Open Market Exchange – A Sport Event in France

When tourists visit Europe, one of the favorite activities is going to the market filling the town squares with luscious fruit that looked as if they were plucked from Eve’s garden,  vegetables freshly dug from the earth , whole milk and cream squeezed from the dairy cow that morning.

Like everything in France, there is a savoir faire to open market shopping, an unspoken etiquette for waiting in haphazard lines that the locals would never breech for fear of a tongue lashing by their neighbors. As an American, I never understood the rules and was always overtaken by jumping little old ladies far more savvy. Forget the la crème fraiche; I’d be stuck waiting till the dairy cows came home!  Same with bargaining. Social interaction at the market is a delicate interchange. Nor was I clear on the amounts measured in metrics. I order fruit and vegetables by number rather than kilo. How many cherries make a half-kilo? Nor was I fast on my feet counting out change and hold up the line waiting while I fumbled counting coins.

a farmer's stand

a farmer's stand

French open markets are a must see; however, visitors beware, street markets are not for the faint hearted. Shopping at a French open market is like trying to play a sport without knowing the rules. Here are few tips.

1. Bartering – friendly bantering over quality, quantity and price. Must be a native speaker to understand the peasants accents and expressions. Also helps if you understand metric system.

2. Etiquette – who’s turn?  Lines as Americans know them, do not exist. Instead waiting in line the « queue », (also the French word for tail) has no end, or beginning. First come first serve rule does not apply- line cutting is also a fine art. Elderly French women, with years of practice, are very clever about this. Only a native speaker understands the innuendos to put someone in their place politely. Youth loses every time. Old ladies are best at this.

3. Choice – if indecisive like me, impossible to pick which item.  Only medical students could positively identify  animals body parts on display. We aren’t just talking liver, kidney, intestines.  Noooo,  French enjoy spinal column, pigs feet, tail, cows tongue, brain, etc.

Each part of France displays regional specialties. For example in Normandy, in addition to charcuterie, butcher, cheese stand, peasants sell  « bootleg » calvados and cider pressed from the orchard. I once counted over twenty varieties of olives. How can anybody survive working the open markets only selling olives ?

pouring fresh cream

pouring fresh cream

4. Pasteurized in France has different meaning. It does not mean sterilized, what it means is animal rights- freedom to grow up out in the pasture. Cow’s organic milk straight from the field to farmers bucket to market. Free range chicken. Wild hare, quail, and turkey.

5. Fish  should still be flapping. In seaports, boats dock at the quay and sell fish caught that night.

fishermen sell their fresh catch on the quays

fishermen sell their fresh catch on the quays

6. Don’t be discouraged if you find that the produce in your basket does not look quite as nice as that on the stand.

7. Best trick is to take a native along. If someone who regularly goes to market, the better.

In Normandy, the Parisian weekenders throng the marketplace elbow to elbow. My husband,  now a foreigner living in Switzerland, would never be served without his mom. A loyal client at the same stands for forty years, she knows generations of farmers who sell their wares locally. Since she is so loyal, they would never think of giving her soured creamed or bruised fruit meant only for tourists, for she would be the first to elicit shame with her sharp tongue.

Customer loyalty is at a premium in open market where regulars will always get the best cut of meat, ripest melons and freshest fish.  Just as referees always favor the home-team,  merchants favor the hometown loyalty.

Trouville Normandy – A Trip Down Memory Lane

When we lived in Paris, we joined the mass exodus leaving the city for weekend get aways to the nearest seaside in Normandy, to visit our French family.  Now the seven-hour jaunt from Geneva-Switzerland is harder to make, so I hadn’t been back for years.

As soon as I rang my French in-laws doorbell in Trouville, I was flooded with memories. The brick-framed, six-story walk-up built into the falaise along the Touques River,  has housed fisherman’s families since the 1700s. Step out the front door on ground level and you are on the quais of the bustling seaport, across the ultra chic twin city Deauville. However, out the backdoor, on the floor above, is Papie and Mamie’s place, which opens onto the winding cobblestone rue de Bonsecours.

Trouville from the bridge leading to Deauville

Trouville from the bridge leading to Deauville

The house echoes with footsteps. If the faded, wooden steps of the spindly, spiral staircase could talk, the stories they would tell! Not long ago, I listened with trepidation as my children giggled, racing up and down flights. Now my heart jumps as I hear the stairs creak with Papie and Mamie’s footfalls, afraid that they will slip. Papie just returned from the hospital after a lung puncture to remove fluid build up from a weakening heart. Mamie slipped on wet cobblestone of mainstreet and broke her wrist. Yet, still they insist laying out a banquet fit for a king, with an artillery of glassware and cutlery.

Mamie, with her left arm immobile in a cast, directs traffic with one hand from the kitchen nook to the dining table. She oversees the steady stream of courses on platters laden with fresh asparagus, green beans, sole fish, Camembert and strawberries dipped in cream, the finest Normandy has to offer from land and sea. Papie, frail after losing 10 pounds, still pops open champagne, serves aperitifs, pouring the wine, and argues about past skiing exploits with his son.

The seaside resort retains a sense of timelessness. Sea gulls swoop and dive above the fishing boats bobbing in the waves under azure skies. Daffodils dance on iron wrought balconies in the briny, spring breeze. Horses clomp down Main Street hauling tourist carts from the bridge connecting Deauville and Trouville, at one end of the road, to the casino at the other end.

horse & buggy in front of Deauville's casino

horse & buggy in front of Deauville's casino

 

As I walk on the beach, lined by 17thcentury mansions, I am overwhelmed with nostalgia. Young couples stroll the boardwalk with their arms intertwined. Parents with toddlers in tow pick up seashells; small children dig castles in the fine, white sand. School age kids race the waves as they crash the shoreline and teenagers kick soccer balls.

Nat & Nic on the beach      circa 2005

Nat & Nic on the beach circa 2005

kids growing up on the sand.

kids growing up on the sand.

 

If I close my eyes, snapshots of my children’s pasts flash by. Nat skipping alongside Mamie to play at the beach; Nic’s his eyes aglow carrying a gaufre, giant waffle covered in chocolate and whipped cream. Nat tugging on a kite string; Nic climbing over the Roches Noires. The two of them playing keep away with their cousins.

The magic of this historic spot by the sea is that throughout time’s passage, nothing changes; Trouville, like memories it holds, just grows older and more beautiful.[meteor_slideshow]