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crépuscule

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Everything posted by crépuscule

  1. I'm getting organised to holiday in France. I have a pile of left-over Euro coins from my last visit, mostly very small denominations (2c, 1c). Are these still used in France? If not, what is the smallest denomination coin that is acceptable?
  2. Good luck in finding a home for these tickets but I have to say that Canada v Japan is even less appealing than Scotland v Italy!  I have given up all hope of getting tickets for the latter and have decided to holiday in Savoie during the early stages of the tournament instead of St Etienne and, hopefully, watch some games on TV. On which topic, I see there is a full page advert in the latest edition of France magazine promoting coverage of matches on TV5Monde. This threw me a bit as I was expecting the coverage to be on one of the main terrestrial channels. After a brief bit of googling, I think I have convinced myself that TV5Monde is a worldwide francophone satellite service which is showing all France's pool matches plus the knockout stages but that the main source of TV coverage will be TF1. Is this correct?
  3. See http://www.cantal-walking.com/footpaths.html . I think red and white markings are universal for GRs. Otherwise, I think local rules apply but different colours usually mean different degrees of length. Even for GRs, it is sometimes difficult to spot the markings. As with French road signs, if you don't see any markings that usually means you should just keep going in the same direction but it's not an approach that I like. After a while doubt always sets in. Best to always have a map & compass or map & GPS.
  4. Apologies. I did not read your posts of 10:58 and 13:10 properly and confused "Portugal" with "Italy" - an easy mistake to make! I'm not really that bothered about going to Scotland v Italy. It would have been nice to combine a holiday with watching the game but I would be just as happy to go somewhere else in France and watch some games on TV.  Enjoy the games in Bordeaux. I was in Dublin a couple of week's ago and sampled some real Irish pubs!
  5. I'm totally confused. I agree that I it looks as if tickets are available for Samoa v USA and SA v USA using the process described in my previous post but when I go through exactly the same process for Scotland v Italy, it says 0 tickets available in all categories.
  6. You got me excited there! I have just tried this but no luck. Are you doing something different from me? I went into www.france2007.fr which led me to www.france2007.ticketnet.fr which suggests that tickets for Scotland v Italy are available but, if you try to buy any, at any price, you get a message "ATTENTION IL N'Y A PLUS DE PLACES DISPONIBLES DANS LA CATEGORIE DEMANDEE".
  7. Yes, I saw that in my newspaper yesterday and immediately checked the RWC site but still no tickets for Scotland v Italy in St Etienne. I tried again this morning after seeing your post but same result. For Pool C, Scotland's Pool, it seems you can get tickets for matches in Edinburgh and Marseilles but not the other venues. I can't imagine that Romania v Portugal in Toulouse is a sell out! 
  8. There is a warning on the RWC 2007 website not to buy tickets except from the official sources. I don't know how rigorous the checking will be in France but I know that my rugby club got in trouble a few years ago because a member sold on tickets.
  9. I was thinking about having a holiday in the region around St Etienne around the end of September and maybe taking in the Scotland v Italy  qualifying match. Ticketmaster say that all tickets for this game are sold out which I find a bit surprising. The Scottish Rugby Union have great difficulty selling tickets for home matches these days so I find it a bit strange that an away match like this would be so popular. I suspect that all the tickets have not really been "sold" but have been taken up by tour operators who may then release them back to RWC at a later date if they can't sell all their holiday packages. Do any of you residents have any inside information? 
  10. I prefer using ALT+130 for é and so on, rather than using the Lexibar (see a previous discussion!). Using this approach, I can send special characters from Outlook 2003 to/from Hotmail without them getting jumbled up.  The only setting I can find in Outlook that may be relevant is in Tools/Options/Mail Format/International Options where "Preferred encoding for outgoing messages" is set to "Western European (ISO)". A quick Google suggests that this is a suitable setting for European languages. It might be worth looking to see if there is a setting in your own e-mail system that is similar. I'm no expert so this might be a complete hareng rouge.
  11. For what it's worth, the 5 most common surnames amongst last Saturday's French rugby team were: Marty 27,000, Clerc 14,000, Ibanez 5,700, Vermeulen 3,600 and Nallet 1,600. A surprisingly large number of Vermeulens? If Harinordoquy had played instead, the result would have been much different!
  12. I agree. This sounds like the wrong way round. Thanks anyway for everyone's suggestions.
  13. Sorry if this has come up before. I have done a Search and I have checked the proverbs section at  http://www.e-frenchtranslation.com/ and my book of 2001 French & English Idioms but does anyone know if there is a French equivalent of: "Why have a dog and bark yourself?
  14. I've just downloaded Cobian too and it looks pretty good but I'll stick with WinBackup as I'm used to it now. I use a Western Digital Passport 80Gb external drive for my backups.
  15. On second thoughts, I probably downloaded WinBackup from: http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/downloads/2149347/winbackup-1-86 so it's an older version of the software but it's completely free and it's easy to use.
  16. I did not know this existed either! I tried to download it but the validation failed! I have Windows XP which has been validated already and I have Office 2000 but I have upgraded Outlook to Outlook 2002. All of these were obtained officially! The validation process seems to be biased towards more modern versions of Office than mine. There is a link on the MS website for older versions of Office but it doesn't lead anywhere that's obviously useful. I can live without this but if there's any obvious reason why the validation doesn't work, I'd appreciare some advice. On a wider note, while backing up your mail is very important, everyone should have a regular back up regime for all important data e.g Word documents, spreadsheets, Favourites. I use the free version of WinBackup which is available from www.liutilities.com . Amongst other things, it lets you back up your mail without backing up anything else.
  17. I have just found a word containing ü - un capharnaüm = a shambles.
  18. I like Suze but I read somewhere that it is considered a "woman's" drink and there will be smirks and winks all round if a man asks for one. Is this true? I have not suffered this reaction myself. I was also reading "The Razor's Edge" by Somerset Maugham recently and he claims that the perfect dry martini requires gin, noilly-prat and - a dash of absinthe. I haven't tried it myself.  
  19. If you look in Wikipedia (which I should have done first!) under "French Language", there is a section: diaeresis or tréma (ë, ï, ü): Indicates that a vowel is to be pronounced separately from the preceding one: naïve, Noël. Diaeresis on ÿ only occurs in some proper names (such as l'Haÿ-les-Roses) and in modern editions of old French texts. Since the 1990 orthographic rectifications, the diaeresis in words containing guë (such as aiguë or ciguë) should be moved onto the u: aigüe, cigüe. Words coming from German retain the old Umlaut if applicable but uses French pronunciation, such as kärcher(trade mark of a pressure washer). There is no mention of ö which suggests it does not occur. The suggested switch from guë to güe is not reflected in my Robert dictionary (published in 1998).
  20. I haven't tried resetting the keyboard so I'm not saying that using the ALT keys is better but I've got used to it now so will probably continue with it. For French, most of the time you only need 4 combinations: ALT+130 é ALT+133 à ALT+135 ç ALT+138 è which I can just about remember but I have a crib sheet which sits under my monitor that I refer to for the others: ALT+131 â ALT+136 ê ALT+137 ë ALT+139 ï ALT+140 î ALT+147 ô ALT+150 û ALT+151 ù That's really all you need as you can get away without using special characters with capital letters. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions for words with ë and ï but so far none with ö or ü! After a quick flick through my Robert, the best I can offer is führer which probably doesn't count.
  21. I have made up a table of ALT key combinations to make it easier to type in French special characters e.g. ALT+130 = é. I have included ALT+148 = ö and ALT+129 = ü but, on second thoughts, I don't think there are any French words that contain these characters. Can anyone confirm this or suggest words that do have these characters?
  22. Using an English keyboard is no excuse! ALT+130 will give you an é.
  23. I've also heard "Bonne continuation" after being served with my main course.
  24. To prolong the debate: Last night, I was reading the Rough Guide to the Pyrenees and came across the following under Eating and Drinking: "The waiter/waitress will approach with the words Ca-y-était? to take finished plates away, which inevitably throws some people as the expression isn't in most phrasebooks." It isn't in mine! Is this an alternative or a mistake by the Rough Guide?  
  25. Does anyone have any suggestions for a round trip on this train? The complete round trip Villefranche to Latour-de-Carol and back seems a bit long at approx. 6 hours and there doesn't seem to be much to do at Latour except wait for the next train back. Villefranche to Mont-Louis and back would be the most convenient for us (and it's a reasonable journey at 90 minutes each way) but is there any other section that would give a more interesting journey plus somewhere reasonable to stop off for some sightseeing and some refreshment? 
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