The Return of the Matrix

Some of you have asked how exactly we we chose our apartment. We did our apartment searching back in April last year, when many annual and seasonal rentals at the ski areas turn over. We made lots of phone calls, saw lots of apartments, and finally decided on our place in Les Brevieres.

The choosing part was difficult. It's not every day you move to a new country and can pick which town you want to live in! Before we even left for France though, we had it narrowed down to two general areas: 1) Easy driving distance to les Trois Vallees ski area, 2) Easy driving distance to Espace Killy ski area. And as a fall-back plan in case one of those didn't work: 3) Easy driving distance to the Chamonix ski areas.

Then, as we started looking, we narrowed it down even more, and required that we were connected by lift or by bus to one of those three areas. That still left us with literally dozens of towns to look at. We visited lots, and when we liked one, we would thumbtack a note saying we were looking for a place to the neighborhood posting board (usually outside the town hall, or near the communal poubelles (garbage containers)). We would also ask the Tourist Office for a list of proprietaires who might rent apartments for the season, and start calling them.

Ultimately, we looked at thirteen different apartments in six different towns.

And ultimately, to chose, we reinstated what we call "the Matrix."

We developed the Matrix over ten years ago to help us shop for apartments. The Matrix is a weighted scorecard where we award points in categories we have decided are important. Each category has a scale (eg. 1-3 for "Bad", "OK", "Good") and a multiplier. The higher the multiplier, the more important the category. The best part about the Matrix is that it is fairly subjective and allows us to look at apartments separately, if we have to. This actually works! I once gave Craig the go-ahead to sign lease paperwork while I was on a business trip, based on an apartment's Matrix score.

This time though, the Matrix was a bit more complicated, because not only were there different apartments, but different towns as well! So first, we made a Matrix for the towns.

The Town Matrix

The categories for the Town Matrix were:
Access (How easy will it be to get to the slopes? 1-5 points.)
Road (How easy is it to get to where we will do our "stock-up" shopping? 1-5 points.)
Services (What will we be able get to without driving? 1-5 points.)
Feel (A somewhat subjective category related to how much we enjoyed hanging out in the town. 1-6 points.)

Results for the Town Matrix

Town	Access (1-5) x 4	Road (1-5) x 1	Services (1-5) x 3	Feel (1-6) x 1	TOTAL POINTS
Val d'Isere	5x4=20	3x1=3	5x3=15	4x1=4	42
La Daille	5x4=20	3x1=3	5x3=15	2x1=2	40
Les Brevieres	4x4=16	4x1=4	3x3=9	3x1=3	32
St. Martin	4x4=16	2x1=2	3x3=9	4x1=4	31
Les Granges	2x4=8	2x1=2	1x3=3	4x1=4	20
Praranger	2x4=8	2x1=2	1x3=3	4x1=4	20

Then, of course, we had the individual apartments to rate. The categories for the Apartment Matrix were:
Size (How big is it? 1-5 points.)
Light (How bright is it? 1-3 points.)
Storage (How much is there? 1-5 points.)
Character (A somewhat subjective category based on how we felt being in the apartment. 1-6 points.)
Parking (Is it possible on the property? If not, how far away? 1-5 points.)
Local connection (Do we think our landlords will be good community connections for us? 1-5 points.)
Guests (How comfortable will people be when they come visit us? 1-7 points.)
Bonus Points were awarded for: Dishwasher (1 pt), Washer/Dryer (3 points) and Ski-in/Ski-out ability (2 points each)

Results for the Apartment Matrix
This is how our apartment scored:

Category	Raw Score	Multiplier	Weighted score
Size	2	x7	14
Light	2	x7	14
Storage	3	x4	12
Character	2	x2	4
Parking	5	x5	25
Local Connection	4	x3	12
Guests	4	x1	4
Bonus Points: Washer Ski-in Ski-out	3 2 2	x1	7
Sub total			92
Add the town score for Les Brevieres			32
GRAND TOTAL			124

This was not our highest rated apartment, but it turned out that we couldn't rent the highest rated one, because the current tenant renewed for another season. But, this one was about 50% cheaper, so it all worked out well!

The picture is of our micro kitchen. But this kitchen is bigger than some we looked at. In one apartment (which scored 94, incidentally) the kitchen was right inside the entrance and there was a fold-down counter on the back of the front door. I'm glad we're not living there!

-SK

Fresh tracks!

Now, this is what we're here for!

The fifth day after the snow fell, Craig and I put the skins on the skis and hiked just outside of the Tignes ski area. We found amazing good snow, and the incredible thing: NO PEOPLE! Not even another track was visible. We were starting to fear that this might never happen in the French Alps.

But it did today. And here's the proof.

The top photo shows me (small dot, look for where the second track is being made), and the bottom photo shows Craig. This line was so good we skied it three times!

-SK

PS. I hope this makes some of you think again about coming and meeting us here. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!

This is our view today...

... As you can see, visibility is pretty bad. The good news is that, somewhere on the mountain, it is probably snowing.

So what do we do with ourselves when we're stuck inside due to weather?

Well, boring things like cleaning, doing laundry, etc. AND trying to prepare the responses to the things that you all want to know. We have a good start on several "Best of Europe" lists that we'll be putting online soon!

Also, today, we finally put all of the Europe pictures online. So now, you can finally see pictures of France! Go to le Reve home page and click on "Photos by Region".

-SK

On Language in Europe...

In these times of quick and cheap automatic translators like Babelfish, we might assume that language differences are becoming less and less of an issue for travelers around the world.

However, we were quite happy we had studied French when the English menu at a restaurant in Fontaine de Vaucluse read "Salad..." (OK, so far, so good) "...with Ham Believed." Ham Believed!! What in the world is that?! We looked at the French menu. "Salade avec Jambon Cru." Jambon cru is a raw, cured ham, like prosciutto. But cru is also the past participle for the verb croire, to believe. So we ordered the Ham Believed and ate, gloating to ourselves that yes, we ARE smarter than Babelfish.

Really though, the places where Babelfish (or equivalent) is necessary in Europe are few and far between. Yes, fortunately for us native speakers, our unfortunate language is spoken widely almost everywhere. The notable exceptions are: rural Sicily (but it's Italy, so it doesn't matter, since more than half of the communication consists of gesticulations and volume), Albania, Bulgaria, and rural Hungary, where the dominant second language is German. We were embarrassed when trying to troubleshoot a clutch problem at the Fiat dealer in Szekszard. "Sprecken sie Deutsch?" they asked. "Nein. English?" we answered. "Just English??" was their response. Well no, French, and a bit of Spanish, but those don't help in Eastern Europe.

Thankfully, the Hungarians don't expect tourists to learn their language, which is completely unrelated to romance languages, germanic languages OR slavic languages. No, it is unique in Europe, with its closest linguistic neighbor Finnish. We found basic phrases nearly impossible. For example, goodbye is viszontlátásra, and thank you is köszönöm. Which may not be as bad as the Albanian thank you: Falemenderit, or the Bulgarian: ҕлагодарЯ (pronounced "blagodaryah"). We think the worst, though, was Greek. Please is Παραχαλω (Parakalo), thank you is Ευχαριστω (Efkareesto). Help! Words for thank you should be two syllables. Max.

The Danes have the right idea. Thank you is Tak. This, I can handle. Danish and Swedish rank among the easiest languages for English speakers. Many words are the same, just spelled funny, like brød and fisk (bread and fish). Dutch, too, is pretty easy to read, but sounds like complete hell when spoken! And, because we've studied French and Spanish, the romance languages: French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, are also pretty easy for us.

However, studying French has its drawbacks. I have become a terrible speller. Is it blue or bleu? Appartement or apartment? Adresse or address?

Along with these franco-spellings, we expect you will witness the following words from our mouths when we return: Peut-être - French for "maybe"; Pour la plupart - "For the most part"; Vraiment - "Truly"; Brico - abbreviated from bricolage, for "home improvement"; Frigo - "Refrigerator"; Bancomat - Italian for "cash machine"; and Smak - Dutch for "flavor". Oh, and you might hear us speaking fake German.

We are blissfully ignorant of German, and adore the way that its words easily become six syllables long with 80% consonants. For example, my Sonnenmilk is feuchtigkeitsspendend. (My sunscreen is hydrating. I think!)

So, in conclusion, das Langenthingen ist guddfohnnen! (This language thing is good fun!)

-SK

Missing Pictures: Porto, Portugal, November 8

...Yes, we promised we'd write what you wanted to hear... but first, here's a description of a another photo we lost when our computer was stolen. I guess we're not quite over it yet!

This is a picture of Porto, Portugal, taken from across the river in Villa Nova de Gaia. It is late afternoon, and the sun casts orange light on the narrow buildings stacked on the bluff. Most are only a room (two or three windows) wide, but at least six stories tall. The buildings jumble themselves against the bluff like an Italian hilltown with an urban, gritty and slightly dilapidated feel. Many of them are tiled in the Portuguese style - which makes graffiti easier to remove, but it's sometimes hard to find a match when broken tiles need replacing.

In the foreground, you can see the river that separates Porto from Gaia, and that travels just two kilometers to the west (left in this picture) to the Atlantic Ocean. The old-looking wooden boats are the traditional transport for that famous fortified wine -- Port. Most people think that Port comes from Porto, but in actuality, almost all of the port houses are in Gaia. This photo is taken from the terrace of Taylor Fladgate, where we tasted several and ended up buying a bottle of Taylor's 20. Special occasions only!

After taking this photo, we walked across the bridge you can see on the right, and explored Porto as it got dark. This ranks among our scariest experiences in Europe. Porto is a fascinating place - but its narrow alleys, many dead-ends, general feeling of cultural uneasiness, and lots of people that look like they have nothing to do make it a bit nerve-racking! On our way back to Gaia, we walked past a gangish looking group towards a unknown route down the hill that felt, several times, like a trap.

Luckily, we made it, even though this photo did not.

-SK

New Year, New Blog...?

Well, not really.

You can still find us here. What I'm hoping to do though, is to make our chatter more interested by writing what YOU want to know about our trip. I mean, we traveled for 10 months and only wrote about a small portion of it!

So we want suggestions! What would you like to hear about? Send us an email or post a comment on the blog.

We are also in the process of updating le Reve website. I'm cheating, and using Apple's iWeb project. There are several things that are annoying to me about it, but hopefully you won't notice them!

-SK

PS. The photo shows FIS World Cup action (women's slalom) at Val d'Isere