Thursday was another moving day and this time we were going to La Lavandou and Bormes.  Bye Remi and Sylvie…

I had a great time getting to know my new host, Mireillle. We toured the sites around the area including the French Presidents summer camps.

Around mid-day we went for a tour of Bormes, a town full of history up on a hill overlooking the sea. The city used to be a walled city and port but is now known for it’s tourism, architecture, and it’s 80 varieties of Mimosa trees which bloom for two weeks in the spring. That night we went out for dinner in San Tropez, a posh sea port.

Wednesday started off with a visit to the city hall in Hyeres where we met with a incredibly well dressed and beautiful woman who handled student and cultural issues. Unfortunately, I never got her name but hopefully one of my teammates will be able to fill it in once I am back. She introduced us to the assistant to mayor and Richard Bonfatto, a gov’t employee who had knowledge of government that I had not yet encountered.

A little bit about Hyeres:

Hyeres is the third largest town in the var with 60,000 residents. The second largest town is just a little ahead of them and Toulon is the largest town with 150,000 residents. Picasso lived in the town for a while and the city recently purchased and renovated the property he resided in. You’ll see from the pictures later on that the garden on the property is beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed the modern art exhibits.

Garden/Art Exhibits where Picasso used to live:

We followed up our visit by walking around town and below you can see a typical olive and vegetable (legumes) stand. I was blown away by the selection and freshness of everything.

The night ended on a great note with a presentation before the rotary club, Sollies vallee du Gapeau. This is Remi’s club and they were beyond gracious to us. Thanks to Remi for passing along the pictures he took so I could add them to the blog.

So let me start off by saying that we were told not to eat that much for breakfast this morning. You see, the day started off with a visit to a Denis Matyasy’s company. Matyasy is a patissier and traiteur, in other words he is a caterer and pastry chef and is highly respected in his area. He makes some of the most wonderful looking and tasting desserts I have seen. Here’s a mental note, Keith and I have to go take some classes at the CIA. Maybe its time for Chris to really learn how to cook and bake. Anyway, the business goes through about 600 tons of chocolate each year and employees approximately 40 workers. Denis treated us to a delicious lunch and walked us through how he makes some of his deserts. It was obvious that he inspires those around him to do better in their work and that all his employees enjoy working at the office. Additionally, he feels strongly in the mission of rotary and even with being busy running his business; he is also president of his local rotary club.

Following Matyasy’s we visted our first winery, L Ameralyde. The winery dates back centuries and has a courtyard filled with trees planted in 1594. The massive trees have more trunks and are higher then other trees in the area because they are a mix of the American Sycamore trees with the French Plain trees.

The vineyard is protected by Apollo, the greek god that protects us from diseases and bad weather. This is unusual for a winery, as most have statues of the roman god of wine, Bacus.

What a car! We ran into the owners during our tour, a lovely older couple. They showed us the below, 1962 Chevrolet Impala they are fixing up as a wedding present for their son.

So on with the wine, the winery (domaine) has over 1,200 acres of grapes with 80% of the crop being rose, 15% white, and 5% rose. Harvesting of grapes is usually completed in September and they begin to prepare for the harvest 6 to 7 months earlier because once they start harvesting they will continue non-stop for 1 month, day and night. The grapes, except for the most exceptional, are harvested at night by machines. One key element to Rose wine is to leave the juice in contact with its skin to give it it’s color. Rose and white grapes soak for 5 to 10 hours. The skins are then removed, they are pressed, and they are placed into the vats/casks. Each vat holds approximately 148,000 liters of wine. The red wine are left for 2 weeks and then the skins are removed (they float on the top). Then sulfites are added and it is left again before being placed into the vats/casks.

The night ended with a presentation before the Hyres Les iles d’or rotary club. It was a wonderful evening with great food and pleasant conversation. I especially enjoyed the conversation with Stephane Gourjon and Armand Salehi.

The morning started off with a visit to the Gendarmerie. The Gendarmerie, a police force in France, started in the 1200’s, but it wasn’t until the 1700’s that it was called the Gendarmerie. They are separate from military and civilian forces and are overseen and paid for by the military of defense as opposed to civilian police forces which work for the mayor and localities. National police also exist in France but they are civilian and are funded by the national government.

Our host was Capitaine Didier Poissonnier, a well spoken captain in the Gendarmerie, that had worked in Kosovo and French Guiana. He mentioned that in Kosovo, over 26 countries were located there and the one language they had in common was English. In total the Gendarmerie has 80,000 officers and 25% are officers. It was an interesting visit and I have never seen anything quite like it.

Following lunch we each became out own Picaso. Well, maybe not quite that but it was a blast to learn about the “collage” method that involves taking newspaper, gluing it down to a matte and painting over it to create a beautiful piece of art. The owner Katherine Walmsley, was a fantastic teacher and we were lucky to have her as our guide. I’m hoping to take my painting back to the us and here’s a mental reminder to use an acrylic spray on it once we are back in the states.

We ended the night with a visit to a neighbor of the Rotarian which was putting up Christina and Teresa (pictured below with some of his art works) followed by a relaxing enjoyable dinner with Remie, Sylvie, and Dave.

Over 700 people attended the event and the club expected to take in approximately 10,000 euros for SAMU. Now, if you have ever played Bingo, you know that they draw a ball with a number on it and then read out the number to the players. This is fine and dandy except, that they were reading out the numbers in French so Dave gave us a crash course on numbers. For example, one = un, two = deux, three = trios, four = quatre, five = cinq, six = six, seven = sept, eight = huit, nine = neuf, and ten = dix. There is some repetition but go ahead and try to do that up to 90 on our Bingo cards. As you may have expected, there were a few problems for a team that had just learned to count to 90. In what I have begun to understand is true form for the French, a group of five or so women that had nothing to do with Rotary came to our aid. They were in the hall to play Lotto and had never met us but instead of leaving us to our own devices they separated and sat between each of us so they could make sure we caught all the numbers and played the game correctly. To top if off, one of the women won a gift basket (by the way, the top prize was a trip to morocco) and she gave it to us as a gift. I will never forget this wonderful experience of playing Lotto.

We bid farewell to Bertrand, our wonderful chauffeur for the week and everyone else and headed out for the next adventure. David and I were staying with Remi and Sylvie again for a few days and later that evening we were treated to a wonderful meal by Christian, the president of the Rotary club Sollies Vallee du Gapeau.

May 8^th started off with a visit to the rade, or harbor in Toulon where we had previously had Bouillubaisse. This time we took a boat ride to see the military ships from afar. France’s aircraft carrier, the Charles De Gaulle is based in Toulon so we saw some massive tug boats that are used to bring it into the docks. There were also some transport ships and other military convoy support vessels.

The below picture shows the fort that was Napoleon’s first leadership post when he was moving up the ranks in the French military. Per Dace, part of the reason Napoleon was such a successful leader and the eventual emperor was that he rode in front with his men going into batlle. At the time, it was common for leadership to stay in back and direct their forces during a battle. By riding in front he engendered a sense of commradery and friendship from his men. The canons pictured in the photo are not close to the water but most that we saw were because you could double the distance of a cannon by bouncing it off the water.

Our next visit was to the Musee national de la Marine (The National Marine Museum) which we were able to see on our first visit to downtown Toulon (the day we had Bouillubaisse). For this visit, Bertrand got us the English audio tapes so we went off on our own to learn about the rich history of the French navy. I’ll focus on just a few of my pictures… The first shows the port of Toulon in 1756 and you can see the port in the background and I noticed that most of the land was used for farming. Another painting depicted Toulon about 100 years later and much of the right hand side along the water had buildings on it so there must have been a large expansion over those 100 years.

This next piece is carved from wood and depicts the different cultures and countries paying tribute to Minerva. At one point there is an elephant laughing at a sailor who is carrying a too heavy load.

Lastly, here is a depiction of Careening. I believe they said this was a depiction of a hull repair done on a ship that was damaged off North Africa. They would tip the boat on it’s side while still in the water to conduct the repairs because the dry dock had not yet been invented.

Time to eat!  Well almost at least, what is a good day without some candid shots while we’re in the car…

We went back to Alain and Dani’s home with the group for a picnic with some of the Rotarians we had met during the week. Jerome, who you may recall brought us to the military hospital brought us to a church dating back to the 11^th century situated in Orielles as well as Sanary. We then went to Sanary, a beautiful sea side town with local artists, sail boats, artisean shopping (Artisean is a specific word which means the products are locally hand made) and café’s.

Below is a picture of our group with Jerome. He was a great tour guide and he is a wonderful man. It was a delight to meet him and his four children. They were very much the typical French family.

While the day was fantastic the night made the largest impression upon me. We visited a male only and female only homeless shelter run by Alain.

About 11 years ago he formed SAMU (service d’aide médicale urgente) Sociale in Toulon. SAMU is a national organization but he formed the homeless shelter portion in Toulon. SAMU also delivers approximately 130 meals each day and every day. They circulate to twelve different stops in Toulon each night like clock work.

The whole visit has felt more like a vacation than anything else. We have seen parts of the South of France that only the locals get to see and have been treated to wonderful meals. It’s like being in New York City and se3eing the tourists eat at the olive garden when right around the corner is the place where all the locals go because they have the best food in the area. Not to mention the fact that the locals know the best dishes.

This night was truly shocking as we visted the shelters and saw another face to France. The individuals in these facilities suffer from a number of issues including alcoholism, mental issues, not being able to find work, and others have moved to France but do not have identification papers. The men in the facility varied widely in age from younger men in their teens to older men in wheel chairs. Most appeared to suffer from addictions to alcohol and it was a rowdy bunch. This is by far, the harder of the facilities to work in and I have tremendous respect for Sebastian (a member of the French team visiting the US) because he works in this facility. The facility has 2 staffers starting at 3 pm and one at night until it closes at 8 am. They have a total of 24 beds in the mens facilities and the men are not allowed to leave after nine because of the limited staffing and if they do, they could run out for alcohol. The women’s facility was more relaxed and we met Christina, a woman who suffered from alcoholism but has now turned herself around and will be moving into her first apartment. She cooked our dinner. We asked how she learned to cook and she told us how she started at the age of 2 because her mother needed additional help cooking for the family. We also met two young couples in the womens house. The house is all female except for two couples they allow to stay. One couple had moved in five days earlier and they had come from the North of France to find work. The gentleman was a carpenter but he said he was having trouble getting work because he does not have a car to travel to work sites with. The other couple was a young man from Tunisia and a women who was born in France. She was carrying his child and after the baby is born they will not be able to stay in SAMU sociale. They will move onto the next facility which provides assistance to mothers and their children.

Alain (my host) was kind enough to set up a visit for Kelvin and me to the military hospital. So, today started off with the Military hospital in Toulon, Sainte-Anne, which is the primary military hospital for the south of France and I imagine is one of their largest because Toulon houses the largest military port in Europe. In all it has 400 beds and is led by a two-star medical general.

Jerome Maslin, our host for the visit, said it is France’s international vaccination center, mainly for yellow fever. He brought us around to see the labs, hematology and toxicology departments, infectious disease labs, and the quarantine centers. Jerome is in charge of a level 3 quarantine room that we were able to see because the room is still under construction. As opposed to clean rooms which are created to keep pathogens out, the quarantine room uses negative pressure to keep pathogens from escaping. Needless to say, I was happy we were only visiting.

The hospital also has a public/private mission and takes civilian patients. It’s two main specialties are a burn center and neurological department. On our way out we were able to see the turtules which are the robots we heard about in the hospital that was under construction. As an aside, I was surprised to hear that it costs approximately 100 euros to make one pint of blood because the required testing and other costs.

So this all happened while the girls were visiting a theater. We then met at the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Toulon. At the Tribunal we met with Regine Roux, the Prefecture. A position that could be equated to a regional district attorney’s office in the United States. Over the meeting and lunch it was interesting to hear about France’s inquisitive legal system. In their legal system, the judge leads the investigation into a crime and working with police, the defendant’s attorney, and the prefecture, he or she tries to gather facts about the incident. After the facts are collected, the Prefecture will make a recommendation to the judge for an appropriate punishment. Josephe, who I mentioned in the Porquerolles post was previously president of the commerce tribunal. That tribunal handled problems related to business such as bankruptcy. There were also three other tribunals that deal with crimes. The lowest of the three dealing with petty theft, the next, financial crimes (think Goldman Sachs), and the last, more serious crimes such as murder.

Our next visit was to Université du SUD, Toulon-Var which is the law school in Toulon. We received a tour of the University by the Faculté de Droit or President of the University, Jean-Jacques Pardini and Valerie Gomez-Bassac from Univeristy Relations – Enterprises. The tour was wonderful and the University is physically very much like those in the United States with public meeting area, a library with meeting rooms, and lecture style classrooms. As for the University administration, it varies significantly from those in the United States. In the United States we have deans of individual schools that oversee faculty and have in many cases have significant autonomy. In France, the Presidents at the top of a defined hierarchy that everyone follows. Additionally, there is not much university/industry collaboration that takes place on the campus. Valerie, is the one person on campus who would do that and she is looking to expand that role of the University so it will be interesting to see if she takes me up on my offer to connect her with/visit some of New York’s campuses.

And so ends our action packed day at the Hospital, Courts, and University…

I’m writing this blog entry four days after it all happened so I am sure I am going to miss some things but I will do my best. The day started off with French lessons from Danielle (Dani), Alain’s wife. If you want to even start to learn French, memorize these sentences:

As-tu bien dormi? Did you have a good sleep?
As-tu bien mange? Did you have a good eating or meal?

Aimes-tu cette musique? Are you enjoying the music?

As-tu aimé ce livre? Did you like the book?
As-tu aimé ce voyage? Did you like the trip?

Notice how dormi and mange are actions. The act of eating and sleeping. As opposed to the nouns, book and trip which are items. That’s why the sentences are different. Or so I think at least…

So that is how the day of six de Mai started. We spent our day in the iles de Porquerolles, an island off the coast of southern France. Dani described it as a paradise and that was exactly what we found. We were shuttled over to the island on the ferry, owned by the president of the local rotary club who toured us around the island with another Rotarians (Josephe) who owns the hotel on the island. The population of the island jumps from 350 in 3500 during the summer to handle the increased demand and the owner of the ferry increases his staff to 150 to keep pace.

The history of Porquerolles revolves around the story of Francois-Joseph Fournier who made his money in the silver mines of South America. He returned to France and had two wives but neither bore him children so, through his doctor, he setup a marriage with Sylvia Davis who was thirty years his younger. As her wedding gift he gave Sylvia the island of Porquerolles and together, they had six children. Today, three of the children still reside and own land on the island but the vast majority of the island was given to the state to offset the estate taxes Francois would have paid on his death. It is now one of the six national parks.

There are three wineries on the island with L’Alycastre offering the best wine. Additionally, there are agricultural fields with apricots, peaches, and other fruits which they splice together as the island is also a major agricultural preserve for the country.

We were able to see the agricultural preserves and many areas no visitor would see including the local supermarket pictured below. Every fruit is grown locally on the island and picked daily.

And who could for forget Josephe, pictured below with his new love, Christina. Josephe was a truly wonderful man whose birthday is today, May 10^th. So happy birthday Josephe!

Lunch on the island was wonderful and it was followed up with a tour of the national park areas by our tour guide. The flora is beautiful.

We then got on a special visit to one of the eleven forts on the island. There is 1 forty for each kilometer on the island and the fort we visited was built in the fifteen hundreds. Approximately 20,000 years ago or so, a blink of the eye for mother nature; the island was connected to Corsica to the South and mainland France to the North. Then the plates shifted and Corsica and the other land masses separated from the island and the water levels rose to the North. It is because of this (or so we are told) that there are beautiful beaches to the North and cliffs to the South. One of the pictures below shows the height gradients between the mainland, the island, and the sea.

On our way out of the fort we were shown vases dating back more than 2,000 years that were used for shipping and storing food.

Finally, on our way back and after doing a little shopping we returned on the Ferry. Christina and I were able to ride on the front of the Ferry and it was one of the most amazing experiences. There is nothing quite like smelling the Mediterranean sea water, feeling the wind on your skin, and tasting the sea water as it splashes up on you. No words can truly describe the feelings and it was at that moment that we both realized, we are truly in France.

Dinner that night was at Sylvie’s (my host from the first night). She and her husband, Bertrand, an optimologist, had a dinner part with the president of the local rotary club and our team. It’s was absolutely delicious and the dinner conversation was fantastic, even with the language differences.

The morning started off wonderfully with my teammates singing me bon anniversaire! (happy birthday) Our first visit was to L’Hopital Sainte-Masse where Jacques showed us around the building site. Some interesting notes, the building will house 750 patients when it is completed and will combine two local hospitals, one built in the 1890’s and another built in 1962. It will serve an area about the size of the capital district with some 400,000 inhabitants. To put the building of the hospital in perspective there are 50 or so hospitals being built in France over a 15 year period beginning in 2000 and they will all be about the same size. The project is very important (a grande project) for the provincial area. I found it interesting that there will be separate elevators (lifts) for patients, visitors, and freight/staff. Robots are used to transport freight in the elevators similar to ones that are used in shipping facilities such as amazon.com, ups, and fedex. Something I have not seen done in hospitals in the US. This visit was centered around my teammate Kelvin who has a background in public health and he found the most interesting thing to be the public mission and financing of the hospitals. I found the most interesting piece to be the garden spaces that were intertwined in the construction of the building.

After the hospital we stopped at le Fort du cap brun (the brown fort) which is in a rade (protected area) overlooking the harbor of Toulon. The harbor is the largest military port in Europe, surrounded on three sides by land which made it a key location because it was easier to protect.

We then went to la rotarie liberte, a womans only Rotary club in Toulon. The lunch was fantastic and they (most likely because of our wonderful guide Bertrand) arranged for a birthday cake during the meeting. These women are amazing and they accompanied us on our visit of a local farm which is owned by the parents of one of its members.

The farm employs four full-time staff and specializes in organic farming and community supported agriculture (CSA). I’ll explain a bit more but they told me that 1 full-time staff person will take care of the vegetables for 40 families (four people per family) and this farm supports about 200 families. The community supported agriculture (CSA) concept involves having individuals pre-pay the farmers for vegetables. They can then pick up a supply of fresh vegetables each week which they estimate can feed a family of four. This concept came to France when the owners of the farm were visiting with their family in New York State. CSA’s were in use in the United States and they and brought the idea over to France where they started the first CSA. There are now over 3,000 CSA’s in France.

This farm covers approximately 3 acres and they have over forty different kinds of tomatoes. The most interesting thing I found was the fact that they rent their land from the government. In France, only 30% of the land used for farming is privately owned. The government sees it as their responsibility to support farming and to do this they maintain control of the land and allow farmers to use it. The rent is associated with how much the farmers make off their crops and anything placed on the land is the property of the farmer such as a greenhouse. As an example, the farm we visited used to grow flowers. The price of flowers decreased and the current owner took over the business from his brother who had been selling flowers.

We ended the day early today and had dinner with Danni and Alain.

Date: Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The day began with a visit to a tennis club but due to the pleu (rain) we were unable to see a match. We met Jean and his wife as well as the president of the local rotary club. Since it was raining we went to le promenade in Toulon to walk along the water and visit the military museum.

For lunch we had Bouillubaisse (I am sure I massacred the spelling). Bouillubaise begins with a broth that comes from cooking the fish and is then followed up by MASSIVE amounts of fish of so many types that I can’t even remember, potatoes, and vegetables on a platter. I didn’t even mention the aperitif which consisted of bread with the option of rubbing garlic on it or a sauce made of saffron with mayonnaise and I’m sure other items. The sauce was about the consistency of dip and had an orange color. It was wonderful and is also used along with the broth and the fish, vegetables, and potatoes. Did I mention all the fish had their heads attached? But of course, it’s the south of France.

During lunch the wine was stationed near me so I learned yet another French saying, “en peu plus vin de blanc/rose/rouge” It means, would you like a little more wine and lunch of course involved me saying that many times.

Following lunch we attempted to go to the military museum but realized it was closed on Tuesdays so we instead walked around and went to musse de Toulon which is the museum in Toulon. The museum has a grand entrance which is typical of government or establishment buildings in France. The goal was to create a grande entrance that showed that they had space to spare. The museum was free and Bertrand relayed the history behind paintings by Courdouan, a famous painter known in Toulon who’s paintings depicted the sea ports. Tres magnifique! (spelling yet again is probably wrong).  We also stopped by to see the statue of Marianne which is the French national emblem that represents the French as a state and its values.  Like the statue of liberty, she holds a torch and symbolizes the triumph of the republic.

Following the museum we went to the medieval village of Casstellet where the buildings were most likely over 1,000 years old. Followed up with desserts that Jean purchased in Toulon from Gaudefroy. I didn’t know macaroons could taste as good as they did.

The significance of this door is that it shows the big door in the church in Le Casstellet.  Essentially, there are two small doors on the left (gauche) and right (doigt) sides which peasants would come through.  The main door would open after the church had filled to allow the local feudal lord to come in.

Dinner took place at our hosts home (Alan and Danielle). It was wonderful and as an after dinner drink, Alan offered Genepi which is a sweet liquor made from mountain flowers. I so wanted to sleep after all that.