We have been away for a couple of weeks. We went to Sweden and visited friends and relatives. We were very lucky with the weather. Not one drop of rain, which is quite unusual at this time of the year. The short days are a bit frustrating though even if we should be used to it having lived in Sweden all our lives. It is nice to come back to longer days and temperature around 15 ºC during daytime.

The day after we came back we were invited to our American friends for Thanksgiving party. My good what a lot of food; and it was so nice. We really had a good time. There were another American couple and two Irish couples at the party as well. It is amazing that most people who renovate the old houses are from other countries. The locals prefer to build new bungalows in the outskirts of the village.

The foreigners who live here are mostly retired and have found that they get a much better quality of life in France that they do in USA, UK, Sweden or elsewhere. It is a combination of economic conditions, social security, social life and climate and last but not least the quality of food and drinks that makes life better here than many other places.

We went to Narbonne today to buy a few things for our dinner. We decided to eat lunch in Les Halles. We ate at a little bar called Le Zinc. The counter was full of people when we arrived but people just moved together to make place for us and we ordered “bavette”. The barman shouted “deux bavettes” to the butcher next door and after a while a little package with our meat arrived on the counter and was taken care of by the lady who did the cocking. Meanwhile they placed a bottle of wine in front of us and we could serve ourselves as long as we kept track of the number of glasses we pored. The guy next to us started to talk to my wife – he was working for the tax authorities and the two guys on the other side were discussing the excellent wine in our village with me. When I told them I was from Sweden they had to tell an IKEA story. It goes like this:

I lady bought a cupboard from IKEA. She went home and put it together but when the bus passed on the road the cupboard collapsed. Off course she contacted IKEA and they told her in detail how to assemble it again. She did exactly as she was told but when the bus passed the cupboard collapsed again. She rang IKEA again and this time they sent a specialist from the shop that assembled the thing and said that this time it would be all right. But – when the next bus passed the cupboard collapsed again. The guy from IKEA came back and this time he decided to wait for the bus and see for himself what was wrong. He assembled the cupboard and stepped into it to see what went wrong when the bus passed.

While he was standing there the husband came home and he was so happy when he saw the cupboard still standing so he had to look inside and found a man standing there.

-  What the hell are you doing in my wife’s cupboard? he shouted.

-  I am waiting for the bus, said the IKEA man.

Two things are quite interesting. First, there are always rumours that the quality is bad when a company start so sell things less expensive than others do. I wonder who start those rumours. Secondly, a company has really become successful when people start telling stories about them. It does not matter if the stories are true or false, positive or negative, it is still a sign that they have managed to get a position in peoples minds.

I really hope they sell Xmas trees and Swedish ham at IKEA; otherwise I will have a depressing Xmas.

The food we got was excellent and the wine as well. My new friend shared the last of their rose wine with me and the taxman insisted to buy me a Calvados. We also got his business card and he got our telephone number. I would not be surprised if he really calls us as he promised.

Things like that would never happen in Sweden. We would not have got a place at the bar the first time and if we had managed to squeeze us in – which would be very un-Swedish -  we would have pretended the other guests were invisible. If someone had talked to us he would certainly have been drunk or an immigrant that hadn’t passed the course for immigrants in “Adjusting to the Swedish Culture”. They say that one of the tests is to take the “New Swedes” on a ride in an elevator. If they just stare into the wall without saying anything or greeting anyone they will be passed otherwise they have to take the course again.

To round this up, the bar bill was 20 Euros for the two of us. That included wine and coffee.

In the evening we went to Conilhac, Corbières on the last day of their annual Jazz festival. It has been going on for a month now every weekend. We listened to Tania Margarit Quintet – a fusion jazz band that was very good. The main attraction was the famous accordionist Richard Galliano who played music inspired by Astor Piazzola but also modern interpretations of traditional French musette music. The audience and among them many elderly ladies were absolutely thrilled.  

There are many rules in France and it is a duty for every Frenchman to break them as often as possible. French people are very proud of being a nation born through a revolution, unlike countries like Sweden and Britain that keep a family supported by taxpayers that can’t do anything more useful than feeding the tabloids with scandals and other news from their life.

The French are not revolutionary in the sense that they like change. On the contrary, they protect their traditions and their way of life against any change from authorities. Many presidents have tried to change some of the more ridiculous old rules from the Napoleon’s time without any luck.  We have all sometimes admired/feared the French way of protesting though masses of tractors on the roads or through high jacking Spanish tomatoes trucks and spread the tomatoes over the highway. For those Frenchman not being lucky to take part in such things it is possible to show their importance and strengthen their human dignity by doing small thing every day. Parking the car is one of the most popular ways to show your individuality and mark you way through life.

The principles for parking in France are quite simple in theory but it takes you years to master them. I would say that people from some cultures never have a chance to even come close to some of the more equilibristic varieties the French master so well. It is just that your whole upbringing and culture is standing in the way for it. You have to understand the following:

• One basic principle is to park in such a way that you are to as much nuisance to others as possible. In that way you mark your place in history – for a short while anyway.
• Another principle is never to pay if you can avoid it. This principle is often in conflicts with the next principle.
• Always park where it is most convenient for you. This principle might sometimes be in conflict with number one. In those cases it is a matter of personality which one you choose.
• Never park where some authorities have decided you should park. Here the real creative can come up with the most fantastic solutions.

A little case study I made taught me a lot about French parking behaviour. Here is a report:

The first parking places that are taken are pavements, traffic islands and pedestrians’ crossings. Also popular are the grass inside roundabouts, lawns, street corners and other places that are not meant for parking. Surprisingly enough they never park outside driveway, a behaviour that seems to violate the first principle, but there is a difference between being a nuisance to just anybody and to somebody specific that owns that driveway. You do not do that! So, there is order even in anarchy!

OK – what happens if all these attractive but more or less unsuitable parking places are taken? You can always be boring and park in the street, preferably where it is forbidden to even stop, secondly where it is forbidden to park. If these places are taken and there is only dedicated parking space left you can park across two or three marked parking spaces and show that you are an individual and not a conformist that allow others to decide where you should leave your car. I have seen how real masters manage to park their car in such a way that they can prevent anybody to enter or exit the whole parking lot. This takes a very good mathematical and spatial intelligent to do.

In some places – especially at monuments and other attractions - it is not possible to park for free unless you are willing to walk a few minutes. I have seen parking lots that are half empty and still all places that are not meant for parking are full. That is off course the whole perimeter of the parking, the space between the rows, in the end of a row where there are no white lines, on the walkways in and out of the parking lot, and off course if there are any grass, flowerbeds or any other space unsuitable for leaving the car on. In the large parking lot of supermarkets – where it is free – many cars park on the elevated parts that divide the marked parking places rather than stand in the sparking squares.

One of the most amazing things I have seen was behind our apartment house in Sete where it was no stopping all day in the street. Off course there were always full of cars there. A couple of times a year we had these big celebrations in the town and Tour de France also passed by some years. At those occasions the police sharpened up the NO STOPPING with provisional signs saying NO PARKING and a little sticker that informed that this sign was valid between this and that date. That helped!

If you plan to bring your car to France I think you need a little primer. The problem for Scandinavians is that they have to pass Germany and that calls for some warning as you can read in my yesterday’s blog.

Unlike the German the French highways cost money but are worth it as they are excellent and the traffic is, also unlike those in Germany, very civilised, except for those Germans who have brought their behaviour from home and try to push you off the road by driving into the back of your car if you don’t disappear fast enough. To do such things in a country, like France, where people have such a pride and value their dignity so high is not earning any popularity points.

There are however alternative routes that are also very good – often with highway standard. At the same time as I say that the traffic on the highways are civilized the traffic on the other roads are more hectic. Here are a few principles about French traffic you must understand.

• The smaller the road the faster they drive.
• A French driver must pass you despite your speed or road condition.
• Those coming from your right hand side always have right of way even if they come from their own yard and you drive on a major road. They do not even look to the left.
• Meeting someone on those very small roads is like a chicken race – the chicken moves to the side and reduces his speed; that means YOU. When the road is too narrow I always choose to be the chicken and stop because not even in France it could be your fault if you stand still. As French people don’t mind a few dents they will certainly not avoid them.
• The most furious traffic is always around noon as the major religion in France is spelled LUNCH. Avoid that time for your lazy tour to look at the scenery. Be French – sit down and eat a three course lunch with wine in at least 2 ½ hour.

 If French drivers drive on the country roads as if they were on their way to the hospital with their wives giving birth, they are equally relaxed as soon as they enter a village or small town. To double park in a one-lane, one-way street is perfectly all right. The guy might have something to do in there – maybe he needs a quick cup of coffee or a Pastis or he met a fiend he has to talk to. Nobody would honk their horns or behave as they would in for example Sweden – meaning not very patient. I admit that my experience is from the south of France and it might be very different in Paris. Anyway it is amazing how they seem to have all the time in the world in such occasions and ten minutes later on the country road behave like they had a death wish when they pass you in hidden bends, just before the top of hills or when they meet a huge truck.

Tomorrow I will tell you about something even more interesting that takes much longer to learn for visitor to France. That is parking in the enormously creative and egocentric way the French do. When there is absolutely no parking for me, at least five Frenchmen can find a place for their cars.

One of the good things about living in France is that we do not have to travel by car from Sweden to France any more. During the years we have had a vacation apartment we must have done the 2500 km trip 40 times, so we know what we are talking about. The biggest problem is what we, in our worst moments, call the big road-work south of Denmark. Other calls it Germany.

Most highways in Germany have only two lanes and one of them is filled with trucks, bumper to bumper, from the northern border to the southern border of the country. This “train of trucks” moves in a steady pace of 90 km/h and at any time, one of the trucks, without any notice, can brake out into the left hand lane to pass the others at 91 km/h. You can imagine how long time that takes. At such occasions hundreds of cars have to wait until the truck finally manages to pass one of the others. This would be quite fine in any other place in the world except in Germany. Here someone with one of those cars with a silver star in the front or that other make that have another version of a machinegun sight in front, but this time in blue and white, catches up with the cue in +200 km/h and demand by flashing the headlights to pass all the hundreds of cars cueing behind the slow truck. I learned when I was little that it is not polite to force yourself up to the front of a cue. For English people that are addicted to cueing it must be strange to find out that, in Germany, the one who are last into the cue should be the first one out. For Scandinavian people that are thought not to be aggressive and step on others toes it is also interesting to se how the biggest bully on the road get away with it without any protests in Germany – given they have the right car. Just imagine that you do not just vaporize when you see these signs of German power in your back mirror. What happens is that they pass you on the right hand side with danger for their own life, yours and for those in the right hand lane. The accidents on the German highway are mostly terrible as the speed is very high and there are so many cars involved. Of this reason some of my German friends have not been on a highway for the last ten years.

Those Swedes that have bought themselves the most powerful Volvo or SAAB and have been looking forward to test its ability on the German highway believes that they can behave the same way. Not so! Herrn Schmidt would never move away for such a car, however fast they come, whatever much they flash their headlights. They just ignore such things as foreign cars. This is all right but when they also ignore the German Mercedes wannabes like the biggest Audis and Volkswagens we have got a problem. If you have bought a car like that and do not get the respect you deserve you react exactly like young insecure machos do when they do not get enough respect from their gang. They flip out totally! Talking about dangerous traffic environment!

I must admit I drive quite fast, not as fast as I used to do though and absolutely not as fast as the Germans think I should do to have the right to get out from between the trucks and into the “reserved” left hand lane. I have one principle though and that one I never go back on – to keep a safe distance to the car in front. This is absolutely impossible in Germany. If you are more than a few meters away from the car in front you are sagging and anyone has the right to fill the gap, preferably by passing “you idiot” on the right hand side – which is difficult and takes some virtuosity and a certain mind when that lane is filled with trucks. This is scary but it is even scarier to have a car behind you that are so close that you cannot see the licence plate in your back mirror. But – as long as you see a machinegun sight you know how to behave.

The big moment my wife and I always are looking forward to is when we, on the way south, pass the border to France at Mulouse. Suddenly we drive on a high quality highway with a smooth surface, traffic that is not faster than 140-150 km/h, nobody is bullying, and the surrounding is nice, the views are beautiful, all artefacts on the highway are well designed and you can stop at the most pleasant lay-bys. This is a contrast to the German side where you, except of risking your life, were driving in a corridor of trees and you could not se a bit of the beautiful German landscape and the lay-bys had a design and a standard that you preferred to forget as soon as possible.

Nowadays we fly Ryan Air but we would be happy to take the car to Sweden if it was economically possible to use the AutoTrain between Hamburg and Narbonne. Can anyone explain to me why it has to cost 1300 Euros to use that train when everybody say they are so concerned about the global warming issue and teach us that we should not fly and not use our cars.

Our house is from 1762. When we bought it, it had been empty for a few years and it had been raining through the roof. It was basically in a good condition but needed quite a lot of renovation. As the house is the oldest existing house in the village, except for the castle, we though it was worth being renovated in a cautious way. All the floors was the original ones and one of the walls was even older than the house and had belonged to the old fortress that had been there as far back as the 11th century and maybe longer.

One of the first problems we encountered was how to renovate the walls. They were now covered with disgusting wallpaper in many layers. When we took them away – which was quite a job – we found the original painted walls. The original walls had just patterns like dots, flowers and other decorations painted on the plaster covered walls. We would have liked to restore this but it was impossible as they had been too damaged by the time and what was left of it disappeared when the wallpaper was taken off.

Anyway we decided we wanted the walls painted in traditional earth colours, the way they used to do it in the south of France, in such a way that the texture of the walls would appear through the paint.

This was however not easy to do as no shop that sold paint could inform us how to do it. The thing was that we wanted to find a transparent paint, a so called glaze, for our old walls. That was not a problem – the problem was to know how to prepare the old walls for application of this glaze. Every shop wanted to sell us some artificial product to make the walls look old before we applied the glaze. We tried to tell them that our walls already were 250 years old and we wanted to know just how to prepare them for glazing. They could not tell us how to do this but persisted that we needed this artificial coating on the walls to get the glaze to stick and get the “right” old fashioned look. So – we had to try different ways ourselves. Finally we found out that we could apply this glaze, which really is a wax (it is called “cire” in French), that you can apply to any pre-painted wall. So, this is the way we did it:

Naturally the walls had quite a few damages like cracks, holes from nails and other fitting and also some damp pieces. We also had to knock down large pieces where the old plaster was loose from the supporting stones. The walls were built of large stones and covered with plaster so they were fairly even – but the charm is that they curved quite a lot and were wider at the bottom than at the top. We mended all the holes with plaster. We scraped down the cracks quite deep so the new plaster would get a good grip and filled them with plaster. You should use the kind of plaster that do not sink when it dries so you can make the surface finished in one go. Do not overfill and think you should sand it down afterwards. That is hard work! Instead fill up the cracks and holes with a mixture that is dry enough not to run and liquid enough to get down in the holes, let it dry for a few minutes until it is like hard parmesan cheese, cut away the surplus with a sharp scraper and coat it with slurry of plaster with the help of a very even steel spatula or even better, with a square spatula with a rubber surface. In this way you get a finished surface in one go. It is important that you soak the part of the wall with water before you apply the plaster. It will dry immediately otherwise and you will not be able to get a good surface. The plaster dries very quickly so make small portions or, as the experts do, mix it with water as you use it.

When you have finished this mending of holes you need to give the wall a final coating with something the French calls an “endui”. This is also based on plaster, but with much finer grain which, unlike the first plaster, keeps open for many hours. You have to cover the whole wall with this “endui” otherwise the paint will soak into the wall unevenly and you will get very ugly spots when you put on the “cire” in the end.

Now is the time to do something about the parts that you know are damp. Stone walls have a tendency to suck up water from the ground so often the walls are damp or even wet at the bottom. You can buy a special product to seal the wall with. You just apply one coat with a brush and let it dry according to the description.

When you have coated the wall with “endui” and this seal you should give it two coats of acrylic paint. I used white as I wanted the colour to come from the “cire”, but you can take any light colour and put a “cire” on top. If you do not use white I suggest you test first.

Here is the time for some warning!

It is tempting to make your wall very even but do not do that, because you want to keep the old look. They put this artificial coating unevenly on modern plasterboard walls to make them look old so you should not overdo your plasterwork and your coating with “endui” to make your old wall look new. The trick is not to make the first plaster too even and to apply the “endui” in different directions and finally not to paint with the acrylic paint as you are used to. Do not use even stokes as you are taught to do; try to paint as you five years old child would have done. The way you do this determines how “lively” your wall will be in the end.

When your paint is dry you start with the fun work – to apply the ”cire”. The “cire” is a coloured wax with the same consistency as soft shoe polish from a tube. You apply it on the wall with a brush and rub it in and away with a sponge. Here you can decide how much colour you want to leave on the wall to get a deeper or more subtle look.

The final result is exactly what you can see in old houses from Provence. When the “cire” is dry the wall is washable and has got a silky shiny look. Beautiful!!

Just a few more thing!

If you have very deep dents or holes in the walls or have wooden beams or other moving constructions, you should mix the plaster fifty-fifty with something called MAP. This makes the joint a tiny bit elastic so it can take some movements. You can also use MAP as it is for very big holes and where the movements might be large.

If you have parts that are painted with old linseed oil paint you can not apply modern paint on top of it. It will not stick or it will crackle. In this case you have to isolate the old paint with a coat of a paint based on “glycérophtalique” (I think it is an alkyd paint). You can use this method to isolate any old coatings or stains from sot in chimneys or any other agents that might come through the finished paint.

We have renovated an ancient house here in France and I guess many of you are in the same situation. There are two reasons why I think I have some experiences that are valuable to share with others. The first reason is that I have done a lot of mistakes that you should not have to do. The second is that I, being a retired university professor in architecture, have the ability to reflect on my mistakes and learn from them. I might also have some abilities to communicate my know-how to others who are in the same situation.

The latest project I did and that rewarded me with a serious attack of lumbago was a pergola on the roof terrace. The reason we wanted to have a pergola is that I want the shade – my wife does not – but we both want a more sheltered place for our dinners and breakfasts. My wife has always dreamt of having some climbing plants and we don’t have a garden – thanks good - so a pergola was of great need.

The first thing you have to decide is the design of the pergola. I choose a standard construction that I like best. The difficult thing is however to decide the dimensions of the construction. The eye will easily fool you. If you go strictly on construction principles it tends to be to thin and it will not look nice. If you on the other hand want to be on the safe side you tend to make the construction too heavy and that is not good either. You like a pergola to look light but not spindly and when the plants start to grow they add some visual weight to the construction.

So I decided on a construction with two primary beams with the dimension 100x40 mm. The length was approximately 2.5 meters. On top of these I put three secondary beams with the same dimension and approximately 3 m long. The actual “roof” of the pergola was 2.5 m long planks with the dimension 100x25 mm with a distance between them of 200 mm.

Three layers of construction would be quite thick however if I had just put them on top of each other so I let the top beam always cut into the lower one 40 mm. In this way I could reduce the construction height from 300 mm to 220 mm which made it quite nice. I only needed 1 pillar and I found that 100x100 mm is a good looking dimension. Remember not to let the pillars have direct contact with the ground or the floor. It will draw water and by the time rot, but there are constructions that allow a distance between the supporting floor and the end of the pillar.

The second important decision is what wood to use. I decided on red cedar. In the French climate this wood is very good as it resist water and do not rot and it also contains chemical substances that different bugs that eat wood do not like. You do not even have to treat it. It is light, which is good if you have a bad back, it is very easy to work with and it looks beautiful. It is however poisonous so be careful when you work with it. Use gloves, do not get dust into you eyes of breath it in and be careful not to get splinters in your hands. It is allergenic to many people and I noticed my hands got very funny after a while. Off course I read about the hazards too late to benefit from the knowledge.

Another thing you have to know is that the wood is corrosive so you need to use stainless steel screws and nails and at least galvanized fixtures if you think stainless is too expensive – which it is.

A piece of advise when you cut the beams to fit into the lower one – cut the top beam, not the lower as that will cause pockets for water to get into. Also put the beams on place and mark where to cut in place. If you cut the beams by measuring where the cuttings should be they will not fit. It is easy to do these cuttings – just make two parallel cuts with a sharp saw to the depth you need (in this case 40 mm) and give it a blow with the hammer. The bit just pops away as the cedar wood is very even in its structure. Even the bottom of the cut a little with a rasp. If the dimensions are a little too thick to just pop off, use a chisel and take it a way bit by bit.