Super at last

Two years ago in Eygliers and Guillestre, two of the villages down in the valley from our house, flooding such as hadn’t been seen in more than eighty years devastated homes, businesses, and roadways. The electricity was out for several days in much of the area. Villages further up the mountain were completely inaccessible for days or weeks except by helicopter.

Initial concerns were obviously for people’s safety and for how to get medical assistance and food to those in the isolated areas. That helped arrived within hours.

Then came the worry about the main road leading to one of the major ski resorts in the area. A bridge on the road had washed out and without the bridge, the tour buses would not be able to access the resort. It was only a few weeks until the Christmas holiday. No bridge meant no buses and —and no tour buses meant devastating financial losses for a community that survives on tourism.

Almost immediately, the army corp of engineers was brought in to build a new section of road and a bridge. Public opinion was split because funding for the bridge was not a problem but then the government claimed that money to help everyone else and all of the mom and pop businesses in the valley was.

And then there was the supermarket.

Guillestre has two - Intermarché and Carrefour. They could be rivals, but they aren’t. One sits toward the entrance to the Queyras region, and the other is at the entrance into Guillestre, just off la nationale, the main highway. Intermarché happens to be located right next to a small stream I’d honestly never even noticed. During the floods, that little trickle became a raging channel of rainwater and snowmelt. It surged across the parking lot and filled the store with meters of water and mud. For months afterward, posters showing the damage were taped to the windows—strangely fascinating.

Fascinating and frustrating because talks of renovating and reopening were long in coming. Apparently a supermarket several towns away - and which was benefitting from an increase in customers thanks to the loss of Inter in Guillestre - raised objections to the renovations. These objections halted the permitting process and any work to reopen our supermarket. This went on for a year. Once resolved, the renovation itself took another twelve months.

This Monday was the official re-opening of the new Super Intermarché. The upgrade from market to supermarket is a bigger deal than it sounds.

I used to teach my American French students the difference between a market, supermarket, and hypermarket. A market can be anything from open-air stands to a corner shop. A supermarket is larger and sells not only food but also smattering of books, office supplies, clothes, tools, and basic car items. A hypermarket—well, that’s the place that sells just about everything. When I was a kid in France, I loved going to our local hypermarché because we’d come out with groceries, a new lamp, snow tires, a pair of boots, a cassette from my favorite singer, and a novel in English. Then we’d go have lunch in the store’s cafeteria. It was magical.

I am not a big shopper now. I do motivate myself to do some Christmas shopping., and I enjoy wandering through Amazon, but my cart is always full of things I’m never actually going to buy. My husband wishes I would go shopping for myself—make-up, clothes, home decorations—but it’s just not me.

Grocery shopping, however, I love. For all of my major grocery shopping, I drive either twenty-five minutes in one direction or thirty-five in another. If I really want a hypermarket, I have to drive at least an hour. But if I just need to grab something quick, I rely on the local markets. Carrefour is a small supermarket and has saved me more than once with a last minute birthday gift, socks, and mailing envelopes. Still, it’s a 35-minute round trip from our house.

Intermarché is even closer - just 20 minutes round trip - and it used to be my go-to market for those ingredients I didn’t know I needed for tonight’s dinner and for ready-made salads and sandwiches during the chaos of our initial house renovations.

So yesterday, on the way home from school, my son and I stopped to check out the new Super market. Honestly, it was pretty super - bright, fully stocked, a little crowded. I love seeing how the aisles are organized, the product selections, the little surprises. I bought a bag of onions, a toothbrush, cheese from the new cheese counter, and a jug of winter windshield cleaner. Not exactly a glamorous haul, but somehow it made me absurdly happy. Life in the mountains comes back together in the smallest ways. Super, just as promised.