Holy cow, stinky cheese

If there's some stinky cheese in a forest and no one around to smell it, does it have a stinky smell?

I pose this question a week before my departure because dairy philosophy is more fun than saying goodbye.

This evening I said au revoir to the folks in my running club. Being a) French and b) runners with enormous appetites, they're a lively bunch of gourmandes. They asked what food I'll bring home and what food I'll miss most. I said I'm bringing back various chocolates and Dijon mustard and other nice things, but what I'll miss most is the one thing I can't bring along, for fear of melting, smashing, and, er, smelling: cheese.

Cheese...oh, cheese. Le fromage. Not to toot their horn - since they do it fine themselves - but the French have mastered l'art du fromage and left the rest of us with milk pails in hand, wondering what is that tangy, intoxicating odor?

Describing cheese feels cheesy. But when in France... bah, talk about cheese. It's a national past time, like striking and vacation.

Some fromage is sweet and unctuous, some sharp and firm. Some comes in rounds, some in blocks. Some has blue streaks, some has green spots. Americans have our notions about stinky French cheese, but most doesn't smell bad at all. But some does. And oh la vache - oh the cow (holy cow) - even mild French cheeses make the fridge stinky. And I mean plug-your-nose-and-scrunch-up-your-face stinky.

My favorites are ewe's milk cheese, followed by fresh goat cheese (the consistency of fresh mozzarella with the billy goat's kick!), and finally le Beaufort, a hard, cow's milk cheese nicknamed Prince of the Gruyeres (similar to Americans' Swiss cheese).

But frankly, my dears, the flavor, textural, and visual variety is as resplendent as the myriad spring flowers in bloom around me.

Now for some cheese-y anecdotes.

1. I saw a woman drop eighty euros on cheese like fromage was her middle name. Anais and I were at market in Annecy, in the Savoie region of eastern France. I stood fixated as Cheese Seller and Cheese Consumer interacted with fluid gestures - she pointing, he cutting, she nodding, he wrapping. She asked, he advised, she listened; it was a beautiful exchange. The five euros I handed over in exchange for a Tommette (a little Tomme, or sweet skim-milk cheese) de Savoie felt like child's play. Delicious child's play. 

2. I once (not to be repeated) made the smelly mistake of confusing Munster cheese with Muenster cheese. Muenster is a mild, white American cheese, and Munster is a creamy, strong, stinky French cheese. To my nose, it is King Stinky. The shape should have been a warning, as Muenster comes in blocks or slices and Munster in a round wooden box. But I was oblivious until I sunk my teeth into the stuff. Oh la la! It was not unpleasant, but not what I wanted on my toast. And I made the mistake of touching it. My fingers smelled awful, even after multiple washings. Needless to say, I kept my high-fives to a minimum that day.

3. In French, a pie chart is called un camembert (cow cheese from Normandy). Sure, okay, pie is food, too. But in all objectivity, Camembert is funnier. Imagine receiving these instructions from your math teacher:  Now, students, take your pencils and your cheese blocks and graph the percentage of people who prefer cows, those who prefer goats, and those who prefer sheep. Ha!

Admittedly, this last one is not an anecdote, just something I've been wanting to share.

The million-dollar question is, of course, how do the French each so much cheese without splitting their jeans and popping their shirt buttons? The answer is ... portion size, portion size, and portion size. Frequent consumption in small quantities - I'm talking three or four little slices. And there's never the fear that supplies are low, because the corner store has a cheese aisle the size of the dairy farm where those little blocks were conceived.

I know there's good cheese to be found on the other side, despite the pasteurization regulations (who gave that the OK?). What I'll miss is knowing that the cheese course is coming. I'll miss the excitement of not knowing what new kinds await me, and the fun of knowing and tasting more different kinds than I have fingers and toes. I'll miss maps of France with little drawings of cheese instead of cities. Though it's not my favorite, I'll miss stinky cheese.

And if I smell a little funny when you see me, it's the smell of happiness.

This one's for you, Stinky. 

 

Say Please, Dammit!

True or false: the French are rude.

Answer: Ha! It's a trick question that can only be answered on a case by case basis. But for today's purposes, it's false.

I've encountered one rude French waiter, one rude French café owner, and one rude French running partner, but all the rest pass with flying colors. A well-kept secret is that the French are actually incredibly polite. La politesse means serious business in the land of King S'il Vous Plaît and Queen Merci, and like most things French, there's a certain way to do it.

When leaving a place of business, the check-out person or shop owner bids the customer farewell by saying, Merci, bonne journée, au revoir (thanks, have a nice day, bye), always in that order. But what they actually say is Mercibonnejournéeaurevoir! because it's as ingrained and oft-repeated as "How are you? Fine, and you? Fine, thanks." And as automatic as, "Wow, your baby is so cute!"

The customer's response to the shopkeeper's MARB-J (merci, au revoir, bonne journée), as I like to call it, is merci, au revoir. Or, merci, bonne journée. Or, bonne journée, au revoir. Any combination of two will do, but never all three. The customer never says all three.

The MARB-J was easy enough to get down. Within a week of my arrival, I was wishing shop keepers good days before they even started to thank me. The aspect of French politesse that I've had some difficulty mastering is the one that should be the easiest: the one and only S.V.P., s'il vous plaît, the timeless and universal "PLEASE, sir, I want some more!"

Act 1, Scene 1: A sunny Sunday afternoon in Lyon. On the way home from un petit café en terrasse (tiny coffee with a side of sunburn), Vincent and I stopped into a rustic, delightfully aromatic boulangerie for some bread. When it was our turn to order, I smiled and said cheerfully, Bonjour! Alors (so), un pain aux céréales (a whole-grain loaf), et une baguette au sésame. I stood there smiling while the girl behind the bread counter looked at me, waiting.

Vincent swooped gracefully to my rescue: S'il vous plaît, he said, with his darn perfect French intonation and a smile that said, "We come in peace. She's from a foreign land and means no offense. Please let us taste your delicious bread." The girl smiled, nodded, and fetched us the bread.

I felt my face turning the color of an heirloom tomato in August. I laughed nervously and coughed up a pathetic Oui, euh, s'il vous plaît. Merci.

How, HOW could I forget to say please? Lesson 1 of Life as a Civilized Person: say please. Then say thank you. Repeat. I've got a B.A. but no preschool education.

C'est pas grave! Vincent assured me. "It's ok!" (Or "it's not grave!" as a student once told me.) The people behind us smiled, their soft chuckles saying, "How cute, she's just arrived and is learning how to say please and thank you." It's been seven months, my friends. Oy va voy.

I still don't quite understand my difficulty, but I think it's the extra syllables in s'il vous plaît that make it seem like more effort than it's worth. "Please" is so short, so sweet! Or the fact that in English, while it's always better to say please, I think that if I smiled and said jovially, "Hello, I'd like a loaf of your whole grain bread and one sesame baguette!" that it would pass, and might even get a smile back.

Smiles alone don't cut it here, they require an S.V.P. supplement. For the French, s'il vous plaît is more than a humble Please, sir. First, it it a sign of respect for the business transaction at hand. But more importantly, it comes at the end of the transaction to signal that the order is complete. One whole-grain loaf, one sesame baguette, do you read me, over? Yes, I read you, over.

Pardon (par-dohn, emphasis on the dohn) is another funny one. Like "sorry" or "excuse me," it's a versatile interjection. Pardon! when you unintentionally bump into someone. Pardon! when you want to pass a slow walker or squeeze through a group of people. Pardon? when you didn't catch what someone said. Pardon, excusez-moi! when you roll over someone's foot with your shopping cart.

It seems normal enough, you're thinking. But it's not normal! The French pardon themselves significantly more than Americans say "sorry" or "excuse me," or the occasional "ex-scu-zay-mwah." Someone bumps into you? Oh, pardon! Someone pushes past you or between you and the person next to you? Pardon! Someone doesn't understand what you said? Pardon! Someone rolls over your foot with their shopping cart? Oh, pardon!

Then what happens is that the bumper and the bumpee/the pusher and the pushed/the roller and the rolled-over say Pardon! simultaneously. Then both people try again. And again. It's like the endless dance we do upon arriving face-to-face with someone in a hallway or street: both people move to the same side to let the other pass, then both move to the other side, and you mirror each other's steps for what seems like an eternity. Finally someone jumps sneakily to one side to end the dance once and for all.

The problem is, when you pardon someone before she can pardon herself, you steal her pardoning thunder. It's like saying, "You're sorry!" before she can say, "I'm sorry." And what's more, over-pardoning diminishes the power of the pardon, and the power of the word itself. If you're constantly saying you're sorry, at some point people will stop believing you. It's the same reason you don't go around saying "I love you" to people in the street. Well it's not actually the same reason, but both suggest to me that certain words should be used with moderation.

But that's the way it goes here. They're just trying to be polite, and I can, too. In my last month, I'll say s'il vous plaît when I buy bread and join in the symphony of pardons at the supermarket. But I swear, the next time someone rolls over my foot, there will be no pardon from this American. S'il vous plaît!