One of the first things I learned when I first moved to France–not when I was fourteen and lived en famille, but when I was in Cannes and actually had to take care of things, run errands, accomplish daily tasks, etc.–is that it’s nearly impossible to get things done in the time you have alotted yourself to do them.
At first, I found it charming. “Oh,” I said to myself, “What a nice day. I’ll walk down to la Poste and buy some timbres to send postcards back home.” (And before you ask, yes, I do talk to myself, and yes, it is in franglais.) But alas, I would arrive at the Poste only to find out that it had closed at 11:55 or someone was en vacances or just that the ladies behind the counter were too busy papoter-ing that they talked all the way through the morning and only three people got served. So I would walk out into the Cannes sunshine, and say “Oh well, maybe later,” and go do something else, which is a luxury that can be afforded to a person who’s biggest commitment is making sexual innuendo with her French professor for three hours every morning.
Once I moved to Paris, it started to irk me a bit more. I had to change my address at the bank, and with school, an internship, and an apartment thirty minutes away from my bank, I tried to give myself no margin of error. I looked up the opening hours, prepared myself with a signed letter detailing my request and a photocopy of my new rent contract, and showed up at the bank. Three weeks later, I’m still dealing with the repercussions of having moved… more than a year ago.
I used to blame French people for their lack of go-getterness. I used to frown and wonder how anyone could spend all day doing nothing, or how my French bosses could possibly expect a basic html template to take me more than an hour to finish, much less a week. French people always seem surprised when I manage to accomplish things, and I am continuously surprised at the general population’s consensus to make that more difficult for me.
Take my recent plumbing catastrophe, for example. When I first moved into my new apartment, one of the first things I noticed as I was making up a detailed list for the état des lieux, a form that allows you one millisecond of time to blame any broken furniture, stains or other problems on the landlord before they start making you pay for it, was the fact that our sinks and bathtub didn’t drain well. I marked it down, we signed, I moved on with my life.
But then it started getting worse. It took the kitchen sink less than five minutes to fill up and more than an hour to drain. I had to furtively do dishes two or three at a time, and I found myself waiting up at night for the sink to empty so that I could finish the task and go to bed. In a rare DIY moment, I took the sink pipes apart and tried to clear them out, but to no avail… the sink was not pleased with me.
Still, I let it go. Plumbers are well-known arnaqueurs in France; because of the lack of plumbers, they pretty much charge whatever they feel like charging, and we have to pay it, because there’s no one else. I was not going to call a plumber… until my washing machine choked and died. It made a sound like it was going to explode during the spin cycle, then stopped, then filled with water and refused to drain.
I called everyone I could think of, wondering if someone knew a plumber who wasn’t going to raid me of all of my money.
“What do you do when your washing machine breaks in France?” I moaned to the Manouche, who replied, quite annoyingly, “Buy a new washing machine.”
I was about to resign myself to having to carry my laundry into the streets and do it at an overpriced laundromat, when the Almost Frenchman had an idea. Enter Bob: an 80-year-old man the Artist had the number for, who apparently can do everything from electricity to construction for 20 euros an hour, in cash. He was my last hope.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” he said over the phone. “It sounds like it could be one of two things: either I’ll be able to fix it quickly, no problem, or it will need to be replaced.”
I crossed my fingers and waited for him to arrive, a plastic grocery bag with two screwdrivers in hand.
I’m not exactly sure what he did. He went into the bathroom with a cereal bowl and came out with a ten-centime coin and a dingy, soaked towel. “It works,” he said. “Par contre, you have a serious plumbing problem.”
“I know,” I answered, elated at the fact that he had fixed my machine. Maybe there was hope for accomplishing things. “What should I do?”
“You need a poire,” he said.
“A what?”
Through a series of hand gestures, I learned that he wanted me to get a plunger, block up all the sinks and the bathtubs with water, and plunge all of them until the pipes were cleared.
“Sinon,” he warned, “I’ll come snake them. Mais ca risque de vous coûter cher…”
Of course it did.
I drafted a letter to my landlady, asking her to pay for Bob to come back and clear the pipes, and then the Artist and I went on a traipse to find a plunger. We finally found a “high-powered” one for 22 euros, which I forked over without a second thought. Anything to avoid getting my landlady involved.
Last night, after an afternoon of just wanting to be at home, vegging in front of the television, I filled up the sinks and began to plunge. Nothing happened. I called Bob, who said he wouldn’t be able to make it back for two weeks. “Did you block up the air space in the kitchen drain?” he asked.
“Yes…” I said, still plunging the kitchen sink and feeling like a moron as Bob talked me through the process over the phone. “Nothing’s happening…” I started counting how many days I could go without eating to pay for a plumber.
And then, miracle of miracles, the sink drained.
I called the Roommate. “Come look!” he came running into the kitchen, expecting a deluge. I ran the taps; the water drained straight down.
So I guess the moral of the story is, when in France, do it yourself.
And make sure you have leftovers to regain strength once you’ve finished working. This sweet potato and chicken chili is a riff off of a similar recipe I made a few years ago. The sweet potato makes the broth extremely flavorful. Add as many chipotle chilis as you like: I like a lot of spicy, smoky flavor, so I used five, but I recommend starting at two.
Sweet Potato Chicken Chili
250 g. dried white beans, soaked overnight
1 tsp. olive oil
500 g. chicken breast
2 small onions, diced
2 red bell peppers, diced
5 chipotle chilies, minced
2 tsp. salt
1 sweet potato, diced
water to cover
Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pot over medium-high heat, and brown the chicken on both sides. Reserve on a plate.
Reduce heat to medium. Add the onion, red bell pepper, chilies and salt, and cook until the vegetables are soft, about 10 minutes.
Add the beans and sweet potato to the pot, and cover with water. Cook an hour or so, until the beans are tender.
Add the chicken back to the pot and cook until cooked through, 10-20 minutes. Remove the chicken and shred with two forks, then return to the pot. Serve with sour cream, if desired.
