Montigny-sur-Loing

We’ve been here almost two months now and we’ve come to know our French “home town” pretty well. We’re kind of known – the folks at the boulangerie know I’ll be every day or so and know that, though I order almost the same thing every time, I will still slaughter their language. It really does feel like home now.

By popular demand (Laurie’s), I’m just going to post some pictures of Montigny-sur-Loing (which means, “Montigny on the Loing River”).

A road sign on one of four routes into Montigny. The photo isn’t crooked; the sign is.

An overview of Montigny, from rue de Point of Vue , of course. This is the old part of the town; there is a larger more modern part, too.

Three public buildings, all new. I suspect they were built five years or so ago. We can see the old City Hall (the “Mairie“) near the new one and it is small and worn out.

Our Street, rue Montgermont

Yes, this is a two-way street. The rule for right-of-way is easy: if you’re on the side with the parked cars (they’re allowed to park on only one side), you yield right-of-way to any car coming up the street. That means you have to tuck in between parked cars somewhere. At first, I thought this was difficult and a little nerve-wracking, but as there are streets like this everywhere, in towns smaller than ours and Paris, I’ve become used to it and don’t even break a sweat. Unless it’s a bus coming the other way…

There are also lots of streets that use a technique to slow down traffic: they allow parking on one side at any point in the street, but what side cars can park on changes every 100 yards or so, which means the right-of-way changes also. On those streets you really have to watch to see where the on-coming cars are in relation to where you are so you know if they have priority or if you have priority. I’ve got it figured out, so I’m comfortable with it, but Laurie, as the passenger, still grabs the dashboard frequently.

A side road, which is the best way out of town from our place. Fortunately, it is one-way (though we have seen cars coming the wrong way down it) and no parking is allowed (except for a couple non-running cars at the top), so driving this street offers no thrills.

The shops of Montigny:

Our Boulangerie
A boulangerie is, of course, a bakery, and this is a top-notch one. We know that people from surrounding towns – towns that have their own bakeries – come to Montigny for their baguettes and bread and desserts and cakes. I’m not going to argue with them; the products here are simply fabulous.

Sunday is the big boulangerie day. Sunday lunch is a tradition: families gather, have a big early-afternoon lunch, and spend the day together. This requires, of course, lots of bread and a few desserts. So there’s a line-up out the door, and you’ll see people leaving with half a dozen baguettes and a couple boxes of the fantastic cakes available here.

Some things a French person can do at Sunday lunch that are generally not acceptable any other day: have wine (really; wine at lunch is not a common thing in any French household but ours); put butter on your bread (yes, really); put butter on your radishes, the typical lunch-starting snack. Really.

The Loing River.
We found a beautiful park on the Loing River.

Looking across the Loing River, you can see the old town and Church. The building to the right was a restaurant, with a terrace on the river; it closed several years ago unfortunately. I suspect if it had stayed open, Laurie and I would have kept it open this summer.

While we were in the river park, these school kids came and waded into the river. It was a class of 10- and 11-year olds, boys and girls. Things are different here:

– for wading, the boys stripped to their underwear and went in. Can you imagine the ruckus that would have caused in the US? Girls screaming, guys totally embarrassed. Here? Nothing.

– while they were wading, the teacher (male) went into the woods to take a whiz. Surprisingly he wasn’t smoking. We’ve seen several school outings where the teachers are with the kids and smoking.

War Memorial

Every town in France has a memorial to the town’s war dead, usually enscribed “To the infants of insert town name, killed for their country.” World War I devastated the young male population of France. It’s common to see a town of a thousand people with 30-50 names on the memorial. How the country had enough men to raise families and re-populate itself after the war is a mystery to me. We always stop to look at the memorials and remember the sacrifice and, mostly, to think what a total waste war is.

Most of the World War I population is gone now, but this woman surely remembers World War II and life under the Nazis.

One other thing we like: sunset is about an hour after Seattle’s. I’m wrapping this up at 9:47, working at the table in our courtyard, and I could work without additional light for another half-hour, at least. Very nice.

So that’s Montigny-sur-Loing. We love it here.