Beaujolais Neuv'owww'

If you are talking to anyone from Lyon this weekend, be gentle and speak softly, as the Lyonnais are showing their annual ability to never let bad wine get between them and a good party.
Yes, Le Nouveau est arrivé.

It is said that Lyon has 3 rivers - the Saône, the Rhône and the Beaujolais, and celebrations are being held all weekend.
Officially it was released just after midnight yesterday, though it was available from the shops on Wednesday. When I asked about this I was told that you're not supposed to open it till after midnight. Hmmmm.
I have to admit it is a great piece of marketing, everyone knows about the Nouveau, and there are special menus, degustations, even chocolates.  It is exported around the world, Japan imports large quantities and in the US it is drunk with many a Thanksgiving meal, there are cross Channel races and even a marathon around 11 of the Beaujolais villages but the undeniable fact remains that it is a bad wine.

So last night I was given a teeny, tiny glass to taste. I was happy to stop after one sip but Guillaume made me drink it all and because of that, I have an amazing hangover today. (Which, indecently, has nothing to do with the vodkas, mojitos and shooters I consumed till the wee small hours of the mornings.)

Dressing Up

One thing the French do really well is dressing up.
At the crèche we have numerous dressing up days - the Carnival on Mardi Gras, animals for African week, Halloween, Christmas etc. Also there tends to be a theme and everyone sticks to it, no Buzz Lightyears turned up on the animal dressing up day!

It isn't just for children either.
In Lyon, Halloween is a big event for adults too. I think it is greatly helped by the fact that the 1st Nov is always a bank holiday, which means everyone goes out on the night itself. This year I was invited to 4 different events (I was impressed with myself that I got to 3 of them!)
The first was a Zombie March - an apero at a friends' before marching, en mass, to the bar. I spent a while zombiefying myself chez moi, before walking 3 mins down the road to their apartment. I was unimpressed though, as several people walked passed me and no one made any comments, they must have been blind!
The party was in full swing when I arrived with, zombies everywhere. I took loads of photos and honestly, it looks as if we were all at the most depressing party ever, because we were all practicing our 'dead' faces, not a smile to be seen.
After a few drinks and pumpkin cupcakes, it was approaching midnight, so the march began. Armed with the remaining drinks from the fridge, we set of to the bar, stopping for a quick photo call on the way. This time we were noticed, well 20 odd zombies (and some of us were very odd - a male, zombie nun for starters) walking along the street is hard to miss.

The mood in the bar was good, with plenty of other zombies, witches, wizards, vampires, ghouls and ghosts socializing over a drink or 3. There was a ghost buster but fortunately he seemed powerless after a couple of drinks. What I loved was that everyone had a Halloween theme and ok, apart from a couple of girls in cat suits, everyone was embracing the 'horror' element of the theme.
Most of the bars in Vieux Lyon had some Halloween theme going on and people were wandering between them all on some sort of ghost pub crawl. There were spider's webs and carved pumpkins everywhere and a fantastic party atmosphere. The band playing at the bar did a few 'spooky' songs at the end of their set and finished with a fine rendition of ''Ighway to 'ell' that had the whole place jumping.
After the bar closed, we went upstairs to another party (with the remainder of the bottles from the fridge). I was proudly shown the kegs of beer and beer pumps they had set up - well they do live above a bar, and the partying continued. Around 3.30 we called it a night and started off home. Although there were only a couple of us wandering along the river, and our make up was wearing off, we still caused amusement and fear on our way!

Never piss off a physiotherapist.

So, as well as a bucket load of painkillers for my poorly back, the Dr also prescribed sessions with the physio.
Being me, I asked around for recommendations, ignored them all and went to the cabinet de kinésithérapie on the ground floor of my block of flats. The Kiné I got appointed is a tiny little thing, all of 5 foot nothing in her Birkenstocks. The first session, she asked what I had done and then got me to lie on the bed and gave me a massage. it was the first time ever I have been on a massage bed that then got lowered rather than raised to the physio's hight. The next couple of times I got the same massage treatment and comments on how my back muscles were loosening up nicely.
Then I must have pissed her off somehow. Maybe it was because I was a little late - in my defense it is hard to judge the volume of traffic on the staircase, because when I turned up, she didn't let me go into her room, oh no, she pointed me in the direction of the gym room. Before I knew it, I was lying on my back and being made to do weird and impossible things with a huge gym ball. This was not helped by the fact I was wearing jeans.
While this half hour of progressively more difficult exercises progressed, I couldn't help but notice 3 people sitting in a jacuzzi in the adjoining room. Part of me wanted to burst in there and demand what sort of injury needed rehab that involved sitting in a hot tub for half an hour, but I was to frightened of upsetting my Kiné any further in case she decided to make me suffer even more.
So I meekly made another appointment for another session and any hopes of it involving a nice back rub were dashed when I was walking out the door and she called after me to wear some sports clothes next time.

Drug Lessons 2

When you have been given a whole heap of drugs for a sore back, including codeine for the pain, and then find yourself hosting a new online group coaching course, don't chat to the 1st client who comes online (that you know well, who also lives in France and knows that Dr's give you loads of strong medication) about feeling doped out - which leads to banter between the two of you about other drugs including the words 'coke' and 'LSD', as you then may hear another little voice saying 'Hello?' as a new, completely unknown client joins the call.
Your professional image flies out of the window.

Drug Lessons 1

When you have been given a whole heap of drugs for a sore back, including one to be taken 1st thing in the morning and one to be taken last thing at night, make sure you take them at the right time, or you could find yourself falling asleep in the waiting room at the cabinet de radiologie.

Extreme Pavements

The Montée de la Grande Côte does what it says on the tin and leads you in a rather straight and steep route up the side of the hill to the Croix Rousse plateau. A plaque at the bottom helpfully informs us that it used to have a huge sewer running down the middle of it when it was the major route up the hill to the silk weaving district but, be reassured, it has been tarted up a lot since then and has even got funky new pavements.

In the seventies there was a great uproar when several Medival and Renaissance buildings were deemed beyond repair and pulled down. This area (near the top) has been made into a park area, with views down the hill. However the demolition sparked a major restoration project both on the Croix Rousse hill and in Vieux Lyon and this eventually led to the designation of a UNESCO world heritage site in 1998.
Nowadays you can see wonderful architecture as you go up and down a pedestrianized street, there are a couple of bars and cafes, as well as plenty of boutiques and workshops that help reflect the history of the area. On a weekend, red faced and slightly sweaty tourists plod up the hill, in fact it is so steep that there are parts of it that are staircases and other parts that have steps cut into the pavement.

It was one of these sections that caused me soooo much pain today.

There I was innocently going to work at 6.50 in the morning, when I noticed the street cleaners were washing the pavement with gallons of water. Being aware of this I slowed my pace, not wanting to slip in the rivers of water washing down the hill. I reached a relatively dry bit and needed to take a road on the left, observed a stream of water and thought to myself 'Avoid that bit, it will be slippy' but somehow still ended up on my arse anyway.

So a scream alerted the 2 cleaners and a passing pedestrian that I was on my bum and in a tiny bit of discomfort and they came over to assist.
When asked if I was ok, I said that my knee and foot were hurting. I rolled up my jeans and showed an impressive cut on my knee and one of them said 'C'est vrai.' If I hadn't have been in so much pain, this would have annoyed me. Did he really think that I had artfully arranged the contents of handbag across the pavement, then sat millimeters from a stream of running water, sprinkled water on my jeans and then cried out as I was some sort of Munchausens suffer?
One of the cleaners then cheerfully informed that lots of people had slipped on these new paving stones but the Ville de Lyon was not replacing them as it was 'Trop cher'. I eventually made it down the hill and into work.
Then the adrenaline wore off and my back started aching, combined with the fact that the swelling on my knee kept on swelling and the realization that it was very difficult to bend over and place a baby in his cot, made me acknowledge that I had done some serious damage.

This being France it counts as an 'accident de travail' (as i was on my way to work), so everyone has been buzzing around trying to make sure that I'm ok. The Dr gave me a truckload of medicine (including one that may make me vomit blood), an appointment for an xray and a prescription for the physio to give me back massages.
I was fortunate enough to get an appointment tonight with the physio who made me twist and turn and basically inflict torture on me before she relented and gave me a back massage. She after reminding me to breathe as she worked on the more painful bits and watching me struggle to get off the couch, she remarked that the muscles in my back were tender. Why else did she think I was there??

So, my advice for today, if you're going to slip on a pavement, do it on your way to work, but be prepared for people stating the bloody obvious.

Le bus change

Anyone living in Lyon will have noticed the signs that have been up since the beginning of the summer informing us that on the 29th Aug the bus routes are changing. To be fair, there have been a lot of signs informing us these changes will be happening however very little in the way of information about what the changes will be.

The week before the big change, I noticed a little stall set up by the Croix Rousse metro, all decked out in red and manned by a couple of people wearing fetching 'Le Bus Change' red T-shirts. It was about 8 in the morning and as I was on the way to the gym I didn't stop. Fortunately it was still there on my way back, this time manned by 4 people. I had a little laugh to myself thinking that only in France could they think that 2 people could cope with the rush hour commuters and 4 people with the day time shoppers.
I went over and was asked if they could help. I requested a new map of the bus routes. This was met with some pursing of lips and a suggestion that she could tell me information on specific bus routes (and even recharge my monthly travel card) but she didn't have a map to give me. I pointed that it would be good to have a map that I could refer to when needed and she went off and asked the supervisor, who had a thick timetable of all the bus routes for his own personal use, but no maps. The only suggestion they had was if I wanted one 'urgently' I could go to the nearest travel office in Hotel de Ville. (The travel office in Croix Rousse being helpfully closed during the summer 'Vacances scolaires'.) I pointed out that it seemed a little bit strange that they had a stall offering verbal information but no maps or time tables and, in true French fashion, received a shrug in reply.

I was not really sure what they meant by 'urgent' but as it was only a few days till the big change, the next time I was passing an open travel office I picked up a map and, after studying it, found out that the bus I used the most often (the no 18 for anyone who is interested) as it formed part of my route to work, was having it's route cut and is no longer of any use to me. Hmmm
Since then I have noticed more of these little information stalls outside of metro stations and major bus stops and now they seem to be equipped with a steady supply of maps and relevant bus timetables. Obviously I was not the only one who found their method of information distribution rather odd and there have been changes.

Then the other day I received in my letter box, a new map and 4 free tickets. Fantastic. The only thing is, I got these on the 2nd September, a full 5 days after the new changes came into place..... ?????