Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

FOLLOWING THE SUN
My French classes have come to an end, and I had a month of semi-normality before the schools broke up for summer holidays. This post has been half written for the last 4 weeks but other posts got in the way, so it remained unedited for that time. However the weather outside today looks a lot like Boston and Netherby in spring – it has been raining since last night, and I have no inclination to head out in it.
With a pot of tea at my elbow, here is the low down on a South African living in 100 square meters.

As we move through the stages of adult life, we sometimes make decisions based on our circumstances as they are at the moment. We know they could possibly change at a later stage, but for the time being, we do what we have to. Circumstances could be just about anything- but mostly, once you are able to pay a deposit on a house (and finance a bond), that house becomes your foundation. It can assist you when you decide where you are prepared to work, it should let you determine what car you can drive, and it determines where you send your children to school.
Granted, life is not so simple, but for the most part, you could agree with me.

When you rent a home, you could allow yourself a little more flexibility- provided you don’t object to packing and unpacking more than the average person does.
In our case, here in France, we have allowed the decision to live where we are, be based on where our girls attend school. Well, for now anyway. In 3 years time- as we approach renewal of our rental contract, we could feel that things have changed, and living in an apartment opposite a 5 storey building, next to a 5 storey building, and behind a student residence might just not be our idea of happiness.

I spent a few weeks commuting on trams and busses in order to take the girls to school (and you can refer back to this post https://gaenordup67.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/curveball/ for our reasons to enroll them in this particular school). It would take approximately 45 minutes, which is not completely unusual for some families I guess. The horrible part was the afternoon bus at 5pm- it was never empty, we could never find a seat, and it always made me cry, no matter what.
Based on 2 weeks of this prior to apartment hunting, I knew that I could not deal with living ‘outside of town’. As much as I wanted it, tt would be too much for me, and the girls.
When we gave our house-hunting specifications to the relocation agents, it read something like this:
• 80 – 100sq/meters
• 900€ per month for rent (and we needed to know that heating and electricity would not be more than 150€ per month)
• Suitable parking
• Furnished kitchen (built in cupboards are a rarity in here- you would be lucky to find a sink in a kitchen)
• 2 ½ bedrooms
• Within a 3 kilometer radius of the International Schools
• A balcony
• Ground floor (so we did not have to carry monthly groceries and kids paraphernalia too far)
• A cave (or cellar- less for wine, more for storage)
• Close proximity to public transport lines

We were lucky- the first apartment we looked at filled 9 of the 10 criteria and decided immediately that we would take it.

Heating costs are included in the rent, which was an added bonus, and our bathroom is located directly above the boiler room, so in winter, we barely had to turn the heating on, although it WAS a mild winter, I have been informed.
Our quartier (suburb) is relatively old (- many buildings have dates etched into the plaster, going back to the 1900’s) if you compare the buildings to other buildings in the city, you will see the heavy blocks, the tall, singular buildings, their windows like eyes- bringing light in. How they differ to newer buildings on newer sides of town, which are wider and shorter; their windows like mean slits, almost disgruntled.

Directly across the street from us, is a similar row of tall old buildings, and this means that I really don’t have a view- unless you consider the row of bikes locked up, or the high school students milling around at break time, smoking, and spitting onto the pavement. This view is south facing, so the girls rooms and my lounge receive sunlight. My kitchen and bedroom are north facing, onto the open space that ‘belongs’ to the student res. Our 100 square meters is spacious enough, and during winter, I was really happy with it. If we entertained, we were cosy in the lounge/dining room, huddled around our table, warming our red wine in our hands.
But I am now getting tetchy with the lack of garden area, the inability to just walk outside and picnic for dinner. I have realised that entertaining here in summer is just not going to be fun for me- my soul is so attuned to alfresco dining, or at least not have to worry about little children getting up to mischief in a confined space, while the evening light is still glaring at us through the windows.
The windows… those shutters…my heart bleeds. Having lived in London and a French winter where the sun is but a memory at 4pm already, my soul hungers for those delicious golden rays that stream through glass. I turn into a cat, curled up wherever I can fit, and nap. (Well, in winter anyway). Like a shirtless boy in a Lesotho village seeing a car filled with tourists, he clamours for sweets, I relish the sun. And never would you see that shirtless boy turn his back on that tourist car; I simply cannot close the shutters on the sun in my northern Europe city apartment.
However, the reality is that my little 3 year old is all about sleeping when it is dark, so we have constant battles about bed time if I have left the shutters open a little bit too late. And to add to my lament, our toilet cupboard has a window, but no shutter or curtain, so at 5h30 when her little majesty is up for a toilet break, she proceeds to run to us to tell us that it is “wakey-time”, and often trying to get some extra shut-eye is nigh impossible.

My idea of dinner parties in the late evening sun is now just a dream, and I am trying to decide now that we are on holiday if it’s worth our while to walk down to the city after dinner to soak up the summer festivities with thousands of tourists, or just to stay in and ensure the little girls and working hubby have a good night’s rest.
What would you do?