Our first two weeks at Moulin du Bayle seem to have flown by with nearly everyday filled with either exploring a new local market or dealing with French bureaucracy so we could purchase a car.
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| Mirepoix Market |
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| Olives to die for! |
One of the many things we were looking forward to doing when we got to France was to visit the local weekly market to buy our fresh vege, fruit, cheese and bread. We most certainly have not been disappointed, from the small village markets to the larger town ones, the abundance of fresh food as well as unique jewellery, clothes, shoes and general bric a brac has been wonderful. It seems that there is a real avante garde cum alternative flavour to the markets, particularly the clothing, handcrafted footwear (gorgeous and unusual leather sandals, boots, shoes) and jewellery. The prices, however, are not cheap especially at this time of the year when it's the height of the tourist season.
There are always cafes and restaurants dotted around the squares selling great food and coffee -the kind that knocks the top off your head or for the less serious coffee drinkers they now have cappuccinos which were not in evidence when we were here in 2006. Apart from what is on sale at the markets it's the surrounds that are what makes the whole experience so stunning. The markets are held in village squares which are bordered by wonderful old buildings, ancient churches, chateaus and in Mirepoix the whole square has a medieval veranda under which there are shops and cafes, it is absolutely fabulous.
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| Melons, peaches, nectarines in abundance |
It's the history around every corner that really constantly surprises you and reminds you how young we are in New Zealand!
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| Around every corner, about 3kms from home. |
Now to the second 'M' of this blog, our motoring experiences! I'll start by saying that we are now the proud owners of a 2004 Peugeot 206, 55,000kms on the clock, two new tyres, a service and a new CT (registration) good until mid 2012. All in all a pretty good deal but it did not happen without a fair amount of frustration and perspiration! Martin, car buyer extraordinaire, had us looking in every car dealership we came across, trying to explain what we were wanting to purchase -lots of hand waving, diagram drawing as well as a few sentences Peggy had memorised - worked well until they answered back! All this usually eventuated in us looking at one or two cars at each dealership but always at a price more than we were willing to pay...so...back to the internet.
We finally found our car in a nearby town, Limoux, being sold by an English lady who is moving back to the UK. YEAH...job done...yeah right! It turns out that changing ownership of a car in France is something akin to gaining a PhD. Deidre, the lovely lady we bought the car off provided us with all the information she thought we would need to do our part of the changeover and it was agreed that we would go to the Prefecture (Govt civil servants) in Carcassonne together to get the job done all in one hit. So at the appointed time, armed with every piece of paper conceivable, we rocked up to the office, handed over the relevant documents, waved our arms around, smiled, said a few more memorised words and waited. The young prefecture for his part, looked through the papers, waved this arms around, consulted with three others and then told us that we could not do the changeover until we had been to see our local mairie (mayor) to get a piece of paper to say we were resident in his 'commune'. By this time is was 12o'clock and everything closes down for two hours so it was back to Moulin du Bayle for a few deep breaths and some lunch. At 2 o'clock we trudged up to St Jean de Paracol with the hope that the mairie might be in...we had heard that they generally only open their offices Wednesday from 2-3.30 in the smaller towns and this was Wednesday! We were in luck he was there and happy to see us except he didn't speak a word of English. Once again, Peggy managed to spit out her memorised intros (getting pretty good at it now) and the rest she left to the 'google translations' she has written down prior while waiting for 2pm. He got the picture and eventually found the relevant paper and signed it. After that I think he welcomed us to the village and said that there were a number of English speakers who we might like to meet. As it was too late to get back to the prefecture before closing time, we took another trip to get more money out of the bank (can only take $1000 a day) so we could finalise the purchase in the morning.
The new day dawned bright and we were all away back to Carcassonne with some trepidation but positive that today was the day! In a repeat of the day before, we presented our paperwork to the same prefecture who appeared to remember us and in what seemed no time at all he waved us over to a ticket machine. It seemed he was just the first phase of this process, we now needed to take a number and wait to see someone else to have everything checked. It needs to be said there were at least 20 other people waiting holding tickets! After a relatively quick 15-20 French minutes, we were called to a man who looked at the papers -not at us- stamped them and waved us back over to the ticket machine. Rather nonplussed we wobbled our way back to the machine just as a English woman had been issued her ticket. She told us that this ticket was for the final part of this process...the paying part. Another 10-15 French minutes and we handed over 140 euros and we had our temporary 'carte de grise' (change of ownership). Once outside there was much cheering and clapping and wiping of the brow, we'd done it...well at least most of it...
It seems in France when you change ownership of a car you are given a new licence number which means you must purchase new licence plates. So...back to Limoux to find a licence plate maker! It is now just on 12pm so once again nothing except eating and drinking happens until 2pm so we indulged! We found our man down one of the many narrow streets and he told us it would be done in 5 mins and to bring the car to the front of his shop and they would put it on. The speed of this was a bit dazzling, so we were a little suspicious but did as we were told and sure enough when we eventually wound our way back to his shop the licence was waiting and so was a very happy and rather drunk older man armed with a rivoting gun and a drill. All plates in France must be rivoted on apparently to stop thieves?! This process took about 20 minutes largely due to our man having some difficulty getting the plates straight and helpfully putting in 6 rivots where two would have been sufficient.
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| Our friendly rivot man! |
Now you would think that this would have been enough for one day...but there was still one more job to be done. It is apparently illegal in France to drive a car without insurance so we needed to get this sorted quickly or have a long walk home. We had been advised by a number of people that AXA was a good company to deal with so up the stairs to the AXA man we went and what a gem he turned out to be. In less than half an hour we had full cover insurance from Guy Serie for 491euro (about $900nz), this covers us for everything from the usual accident situations to car break downs where they will send a mechanic and a courtesy car for however long you need it. This covers us for all over Europe.
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| Peugette! |
It was with great relief and a certain amount of pride that we arrived back to Moulin du Bayle that night in our new car...Peugette (named by Martin). So for the last few days we have finally been able to sit back and enjoy life here at our new home. We have been back to our local markets and bought a few plants for the garden pots, fixed the flat tires on the velo (bike) that was here, put up a hammock, slept during the afternoon and generally chilled out. Martin is now on the hunt for another velo for me so that we can 'go on rides together'...all of you who know about Martin's bike riding exploits can stop laughing now, we are keen to try out some of the many flat roads in the area. We have also been told about a local woman who gives French lessons as well as introducing you to conversational french with our local neighbours and french cuisine, so we will be signing up for that in September.
Apologies for the length of this blog, hopefully I will be more diligent now that we free of our bureaucracy!
Bonsoir from France, we hope you are all enjoying what sounds like an early entrance of spring in NZ.
