Market day in Bulle today. It's my fourth Thursday here but I missed the first Thursday because the rain was absolutely pouring, and then on the second Thursday I found out that the train I was going to catch didn't run on Thursdays. Last Thursday I went hog-wild at the market. I feel that when somebody's gone to the trouble of planting something and growing it, and cutting it out of the ground and taking it to a market, and then placed it on a table for me to look at it, I have to buy it! So I tried to buy something from every stall. I didn't quite succeed, but I managed to spend eighty francs. For just lil ol me. No family of six or anything, just moi meme, hogging it all week. This week was sunny (last week I went in wellies borrowed from the house here) and thus the market was huge. There were men in the bredzon (that's the local mountain costume, denim with little short puffed sleeves) playing alphorns, there were folk bands with double bass sawing away, and also there was my friend of the Sunday morning train, as he promised, selling cheese made from his lovely goats, so full of finesse and sensibility and espieglerie. He was sharing a little table with a man I met with and had a long conversation with last Thursday, who also lives on the mountains, though one closer to Bulle than Chateau d'Oex, and also sells cheese he makes himself from his lovely goats. And who has also travelled the world before going back to his remote mountain chalet and the activities of his forefathers. I bought goat cheese from them both. Jean-Michel, the man from the train on Sunday morning, gave me a brochure he had hand-written and photocopied himself. He offers a B&B experience with a difference; one has the choice of sleeping on straw and it's waaay up there; one has to take one of the legendary Post-Buses, yellow things that go where the trains don't go. Guests get to drink Jean-Michel's own wine, a speciality of the region, and something passed down through generations. And also his homemade cheeses and several other things I imagine. I pass on his details for anyone reading this who is interested:
Michel-Joseph Braillard
a c/oe Les Sciergnes
Poste Restante
1660 La Lecherette, Vaud
SMS (+41) 079 813 4607
He speaks fluent English and in fact was in Canada in 1968, as I think I said earlier, and in Scotland in 1973.
I can't possibly reproduce his fascinating handwriting on this brochure where he waxes eloquent and poetic (in French) about his mountain and his home. The heading to it is: «Trois Lacs en un Clin d'Oeil»
I have been eating a heck of a lot of goats' cheese, in fact. I bicycle around everywhere here and there's something about a bike that is truly special. You have direct contact with your surroundings because you're not inside a moving object...you are the moving object. But you move fast, and so things suddenly come upon you. For example the other day a huge huge furry cat came upon me. So big he could have been a medium sized dog. And as for those ridiculous mechanical dog-toys that spoilt Hollywood bimbos carry around in bags, this cat could have eaten one and looked around for more. His name was Maurice.
Anyway, I was gliding along shortly after the beginning of my stay here and suddenly I heard the sound of faerie bells! So they were! Tinkle tinkle tinkle tinkle. Then I noticed that it was a small flock of fuzzy black goats, eating grass for all they were worth, nodding their heads up and down as they cropped the grass and setting the bells around their necks a-tinkling. Well when I saw «Tomme de Chevre de Grandvillard» in the Laiterie, I simply had to buy one. That was a lot of goat's cheese to eat. And now these mountain men, so kind and genteel and interesting, with their goats which they love and milk and make cheese with, bringing it all the way down to Bulle. The least I can do is buy it.
Yesterday on my way from the station after the audition in Lausanne, I was offered a ride from a nice man who had something of the armailli about him (armailli is the name for the mountain shepherds) but who wasn't one. He didn't speak a word of English, not a single word, and he had a thick dialect. His father was an armailli, and he still lived up in the mountains, but he dealt in (and I thought he meant, 'farmed') «Camio». It took me ages to figure it out, but he meant trucks. Or at least, he owns one big one and uses it for the various local industries. Gravel excavation, logging (talk about selective. The way these Swiss go about it, no forest would ever notice the difference) and that sort of thing. He took me for a coffee in the restaurant adjoining the laiterie. When you ask for cream here, they give you thick, spoony stuff in a tiny cup made of milk chocolate. What a fabulous idea. Michel regaled me with stories of the area's history, and wars that Swiss soldiers were hired to fight over the centuries. His refrain was «alors tu vois, mon ami Patricia.» I didn't understand much but it was fine, really. He wanted to know the word «Truck» and kept using it, pronounced «trroooc» He simply couldn't get the vowels right.
Incidentally on my way back from Bulle market, as I sat waiting for the train to Grandvillard I spoke with a local old lady who was happily eating a cheese tart made by the flamboyant baker at the market, who sings opera as he sells his stuff. We had a nice little chat about him and things, and sat companionably. Then along came a couple from Suffolk, as touristy as Britain makes 'em, she with a freckly red tan and leathery cleavage, and many gold chains and he with a huge belly and triple chin. I sort of like talking to tourists because it makes me feel wonderfully different; poised between two worlds. And they're always so delighted to meet someone who speaks English. Did you buy anything at the market, I asked, laughingly pointing at my bulging backpack looking like a horn of plenty with local produce sticking out of it. No, they said. Not very good shops here. She wanted a cow, she said, to take back to England, like she saw in the tourist shops on the 'Lake Geneva'. We got on the train. Where else could they go shopping, they asked? Well, Chateau d'Oex? No, they're staying there; no shops there. Uhhh, Montreux? Been there yesterday. Okay, sorry I guess. Nowhere else for what you want. I tried to tell them about Tarte au Vin Cuit. I might have been speaking Swahili. Did they try the famous cream and meringue at Gruyeres? No, they didn't have time. Well, we're going through Gruyeres in just a couple of minutes. You could go there again. They shook their heads. Been there. Another couple got on and the pair from Suffolk shouted greetings at them. They were on the same tour. 'We're following the woman in the hat!' they all laughed, pointing at the old lady I'd been talking with earlier. Yes, she was wearing a sunhat. A nice little affair in white straw. But here these people were, talking as if this local woman were some sort of savage rustic, pointing at her as if she didn't have eyes or ears. I had been considering spreading the word about Michel-Joseph's Pays d'Enhaut mountain chalet experience, but swept the thing from my mind.
