Juhannuspäivää is the name Finland gives to midsummer. On midsummer day, Finland and the Scandinavian countries have huge communal parties that are immense fun, and so on 21 June I always have warm thoughts of Helsinginkeskus (Helsinki city center) overtaken by youths in graduation sailor caps, dressed in overalls and, well, drinking. Lots of drinking. For at least 24 hours straight.

This is my patio as it looked a few moments ago. In a month or two I’ll finally get my tax refund and have paid off the majority of the non-mortgage loans I had to take out in order to furnish my apartment last year. (My previous apartment was a furnished rental, so I had practically no furniture of my own and, especially, no appliances.) To pre-celebrate, yesterday I got myself something I’ve wanted for the longest time: a deck chair! It’s a solid oak frame, sold by Habitat and on sale once a year — which happens to be now. Once the tax refund has well and truly arrived, my next purchase will be a small oven, since I’m going mad without one. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a gluten (wheat, oats, etc.) and casein (all animal milks) intolerance, which means I can’t just order out for pizza, for example, and nor can I buy regular pies and cakes. Gluten- and casein-free baked goods are sold frozen and require an oven to cook them. Homemade pizza, freshly-baked lemon and apple pies… I can hardly wait.

Meanwhile I’m making do with delicious market finds. Today there were vegetables grown in Nice for sale, so I got some courgettes trompettes (flower zucchini) and an aubergine. I also got a type of melon I’ve always wanted to try, called le puits d’amour, “the love well”. Last week I tried a Charentais Carlencas melon, which was the most divinely delicious melon I have ever had the pleasure to savour.

I do have an update on my mentally ill, abusive neighbor: a few months ago she once again put crap (literal crap) on my patio and screamed at me, so I called the cops on her. Three VERY large gendarmes (national police, not local) took statements from another neighbor, myself, and the culprit. Two of the policemen had a private chat with her. When they returned they were visibly unnerved and said she was clearly off her rocker and among the most abusive people they’d had to deal with. The good news is, whatever they said to her had a strong effect: ever since, she hasn’t dared to speak to me, much less touch my patio (apart from some benign things like broken pens and paintbrushes). It has been wonderful to be able to use my patio. I do still keep a close eye on the kitties, of course. Her divorce should be final soon, and according to the police, she’ll have to move, since being unemployed (and unemployable in her mental state), she likely won’t be able to afford to buy out her husband’s half to her apartment. We’re all hoping that’s the case.

I also went to the port yesterday, going on foot along the Promenade. Unbeknownst to me, there was a show of cars for the Jean Behra rally, so I was glad I had walked rather than taking the bus.

Nice’s port is lined by colorful buildings and all types of boats can be found there, from cruise ships to NGV (high-speed boats to Corsica) to ostentatious yachts licensed to ports such as Nassau, Cayman Islands and London, to a lineup of school sailboats to small wooden boats painted every color of the rainbow. The two in the closeup here are shown from further away in this picture. I also liked this lavender and bright turquoise boat, as well as the funnily-named M’en bati. In Nice there’s a saying, “m’en bati, sieu Nissart” — “I don’t give a flip, I’m Niçois”, joking with Nice’s strong sense of individuality. Nice was not part of France until 1860, and even that cession was — and still is — strongly debated. Although it’s extremely doubtful that Nice’s inhabitants would ever actually declare their independence, the idea is discussed, and to this nine-year resident’s ears, often seems more like an affirmation of their uniqueness than a true call for secession. (In that sense it is much like Pacific Northwesterners griping about similar issues — see the “Free Cascadia” icon in my sidebar!)

As I mentioned yesterday, I walked to the Russian Orthodox church not far from my place this morning to take some photographs. It was a beautiful day; the church was lovely. You can see all the photos I took of it here. I arrived just before 10am and had a wonderful surprise: the bells started ringing. But they didn’t just ring the time — they played an incredible piece of music that lasted for several minutes! I highly recommend visiting on a Sunday at 10am if you enjoy music, because it was among the most amazing experiences I’ve had. I took a mobile phone video of part of it, but it’s much less impressive than in reality. Do note, however, that you won’t be able to go inside the church on a Sunday morning since they have their services then.

On my way from the church to Nice’s port, I passed our famous hotel, the Negresco, and snapped this picture of it against one of our gorgeous deep blue skies:

A quick catch-up post: a month ago I had the chance to take a helicopter ride over the Bay of Cannes. We had fifteen minutes in a Robinson R44 (four-seater helicopter) and flew to the nearby Îles de Lérins. Six years ago I did something similar in a small plane, where we flew over the Estérel from Cannes airport. That time I got to fly, but not this time, though I did get some gorgeous photos.

One of the photos was of trains along the coast that looked like miniatures from above. Not long afterwards, I found the fun tiltshiftmaker.com and tweaked that photo to truly look like a miniature train scene! I did the same to a train over a stone bridge I shot in Tende two years ago, and to a photo of Nice’s port that I took last autumn. That last photo is the same one I use for the title header here — I love how it turned out.

Tomorrow I’ll be going to the Russian Orthodox cathedral, which isn’t far from my place, and then to Nice’s port to better shoot some small boats whose colors caught my eye last week (I only had my mobile phone at the time).

The photo is unrelated to this post’s subject, but I wanted to share how Grey encourages being petted, and how large his paws are. At five foot eleven (1m80) I’m not a small woman, but next to Grey’s mitts, my hands certainly look it!

I’ve found it interesting to read various “life on a budget” discussions elsewhere, so thought I might share my own penny-saving tips. The biggest one is that I don’t have a car. A bus serves a stop two blocks from my place, and one block from our offices. That costs just €30 a month, and I spend another €10/month for the tram, for a grand total of €40/month. Beyond those set costs, I can go by bus, train or plane to pretty much anywhere from Nice. I also don’t have a television. Now, before anyone scoffs “another anti-TV person argh”, please realize that it costs about 120 euros a year just to watch regular French public television, due to the redevance audiovisuelle, and that’s for only six channels. Cable and satellite are extra, of course. I would much rather save that money, not to mention the cost of a TV, and use it to buy the series and movies I really like on DVD. Then I can watch them on my PC when I want, as many times as I want, and without advertisements.

As internet and phone go, I haven’t had a true land line since 1997, when I was a student in Lyon. In Helsinki in 1998, mobile phone subscriptions were dirt cheap, and with friends who worked at Nokia, I had free loan phones. Once in France, I started out with prepaid phone cards, but a few years ago the validity of cheaper cards was cut from 3 months to just 15 days, or one month at most. I shopped around and found a cheap subscription for 7 euros a month that gave me 10 minutes for free; I upgraded last month and now pay €10/month for 20 free minutes and unlimited free SMS, although no free data. That’s all right though, since I have uncapped ADSL for €30 a month, with unlimited free VoIP calls to pretty much anywhere in the world.

As for utilities, in France there still isn’t much choice. I go through EDF (privatized in 2007) since it’s less bad than its competitors. I use CFL bulbs, an A++ class washer (1 kWh per load) and refrigerator-freezer (less than 1 kWh per day), and dry my clothes outside. My telephone is Eco DECT (60% less power consumption than regular phones), I built my computer with just the basics so it only needs a 250-watt power supply, and I have an electric cooktop and 1.8 kW water heater. All told I only pay €30 a month for electricity. Water and heating are centralized through my apartment building and average out to €50 a month.

I pick up free, abandoned furniture: two nice chairs and a set of wood trestles to date. Other furniture is either secondhand or Ikea, with a few pieces from sales at Habitat.

Sales in France are on dates that are set by decree: Google dates soldes france. Winter sales are usually in early January through mid-February, with summer sales at the end of June through July. Stores have other, smaller sales too, so it’s good to keep an eye out for when they come.

Groceries are more complicated since I have a gluten and casein intolerance — I can’t eat wheat/barley/oats (think pasta and bread) nor any animal milk products. Generally I get 5-kilo (11-pound) bags of jasmine rice from the local Asian supermarket (Promo Asie in Nice), which last me about a month. I spend a grand total of €5 a week at market for potatoes, fruits, aubergine (eggplant), onions, and one or two other vegetables. I don’t think I’ve ever reached €10 at a marché. And the produce is delicious! I dice the veggies and freeze them to use all week with rice, and for breakfast I eat gluten-free muesli with soy milk, since I use a lot of energy while mountain biking in the forests during mornings.

Which brings up a good point: although my GT mountain bike was expensive at 1800 euros (I got it on sale — the original price was 2500!), I’ve had it for three years now, riding at least 30 kilometers a week, and have only had to pay €50 total for repairs since buying it. Other people who spent half as much on their mountain bikes and ride less than me have spent much, much more in repairs, and most have had to buy new bikes in that same amount of time. Meanwhile mine is still running beautifully.

The kitties get high-quality “carnivore” food such as Orijen. It costs a bit more, but they eat less of it than foods with grains (which cats are not meant to eat in large quantities, since they’re obligate carnivores), and they’re so much healthier that I feel badly for not having done the same for Malo. I’ll get 7-kilo bags and have them delivered, which is actually cheaper than going to the store to buy the smaller, more widespread 2.5-kilo bags. I also try to avoid fish-based foods, mainly because there are so few fish left in the seas nowadays.

I’ve continued restoring the original tomettes, traditional southern French terracotta tiles I discovered (and uncovered) in December. As a reminder, this is what the living room looked like before, while this photo shows the tile adhesive I had to remove.

The photo above, tomettes now clean, shows how the sofa nook looks now, and here’s the other half of the living room. Last Sunday I decided to test my theory about a heavy-duty cleaner (décapant in French) that I had used before and that didn’t work so well. Instead of diluting it as recommended, I added only half the amount of water prescribed, making it more concentrated. This worked nicely, and I was able to scrape off tile adhesive residue very quickly. About two-thirds of the living room still needed adhesive scoured off — I finished it all that same day!

What most surprises me is that the floor is in such good shape. The apartment building dates from 1953, so the tomettes are 56 years old, and yet only one of them has serious damage. The rest were so well cared-for that even after being tiled over, then having that tile removed, and being scoured, scraped and treated with a chemical cleaner, they still shine! My apartment has only had two owners before me, with the previous owners having bought four years ago and putting in the tile when they arrived, so it would seem that the original owner truly cared for the terracotta floor.

Some thin spots of residue still need to be scrubbed off with a regular scouring pad, but that should go quickly. After that, all that remains is to seal and wax the floor. Easier said than done since with the furniture, I’ll only be able to do half at a time. And will need to keep kitties from exploring the floor while it’s worked on. They behaved surprisingly well with the ammonia-based cleaner, never once touching it — I’m assuming because it smelled bad.

I woke up relaxed and cheery this morning, put the two furballs out to play on the patio, fixed myself breakfast, checked on my plants — the cayenne peppers are growing fast! — then came inside to turn on the computer and read my email.

“Envoi de votre facture Bleu Ciel d’EDF” was one subject. I thought to myself, “ah yes, they turned on my electricity a year ago today — that would be my invoice that accounts for any meter reading discrepancies with their estimates. But that’s odd, because no one has come to read my meter. Hm.” EDF is Electricité de France, and I had signed up for monthly payments (mensualisation) based on an estimate of electricity usage for my home size and appliances. I clicked on the link to my invoice.

“Facture du 08/06/2009 : 544,81€ pour une consommation estimée de 3.400kWh en heures pleines et 5.300kWh en heures creuses.”

In France, the decimal separator is a comma, and the dot is used to separate thousands (or sometimes just a non-breaking space, for instance 3 400 is three thousand four hundred). In other words, they were charging me five hundred forty-four euros and eighty-one centimes. I nearly passed out. Finally enough blood returned to my head for me to walk to the electricity meter and check it: since last year, I had actually used only 700kWh in heures pleines (regular hours, 11 centimes per kWh), and 1800kWh in heures creuses (low hours, 7 centimes per kWh, from 10:30pm to 6:30am, which is when I run the water heater and washing machine).

I phoned EDF, hands shaking from the adrenaline rush and subsequent relief, and worked it out. They had made a typo in both my address and my phone number, which is why a meter reader had never contacted me. I’ll still be charged the 544.81 euros in July, since according to the woman it’s automatic and can’t be cancelled, but EDF will then refund me. With the true meter readings, I won’t owe anything, and may even be refunded further (my calculations say about 40 euros in my favor, accounting for the twelve months I’ve been paying their previous estimates).

So if you’re in France and using EDF’s facture électronique, pay close attention. This is not the first time they’ve messed up — last year I tried signing up online, got two confirmations, no one came, and then I had to call twice to get a worker to come hook up my apartment. This year I almost didn’t look at my invoice. The only reason I did was because it seemed strange that no one had ever done meter readings in the past year — usually they come to read meters once every six months.

Phew! After working out a solution to the privacy issue, and with enough time to be able to post once (maybe twice) a week, I’m back to writing here.

This is Grey a month after his arrival — he’s much healthier, happier and more playful. I’ve also finished cleaning the original terracotta tiles (tomettes) in my living room, and will write about that in another post.