Foreign Perspectives

As usual with French events, all the publicity is in French and there’s little distribution of it outside the local area so it’s a great opportunity to see a good rally without the usual crowds.

This year the route of the Fenouilledes Car Rally starts on Saturday in Ille-sur-Tete, heads up into the mountains through Belesta and Pezilla where they loop round through Rasigueres, Panezes and Latour de France finally turning at Estagel and heading back over the hill to Millas and then towards Ille-sur-Tete. The Sunday route is similar but goes through Ansignan after Pezilla, descending into Maury before once again crossing the hill at Estagel towards Millas and finishing at Ille-sur-Tete. There’s a map of the route Fenouilledes Car Rally Map 2006 and some photos of the key points on the route at Key Points on Fenouilledes Car Rally 2006 with complete details of the stages at Stage Details for Fenouilledes Car Rally 2006 and the participants at Participants in Fenouilledes Car Rally 2006.

By co-incidence, Auberge Mas Camps is in one of the better places to watch the race and have been fully booked by the rally organisers, ASA-Roussillon.

All being well, I’ll get some decent photos for a later posting.

For the most part they don’t, of course. A few weeks ago we had Halloween here. For a start, it’s a public holiday in France (November 1st is All Saints Day) and they haven’t gotten the hang of Trick or Treat and instead wander round the streets demanding bon-bons (sweets) from the locals.

Obviously they don’t mark November 5th as being anything special but the next special day was Remembrance Day which “obviously” is an international thing, isn’t it?

Well, sort-of. Yet again it is a public holiday here but they don’t seem to have the minutes silence at 11am. Neither do they have poppies which I’d always assumed were the standard symbol around Europe, if not the world although Wendy tells me that it’s a sprig of rosemary in Australia. I’ve not seen the equivalent of either in France though they do take the day quite seriously with small ceremonies in every village in France as you can see.

For a start, the actual holiday is November 1st (All Saints Day) when just about everything in France closes, much to the surprise of foreigners who are more used to Halloween being just for the kids and being the day before.

Secondly, it’s not really a French traditional holiday and they haven’t quite got the hang of it yet. Imported from America (no doubt to the disgust of a number of the French), there are numerous outfits for the kids and, of course, the usual Halloween goodies seen elsewhere. On the other hand, they may well have the outfits and troup round the houses but haven’t worked out a proper translation of “trick or treat” and therefore just go round the streets calling out for “bon bons” (sweets). The householders, for the most part haven’t got the hang of it either so the vast majority of houses remain closed and it’s noticeable that the groups of kids are very selective in the houses that they call on.

Anyway, if you’re on holiday here around Halloween, don’t forget to buy your petrol etc. on the 31st of October and wonder at the spread of an American holiday to France.

However, during the last year we happened to get an Auchan loyalty card and about a week ago received the French equivalent of a pre-approved credit card application from them. It said on the letter that all we needed to do to collect the card was to bring along the letter with the attached sample card to Auchan with proof of ID and bank details. Frankly, we didn’t believe that it would be that simple. Besides this being the land of documentation mountains, we had previously tried to open a savings account with Auchan and couldn’t provide them with enough documentation so we figured that there was no way they’d actually issue us with a credit card.

Anyway, as the offer expires in a week or so, yesterday we went to Auchan (similar to a really big Tesco) out of curiosity.

They took the letter, asked us how long we’d been living here, how long we’d been working here and in under 20 minutes we walked away with a credit card with a EUR 7500 limit on it!

Given the lack of credit referencing facilities in France, this seems incredibly stupid of them. After all, the only information that they could check was my passport, address (from the loyalty card letter), and bank details. They didn’t even ask anything about our income or even proof that we were working here for that matter. Also odd is that whilst we use Carrefour every week and have had their loyalty card for well over two years they haven’t come out with any invitation for their card yet we’ve had the Auchan loyalty card for under a year and only go there maybe once a month.

As it’s a French card, the facilities that it has are quite different from those on offer elsewhere in the world. We kicked off with a 10% discount voucher for our first trolleyload put through the checkout plus a EUR 15 gift card so we’re already ahead. As it’s an Auchan card, it also comes with a 10% discount on any Auchan products bought on Tuesdays. Naturally, it comes with a charge: EUR 8 per year from next year which is about typical for store cards issued here. Other odd features are that after 3 months we can get a EUR 300 bank transfer from the card to our bank account and after 6 months we can use it in the ATMs in Post Offices here. Interestingly, there doesn’t appear to be a cash advance fee for that though obviously there are interest charges.

However, by far the biggest advantage of the card is that we can now use the checkouts reserved for Auchan cardholders. Thanks to the loyalty that the French have to their own banks, these particular checkouts rarely have any queue at all.

Our next challenge is to get it upgraded to a proper Visa/Mastercard.