Furnishings and Repairs

Our first years were spent purchasing furnishings. Lights were most important as apartments in France, at that time at least, did not include any lights. We did have one in the WC and one in the bathroom. Often apartments did not include ANY appliances, either. We were lucky to have a 2-burner gas top and an electric oven (although the door did not close properly), and a small fridge below the oven. I never understood the logic of putting a hot oven right over a tiny fridge with even tinier freezer compartment! Overhead lights for the living room and kitchen and two wall sconces for the bedroom completed our lamp purchases.

Then it was time for curtains for the bedroom, as that window was directly on the outside passageway along which everyone walked to get to the elevator. Of course there were no screens in the windows (unheard of in the Roussillon back then). One day when our infant daughter was in her crib, some teenage boys came walking past the window and stood looking in at her in her crib! Buying curtains was quite an ordeal. High school French does not teach you the words for rods and hooks, etc. But we managed to get some nice white sheers, which provided us with a semblance of privacy when the shutter was up on the bedroom window.

The next real necessity was a carpet sweeper. The apartment was covered with a short-nap burnt orange carpet—wall-to-wall carpeting except but the WC and tiny kitchen floors, which were tiled like the balcony. That sweeper never really worked well and we ended up bringing a small electric vacuum with us from the US. Thirty years later it still works, although now all the carpeting is gone and replaced with tile or wood. How I hated that carpeting, always full of sand from the beach and sand fleas, as well!

Before going south from Paris one year, I flew to Quimper to buy dishes! I had fallen in love with a pattern of Quimper dishes years before and had bought a couple of demitasse cups several years before on a stop in Quimper. But now I needed a set of dishes for our new apartment and I knew exactly what I wanted. It took stops in several shops to find exactly the right pattern and quality I wanted. Then after an afternoon of bagpipes piping in the area for a festival, a lovely dinner, and late church service, I went to bed for my early morning train to Paris, then on to Banyuls. The following year I returned to Quimper and bought $400 worth of dishes, so that we would have 4 of each kind of cup and plate. Now I need to return for another 2 of everything, as the family grows! Quimperware is quite “friable”—easy to chip—so over the years, they have picked up a few knicks and one of our renters broke a saucer one year and I broke a pitcher another year. But we have added to collection by scouring the antique stores in Perpignan and picking up some lovely antique Quimperware.

We purchased a dresser and 2 night stands for the bedroom and a sofa bed at M. Meuble Furniture Store that first year. That sofa bed became not only a guest bed, but also our daughter’s bed, when she outgrew her cot, until our move to a larger apartment. It is still with us and sags a bit, but we still use it for the occasional guest, when both bedrooms are filled, and we had an exciting night on it watching the Super Bowl for the first time on French TV several years ago! One night stand had to be ordered, so we said we’d pick it up the following trip to France. When I called upon our next arrival, they said it should be there, so up I went to the store to fetch it. It wasn’t there but “would arrive in two days” and they’d deliver it. I said I’d fetch it as I was going to Perpignan that day anyway. When I returned, they said that it had never been ordered, the salesman from whom I’d bought it was no longer with them, and they didn’t even know what the furniture looked like and I could I please bring in the one I already had! The following morning I was back at the furniture store with the “chevet” and was told that the factory no long makes them, but they called other branches of their store to look for one. They never did find a second night stand for us and did reimburse our money, and that is how we ended up buying one in Barcelona and transporting it back to Banyuls via taxi, buses, taxi, train, and foot—but that’s another story!

Two years later we decided to take a train trip down to Barcelona to do some shopping. We had a lovely late dinner at Reno’s, our favorite restaurant in the city, and enjoyed walking down Passeig de Gracia, looking at lots of china, crystal, etc. until we found a furniture store that was liquidating stock. There we found several interesting items. An antique mall of 72 stores also piqued our interest; we saw a Soler painting for about $10,000 and a fake Picasso, as well as a lovely art deco hand mirror for $200 and a sterling silver tea strainer for about $100. But we returned to Silva, the furniture store, located in one of the Gaudi buildings, and bought an end table, which we planned to use as our second night stand. Then the fun began!

We got our bags from the hotel and took a taxi to Estacion Francia to await the 4 p.m. train back to Banyuls. The station was very quiet—too quiet! Our taxi driver went into the station to find out what was happening and discovered that all the trains in Spain were on strike! The tourist office said there was a bus to Figueras at 2:30 so we hurried by taxi to Estacion del Norte to catch the bus. The line for tickets was very long, so I investigated taking a London bus which stopped in Perpignan, but it left from somewhere else. So we got tickets to Figueras, leaving at 5:30 p.m. When the bus pulled up to the curb at 5 p.m., everyone pushed and shoved to get on it. My husband quickly put the luggage and the end table in the compartment under the bus as I climbed onboard with the tickets, only to discover that this was NOT the bus to Figueras. So we had to quickly remove the luggage and table from under the bus and transfer everything to another bus that pulled up at 5:30 p.m. That driver said he was only going to Gerona. But he did not fill the bus, so he let some of us going to Figueras onto the bus. By this time, I had struck up an acquitance with a French girl and found out she was trying to get to Montpellier. She’d been told there was a bus from Figueras to Perpignan, so we decided we might be able to do the same, then take a train south to Banyuls.

When we got to Girona, mass confusion followed. A group of us that were headed for Figueras crowded around the bus beside ours because we were told it was going to Figueras. Then the driver told me NO, so we pulled table and luggage once again out of this bus. Shortly the group wondered back to our first bus and there a supervisor told our driver that he was, indeed, going on to Figueras. So we all climbed back on board and my husband once again stored the luggage in the compartment under the bus..

As I’d learned several years before, the “no smoking” signs on Spanish buses mean absolutely nothing, as everyone lights up their cigarettes, including the driver! First the bus had to stop for petrol and then we headed, at last, for Figueras.

When we got to the train station in Figueras, the station was closed and there was no bus to Perpignan. Luckily there were some taxis there and we decided to share a taxi with the French couple as far as the Perpignan train station. Once again we had to first stop for petrol! The taxi took us up the autopista (highway) to the border with France, where we had to stop and get out of the taxi. The taxi driver ran over to the exchange to get some French money, while the rest of us stood around with the French customs officers trying to explain why an American, a Brit, a French couple and a trunk full of luggage with a table roped on top were traveling across the border in a Spanish taxi!

When we got to Perpignan, the taxi driver got lost in the city and I ended up directing him to the train station. We arrived at 9:45 p.m., missing the 9:30 train south, so had to wait until the 11:50 train, the last train to get home. We arrived back in Banyuls at 12:20 a.m. and carefully and quietly walked down the hill, across the village, and up the hill on the other side to our apartment, carrying our luggage and the end table. And that’s how we finally got a second nightstand for the bedroom.

 

During the second year of ownership, I went to Banyuls with my friend, Judy, traveling on Halloween. We took with us two king-sized pillows for the bed. Knowing that our luggage would not accommodate the pillows, we rigged up ropes through the plastic bags on the pillows, and wore them like knapsacks on our backs. When the stewardess on the plane remarked on them, we said we were dressed as beds for Halloween! I must say they made the trip in coach much more comfortable! When we arrived at the apartment, after a day in Luxembourg and several days in Paris, we found that the gas heater did not work. So no heat in the apartment and no cooking on the stove. We used a loaf pan to heat water in the oven! It took a whole week to get a plumber to arrive and find the problem with the heater.

Meanwhile, I had decided that the one wall in the living room, which was not papered (probably because someone had papered around a large armoire against the wall) really needed to be papered. I arranged for a paperhanger to come and take a look at it. He was very amused and had fun figuring out how to fit the pattern together with the remnant of wallpaper I had found in the closet. The following morning he arrived with a helper and they began to put up the paper. But they were gluing the paper on top of a rough design that had been sprayed onto the wall when the apartment was first built, so the paper was lumpy and then there wasn’t enough paper to finish the bottom of the wall, but they continued their work, grumbling all the time. I told them that was okay because the sofa was going there anyway! All the time they were working, I was in the kitchen making a pate brise for an apple tarte. The paperhanger commented that I needed to be using my hands to mix the dough, not a fork! His father had been a baker, so he knew what he was talking about and offered to put his gluey hands in my dough to show me. No thanks, monsieur! He’s right, of course. One does need to use one’s hands to mix the butter into the flour of a pate brise.

During those first few years of owning our apartment, we rented it out to fellow professors from my university from time to time. One engineer and his family stayed for 5 weeks while he was on sabbatical. One of his requirements was that we have a phone in the apartment. Up to that point, when we wanted to make a phone call, we either went to the phone booth in the street or to the Poste to have the gals there place a call for us (always a thrill for them when it was a call to the US!).

With some help from our realtor, we contacted the phone company and arranged for the workman to come and install a phone. As usual, the schedule was “Tomorrow” and they didn’t arrive until the middle of the afternoon (sometimes a workman will arrive about 6 p.m. after one has waited all day and given up the hope of ever getting the work done, and mostly often it’s really the next day they arrive).   After checking the conduit through which the wires should be threaded, he discovered that the conduit was blocked and he would have to bring along someone else to help him unblock it. Then I waited another long day for him to return. And I was waiting for a plumber to come fix the gas heater yet again. Then it was decided that an electrician was needed to unblock the phone conduit! Throwing up my hands, I took myself out for a nice dinner at Le Sardinal.

The next day I drove to Montpellier to pick up my husband at the train station and we then headed toward Ikea in Vitrolles, outside Marseille. We had a nice stop in Arles along the way and visited the marche the following morning, purchasing an old map of the Pyrenees Orientales.

Ikea was a godsend for us! We could have semi-Swedish food for luncheon in the Ikea restaurant and then luxuriate in the many beautiful items throughout the store. We bought several shelf units, a tall china cupboard, a small dining table and folding chairs, and a “Poem” chair (I think they call it “Pong” in the US these days). Then, of course, there was the inevitable car-top carrier and rope (still sitting in the garage, unused for the past 30 years). We got lost in Nimes, seemingly going around and around in circles until our tempers snapped. Forever in our minds, Nimes will be the city of traffic circles!

Five days after the first visit from the telephone man, an electrician arrived and said that the conduit was broken inside, so we could not have a telephone wire put through it. It took another week or so before it was decided that a telephone wire could be strung up along the top of the wall from the living room to the front door and then out along the outside corridor to the junction box. It finally got installed just before our renters arrived.

Meanwhile we’d bought a washer at our friends’ store and that was delivered and installed in two hours. We started it right up, but I had the oven on at the same time, so the circuit was blown! A quick change of a few wires in the circuit box, and we were okay—for the time being! That would soon change as we added appliances to our tiny apartment!

The following year we noticed the lights flickering, until we unplugged a tiny night light! We decided it was time to check with the electric company. The man was to come in two days to install a new junction box in the outside corridor, but he never did arrive and we had to wait until the following year to get that work done. When he arrived, he was sure that moving our power up one notch would be plenty. It wasn’t until my husband said, “But this is for an American kitchen,” that the electrician laughed and said, “Well, in that case, we better move it up even more!” Finally we had enough power to run the apartment! When we moved into our larger apartment fifteen years later, we had to have the electric company come and increase the power for that apartment, as well. Apparently, we Americans use a lot more electricity in our homes than the French!