The French Journal

Eating Corsican food

Here's a gig: working on a small farm in Corsica for a week in exchange for sampling some of the local fare. A reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald has contrived the assignment, and an account of the work is subsumed to descriptions of the food: beans "simmered in sage, rosemary, homemade olive oil, then slipped into a bed of polenta; wild boar; brocciu -- a versatile, ricotta-like cheese; cured meats, "considered some of the best in the world, attributed not only to the maquis but to the abundance of acorns and chestnuts that the local porkers fed on"; beignets made with chestnut flour; a fish soup called aziminu; and shots of a home-brewed acquavita. Due to timing, he misses the chance to taste casgiu merzu, a rotten cheese -- "a mass of rank slime crawling with maggots" which are introduced to help with fermentation. He's not sure he regrets the lost opportunity.

Foodies will like this one.

The Times (London) goes to France (with kids, pétanque, skiing, and sun)

The Times (London) went fou for France this week in its Travel section. I'm tempted to dole out their stories one-by-one -- content is valuable -- and, indeed, I've already served up Porquerolles and andouillettes from their offerings. But to avoid seeming like I'm just an RSS feed, I'll offer a quick recap of the remaining items for you to explore as you wish.

• Kids with a glass of wine. For family vacation types, The Times visits Château Rigaud in St. Emilion, a child-friendly boutique hotel where kids are tended while the adults lounge around and eat late dinners.
• Kids with bullet holes. Another family rents a spa/villa in Corsica, where they are spoiled with pain au chocolat and massages, and titillate themselves by checking out bullet holes made during regional vendettas.
• France versus Switzerland, ski edition. Two sporting types point and counter-point on the merits of Val d'Isère and Verbier in Switzerland, which I hear is a nice country but which isn't France.
• Back to the Golden Isles. Duplicating its efforts, The Times had a second story about the Golden Isles off St. Tropez, which offers more on Porquerolles and adds a leg to the trip with a visit to Port Cros, "... covered almost entirely in pine and holm oak trees...highly regulated. You can’t even smoke there. There are no forms of transport, not even a bicycle."
• Pétanque at the source, or, How I Learned about Boules in Provence and Met Renoir's Descendant.
• A tour round-up. Need suggestions for a thematically organized vacation? Here's a list: new hotels, surfing jaunts, more options for kids, wine tours, cooking classes, etc.

Trucs: Cleaning out the drawer #1

Sometimes I have no new items to cover; in other circumstances, due to timing or factors like the length of an article, I never get around to referencing a piece. Today will be devoted to mostly unrelated articles as I clean out the inventory.

• Tummygate. This week there were two insubstantial Sarko items of note, that is, not to be confused with real news. The first was a report that Paris-Match photo-cropped M. le President's love handles when they ran a picture of him in a bathing suit (The Times, U.K./Charles Bremner). Apparently, the omnipresident is not unaware of Brad Pitt's impact on the culture.
• Reza does M. le President. The best-selling book in France this month will no doubt be a short work by playwright Yasmina Reza, who spent a year trailing Sarko and then wrote about it. She is partly charmed, even though her subject has a potty mouth, a short temper, smokes cigars, and covets Rolexes. (NYTimes/IHT, which also has excerpts.) It's entitled L'aube le soir ou la nuit/Dawn Evening or Night, and it's being touted as a candidate for the Prix Goncourt.
• A train ride to Paris. I ignored this June article from the South Africa Independent On-Line about a train ride from London to Paris because I had no sympathy with somebody who could write the line, "My first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower was ambivalent," and then follow it up by being disappointed with the Mona Lisa. The article is less about the train, and more about a first-timer's knock about the city, and to be fair, he does have a few overwritten epiphanies.
• A car ride through the Loire. Whereas I ignored this article from the same source (IOL) by mistake, mixing it up the Paris train piece. Tour the castles of the Loire! The author favors the occasional exclamation point, and sometimes the writing reminds me of my worst, when I'm cranking stuff out under deadline, but it's still a worthwhile trip.
• Cargèse. Here's a little write-up from The Guardian (U.K.) about a town in Corsica, perfectly serviceable, which I didn't highlight before because it's short. What's good about the town? "The peace, the sunshine, the smell of the maquis [native flowering shrubs] and the sheer beauty." Nothing like putting a definition in parentheses when you want to kill prose.

More dust gatherers comin' up shortly.

A Corsican idyll

The Times (U.K.) has a travel story that takes a more ruminative track than most, as the writer Dom Joly fulfills a childhood dream and vacations in Corsica. While the headline emphasizes Joly's disdain for the masses as he makes his way to the expensive vacation spot ("No riffraff, please. This is Corsica"), that's misleading; most of the time, he's simply alive with the joy of finally experiencing "a French island basking in the Italian sun." In one anecdote, he talks about a magical moment when he happens upon a choral performance at a church in Calvi; how many of us have had that happen in France, when one of those marvelous cathedrals is suddenly filled with heavenly sounds? (I've experienced it frequently, and sucker that I am, it never fails to make my eyes tear up  with bliss.) Should you read the piece, you may pick up a few travel hints, but more likely you'll sink into a daydream of Corsica and of its rustic, luscious charms, even if you've never been there.

Mare a mare sud: A "shorter" walk across Corsica

Lots of people travel the GR20 hiking route across Corsica, but its 110-mile length is daunting for beginners or those of us who may be in less than perfect physical shape. This week, The Times of London tries a "gentler" alternative: the Mare a Mare Sud, about half the distance of the GR20, with a less challenging terrain. The trail is not without its obstacles however; at one point, the reporter faces a stream, bordered by thicket, and lacking any clear sense of what his next step should be. He hacks his way through the brush and eventually finds his way. But mostly the five day journey is manageable, low cost (especially in the spring), offering stops in a handful of southern Corsican villages and punctuated with occasional moments of rigor. The towns along the trail are Propriano, Santa Lucia di Talla, Serra di Scopamena, Levie Cartalavonu, and Porto Vecchio.

For more information, try the sites Corsica Hiking and the Corse Web.

Books - The Rose Café: Love and War in Corsica

A new memoir, The Rose Café: Love and War in Corsica, sounds as if it does very interesting variations on the theme of an ex-pat living in France. The author, John Hanson Mitchell, had lived on the island forty years ago while avoiding the draft. Working at a café for room and board, he had the chance to learn the terrain and to talk to the people who lived there. From the publicity material: "From a group of local card players (some with possible underworld connections, others refugees from the Second World War) to colorful continental types and a younger crowd of fellow students, Mitchell tells the stories of people spellbound by the lush charms of the island." The Boston Globe opined: "Mitchell is a master of sensual detail. His Corsican idyll, youth's paradise lost, enchants, still vivid and affecting some 40 summers gone."

Climbing the mountains of Corsica

There are many ways to explore a country, and mountain climbing is one of the more strenuous options. Not for me; I know I'd end up at the bottom of a ravine, with my last thought being "I could have stayed at the Marriott." But for the many who have adventure in their blood, you can scale the GR20 hiking trail in the wilds of Corsica. "The 104-mile trail passes through some of Europe's most challenging walking terrain, and the gradients are unrelenting," writes Alexandra Ferguson in The Telegraph. Mitigating the arduous trek for the participants are "astonishing" mountain views, wild ponies, and glacial lakes. Sounds great...if only there were a bus...

A Corsican hero

As I never feel I have enough history in The French Journal, I was grateful to Craig McGinty over at This French Life for alerting me to a tribute to Pasquali di Paoli that appeared on the BBC site. The two threads that run through the piece are first, a recognition event that occurred on the 200th anniversary of Paoli's birth in the little village of Morosaglia, and second, of Paoli's ties to England, with which he formed a brief political affiliation, and where he died.

Paoli helped to liberate Corsica from domination by the Genovese, but was less successful in gaining independence from France. His intellectual achievements include a constitution that was a model for America's. For more information, try this mini-biography or this site.

Auto Tours in Tours (and elsewhere)

The Independent thinks that many Brits limit their weekend options by driving through the Chunnel to France because too much of the country is outside easy travel by car. So it has recommended that folks jump on a plane for a short hop and then rent a car on arrival, which opens up new possibities for quick visits.  If non-British citizens bypass the plane suggestions, they, too, can benefit from these auto-tour itineraries for places like the Dordogne, the Loire Valley, and Corsica (where -- if I'm reading between the lines correctly -- the mountain roads will cause cardiac arrest).

Regions of France - Corse/Corsica

It's been too long since I've examined one of the 22 regions of France in depth. Here, at last, is the next on the list: Corse/Corsica. The aura of Napoleon, who was born there, is a blinding glow around the island, but there is also its Italian lineage, wild landscapes, and a reputation as the "Island of Beauty." Let's explore!