Geeking out (just a bit)

Woah, posting twice in one day...actually, this isn't so much a proper post as an anecdote to my--possibly overly erudite--posting this morning and also a proof that I am wasting too much time online.

That said, this is totally and completely awesome!! XKCD strikes again...

Oh, Marianne

I just finished reading Citizens, by Simon Schama, subtitled a chronicle of the French Revolution.  What a story!  After getting through it, I can’t believe I got as much out of all my undergraduate modern history courses as I did without having studied the French Rev in more than a passing and tangential way.  So many of the topics I was engrossed by—the rise of anti-colonial nationalism, the Russian revolution and what came after, the totalitarian states of the twentieth century…. I could recognize the roots of so much of that in what I was reading about the events of 1789-94.

This is not to say that I am giving up my previously-held conviction (a belief instilled in my and my classmates by the ghost of Edward Said, who I am fully convinced still paces the halls at Columbia, leaking ectoplasm and causing the lights to flicker when people mention the canon) that it is fundamentally wrong to see modern history as based on a central narrative driven by a progression of key events in Western history…perish the thought!  But, (and, as my 7^th grade teacher would say, “this is a big but—”) there were so many things—the rapid transformation from revolutionary chaos to police state; the attempt to completely remake society on the basis of a new set of ideals; the desire to claim for as the revolution’s heritage an “authentic” idea of the national past; the movement towards a systematized, “scientific” method of eliminating the people deemed dangerous to the new order as quickly as possible—in which I saw amazingly-prescient echoes of so much that I had studied from the last two hundred years.

It also helped that Schama is a very engaging writer.  He was clearly writing the book to appeal to a wider audience than just his peers of the academy.  For one thing, he translated all quotes—a sure sign that this is not a book meant only for grad students to be able to regurgitate during exams.  Although part of me was sorry not to be able to get more of a taste of the historical figures whose words he made use of (since I think some of them would be quite entertaining to read in their own right), I really enjoyed Schama’s relaxed writing style, which walked the line between conversational and informational.  His confessed aim was to make the book a “narrative” of events, and I definitely had to stifles feelings of, “Wait! The story can’t be over yet—” when he tied off his account with the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror. He really made the characters of the time come alive.

Of course, it helped his case that there were some truly larger-than-life characters adding their influence to those events.  Not just Robespierre, who Schama painted as an almost evangelical figure, wanting to cleanse French society using the dual principles of terror and virtue, but the rake-Bishop Tallyrand, the self-aggrandizingly heroic Lafayette, the fatally waffling Louis XVI, the ice princess Charlotte Corday, the fatally world-weary Malesherbes.  I think my favorite was actually Danton.  Not that he was really any less of a violent rabble-rouser than any other member of the revolutionary government in its various iterations, but you have got to respect someone whose final words on the steps of the guillotine were, “be sure to show my head to the crowd afterwards.  It is well worth the effort.” The man had cajones.

I'm Bringing Quirky Back

Surgeon Generals Warning: what follows is a rant.  Bear with me.

When she walks, she swings her arms, 

instead of her hips

When she talks, she moves her mouth, 

instead of her lips

My latest lesson plan for my students (English conversation reinforcement at a French lycée), revolved around introducing them to some examples of American teenage culture that might not have made it to Cosne sur Loire yet.  I found an article purporting to "explain" hipsters, and printed it off for them, hoping that hilarity would ensue.  Mostly what ensued was confusion, since the appeal of vintage shopping is not one that translates well--at least not in this provincial town.  After several attempts at giving the lesson (I'm fortunate that I have many students at the same level, because my classes definitely take multiple reps to iron out all the problems), I was able to successfully segue the discussion from comprehending the article to talking about fashion and conformity more generally (this is not the rant, by the way; I was actually pretty happy with this discussion).

The rant is this:  Who am I to be leading teenagers in discussions of pressures to conform?  I am, as anybody who knows me can tell you, not the most confident of people at navigating the messy landscape known as adult social interaction, particular when it happens between genders.  I am just as liable as anyone to try to conform to what's hot/cool/smart/funny/normal when I am in a social situation.

This is a strategy that is clearly not working out too well for me.

However, it has recently struck me that there are plenty of messages--coming right out of popular music, no less--there for girls who do not fit in, girls who are, plainly, just a little weird.   Whether it's Cake singing about the girl with a mind like a diamond, or even (please bear with me), Rob Thomas singing about the girl who can only sleep when it's raining, fitting in does not seem to be what's desired here.

So, I think its time to embrace quirkiness.  Stop worrying about being the cool one, the one with her act together, and start acting more like the girl who wears high heels when she exercises, or the one who looks so sad when she smiles.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Back in Europe, but not yet in France

...and, I'm back!  Despite the gap in my blogging, I did not disappear into the howling void of delayed airline transit for my entire vacation, although I was definitely afraid at certain points that that was going to happen.  I was supposed to get back to California on the 19th of December, and I did not actually make it home until the morning of the 25th, after numerous delays, bad weather, striking airport workers, missed connections, expensive emergency hotel stays, and more hours waiting in Charles de Gaulle airport than I like to think about.  It was enough to shake my belief in the efficacy of air travel as a modern means of transportation, and it made me want to celebrate Christmas in June so I wouldn't have to travel at the same time as everybody else in the western world.  Nevertheless, when I finally got home, I had a lovely time--far too short, as it seemed to me when I left two days ago.

The journey back to the old world was not nearly as traumatic as one home, although it had its drawbacks (the worst airplane food I have ever eaten, and a seat neighbor who spoke almost no English, drank 10 whiskeys over the course of a 9-hour flight, and passed out on me so that I had to go and get a stewardess to yell at him in Polish...)  Once I arrived, though, things started looking up.  I had made plans to visit an Austrian college friend for the last weekend of here winter break, and so I flew in to Vienna, where we are spending three days together before I go back to France and work and she goes back to her home town of Graz.

I was more or less drunk from sleep deprivation when I arrived yesterday (its hard to sleep when you have to keep pushing an inter Pole off your shoulder), but I had an amazing 12 hours of sleep at our hotel last night, and started the morning off feeling like the proverbial daisy.  Vienna really is a great city to be a tourist.  I had not thought much about what it would be like there, besides the fact that it would be great to see Katrin, so I hadn't spent a lot of time looking forward to doing anything particular.  It turns out, that there is a lot to look forward to. 

We started off the day by going to watch a morning training session at the Spanish Riding School.  This is the traditional home of the Lipizzaner Stallions, whom I had read a book about and loved as a child, but had almost forgotten that they were even an attraction in Vienna.  It was only last night, when we came into the central square of the Hofburg (the giant complex of imperial palaces and houses of state that is at the center of the city), when I saw the statue of the Emperor sitting on his horse and remembered vividly the scene in Marguerite Henry's book White Stallion of Vienna when the boy Hans climbs up to sit behind him in the middle of the night and resolves to become a riding master at the Spanische Hofreitschule, that I felt the thrill of recognition and excitement you get when you see something you loved as a child reappear in your life.  Fortunately, although there were no performances this weekend (and they probably would have been too expensive for me if they were), we were able to visit the horses exercise period, which is open to the public.  The training is done to music, and it takes place in the same gallery where they perform, and where they were once watched by the emperor (indeed, the school is also at the Hofburg).  It felt like part of a tradition from another era.  It was also beautiful--the cues the riders give their horses are almost invisible, and the horses go from pace to pace like dancers.  It was like watching ballet for me, with none of the bitterness of remembered experience.  The only thing that would have improved it would have been if they did any of the airs above the ground (which I was secretly hoping to see), but I suppose I will have to come back and see a show for that.

After the riding school, we went to the other side of the same building, to see the museum of the imperial silver collection, the imperial apartments, and the museum commemorating the Empress Elizabeth, who was the wife of the Emperor Franz Joseph and, apparently, both a great beauty and a real piece of work.  The entire experience was one of overwhelming luxury--great to see, but one is glad that the state is no longer paying to showcase its power and glory in the bodies and lifestyles of a privileged royal family.  Some of their excesses were slightly mind-blowing: a 140-person gold-plated state dinner set, for example, or the fact that Sisi used to wash her ankle-length hair in a mixture of egg yolk and cognac... You understand why people became communists.

After all that, we were in need of sustenance.  Fortunately, Vienna is a city where they do right by coffee breaks.  We ended up at the cafe of the Hotel Sacher, where I tried the "Original Sacher Torte," a cake that was invented in 1832, whose success predates the hotel, and whose recipe is a closely guarded secret.  The original is kept in a safe under lock and key, according to the informative menu.  Having tried it, I can see how it has stayed popular for 180 years.

Waiting to get out of Paris

To be stuck waiting to get out of Paris is an experience with a long and storied history.  This should be a comfort to me, but somehow I don't think I am going to make it to Casablanca and Rick, at least not on this voyage...I will, God willing, eventually get out of here and back to California in time for Christmas, but it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would.

All week, while I was making my preparations to leave Cosne and Nevers for the holidays, everybody asked me, "Oh, quand est-ce que tu pars pour les Etats-Unis?" and when I said Sunday the 19th, the uniformly replied with something along the lines of "Euh, la neige aille poser une probleme pour toi, je crains!"  No, I thought, that couldn't possibly happen; there is no way the weather will wreck havoc on my flight plans--all these people are just being naysayers....Famous last words.   I got to to Charles De Gaulle airport on Sunday morning in the middle of a merry blizzard, and promptly joined a swelling crowd of would-be travelers, who were all trying to figure out what the hell they were going to do.  Apparently, while it was snowing in Paris, it was really coming down in London, and Heathrow was completely closed all day, and would be for part of the next.  My flight was, of course, on British Airways, which routes all flights through Heathrow, so I was not going anywhere.  I proceded to wait in line to try to get an alternative flight for the next six hours, all the while dealing with stressed-out fellow passengers and an incredible amount of missing information.  Finally, at 4 pm, after having been on my feet in various unmoving lines since 10 am, I made my disgruntled way back to Paris on a train that was, unsurprisingly, also delayed and overcrowded.

De Gaulle or the Louvre?

On the other hand, at least I had somebody to stay with.  It could have been so much worse.  My friend Hilary from Columbia, who has a charming apartment in the Marais district (i.e. pretty much close to everything) has generously been letting me stay with her for my unexpectedly-longer visit.  We have taken advantage of this opportunity to see some more sights, and yesterday we girded on our armor of cultural appreciation, and went to that bastion of the spoils of culture and empire--the LOUVRE (capitals are essential).

Festival de Lumières, and other excitement in Lyon

I can't even say that the holiday season is fast approaching...it's already here.  It's sort of unbelievable that I am two days away from Christmas break and three days away from flying back to CA, although I am more than ready for it.  The past few weeks--and really the whole fall--have gone by really fast, but I think it will be good for me to go home and fill up the tank a little bit.  Things have been fairly intense lately.

For one thing, there has been a lot of travel.  Coming on the heels of my weekend in Paris and then in Tours, I went back to Lyon last Friday to visit with Clara and see the Festival of Lights, an annual celebration in the city that centers around the 8th of December, the day on which--legend has it--the Virgin Mary saved the city from the plague during the middle ages.  Traditionally, the Lyonnais put candles in the windows of their houses to mark the occasion, but in the last hundred years or so, the festival has morphed into this huge outdoor spectacle featuring electric light shows that lasts a week and draws crowds from all over France (and, indeed, the world).  It was a sight to see.

so all these photos are from Therese.

Once again, I forgot my camera

I was glad to have gone, although I think that if I lived in Lyon, it would not be something that I would go out for every year.  I was somehow under the impression that it would be displays with candles, the way it was traditionally, and the displays of electric lights, while many were impressive (and some were truly bizarre--see below), were not really to my taste.  Having grown up with the luminarias of Albuquerque, I prefer lights that flicker to those that strobe.

Does this look like a giant desk lamp?  That is what it is.

I think that I was also less able to take in the glories of the light displays because it was the end of a long day.  The weekend was so packed with activities that we actually wrote out a schedule for Clara, me, and Therese to follow (I get a neurotic pleasure from checking things off lists).  Everything we did was absolutely worth doing, but the total impact was somewhat more than we had bargained for, especially since some of the individual events proved taxing.  Not everything went according to plan, but we did manage to do everything we meant to.

Case in point: part of the day's activities included cooking a fabulous dinner of new (tajine) and traditional (souffle) French recipes.  The piéce de résistance was to be the desert, crème brûlée.  Although our attempt this time was more successful than our previous efforts, there were still a couple setbacks.  More specifically, the torch Clara had bought for brûlée-ing turned out to be a bad bargain, since it refused, either to light easily or stay on more than a few minutes at a time.  We exerted ourselves, however, and discovered that, even when the sparker was not working, the butane was still coming out, so we were able to jury-rig a technique whereby we used an electric lighter and the torch with a two-man approach that worked, in a Macgyver sort of way.  Despite the unorthodox flaming, the brûlée ended up tasting delicious.

Tours

I totally forgot my camera, again, this weekend

I just got back from another traveling weekend (my feet are really itchy this month--I am going to be going here and there pretty much every weekend until the middle of January, if you count going home to CA).  This time my wanderings took my to the city of Tours.  I like to think of myself as living in the Loire valley here in Cosne--and, indeed, I am right on the river--but Tours is in the valley proper, if you think of it as the place of expensive wine tours, medieval towns, and chateau that inspired Jean Cocteau and those crazy kids at Disney.

Minus the wine tours, which will have to wait until my ship comes in, I think we did a pretty good job of touring Tours.  I say "we" because I went with Therese, one of my fellow English assistants of the Nièvre.  We were only there for less than 48 hours, but in that time we managed to fit in tramping around the old-section of town--which is, as you can see, medieval and very nicely preserved--going shopping at the Christmas market, visiting a proper chateau, going to the local musée de beaux arts, and eating some really fabulous local food...

It had been very wintery for the past week or so (in fact, I had almost no students on Friday because the buses were not running and it was snowing like crazy) but fortunately we were still able to use the tickets we had bought in advance, and our train Friday evening was only slightly delayed.  It is now raining sloppily, and the weather was warm enough over the weekend that everything was sort of drippy, but that did not prevent it from being very picturesque.

Saturday afternoon we took another train outside of town to visit the local Chateau de Chenonceau.  Actually getting there was something of a misadventure, since we were just settling into our seats on the train when I looked at the guidebook and read the fateful words, "The chateau of Chenonceau is not to be confused with the village of Chenonceaux..."  Chenonceaux was of course where our train was heading.  Therese and I hurried off the train and went to ask the station agent which route we should actually take, and he assured us that we should, in fact, take the train to Chenoneaux.  We rushed back, only to have the doors slam in our face and the train pull off without us.  Turns out the chateau of Chenonceau is in the village of Chenonceaux.  Poor wording, Lonely Planet; poor wording.

so all these lovely pictures are courtesy of the internet!

When we actually got to the chateau by the next train, and hour later, it was quite lovely. The village was even smaller than Cosne, so the chateau was pretty much just surrounded by its own fabulous gardens, stretching out into and blending with the forested countryside.  As I said to Therese, I felt as if we should be strolling through the grounds in riding habits with our dogs, or else rattling up the long tree-lined approach in a gilded coach.  It was very "to the manor born."  The chateau itself was pretty impressive, since it is built actually on the river Cher, with a long, black and white paved gallery spanning the waterway.  The alternate name of the place is the "Chateau des Dames," since it is famous for having been the residence, and the design project, of a number of powerful women, including Catherine di Medici, who ruled France as regent during the minority of Henri III, and Madam Dauphin, a great salon hostess and society leader during the revolutionary period.  The whole place was very well-maintained; historically restored, but not to the point where it felt like a theme-park.  It was especially nice to be there when it was decorated for Christmas, since many of the rooms were filled with great aromatic bouquets and buckets of dried orange slices, cloves, and other spices.  The downside of going to such a fabulous and touristy place is, well, the tourists, though.  Therese and I had the misfortune to arrive at the same time as a huge bus-full of Asian tourists, which was a little overwhelming.... Even after years of dealing with crowds in New York, it is still a challenge to fight through them when you are on a spiral staircase!

The one part of the experience that was not crowded was the musée des cires, or wax museum, which was hidden off in a side building, away from most of the tourists, attention.  Therese and I went over to check it out before we left, and the whole thing was, as you might imagine, totally creepy.  There were no human attendants, just an automated turnstyle that let you in after you swiped your ticket, and then motion sensitive lights and music that played as you inspected half a dozen degenerate wax recreations of the various famous residents and visitors of the chateau, including such luminaries as Rousseau and Voltaire.  You could totally imagine them coming to shuffling life and chasing unsuspecting tourists through the woods.  "The return to nature," indeed!

After we finally got back to Tours that evening, we had dinner at a place called "Comme AutreFouée" (since bad puns in restaurant names apparently are not limited to California) which specialized in the local dish, a sort of little flatbread called les fouaces, which is baked in a wood-burning oven and then brought hot to your table, where you cut it open, put in butter, meat, or vegetables, and eat it immediately--yum.