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Page 6 Proverbs of the Month As you may remember from previous articles – I love cats! So I’ve been delighted to find the furry friends popping up in lots of French proverbs. Here is another selection: Chat echaudé craint le feu Once bitten twice shy (The burnt cat is afraid of the fire – oh!!) Je donne ma langue au chat I give up (quiz, riddle, etc.) (I give my tongue to the cat) Avoir d’autres chats à fouetter To have other fish to fry (To have other cats to whip -oh!!) S’entendre comme chien et chat i.e. Not to get on at all (To get along like dog and cat) Acheter chat en poche To buy a pig in a poke Talking of pigs: You know when we say – ‘That will be the day/pigs might fly’ and we imagine a pig flying by the window? Well, the French make use of another animal. Quand les poules auront les dents (When hens have got teeth) I didn’t know that hens didn’t have teeth. Is that why they are so rare? Editor PC TIPS - Backing up your data I can bet with confidence the majority of PC users don’t back up their data regularly. If it’s you, please save yourself a lot of grief and start to backup NOW The easiest way is to put your data on a CD, DVD or a USB Memory stick. But if you have lots of data, photos or video, by far the best thing to do is either to fit another internal hard drive into your computer or buy or make an external hard drive (usually USB). It’s then easy to ‘drag and drop’ or ‘copy and paste’ onto that backup drive. If your PC has died and your data seems lost and there isn’t any backup, don’t despair. There may be a simple way to get your data back. Buy a caddy, take out the hard drive from your PC and fit it into the caddy, as you would for making an external hard drive. Make sure the caddy you buy is appropriate for your hard drive i.e. IDE or SATA, 3 ½ inch or 2 ½ inch (laptop size). If you’re unsure how to do any of these bits of engineering, go to the Entente Cordiale website ‘IT Information’ page or E-mail: information@ententecordiale-creuse.org Robert Bates
Let the Train take the Strain! (From our Railways Correspondent) Page 7 This is a very old slogan from the days of British Rail, before it was sold off to private operators, but it is very appropriate for many journeys here. France is a huge country, and although the roads are excellent, and by UK standards fairly empty, distances and times between major venues are often deceptive, and it is worth considering using the rail services instead. Many of us will have depressing memories of rail services in the UK: expensive, overcrowded, rarely on time, and so on, whether in the days of British Rail or its successors. So a certain anti-train bias is perfectly understandable. The contrast between SNCF, the French national rail company, could not be greater: clean, fast, spot on timings, reserved seats on all but local trains, and very reasonably priced. A standard 2nd class return ticket to Paris from la Souterraine costs €64, (about £51) without restrictions, and cheaper options are available on certain trains. With the exception of a few tourist and preserved routes, all trains in France are operated by SNCF, despite having a confusion of different names for their services, such as Corail, Teoz, Rhealys, Thalys, TER, RER, Eurostar, TEE, and so on. Some services inside the Paris banlieu are operated by RATP, the Paris regional transport authority on behalf of SNCF, and vice versa. There are frequent direct trains to Paris and the north daily, and to Limoges, Cahors and Toulouse in the south, with local TER stopping trains in between. The introduction of a direct service to Lille from Brive la Gaillarde has bypassed the need to go via Paris for Eurostar trains to London, although the timings of the connections in Lille are a bit long winded. Nonetheless, this train, which leaves la Souterraine at 08:13, has opened up a few other interesting possibilities. For example, it is feasible to get off at Juvisy, south of Paris, and get an RER service to the centre of Paris and on to Versailles. This train stops at Gare d’ Austerlitz, Notre Dame, Palais de Luxumbourg, Les Invalides, Arc de Triomphe and Tour d' Eiffel, before crossing the Seine on it's way to Versailles. So it's an interesting journey through the heart of the city. TGV’s in Gare du Nord, Paris Other options on the Lille train are that it stops at Marne le Vallée, which is the station for Disneyland, or you could alight at Aeroporte Charles de Gaulle, where you can catch one of the new ultra fast TGV's to Strasbourg and the East. These double-decker trains are holders of the world speed record for conventional railways, at a speed of 574.8 km/h (357.18 mph), although the public service is not quite that fast! Finally, another advantage of the 08:13 train is that it stops at a number of stations en route, including Vierzon, where you can get trains to Bourges, Nevers, Clermont Ferrand & Lyon. Also, because this train has become the stopping service, the earlier 07:16 train now only stops at Chateauroux, getting to Paris 10 minutes earlier than before. Just as all roads lead to Rome, so in France, all railways lead to Paris, but there are many cross country routes that are worth exploring. There is a remarkable train to and from Bordeaux and& Lyon each day, which takes about 11 hours to wander between the two cities, and it stops locally at Limoges, St Sulpice Laurière, Guéret, & Montluçon. Of course, there are much faster ways to get to both Bordeaux and Lyon, but it's a nice casual journey! So far, I've only touched on journeys inside France, but this is a fantastic place from which to take trains to many European destinations. For example, did you know that there is a sleeping car train to Barcelona from Limoges each day at 23:55? (This train actually starts from Amsterdam Central). So, with the Editor’s permission, in the next newsletter I'll write a bit about Trans-European services. I’ll also mention some of the various discount cards you can buy, some of which can get 50% reductions on trains, hotel and car hire discounts, and even cheap tickets on the ferry from Marseilles to Corsica! Bon Voyage! Michael Overs
Page 1 and 2: ewsletter Autumn 2008 Welcome to th
Page 3 and 4: THE ENTENTE CORDIALE QUIZ - 2008 Pa
Page 5: Café Club Franglais Page 5 The Caf
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