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French Residency

We finally picked up our 10 years French residency cards. You only have to live here 5 years (for our circumstances) to apply but because of Covid we had to wait an additional 2 years. Because we have these cards and the corresponding residency status we don't have to pay residency fees for the next 10 years. To stay in France we only have to pay a relatively small fee every 10 years, reapply for the residency card (with no new requirements) and stay out of trouble. The photos on our residency cards made us look ridiculous so I didn't want to put my card photo in this blog. John kindly covered my ridiculous photo with his ridiculous photo. He's such a sweetheart.

Great DMV-like photos for our
10 year residency cards.





Mingling With People Again

We visited the big Saturday market here in Rennes for the first time since the pandemic started. We are cautiously reintegrating into the world. I say cautiously because there are new, more powerful and more contagious Covid variants being created regularly.

John took the photos below of the ancient city gates in downtown Rennes. They were recently repaired and structurally reinforced. John loves the old buildings throughout France. I do too. I also love that Rennes is very big time into upgrades/maintenance and cleanliness. John does too. The frequent rains help but the attention paid to building facades and the fines for dropping cigarette butts and doggie poo help too.

We'll go to Paris in mid December. It will only be a day trip and we will see the Munch exhibit (we'll take pics if we can). Then we'll walk over to The Sainte-Chapelle, a royal chapel in the Gothic style within the medieval Palais de la Cité, the residence of the Kings of France until the 14th century. It's renowned as one of the greatest architectural masterpieces of the Western world. Sainte-Chapelle is no longer a church. It was secularised after the French Revolution, which ended state religion. It is now operated as a museum by the French Centre of National Monuments. Although damaged during the French Revolution and restored in the 19th century, it has one of the most extensive 13th-century stained glass collections anywhere in the world. John is big-time into history, art and architecture so the Sainte-Chapelle is a perfect place for us to visit. It's beautiful.

After Sainte-Chapelle we'll visit my favorite Mexican restaurant in Paris, Fajitas. Admittedly we've only tried 3 Mexican restaurants in Paris but of those, this one is my favorite (and the food there is VERY good). The French are good cooks - did you know? After our meal we'll quickly check out Notre Dame before we head home.

Even though our mid-December visit to Paris is just a day trip there will be plenty of holiday decorations to see everywhere and we'll take pics of those too.

We return to the market for the first time since the pandemic started. The medieval Rennes city gates had a face-lift. Another view of the tower in the previous image.
Portes Mordelaises - entrance through
the old city walls. 		Another view of the city gates. The view of the city gates from
the opposite side.





Around Rennes

It's rained a fair amount recently and our local rivers are overflowing. Near the city these rivers are small and this level of overflow is harmless.

I'm starting to think John has become obsessed with the nutria in and around the rivers and canals. He talks about them a lot. I must admit that they are kinda cute.

La Vilaine is almost overflowing
from the recent rains. 		Since we became aware of nutria along the river we started seeing them every time. This one was almost a baby.
Three nutria eating a breakfast of local flora. A large nutria mowing the park grass while his seagull buddy keeps watch.





Around France

There is a new board game in France - the Antifa game. Right click the HufPost France article to translate. On its website, the publisher presents "Antifa the game" as "a simulation and management game in which you bring a local antifascist group to life" by implementing "actions that will require your time, resources, and a bit of organization. Because of right-wing complaints saying the game glorified criminals the Antifa game was removed from sale for a day while it was reviewed. At the end of that day it was determined that it contains "nothing likely to justify a refusal to market it." The affair gave this little-known game a new spotlight, so much so that Libertalia indicated on Monday afternoon that the new edition of the game for sale on its site was sold out. The publisher, who had denounced "false allegations emanating from the far right, said Tuesday on its site to have launched a reprint and be able to deliver new copies in January.

At this time half of the country's nuclear reactors are offline because of ongoing or delayed maintenance, or corrosion problems. The new generation of power stations has yet to be built. As a result, France will be "a major importer of electricity this winter" to compensate. France's electricity grid warns it will strain to deliver this winter. "Historically, France is an exporter because of its very large nuclear fleet, however, now it turns out that it has temporary difficulties ... (which) will be resolved but it will take a few years," France will turn to European neighbours to import up to 15 GW to cope with a peak in electricity consumption of around 90 GW, and "contributes to being able to avoid cuts".

France will cap power and gas price increases for households at 15% next year to ease the pain of Europe's worst energy crisis in decades on consumers. The caps will prevent household bills from more than doubling. The state will also continue grants for the poorest, with a cheque of up to 200 euros for 12 million households.

The French Parliament announced plans to develop daily rail transport of the RER type in ten French cities, city councilors hastened to this Monday, November 28 to announce their candidacy for such a project. The Minister of Transport Clément Beaune spoke on Monday of "relatively mature projects" in Strasbourg, Lille, Bordeaux or Toulouse. "In Rennes Métropole, we have been ready for a long time to welcome such a project."





Around Europe

A statue of Vladimir Lenin in the Ukrainian city of Odessa has been given a sci-fi twist - by being transformed into Darth Vader. The statue had been earmarked for removal under the country's "de-communisation" law. But instead, it now wears the instantly recognisable shiny black helmet and mask of the Star Wars villain. How cool is that?

The EU is making some progress on sanctioning Hungary for its violation of EU laws related to curbing corruption. My head spins when I think of the EU, NATO and Hungary. It feels much like Trump committing all those crimes for decades and still walking free. Sigh.