Ep 96: Rebecca settles into Menton

Where to find Aimee: 

• Instagram: @vibrancenutrition
• Nutrition Coaching: vibrancenutrition.com
• Podcast on Nutrition: Blasphemous Nutrition
• Substack on Nomadic Life: NomadicNomMom

Where to find Rebecca: 

• Instagram and her life in Paris: @beseriouslyhappy
• Podcast for Interior Design-preneurs: Stuff Interior Designers Need to Know
• Biz Coaching for Interior Designers: seriouslyhappy.com
• Book on Interior Design Psychology: Happy Starts at Home

Transcript

Speaker 0:01

Welcome to Bon Jola, a podcast about two women, Amy and Rebecca, who each move from the United States to Europe to become expats. Amy to Spain and Rebecca to France. We're here to share the highs, the lows, and the logistics of this adventure. Encourage you to follow your own, move abroad dreams, and remind you that you're not alone when the going gets tough. Enjoy.

Aimee 0:24

Banla, Rebecca,

Rebecca 0:26

Amy,

Aimee 0:27

we are one week into your new place. Have you made Friends? Gone Out? What's, what's been going on?

Rebecca 0:37

uh, I feel that I have squeezed two to three weeks of life into one week for sure.

Aimee 0:43

Ooh, do tell.

Rebecca 0:44

well it's mostly because Damien starts his internship at Mezo. Tomorrow, which will be one and a half weeks since moving here. So we felt like we both needed a really work in getting our home set up this first week, but also we wanted to spend time exploring our new city together before he's gonna be whatever he's gonna be over the next four months. We don't know if he's gonna have any. Wherewithal to like explore or be here. We just don't know what the internship's gonna be like.

Aimee 1:13

So he doesn't even know like what his hours are going to be, or there's no contract that.

Rebecca 1:19

So there is a contract that Rumble is really good about. Doing the paperwork well and saying, here's what we're agreeing to. And that's important because, um, the, the diploma that he's getting requires a certain length of internship, so that part's taken care of. But the reality of working in a restaurant is really different from working in a restaurant on paper. And so, like it says that he. Start at, well, like Wednesday, he starts at nine. He presents himself to the chef at 9:00 AM but then I'm just kind of assuming he'll be at work then for four months. Like he's not even gonna come home at night because cooking, I mean, restaurants, they just keep going until service is done and things are cleaned up right?

Aimee 2:08

we go folks. This is a Rebecca's brain.

Rebecca 2:13

It's partly just emotionally preparing for the worst case scenario.

Aimee 2:17

not reporting to a ship that's headed out to the Mediterranean, my dear.

Rebecca 2:23

No, but I am assuming that when he gets home, especially the first couple weeks, he's just going to absolutely crash from exhaustion. And I wanna be ready for that. But the more the point more is we wanna enjoy this first week, which we have very much done, and the very best part. Well, I'm gonna share a little bit about furniture shopping and going to Italy, which is a funny thing to bring up right after you've moved to a place in France. But the cool thing about Menton is that it is literally on the border with Italy, and we did, I think it was the second day we walked. There's two different routes you can go, kind of. One is up the hill and one is along the water. They're both border crossings and they are, they look just like out of my childhood, when I remember there were actual border crossings in Europe, going from one country to another was a big deal, and so the borders completely open. Now there is a police person that stands there kind of checking people, but. What's cool is the ghost of what remains the ghost toneness of it. This particular border crossing, it kind of looks like a 1960s jet Jetson style ship, right? And, but it's all rusted. It's clearly disused, but the guard houses, it's all there. And you can feel the history of this border that has been in existence now for. Like hundreds, maybe thousands of years. I can't remember. No, not thousands, but literally we're talking like Macedonia, right? It's crazy.

Aimee 4:06

far, how far is it from Ton to the border or how, how long is this walk?

Rebecca 4:11

20 minutes.

Aimee 4:12

Oh, geez. Okay.

Rebecca 4:14

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not kidding. It's to the point where when we were, when we told people we were moving here, they said they do a lot of their, the regular people do a lot of shopping. In Italy, they go over a lot and we've noticed a lot of Italians over here hanging out in France for the day, right?

Aimee 4:31

right.

Rebecca 4:33

So yeah, in 20 minutes we can cross the border and then you, you're just walking along the coast and it's stunningly jaw droppingly beautiful. It's the turquoise blue waters crashing on the rocks and um, evergreen trees, but the Mediterranean style, not my old Seattle style. But then because this place has been a tourist destination since like the Queen of England, queen Victoria Times, there's old British mansions all over the place, a lot of which are hotels, and they're just kind of tucked in to these Mediterranean cliffs. There's restaurants. So we're wandering along this path, and there it's like you can just stop and have a really lovely meals. So we stop. We ask for a beer. They don't just bring out a beer, they bring out the most delightful platter of olives and cheese. And this like top of nod. There were these caramelized balsamic onions that made me weep with joy to put in my mouth, and then all just came with the beers

Aimee 5:44

Yeah. Yeah.

Rebecca 5:46

and, and it's just, you really don't feel like you're living. A real world down here, it has been terrible for my productivity. All I wanna do is just sit in the sun and stare at the ocean.

Aimee 6:01

You mean you want to live your life? What?

Rebecca 6:05

Yes, this might be very good for me and very bad for my work, so it's amazing.

Aimee 6:13

understand that, and this is, you know, this is something that tends to happen the further, the closer to the equator you get. Right, the sunnier it is, the warmer it is, the more difficult it is to put one's brain to task of and work. It's just harder.

Rebecca 6:33

Yeah, but I mean, I'm not complaining. I'm a little worried, but I'm not complaining. Now our apartment is right on the frontage road, so there is quite a bit of, uh, road noise and I expected that. Um, but it kinda wears on you a little bit the other day 'cause moving is exhausting. And I was kind of at my wit's end, I said I need to take a walk. And I ended up going up the hill behind my house. It was my first time doing that and I discovered this amazing old Olive grove plantationy thing. It's now a public park and I discovered it on Easter Sunday. So the whole thing was full of regular families having these massive picnics, A lot like where you live and it's up the hill, just enough that the sound of the beach tra traffic and tourists just goes away completely. It is like walking into another world and it's again, it's right there.

Aimee 7:33

Yeah. That's awesome There. I can only imagine because you're, you are in Europe. There will be so many things you discover on that hill and the trails back there because I mean, I've just, you know, we have this little hill, right? That we have this hill, the, these. Neighborhoods that are just outside of town, you know, leave my neighborhood and go straight up the hill. And you are not two kilometers, right? You're not a mile and a half out out of town, and you stumble upon an old Hermitage from the 16 hundreds or this huge old building that looks like maybe it was. A grainery or something, but it turns out, no, this was where they stole all their, they stored all the munitions just out of town for when the French would invade Gerona because the French loved to invade Gerona over, you know, however many thousands of years. And you go a little bit further and. Six miles away, I stumble upon a religious site where some medieval farmer saw the Virgin Mary, and so now there is a whole church and gorgeous statue dedicated to her in the middle of the woods, and you just find stuff that is so old, so old that are that it's just there. It's just there. Nobody knows. What it was, how long it's been there, because it's so commonplace here. Nobody cares. It's just really bloody old. You know, I've stumbled across cars that are probably from the late forties, just hiding out in the woods, you know, abandoned. Random stuff and it's, it's incredible. It's incredible. The woods are filled with all, fortunately I've not found any bodies from the Franco era, which is really, I'm very pleased that I have not stumbled upon anything like that. But I've also, you know, out there, I've also wondered, you know, are there, are there mass graves here? Where are the mass graves? Because they are also everywhere, right? Um.

Rebecca 9:59

And that's the joy of living because it's kind of funny. You and I are both living in very tourist places.

Aimee 10:06

right.

Rebecca 10:06

there's nodes where everybody flocks to, and you know, it's, I, I, I'm sure I'm gonna get real stabby about trying to get around the tourist when I'm just trying to live my life. But as they have the, this tourist mob has no clue and no time to go explore the rest of the area. So it doesn't take hardly any work at all to get away from the crowds as long as you just get yourself to do it.

Aimee 10:34

Exactly. Exactly. And that's where, that's where all the gems are.

Rebecca 10:38

Yeah. Oh my gosh. There's so much me to explore. There's just like little tiny hill towns, just pockets of them everywhere. There's the Italy side, there's the French side, and then I don't have a car, so I'm a little bit limited, but like when I was talking to the one of the restaurant people, they're like, oh yeah, we go skiing every, you know, weekend. Because the Alps are right. There's just everything.

Aimee 11:03

right.

Rebecca 11:04

I'm really, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very tired. Like I said, it's been a very intense week. We also needed to get some pieces of furniture to really fit out the house and stuff. So we did some, um, furniture shopping that was very unsuccessful and I ended up ordering most of the stuff online through Amazon. Um, I tried not to, I did, I wanna put that out there. I tried not to. But I'm, I'm thrilled and I cannot wait to reveal more of what I discover as I get myself out every single week.

Aimee 11:37

I'm happy to hear that you intend on getting out every single week.

Rebecca 11:40

Oh yeah, that, that, that's the whole point of moving here. Like if I don't make the opportunity, make the most of the opportunity to get up in the hills. And then when the weather is warm enough to swim, which isn't quite yet. I will have wasted one of the most amazing opportunities that I've ever been gifted. So I'm just, I'm not gonna let that happen.

Aimee 12:02

Good. Good. Because I mean, you're, there all is, there is also a very strong aspect to your personality that is like, Damien's gonna be so busy at work. That means I can be so busy at work and where do I get my Snickers bars? Let's go.

Rebecca 12:17

Yes, and I am not going to pretend that that isn't a strong part of my personality. The coolest thing. Okay. I actually have my own office in this apartment, which is also a guest room. I have proper guest beds. But looking out the window here, the main part of the house faces the ocean, and that's the postcard view and the marina and everything. But my side window here looks right at the mountains. And so I, when I am working, I get to look at my favorite thing, which is trees and rocks and mountains. And so even when I'm working, this place is nurturing me in a way that Paris couldn't. Now I do wanna say I miss Paris and I miss it a lot more than I expected. And that's partly 'cause I had actually made some friends. And I am feeling that loss already. But it's also, 'cause Paris is just a, a different creature. Um, it, it, it's, I wanna say she, it's, it's like she is alive and, and the history in which she is just draped, it's like looking at somebody in as sumptuous, embroidered gown and, and there's, you just can't, you take your eyes off of it. And there's, as we were just saying, there's so much history here too, but it feels so different. It's, it's just a completely different flavor of history and it's more what I wanna say. It's hard to describe. Um.

Aimee 13:56

The way that, just with what you've said, I imagine, like with Paris, it's Marie Antoinette, right? Like Paris is there, it's, Paris presents itself to you and when I think of Gerona and I think of all the history that is here, but it's not in your face that while Paris presents itself to you, you have to present yourself to Ton to discover her riches, right? She's like the wallflower and you don't realize how amazing it is until you go to her to strike up a conversation.

Rebecca 14:32

Yeah.

Aimee 14:33

Whereas Paris is like darling and

Rebecca 14:37

yeah, it's like instant love or not because there's a lot of people that don't like Paris, but if you love her, you just do. You can't even help yourself. And here, I think it'd be very easy to really dislike Manon, especially if you allowed yourself to only see the tourist side of it. Oh my gosh, though, I'll tell you one of the best parts. Is that you just, you're wandering around and then the smell of orange blossom

Aimee 15:05

Oh, shut

Rebecca 15:06

see you in the

Aimee 15:07

my God. Nice.

Rebecca 15:10

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's early spring, but already there's uh, blossoming and the wisteria blossoming and they're literally are oranges and lemons hanging from all of the trees. It is awesome.

Aimee 15:26

That is fantastic. I'm imagining that Damien will end up learning how to make his own lemon cello here with those

Rebecca 15:35

guessing that is true. Yes. Um, and then friends-wise haven't barely begun. I did make a Facebook connection with somebody who, um, turns out she owns. Three Airbnbs and they do all their own management. They're very busy right now 'cause this is a hundred percent an economy built on tourism. So like the stores are, you know, get your linens bleached here and redelivered and here's your cleaning supplies. It's this whole industry serving tourism. Um, so my friends will be people like this, but she definitely warned me in her messages like, this is busy season. You can tell that there's this intensity to the work. Um, she, but she gave me a clue about two or three different language practice places for practicing French. So I'm looking forward to pursuing that. And um, lots of English of that part will be bad for my French because they are so, again, they're so accustomed to tourists. That it's an immediate response to go into English?

Aimee 16:47

Right, right. And is it mostly British English that is being spoken here like.

Rebecca 16:53

Yes, I would say so. Yeah. But what's interesting is we aren't, I haven't heard yet much English from the tourists from, but we're, we're in off season right now. So right now almost everything we hear is French and Italian. I suspect that A, it has changed a little bit. I think more French and Italian are coming here, and back in the day it was all British. And then I also suspect that will change as tourist season hits and it becomes more of a mix.

Aimee 17:22

Right. That makes sense. That makes sense.

Rebecca 17:27

Can't think of anything else to share. Well, all right. I will share this. I've studied the geology of the area and it's mostly limestone, which might mean that there's a bunch of caves in the area, so that's also something that I wanna check out.

Aimee 17:39

nice.

Rebecca 17:41

it's true or not yet, but I'm, my little geological nose is tingling and I wanna know

Aimee 17:48

That's cool. I don't know. When I hear limestone, I just think about making tortillas

Rebecca 17:54

why.

Aimee 17:56

because lime is used to when you make corn tortillas, and I think it's why the tortillas here in Spain don't taste right. You use lime when you're making tortillas in Mexico, you use lime to process the, the corn?

Rebecca 18:13

I didn't know that. I do know that the tortillas here taste completely wrong.

Aimee 18:19

Yes.

Rebecca 18:19

Yes. I, I, I did not know that they were made with lime, but my brain is processing this. Okay. Actually, I wanna tell you where my brain just went because

Aimee 18:35

Okay.

Rebecca 18:36

you had sent me an Instagram reel recently, um, about how the Mexican Spanish was really influenced by indigenous languages.

Aimee 18:44

Yeah.

Rebecca 18:45

Okay? Then the other day I was thinking about some things I can't find here because this gal who posts stuff about France posted how she can't find molasses and it's one of the ingredients she really likes in baking. And she was saying that the reason that they don't have molasses, the way we, um, not molasses, um, brown sugar, which is made with mola.

Aimee 19:06

right, right.

Rebecca 19:07

They've got some things like brown sugar in France, but not brown sugar. The way we understand it, because apparently it's made from sugarcane instead of

Aimee 19:17

Exactly.

Rebecca 19:18

from here, so that that's one piece of information. I also can't find cottage cheese, which has nothing to do with this list, but the SSEs brown sugar thing made me realize the other day that I also can't find what I think of as cotton balls. And

Aimee 19:35

Oh yeah, they have the pads. They have the pads, but they don't, you're right, they don't have round balls.

Rebecca 19:42

And then most of the cleaning rags here that I find are microfiber and they're not cotton. And in the United States, I loved my big cotton rags for everything, and it just, I had this aha moment of how. The culture of America, slavery, cotton and sugarcane would of course, have influenced the products that we developed and that we therefore use all the time and think of as normal. Well, of course you have cotton for X, Y, or Z or of course, cotton comes in a ball, but it's so subconscious

Aimee 20:17

Yeah,

Rebecca 20:19

and, and I do miss it. I, she Mrs. Brown sugar, and I Ms. Cotton balls. It's weird. The shape of something influences whether or not you wanna use it, but it's nostalgia and comfort and, I don't know, grip.

Aimee 20:34

I, I will say that the cotton swabs here are very sad. to the, to the extent that I have purchased and brought back Q-tips from the United States, because when you are using cotton swabs that were made in Europe, they are very. Limp and they kind of collapse with any sort of pressure they bend and collapse. And so there's they're perfectly fine for removing mascara from under your eyes, but any pressure beyond what you would use underneath your eye is too much for the darn thing to handle. and I have, you know, I have a friend who requests. That I bring back American deodorant for her because European deodorant does not have the chemicals that completely thwart your ability to sweat and smell like we permit to be used in the United States. They've, you know, they're just not used in the eu. I'm sure they've been banned because reasons.

Rebecca 21:45

Yeah, the aluminum levels.

Aimee 21:46

Yeah, but I don't think they have any excuse not to, um, not to nix them all the, the corn. It's the process of adding the limestone to the corn to processes to make the tortillas, because there is limestone here.

Rebecca 22:03

Absolutely.

Aimee 22:05

The only thing that I can think of as to why the corn tortillas here tastes so crummy would be. Neglecting to do that, that additional step, because that is the traditional Latin American native, you know, the, the Mayan. The Aztec. This is how they process the corn. And yeah, for whatever reason, when Spain brought corn back, they were just like, eh, don't need that.

Rebecca 22:35

And I would wonder if a Spanish person, if they liked. Quesadillas made with tortillas. If they would go to Mexico and be like, this doesn't taste right, like in the opposite direction too.

Aimee 22:46

Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Just like you know, we eat. So for instance, a lot of the time if we're going out to eat at an ethnic restaurant. That's Asian. It doesn't taste the same as it does in the us and we're like, oh, this doesn't taste right. And then you have to stop and think, well, American Chinese food also isn't going to taste right because it's not any closer to being authentically Chinese. Then what you're gonna find over here,

Rebecca 23:16

What does right mean? There is no right in this context. Yeah. But

Aimee 23:23

I'll say in every case where you go to the place where the food is from, it is always better than what you've experienced at home. So I would hope with, especially with as cultivated as a European palate, is that they wouldn't go to Mexico and be like, this doesn't taste right.

Rebecca 23:43

Hard to say though. They do have strong opinions,

Aimee 23:47

It's true. It's true.

Rebecca 23:49

but going back to the Q-tips and to the deodorant too. It, it's a constant reminder of something we've talked about before. Americans just do everything bigger, stronger, and more comfortable. You know, we're always going, leaning into the comfort, leaning into the convenience, and leaning into something, being robust, and I think we often over-engineer everything and it's a very American thing. And so you kind of expect your dish soap to be able to obliterate anything and your right.

Aimee 24:23

Yes and no because if they will not make things super robust and over the top, if it's going to cost more, right? Like our furniture, our appliances, it's a very disposable culture in that regard. You put your clothing on, you wash it once it starts to fall apart. It's a very disposable culture, and in that regard, the quality that you would find in Europe is completely absent in the us.

Rebecca 24:53

Yeah, it's the consumerism versus the obliteration. If we're trying to obliterate something, we're gonna do it all the way.

Aimee 25:01

We will make sure germs do not exist in our country. We will give you antibiotics whether you need it or not. We will make sure everything has trick laan in it, so you are a 100% sanitized anytime you put anything on your hands, be it soap or

Rebecca 25:21

And if a germ gets through and if a germ gets through, we make sure that you won't notice that you're sick, so you can keep working.

Aimee 25:28

That's right. That's right.

Rebecca 25:32

Folks, we didn't say that it was healthy. We didn't say that it was right. We're just saying what it's like.

Aimee 25:40

Whereas here they're like, there's nothing we can do. Go home and wait it out.

Rebecca 25:43

Exactly. I can't think of anything else to share. It's only been a week?

Aimee 25:49

Yeah. Yeah. So with the, so you walked to Italy and you got furniture. What else? I mean, you say like you feel like you've lived two weeks, two or to three weeks in the last week and a half. So what else has happened that has made time feel so compressed?

Rebecca 26:07

So we have been taking a two or three hour walk every single day, sometimes to the furniture stores, sometimes to Italy, sometimes through Old Town Menton, really trying to get our. Or feet on the ground. So that's part number one. Part number two is literally unpacking and figuring out where things are gonna go. Figuring out where things went that we lost. I lost all of my necklaces in this move. Yeah. Set 'em somewhere and they are completely gone. So that was frustrating. Um, but I'm also teaching, I was teaching a class for six weeks and that was on the calendar before we were gonna move. So I'm trying to do that and deal with wifi. Oh, and the wifi was really spotty. Um, just wasn't getting around the apartment. It's good wifi, but not getting around. So we had to buy an extender, one of those web things or all mesh things. So it's, it's just a lot of setting up and then, you know, figuring out where you can go shopping. There was a really cool, what's it called? Broy. I think it's um, yard sale, like a great big neighborhood yard saley thing right outside of our door yesterday. So obviously we had to go and I got myself a really cool dress. So things like that have happened. Then we also decided to go to Damien's restaurant, before he starts working there. So we had a great big fancy dinner on Sunday. So just lots of things to just eight days

Aimee 27:43

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I can see that then. Feeling like a great deal of of stuff going on. Yeah.

Rebecca 27:49

perimenopause decided to smack me in the face. So there was some crying that happened too.

Aimee 27:55

You know, if I had lost all of my jewelry, I would be on the floor weeping.

Rebecca 28:00

You know? Yeah. I mean, you remember the St. Francis that you and I

Aimee 28:03

I was hoping you were not, you were gonna say that wasn't part of what was

Rebecca 28:07

it sure was. Yeah. That and my Camino necklace. Um, this really pretty bee that I'd got as a, as a milestone in my business, you know? Yeah. It's, but you know, I think this is part of the journey. You, things get lost. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not, and it is sort of the, it almost feels like a price you pay for taking on the next adventure. You can't hold onto everything, and you don't always know. You don't always know what you're saying. Goodbye to when you choose to say goodbye.

Aimee 28:43

Yeah, that's true.

Rebecca 28:44

I'm trying to be really philosophical about it 'cause it's just stuff and I'm glad I had it and I won't lose those memories and they're in photos and there's not a thing I can do about it. The most frustrating part is not the fact that I lost the necklaces, it's the fact that I feel like my brain failed me. 'cause I'm like, how did I lose the necklaces? Like if I could just remember the stupid thing I did that led to that happening. I would feel like I wasn't losing my mind

Aimee 29:14

Right.

Rebecca 29:15

like my mind and the necklaces, I'd like to lose only one of those. Please. That's not how it works.

Aimee 29:24

Like you said, Rebecca, we don't choose what we lose most of the time.

Rebecca 29:32

I can't remember. There's a, there's an old poet or cartoonist or something he said, um. All the things I've lost, the thing I miss the most is my mind

Aimee 29:41

Yes, I remember that. I do remember that.

Rebecca 29:45

to look that up. Yeah.

Aimee 29:48

Well, I suppose on that note, we should, um, get lost

Rebecca 29:53

Yeah. Update next time around.

Aimee 29:57

until next time folks. Adios.

Speaker 2 30:02

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Banla. If you did, the best thing you can do is share it with another person, brave enough to move abroad. See you next time.