We have had many memorable moments in Banyuls over the years, making new friends, sharing good wine, celebrating American and French holidays together.

But one of the first village favorite moments was our first Catalan fest in 1986. Every summer the Catalan villages from both sides of the border get together for a day of celebration of all things Catalan, mostly food, music, dancing the sardana and crafts. That July day, we headed downtown about 10:30 a.m. to hear the speeches made by our mayor and the visiting majors from neighboring Catalan villages, both in France and in Spain. This was followed by the castellars, who are acrobats that form human towers right on the street. They climb upon each others’ shoulders, making a tower, with a young child climbing up to the top! This was very new to us, and I kept thinking about all the safety nets and harnesses they would have been required to have in the US.

By 1:30 p.m. two HUGE paella pans were cooking paella on the plaza behind city hall, just outside the post office. Tables were set all up and down the street that runs beside city hall, effectively closing off traffic for the afternoon. For 25 francs each (about $2.50 back then), we had a lovely meal of bread, wine, seafood paella and dessert. It was our first feeling of inclusion by the villagers, who welcomed us as one of their own.

Later we danced on our balcony to the music that floated up to us from the square. Amidst all the repairs and renovations we were doing at this time in our lives, our first Catalan fest was a spot of conviviality and feeling of warmth from the village, which we relished.

Racing for a Win

One of my personal favorite moments was watching our young daughter beat the French boys in a swimming race! After she turned 12, she was encouraged to try a sailing class, as she was really too old to continue at Centre Aere, the village’s summer camp. Before the children were allowed to go out in the sailboats, they had to pass a swimming test by swimming a distance along the shoreline, while wearing lifejackets.   The boys in the class were all quite shocked that our daughter, whom they assumed was deaf or dumb because she didn’t speak French to them, beat them soundly in this race. I had to take a photo of the finish as she never would have believed it—and still doesn’t!  After that, she was treated like a princess by the boys!

Concerts

We have attended many wonderful concerts, some of which have been mentioned in previous stories. Two of our favorites were part of the annual Casals Music Festival and took place in the tiny hill village of Eus, west of Perpignan. In 1999, when our friend and her teen-aged daughter visited us, we attended the performance of two American musicians, Paul Bliss and Marian Fried. As it turned out, they used to live in our hometown in Ohio and knew lots of our musician friends. In fact, they had been hired at our university by our friend’s father, who, at that time, was head of the music department! What a small world!

The following year, we were back in Eus for a concert by a group of eight bassists, called “The Geatles.” We arrived early so that we ended up with front row seats. They were the best bassists I had heard in a long time and were very entertaining. They were absolutely superb as they switched easily from Bach to Elgar to the Beatles to Haydn to wild, crazy stuff. They really showed the full versatility of their instruments. I remember that concert with a smile, because of all the fun they had playing together and entertaining us. Luckily we bought their CD, which they all signed, and can relive those memories whenever we please.

That year, we also attended a cello concert at St. Michel de Cuxa, another of the Casals Festival venues. Cellist Frans Helmerson ended the concert by playing Casals’ “Song of the Birds” accompanied by 29 cellists. At the demand of the audience, they repeated their performance. Fabulous and spine-chilling!

50^th Anniversary Party in Cerbere

In July 1999, we were invited to the 50^th anniversary party of our friends’ hotel in Cerbere. So at 9:45 p.m. we drove the winding road down to Cerbere to help celebrate this milestone. The chef had prepared a six-layer tower cake topped by Roman candles!

Our friends had to open the awning roof before lighting the candles!

We enjoyed a few hours visiting with the patron and his family and met a Swedish couple who had been coming to Cerbere for over ten years. When we left, the patron’s son, who now runs the hotel, gave us a fancy bottle of Banyuls wine and set of glasses. We were so pleased to be able to share this celebration with such good friends.

Coince!

Our apartment building has two elevators, one in either corner of the building. They are single-minded elevators, which means that they do not take multiple orders for stopping at the different levels. If you want to go to level 2 and your friend wants to go to level 0, the elevator will go to whichever floor’s button is pushed first, as it only takes one command at a time. We squeeze ourselves and groceries into these tiny elevators several times a week, and when we arrive with lots of luggage, the luggage and one person goes up the elevator while the other climbs the stairs.   There’s just not enough room in these tiny metal boxes for very much stuff.

On Memorial Day a couple years ago, at the end of the day, I took the trash and recycle stuff down the elevator to the basement of the building. After putting the trash in the trash bin and the recycle in the yellow recycle bin, I got back into the elevator to come up to our apartment. The doors closed, but the elevator did not move! I was coince (trapped)! After banging on the doors and pushing them apart, then back together, the elevator came up part way. After more banging and pushing on the doors, it finally came up to the second floor, but then the doors would not open for a while. I was getting really panicky by then, locked in that tiny box! Finally they opened and I got out! I had pushed the alarm button several times, but our neighbor, who is our resident “go-to” guy, was out of town, as were our other neighbors, and by the time my husband heard the siren, and had started down the stairs to find me, I was out of the elevator! It probably was only a few minutes that I was locked in that tiny metal box, but to me it seemed like hours! So we flipped the switch in the elevator to stop it, and I put “out of service” signs on all the elevator doors (all six floors!), then wrote emails to several neighbors to let them know of my experience.   Then I had a stiff drink! When our neighbor returned, he had a repairman check the elevator. He said that he always carries his cell phone with him when he uses the elevator, so he can call if he gets stuck. I told him I didn’t think I needed a phone to take the garbage down! He then reminded me that next year we were to have new elevators installed; these would have a phone in them “as well as a large mirror, so women could fix their make-up.”   Well….they do now have a large mirror, but no phone, and they now announce everything they are doing: “On descende” “On monte” “deuxieme etage,” in an annoying voice.

So this was a terrifying experience, not so much a favorite moment, but it happened on Memorial Day, so I guess it was memorable.

Fish Encounters

One year, when our daughter was ten, we went up to Canet Plage one morning to enjoy the lovely, and very long, white sand beach. This beach is more like we encounter in the US along the Atlantic coast, both in New Jersey and in Florida. While the beach in Banyuls is gravel, the beach at Canet is lovely white sand. Our daughter has enjoyed being buried up to her chin in the sand, until the sand fleas begin to bite, that is.

This particular day, the wind was down, so Canet seemed a good choice (when it’s windy, your legs get sand-blasted). By 9:30 a.m. the parking places were almost all filled, but we found one spot. The sand was lovely and warm, but not burning hot. I went into the water with our daughter. Within ten seconds, I had stepped on something that stung! I quickly backed out of the water and sat on the beach, wondering what I had stepped on! As I sat on the sand, the pain got worse. By then my husband and daughter were in the water together and far from our mats and towels, completely oblivious to my pain. So I tried to go for help, hobbling and limping through the deep sand up the beach to the children’s play area. The man in charge there directed me to a pharmacy up on the street level. It was too far and painful for me to walk all the way back to the mats to tell my family where I was going, so I had to stand there and wait for them to get out of the water and notice I was no longer there. By walking partway back and yelling and waving my arms, I finally attracted the attention of my daughter, who ran over to me and helped me to limp up to the pharmacy, which was quite a distance! There, a nice girl sat me on a chair and held a huge wad of cotton fluff soaked in ammonia on my foot for five minutes. Then she applied a white cream and said it should be better in an hour. She said I had stepped on a “vive,” a flat fish that buries itself in the sand and stings its predators, like me, apparently. After that experience, I wear water shoes on ALL the beaches!

Last year, my daughter and a college friend decided to visit Banyuls for a week, after traveling around Italy for a week of vacation, so I decided to plan a day at the local spa as a nice surprise for them.

One day, my husband and I went to the spa to check it out. Besides massages and relaxing classes, a sauna, restaurant, and a pool, the spa offers fish massages! I had never seen this before, but decided this was just the right kind of exotic experience the girls would need.   You stick your feet into a tank of water and tiny fish nibble away all the dead skin on your feet and legs! I first took my step-daughter for a fish massage to try it out before booking the spa day for my daughter and her friend. We had a lot of fun, sitting on the bench with our feet in the tub of water, watching the fish eat away at our feet and ankles. It tickles for the first five minutes, but then you get used to it, and after 20 or 30 minutes, you have nice smooth feet! The tank is right out in the lobby of the spa, so other people were stopping constantly, watching in fascination and asking us questions. We all enjoyed that new experience!

Boy Scouts’ 100^th

In 2007, the Boy Scouts celebrated their 100^th birthday. As a former scout, my husband wanted to be part of this celebration. We had read about the celebration planned by local scouts, so early one morning we drove up to Perpignan for an 8 a.m. service at the Monastere de Ste. Claire.  The church was filled with scouts and their families and friends. It was a very moving service and included the reciting of the Boy Scout pledge and other traditional customs, all in French, of course. Afterwards we went to the garden for petit dejeuner (breakfast) of juice, wine, breads and cookies. We met lots of people who all seemed pleased to have us there, particularly when they heard that my husband had attended the Boy Scout Jamboreee in Paris in 1947. One of the guests at the celebration had also been at this jamboree!

USS Avenger Visit

But the most significant event of our 30 years in Banyuls was the arrival in July 1991 of the USS Avenger.   This minesweeper had been in the Middle East during the Gulf War, and was on its way home after a year of deployment. So for the 4^th of July, the Avenger came into the port of Port Vendres, our neighboring village, for several days to celebrate the American holiday. My best friend was enlisted to organize a picnic for the officers of the ship and to do all the translations for the ceremonies in Port Vendres and in Banyuls. So we few Americans in town were also enlisted to help with the picnic. I made a large bowl of cole slaw and baked a pot beans all night long, then opened six cans of Green Giant corn to heat up. (Fresh corn is only recently being seen in the markets of France and it is always, always seen with wrinkled kernels. The best option is to purchase canned corn!) Our friends bought pre-formed hamburger patties (rather unusual in France back in 1991) to cook on the grill. Then we helped decorate the campground pavilion in Banyuls with yellow ribbons on all the posts and trees and put American flags on the tables.

About ten officers arrived around 11 a.m. and we served them hamburgers, baked beans, cole slaw, lentil salad, potato salad, corn, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, chips, munchies, watermelon and peanut butter cookies—a little taste of home. After our picnic, we took them to the large winery in Banyuls for a tour, and then we all went to Port Vendres for a look at the ship and a ceremony at the American Revolutionary War monument.

This was followed by a cocktail party at Club Nautique in Port Vendres, where the captain was shown how to drink from a porron (see “Adventures and Misadventures in Spain”).   Our three-year old daughter sat on a bar stool, singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with the sailors, who all fell in love with her.

After this, we returned to the ship for a thorough tour of this minesweeper (we were given USS Avenger caps, which I still wear proudly on the 4^th of July), after which we took the captain and five other officers up to Argeles for tapas and authentic gypsy flamenco in one of the cafes.   We got home at 2 a.m.! Our daughter became very attached to one of the officers

and enjoyed being carried through town by the captain.

These fellows were really missing their families and anxious to get home to them. We were glad to be able to give them a little reminder of home as they headed back across the ocean.

Christmas for the Millennium

For the millennium, we decided to spend Christmas and New Year’s in Banyuls. This was an experience not to be missed. In addition to our favorite shopping trip for a tree (“Out and About”), we had wonderful meals with friends, sharing our Swedish Christmas with French friends and their Icelandic relative, and sharing an English Christmas dinner with the family from Cerbere.

We flew into Paris and took the train down to Banyuls. By now our daughter was 12 years old, so was no longer permitted to share a wagon lit bedroom with us. So, in order to stay together, we had to book a couchette, which is then shared with strangers—not the ideal.

When we arrived in Banyuls, we walked down through the quiet village and up our hill on the other side. It was fun to see the lights decorating the trees and the new stage with multi-colored shell overhead on the square. There was even a Christmas tree on the square, but only lights on it from half way up to the top! Typical for that time of year, the tramontane wind was very strong and cold.

After picking up a rental car in Perpignan the following day, we went to Auchan, one of the large grocery stores in Perpignan, and bought what we would need for our Christmas celebration, plus our daughter’s surprise present: our first TV. It was then we discovered that there is an annual tax to pay if you own a TV! Every year we receive a form from the government asking us if we still have a TV, so that they can add the TV tax to one of our annual tax bills.

We found our wonderful $5 tree on the 21^st of December, and our daughter then spent about three hours making tree ornaments to add to those that had come with the tree.

The following day, we drove up to Toulouse, a 2-hour drive, to shop at Ikea for items for our Swedish Christmas. I was able to buy a Julbock (Christmas straw goat), some tomtes, herring, and lingonberry jam. The next two days were spent in the kitchen making syllta, Swedish meatballs, red cabbage, ham, cookies, cake for a Buche de Noel, salmon, and all the rest of our traditional foods for our Swedish smorgasbord. One of the bars downtown was owned by a Swedish family that year, and also was decorated with lots of tomtes.   We enjoyed a nice hot glass of glogg with the owners one cold evening. I think they were pleased to find someone who appreciated the Swedish Christmas customs.

On Christmas Eve, our French friends arrived for Swedish Christmas with their Icelandic “granddaughter,” just as Pere Noel arrived on the beach below us by Catalan barque, all lit up with lights and torches. He landed under the arcade and created a lot of excitement for the village children.

For our Swedish Christmas we all started with glogg and hors d’oeuvres of salmon mousse, anchovy paste, and boursin with hardbread and toasts. Then we went to the table for the first few courses of shrimp, herring, anchovies and sardines, salmon, and syltta.

Then we had the buffet of ham, Janssons Frestelse, beans, red cabbage and apples, meatballs, and cheese. We ended with the traditional French dessert of Buche de Noel. The tomte had come and left little packages for everyone, after which I played the Swedish Hymn, and then it was officially Christmas.

About 10:30 p.m. we all drove down to the village church for Christmas mass.  The priest headed the procession, carrying the baby Jesus into the church and placing him in the crèche. He was followed by about 20 children dressed as angels and in Catalan costumes; they stood or sat around the crèche. We sang several familiar carols in French and in the middle of mass, the children danced a Catalan dance and everyone clapped along. It was an unusual church service, but full of joy, and it lasted exactly one hour.

Christmas morning was special because all the presents were small—they’d had to fit into our suitcases!—except for the bookcase my husband had made for me and the really big box that had been intriguing our daughter for several days.

She was so surprised in opening it to find a TV! She spent most of the day exploring the different French shows that were available, learning quickly that French TV shows never start on time!

Two days later, our Cerbere friends and their two small children arrived for our Christmas dinner. We had brought a frozen turkey with us from the US. It was only 12# because that is all that would fit into the suitcase, but to them, it was humongous! For this dinner, we did our usual roast turkey with oyster stuffing and chestnut stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, carrots, then pumpkin pie and Christmas pudding with custard. It was an unusual dinner for them, and I remember that the children did not eat too much, but enjoyed the dessert!

On New Year’s Eve, the entire village was invited to gather on the beach in early afternoon for a millennium photo. All the children sat on the sand and the older people sat on chairs. It took about an hour to get everyone ready, so it was a lot of standing around just waiting. But we’re very glad to have a copy to hang on our wall to remind us that we belong to this small village on the French coast of the Mediterranean.

Later we dressed up in our party clothes and attended an aperatif for a free glass of Banyuls wine served to everyone by the municipal police.

By early afternoon we began to watch the millennium on TV as it traveled around the world. This was broadcast on a Spanish station. It was really wonderful to see how each country celebrated. We had Pitt Island at 1 p.m., New Zealand at 2 p.m., Japan, China, Indonesia, India, South Africa, Russia, Egypt, Greece, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, etc. At 11:30 p.m. we switched to a French station and began the Paris countdown—the most fabulous display of all. It involved three ferris wheels of acrobats and pictures, and then the Eiffel Tower exploded stage by stage—wonderful!

At midnight our daughter hit her “crystal” ball with a hammer to open the surprises inside and we shared a bottle of Moet-Perrier 1990 champange. Thus the new year and the new millennium arrived for us in Banyuls. We had celebrated the dawn of the new millennium in our little bit of paradise.