One of the first things I learned about cooking in France is that white vinegar there is twice as strong as white vinegar in the US! I ruined several batches of Swedish dillsas for lamb, before discovering my error. It must be cut with water to use in an American recipe.

The second thing I discovered was that I had grown a “mere du vinaigre” in a plastic bottle of red wine vinegar! My best friend took it to her meme (grandmother) to have it trimmed and placed in a glass jar for me. Every year I feed it with the remnants of red wine or Banyuls wine, so I always have vinegar for my vinaigrette or to drizzle on oysters in the half shell. I‘ve never known any Americans who had a vinegar mother in their kitchen in the US, but I now have TWO in my French kitchen! This past year my daughter called to ask me what was wrong with her red wine vinegar as there seemed to be something weird at the bottom of the bottle. “Aha!,” I said, “You have a mere du vinaigre!”

Our village has open markets two days a week, and we most often go on Sunday mornings as the church bells are ringing. It’s a lovely walk down the hill and a difficult walk back up again with groceries, so shopping bags on wheels are a necessity. We quickly found that the vendors stayed mostly the same every year, so we had our “olive ladies” and our “cheese man” and our “chicken man.” They seemed to look forward to seeing us every year and always asked about our daughter when she became old enough to be working every summer and unable to join us on a regular basis. Eventually the olive ladies left and were replaced by several other olive and nut stands, but they were never the same.

And the cheese man and his wife retired and were replaced by a lovely young lady who had bought their truck and business from them. She always has a big smile for us, along with a few new cheeses to sample.

Our chicken man originates from Portugal and makes the most marvelous Catalan chicken, which we look forward to every Sunday. I have not yet gotten him to give me his secret recipe, so I continue to experiment with vegetables and saffron and herbs, trying to get the sauce just right.

The merchants we see every year know us by now and every year we arrive with trepidation that our favorites may have retired or gone out of business.   The grocery store on the main square has changed its name more times than I can remember, but we still refer to it as the Midiprix, a name from 30 years ago.   One year we arrived to find that a hotel and a bar had been purchased by Swedish families. That year we had our Christmas glogg in their bar!

Fortunately we have a wonderful poissonnerie (fish shop) where I always find fresh catch right out of the Mediterranean, often provided by the fishermen at Port Vendres, the neighboring village.  There we can always find fresh anchovies, fresh sardines and fresh mussels, among all the rest of the fresh fish on display.  I enjoy trying to duplicate the mussel recipe of my chef friend in Cerbere: Moules Sang et d’Or.

A few years ago, my penpal from Australia visited us in France for a few weeks. She is a vegetarian but said she would eat fish. So for her first meal with us I planned a nice piece of cod on a bed of root vegetables (a Scandinavian recipe I’d picked up on a TV show). On the drive up from the Barcelona airport, I told her we were having cod. She groaned and said “Oh, that’s the one kind of fish I don’t like!” So I served her the vegetables and put her piece of cod on a side plate for her to taste. She ended up liking it so much that she plopped it onto her vegetables, just like we had on our plates, and ate every bite! She’d thought cod would taste like cod liver oil!

So I then took her to the poissonnerie and told her to pick out something she would like to taste. She chose filets of “rascasse,” probably because they were filets (no head or tail and off the bone) and looked nice with rosy skin. So I quickly sautéed the rascasse in olive oil for her and she loved it. She kept asking me what the name was in English and I kept stalling. The next day I sent her to the aquarium, which is in the University of Paris College of Marine Studies, located in our village, and there she found a rascasse swimming around in its tank.

She came back to the apartment, laughing and scolding me; she couldn’t believe that I’d not told her that the rascasse was a scorpion fish!   It’s an experience she is still talking about. We use rascasse often in our recipes in France as it’s a nice mild white fish that lends itself well to several methods of cooking.

When taking American guests to restaurants in France, we remind them that an entrée is NOT the main dish, but IS an “appetizer,” as in the US, or a “starter,” as in England. I don’t know why that mistake was made when the word “entrée” came to the US, but it is very confusing to anyone traveling back and forth between the two countries. In France, an entrée is the first course (entrance to the meal), usually fish or a special salad or anything a bit smaller than the main course. I often serve fried sardines as an entrée or pate with toasts. Another time it might be salmon and potato pancake stacks with asparagus topped with hazlenuts.

A few years ago, I made stuffed artichokes and topped each with a fried squash blossom. It was lovely and delicious!

The courses are likely to go as follows: appetizers (such as nuts and olives) with drinks or a glass of Banyuls, then the following courses all with appropriate wines: mise en bouche (meant to be the chef’s sampling of a new recipe, this is usually a tiny glass of cold soup or a verrine, which is a layered appetizer, or a simply small crab cake, small tomato tart and garlic shrimp),

them the entrée, such as foie gras with onions and radishes (served to us at L’Auberge du Cellier in Montner),

then the main course, either meat or fish (such as red mullet on fennel),

then a variety of cheeses,

and then dessert, like crème catalane or kiwi meringue stacks,

then candy or cookies or small pots de crème and stuffed apricots with coffee,

and then sometimes a degustif (cognac, for instance).

Of course for really FORMAL dinners, the French will add sorbets and entremets and anything else they can dream up! As we get older, we find that we are cutting down on our courses, although my friends laugh at me and say they’ll never get a simple meal out of me. And I say the same about them. When my friend in Banyuls asks us to come for a simple supper, I am positive that she does not mean a bowl of soup and piece of bread!

Ah! Bread! Now there’s a whole chapter in itself! Whenever my French friend comes to the apartment for a meal I have to make a special effort to remember to put the basket of bread on the table. As an American, I find it very difficult to remember to serve bread with meals. Invariably we will begin our meal and then I will hear her ask me, “Do you have a little piece of bread, please?” It’s become an inside joke by now. With all the other preparations I am doing for all those courses, cutting the bread and putting it into a basket is just the last thing on my mind!

Last year I decided to learn how to make my own French bread as we can never find French bread in the US as good as what we buy in France. (Well, maybe in New York City we’ve had pretty good French bread, and once in the Cleveland area.)

It took a lot of flour last winter for all my tries, using Julia Child’s recipe, which takes 12 hours, by the way, and is over 20 pages long. I succeeded eventually in being able to produce a fairly decent batard and a boule, but will just wait until our return to France for the real deal.

In France I cook mostly fish or veal. The fish is fresh, right out of the sea, coming mostly from Port Vendres.

The veal in France is very tender and delicious. In the US, I am now in an area that gets very little fresh fish and when it does appear in the stores, it is filleted and has been in transit up to a week.   Who knows how fresh it really is?

The veal that I find in my area of the US is either paper thin or in cubes. There’s no chance of stuffing a veal breast or roasting a shoulder of veal. On the other hand, I rarely buy beef in France, as it’s never as delicious as what we eat in the US.   My daughter soon learned that French hamburgers always arrive from the Flunch Restaurant kitchen quite red inside.  We do stop at McDonalds in the city, but only to use the restrooms! The McDonalds restaurants have automated kiosks in them for ordering and paying for your food, something that I see is now coming to the US. And of course they serve wine and beer in France.

I like my meat well-done, which I know is not de rigueur. I’ve given up ordering maigret de canard (duck breast) or almost any meat in a French restaurant, unless I know it is in a stew and well-cooked, because I know it will arrive on my plate red or pink, and indeed that is how it should be served! Even tuna should arrive red inside, but not for me. Sending a plate back to the kitchen to be further cooked often brings ire from the chef, so I try to avoid that scenario by just ordering something I don’t have to worry about.

And so I am just an ordinary cook, who has her own 4^th of July on her balcony in France by eating fried chicken, onion rings, and cole slaw and reading the Declaration of Independence to the family, and then ten days later celebrates 14 Juillet with the rest of France, watching the local fireworks over the sea.

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!

 

 

 

Throughout the Fall of that year, we received numerous communications from our British lady in the Roussillon and finally a “sous-signe prive,” that wonderful pre-sale contract that says you are definitely going to purchase the property. At the time it arrived at my home, we had two French-speaking professors visiting our college, and they agreed to assist me with the language of the documents. So one evening I found myself on my sofa with a Frenchman from Peugeot on one side of me and a Belgian university professor on the other side and together we read through the many-paged document with both of them translating and arguing about the correct word to use until we were all laughing.

We were advised to put our initials on each page, to sign everything with “Lu et approuve” written above our signatures, then get it notarized with as many ribbons and seals as possible, as the French love that sort of formality.   Later, I also had to have our marriage certificate translated into French by a French professor at the university. Nothing could be submitted in English.

Just after Christmas, we headed back to France to take possession of our new apartment in Banyuls. It was a difficult series of flights, with a change in Madrid, where there were several gate changes. Arriving in Barcelona was a chore at that time, as there was only one terminal, with a domestic end and an international end. We arrived from Madrid at the domestic end, but our luggage was at the international end, inside Customs. But the Spanish always have a solution, no matter if it seems correct. We just had to show our luggage tags and enter the Customs “Do Not Enter” exit door! We’d brought along a large trunk full of linens and kitchen items, and that, of course, had to be opened in Customs to be inspected. “Cosas por nuestra apartemiento en Francia,” I tried to articulate. Then a wave of a hand and we were through Customs.

The map from Hertz was very imprecise, so we did our best to drive through Barcelona and up to Gerona and Figueres, before heading to the coast and Port Bou. Up on the top of the cliff between Port Bou and Cerbere was the border control station, a simple cement building that looked like it had been there since long before the war. The Spanish police waved us through, so we proceeded on down the hill on the other side, but a whistle from the French police brought us to a screeching halt! We quickly backed up to the French police who demanded our car papers. I handed them the papers from Hertz, but they wanted the insurance papers. After a thorough and unfruitful search through our papers and looking in the glove compartment, where we saw only an empty folder from a previous renter, we were told to turn around and return to Spain! We stopped to talk with the Spanish police and they were sympathetic, but agreed that we needed the insurance paper. By this time, I could hardly talk, a result of battling bronchitis for the past two weeks. The Spanish police suggested that instead of returning to the airport in Barcelona (a 3 hour drive), we go to the Hertz office at the train station in Girona. I was furious that we couldn’t enter France, but what could we do but comply?

So off we went back down a couple more hours to Girona, stopping for more gas and directions to the train station, and there we found a very nice Hertz agent who actually found the insurance paper at the very bottom of our glove compartment. She advised us that the French police at Port Bou might still not let us cross because they sometimes require original copies, not the carbon copies we had! At her suggestion, we took the autoroute, crossing at Le Boulou, where we got across the border quite easily.

By this time, it was very dark outside. We headed toward Elne, then south along the coast. The streets were decorated with lovely colored lights for Christmas and the New Year, so it was all quite magical as we drove through the coastal villages. We had booked a room in an old hotel in Banyuls, one of the few open during the winter season. There we were led up three flights of stairs on the outside of the hotel to our room. Still weak from bronchitis and suffering from our difficult travels of the last 24 hours, we dragged our bags up all those stairs and collapsed briefly before walking down to a wonderful restaurant on the square, Le Sardinal. There we were very well taken care of with mussel soup, oysters, and homemade noodles, which we were too tired to eat. Thankfully, we were able to enjoy many more wonderful meals at this, our favorite Banyuls restaurant, over the next few years.

 

The following day, we slept late, then arranged to meet the Banyuls realtor, who met us at the bank in Cerbere to arrange our mortgage. After signing whatever paper they put in front of us at the bank, we were whisked off the notaire in Collioure, when we signed a power of attorney document for our British realtor to sign final papers for us later in the spring. But the best part of the day was when we were told that we could take immediate possession of the apartment and spend New Year’s Eve in our new home. First, we needed some furniture!

Purchasing a bed took the usual route of doing anything in those early days. First you go to a furniture store in Port Vendres only to find it has moved to Argeles sur Mer. There you are happy to find the store immediately, only to discover that it is closed for lunch and siesta. So you go for a not very good lunch, have a siesta in the car, and return to the store.   You discover a whole new world of French mattresses and bases (not really box springs), but then discover you cannot exchange money because all the banks are closed, so you have drive up to the train station in Perpignan. But the “Change” there does not reopen until 5 p.m., so you do a little shopping at the department store down the street, return to the “Change,” and finally get back down to the furniture store in Argeles, just before it closes for the day, to arrange delivery of the bed the following Monday. Buying a bed took an entire day.

 

The next day, after a day of cleaning in the apartment and food shopping, we had a fantastic dinner a Le Sardinal that evening: foie gras, turbot, sorbet, pigeonneau, cheese, patisserie. Then we were ready for the bed delivery.

New Year’s Eve was a bright, sunny day, with the tramontane wind blowing its usual force. We continued to fix things in the apartment and spent much time in the hardware store, where the owners were very kind to us. They were out of the fluorescent bulb we needed, but said they’d have some by May for sure! The wife noticed my Icelandic mittens (the tramontane was indeed very cold!). “Those look very warm,” she commented. “Yes,” I replied. “I bought them in Iceland.” “Oh,” she said, “I have family in Iceland!” This was the beginning of another wonderful friendship, which we have cherished for over 30 years.

Our New Year’s Eve meal was onion soup, Catalan salad, Janssen’s Frestelse (a Swedish potato dish we usually have on Christmas Eve), artichokes, pork chops, and Muscat mousse cake. At midnight we opened the champagne and the shutter at the window overlooking the bay, so we could toast the village at midnight. I was so ill that I had to go to bed immediately after our toast. But we’d made it to our new home, we had a bed to sleep on and a trunk to use as a table, and, unbeknownst to us at the time, we had already met our best friends in our village.

 I guess it seems like we took my sister’s honeymoon for her, as we left for the airport directly from her wedding reception and flew to France. It was time to introduce my husband to Cerbere.

We’d made a brief visit the previous Fall, but with everything closed for the season and my friends from the hotel on vacation, we just had a short visit, staying in Collioure for a few days.

We did find a favorite Collioure restaurant, Le Puits, where we subsequently dined many times over the next 8 years or so. Sadly it is now a pizza parlor! Madame, who ran the restaurant, was very correct and exact in everything she did. She was the epitome of the French “politesse.” And she did not suffer tourists gladly.   I remember overhearing her explain to a French couple one evening, when they mentioned having paella, “Oh, that’s just for the tourists.” After that, we made sure we always ordered fish, which we adored anyway, and made sure she noticed that we knew how to filet it ourselves! It was in this small restaurant that our daughter, at the age of 4 or 5 years old, learned to behave impeccably and to speak very quietly in French restaurants. Anything above a bare whisper during a meal was frowned upon.

So we arrived in Paris mid-August the following year, with the idea that we would find a summer residence in the Roussillon to purchase. We’d been in contact with a British woman who ran a realty company there, specializing in selling property to Brits. So to get things lined up, so to speak, we went to a large bank in Paris and asked about borrowing money to purchase a property. There we were told that the banks in France would not lend us money for a house unless it was our primary residence. That turned out to be false, but it left us very discouraged at the time. When we arrived in the south, our British realtor assured us that we should be able to get a loan of 50% of the purchase price from local banks. We arranged some showings over the next few days and headed on to Cerbere.

With flowers in hand for the patron’s wife, we arrived at the hotel, surprising the patron in the kitchen, where he was busy cleaning fish. We were soon installed in a lovely suite above the bar, with living room, kitchenette, bath, bedroom, and balcony with table and chairs. Once again I spent most of my days walking through the village, finding solace in the peace and the friendliness of the residents. One evening we attended the mass for St. Mary in the church, where we all held lighted candles, sang the Ave Maria, and walked to the front of the church to place candles in the sand. It was simple and very beautiful.

The following week began our viewing of Roussillon properties. We had a top price limit set and we knew we wanted something easy to care for and with a view of the sea. We met our realtor in Bages, a small village far from the sea, to see a 100 year-old village house. On the ground floor was a living room with built-in corner cupboard, and a kitchen with old shallow marble sink and a door into a wine cave in the corner. The second floor was a bedroom and the third floor was a bedroom and roof-top terrace. It was lovely, rambling, needed lots of work, but appealed to us as it was old and interesting. Unfortunately, it did not have a bathroom or toilet and would need at least 10 years of vacations to renovate for our use! And no view of the sea. Then on to Fourques, where we saw an apartment which was even smaller, done up by an English couple (lots of clutter and frou-frou), had tiny balconies, and the kitchen was on the second floor (lots of grocery-toting up stairs), which did not appeal. The third property was in Trouillas, which had lovely dining room on the first floor and, once again, a kitchen on the second floor. I could see myself trying to carry dishes of food down the steps to the dining room and dirty dishes back up afterwards….not my cup of tea. And still no view of the sea.

That afternoon, she finally took us to see properties along the coast. The one in St. Cyprien was near the beach, but no view of the sea, then a few others much smaller and not as nice. The apartment in Barcares was actually along a dock, to which large powerboats were tethered. We envisioned loud boat parties late at night, keeping us awake all summer long. Thus far, we were not seeing anything that suited us and so we went off to Barcelona for a few days of reflection and Gaudi. There we had an adventure.

My husband wanted to visit an art gallery in Barcelona, but we were having trouble finding it on our map. A man and his wife came along and asked us in English if he could help us. So we asked the man if he could direct us to the art gallery we were seeking.   Speaking a little English, he directed us to follow him. Well, beware of following strangers! We ended up at his leather goods shop, trying on leather motorcycle jackets and sipping sherry! We never did get to the art gallery, but we did get a glass of sherry! And, no, we did not purchase a leather jacket!

That evening we went to our favorite restaurant, Reno’s, at the earliest time one could eat dinner in Spain, after 10 p.m. As usual, dinner was lovely: fettucini with truffles, quail stuffed with foie gras, champagne sorbet. We had fun listening to the four American women at the next table.   Funny how we assume no one around us understands English when we’re in a foreign country.   One of them mentioned she’d danced with a faucet exporter; we longed to ask her if she’d tap-danced with him!

After our return to Cerbere, we decided to visit the local realtor, situated beside the hotel. We did not receive a very cordial welcome. Perhaps he was just puzzled as to why an American couple would want to purchase property in his village. He finally said we could visit a house for sale on Rue des Falaises and he had me sign a paper saying I would not buy it except through him. He also called our British realtor and was quite rude to her! We left to find this house for sale and ran into the patron’s son, who told us we should be sure to see it because he was certain the view was over the national route, not the sea! He was correct.

We went to sleep that night, once again discouraged about finding property in the Roussillon. At 1:30 or 2 a.m., we were both awakened by the sound of the realtor’s voice in the bar below our balcony. What a comedy ensued! Below was the realtor and our friend, the patron, talking, and above was my husband and I trying to see and hear everything that was going on without being seen, standing on chairs, hanging onto window ledges, crawling out on the balcony! All we could decipher was the realtor loudly asking the patron over and over again if we really had the capital to purchase property and the patron’s quiet replies of assurance. We spent the remainder of the night playing cards and wondering whether or not we’d “passed the test”!

When we arrived at the realtor’s at 10 a.m. the following morning, the realtor was very cordial. He informed us that the house on Rue des Falaises had been sold, but that he had an apartment over the butcher shop for sale at exactly the top of our price range. I said, “Well, there’s not really a view of the sea from there.” “Oh, yes, madam,” he answered. “There’s a view if you just look across the square and through the buildings!” We thanked him and said we’d think about it. We told the patron what we’d been offered and he was appalled. “C’est absurde!” What then followed was to give us exactly what we were searching for. The patron picked up the phone and called his friend, the poissoniere (fishmonger) in Banyuls-sur-Mer, the neighboring village. His friend was about to retire and had been looking at properties in Banyuls. We made an arrangement to meet him the following day in Banyuls on our way back up to Paris.

That evening we had a lovely last dinner in the hotel restaurant and invited the patron and his wife to join us in the evening for a farewell. With gifts laid out for them, cheese and toasts ready to have with a bottle of Banyuls, we were ready for a lovely evening of conversation. The patron told me they had bought the building where our room and the bar is located in the late 60s or 70s, but that a lady lived in the apartment on the second floor and he could not put her out. I wonder how that turned out in the end. We also shared a bottle of champagne and talked of the realtor, Mitterand, travel, their son, and vacations, then promised to return in October when the village would be quieter and they could visit with us at a more leisurely pace.

The following day, we packed up, checked out, said our last farewells to the hotel staff, and headed up to Banyuls-sur-Mer. There we found the fishmonger on Rue St. Pierre and he directed us to his realtor across from the wineries. We were shown two apartments in a residence on a hill overlooking the beach and harbor. The first was absolutely perfect: one bedroom, small kitchen, bathroom, and living room with tiled balcony overlooking the beach.

And the price was less than our top limit. We were ecstatic! The realtor was very nice, no pressure, and said he would make the mortgage arrangements for us. We left for Paris with our heads buzzing with ideas and excitement. Several days later, as we sat in a café in Versailles, we made the decision to try to purchase that wonderful apartment in Banyuls. We wrote a post card to our British realtor, directing her to make contact with the nice realtor in Banyuls and to negotiate the deal for us.   Four months later, we were on our way back to the Roussillon to take possession of our newly acquired property.

 

 

I first saw the little village of Cerbere on the southern border of France in 1972 and was completely bowled over by the sight. I’d taken myself on my own “grand tour” of Europe that summer, visiting Amsterdam, Paris, Karlsruhe, Barcelona, Rome, Copenhagen, and Sweden.   By the time I’d spent my few days in Barcelona, I was ready to return to France where I could once again have a passing understanding of the language around me.   At the border, we all had to change trains, as was obligatory due the difference in track gauge, and this was at the small village of Cerbere.

SNCF had set up a special counter in the station for summer travelers that year, to assist in finding connecting trains. An energetic curly-haired man was busy helping traveling students and coping with bewildered seniors. He quickly found trains for me, then tried to convince me that I should visit his village as I had a six hour wait until my train to Arles, a short stop on the way to Rome. But I was so happy to be back in France, that staying in the train station for six hours did not seem a chore at all. I was there and I wanted to stay put!

When the train pulled into the station that afternoon, my curly-haired friend kindly helped me into an empty compartment, with my luggage and a dinner box of roast chicken from the station restaurant, then handed me a paperback book in English, which he’d found at the station kiosk! “I don’t understand the title,” he said, “but I thought you might enjoy it because it’s in English!” I looked at the title, “Fly Girls,” and at the provocative cover, and simply explained that it was about airline stewardesses. It was a kind gesture, particularly since I continued to refuse his suggestion that I stay the night in Cerbere. And so he left the train after repeatedly making sure no one else would try to come into my compartment (“C’est complet, monsieur! C’est complet, Mesdames!”), and as the train pulled out of the station, I looked out my window and saw the village, glaring white in the afternoon sun, nestled up against the foothills of the Pyrenees as the blue Mediterranean Sea splashed to its shore. And I was smitten! I vowed then and there that I would return to visit this lovely village perched on the French-Spanish border.

It took me 8 years to fulfill that promise, but finally in 1980, I was once more free to travel to Europe and planned a week at a cookery course in Dieppe and a week in Cerbere, with several days in Paris in between. One of my colleagues at the university agreed to accompany me, then at the last moment announced that her mother would also be joining us. As things turned out, my colleague decided to go to Brussels to visit her new boyfriend and I found myself on the day train, traveling south from Paris, with her mother spending most of her time in the club car.

We arrived in Cerbere at 10 in the evening and there at the station was my curly-haired friend from 1972! Of course he did not know me from Adam, as I’m sure there were many young ladies traveling across the border in the past eight years, and perhaps several were more agreeable to “spending time” with him in Cerbere. But he was his usual helpful self. My calls to get a taxi did not work, so my friend called the hotel for us, and the patron of the hotel came to the station in a car. We loaded the luggage in the back, then tried to get the front seats to move forward so we two ladies could sit in the back, but none of us could figure out how to accomplish this! It turned out that this car belonged to the chef at the hotel’s restaurant! So we squeezed through the narrow gap between the seats and had a good laugh over our adventure. Once we arrived at the hotel, the patron took our luggage to our room in the annex, located across the square, while we had dinner. Unfortunately, we had to share a room that first night. “No, no!” I said to the patron. “I cannot sleep in the same room with her!” “Tomorrow,” he assured me. “We will have another room ready tomorrow.” And so my first night in Cerbere, which I hadn’t seen properly yet because it was dark when we arrived, was spent dealing with my roommate’s radio and her drinking and loud snoring.

However, as life teaches us, everything looks better in the morning and so it was as I had breakfast at the hotel, then wandered about the village, doing a little shopping for spices, magazines and post cards. That first day of exploration was my first step in a love affair with this village that will never die.

The weather was gorgeous, although the wind kept us cool. It was April and the tramontane wind still had several months to blow itself out. I found a bank to exchange money and discovered it was open only two days a week for an hour and a half in the morning and the afternoon. This was, indeed, a small village! I quickly found the tunnel that takes one directly from the train station to the beach, then the church, which had unusual doors, one opening one way and the next opening the other.

 

That afternoon, I did manage to move into another room and I told my friend’s mother that I would be pleased to meet her for meals at the hotel, but that I had come to Cerbere to be alone. That seemed to work for her as she was a bit perturbed that her daughter had gone off to Brussels. So she decided to leave the next day, when her friend from Barcelona arrived in her limousine to whisk her off to city life for a few days. Now I had Cerbere to myself!

I discovered calamar for the first time, finding it later at the poissonerie on the hill above the hotel, and I came to appreciate the simple meal of cheese omelet, green salad, and a glass of wine.  The next day I began to make my map of Cerbere. As I walked around the village and tried to visit all the little winding streets, I drew my map.

My favorite spot was up on the hill above the village. There were about four cement steps set into the hill, with a drawing of a reclining woman and a date from the early 1940s set into one of the steps. I climbed these steps and up the hill to sit in solitude, looking down over the village and out to sea, and wondered about the woman in the steps. It was peaceful at my spot on the hill, and I often found myself there, reading or writing in my journal while the village had its siesta.  And it was invigorating in the wind, although at times it was strong enough to almost blow me off the hill.

After several hours of walking around that first day, I returned to the hotel where I found the patron having a cup of tea. I asked him if I might also have a cup of tea and he explained to me that the café was actually not open during siesta, but he reluctantly brought me a cup anyway and I sat down to chat with him. “Why do you come to Cerbere at this time of year? What are you doing here? “ he asked me. I guess I was a strange duck to him, coming to this little village all the way from the US, just to walk all day and to be alone for a week. And so I told him the story of my very first almost-visit to Cerbere eight years ago and how I had promised myself that I would return as soon as I was free to do so. He wanted to know about my job at the university and I wanted to know about the tourist season on the French coast. We discussed marriage and the role of the French woman of today. Then I told him about visiting the church and how delighted I was to find a statue of Jeanne d’Arc in their village church. “You know,” he said,” the French only go to church four times in their lifetimes: to be baptized, to be confirmed, to be married, and to be buried!”   We sipped our tea and lemon water, discussing life in general and thus began what was to be a long and warm friendship of more than 35 years.

My colleague arrived the next day on an early train. I had two hours to show her around my beloved village before putting her on another train on to Barcelona to join her mother.

That afternoon I finished my map of the village and then took all my courage in my hands and approached the patron with a very important question.

“Please, monsieur, would it be possible for me to sit in the kitchen and watch the chef work?” His eyes opened and he tried to keep from laughing. “You want to watch the chef in the kitchen?!” “Yes,” I replied. “Please?” In the corner of the dining room I could see the patron’s elderly mother, sitting in her usual seat, mending the sheets. Her ears perked up and she quickly came over to see what the fuss was all about. “She wants to watch the chef in the kitchen!” he explained to his mother. Turning to me, his mother asked, “Are you interesting in the cooking?” What could I say but “YES!” “Well,” the patron answered at last, “then you will have to ask my chef!”   And so I very carefully approached the chef at the door of his kitchen and asked if I could sit and watch him work tomorrow. He looked at me sternly and said, “You must be very quiet and watch only!”   “Oh, yes!” I replied. “I will be as quiet as a mouse!”

I was so excited as I sat down to dinner that night. Two Americans came into the hotel looking for a place to stay between trains and I talked them into staying at the hotel, telling them how wonderful a place it was. Then I assisted a young British boy order his dinner.   I felt I could do anything!

The following day was the best day of my life thus far, and I will always be grateful to that young chef who allowed me to enter his kingdom for a day. Immediately after breakfast, I took a chair into the kitchen and sat along the wall, out of the way, and I watched everything until noon, when it was time for lunch. I was back in my chair by 12:30 and stayed until 2 p.m. Then siesta until 5 p.m. and back to the kitchen until 9 p.m. I watched the chef make fish dishes, the coating for pork, pastry, soupe de poissons, and many other dishes I no longer remember. He gave me a very large and heavy cookbook to look at (I have since purchased both the French and the English edition of “L’Art Culinaire Francais”). After a while, he became a bit curious, I guess, because he asked me about food in the US and in Sweden. And then he began to explain all sorts of things to me. His sous-chef showed me how to make vinaigrette, and the chef showed me how to make several different kinds of omelets. It was really wonderful.

The following day was my last day in Cerbere. My colleague and her mother arrived from Barcelona in time for lunch at the hotel. I had the dorade au l’aioli, made especially beautiful for me by the chef. In the afternoon, there was a wedding at the mairie.

I followed the procession to the church for the religious ceremony. The church was packed and I stood in the back with many others. When the collection bag came past me, I added some money and heard a gasp from my neighbors in the back of the church. Had I given too much? I suppose I had as they were smiling kindly at me. But I didn’t care because I had fallen in love with their village and all was right with the world.

Back at the hotel, I paid my bill and gave extra tips to the servers, then said a sad farewell to the chef, promising to send recipes from the US. A final farewell to the patron’s mother in the annex followed, then the last few minutes waiting outside the restaurant for the taxi that would take us to the station. The patron gave us a bottle of wine for the train, and, as we pulled away, he stood at the window with the other men at the bar and waved to us. It was very difficult to leave this village that I had grown to love so much.

Over the years, I have visited Cerbere many times, accompanying the patron and his friends to their secret mushroom spots on the mountains for a day of hunting the elusive cepes, spending an afternoon with the patron’s son at his grand piano as we shared our love of music, and many years later taking my husband to Cerbere for a week ,as we searched for an apartment to purchase in the Roussillon. We didn’t end up buying property in Cerbere, but in the neighboring village of Banyuls sur Mer, and therein lies another tale!

I have rejoiced over the years of looking in guidebooks and finding very little mention of Cerbere, as it was a secret place I cherished and which I did not want to be spoiled. But times change and roads change, so perhaps it’s time for Cerbere to come out of the shadows and become someone else’s best-kept secret! The hotel is still there and now run by the third generation of the family. The chef trained his brother to succeed him, then went off to work in the kitchens of Air France. So I still have my good friends to look after me when I appear on their doorstep, and I know that in Cerbere I will always find my solace in the winding streets and steep hillside, the blue of the sea, and the white buildings in the afternoon sun.

November 23, 2015