Cannes is that despite the fact that downtown Cannes is comprised entirely of old-looking buildings, which all seem to be filled with little shops, there are actually massive supermarkets and shopping malls stuffed into them. I think they must have done advanced research into the fourth dimension. You can go into a shop called Fnac (pronounced Fnack!). It looks like a kind of small shop, like a tiny record store. Once you get inside, it is a giant 3-story shopping complex that has books, CD's electronics, etc. etc. The same thing for the Champion Supermarket. You go to the front of the building and it looks like a pretty small shop, but inside it's like a giant King Soopers or Stop & Shop.

And, although in Cannes they have bigger stores than anything we have ever experienced in the States, we have been reliably informed that the supermarkets etc. here are only half as big as the stores in the surrounding areas.

The last thing we can think of today is just to note that although you can get American food, Chinese food, etc. here, the French will not leave it alone. You get pizza, and instead of Mozzarella, it's made with Brie cheese. This is a little weird, but not bad.