Mice and the Middle Ages

It is a rainy morning here, the sort of weather that makes you glad you can sit inside and drink tea without having to worry about going anywhere.  It's good for a lazy vacation Saturday, although I'm glad it held off yesterday.  Aurelie took me to see a nearby village called Pérouges in the afternoon, which had preserved almost in its entirety its midieval architecture.  Walking through the little slanting streets over stones that I would hate to think of trying to pull a cart over, it was as if we had slipped beneath the layers of development of the last 500 years and were catching glimpses of the way the village might have looked in the days when towns of burgers were first beginning to form, creating environments where commercial relations took on nez power and the old feudal ties of landed lord and hereditary vassel began to decay.  Townships like this, which look like the antithesis of modernity to us today, were actually the cutting edge of developments that would lead to secularism, captitalism, revolution, and a host of other big concepts--at least if my stuffy, Intro to the Later Middle Ages professor of last year is to be believed.

Not everything in Pérouges was a relic, though, and I came upon this personal vehicle that would have fit right in in my home town:

Because it was the off season, and a cold and windy day the town was relatively empty, with the tourist museums shut, and the only visitors the few families who had brought their children to wander the streets. (I imagine that, as a six-year-old, this would be an even more awesome place to visit).  The quiet was actually quite nice, though, and it felt appropriate to the setting.  Aurélie and I did some exploring >>

...Then we went to taste the town specialty (Aurélie said, "Of course every little town in France has their own food that is a particular product of the locale").  In this case it was the galette de Pérouges, a sort of a flat cake baked with sugar on top, something like a sweet pizza.  We tried it, along with tea and coffee, at a little restaurant that had been serving the same cake since it opened in 1912.  The interior definitely suggested that little had changed there in the last 98 years.  The walls were decorated with old-fashioned china and brass cookware and the waitresses with lacy aprons and little caps, and we were able to warm ourselves in the heat of a large open hearth while we ate.

Unfortunately, we were not the only ones to treat ourselves yesterday.  The other adventure of the day was an escapade of Aurélie's cats.  She has two, brother and sister, who she brought with her from Nevers for the holidays, and who are enjoying the country life a little too much.  While we were sitting watching a movie after dinner that evening, Omar, came trotting in from the garden to show us what he had found--a mouse, and one that had not yet succombed to his attentions!  We proceeded to have very girly responses (squealing, and staying out of the way), while Omar began to enjoy himself with the poor mouse, letting it run here and there, and then catching it again, while it sqeaked pitifully.  After a while we convinced him to take it outside to finish it off, and we were just breathing a sigh of relief, when he brought it back again, still alive.  This time I, after much dithering, tried to rescue the mouse, using a dustpan and a rolled-up magazine, which prompted Omar to take it outside again.  This happened about three more times--mouse came in, made brief and increasingly failing runs for freedom, I approached with the dustpan, and Omar retreated, carrying his prize.  At last he came in and, having decided that the game was over, finally killed the mouse and proudly ate it in front of us.  There was a lot of crunching. 

Relieved that it was finally over, we were settling back to watch the movie, when Biscotte, who had been watching Omar jealously the whole time, trotted in with her own mouse!!  Mercifully, this one had already given up the ghost, bu Biscotte was determined that this would not spoil her fun, and she commenced to play with it, flinging the corpse the air and leaping about while we groaned and tried to avert our eyes.  After far too long (for us) she finally gave up and polished off her own as well, but it was rather too much like being a spectator at the Roman games for my taste.  I know they're cats and they can't help their nature, but still...!

Biscotte, looking innocent--don't be fooled!

From Dijon to Lyon, and What Happened There

So I wrote yesterday that I was going to try to sync up my blog life with my actual life, a manipulation of time and space akin to the machinations of a mad scientist... but I forget myself.  Suffice it to say that this posting may be a little long, but bear with me; it will not end up like this.  Away we go...

So, the reason that I had to be in Dijon on Tuesday, October 26, is because, in order to verify my visa de longue séjour and ensure that I would not be summarily deported in a surprise attack by immigration services, I (and all the other assistants) had to submit to a medical examination.  This is to ensure that we are not vectors of swine flu, AIDS, TB, ebola, scabies, etc., etc., and that our presence will not result in any population-threatening pandemics.  Fortunately, I was deemed perfectly healthy, and I made it through the process with only a minimal loss of time and dignity.

France is a fairly bureaucratic state (as I think one or two people have pointed out before) and the process of getting verified took, what with the line of 20-odd assistants scheduled to be seen in one afternoon, about three hours.  I am seemingly-incapable of showing up prepared for these appointments (when I got my visa at the SF consulate, I had to go through the line three separate times, since I kept leaving out vital copies of things) so I had to leave at one point to go get a headshot taken at a local mall, and I covered myself with idiocy at one point when the nurse, in the course of asking rote questions, demanded, "Et vous êtes enciente?" (Are you pregnant?) I thought she said, "Et vous êtes en bonne santé?" (Are you healthy?), and so I responded with an emphatic "Oui!"  ....Oh well.  I tell my students that you have to submit to a certain amount of humiliation when you want to learn a foriegn language, and I suppose the best teachers lead by example.

Really, though, in the hall of fame of surreal official experiences (in which for me, the pride of place is still held by my visit to the Post Office of Jaipur: Kafkaesque in the extreme), it was not that bad.  I got to stand in a miniature elevator while they hoisted me up to take an x-ray of my lungs, which was a sort of a bizarre fun-house experience, and at the end of the appointment I emerged with an officially-stamped visa (stamps are very powerful here) and an image of my lungs, somewhat like this <<.  Apparently, I am in no danger of ending up like a consumptive heroine of the 19th century.

After my afternoon of inspections, I took a train to Lyon, arriving only an hour and a half after I had intended.  Parliment has finally voted on the issue of the age of retirement, and the strikes are gradually dying down, although the government's actions were ultimately unswayed by the activity.

I stayed my first two nights in the city of Lyon, which really is a city--my first in France.  It is really beautiful here, and very accessible.  I think Lyon is a similar size to San Francisco, in that there is plenty of cosmopolitan presence and things to do here, but it is not overwhelmingly huge, and you can walk most places.  Otherwise, you can take the metro, a very modern-looking and new affaire, with automated trains, which prevents them from going on strike.  (I am confident though, that if machines evolve to the point of independent intelligence, that while the machines of other countries may make war against humainity or consign us all to a virtual reality and harvest our life-forces for energy, the machines of France will form syndicates and strike regularly.) ...Anyway, back to my tourtist-ing around Lyon:

Clara, my hostess with whom I had the rare (for me) and pleasant experience of going from new acquaintence to friend in a manner of hours, took me out to see the sights of the city on the first morning I was there.

Lyon is centered around two rivers, the Rhône and the Saône, and two hills, something I appreciate a lot, as it always gives me some reference points to orient myself by.  The two hills are referred to as "the hill that prays" and "the hill that works," because the latter was the traditional site of the Lyon silk industry, while the former was the site of the Cathédrale de Fourvière.  Clara and I went up to it (which is where this picture was taken) and it really was up!  There is a cable car, à la San Francisco, that takes you at an incredibly steep angle up through a tunnel inside the hill, and you emerge at the top to see the arching buttresses--gothic in evocation, but 19-century actual date of construction and in level of fru-fru decoration.  Cracks about the bishop's bird stump aside, though, it was really quite beautiful, both up close and from the foot of the hill, which we walked down afterwards, along a switchbacked track through a woodsy park.  I love the way that parks inside cities can make you feel as if you have been transported to a separte peace, outside the urban sphere--I think it comes from having gotten to know Central Park in NYC.

At the foot of the hill, we emerged from the park in the old part of the city.  This is the space between the two rivers, the "presque-îsle" (almost island) as it's called.  It makes much more sense to me the way that old cities always cluster around natural waterways or in other logical habitats, unlike their younger, post-industrial cousins, which get built on swamps (Huston) or in the middle of deserts (LA).  The quarter we were in was a neighborhood of Italian merchants during the Renaissance, so it was full of narrow streets with tall, balconied buildings and "secret" courtyards and passageways--very Romeo and Juliet.

I would like to add photos of all these things, but after my last upload, the computer I am currently using refuses to add any other files, just to spite me, so I will once again have to wait to update images until the technological stars are in better alignment.  I will just finish by adding that, my second day in Lyon, Clara took me to meet Aurélie, whose parents home just outside the city is my current port of call, at the Place Bellecour, the largest square in western europe, which turned out, at that particular moment, to be occupied by what might be the last hurrah of the strikes.  There were riot police in full outfits, marchers carrying flares, syndicate affiliations, and even communist flags (!!), and people yelling over the PA about the spirit of the worker and the rights of society.  Even in protest, French rhetoric is expressed in ideal and theoretical rather than personal terms--something I find very different from the US.

This post is becoming epic, and although Hugo might approve, I am realizing that it might profit me to go out and enjoy the nice weather while it lasts, since I am once again in the countryside.  I almost achieved my goal of bringing my blog up to the present moment, but sadly, this incongruity in the writing space-time continuum has yet to be corrected.  I suppose the reality is that I will always have more to say...

Until next time, though, I think this is it!

....and, pictures!

I have finally gotten to a place where I can upload photos, courtesy of another kind hostess, this time in Lyon, so I can add some pictures to illustrate my long weekend in the Dijon countryside.

I realize that this picture is not hugely demonstrative of my location, but I can assure you that the landscape behind me is full of vineyards (see below).

Another friend of Kellen's who was also staying with her in the upper dormitory-like room of home (it's not quite a chateau, but still a big country house) said to me, "It's too bad you weren't here a few weeks ago during the harvest."  I'm not sure I agree--the harvest time is, as one might only imagine, very tourist-y, with lots of visitors descending on the little villages and hamlets of the region to exercise their noses in various caveau de dégustation.  I liked the emptiness of the tiny towns (although I certainly wouldn't want to spend more than a weekend or two away there, as I am a city girl at heart), and the vine fields, even stripped of their fruit and beginning to lose their leaves, were a beautiful burnished amber.  Even in fall, the land is surprisingly verdant-looking to me, since I grew up with the surrounding the Bay Area and ringing the Sacramento Valley, which stay a the nice golden brown of a tray of muffins for approximately nine-tenths of the year.  I ran along the road from Kellen's place to a nearby chateau on a truffle farm (really!) Tuesday morning before leaving, and I was able to take in a lot of the scenery, although after a few days of some reprieve from the damp cold of Cosne it had become frigid, and I felt as if I was battling a a sharp-toothed and unreasonably-agressive wind both ways.

Looking back, it seems amazing that wine-tasting at Kellen's (which is what is going on in this picture) was only three days ago.  Since then, I have gone back into Dijon, spend almost three hours having a very French bureaucratic experience getting medically certified to remain in the country, taken the train to Lyon, and had a day of tourism and excellent food with a new friend, but that will have to wait for the next posting--I don't think my blog is ever going to catch up with my life!

Wine Tasting

This morning I had had an experience that--improbably as it seems, given my northern-CA background--was totally new to me.  I went wine tasting.

Sadly, pictures again will have to follow, but I will try to do my best with words.  Kellen took me in the morning to her vineyard, Domaine Lucie et August Lignier, to sample some wines with a couple visiting tourists.  I'm afraid I displayed my ignorance rather forcefully in front of these pleasant New Yorkers, since I have the bare minimum of sommelier knowledge.  Listening to Kellen describe the process of winemaking and the evolution of taste over the life of a wine bottle, I felt as if I was getting a fleeting glimpse of an entire self-sustaining world's worth of knowledge, with its own sciences, cultures, and lore, and I asked many elementary questions, such as "What are tannins?" and "Why are white wines white and red wines red?"  Although Kellen was happy to answer everything I asked, no matter how simplistic, and I learned a lot, I don't think I am even now in any way prepared to give a discourse on winemaking.  One thing that did strike me powerfully, though, with my historian tendencies, is the way that wine, with its long maturation period, and immense range of variation between terroir (the earth it is grown in), vineyard, wine-maker, and vintage year, is like a historical document, in that it records the specificity of a particular time and place.  Like a historical document as well, its story changes over time.  A particular vintage can develop in taste over time, it can "go to sleep," and "wake up" again, it can have bottle shock and become unpleasant until it resettles--like a bit of historical evidence that becomes more and less important as fashions in history-writing change.  Maybe I am pushing the history-metaphor a little far here, but I found the idea of a product that can last for years, and that can grow and change, but always retain certain characteristics evocative of its origins, a very powerful one.

On a less philosophical (pretentious?) note, it was really cool to go down into an actual vaulted wine cellar, like one Montresor might have felt at home in, watch Kellen uncork a giant barrel, and suck some wine out using a tool reminiscent of a giant eye-dropper, and give us each a sample, which we then slurped and spat like pros.

A votre santé!

Amis

I just wanted to add a quick note to promote a blog of one of my fellow assistants in neighboring Nevers: http://lifeinfrogsville.tumblr.com/.  Maisie is a Londoner teaching in ecole primaire, and it was her birthday that we celebrated last weekend.  Her "10 Commandments of Being French" is pretty funny, although I would quibble with the one about beef--pork seems to me to be far more omnipresent.

La guerre des etoiles

I am currently in the wine country south of Dijon, staying with a friend of a friend who has the added distinction of being a vineyard owner.  Since the countryside is very beautiful here, and I am blogging from my hostess's computer and so cannot upload my photos, I will hold off on exclaiming about rustic location until I have the wherewithall to show some of the views as evidence.

For the moment, things are very quiet here.  It is a rainy sunday afternoon and Kellen, my vinter-hostess, is preparing to roast a chicken with vegetables from her garden.  This morning, her two children (10 and 7-ish) were watching Star Wars: Episode II, and I joined them for some of the fight scenes.  Kellen is an american expat, so they are more-or-less bilingual, but they were watching it dubbed into French, which improved the whole thing immensely.  In good geek-girl form, I consider George Lucas's later additions to be an almost unforgivable blot on his oevre, but the execrable dialog is much better en francais.  Lines such as "Bien fait, mon jeune paduan" and "Tu vas payer, Duku, pour tous les jedis qui sont morts aujourd'hui" go from being painfully embarrassing to pretty amusing.  I had to hide my smiles from the kids, who were fully emotionally invested in the story, and informed me  in their melange of English and French, that "Maitre Yoda" was going to save the day.

Winter is coming (already)

One aspect of living in a the Loire valley that I had not anticipated is, well, that it is a river valley.  The fog rises off the river in the mornings like it wishes it was in an Edgar Allen Poe story.  Sometimes, I get up an look out my window and this (exhibit A >>)  is all I can see out my window.  It is beautiful, but quite spooky, and I am glad I am not out driving in it.

Other mornings, like this one, the sun is shining brightly high in the sky, but the fog lies low in the pockets of the rolling countryside, covering the fields and spinnies in a bluish muffler.  I spent the night in Nevers last night with Aurelie, and as we were driving the thirty-five minutes it takes to get to Cosne on the highway, we kept going over miniature rises and coming upon unexpected reservoirs of fog lingering before the sun's rays became too bright.

The downside of a sunny day, though--and it has become a very sunny one, post 10am--is that it is freezing.  Aurelie had to scrape the ice of her car before we could leave this morning.  After a week or so of summery weather when I first got here, the last two weeks have skipped fall and taken us directly to winter, complete with cold, damp, and wind.  The heat was not on in the school last week, which meant that the conversation in the staff room consisted of a lot of people sitting in their coats saying, "Merde, il fait froid!" to each other in various stages of outrage.  Fortunately, they turned on the heat in the personal apartments over the weekend, and as of today, it is finally on all over the building, so it is much more comfortable inside at least.

The Epic Voyage of a Clic-Clac

Listen my children and you shall hear....a tale of valiant struggle, heroism, feats of daring, and triumph over daunting odds.  Noteworthy, even during a weekend of high adventure in the streets of Nevers (speeches, strikes, anniversaries, proposals of marriage...but more on that to come), the journey of Therese's futon is an epic unto itself.  Read on...

First: the setting--Carrefour, the Target of France; the time--a gray and prematurely cold Saturday afternoon in October; the cast of characters--four daring English teaching assistants devoid of automated transportation but stout of heart.  Pictured above are Therese, the mission's leader, new tenant of a beautiful but unfurnished apartment and new owner of a bargain futon or, in the French, "clic-clac" (for real!!),  Maxine, and Kali (yours truly was holding the camera).  Our mission: to carry the futon from its place of origin to its new home.

The prospect of this task astonished the unassuming Frenchwoman who sold us the futon and brought it out for us on an industrial-sized hand truck.  Undaunted, though, we boldly set off, traversing the five-block distance with only a handful of stops along the way.

Ignoring passing motorists, ambulances, curious passersby, and our own trembling arms, we finally attained the sanctuary of Therese's apartment.  It was only once inside, however that our troubles really began.

The first set of stairs was a challenge in itself, but worse awaited us around the corner of the next landing:

Faced with this herculean challenge however, we did not blanch, but put our shoulders to the wheel (or rather, the futon), and bravely soldiered on, scaling the heights with minimal damage to our backs and our dignities.  Lest any reader, amazed by the narrow and alpine nature of this last staircase, doubt the veracity of our accomplishment, I offer proof in the form of the view of us at the summit, resting after our labors.

From there it was but the matter of a few more feet of pushing, and the futon was in Therese's apartment, where its arrival was welcomed with appropriate expressions of glee and victory.

Diner a la campangne

Last night I was invited by one of the professors at my school to have dinner at his house.  He is a history teacher, but he has an advanced-level class on English-language European history, and he wanted to have the opportunity to practice his English with me.  His wife is also English-speaking (she works with British foreign exchange students as part of her job), so it was a bi-lingual evening. 

If the language of the night was not predominantly French, however, the setting certainly was.  M. Meunier and his wife live about 20 minutes outside of town, absolutely in the middle of the countryside on an actual farm, surrounded by bucolic fields of corn (wheat, to Americans), and vineyards.  It was like a travel brochure for the region.  I desperately wished that I had had my camera with me, although it probably would not have been quite the thing for me to be taking pictures of my hosts.  The farm belonged to Mme Meunier's parents, and her brother now runs it, while they live in the farmhouse.  The building itself is from the 19th century (coming from a state where most buildings are 100 years old at most, it is constantly amazing to me how common it is to live in a more-than centenarian home in Europe).  When we arrived, Mme. Meunier and their little girl were out in the farmyard, looking for the cat, who had disappeared that morning--it turned out she had accidentally become locked in an armoire, from which she was rescued shortly after my arrival.  The little girl, who is two and a half, was absolutely darling.  She was in love with the cat, and when she invited me to join her in coloring before dinner, she insisted that I draw "un chat."  It reminded me of Le Petit Prince: "dessine-moi un mouton."  I could communicate pretty well with her, although with my shaky comprehension and her shaky pronunciation, trying to understand her was a bit like trying to understand French spoken over a New York subway operator intercom--fuzzy, and prone to fading in and out.

Diner itself was for the most part delicious, although I am still having minor culture shock moments over bizarre French meat options.  Take for example, a snack that we had as an appetizer, whose name unfortunately escapes me--it was a pre-packaged bit of fish, make from the leavings and unused bits of a fish carcas reconstituted into to breakfast-sausage sized cylinder, which you then dip in mayonnaise and eat.  I kid you not.  I don't think this is to everybody's taste, even in France.  M. Meunier admitted that it was not his, so I did not feel so bad about being unable to manage more than a few bites of mine.  The rest of the meal was lovely, though--simple but high quality ingredients, just like they always say about French cooking.  I think that this time abroad is going to usher in a whole new era in my understanding of cheese, although that may be a topic for another posting in and of itself.

Out on strike

The last two days have been very exciting for a lot of people in France, and more-than-usually quiet for me.  The cause?  A national strike over the age of retirement, which the Sarkozy government wants to raise from 60 to 62.  This has inspired industrial, service, and professional unions to a series of strikes, which have been going on sporadically since before my arrival.  Yesterday, even the students in my school walked out in protest.  It is sort-of inspiring to see high school students responding with action to questions of social justice, when cynicism and apathy are so rampant among teenagers everywhere I lived growing up (no offense, Obama generation).  It would probably be more inspiring if I imagined that most of the students were more excited to protect the pensions of their elders than they are to cut school, go into town, and get a kebab....but perhaps it is better not to ask those questions.

I am not sure of my own perspective on the strike issue.  I certainly do not know enough about the problem to debate any French person on the subject, but it is odd--of all my friends and relations over 60, the majority are not even about to retire, and if they did, the pensions their jobs provide would not be able to support them in comfort.  Many of them have not worked at one job long enough to earn a significant pension.  I guess it seems, from my millennial-generation perspective, that the workplace culture of staying 40 years with the same company and then living off the pension accrued during that time is giving way to one which is more fluid and one in which people live longer and stay active later in life.  Of course, that is a young person's idea, and an American's.  Here, I see older middle-aged white guys driving the steam shovels that are fixing the road down in the village (something I have never seen in the States), and I understand that after a career of work in heavy industry, 60 is about time to retire and live in state-sponsored comfort.  So I don't know what to think.  Fortunately, the Sarkozy government is not calling on me to mediate.

One thing I do know, is that the strike has thrown a monkey wrench in my activities for the last couple days.  I have had almost nothing to do for two days,  and because of train travel being suspended, I can't take advantage of the freedom to go to the neighboring town and visit friends (Cosne does not have much of a happening scene.)  Classes were more or less canceled yesterday, which I had anticipated, but then the strike continued on today, in an impromptu and inconvenient manner (which I suppose was the goal).  I was working in the teacher's lounge on my lesson plans this morning, when the students from the high school's professional campus staged a rally in front of the main building.  It was like the storming of the Bastille, minus the starving peasants, violence, and destruction.

Bonjour a tous!

This is the official start of the travel blog I will be writing during my year (make that seven months) in France. I am staying in the town (really, village, but people get testy if you call it that) of Cosne-Cours-Sur-Loire. Like this Hawaiian fish, the name is more majestic than the reality.

However, majesty is not a quality that should be associated with the French, at least not since certain noteworthy heads of state lost theirs....but let's not bring the civil war--excusez-moi, Revolution--into it! Suffice it to say that there are many positive adjectives I can associate with my new locale, the most appropriate of which is mignon: cute (see above).

That is the view from the kitchen window of my little apartment. I am staying at the school where I teach, at an amazingly cut rate, with the only side effects being 1) that it is deathly quiet on weekends and 2) that I carry around the awareness that my life-work situation closely resembles a Victorian governesses' without the prospect of a Mr. Rochester in the future, or even a Rawdon Crawley. But c'est la vie!

It is actually quite amazing how much of what I have seen so far of France looks like France is supposed to look. I realize that sentence it quite redundant, but it's true that when you grow up hearing about a place in books, movies, tales, and myth, you pretty much expect that the reality is not actually going to be that way. True, I have yet to see anybody wearing a red beret, bicycling with a baguette in their wicker bicycle basket, or curling their mustaches, but the country houses are whitewashed with high-peaked roofs, the farmland is green and rolling, and people do both bicycle and buy baguettes (just not at the same time). I sometimes forget that, as a girl from California, I am used to a landscape that is much bigger and rougher, and an architecture that is much younger-looking than things tend to be in Europe.

...Speaking of California, just because things seem excessively French here, does not mean that I am not also having to navigate the unexpected episodes of globalization: This afternoon, over a petit cafe I was sharing with some of the teachers, the principle of the middle school, a man of years and dignity, asked me if, in American English, the word "girl" was spelled with an "i" or a "u." It seems he had been watching this video. (West Coast represent!!)

I think I have written as much English as I should allow myself for the day, but I will try to update this regularly (I hope not famous last words), with anecdotes of my experiences of small town life and touristic adventures.