Down south in the north of France

This weekend was Braderie weekend. The Braderie is the annual car-boot sale in Lille, it's the biggest sale of its type in Europe. It starts with a semi-marathon around the town, and lasts for 33 hours once the final marathoner has crossed the line. I'd heard of it, watched documentaries about it on French news, read countless articles about it because you're pretty much bombarded with Braderie information every September, wherever you live.This time, I'd invited my best friend Angélique up to go round the sale with me. I hadn't seen her since before I left for Mayotte, and I finally had a spare room to put her up in, so we were over the moon to be with each other.

My first impression of the Braderie was of crowds. People everywhere. I couldn't walk at anywhere near my usual speed, and sometimes, there would be bottlenecks and the crowd would stop completely. I've never been so pushed and shoved around, and I've never shouldered my way past so many other people in an effort to move forward. It really was impressive.

Inside the Braderie, both individual families and professionals were selling their wares. A lot of shops had "Braderie prices", which were something like ten per cent off the usual price. No interesting bargains as far as I could see, but then I wasn't looking for anything in particular : I'd just had all my clutter from before I left for Mayotte delivered to my flat, it was up to the ceiling as it was. As a matter of fact, I had spent the last couple of days going through said clutter and deciding what I needed and what I didn't. The unwanted stuff went in a pile of cardboard boxes, and I'm still taking a box down with me whenever I go downstairs. During the Braderie, any box that I put outside would instantly be rifled through and, more often than not, would either be emptied or disappear completely before I came back home. One box was particularly quick to vanish: a set of see-through plastic desk drawers on wheels, full of leftover makeup and shampoo from five years ago. Literally thirty seconds after I set it down, a lady had picked it up, looked around her rather shiftily to make sure she wasn't stealing anything (or if she was, that nobody had seen her) and hurried off with it. Strangely enough, my folder of Latin lessons from school didn't go anywhere, although it would have made a good doorstop.

The biggest and best-known part of the Braderie, though, is the food. Everywhere suddenly starts serving mussels and chips, even the Asian and Moroccan restaurants down the street who had never seen a mussel before. The most common was moules marinière (with white wine and onions), but you could also get mussels in a sauce made from the local smelly cheese. I even found mussel pad thai. I had been told that each restaurant piled up the empty mussel shells outside, then had a competition to find the highest one. As it happened, there was precisely one heap of mussel shells, outside just one restaurant. The two above were rubbish bins. Very disappointing.

While looking for transport down to Lyon on a carpooling website, the destination "Amsterdam" flashed up, and someone was offering a carpool to Amsterdam for 19€ (a single train ticket is around 60€ from Lille). I looked up a host on Couchsurfing (a wonderful guy called Yari who had been "born, bred and buttered" in Amsterdam and knew the city like the back of his hand, plus he had been in the hospitality industry for twenty years and looked after me extremely well) and started looking up what I would like to see and do in the city. It's not far away, it's somewhere I know I can go back to fairly easily, so the focus was more on discovering the atmosphere of the town and riding a bike around the canals than on learning the history of the town and queuing to enter museums. We'll see about that if it rains.

The first thing that struck me were the similarities between Dutch and English, with a bit of German thrown in. I can only say one sentence in German, which translates to "I am a little cat", not terribly useful in everyday life. But Dutch... now, look at Dutch. Spoken by about 23 million people worldwide, it's the official language in the Netherlands, parts of Belgium (predictable) and in Suriname, interestingly enough.

Some fascinatingly transparent words:

I went off hitchhiking again on Thursday, and came back on Saturday. A full day's hitching each way. It didn't go quite so well this time. Leaving Lille was fairly easy, but everybody was going to work and most were heading for Valenciennes or Brussels. I don't usually stay stuck in one place for more than five or ten minutes, but Thursday morning had me standing for three-quarters of an hour at a motorway toll booth not far from Lille before giving up and going on to the route nationale. I was then picked up by a series of people who were only travelling a few kilometres, and ended up with a large agricultural container lorry-driver who dropped me at another toll booth just south of Cambrai. There will be lots of people there, he said. Humph. Instead of the usual ten or so lanes on the big motorways, there was only one lane and absolutely zero cars. The weather had been nice and grey up until that point, when it started raining. I got lucky, though, as the second car that went through in the space of about half an hour was going in my direction and picked me up more out of pity than anything else. It turned out that they had missed the motorway entrance they wanted and had come that way by chance... and not only were they going in my direction, but I travelled with them for about 400km from Cambrai down to Mâcon. The rest was easy, and I got into Romans-sur-Isère, my final destination, at about 6.30 p.m. 790 kilometres in twelve hours hitching, pretty good going.

The friend I was meeting decided that I needed to see a bit more of the area, and took me through Villard de Lans (with its suspended houses) to Grenoble the next day to have a look at the town. In the rain, of course. Much more interesting, "and you're English, what's a bit of rain to you?". He used to live and work in the centre of Grenoble, so he knew the town well. It is circled by mountains and is reputed to be very cold and humid in winter, very hot and bothering in summer. We had fun trying to park in a maze of one-way streets with no signposts, then set off into the centre. It's not a very attractive town, there didn't seem to be anything remarkable about it, but it was clean and not run-down. Trams run everywhere in the town centre, especially down a huge avenue which has a grassy streak all down the middle, and the trams run down the middle of the grassy streak. We went up in the téléphérique, four small egg-shaped cubicles, and took photos from the top of the town, had something to eat in a nice but rather forgetful restaurant called the Téléférique (apparently, both spellings are accepted by the Académie Française, so the restaurant used the spelling with the f to differentiate itself from the device) and came back down. Then, on into the Grenoble Museum of Contemporary Art to get out of the rain for a bit. Came out, walked through the town again, actually looking at the buildings instead of at our feet now that the rain had stopped, and that was that.

I left Valence at 8 a.m., which was a bit late to hitchhike back up to Lille on a bank holiday (15th August). It took me quite a while to even get picked up, never mind end up anywhere interesting: a lady took me to the nearest service station, then an illegal lorry who shouldn't have been driving on a bank holiday went almost up to Lyon and dropped me at the side of the motorway. As pedestrians aren't allowed on high-speed roads, my next car was a police van, to whom I explained logically that I'd been dropped there and was doing my best to get to the nearest safe place. They didn't really know what to do with me, so they brought me back to the police station and offered me a cup of coffee. I tried my best to get the police motorbikers to take me to the next motorway toll booth or services, but it turns out that police motorbikes don't actually have a passenger seat, it's all taken up by their radio equipment. They did let me sit on the bike, though, then one of the officers drove me a few kilometres further on with blue lights flashing, meanwhile showing me how to control a service station and what sort of people and cars they consider suspicious. On to the nearest toll booth with a young man who was only going that far, then I had a huge area with about fifteen lanes to choose from, which was nice as it was getting late-ish (past midday and still 600km to go) and I wasn't looking forward to having to stop somewhere, or hitch at night. I ended up with Maurice, a friendly man in his 70s who had left France for Belgium twenty years ago. He was going to Brussels, but as we got on well, he took me right into the centre of Lille and we had a meal out before thanking each other for a nice trip and going our separate ways.

While in Mayotte, my violin and I had had a bit of an accident. A friend of a friend agreed to make me a new one, with six strings instead of the usual four. As he lived and worked in Lyon, down south (this said, everything is down south from Lille), I hitchhiked down on Sunday to fetch the violin. It took a while, as I started off at 7 in the morning and didn't get in until 10 at night. One of my first cars was a police van, which was when I learned that it was forbidden to hitchhike on the motorway: they explained how dangerous it was, then took me to the nearest safe stopping place. We had a good laugh and they even blared the siren for me. I made a bit of a mistake near Chaumont, when I ended up going north instead of south and lost a few hours, but got into Lyon safely. Among my transporters for the day were the police van, a lady who dropped me off then ran after me to give me her phone number and ask for news of my trip and a photo of the violin, a gypsy who was going round France in his van doing odd jobs, a wine-seller who nearly dropped me in the middle of nowhere when he found out he wasn't getting my phone number, a sociology researcher in his fifties who had done a lot of hitchhiking when he was younger, a lady who told me all about her marriage to a man and said that it's much better now she's married to a woman, and a friendly handicapped lad who couldn't use his legs and had therefore rigged his car with accelerators behind the steering wheel, a brake he could use with his hands and a captor on the gear stick which pushed the clutch for him when he put his hand on the lever.

While in Lyon, I contacted a hiking friend whom I'd met in Réunion island and who lived nearby. He took me out to a traditional Lyonnais restaurant (where I ate a rather weird local speciality: a deep-fried slice of tripe, called tablier de sapeur, which I will not be trying again) and showed me all around the town. It's a pretty town, but all the roads seem to lead upwards! There's a huge basilica called Basilique de Fourvière at the top of the town, which allows for a good view of the whole city, and a lovely historic area.

The point of the Lyon operation was to collect the violin pictured above. I finally met the violin-maker with whom I'd been communicating via e-mail for the last six months. He turned out to be a real chatterbox, and took two days to tell me all about how to care for the instrument, what strings to buy, etc. It's a lovely violin, made of cedar for the front and walnut for the sides and back, instead of the usual maple and spruce. Now I just have to learn how to play it.

Violin in box, I stayed the night with my tour guide friend and set off the next day back up to Lille. My first car took me about 20km north, my second car was a couple heading for Paris who dropped me off in Beaune, south of Dijon, and my third vehicle was the main one: a female lorry-driver, Béatrice, who took me from Beaune right up north to Lens, about an hour's drive away from Lille. She wanted to avoid the traffic jams and went off on a side road, dropping me at the motorway toll booth where I was quickly picked up by lorry driver number 2, Patrice. His job was to empty his lorry in the depot, then he said he would take me as close to Lille as he could get. We went up to the depot, where he told me to wait there and went to enquire about emptying his lorry, then came back muttering that they wouldn't empty it today, he'd have to sleep at the depot and empty it tomorrow morning. He took me back in to the depot with him to complain, saying that he might be able to find someone else there to drive me back to Lille. I smiled sweetly at the manager, and half an hour later, the lorry was empty. The driver dropped me off a couple of blocks down the road from my flat, in a nice big 44-ton lorry. I thought that was wonderful.

Comic by The Oatmeal

Just before I came back to France from Mayotte, the various news papers and channels had been going on about the canicule, the heatwave that was all over France. Thirty degrees in one area, thirty-five in another, can't sleep, the pets are restless, the baby's too hot, there's a dog in the car, who cares, we're on the beach. Thirty to thirty-five degrees is about normal for Mayotte, so coming to France at this time shouldn't mean too much of a temperature difference. 

Unfortunately, my destination was not one of those newsworthy places where the heatwave was doing its worst. I'm in Lille, right up in the north. It's 18°C and it's raining. Rather unfair, really. I now know that for people up here, grey is not only a colour in itself but can be classified in several shades, going from "oh look, there's a little bit of drizzle, well, fiddle-de-dee, my glasses are foggy" to "uh-oh, the heavens are opening, get home quick". We're in July, people are telling me, so the rain is fairly warm and you can still wear a t-shirt. Hmmm. I see.

As far as the flat goes, things are progressing slowly. A nice seller at a local DIY shop called Leroy Merlin thought about the leaky loo problem and came up with a series of PVC pipes which fitted into each other and could be solidified with some special waterproofing glue. I now have a loo that can be flushed and that does not deposit water all over the floor and down the four floors below. Astonishing. The assorted Ikea products are slowly starting to resemble furniture, but said furniture does not seem to like that very much and is apparently taking it out on me: so far, I have been attacked by a couch, a desk, a tall cuboard, a bed and a couple of storage boxes. There is cardboard packaging and plastic film everywhere. An electrician's son and his apprentice have taken a hammer to a rather cumbersome cupboard in the corner of my (small) kitchen, and ten noisy minutes later, the cupboard had gone. I have slept in the flat and found the downsides of living in a brightly-lit city centre with no curtains, as well as the different but no better downsides to living in a cold area with no electricity.

The subject of electricity is, unfortunately, where a rather expensive mistake kicks in. While I was in the process of buying the flat, I received a sheaf of diagnostics ranging from termintes, lead and asbestos to the state of the electrics in the flat. The estate agent went through it all with me and minimized everything, saying that it didn't matter, that's nothing, you can sort that out in a second, and you know, these diagnostics are done by people with hardly any training, they don't mean anything. I've just re-read the electricity diagnostic, and it's practically flashing red lights at me to say: this is an urgent problem, get this sorted ASAP or the whole block of flats can catch fire. The wiring is as old as the building, eighty-five years old. Somehow there is thin wiring at the bottom of the block and nice thick wiring in my flat, so a big thick wire needs to be taken from the ground floor up to the fourth, winding up the staircase and along the walls. Hardly any plugs in my flat are connected to the earth. The cooker can't be plugged in because the flat is lacking the required 32-amp socket. All of this has to be redone, it's a lot of work and is going to be extremely expensive... and meanwhile, I can't use more than about 2000 watts at any given time (this is including every single electrical appliance in the flat, be it hot water boiler or kettle) at the risk of setting it all on fire. Two electricians have come and left quotes for me, two more are still to come, and the quotes range from 5300 to 8000 euros. I can't do a thing about this because the estate agent and the seller will just retort that I should have gone round the flat with an electrician and a plumber before buying it, and they're right, I should have, but I didn't know, didn't think about it, didn't realize. You live and learn.

I had asked for the Lille area before going to Mayotte, four years ago now. It was right at the top of the list. However, the French National Education points system didn't see fit to send me there at the time, and sent me to the other side of the world for the fun of it. She wants a big city in a cold area? Let's send her to a run-down village in a very hot area and see how she likes it. After the four years in Mayotte, I had plenty of points because I'd been a long way away in a pretty awful school, so I asked for the Lille area again.

In March 2015, just before knowing if I would get the desired area or not, I went up to Lille, planning to find a flat there. I wanted to own my own flat for the first time ever, and Lille seemed like as good a place as any to do so, as it's a student town and any flat I might buy could easily be rent out to a student when I wanted to go walkabout again. In about ten days, I went round ten or so banks to find out how much I could borrow, visited twenty-five flats, signed paperwork promising to buy one particular flat and made a friend out of an estate agent, who happened to be the one who sold me my flat. I then went back to Mayotte and thought of nothing else for the next four months.

On July 11th, 2015, I took the plane from Dzaoudzi through St-Denis-de-la-Réunion and on to Paris, where Nanny and Papi collected me from the airport. They were staying in a gîte called Les Caperies in Richebourg, near Béthune and La Bassée. We got to the gîte at some impossible hour in the morning, accompanied by unhappy grandparents having had to navigate through wrong turnings in the dark and two cats, one of which was wailing vigourously. Dumped everything on the floor in the bedroom and went straight to bed and to sleep. We'll worry about the rest tomorrow.

Over the next few days, we visited IKEA (horrible, labyrinthine, busy, exhausting place), Conforama (furniture and electronics store, closed so that they could remove the asbestos from the walls, so everything was in a tent in the garden), Electro Dépôt (cheap and cheerful white goods store with confusing parking) and Bouygues Télécom (phone and Internet company who introduced me to 4G, told me that I couldn't have a phone plan because I was English and explained that they were going to give me 120 TV channels... what do you want me to do with all that?). We sampled various restaurants in and around Lille, eating local food such as émincé de boeuf with Maroilles (smelly cheese) sauce or carbonade flamande, like boeuf bourguignon but cooked with beer instead of wine. Local food in Lille is mussels and chips, chips and chips, and anything cooked in beer. Light, nutritious and good for you.

Friday 17th was the day I signed the paperwork at the solicitor's office. I'm now a proud home-owner. With lots of work to do inside the aforementioned home, as it's empty except for the kitchen, and the kitchen needs redoing completely. I've been instructed not to exhaust Nanny and Papi, but they started off by coming up the four flights of stairs and exclaiming that I obviously didn't want them to visit too often. Humph.

This is the kitchen in my new flat. It's going to need quite a bit of work to make it practicable. To be honest, it was pretty much liveable when I bought the place, but I'd like to have it my way, so we've been ripping out the old built-in (but horrible and very low down) fridge and freezer. I wanted a new fridge-freezer to go in the right-hand corner, but there are great big gas and water pipes down there and whatever does go in will not only not be able to go up against the wall but will also stop the window opening completely. The first thing I bought for the kitchen, being English, was a kettle, but we can't actually make any tea or coffee at the moment because there's no electricity yet.

The electrics in my flat are actually pretty ancient, as is the loo, which we've just realized is leaking from a rubber joint that is too old to be found in the shops any more. Everything's pretty ancient, really. The block of flats was built in 1930. Things have been redone: the collective boiler which feeds the whole block (well, there's only five of us), the roof, the façade, the staircase, the interphone. Nothing major needs doing or redoing soon, which is good news as I don't have an awful lot of money left and will have even less once the plumber has changed the whole loo and the electrician has rewired the flat. There are pipes all over the place, sticking out of the tiles and the walls: there's an especially lovely one which comes out in the middle of the kitchen wall tiling for some reason.

The furniture, however, is resolutely modern: it's all from Ikea. And that is a problem in itself. We went to Ikea to have a look round, and I collapsed upon coming back home, completely exhausted. Looking round was not a good idea. However, they had a helpful website, so I chose everything I wanted from there. Delivery from the website was announced as two weeks, but the local shop could deliver on Monday (two strong guys heaving twenty-six large boxes up the stairs, sweating profusely), so we filled the car up with the not-too-heavy stuff and carted that up the stairs. Fitting it all together was fun, and I now have the user manual for all Ikea furniture the world over: follow the pictures to get it in the right place, then bash it until it fits in.