articles

Comment: Dear Sir/Madam,

I am working on tv project for the Six Nations Rugby, in it there are a French man (in his late 30s/40s, a Scottish man, an English man and a Welsh man. Would you happen to know of any French men living in Ireland who would be interested in coming in to a studio to be put on camera i.e. cast, whomever ends up in campaign will be paid a generous fee, the casting would be on the 11th or 12th of Jan and the actual filming of tv campaign would be on the 18th or 19th.

My name is Carmel O'Connor and I am the casting director working on this project, my email is above and my mobile is 087 9880328 and my landline is 01-6682450 .

The characters we are trying to represent are your typical Six Nation rugby supporters, there will be line so we are trying to have authentic accents for each nation. If you do know of any French men in their late 30s to mid 40s perhaps you'd pass my details along or indeed you can pass theirs to me and I'll contact directly.

Regards, Carmel O'Connor

GRAPE PICKING WINE TOUR


This year, The French Tour co will be combining a mornings grape picking on a boutique vineyard followed by lunch on the vineyard ( with appropriate wines), and vineyard visits and tastings in the afternoon.
The vineyard owner speaks perfect English and will explain the whole wine making process during the day. It is a fantastic day out, a great learning experience and a wonderful insight into "how wine is made"




BEAT THE WINTER BLUES AND CATCH SOME WINTER SUN

Irish sisters Karen and Suzanne O’Reilly who run The French tour Co in the South of France are organising a fantastic 3 day trip to the Pyrenees Orientales around the atmospheric wine festival which takes place on the 17th October in the Catalan capital of Perpignan.

From Thursday 15th October to Sunday 18th October.BORED WITH BEAUJOLAIS? Catch some late summer sun, Pamper yourself in a luxurious spa hotel, relax and unwind at the Perpignan wine festival and enjoy an unforgettable gourmet wine tour. The French Tour Co and Frogbus.com have teamed up to put together a weekend package filled with fun, sun, wine, cuisine and culture.

WINE TOUR

We will be running these tours from the 20 Aug to 20 Sept.

Price : €80 per person

All year round, you can partake in our RED BERET WINE TOUR which is an excellent day out. We visit 3 – 4 vineyards and have lunch in a vineyard estate with the appropriate wines : We partake in a "how wine is made tour" in English with the vineyard owner. The atmosphere is relaxed yet informative as we visit a variety of vineyards.

Price : €80 per person including lunch

Check out our other tour and transfer options on www.thefrenchtourco.com

How to Set-Up a Website for Your French Holiday Home" on your website?

If interested please follow the link to this website www.simplicitywebsites.co.uk in acknowledgement.

Trevor Owen, Simplicity Websites

Rendez vous en France


This year, summer travel in France doesn't just mean fun. It means value, too! Read on to find out how you can lower the bill on all aspects of your next French vacation, from rail travel, to restaurant bills, to leisure activities.

Plus, learn about upcoming outdoor summer festivals, take advantage of France's ample waterfront spaces, and enter to win a trip for 2 to Bordeaux or an Ipod touch!

French Government Tourist Officehttp://us.franceguide.com

Dear Brendan, we are running short cooking courses in the middle of Brittany.

The cuisine is a broad range of European cuisine but local French/Bretagne influence is paramount.

We have visitors from all over Ireland as well as France and further afield. All classes are in English and we also run guided tours to the food markets as well as specialist farms and places of culinary interest.

You don't have to be an food expert to attend - just enjoy learning new skills and meeting new friends. Further information is available on our website http://www.frenchdiningschool.com

Best wishes

Niall

Bringing Irish and French people together in Brittany


Niall O'Reilly wrote on the 21-05-2009 :

Hello, we run a cooking school in Brittany - the Irish part of France!

We specialise in bringing Irish and French people together over a table of good cuisine and fine wines!

All are welcome!

You can check us out on http://www.frenchdiningschool.com/.

Here is quite a nice piece from today's Sunday Independent you might like to read ??

Independent.ie

Staying Seine

By Madeleine Keane Sunday December 07 2008

I EMERGE from the Metro Luxembourg, and there, out of the crisp Paris evening, she materialises. My baby, not only all grown up, but a Parisienne to boot in her ballet pumps, a crimson beret perched on her head. My elder daughter Natasha has come to Paris for her Erasmus year, to study law at the University of Nanterre (where Sarkozy studied, as she patiently explains each time someone enquires why not the Sorbonne?). And so here I am on a winter weekend to my favourite place in the world to see one of my favourite people in the world.
She's staying at the Centre Culturel Irlandais -- known colloquially as the Irish College -- and so by serendipitous accident am I. And what a wonderful place to stay. Located in the justifiably celebrated 5th arrondissement, this beautiful and historic building acts as hall of residence -- home to lots of Irish students and artists -- and serves as an artistic and cultural flagship of Irishness for le tout Paris. Natasha shows me to my room, which immediately manifests its monkish origins (it was the priests' college for centuries). It is austere, but beautifully so -- a thoroughly modern room with the old fabric of the building evident in the beams poking through the ceiling. All is white -- walls, linen, towels -- and the furnishings are utterly simple and totally functional. Very French, in fact.
We dine that evening at a typical bistro -- Comptoir de Soufflot -- on half a dozen escargots, chicken cooked in its own juices and confit de canard, and take a digestif afterwards in the lively rue Mouffetard. "Turn around, Mum," my daughter orders; I do and there's the Eiffel Tower shimmering with light. Ah, bliss! I really am back in Paris.
A 10-minute stroll through bright November sunshine takes us the next morning past the Pantheon to Gregorian mass at Notre Dame . Then we walk along the Left Bank of the Seine for a cafe creme before taking communion at the beautiful church, the Madeleine. Fauchon, that epicurean heaven, is closed, so we console ourselves with a wide slice of Moulleaux, a gorgeously moist chocolate cake.
We stroll through the elegant expanse of the Jardins de Tuileries. It's the first Sunday of the month, so entry to art galleries and museums is free: hence, the Louvre is very busy. La Gioconda is there in all her glory still smiling enigmatically at the hundreds of tourists snapping her visage. In the Sully wing, we gaze in wonder on the masterpieces of Watteau, Fragonard, Delacaroix before winding home past the famous Shakespeare and Company bookshop where we pick up vintage Ian McEwan.
If you stay at the Irish college, you can breakfast with the students. It's simple but sufficient: juice, tea or coffee, a choice of cereals, bread and jam. There's a lovely atmosphere and a real sense of Ireland in this rue des Irlandais. According to Natasha and her cohorts, the authorities are strict but fair. A Halloween party was allowed on the grounds that the students stayed "sage et calme". And that they cleared up afterwards.
Sheila Pratschke is the practical, affable Irish directrice of the Centre, who felt she wanted "to do one last job before I retired". As director of the Irish Film Institute, and more recently, Annaghmakerrig, she describes herself not as a specialist but "self-propelled and interested in all the arts". With her "very moribund degree French", she found this great place at first a great challenge but could not resist the beauty of the city on the river.
"I was lonely in the beginning, though the longer I'm here the more I find out how many Irish people have a pied a terre here," she laughs. While she acknowledges the challenges of running the centre in a city where there are 42 different cultural centres vying for attention, she praises her "terrific team of work colleagues and the Irish embassy, who give great support". Her head lifts with pride when she lauds the unique nature of the centre. "It's wonderful for Ireland to have something so historic in such a location. We are rightly proud of it and it has been invested in properly."
This small corner of this extraordinary city has a rich history. For centuries, it trained priests and students. In 1807, its superior, Jean-Baptiste Walsh, persuaded Napoleon to change the name of its street by prefectorial decree from rue du Cheval Vert to rue des Irlandais. As the Irish had previously sought refuge in the College des Irlandais and their other establishments in Paris from the 16th century, they too made the college available as a safe haven to others in need. It was converted into a hospital to accommodate French soldiers during the Franco-Prussian war and in 1945 the premises served the United States army as a shelter for displaced persons claiming American citizenship.
In the immaculately restored old library, Sheila shows me (from a collection of about 8,000 printed books and manuscripts) the ancient exquisite illuminated texts. Downstairs, the mediatheque offers a multi-media library.
To celebrate the French presidency of the EU, the college is paying homage to Irish culture with a series of cultural events which runs from September to the end of the year. Supported by Culture Ireland, the season has offered the very best of literature, art, theatre, music and film with a distinguished roll call of our premier artists, among them, Roddy Doyle, Olwen Fouere, Conor Lovett, Sean McSweeney and Dermot Bolger. While I'm there for a screening of The Last September -- Elizabeth Bowen's novel adapted for the screen by John Banville, directed by Deborah Warner and starring Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon and Fiona Shaw -- the venue is packed with French and Irish, and there's something special about watching this slice of history in the Irish college.
Our autumn weekend is packed with such cultural delights. There's an exhibition of war photographer Lee Miller's work at Jeu de Paume -- including the self-portrait in Hitler's bath -- and later at the sublime Musee D'Orsay there are endless wonders. Of course, being in Paris with my daughter means shopping tops her agenda, and we find the perfect pair of winter boots in Au Printemps.
In a sometimes sad and uncertain world, as Rick reminds Ilsa in Casablanca, "we'll always have Paris".
- Madeleine Keane

P.O. Networking

We are a group of over 100 business owners , living in the PO , who meet once a month to network, organise events etc

http://www.fab-po.com/

We are having a Christmas Fair on the 23 November in Ceret with a large selection of different stalls

Best Regards
Karen.

I received the following e-mail from Jean Marie Desbois, Provence. Very interesting to learn of someone in France making such an effort to learn Irish. Please visit the websites below.

Dear Brendan,

My blog deals with genealogy and local history in Provence (a region in Southern France). I will write an article next month about a young man (20 years old) who was the son of an Irish soldier and a woman from Embrun (a town in the Alps). He was raised in a hospital and died at age 20. I wanted to use this picture to illustrate this page. I have found a bigger version of it on another website and I think this image is free of rights. So I will probably use it.I like Ireland too. That is why I started a blog recently about Irish language :

http://gaeilge-irlandais.blogspot.com

http://www.geneprovence.com/2008/07/mort-dun-enfant-de-soldat-embrun-17.html

Buying or selling French property? - How to choose the right professional
adviser
Buying a property or establishing a business in any country requires the specialist legal assistance of
highly-trained, qualified professionals suitably experienced in such matters. Investors require clear,
impartial advice prior to, and during, the purchase process, to avoid costly mistakes. In most commonlaw
countries, both vendor and acquirer instruct their own legal professional to act in their interests, yet
many French property purchasers fail to insist on having their own adviser. Why is this? Often, because
they have been purposely misled (being told that it is the norm in France) or they allow themselves to be
carried away on a wave of false promises. It is not just permitted to have your own legal advisor, it is
highly recommended.
Notaires (notaries) are Public Officers whose main role is to draft and execute Deeds. They are civilservants
who have a monopoly on documents that must be authenticated by Deed, i. e. wills, marriage,
contracts, document dealing with transfer of real property, and conveyancing. Notaries often act for both
buyer and seller, which can potentially give rise to conflicts of interest. Their fees, based on a fixed scale,
depend on the property's value. Notaires only get paid if a given transaction proceeds to completion.
Avocats (solicitors) are equally highly-trained professionals and similarly authorised to accomplish the
same as a notaire, plus further to the notaire, if things go wrong, they can represent a client in Court.
French notaires are generally very courteous and competent, but there are situations where customers,
especially non-French speakers, are experiencing difficulties: they are either being overcharged for a
service, or simply left in the dark with no answer whatsoever to their queries, delays occur etc... In most
cases, that situation leaves foreign customers with very little recourse against the notaire concerned.
There are distinct advantages of using the services of a bilingual, qualified French solicitor:
- You are assured that a qualified and experienced legal professional is really looking after your
interests;
- Not only an independent solicitor is obliged to comply with strict professional standards, but he will get
paid regardless of where and from whom the buyer buys;
- Where a difficulty arises, your solicitor can liaise with the notaire on your behalf and, if the matter does
not get resolved, write to the notaires' local Law Society and lodge a formal complaint on your behalf. As
a last resort, your solicitor can cancel the sale, reclaim your deposit and/or damages, and even sue the
notaire in question for negligence where applicable;
- A qualified French lawyer established in France officially acts for you when corresponding with French
Notaries, local authorities, banks, etc. whereas correspondence originating from law firms based outside
France do not have the same efficiency and credibility...
As always, it is advisable to prevent this from happening if possible: involving your own French solicitor
from the outset can, in the end, save a lot of money. If problems do happen, do not wait until matters
have gone worse before consulting an independent French lawyer.
Fabien Cordiez is a dual-qualified Franco-British solicitor
http://www.solicitor.fr