Final resting place...ou pas?

A couple of weeks ago I was watching Capital on M6.  I generally enjoy this show and it’s a welcome change from all of the crime shows that generally seem to be the bulk of my options on French TV.  Each episode of Capital focuses on a different topic from a financial/economic point of view.  This particular episode discussed the financial side of death…everything from funeral costs, budget funeral companies, the prices associated with different options for death and burial and even the costs associated with the death of a pet.

While I’m not generally that much of a doom and gloom person, I did find the show to be quite interesting (especially when they talked about an American woman spending $150,000 to have her dog cloned when she found out he was dying of cancer!).  But what really shocked and surprised me the most was discovering the hidden (or perhaps not-so-hidden) truth behind your supposedly “final resting place” in France.  Imagine my shock and horror when I came to discover that your final resting place may not actually be your final resting place!

Apparently, there is an entire second-hand market for funerals here in France.  When they first mentioned delving deeper into the second-hand market to lower your funerary costs, right before a commercial break, my mind was spinning trying to understand what exactly could be reused and sold on the second-hand market to make a funeral cheaper.  When the show came back on I was shocked to find out that they were actually talking about your plot in the cemetery.  I had absolutely no idea that this was possible.  From my understanding, in the US, you purchase a cemetery plot, you are buried there, and you stay there.  At least for the foreseeable future.  I’ve never heard of anyone being removed from their plot in the US before (without of course court orders or the family’s permission).  I mean sure, I’ve heard of very old cemeteries being lost or forgotten (especially Native American cemeteries) and then rediscovered when they attempt to construct something in that particular location.  But someone who was recently buried (say in the last 50 years or so) is going to stay in their plot.  In my lifetime, I don’t expect to ever see them removed.

Here in France, however, that is apparently not the case.  As I so unexpectedly learned while watching Capital, apparently in France it is very common to “rent” your concession.  Meaning that someone has to continue to pay the “rent” on your plot otherwise you risk eviction!  How often your plot has to be renewed seems to depend on the city and the kind of plot you choose, though in some cities, “perpetual” plots are also available.  I say “perpetual” because even paying for a “perpetual” plot apparently (as I discovered after hours of google research) does not guarantee that this will be your final resting place forever.  There are conditions otherwise you still risk eviction.

I was shocked.  I literally think my jaw dropped to the floor.  Poor Lionel just looked at me like I was crazy and then acted like it was perfectly normal to evict a body for failure to pay “rent”.  But I just couldn’t leave it alone.  Questions and what-if scenarios were flying through my mind.  What happens to the person once they have been evicted?  What if they have no family left to pay the rent?  What if the surviving family members are unaware of the fact that the rent has come due?  What if the family members forgot to update their address or moved out of the country?  How is this even possible?

Since Lionel seemed to be unable (or perhaps unwilling after my millionth what-if scenario) to answer all of my questions, I took to google to do some research of my own.  And after hours of investigating I realized that it is nearly impossible to find out what happens to the people who are evicted from their graves.  I stumbled across one woman’s blog, the only place where I found anything written on the issue, and she claimed that there were three possibilities depending on the city.  The evicted person is either 1.) reburied in a common plot, 2.) their bones are place in a community ossuary or 3.) they are cremated and their ashes are sprinkled in the jardin des souvenirs.

My research also left me far more horrified than I already was.  Imagine my surprise to find out that there are pompes funèbres forums out there to assist people with their questions.  As I was scrolling through the forums, hoping to find some answers, I was literally floored when I discovered how many people in France had “inherited” their family’s concession and were wanting to know if they could sell it (apparently this is not a possibility…if there are occupants inside you can’t just sell the plot, you have to wait for the rent to come due and then fail to pay at which point the city reclaims the plot, pays you nothing, and your family members are evicted), in an attempt to make some cash!  

Anyway, I digress, back to the evictions for failure to pay rent issue.  So, you might be wondering what happens to the plot once the city has decided to reclaim it and has evicted the occupants.  This is where the second-hand market comes in.  On Capital they showed two fonctionnaires with the city of Lyon, I believe, appraising a concession that had recently become available again following the eviction of the occupants.  They eventually came to the second-hand price of 200 euros for the used monument, plus of course “rental” costs with the city.  In determining that price they considered the type of stone used to build the monument, the size of the monument and the “extras” that came with it, i.e. plaques, vases for flowers, etc.  The city then sanded the names of the previous occupants off the monument and put it up for sale.  I couldn’t even believe it.  I just can’t imagine something like this being seen as acceptable in the US.  My hours of googling also led me to discover that this is not just a French thing.  Apparently with the economic crisis in Spain, more and more people are being evicted from their graves as their families can no longer afford to pay the rent!

Then a light bulb went off in my head.  About a month and a half ago Lionel’s aunt and uncle were visiting from Bretagne and while they were here we went to the cemetery to visit Lionel’s grandparents’ grave.  While we were walking through the cemetery I noticed a tomb with a little sign next to it stating that the concession needed to be renewed.  At the time I remember finding that to be extremely strange and I couldn’t figure out what on earth would need to be renewed.  I think I finally settled it in my own mind as being an empty plot that someone had purchased in preparation for their eventual death and they needed to confirm that they still intended to use the plot.  But now, thanks to Capital, I know that it was in fact the grave of someone who risks eviction if their family doesn’t respond to the letters from the city or visit the grave to see the sign and pay the rent.  Horrible!

After watching this episode of Capital I discussed the topic with a few American friends.  They were just as shocked and horrified as I was to learn that in France your final resting place is not necessarily your final resting place.  And here I am, a few weeks later, posting about it because it still bothers me.  So what do you think?  Have you ever heard of this before or am I just out of the loop?  Maybe I’m just crazy to be so disturbed by this?  But one thing’s for sure, as I told Lionel when the show ended, now that I know I could risk eviction I definitely don’t want to be buried in France!  !  I mean, I get it, we will eventually run out of space for all the dead people, but really!?  There isn’t any other solution?  Nothing better than potentially evicting a body while their close family is still alive? 

Oh, and I apologize for the extremely dark and morbid post, but I really just can’t get over this.  In fact, writing this post has inspired me to start googling the subject all over again.  And in my additional research this evening, after writing this but before posting it, I stumbled across this interesting article written on the subject in 2006.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! Of course, as I've previously mentioned,  we celebrated Halloween this past weekend with friends who came from all over France for our Halloween party/crémaillère/fête de retour.

We had an incredible weekend and it was great seeing all of our friends, most of whom we hadn't seen in 2 years. We also had a very full house with 10 people staying here, plus Rasteau of course.  I thought the logistics would be quite complicated, but in the end everything went smoothly. Of course,  don't ask Rasteau's opinion on that. He definitely did not enjoy having so much company and spent most of the weekend outside,  afraid to enter the house to even eat, or cowering in our bedroom.

Most of our friends arrived on Friday by train, plane and car, but a few arrived Thursday night and pretty much everyone left on Sunday afternoon, except one person who had a flight very early Monday morning.  Originally Friday night we had been thinking about going out to dinner in Bordeaux, but in the end everyone was worn out from travelling so we just ordered pizza, drank some wine and hung out at our house, chatting and catching up until the wee hours of the night.  Saturday I spent the day in the kitchen (as well as part of Thursday night and Friday night) and Lionel took some people out to visit St. Emilion and to taste wine while another group drove out to Arcachon to see the ocean.  About half our friends also had to make stops at the costume store near our house because they hadn't found costumes yet.

Saturday night came and everyone put their costumes on, we threw up the decorations (spiderwebs, candles, Halloween garlands, skeletons, spiders, etc), our friends who live in Bordeaux arrived, I brought out the spread and we partied and talked, listened to music, played Guitar Hero, did some karaoke and Lionel and our friend Alex played some music on the (real) guitar.  The costumes were great and people put in a lot more effort than a few years ago.  We had everything - a few witches, a devil (me), a lizard (Lionel), a sumo wrestler, a couple of 70's disco costumes, a soccer player, Fidel Castro, a flapper and a vampire.  Not too bad for a bunch of Frenchies celebrating Halloween for only the second time in their lives.

Luckily all of the food I made was eaten and I only had one kitchen disaster (a recipe for black bean dip that I had made before in the US with no problems but this time it just didn't want to work...don't know if it was my food processor or what but I had to throw it out).  In the end I ended up serving a bunch of American staple party foods...buffalo chicken dip colored green (a favorite of all our French friends and a constant request), guacamole, a face-shaped jalapeno-bacon cheese ball, knacki mummies (pigs in a blanket made to look like mummies), pumpkin cupcakes, pumpkin bread, jalapeno popper "witches fingers", spinach artichoke dip in a bread coffin with a "rotting corpse" inside and "bleeding" baked brie (I choose this recipe specifically thinking that French people would have no problem with it, but in the end everyone was very freaked out by the idea of eating brie baked in pastry with jam...until they tasted it and then it disappeared quite quickly).  I also made a vodka based punch with 2 bottles of vodka which was unfortunately gone by midnight.  Luckily we had plenty of other drink options as well.  Though afterwards, while recovering on Sunday, I was thinking about all of the alcohol that had been consumed over the weekend, and I must admit I'm actually kind of embarrassed by the insane amount of alcohol that we drank in such a short amount of time...it's actually quite disgusting really.  And lugging all of those empty bottles down to the glass recycling bin should be a lot of fun.  So, without further ado, some photos of our Halloween party:

the entire group squeezing into our dining room for a group shot relatively early in the night 

my punch...served in a cauldron full of frozen hands, eyeballs and skeleton parts...tasted great but from the recipe I thought it would be much more red

 

the beginnings of the spread, but this is only about half of the food I served

 

flayed face cheese ball...the picture just doesn't do it justice

 

vomiting pumpkins...I really should have taken a video when I was filling them with dips and they were "vomiting"

 

my friend Julie and I and some of our decorations in the background

 

digging in

 

enjoying the Halloween festivities 

 

The party ended up being such a success again this year that I've already got requests for a repeat next year.  I'm finally starting to convince the Frenchies that Halloween really is a great holiday.  Of course, it doesn't take much to convince me, so I'm thinking I might just make this a yearly tradition!

Portes ouvertes en Graves

On Saturday we were invited to join Den Nation, her husband, her sister and her sister's boyfriend to check out Les Portes Ouvertes en Graves, an open house weekend in les Graves, a wine-producing region south of Bordeaux.  Most of the châteaux in the region were open for visits and tours of their chais (wine storehouses) as well as free wine tastings of a selection of the wines they produce.  And we were very lucky with the weather and Saturday ended up being an absolutely gorgeous day.

We met up with them in the early afternoon and visited three different châteaux in the northern part of the AOC Graves.  First stop was Château de Portets where their American neighbor is Maître de Chais.  She was kind enough to give us an English language tour as some people in our group didn't speak French, and then it was off to the tasting complete with magic tricks based on the château's wines.

Les chais at the Château de Portets

 

Château de Portets

 

Our next stop was the Château de Castres, which ended up being the château that impressed us the most.  The grounds and structures were beautiful and the wine was excellent.  Our group walked away with quite a few bottles in the end.  I wish I had taken more pictures, but I was too busy enjoying their wines! 

 

the vineyards in front of the Château de Castres

 

wine tanks at the Château de Castres

 

Château de Castres

 

The last château we visited was Château la Perrucade, a much smaller operation.  Unfortunately, they didn't offer any tours, just a wine tasting, and as a result I didn't take any pictures.  But they had some very interesting wines that were very different from what we had tasted at the other châteaux.

 

After all that wine tasting we decided to end the day by visiting the nearby Château de la Brède, not a wine château this time, but a 14th-century château where Montesquieu was born.  Unfortunately we arrived too late to visit the interior, but we were able to visit the park.  The château is absolutely beautiful and very interesting architecturally.  It's also surrounded by water which makes for some incredible photographs.

 

Château de la Brède and the grounds

 

visiting the château

 

Château de la Brède

 

Understandably, after all the wine-tasting and château-visiting we were all quite hungry so Lionel and I invited everyone over to our house for a barbeque (and more wine, naturally!).  The perfect end to a perfect day!

My dream cuisine!!!

After nearly two months of renovations, stress, shopping and hard work our kitchen is finally complete and fully operating!  I'm pretty sure I've already written about it enough (and bored my blog readers to death in the process) so, without further ado, here are some pictures of our beautiful new red kitchen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can imagine I am more than thrilled to finally have a completed kitchen and I'm looking forward to doing a lot of cooking in normal (non-camping-like) conditions.  And now that the kitchen is finally done I feel like I can move on with my life and start focusing on other things, starting with getting the rest of the house ready for all of the company we will be having next weekend and all of the preparations for our Halloween party.  And you, my dear readers, will finally get to read posts about something other than kitchen renovations! 

Je cherche the bright side

As you may have guessed, based on the fact that the name of this post has nothing to do with my kitchen or renovations, the kitchen still isn't finished. And no, I really don't want to talk/write about it.  It just makes me too angry and sends my stress level through the roof.

So today, in a desperate attempt to try to control my stress, I've decided to try to look at the bright side and post about some good things (no matter how insignificant) that are happening chez moi:

1.  Though the kitchen still isn't done, it is at least FINALLY finished to the point where I can not only use it, but also store all of my kitchen stuff and food in the cabinets!  And sometime this week I will finally be able to move my refrigerator into the kitchen as well (because I'm moving it in there this week whether or not my father-in-law has finished what he wanted to do in that corner and he'll just have to deal with it)!  Soon I won't have to go into the freezing cold garage in order to be able to cook a meal!!!  The fact that I finally have kitchen cabinets also means I've been doing an insane amount of shopping for all the kitchen gear I haven't been able to buy over the past few months because I didn't have anywhere to put it.  However, after purchasing new pots and pans, various storage accessories, wine glasses, serving dishes, kitchen gadgets, cutting boards, a fancy new food processor, baking dishes and pans, and a dishwasher (!!!), I must admit my bank account is feeling a bit stressed as well.  But talk about retail therapy!

2.  I got a package in the mail from my parents yesterday containing all the American foodstuffs I will need to get through the holiday season, covering Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas!  Thanks mom and dad!

3.  I also got another package this week containing a very exciting purchase I made:

 

 

I'm so excited to FINALLY have a slow cooker in France, and not just any slow cooker but a Crock Pot brand slow cooker!  After hearing horror stories about the various brands of slow cookers that could be found in France I got worried that I would never be able to have a slow cooker here.  And I just love them because they make it so easy to make a warm and delicious home-cooked meal.  So I started digging around on the internet and I finally found the site electriqueshopping.fr that sells a variety of different Crock Pots and ships them to France.  It certainly shipped from the UK as everything is in English, but it comes with your choice of a UK plug or European plug.  It certainly cost a lot more than what it would have in the US (60 euros for the 6.5 liter slow cooker!), but at least shipping was only 5 euros.  I can't wait to try it out! 

 

4.  Besides working on the kitchen and dealing with the nearly constant stress of my in-laws' less-than-productive presence, I've been very busy getting ready for Halloween.  At the beginning of September our only good friend here in Bordeaux, Matthew (who moved here from Paris shortly after we left for the US), asked me if I wouldn't mind hosting another Halloween party like the one I threw back in 2010 (and which, looking back through my blog archives, I apparently never posted about).  Apparently Lionel's friends were all very impressed by that party and they still talk about it and Matthew's wife has always regretted the fact that she missed that party.  So Matthew wanted to see if I would be up for throwing another one and trying to get all of our friends to come in from across the country as a Halloween party/retrouvailles.  I immediately agreed because, well, I love Halloween, I love throwing Halloween parties and I love trying to come up with all kinds of Halloween-themed foods and drinks.  Not to mention the fact that Lionel and I haven't seen his friends in two years and I know he's pretty bummed that we haven't had the time or the money to travel all over France and visit them.  I figured we could try to guilt them all into coming by not only making it a sort of fête de retour  and Halloween party but also making it our crémaillère.  Lionel was very pessimistic and kept insisting that no one would come, but in the end everyone RSVPed yes and they've all arranged their various forms of travel and will be descending on Bordeaux in a week and a half!  There will be 8 additional people staying in our house for the weekend and one couple decided to get a hotel nearby.  So we've been busy trying to figure out all the logistics, getting sleeping arrangements sorted out, shopping for Halloween costumes and decorations and preparing the menu.  We are both really looking forward to it and it's pretty much the only real bright spot in what has been an otherwise very stressful and dull autumn.

 

So all in all, I guess things could be much, much worse and I'm looking forward to posting pictures of my kitchen soon.  And I gotta admit, writing this blog post has definitely helped bring my stress level down a bit!

How to guarantee that your kitchen renovation will never be finished

As some of you may remember, back in August I posted about a constructive conversation that resulted in the decision to finally buckle down, get organized and get our kitchen done.  This decision came the weekend of August 23 and our original (perhaps slightly unrealistic) deadline was two weeks.  Of course, this didn't happen for various reasons.  But in my last post I mentioned the fact that, though we were unable to complete the kitchen in two weeks, I at least felt certain that by the end of the month of September I would have a completed kitchen.  This gave us an extra two weeks to accomplish the task and seemed completely achievable, especially considering all the work that was completed before my in-laws left on vacation.

Let us just say that apparently even the end of the month of September is apparently a dream.  For those who would like to personally witness perhaps the slowest kitchen renovation in the world, I invite you to come for an extended stay in Bordeaux.  For those who can't make the trip, I present a list of ways to insure that your own kitchen renovations proceed at a glacial pace:

1. Make the decision to just ignore the obstacles your kitchen presents rather than deal with them in an appropriate manner, i.e. all those exposed pipes, just leave them like that.  That huge concrete block that was under the sink, don't bother to remove it.  That would make everything else less fun!

2. When making the decision to install a new floor, rather than shopping for and purchasing said floor in advance, just start ripping out the old one.  Spend at least two days scraping 40-year old glue off the original floor using a chisel and hammer.  Then, finally go shopping for a new floor only to end up choosing a floor that could have been installed without removing the old one.  This way you are sure to waste at least two days of work.

3. Still pertaining to the floor, also, disregard everyone's advice so you can be sure that, once you are finally ready to go shopping, it is Sunday.  That way all the stores are closed and you lose another day of work.

4. Once the new floor is finally purchased, be sure not to have any appropriate cutting tools so that a floor that should take 2-3 hours to install actually takes one and a half days.

5. Now that the floor is finally installed, go to the store to purchase your kitchen.  But be sure to insist that you do not purchase everything you need.  This way you can return to the store.  But, please note, on this subsequent trip you should also not purchase everything you need.  Repeat this step often resulting in at least two trips to the store a day to purchase everything from screws and supports to backsplashes and counter tops individually.

6. Start your installation by building the element in which you will be placing the sink.  Make sure that it takes you three hours to partially build this one simple element.

7. Proceed to cut your counter top to accommodate the sink.  But naturally be sure to not have the correct tools to do this.  Also, make sure you don't read the instructions that come with the sink.  This way you can spend at least four hours cutting the counter top and installing it, only to realize that it was not cut right and you need to redo it to enlarge the hole.  Remove counter top and start again.

8. Finally install your sink and counter top.  Celebrate.  The first little bit of your kitchen is installed and it only took a day and a half!

9. Admire what you have completed.  Then start scratching your head because something just doesn't look right.  Grab the measuring tape and remeasure the space.  Realize that you did not measure correctly and the future (but naturally not yet purchased) dishwasher will inevitably be too tall for the space.

10. Leave.

11. Come back one week later.  Insist that it will only take an hour to redo.  After all, all that needs to be done is to remove the counter top, raise the element, replace the counter top and redo the pipes for the sink.  Instead of spending one hour on this task, spend half a day.

12. Finally move on to other things. Start with another trip to the store for the backsplash.  But, make sure that while at the hardware store you don't think about purchasing any tools for cutting this backsplash.

13. Proceed to cut the backsplash with the incorrect tools.  This will naturally make the process take longer.

14. Install the backsplash, shockingly with little difficulty.

15. Make another trip to the store for a support for the counter top you had previously installed.  Also, make sure to spend at least an hour a day searching for the various screws and tools that you are sure you have but just can't seem to find due to lack of organization.  Dump your entire tool box on the ground in the process of looking for one small item, thus giving your daughter-in-law a brilliant idea for your Christmas gift...a larger and portable toolbox that actually has compartments for organization!

16. Start trying to install les éléments hauts that go above the sink.  This process will be long and complicated because you did not want to appropriately deal with the obstacles in the kitchen.  After nearly an entire day of trying to install these elements, give up in frustration.

17. Realize that you put too much expanding foam in the space between the wall and the backsplash (because remember you didn't want to deal with the exposed pipes by "building" a new wall with a sheet of drywall to cover them).  You were forced to create this space with boards in order to avoid the exposed pipes.  You then wanted to fill it with expanding foam, but didn't read the instructions first.  As a result, it is now destroying your backsplash.  Try to remove with a saw???

18. Watch your son and daughter-in-law curl up in a ball of stress and frustration and cry as they realize that their dream of a kitchen sometime in this century is slipping away.  Oh, and don't forget, once those elements hauts are installed, you still haven't purchased a stovetop or hood and will need to go shopping for those in order to move on to the next section of the kitchen.  And let's not even talk about all the unpurchased finitions meaning that you still won't even be close to finished with that one small part of the kitchen.

19.  Realize that in three and a half days of work, this is all you have completed (this is just one of three separate sections of our future kitchen - the others have not even been touched):

 

So, if anyone has been wondering why I haven't been posting much recently, this is what I am dealing with while also trying to complete other projects in the house such as the heaters.  So we can use them when it starts to get cold. 

 

Basically my entire month has been kitchen, kitchen, work, kitchen, work, heaters, baseboards, pipes, kitchen, work, kitchen, shopping for kitchen, work, shopping for fall/winter clothes because I have none, kitchen, work, kitchen and two dinners with friends.  I am even dreaming about kitchens.  Sounds like fun, huh?  I haven't even had time to keep up with the blogs I normally like to follow.  Needless to say, not entirely blog-worthy as I don't want to lose what few readers I have because they die of boredom reading about my never-ending kitchen renovations.  And so, I make this promise to you, dear readers: my next post will be either entirely unrelated to my kitchen or it will be photos of a completed kitchen.  Your guess as to which one is most likely to happen first.

It's been awhile

I can't believe it's been more than two weeks since my last post!  Things have been extremely busy around here what with trying to get the kitchen done before my in-laws left on their vacation as well as some other administrative stuff (because it never ends) and attempting to have some semblance of a social life here in Bordeaux.

Unfortunately, we were unable to complete the kitchen before my in-laws' vacation so we have to wait until they return to install it.  There were various unforeseen circumstances that prevented us from finishing, some of them good, some of them bad, but nothing I particularly feel like going into on my blog.  But, looking at the bright side, at least I am fairly certain that I will finally have a kitchen before the end of September!

What we were able to complete, however, was the floor.  We spent two long, hard, back-breaking days ripping out the old floor and scraping the 30-year-old glue off the original tiles with hammers and chisels.

removing the old kitchen floor

 

We then went shopping and finally settled on this dark gray flooring that, in fact, could have been installed without removing the old linoleum.  So we lost 2 days for nothing, and this is why I prefer to plan ahead, but no one listened to me.

 

our new kitchen floor

 

We also finished all the work in the entryway and finished painting the kitchen so once the new floors were installed we made our final decisions on the layout of the new kitchen and went to Brico Depot to purchase all the kitchen elements.  We just didn't have time to build and install them or to shop for an oven or stove top, so all of that has to be done when my in-laws return.  But here is our new kitchen, still in boxes, in the garage:

 

Rasteau curled up on top of our kitchen

 

It has served one purpose though - it is Rasteau's new favorite bed!  He literally spends almost all his time sleeping on top of our kitchen.  He's going to be devastated when we install the kitchen and he loses his preferred sleeping spot!

 

Other than that, there hasn't been much of anything going on here.  Nothing that is particularly blog-worthy at least.  We got our carte grise for the car, after naturally having to deal with more administrative red tape.  I got everything set up to be able to declare my revenue and pay mes charges online, and Lionel was finally able to go to the CAF to see about getting aid until he finds a job.  He's also found a few more positions to apply to now that summer is over so hopefully he will at least get an interview soon.  We spent a Friday evening out in Bordeaux with one of Lionel's friends (our first night out in Bordeaux) and discovered this great little Vietnamese restaurant in the centre ville and we have dealt with Rasteau's flea problem.  That's pretty much it at the moment.  I know, I know, it doesn't get much more exciting than that!