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The shooting was one of the few scheduled days for us last year and reminded us of the rat race we left in 2004. The previous time we were filmed for TV was in Antaiji Zen monastery in Japan.

Lamastalgia 8/8 will come out on Yle Teema channel twice:

Premier Friday 2nd of April 2010 at 9 pm

Review Sunday 4th of April 2010 at 2:45 pm

Public transportation, trains and buses, and budget flights are the cheapest way to move around. The more south you travel, the cheaper they become. Hitch hiking can take some time, but it is an excellent way to meet people.

Being a member of hospitality exchange communities makes travelling even cheaper. Hospitality exchange works well in Europe except in Spain where many hosts are males looking for female company. If you ask your host, s/he is probably eager to help you to find a room or a flat for rent for a longer stay.

Drugs Are Dear

Alcohol is relatively cheap in the south, especially wine in wine producing countries. White and red wine can cost less than US $2 / bottle. However, stronger liquors are more expensive as taxes are usually tied to the alcohol percentage. The more north in Europe you move, the higher price you pay for alcohol. Nordic countries and Finland are the extreme.

Addictions are expensive in Europe, while they are less expensive in, say Asia. Cigarettes have high taxes, the higher the more north you travel. Also coffee costs a lot, especially in coffee shops. The easiest way to cut costs is by stopping to poison yourself. If a cup of coffee in a coffee shop cost the same as two pounds of carrots, you can easily figure out which one keeps you in better going.

Eating And Sleeping

Eating in restaurants and staying in hotels or hostels are the most expensive ways to travel in Europe. A full tourist meal costs easily over US $30 dollars / per person. With the same price you can buy vegetables and fruits for one week. They cost in a local supermarket, e.g. Lidl, under $US 0.5 / pound everywhere in Europe. The same applies to accommodation. One night in a 3-4 star hotel costs almost the same as renting a room for a month. In two years we have only stayed three nights in a hotel, renting flats or rooms most of the time instead.

Basically the same rules applies to all other countries as well. If you want to show off, visit tourist attractions, and be scammed, travelling will be expensive no matter where you go. On the other hand, living in a modest and ecological, sustainable way reduces costs and enables travelling anywhere.

Visas And Winter

We have enjoyed hassle-free life as we don't need visas or living permits in Europe. These meaningless pieces of papers can cost quite a lot of money when travelling, some US $300-500 per year. They also cause a lot of unnecessary and unnecessary travelling, offer unpleasant experiences and cause uncertainty because of the despotism of local officials. This applies to all countries. Our Chinese and Serbian friends have been rudely mistreated by EU countries when applying for visas.

Winter in Europe is far from pleasant and one of the biggest reasons to stay away. In the north, houses are properly heated, but temperature differences inside and outside can be over 70 degrees F. On top of that, the more north you go, the darker it gets. The south is the opposite: there is no heating and houses are built to be cold as hot summer weathers are form a bigger problem for locals than cold winters. Sometimes it can be 32 degrees F inside at night. For outdoor people who like walking, temperature differences are not pleasant not to mention the physical changes winter makes to the body. And think about the amount of polluting energy wasted for heating. On the other hand potable tap water helps to reduce the amount of plastic bottle trash.

All in all, Europe doesn't differ from other travel destinations. By consuming moderately and choosing for less expensive options, you can travel well anywhere in the world. Hope to see you around!

Marseilles is not only soap

We started our Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur tour from Marseilles. Many French people dream of living at least one year in this lively port city. There are a lot of immigrants which is why the city is also called "Ville arabe", Arabic city. Some parts of the city look like bazaars with street markets and rubbish all around. The city is not particularly clean, but it sure is lively.

Marseilles is a sunny city, but when the wind was blowing, we really had to concentrate in keeping our feet on the ground. Nice is different with its own micro climate. It is open to the sea, but protected from the wind by surrounding hills. In general, the climate in the Riviera is mild even in winter. In December some people were taking sunbaths and even swimming when the rest of France was shivering in the cold.

Nice is nice

Marseilles and Nice could not be any different. One is loved by the French and the other by tourists. Nice is considered posh by many French people, but tourists love it, obviously because of its climate. There are lots of flights from all over Europe to the tiny airport.

In Nice we rented an apartment with Päivi's parents. The city is very touristy all year round and does not feel very French at all, in fact, but rather like an Italian city. The famous beach boulevard, Boulevard des Anglais, is perfect for walking or jogging. On Sundays everybody is there to see and be seen.

Public transportation in Nice area is functional. There are frequent bus connections to all neighbouring cities including Monaco and Menton. A single trip costs one euro whatever the distance. Moreover, when going eastwards, there are superb views over the Mediterranean sea. Little towns follow one another and are worth a hop-on-hop-off bus tour. Päivi especially enjoyed Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat, where you can hike around the small peninsula.

Toulon is the Mediterranean base of the French Navy

From Nice we moved on to Toulon where we stayed the following nine months helping our friend Patrice with his renovation work, and writing books. We finished two manuscripts, a thriller called Back door (Takaportti in Finnish) which will come out on the 29th of September and a book on couple relationships called Happy Together (Onnelliset yhdessä) for which we are looking for a publisher if we choose not to publish it ourselves. Both books are in Finnish.

Toulon has a more French feeling to it compared to Nice. Some people think it is not part of the wealthy Riviera despite its geographical location in the area. There are a lot of unemployed people and immigrants from Africa. The city is not snobbish but a perfectly ordinary French city that just happens to be on the Mediterranean coastline. Toulon hosts the French Mediterranean navy with some huge war ships including their crown jewel: the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.

Doing this and that

We enjoyed daily walks to the nearby mountain, Mont Faron, which is peaceful all year round. The French seem to appreciate more beaches than mountains. There are numerous little paths and roads circulating the mountain so we could select a different route every time. There is also a nice picnic area on top, in a pine tree forest. Cars are the only nuisance. Even when going for a hike, the French have a compulsary need to use their precious tin cans. Apart from walks we had lazy days cooking, washing dishes, watching films, reading and playing computer games.

The weather was sunny most of the year. In winter it sometimes got bitingly cold because of the Mistral wind that is blowing from the The Rhône valley. Springtime was cool and summer warm and dry. There is very little rain, but the wind is quite often strong, sometimes more than 100 km/h, which is rather annoying. Houses are howling and banging because insulation is not particularly well done.

Climate change has effected area which can be seen on the beaches. There are poisonous jellyfish and sometimes swimming is prohibited. Pollution in the city is occasionally quite high, especially on work days when everybody is rushing to work by car. We lived in the city centre and it took a while to get used to the noise and pollution. Now we are heading to discover some smaller cities with a bit less traffic and noise. Perhaps after some more silent times we will long back.

The lady in the customer service booth explained that jogging shoes only have a warranty for textile parts, not for sole. So because there was a hole in the sole of both shoes, nothing could be done. We asked her kindly to provide us proof that we had talked with her about the issue. This would have been necessary for filing a consumer complaint against Carrefour, but she refused without explanation.

Next we asked her name so that we could at least refer to the incident in the complaint, but she refused again. Instead she lost her temper. Our next question was to speak with her superior. She showed a photo of the store manager in a poster hanging on the wall, but added that the manager would be too busy to talk with us anyway. So our only option for having a proof was to take her photo so that she could be identified later if necessary.

At this point the lady got really mad and asked the guards to take our camera. The photos were erased, but the guards agreed to ask some kind of boss to help us. The boss came, yelled at us something in French and ran away. That was their understanding of the quality of service as one of our main source of competitive differentiation.

The shoes cost us 8.90 € and they lasted for less than one week. Our expectation was one year or more, so the annual price of the shoes would have been 462,80 €. According to Carrefour policy quality always corresponds to what the customer explicitly or implicitly wants and must be clearly perceived as such. The value for money must be the best. What do you think, is 462,80€ for jogging shoes the best value for the money?

One can only speculate what will happen when a customer discovers something dangerous in Carrefour food products or children toys. Perhaps someone will have to die before Carrefour shows respect to customers and follows the rules of responsible commerce. Do you dare to use Carrefour?

History

Cheese making does not originate in France, but most probably in the Middle East or Central Asia. The earliest archaeological evidence of cheese making has been found in Egyptian tomb murals, dating to about 2000 BC. According to a legend nomadic tribes learned cheese making accidentally by storing milk in a container made from the stomach of an animal. The milk turned to curd and whey by the rennet of the stomach.

In Ancient Greek and Rome people knew already a dozen of distinct cheeses. Cheese was an everyday food for the rich and the soldiers. Homer's Odyssey describes Cyclops making and storing sheep's and goats' milk cheese. The production methods were similar to the current ones: milk was coagulated, the curd pressed, salted and aged. Historian Pliny described the cheeses favoured by Romans. According to him the best cheeses came from Nîmes, that is from the South of France.

In the Middle Ages cheese was made in monasteries, and many of the now known cheese brands like Le Munster and Le Maroilles, were already recorded. The French word cheese ('fromage') appeared for the first time in 1500. It comes from the Latin word 'forma' that meant the mould used for cheese making.

Today France is the third biggest cheese producer while United States is number one and Germany number two. USA produces cheese mainly for home market whereas France is the number one cheese exporter in the world. The world's largest cheese consumer is a bit surprisingly Greece with its feta cheese (27,3 kilos per person per year. France is the second largest consumer (24 kilos per person per year). The statistics describe year 2004.

Categorization And Quality Control

Cheeses are traditionally divided into seven categories:

Some French cheeses have been awarded an AOC label (l'appellation d'origine contrôlée, controlled term of origin). All AOC products have to hold to a rigorous set of clearly defined standards. They must be produced in a consistent and traditional manner, and ingredients have to be acquired from specifically classified producers in designated geographical areas. Most of the AOC cheeses are named after the production area and others are not allowed to use a part of that name even if it is a town name.

The purpose of the AOC label is to control quality and maintain traditions. The oldest AOC cheeses date from 900-1000. Since then the production methods have varied a lot and some of them have resembled each other only distantly. When the EU started to control AOC cheeses in 1992, a big amount of producers were kicked out. Today AOC cheeses represent 17 per cent of the yearly production in France. There are some 150 AOC labelled products (cheese, butter and cream) in Europe.

Our TOP 10

We tasted all kinds of cheeses and Santeri got back the kilos he lost in Asia. Our
pilgrimage changed finally into a cheeseless diet. The concept of light cheese is quite unknown in France as fat is an integral part of taste. It is better to eat good cheese more seldom than some plastic and rubbery substitutes daily.

We found our favourites quickly, but the choice for TOP 10 was hard. We tasted only a couple of
cheeses that we didn't like (les Tomme and light cheese Fromage de Montagne). There would have been many more good cheeses to add on the list like Le Beaufort, L'Epoisses, Le Livarot, Le Chaourche, Le Pont l'Éveque and Le Reblochon. Please click the photos below to see enlargements.

2. Le Munster (AOC) is an old cheese made from cow milk. It comes
from the Northern provinces of Lorraine ja Alsace near German border. Benedictine monks started
to produce Munster already in the 7th century to preserve milk and feed the ever growing
population surrounding the monastery. Munster's rind is yellow or a bit orange. It is tasty and it has a strong smell. Like any cheese the taste is stronger if the cheese is made with
unpasteurized milk. Munster is flat and round (diameter 13-19 cm, height 2,4-8 cm, weight 1,5
kg). Try cumin bread with it. A cold beer or white wine of Alsace makes a perfect
companion for this great cheese.

3. Le Maroilles (AOC) is another cheese with character made from
cow milk. It comes from the province of Nord-Pas-de-Calais near Belgian border. The cheese
carries the name of the monastery of Maroilles where it was invented in the 10th century.
Maroilles is square by shape and its rind is reddish orange. It resembles a bit Pont-l'Éveque
and Munster. Le Maroilles has a strong smell and taste just like Vieux Lille, L'Époisses and Munster. It goes well with rye bread.

4. Le Roquefort (AOC) is made from sheep milk. It's a classic known in more than 70
countries and the most popular one of imported French cheeses. Roquefort was the first cheese to
get an AOC label in 1925. The history of Roquefort is long as it was already known in the 9th
century. It is produced near the Pyrenees in the town of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. The city
held the monopoly for production already at the times of Charles VI in 1411. Nowadays there are six private
companies producing the cheese and a cooperative who collects milk from more than 2500 sheep
farmers. Roquefort is made only from unpasteurized milk. There are huge cellars in the city
where cheeses are aging in cold and humid (95%) air. It is due to this mysterious alchemy and
the slow aging process that favours the growth of Penicillium Roquefort from which the cheese gets its
unique taste. The production process takes at least three months. Roquefort is a strong and salty blue
cheese. It has a lot more salt than any other cheese. A good Bordeaux or Côte du Rhône goes
beautifully with it. You can also try it with gingerbread like the Finns do.

5. Le Cantal (AOC) is an excellent pressed cheese made from cow milk. It comes from the green province of Auvergne. Cantal is impressive. It is a huge cylinder-shaped piece which weighs 35-45 kilos (diameter 36-42 cm, height 35-40 cm). The cheese is pressed twice. To get one kilo of Cantal ten litres of cow milk is needed. Milk can be pasteurized or unpasteurized. Cantal matures in fresh, sombre and humid cellars. It is sold at different ages. Young Cantal ('jeune' or 'douce') is 1-2 months old, middle-aged Cantal ('entre-deux' or 'doré') 2-6 months and old ('vieux' or 'caractère') more than 6 months. When the cheese gets old, it gets a slight orange shade. Taste varies. In young Cantal you can taste flavours of butter, vanilla and toffee whereas old Cantal is a bit spicy and stronger. It is better to buy the cheese when it is slightly dry as it gets tastier.

6. Goat cheese has a unique, strong taste who some people love and some hate. We tasted numerous farm cheeses, AOC cheeses (e.g. creamy Le Ste-Maure de Touraine) and cheeses with different spice and herb coatings. They are all excellent, but we also discovered that a simple industrially produced goat cheese sold in supermarkets is tasty. With goat cheese you just can't make a bad choice. The biggest difference with farm cheeses and industrially produced cheeses is shape and texture. Industrially produced goat cheese is usually a cylinder, whereas farm cheeses can be small round buttons, cylinders or pyramids. Texture varies from soft to hard ones in farm cheeses while industrial cheese goes easily to pieces. The cheapest, industrial goat cheeses are also perfect for cooking. They only cost some 6-8 Euro per kilo (2008).
At the end of this blog you can find a recipe for a French goat cheese quiche.

7. Le Camembert de Normandie (AOC) comes from the province of Normandy as the name says.
The production is allowed only in five departments. Camembert was invented accidentally by Mme
Marie Harel who intended to do Brie. The production began in 1791. Camembert is made from cow
milk and the process takes 35 days. The cheese is sold in small round boxes. The rind of the
cheese as well as the taste is soft and creamy. It smells strongly of land. All Camembert
cheeses are very alike. The use of unpasteurized milk makes the biggest difference.

8. Le Morbier (AOC) comes from the province of Franche
-Comté, near Swiss border. It is made from cow milk
(Montbéliard and Pic Rouge de l'Est) and the process takes 1,5 months. Morbier is easy to recognize as there is a dark line in the middle of the cheese. It is wood charcoal ('cendre du bois' or 'ligne cendrée') with which the curd is protected. The rind of the cheese goes from beige to orange. Its taste is a kind of mixture of Brie and blue cheese. It is not very strong, but nice and creamy.

9. Saint Felicien comes from the province of Rhône-Alpes from the region of Ardèche,
where some hippies moved after 1968-movement to herd goats. Saint Felicien was originally made
from goat cheese, but nowadays it is made from cow milk or a mixture of the two. The name of
the cheese is unprotected and it is usually produced industrially. It is sold in round plastic
boxes of 180 grams. Saint Felicien is soft and spreadable. It has a medium strong taste and
it's creamy.

10. Le Mont-d'or (AOC) is made from cow milk in the province of
Franche-Comté and also in Switzerland. It is sold only between the 10th of September and the
10th of May. Mont-d'or is soft and creamy, very sophisticated, and it has a slight flavour of
smoke. It is sold in round cylinders weighing 700 grams. Mont d'or is often enjoyed like fondue.
Make a small hole in the middle of cheese, pour some white wine, heat the cheese and enjoy it
either with a spoon or as a dip.

Market Culture

The French appreciate farm cheeses ('fromage fermier'). These cheeses can best be found straight from the farm or from the market. There are markets in every city and even in small villages every week. Markets are a social happening where people go to chat and to have some coffee.

Farm cheeses are made from unpasteurized milk. It is an advantage as the taste is better. There is a long tradition in the use of unpasteurized milk and people are not afraid of the natural bacteria of milk. On the contrary, it has some advantages as unpasteurized products do not cause constipation like pasteurized or UHT treated products. In some other countries where people are used to industrial, often overly hygienic production this would be a cause for concern. Pasteurization can also be government-imposed. In France the use of unpasteurized milk is opposed by a big dairy company called Lactalis. It has more than 40 factories and 34 500 employees. It is a paradox that the inventor of pasteurization, which kills the good taste of cheese, was French. Mr Louis pasteur, a chemist and a biologist, showed his students in 1865 that heating killed bacteria of milk.

The French have become more eco, or bio conscious. They want to buy their cheese from a farmer who they know. Animal diseases like mad cow disease have brought people to farms to see how and under what kind of conditions the cheese is made. The French also like to support small companies instead of big international or national chains. In small towns and villages people often buy from their friends and producers buy each other's products.

Industrially made cheese is avoided, at least when showing off to other people. In reality, people buy more cheese from the supermarket as it is cheaper. The price difference is huge. The cheapest industrial cheeses cost 4-10 Euro a kilo, whereas farm cheeses can cost 15-40 Euro a kilo (2008). Farm cheeses are delicacies and industrial cheeses everyday products. Even though both are consumed, the French tend to judge the dominance of industrial cheeses as in the next quotation from a French playwright Eugène Ionesco:

Il y a toujours des comptoirs, il y aura toujours du vin, mais le Camembert, ce n'est plus la meme chose. Il n'y en a plus de bon. ça se fabrique industriellement. C'est plus facile, les jeunes sont plus paresseux. (Eugène Ionesco: Le Solitaire, 1973)

There are always bars, there's always wine, but Camembert is not the same any more. You can't get any good. It's industrially produced. It's easier and young people are lazier. (Eugène Ionesco: Le Solitaire, 1973. Translation PK.)

Big supermarkets have huge cheese counters where you can buy both industrial and farm cheeses. You don't necessarily have to travel to remote farms although some cheeses can only be available in specialized cheese shops or at certain time of the year like Mont-d'Or.

Cheese In French Diet

Cheese is an integral part of French food culture. An old French proverb holds that a meal without cheese is like an eyeless beauty (Un repas sans fromage est une belle à qui il manque un œil. Brillat-Savarin: La Physiologie du goût.)

Cheese is served at the end of the meal, 'entre la poire et le fromage'. The saying dates back to the Middle Ages. Traditionally after the meal people always ate fresh fruit and cheese. The cheese plate can crown both lunch and dinner whereas in the breakfast cheese is unknown. For French it would be funny to eat cheese in the morning like many Scandinavians do. They prefer breakfast cereal or bread and marmalade.

With cheese the French usually serve bread or salad or just cheese. Bread has to be as neutral as possible, baguette being the best choice. If possible, take a saltless baguette. On a French cheese plate you can usually find 4-5 cheeses, but for an everyday meal 1-2 is enough.

It is a good idea to take cheeses out of the fridge at least one hour before eating so that they warm up to room temperature before eating. This way they regain their taste. If room temperature is not too warm, you can also store cheeses outside the fridge, but preferably in the dark. Not everybody likes the strong taste of cheese, though. They place the cheese plate in veranda or put some thyme or laurel on the shelf to cover the smell.

Cutting the cheese is an art. There are rules for every shape of cheese which you can get from cheese shops. The easiest rule to remember, however, is to cut cheese so that everybody gets the same amount of rind. It is not considered good and many people don't eat it all.

The French consume most Emmental and Camembert. Emmental is used almost only in cooking. Another popular choice for this purpose is Couloummiers which is cheap. The most popular AOC labelled cheeses are hard cheeses like Comté (43 555 tons/year) and Cantal (18 828). The third is Roquefort (18 719) and the fourth Le Reblochon (16 636). The statistics date from the year 2005.

one of the most well-known cheese brands in France might be The Laughing Cow, La vache qui rit, which was introduced in 1921. The Laughing Cow has very little to do with cheese, however, children seem to like it. Many hotels also serve it at the breakfast for foreigners. In Vietnam, it was the most easily available substitute for cheese.

Research & Development

European Union has lowered cheese production in France so that now there is underproduction. Cheese making is, however, tempting for some young entrepreneurs who dream of countryside life. They are the new followers of 1968 and hippie movement. However, farm work is far from a daydream. There are no vacations or days off. Cows, sheep and goats have to be milked twice a day. You can read about cheese makers' life at our blog as
we visited a goat cheese farm in the province of Limoges.

Farms develop their own cheeses to differentiate in the fierce local market. They get help from regional Cheese Technicians who consult, give courses and assess quality. We met one of the Regional Technicians, Mr. Michel LePage, who has also consulted Swedish farms who wanted to start making cheese from unpasteurized milk. In Sweden the farms arrange cheese tastings so that customers have a chance to try out new products.

In France there are competitions and expert panels. When assessing cheeses technically experts pay attention to curd, texture, colour, and taste. There are also some cheese clubs (club de dégustation) for whom cheese is an excellent way to show off.

A Cheese Recipe

Goat Cheese Quiche

5 eggs
1 small pot of crème fresh
salt, pepper
1 goat cheese (180g)
10-15 walnuts
100 g grated cheese

Cheesy Season's Greetings!

Now you are ready for smelling and tasting French cheeses. Remember though that "Nothing is free except cheese in a mousetrap" like Russians say. You will get fat if you fail to consume cheese moderately. Oh, and if you take a photo you can "say cheese" in French, it's "dites fromage".

The easiest way to go to Corsica from France is to take a ferry from Toulon or Nice to Bastia, or to Ajaccio. The 10-hour voyage was comfortable as the ferry was half empty and we could sleep on the restaurant benches. We arrived in Bastia which is a small, beautiful port city. Corsicans say the city is for rich people so housing tends to be more pricey than in other parts of the island. People were friendly and we didn't detect the suspiciousness that we had been warned about.

Corsican Separatism

Our next destination Corte was different. This tiny university city is one of the strongholds of Corsican separatists. When we arrived to the city, some of the French names in bilingual street signs were sprayed over and the abbreviation FLNC (the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica) was written on approximately one third of the buildings in the city. There were also texts like "Arabe fora" or "I Francesi Fora" (IFF). Arabs and French, go away.

Corsican people don't like foreigners. The reason is historical. Corsica has always been vulnerable to invasions thanks to its exuberant coastline (more than 1000 kilometres). The enemies had an easy access to the island. Corsica used to be part of Italy, but it's now under the French governance. Corsicans show their dislike by putting bombs to the houses and cars of French people living in the island. Usual targets are politicians, high civil servants or rich, foreign landowners. We met a Corsican policeman who had been working there for four years, and during that time there had been some 50 bomb attacks. Outsiders are rarely hurt in the attacks.

Corsicans are proud of their piece of land and want to keep it for themselves. They have their own language and culture, and they are not too interested in external influence. This concerns, of course, only a minority of Corsicans, namely those who are staying in the island. Corsica has some 280 000 inhabitants whereas there are some two million Corsicans living outside the island, for example 300 000 in Marseille alone.

Separatist movements are appreciated among the islanders, although sometimes they only fight with each other. We saw some Corsican students who were part of a student association called Jeunes Paoli, which is a bit like Hitler Jugend used to be in Germany in the eve of WW2. At the time Jeunes Paoli students were striking in the university because of administrative problems, namely corruption. They had chained all the doors so that the students couldn't go to their classes.

The World's Slowest Train

From Corte we continued to Ajaccio and crossed the country by a cute, little diesel train of three wagons. Train is quite a nice way to travel through the island although Corsicans themselves don't trust it. There are often strikes and the connections are not frequent. In addition, Corsicans are, just like the French, extremely dependent on their cars and couldn't imagine living without their precious, unecological tin cans. In Corsica travelling by car is not convenient as the floods wipe out tiny serpentine roads and block access to villages.

We were not in a hurry, so train was more enjoyable. It is extremely slow. A 70-kilometre trip took two hours but the views were stunning: snow-topped mountains, clear water mountain rivers, and lots of forest that cover 40 percent of the island. The weather changes a lot according to where you stay and even within one place. We saw beautiful and warm sunshine, rain and a hailstorm during one day. Up in the mountains there was snow. As the distances are short, you can easily ski in the mountains and swim in the sea during the same day. In December, however, the sea was a bit too chilly for us.

Questionable Value

Compared to the mainland, Corsica is unreasonably expensive, but that is likely to apply to foreigners only. Outsiders are not welcomed and if they enter the island, they must pay for it. That appeared to be the Corsican attitude. Food wise the prices were quite OK. In bigger cities there are supermarkets where you can find reasonable prices, although fruits and vegetables tend to be much more expensive than in France as most of the products are imported. It is not hard to imagine how bad it can be during the high season.

Customer service varied from very rude to very friendly as everywhere, so we can't really say that we agree with those French people who avoid Corsica because of its people. Corsican separatism, however, is as funny as Tibetan: the place could never survive without French businesses, money and infrastructure. It was a beautiful place to visit, but we don't see the point in dividing this tiny world to even smaller pieces. It would be better to get rid of all countries as they divide people instead of uniting them.

Warm South Coast

From Perpignan we continued towards Montpellier stopping in the little city of Narbonne on the way. Montpellier is nowadays one of the biggest cities in France. It used to be the 20th city only some fifteen years ago, but holds now the 8th position thanks to the university students and job seekers.

Montpellier people come from all parts of France and they have a healthy attitude towards their home town: it's just a city, nothing to boast about. The city is young unlike the neighbouring Nîmes which dates from the Roman era.

The train ride to Nîmes was just half an hour. On the coast distances are really short, but note: none of the cities are really on the coast unlike in Spain. Not that it mattered this time, though. The weather was warm, but not warm enough for swimming.

Hiking and eating berries

Southern France is the area of Occitan, a Romance language. It is taught at school, but has no official status in the country. Street names are in both languages, though, which gives a nice, exotic touch to the area.

We had a chance to get acquainted with local vegetation and landscape as we went hiking near Nîmes. The arbutus (in French arbousier) trees were blossoming and their berries were really tasty. A nice break from the busy city life.

Migration causes social problems and some of the suburbs of Toulouse have a bad reputation. Well, you couldn't figure this out just visiting suburbs as they seem to be very peaceful, but in the big French riots a few years ago Toulouse people were for example burning cars, and the atmosphere in the city was tense.

We had again a chance to meet great people. Our original idea was to stay only a few of days in the city, but our visit stretched to one week. We went to see mountain boarding, collected beetroots with local organic farming association members, and Päivi rehearsed some African dancing. All these are very popular in France. This time we didn't explore much the surrounding areas, but we will surely return as we heard so many good things e.g. about the hippie area of Ariège. Besides, France is one of our favourite countries.

Our travels took us towards Spain through the impressive Pyrenees. There was a slow local train that stopped in many lovely picturesque villages. At the border just beside Andorra we continued first by bus in the most mountainous area, and then by train. The views were awesome with autumn colours and the weather got gradually warmer and more humid.

The Capital Of Tapestry

Well, the nothing to see -part was not completely true. There is one thing that draws tourists to Aubusson: tapestry, that is handicrafts that are hanging from the walls and storing dust. They are made a bit in the same way as carpets used to be made in Finland with a thing called hand loom. Aubusson's tapestry is world-famous. Even Bret Easton Ellis's protagonist Patrick Bateman in American Psycho owns a piece of tapestry originating from the city.

The weather was superb, most of the time 20-35 degrees Celsius. People tried to scare us with continuous rain, but the reality turned out to be quite different. This summer was exceptionally dry. This part of the country gets usually a lot of showers and that is why it's called the Green Desert.

We cooked and baked a lot as we had a big oven in our apartment. It felt luxurious after Asia where we had to fry everything in a wok pan. Another blessing was heating. At some nights the temperature dropped down to 10 degrees Celsius, but we could just turn heating on unlike in Hong Kong. Thanks to the quietness of the city, we had the door unlocked all the time. There wasn't even any key.

Pluses And Minuses Of Europe

We have now stayed half a year in Europe. People have been asking us what does it feel like after a few years' break. Here are some of our pluses and minuses of Europe compared to Asia, where we spent the previous two years:

Limousin is one of the old hippie areas, though most of the goat farms are located further in the South. There are about 3500 goats in the province. The cheese production is marginal on a national scale, but the producers are dedicated and passionate according to a leaflet published by local farmers.

The Secret Of Goat Cheese

We met a couple, Richard and Véronique, who are running their goat cheese farm in Pontarion, near Aubusson. They offered
us a pragmatical insight to the secrets of cheese making; how to turn one liter of goat milk with a drop of rennet and a bit of the root of cheese into curd cheese in a day, then put it into moulds, add a bit of salt, turn it a couple of times, and finally let it dry in a steady temperature. Please check the photos to see how it happens.

Producing cheese is hard work and does not attract the young who appreciate more their 35-hour work week and vacations. Richard has to get up early to milk his 58 goats. After that the goats have to be taken to the paddock. In the evening the goats are fetched back into the barn and milked for the second time. This routine has to be performed every single day around the year. It results 180 liters of milk, which Richard's wife, Véronique, turns into delicious goat cheese. 0,75 liters of milk gives 150 grams of fresh cheese which will dry up in a few days to a ready-made cheese puck weighing 75 grams.

Cheese Is Like Wine

The age of cheese correlates to the price similarly to wine. It is stored in a temperature-controlled fridge for aging. Some are contaminated with penicillin for making blue cheese. The shape is either a leaf, a cylinder or a puck. The leaf is called La Feuille du Limousin. The shape comes from a leaf of a chestnut tree, which is the symbol of Limousin. The taste depends on aging but mostly on food that the goats are eating. In this farm goats feed on grain, grass and hay.

On top of farming and production there is a twice a week trip to the local markets in Bourganeuf and Aubusson for sales. Markets have an important social function for French people. Buying products from farmers is also considered a sign of support to their efforts. According to Véronique, people are nowadays interested in how their food is produced, and they like to visit farms, especially organic. However, EU is inventing new laborious regulations and trying to forbid unpasteurized milk which is vital for producing good cheese with a strong taste.

If you are interested in cheese, we recommend to visit Véronique and Richard in Limousin:

Richard and Véronique Weimann
La Roussille Chavanat
23250 Chavanat
France
Tel/fax +33 5 55 66 60 29

We must confess that we have never seen such hard-working hippies, not even in Finland. As a result of our cheese pilgrimage and after taking hundreds of cheese photos we are considering to write a book about cheese. Thank you, Véro and Richard!

What made the house special?

Thomas was motivated by the idea of building something outside the mainstream. He wanted to prove that it is possible to build a house without harming nature. The house is passive which means that it will consume only a minimal amount of external energy. It will use for example sun for heating and rain water for showering and drinking. However, we are still convinced that a tent is more ecological than any house can ever be.

For us it was interesting that Thomas used wood in building like people do in Finland. In France, stone is usually the choice and the art of wood building is still considered high technology although more and more people are becoming aware of its advantages. Still some people are afraid that a wooden house is harder to sell than a stone house.

Some past eco-experiences

Thomas' project was perhaps the first sound effort we have encountered so far. Although financial interests had blurred and inflated a bit the original goal of eco-friendliness, it was not driven by sales and marketing efforts like most bio, green, eco, and organic things appear to be. Growth can never be sustainable, the whole idea is absurd, unless there is an unlimited amount of resources available in the world.

We have felt most of the time that people are just showing off with eco-products. They want to indicate their support to small businesses claiming to produce eco-friendly products and make sure to buy healthy products for their own good. These people have been young, environmentally conscious, and not too wealthy. This is a bit sad in a way that businesses use blatantly their customers' naivety to make more money without really caring for the nature.

One good example of eco-marketing are energy-saving lamps. They save a little bit of energy and might even last longer, but have you ever thought how much more damaging their production is than that of regular bulbs, and what kind of materials are used for them? In addition, if you throw away the good old bulbs to exchange them to new ones, you certainly cause more ecological damage than do any good. The same applies to new eco-cars. Getting rid of an old, still functional car will pollute much more than driving with a new eco-car could ever reduce pollution even if we forget completely the impact of the manufacturing process itself.

If you consider ecological issues a bit deeper, you end up playing the social game of yes-but. Cars are not ecological at all, but walking is. Yes, that is correct, you might say, but you need a car to be able to go to work. Another example. We can claim that having lights at home is not ecological. You could sleep during the dark time and stay awake when there is sunlight like people do in Cambodia. However, the answer of the modern man is yes, but you need to be productive also when there is no light. You can play this game forever and eventually realize that making money and thinking in an ecological way are opposites to each other. No business can ever be ecological. The only way to be truly eco-friendly is to live without money or otherwise you will be just falling into various marketing traps and cause more damage with your actions.

Green perspectives world wide

In New Zealand we saw how a well-designed recycling scheme can turn to an environmental problem. Everyone was washing all their tin cans, glass jars, and bottles with washing liquid and warm water. They put them to green bags in front our their houses and then a car came to pick up all the green bags. The waste was taken to local recycling centres and put into shelves for a few months so that anyone who was interested in the stuff could have the ones he wanted. After that, the recycling waste was transported with big trucks to harbour and shipped to Australia for processing as New Zealand doesn't have any facilities of their own. Just think how much energy the whole process consumed and how much additional pollution it caused.

Similar things happen everywhere. It is simply not enough to appear to be eco-friendly and go halfway, but ask what is the total ecological impact. In France yoghurt is sold in small plastic cans and there is no ecological packing (i.e. bigger packages made of carton) available. French eco-freaks still buy the products because they feel there is no choice. However, the choice is not to buy such products because buying them will encourage companies to continue doing so. It shows that buyers are silently accepting the idiocy.

Our conclusion is similar to the one Arto made in his article about eco-travel: if you purchase the cheapest products and try to minimize the amount of money you use, you end up living more ecologically. Even the choice of your living place matters. For example living in Finland is consuming much more energy and spoiling the environment than anywhere closer to the equator with a milder climate. And, on the other hand, if you want comfort, to own things and to think highly of yourself, you will end up living non-ecologically. But in both cases that is your choice and yours alone.

Back to the track

And now back from ecological issues to Franche-Comté. Thomas and Li are building their house in Héricourt, which is a small town located between Belfort and Montbéliard and serves as their suburb. From there we continued to Besançon, a little-known city but certainly worth a visit if you want to dig a bit deeper in French culture than just visiting Paris. The city is attractive with old buildings and a river crossing the city centre, and the people of Besançon are delightfully modest. They are proud of their simple life style compared for example to wealthier, more touristy and more expensive Dijon.

Have A Warm Midsummer Or A Mild Midwinter!

In our previous article we discussed tourism related issues.

Smelly cheeses

The village itself was beautiful and quiet, ideal for a relaxing holiday for ever so busy Finns. We enjoyed lazy days reading, cooking, having walks, and exploring nearby, picturesque villages. Wildlife offered occasional surprises including a fox, a wild boar just like from Asterix comics, lots of forest moles and hawks, and an owl.

The biggest city nearby was Beaune (pronounced like Bonn in Germany), living from wine tourism. The city is very wealthy and bourgeois like Dijon which is also popular among tourists, both French and foreign. The cities are full of little souvenir, wine, cheese, and delicacy shops. Wine is here a bit like Buddhism in Tibet, and sometimes cheese looked like a means to show off. It is a sacrilege for the French to buy cheese or bread from a supermarket, or in general favour industrial products.

In addition to Päivi´s wine tasting we continued our cheese pilgrimage. The most famous Burgundy cheeses are l'Epoisses, La Chaource, Le Mâconnais, and Le Langres. L'Epoisses became our favourite. It is one of the strongest cheeses leaving a nice smell indoors and sticking also to hands. If you want to avoid gaining weight but enjoy cheese, you can just sniff some l'Epoisses!

The previous travel story from France was about Le Centre.

We spent a month in the valley of Loire and explored cities of Blois, Orléans and Tours. We met again great people who introduced us to the best of France. The areas were near Paris, just one or two hours away by fast TGV trains, but the mentality is completely different. People are not stressed and arrogant, fighting with each other in metro and traffic chaos like they sometimes appear to do in the busy and important capital.

The spring was on its way and the weather was from time to time quite chilly. It was also raining a lot, more than in any other country we have visited. This shouldn't have been a surprise at all as France is, on a global scale, a Northern country excluding its Mediterranean provinces.

For us the main attraction were again the people, but also the food, namely the exquisite French cheeses. When visiting a French grocery giant in China and asking for cheese, we got some yoghurt instead. After two years in Asia without much dairy products we really enjoyed the selection of over three hundred flavours and brands of cheese that the country has to offer.

Cuckoo Clocks And Cowbells

From France we continued to Switzerland that we had earlier passed. It is peculiar how many myths there are about Switzerland which is, after all, located in the heart of Europe. It is supposed to be boringly conservative, picturesque, and dirt expensive without much other than the Alps to see.

We travelled to the German-speaking area which was very German indeed. People were not paying too much attention to external things like their looks. Basel was jammed with pharmaceutical factories and their huge chimneys, the river Rhein busy transporting goods and people dressed casually. Also the consummation of abusive substances is more like in Germany than in France.

If the churches of Switzerland were made of wood, they would all have been burned down long time ago, like many churches in Finland are. They have an irritating habit of reminding everyone about time by chiming the bells every fifteen minutes, and the number of hours every full hour. Fortunately the Rolexes do not do the same. Otherwise they would drive everyone crazy around the world.

We met again some great, very non-conservative people and had a chance to enjoy a couple of parties. The sun was shining, temperature was already more than twenty degrees Celsius and life seemed quite easy-going though busy as in Europe in general. We again remembered that time is money, or at least a noisy nuisance when talking about Switzerland.