Moving to France and adapting to life in Lyon
We celebrated our first Easter in France with, as you might expect, some nice chocolate.
After another lengthy French Mass Cath had booked a lunch at Brasserie des Brotteaux.
There I ate:
Then we went for a walk around Parc de la Tete d’Or in the spring sunshine- along with the rest of Lyon.
I got a bit of a shock when I discovered that Good Friday was not a holiday in France.
It meant going to work when I would normally be off. At least someone was glad to see me.
Instead of Mass at 3pm, when I got home it was off to church in the evening.
Other than that, it was very similar to Good Friday Mass in England. But fasting and abstinence was a bit harder in France.
One of the deals of getting a work or tourist visa for France is you have to have an x-ray of your lungs to check you are not bringing anything nasty like tuberculosis into the country.
Well I’ve been here 11 weeks now so if I had anything communicable I might have infected a few people by now.
But no point arguing or questioning. Just get on with it.
Not sure what I do with it now.
Euronews is such that this week I find myself flying to Bucharest to visit the digital team working for the franchise operation Euronews Romania.
Our head of news is from Romania so I asked him for some advice about where to eat after I landed in the evening.
He recommended a restaurant where it’s traditional to start with a plum brandy so we did, followed by polenta and mince wrapped in cabbage leaf and some more….. cabbage and polenta.
Might try something else tomorrow night.
While in Bucharest we got the chance to tour the Peoples Palace – built by Ceaucescu and one of the biggest buildings in the world and billed as the heaviest!
I did my latest French lesson from my hotel room in Bucharest – en Roumanie. We spoke work-related vocuabulary as well as a false friend that I knew nothing about.
Here are some of the things I learnt:
Je suis un nouveau venu – I’m a new employee
Ce n’est pas une priorité – It’s not a priority
D’abord, en premier – ways to say first
Properietaires – owners
Une clause de cessation de travail – a voluntary redundancy process for journalists. (I didn’t ask about compulsory redundancy – still too raw).
Ils partent avec une indemnité – they leave with a payout
Tout le monde attend ce qui va se passer Everyone is waiting to see what happens
Tout d’un coup – all of a sudden
Tout ce bazar/Tout ce bordel/Tout ce bruit – all this mess, noise
Ca me revient aux oreilles – This got back to me
And did you know, because I certainly didn’t that eventuellement does not mean eventually in French. It is a false friend.
To say eventually you say: En fin, a la fin
Eventuellement means possibly. Wow.
Je n’ai peut pas faire du velo cette semaine parce que je suis encore en rhumé. Alors j’ai pris le tram et je suis decendu quelques arrets en avance de mon boulot et je suis continué en pied.
Today was obviously the day for men to be on roofs. A look out of our window and we saw not one pair but two. C’est un peu bizarre ça.
I’m sure my French is improving – je me debrouille – as Cath has taught me. But I don’t understand everything and that is frustrating when you get emails and you are not sure if they are spam or not.
And then you see a sign like this.
The trams were delayed because of one less ram?
I looked up rame. First meaning – a paddle or rudder. Second meaning – a ream of paper. Third meaning – a train/tram or wagon. Ah, now j’ai compris.
Today was our 25th wedding anniversary so after work I met Cath for a drink where this whole adventure started – in the Mob Hotel. We even got a video call from Matthew and Nathan!
Then on to Selsius restaurant where we had a meal at the end of our visit in November
When we arrived there was a surprise – a bottle of bubbly courtesy of a thoughtful colleague. We then had a lovely meal remembering lots of events from the last 25 years.
J’ai appris un nouveau espression dans mes cours aujourd’hui comme toujours on peut dire. Si quelqu’un est malade – mais pas tellement malade et peut etre il exagerra un peu on peut dire: Cela sent le sapin. Le sapin est un arbre et le bois de cet arbre est utilitse pour faire les coffres.
J’ai dit a mon prof je ne doit pas dire cette espression a la residence ou j’habite maintenant. La il y a beaucoup de monde qui sent le sapin.
Thrown to (the) Lyon 