Feurs: First Impressions

September 28, 2010 - 11:00pm

The apartment is attached to the school and juts out like a cute, cottage-like little tumor. The window on the left is my bedroom. It’s entirely furnished by the teachers’ donations, which is both a blessing and a curse. Woo French social collectivism! We’ve got a lovely little fridge, bed frames, kitchen table, and Françoise has even picked up and restored a big toaster oven (though it's still in the trunk of her car); but there are no mattresses yet because the professor who loaned them in the past took them when he moved away, and the TV gathering dust in the closet definitely looks like it could date back to the French Revolution.

The mattresses are the real problem item right now, though… I’m sleeping on a temporary camping pad, and I have no idea what we’re going to use for Fanny, the German assistant, when she gets here. She actually came by the school today (Tuesday), but upon learning there was no mattress and that the heat won’t be turned on til Friday, she decided to stay with her friends in Firminy until later in the week.

All of the apartment’s utilities are tied to the school, which in some ways is nice: I don't have to worry about water, gas, and electricity, since they are included in my rent. But since the Lycée du Forez is éco-responsable, they don’t turn heat on until October, no matter how cold it gets. And it has certainly gotten chilly, in the low 40’s at night. Even during the day it’s only getting up into the high 50’s and low 60's, and everyone’s all bundled up going to and from classes. Last night was pretty rough, though. Like the students and teachers in the school, I’m pretty much in a scarf and light jacket all day, even to go to sleep. The bedding has just a basic blanket, so I piled a couple sweaters, a big scarf, and my heavy winter coat on top, put on mittens, and tried to sleep. I should have listened to Adam Shirley and taken the time to go find wool socks. Or thermal underwear. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for an electric blanket. It’s supposed to get a little bit better when the heat comes on, but a letter left by the last assistant tells me that it’s still pretty cold in here even when the radiators are functioning, and to prepare myself for some nice sub-zero weather in winter.

Hopefully he’s over-exaggerating, though! This is also the past assistant who told me Feurs was a drab town with nothing to do unless you’re into drinking with old Turkish men and betting on horse races, but so far I actually like it a lot. Yesterday (Monday) I made an expedition into town – about a 7 - 10 minute walk from the school – and was surprised to learn that everything was closed. Apparently nothing is open on either Sundays or Mondays in Feurs, but it was nice to get an opportunity to take some pictures without an excessive amount of people crowding them and to peer in some store windows when I otherwise would have gotten weird looks for doing so. It’s got an SFR office (phone company

), several banks (including BNP, which has a no-teller-fees deal with Bank of America, so that’s who I think I’m going to go with), a cinema, a pretty church (Notre-Dame de Feurs, shown on the left), and a somewhat absurd number of bakeries. There’s almost one on every block, sometimes two or

three within sight at a time.

This whole extended-weekend business did make it rather

difficult for me to eat last night (Monday) though, since all the stores are closed and the big supermarket, Carrefour, is too far away to walk to (and probably closed anyway).

I figured a few restaurants had to be open and that I’d rather spend a few euros more than I’d like than go hungry, so I walked back downtown that evening. But even finding an open restaurant proved to be

difficult! Across from the cinema is a little brasserie/bar/café called Le Théâtre, and when I saw a few other people seated there I decided to go in. But after trying to order the tagliatelles bolognaise shown on the menu in the picture, I was quickly informed that that’s tomorrow’s lunch menu. Sorry, no dinner here. Didn’t you know that’s the lunch menu? Everyone knows that we only serve lunch! By this time the two other ladies drinking coffee had gone, and the interior of the café was filling up with grizzled-looking old guys. I have a feeling they had a good chuckle when I left after paying for my Coke and asking for directions to whatever restaurant might actually be serving food that night.

Le Comptoir à Pizzas is where I wound up, and it’s much more modern and trendy than it appears from the outside. I had a mushroom and olive pizza with mozzarella, emmental, and goat cheese, and it was the most delicious thing in the world. Of course by that point in the evening I could have gnawed my arm off and found it to be scrumptious, so perhaps that’s not saying much. Except it still is, because a pizza with goat cheese on it is always a thing of splendor, and I have yet to find a pizza in this country that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed. I also ordered a glass of house red wine (Côtes du Rhône) for a very reasonable 2,30 €, and it tasted much smoother and richer than its budget price. There aren’t any wineries in or right around Feurs, but there are some in nearby towns on the bus route that comes through Feurs, so hopefully there will be a wine-tasting expedition at some point during my stay here.

I managed to survive the cold last night, thanks in part to the magical discovery of a space heater when I had my nightly “it’s 3:00am, time to be wide awake now” moment, though I’m not actually sure I had managed to sleep yet by then. I’ve had it running in my bedroom, keeping the door closed to keep the heat in, and it’s so incredibly nice to walk in there. Once again though, I don’t know what we’re going to do when Fanny gets here for real… but that’s not for another day or two, so tonight I am determined to sleep well!

As compared to bleak Monday in Feurs, Tuesday is a bustling market day. The town is overtaken completely by tents with merchants selling clothes, bags, shoes, hats, fabrics, and other strange odds and ends. There’s one big parking lot reserved for the farmer’s market, and that’s what I was most excited about. I had accompanied Caroline to the marché in Boulogne and learned from her a bit the ropes of learning which fruit/veggie stands are the best to go for, and to always buy your meat from the weekly market rather than from a charcuterie or boulangerie (where you’ll definitely pay too much) or from the supermarché (where the quality is not as high). I limited my purchases to some fruit, probably too much cheese -- if there is such a concept as “too much cheese ”-- and only bought a little salami at the market’s meat section since I don’t yet have a way to cook anything else. I also went by a bakery and picked up a baguette, and those basic ingredients have comprised my lunch and dinner today.

I also went by SFR and got a phone! It’s a super-cheapo reloadable little thing, but it does the job. They told me that I will definitely be able to get internet service at my apartment from them as soon as I get a French bank account, so that is a very exciting prospect. Their “neufbox” combines high speed internet, a phone line that allows calls to landlines in the US, and TV with 150 channels for only 29 € a month. It doesn’t even require a contract, so we can walk away easily in 7 months. I’d say that’s pretty dang sweet, considering Joanna and I were paying between $50 and $60 a month for internet alone last year. So between Fanny and I, TV, internet, and phone should only be 15 € per month for each of us. Awesome. My only qualm is that last year’s assistant told me that their neufbox inexplicably stopped working after four months and they never got it fixed, but I’m hoping we won’t have a problem with it.

I had wanted to go run errands with Françoise at some point, but I didn’t know that she only had classes until 11am today. So when I got back from the market around 12:30, she was already gone for the day. She doesn’t teach at all on Wednesdays, so I am oven-less until Thursday! Even if it meant not going to Carrefour for a bigger shopping expedition, though, I’m still glad I got to see Feurs’ market today.

Last Tuesday was the last time I went running, and when I realized that this morning, I was determined to not let a whole week go by without a run. I spent way too much time this afternoon in the computer lab trying to format this silly blog; it’s more of a pain in the butt to copy the blog (and especially the pictures! I’ve been so spoiled on fast, reliable internet…) from Word to blogspot than I’d thought. Also, switching back and forth from my computer’s American keyboard to the school’s French one is messing with my head; just as soon as I get used to one way of typing, I’m switching to the other and making silly typos even on my own computer. Maybe I should just cave in and switch it to the French way for the time being.

After computering the afternoon away, it was nearly evening and getting colder by the time I finally got out to run. The Loire River runs right by Feurs, and I’ve heard there are some trails that make about a 15km loop next to the river. I headed west out of town to try and find them, but sadly without success (probably for the best anyway, since it’s been raining a lot and they’re probably all muddy right now). I’ll have to ask around to see if there’s some sort of entrance that I missed. Instead, I ran down a narrow little country road for a ways and was nearly bowled over by all these zippy little Peugeots and Renaults zooming by. I guess people aren’t used to runners much here, because even though I kept to the very edge of the road, so did they. Perhaps I should have reached out and hitched a ride. But on the way back in to town, I spotted a little supermarket (with the strange name of “Simply”) that I hadn’t noticed before and went over to check it out. I’d brought a couple euros with me just in case I came across a store, and I’m glad I did… except that I ran up at 7:25, and the store closes at 7:30. Oh, small towns. They let me in, but I just had time to grab some juice and a bottle of water before being hustled out. Still, I’m glad to know that there’s something more accessible than Carrefour, and I’ll probably go back and check it out tomorrow.

I’ve finally caught up with the week! Of course this will be somewhat outdated by the time I post it tomorrow, but oh well. Bonne nuit!