Gorges du Verdon

Photo time. On Saturday, we took the day to drive north for a couple of hours to the Gorges du Verdon, an area somewhat inland in the mountains with an enormous gorge running through the middle. The Lac de Sainte-Croix sits at the bottom of 700 meters of plummeting rock face, and the Verdon river, feeding into the lake, winds off between the mountains. The water is a shockingly, incredibly, deep, clear turquoise whose color you can see even way up on the ridge of the gorge. It’s truly phenomenal. We armed ourselves with picnic supplies and ate lunch on a random deserted hilltop amidst the trees, and then started winding our way down to the lake, where we rented canoes and went boating and jumping off the boats to go swimming in the lake. No photos from the boating part, alas, and these here really don’t do the lake’s sparkling color justice.

(Click on the photos to make them full-size.)

On the way down

The river winds between the mountains, carving out the gorge.

Panorama

After the boating and swimming expedition, we stopped in the little town of Moustiers-Ste-Marie, a village forcibly shoved into the mountain side and voted one of the prettiest towns in France. (When I excitedly pointed this out, François suggested that there were a lot of towns that had been given this designation, but conceded that in fact this particular one was probably very nice indeed.) When I was in Provence in May 2003 with my parents, we were going from somewhere (maybe Toulouse?) to somewhere else (maybe Nice or Cannes?), and we stopped here. I had an incredibly clear picture in my head of what this town looked like, and sure enough, 8 years later, it looked about the same. (Not so surprising for a town that laments its “demographic haemorrhage” in the 14th century!) It was quaint and picturesque with flat plains of identical, shingled roofs. Built into the mountain, above the town, was the church – well positioned so you’d have to do some work for your weekly praying. It did afford quite incredible views of the town and the surrounding mountains, like the one below:

Moustiers-Ste-Marie

Driving back home that night at 10, when it was nearly completely dark except for a minute glowing orange-ness way off in the distance, we passed through unseen lavender fields that bombarded the car (with its open windows) with lavender smells that enveloped everything and seemed to come from everywhere (which, admittedly, it did). We also passed  several sunflower fields, full of flowers that all faced exactly the same direction and which I must assume was towards the sun.

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In other news, I have successfully moved into an apartment in Marseille! (See Going Postal.) This is the view from my living room windows:

Marseille lit up at night, and Notre Dame de la Garde glowing on the hill in the distance.

Insistently canceling a bank account

Friday morning, I successfully managed to close the bank account that I opened Thursday afternoon.

As you might recall, this bank account that I opened at La Banque Postale came with a confused and overly-friendly bank operator and the minor problem of not being allowed to deposit any money into it for a week. After some soul-searching Thursday night, I figured it would be a better idea to close the whole thing before it was too late and they had already captured my money, and try again with a proper bank.

So first thing Friday morning, quick like a bunny, I scurried into the post office and sat around waiting for my so-helpful-it-hurts incompetent bank man to emerge so I could snatch my papers out from under him before he got a chance to file them away. When it was my turn, he lit up, all excited to see me — little did he know that I was about to break his heart and take my account details elsewhere. We went into his office, and I said, rather timidly in hopes of not hurting his feelings, that I really needed to be able to deposit money immediately, and thus I wanted to cancel the account.

It’s clear that he’s taken this as a personal affront. What do you mean you want to close the account? he says. Don’t you have faith in me? I told you that I’d protect you.

It’s not you, I reply, going for my best commiseration voice. It’s simply the terms of the account; I need to be able to deposit money right away and I can’t wait until next week for it to be open.

But it’s only 5 nights! It’s not a big deal. You’ll be fine until Wednesday or Thursday. I don’t understand; why don’t you trust me?

Listen, I say, switching from kind befuddlement to serious studiousness, this is my own personal situation. I need to close the account. Do you still have the dossier with my papers? Can I just take it back from you and then have the account closed?

With a sigh, he sits down, shuffles through the papers on his desk and finds my folder (sure enough, unfiled as of yet), all the while saying, very hurt, “Je comprends, vous n’avez pas confiance en moi! Je vois, je vois, c’est pas un problème.” (I understand, you don’t trust me! I see, it’s ok, really.) You see, he explains very patiently, this is why I told you not to put any money in when you opened the account, because I knew if you changed your mind, then you wouldn’t be able to get the money out. So see, it’s really very good that you didn’t deposit anything yesterday, because if you had, you wouldn’t have been able to change your mind today! I’ve had Americans do that before, want to change their minds the next day, and that’s why I always advise people to open the account with 0, instead of depositing money immediately. And it was a good idea, wasn’t it?

He writes ANNULÉ across the front of the account form and has me sign beneath it. I ask him to give me back the second copy of my papers – if nothing else, I’ll need the xerox of François’s passport and renting affidavit so I can bring it to a different bank – but he assures me that he doesn’t have them as he had given them back to me the previous day. I was 100% certain that this was not in fact the case. No, he insisted. You have those papers. Remember that nice folder I gave you yesterday, with the flowers on it? Where is that? They’re inside.

I don’t have the folder with me, I explain, but I can assure you that you did not give me back a copy of everything. But if you can’t find them, just give me the dossier with all the originals, and then that will de facto close the account, since you won’t have any of my papers!

Nonononono, he insists. I definitely gave them back to you. Where did you put them? Look, where could they be if I have them? And he goes through a big, exaggerated show of holding up the trash can, looking under the cover of the copy machine, puttering through a few of the many papers scattered across the desk, all, of course, to no avail.

I stare at him and shrug. He pauses for a moment, and then says, upon reflection, You know, maybe you’re right. Maybe I do have your papers! And if you’re right, of course, you’re right, and you should indeed be right. Let’s see. Some more shuffling in a hidden box somewhere and, lo and behold! the other copy of the papers gets magically produced, and he hands them back to be.

Ok. Mission 1 completed: necessary papers procured so I can re-open an account somewhere else. Mission 2, definitely closing this one, and potential Mission 3, getting back all of the papers (i.e., the bank’s copy) so they have no information on me, still uncompleted.

I ask him to give me back the original papers as well, so the account will definitely not be opened, but he says they need the papers in order so that they can close the account. (Don’t ask how this makes sense.) But at this point he’s a bit confused; he’s lost his firm moral standing what with my retraction of confidence in him. I ask if I can just take a quick look at the packet of papers he’s got. He hands them to me, and, very smoothly (if I do say so myself), I remove the xerox of my and François’s passports, all the while assuring him, “I’ll just take these, don’t worry, it’s much easier this way.” Telling him it’s easier makes him complacent. Ok, he says, a bit bewildered. Whatever you say.

So that account is closed, or at least un-openable since they have no official documentation, and I’ve got an appointment with BNP Paribas for Monday morning. Seems I’d gotten my way just by assuring this guy that it was much easier to do things this way. Who can but resist taking the easy way out?