Monday, July 22, 2013
I was planning to do a few minor errands before riding to Carcassonne to see if I could find one of the bicycle shops I'd been told about: I want a lightweight knapsack so I can carry a few groceries back from the Pont Rouge "Intermarché" while simultaneously getting a bit of exercise in. I'm in my cycling clothes and about to put on my biking shoes, however, when there's a knock on the door.
It's Bob Thorp, come to tell me that he just ran into Jean Lacroix, the former gendarme. Jean wanted me to know that his wife Josette's bicycle was mine for the borrowing, I just had to call. With that, Bob handed me Jean's number and took off.
I called Jean shortly thereafter and first spoke to Josette, whom I'd never met before.
Ah, Marta! You've called about the bike. Let me put Jean on.
In a few minutes we'd established that I could certainly come by this morning, and where the Lacroix house is. I was there in a half an hour, carrying a bottle of water for the ride, and a bottle of golden muscat I'd picked up in Mèze.
The Lacroix house is off the memorial to Caunes' war dead from the two World Wars. It is opposite a field of vines, a large, well built house with a garden on the town's outskirts. Jean was in the garage. We shook hands and I handed him the bottle of muscat. He was simultaneously surprised and appreciative of the bottle of muscat, which I offered as a small token of my appreciation of his and Josette's kindness.
Would you like to meet Josette? he asked.
Of course I would, and we went upstairs.
Josette was taking the ends off the French beans she had just harvested from her garden. She didn't shake hands because she said they were dirty from doing so, but offered her wrist. She is a lively, petite woman with small features. Immediately, she asked me to sit down. She and Jean had a bit of a back and forth about whether I shouldn't be taken to the salon, but I said I would be perfectly happy right there, and sat down.
Would you like an espresso? Would you like some orange juice?
I took a glass of water and we talked a bit, with me wanting to verify that I would not be depriving Josette of the pleasure of riding the bicycle if I borrowed it.
No, not at all. I have a little bicycle with five speeds that I run around town with, and that is what I use now. I used to ride the other one, but I'm too old now, I need to be careful.
We talked a bit more, and it turned out that Jean and Josette are both involved with Notre Dame du Cros. I had seen a sign for a kermesse for the benefit of the chapel to be held in August, and wondered what it was.
It's a fair with Mass at 11:00 a.m., then food and games, all to raise money for the church. You can contribute without going, or you can go and eat the food, which is quite good.
They were pleased to know I attended services at the chapel, and remarked that my French was good enough to understand what the preacher said. A short conversation about my family background followed, with them mentioning that their son would be going to New York in a few weeks. By then it was time to see the bicycle.
The bicycle is a top of the line road bicycle, designed by a Tour de France rider from Carcassonne. It has special shoes, designed to lock onto a metal nub where the pedals would normally be. This is a convention of most high-end road bikes, but this one comes with a specially designed pair of shoes, marketed under the brand "Look". My riding shoes are made with the same principle in mind: there is a plastic plate where the ball of the foot sits in the shoe, which when unscrewed, permits the shoe to lock onto the pedal. There seems to be a problem because my riding shoes are not "Look", and therefore don't lock in, but after riding around on the bicycle a bit, I realized I would be able to ride at least to Carcassonne, where I might either buy a pair of "Looks" or put pedals on the bicycle.
The problem with having the shoes lock onto the metal nub is that non-professional riders frequently brake without remembering to release a foot from one of the metal nubs, crashing to the ground as a result. Not wanting to win any races, I thought, I would rather ride with pedals. In any event, I thought I could get to Carcassonne. Once there, Jean told me, Decathlon Cycles could change the pedals at a reasonable price, .
Off I went, discovering that I rode perfectly well without either Looks or pedals. When I got to Carcassonne, I wanted to find the bicycle shop off the Canal du Midi, Cycles Raynaud on Avenue Varsovie to buy a knapsack. The only problem was that by the time I got there, it was 12:30 p.m., and all the stores were closed. I had a quick coffee and a quiche lorraine aux poireaux (leeks), but I got turned around and couldn't find the way I back.
After riding around, wasting a half an hour, a young woman on a main street leading to the highway set me straight.
Oh, you'd better take that road across the street towards Feojolles. Go straight through the first roundabout, then take the one on the left at the next towards Feojolles. You'll go under a little railroad bridge and then see a sign for Castres and Mazmet take that one--
Once I get there, I'll know where I am, I say, thanking her.
Her directions are absolutely correct. I pass the race track at Feojolles, which I had not known existed and make it back to the main road between Carcassonne and Caunes, from which I came. I push to cycle as fast as I can because a courier is supposed to pick up a package between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., and it was 1 o'clock when I left the pastry shop where I had the coffee and quiche. I'm heartened by seeing a clock on the school at Villalier saying it's only twenty minutes of two p.m. , but that's hard to believe --I'm not that fast, even at my fastest, and it's hot and sunny.
As I turn into the valley, the wind kicks in and cools the temperature, but I have still got a long way to go. Indeed, when I turn the key and look at the clock in the kitchen it is 3:10 p.m. There's no sign on the door or in the mailbox that FedEx has been there, though.
I call the company, and they assure me that no one has yet arrived. At 4:10 p.m. the driver calls: the waybill says the address is 3 avenue du Minervois, not 30. The driver is there in five minutes and my package safely away. The pick-up is not by FedEx, but a subcontractor in Carcassonne. At 4:15 p.m. the package is on its way. I ask whether I could have dropped off the package in Carcassonne.
No, no --you would have had to go to Blagnac.
Blagnac is the suburb of Toulouse, two hours away, in which the Toulouse airport is located. There is no other way to get a package out of Caunes, to a national or international destination.
I think that the pick-up would have come at the end of the specified period, even if the address had been correctly noted on the waybill. The delivery of the original document the week before, also came just at the end of the promised pick-up time. This is the Midi, and no one rushes, except for fools.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Sunday, July 21, 2013
The Caunes-Minervois Cycling Club
Sunday, June 21, 2013
Yesterday Bob Thorp told me that the Caunes-Minervois Cycling Club would be going out at 7:30 a.m. in the morning today, so I planned to join them at their regular meeting place, on Avenue du Minervois in front of the farmacie. There were eight guys in all, every one of them older than I am, some of them wearing team shirts, which have the image of the abbey on the back. Bob introduced me around and we shook hands in greeting, as acquaintances always do. Everyone looked with interest at my bicycle: as a folding bicycle, the circumference of the wheels is considerably smaller than on a road bicycle, although mine is kitted out with racing handlebars. It also has only five speeds, while most road bicycles have twelve or more. My bicycle is puny by comparison with those of the club members, but everyone was too polite to suggest that I might be overmatched, although it was logical for them to think I would be.
The members of the group include a former gendarme, as well as an eighty-one year old, Jean, who everyone calls Jeannot. The average age of the men is about seventy. I think there are no women members.
Three days a week the club goes out for three or four hours. The destination changes each time. This time, as luck would have it, the goal of the ride would be the Pic du Nord. I'd heard about the Pic the day before, in Lespinassière. I thought it was a local landmark because there was a television tower at its top. It turns out that there's a television tower there because it's the highest mountain in the region. This climb would not be for sissies.
We set out, pedaling towards Villefranche, a nearby town, where we would turn in the direction of the peak. There was low-lying fog everywhere and it was cool. The visibility was not good. Georges, who rode wearing a a pork-pie hat and a red shirt with the cross of Rousillon on the back, had a tail light on his bicycle, so he rode in the front to keep club members in a line and away from any oncoming cars that might be out that early in the morning. The fog was a thick mist until we got to the turnoff at Cabrespine, where people were out early, preparing for a white truffle festival later in the day. The sun started to shine and burned the damp off our clothes just as we started to climb.
And climb we did. Every once in a while I or someone else flagged, but another member of the club would turn back to check on the lost sheep. When I needed to stop to drink water, the group stopped with me and made sure I was willing and able to continue.
--Nous sommes solides, on n'abandonne pas-- (We look after each other, no one is left behind.) And I rode on.
I pedaled for twenty-three kilometers, just over fourteen miles, before stopping at Pradelles, six kilometers from the top of the Pic. From Pradelles to the summit of the Pic is a ride at the steepest possible grade. The group stopped for five minutes to determine who would go all the way: Jeannot had already said he would not go further than Pradelles, and someone else also decided the ascent would be too much for him. There was a long discussion about why I ought to stop and turn back, which it was not difficult to persuade me to do.
One of the oldest men in the group, a stocky, barrel-chested man with a twinkle in his eye, said he hadn't thought I would ever make it this far, and that if I'd had a proper bicycle, I'd probably be in the lead. Others agreed and said I had nothing to reproach myself for, having gotten to Pradelles, if I turned back now. I agreed with the wisdom of the club's decision and we made plans to meet again next Tuesday. By then, one of the club members would have a suitable bicycle for me.
By the time the three of us got back to Caunes, four and a half hours from the start, near noon, I had pedaled about twenty-eight miles. Before I turned off towards home, one of the men who'd turned back with me said I'd earned the respect of the club, including his.
The day ended with me watching the final stage of the Tour de France, a race around Paris that ended after sunset, when Paris is all aglow. Watching the battle of the sprinters --Mark Cavendish, David Millar and the winner, Marcel Kittel-- all big men with propulsively powerful legs-- I couldn't help feeling proud of my first outing with the club, solide.
Yesterday Bob Thorp told me that the Caunes-Minervois Cycling Club would be going out at 7:30 a.m. in the morning today, so I planned to join them at their regular meeting place, on Avenue du Minervois in front of the farmacie. There were eight guys in all, every one of them older than I am, some of them wearing team shirts, which have the image of the abbey on the back. Bob introduced me around and we shook hands in greeting, as acquaintances always do. Everyone looked with interest at my bicycle: as a folding bicycle, the circumference of the wheels is considerably smaller than on a road bicycle, although mine is kitted out with racing handlebars. It also has only five speeds, while most road bicycles have twelve or more. My bicycle is puny by comparison with those of the club members, but everyone was too polite to suggest that I might be overmatched, although it was logical for them to think I would be.
The members of the group include a former gendarme, as well as an eighty-one year old, Jean, who everyone calls Jeannot. The average age of the men is about seventy. I think there are no women members.
Three days a week the club goes out for three or four hours. The destination changes each time. This time, as luck would have it, the goal of the ride would be the Pic du Nord. I'd heard about the Pic the day before, in Lespinassière. I thought it was a local landmark because there was a television tower at its top. It turns out that there's a television tower there because it's the highest mountain in the region. This climb would not be for sissies.
We set out, pedaling towards Villefranche, a nearby town, where we would turn in the direction of the peak. There was low-lying fog everywhere and it was cool. The visibility was not good. Georges, who rode wearing a a pork-pie hat and a red shirt with the cross of Rousillon on the back, had a tail light on his bicycle, so he rode in the front to keep club members in a line and away from any oncoming cars that might be out that early in the morning. The fog was a thick mist until we got to the turnoff at Cabrespine, where people were out early, preparing for a white truffle festival later in the day. The sun started to shine and burned the damp off our clothes just as we started to climb.
And climb we did. Every once in a while I or someone else flagged, but another member of the club would turn back to check on the lost sheep. When I needed to stop to drink water, the group stopped with me and made sure I was willing and able to continue.
--Nous sommes solides, on n'abandonne pas-- (We look after each other, no one is left behind.) And I rode on.
I pedaled for twenty-three kilometers, just over fourteen miles, before stopping at Pradelles, six kilometers from the top of the Pic. From Pradelles to the summit of the Pic is a ride at the steepest possible grade. The group stopped for five minutes to determine who would go all the way: Jeannot had already said he would not go further than Pradelles, and someone else also decided the ascent would be too much for him. There was a long discussion about why I ought to stop and turn back, which it was not difficult to persuade me to do.
One of the oldest men in the group, a stocky, barrel-chested man with a twinkle in his eye, said he hadn't thought I would ever make it this far, and that if I'd had a proper bicycle, I'd probably be in the lead. Others agreed and said I had nothing to reproach myself for, having gotten to Pradelles, if I turned back now. I agreed with the wisdom of the club's decision and we made plans to meet again next Tuesday. By then, one of the club members would have a suitable bicycle for me.
By the time the three of us got back to Caunes, four and a half hours from the start, near noon, I had pedaled about twenty-eight miles. Before I turned off towards home, one of the men who'd turned back with me said I'd earned the respect of the club, including his.
The day ended with me watching the final stage of the Tour de France, a race around Paris that ended after sunset, when Paris is all aglow. Watching the battle of the sprinters --Mark Cavendish, David Millar and the winner, Marcel Kittel-- all big men with propulsively powerful legs-- I couldn't help feeling proud of my first outing with the club, solide.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
La France Profonde
July 20, 2013
With 300,000 people making their departures from the Gare de Lyon station in Paris today, the loneliness of the road from Caunes to Lespinassière, 7 miles away, makes a striking contrast to the clogged arteries of France's highways. The roads are clogged, the heat is unabated and expected to continue until late in the week, as the flight out of the cities continues. There is a major effort to keep the French cool, whether through visits to the elderly at home to avoid deaths from heat exhaustion, to the inauguration of city beaches inspired by Paris Plage, the capital's installation of misters and chaises longues on the banks of the Seine.
In Caunes, the weather is not quite as hot as elsewhere due to the mountains, but it is still advisable to travel with lots of liquids. I pull out a large bottle of frozen water in a large container, strap on my fanny pack, grab my walking sticks and set out in the direction of Citou, where my Renault Clio 4 had a close encounter with a wall in the village of Citiou, and I saw my life spread out in front of me.
I set out at one o'clock. Five hours and forty minutes later, I return from a fourteen mile hike. On the way to Citou I discover that my shoulder blades and the back of my long-sleeved shirt make a kind of knapsack for the water bottle. The ice melts slowly and keeps me cool. I want to reach Lespinassiere, a village perched on a mountainside in the Black Mountains, part of the Cevennes chain that runs across southern France.
At Citou, I need to replace my ice cubes, but the first people I see, the parents of a young family about to get into their car, tell me there is no commercial establishment in Citou in response to my inquiry about where I might buy ice cubes. They are summer visitors, judging from the neat polo shirts.
Fortunately, a bit further on a man and a woman are chatting. I make the same request, but this time I encounter a kind soul. The woman tells me to follow her, that she has ice cubes in her refrigerator. I enter her house, and follow her into the kitchen, where I fill the bottle with ice cubes and tap water.
After Citou, the road becomes still more desolate. Occasionally a car mounting the hills passes, but few descend. The road is direction north, towards Paris, over the mountains past Castang. I learn this when I reach Lespinassière, nestled between several mountains. The village has some late-model cars, and I pass a fancy private home with built-in swimming pool, as well as a villa. The rest of Lespinassière boasts pretty flower gardens, almost no people. A string of black clothes are drying against a wall, the owner or owners out of sight. I pick up a clothes-drying rack that the wind has knocked over in front of a house, earning thanks from a man walking towards it. Continuing on, I see that there is a nice café, but it appears to be closed. Its terrace is visible from the road, so I walk to it, thinking there might be table service.
I encounter a Spanish woman and a Frenchman of middle age who are tending the place for the owner, who is away. There is nothing on offer, although tonight there will be a Belgian dinner --mussels-- offered. As there is nothing to eat or drink, I thank them for their time and walk out, only to be followed by the woman, who offers to give me some ice cubes and water. Gladly accepting, I get to talk to the two, who are more than happy to put the local geography on the points of a compass, pointing out the direction of Spain, the direction of the Mediterranean, and the Pic du Nord, which is not a mountain but a television tower, and a local landmark.
Walking back, I hear the Argent Double burbling, and with the heat just beginning to subside, the crickets are a symphony. My legs are holding up, although the thought of hitch-hiking has crossed my mind. A vain hope: few cars pass, and those that do are filled. I motivate myself by thinking that when I get to Citou I will be able to identify where in the village I reached the vertiginous way above the sweet onion fields below.
Citou is known as "the sweet onion capital of France". Even in my panic, when I was there last time, I remember noticing the field I was afraid of falling into was planted with onions. Yet I can't find it. In fact, Citou is a much bigger place than I remember, with two roads, not a tiny way. Also, the road up to Citou and to Lespinassière is a two-lane highway, comfortable enough for two cars going in opposite directions. Where was I?
After establishing that it wasn't Citou, I continue my walk back to Caunes. I retrace my steps and keep my eyes open, wondering whether I missed something. I got into the fix I did because I turned off rue du Minervois in the direction indicated by the road sign indicating Citou and Lespinassière along D620, using the GPS to direct me. When I found myself perilously close to falling off the road into the onions, I backed the car out inch by inch past the only two houses on the narrow road, finally turning around and returning to Caunes.
I made it back to Caunes, tested but happy, never having seen a sign of the hamlet I entered a month ago. Having gone almost fourteen miles into the mountains and back, I cannot find the picturesque site of my waking nightmare. It has vanished into the mist, like Brigadoon.
This is la France profonde, deep France. Bob Thorp once told me that on one of his regular drives through the countryside he met a man who had never left his village. The village doors are often shut, the windows shuttered and locked: the owners only return in the summers, except for a few permanent residents. Every village has a church, larger ones, abbeys: in Languedoc-Roussillon alone there are forty-nine. Villages like Caunes have ex-pat communities, including some year-round residents that keep the café and a few other businesses open, but tiny ones like Citou and Lespinassière are just a collection of houses, joined to the outside world by the automobile. Bicycling to Villegly, on the road to Carcassonne yesterday morning, I tried to get a coffee there, but there was no café in town. If foreigners do not settle there, the village sleeps. Which is not to say that the people who do live there do not go to the doctor and the dentist or watch television and read the occasional newspaper, or that the few children living in these hamlets do not get educated (in Lespinassière there is a rather large public school, a souvenir of when it was more populated), but the villages truly exist in a world of their own. Caunes-Minervois is exceptional, because it attracts foreigners, but the isolated villages are more like 19th century villages than 21st century communities, untouched by the world outside, even that of France.
With 300,000 people making their departures from the Gare de Lyon station in Paris today, the loneliness of the road from Caunes to Lespinassière, 7 miles away, makes a striking contrast to the clogged arteries of France's highways. The roads are clogged, the heat is unabated and expected to continue until late in the week, as the flight out of the cities continues. There is a major effort to keep the French cool, whether through visits to the elderly at home to avoid deaths from heat exhaustion, to the inauguration of city beaches inspired by Paris Plage, the capital's installation of misters and chaises longues on the banks of the Seine.
In Caunes, the weather is not quite as hot as elsewhere due to the mountains, but it is still advisable to travel with lots of liquids. I pull out a large bottle of frozen water in a large container, strap on my fanny pack, grab my walking sticks and set out in the direction of Citou, where my Renault Clio 4 had a close encounter with a wall in the village of Citiou, and I saw my life spread out in front of me.
I set out at one o'clock. Five hours and forty minutes later, I return from a fourteen mile hike. On the way to Citou I discover that my shoulder blades and the back of my long-sleeved shirt make a kind of knapsack for the water bottle. The ice melts slowly and keeps me cool. I want to reach Lespinassiere, a village perched on a mountainside in the Black Mountains, part of the Cevennes chain that runs across southern France.
At Citou, I need to replace my ice cubes, but the first people I see, the parents of a young family about to get into their car, tell me there is no commercial establishment in Citou in response to my inquiry about where I might buy ice cubes. They are summer visitors, judging from the neat polo shirts.
Fortunately, a bit further on a man and a woman are chatting. I make the same request, but this time I encounter a kind soul. The woman tells me to follow her, that she has ice cubes in her refrigerator. I enter her house, and follow her into the kitchen, where I fill the bottle with ice cubes and tap water.
After Citou, the road becomes still more desolate. Occasionally a car mounting the hills passes, but few descend. The road is direction north, towards Paris, over the mountains past Castang. I learn this when I reach Lespinassière, nestled between several mountains. The village has some late-model cars, and I pass a fancy private home with built-in swimming pool, as well as a villa. The rest of Lespinassière boasts pretty flower gardens, almost no people. A string of black clothes are drying against a wall, the owner or owners out of sight. I pick up a clothes-drying rack that the wind has knocked over in front of a house, earning thanks from a man walking towards it. Continuing on, I see that there is a nice café, but it appears to be closed. Its terrace is visible from the road, so I walk to it, thinking there might be table service.
I encounter a Spanish woman and a Frenchman of middle age who are tending the place for the owner, who is away. There is nothing on offer, although tonight there will be a Belgian dinner --mussels-- offered. As there is nothing to eat or drink, I thank them for their time and walk out, only to be followed by the woman, who offers to give me some ice cubes and water. Gladly accepting, I get to talk to the two, who are more than happy to put the local geography on the points of a compass, pointing out the direction of Spain, the direction of the Mediterranean, and the Pic du Nord, which is not a mountain but a television tower, and a local landmark.
Walking back, I hear the Argent Double burbling, and with the heat just beginning to subside, the crickets are a symphony. My legs are holding up, although the thought of hitch-hiking has crossed my mind. A vain hope: few cars pass, and those that do are filled. I motivate myself by thinking that when I get to Citou I will be able to identify where in the village I reached the vertiginous way above the sweet onion fields below.
Citou is known as "the sweet onion capital of France". Even in my panic, when I was there last time, I remember noticing the field I was afraid of falling into was planted with onions. Yet I can't find it. In fact, Citou is a much bigger place than I remember, with two roads, not a tiny way. Also, the road up to Citou and to Lespinassière is a two-lane highway, comfortable enough for two cars going in opposite directions. Where was I?
After establishing that it wasn't Citou, I continue my walk back to Caunes. I retrace my steps and keep my eyes open, wondering whether I missed something. I got into the fix I did because I turned off rue du Minervois in the direction indicated by the road sign indicating Citou and Lespinassière along D620, using the GPS to direct me. When I found myself perilously close to falling off the road into the onions, I backed the car out inch by inch past the only two houses on the narrow road, finally turning around and returning to Caunes.
I made it back to Caunes, tested but happy, never having seen a sign of the hamlet I entered a month ago. Having gone almost fourteen miles into the mountains and back, I cannot find the picturesque site of my waking nightmare. It has vanished into the mist, like Brigadoon.
This is la France profonde, deep France. Bob Thorp once told me that on one of his regular drives through the countryside he met a man who had never left his village. The village doors are often shut, the windows shuttered and locked: the owners only return in the summers, except for a few permanent residents. Every village has a church, larger ones, abbeys: in Languedoc-Roussillon alone there are forty-nine. Villages like Caunes have ex-pat communities, including some year-round residents that keep the café and a few other businesses open, but tiny ones like Citou and Lespinassière are just a collection of houses, joined to the outside world by the automobile. Bicycling to Villegly, on the road to Carcassonne yesterday morning, I tried to get a coffee there, but there was no café in town. If foreigners do not settle there, the village sleeps. Which is not to say that the people who do live there do not go to the doctor and the dentist or watch television and read the occasional newspaper, or that the few children living in these hamlets do not get educated (in Lespinassière there is a rather large public school, a souvenir of when it was more populated), but the villages truly exist in a world of their own. Caunes-Minervois is exceptional, because it attracts foreigners, but the isolated villages are more like 19th century villages than 21st century communities, untouched by the world outside, even that of France.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Friday on a summer night in Caunes; Alpe d'Huez stage of the Tour de France
July 19, 2013
I have a ticket for a classical concert in the Benedictine abbey of Caunes, but it doesn't start until 9:30 p.m. Cheek by jowl with the abbey is "Le Cantine du Curé", a warm-season tapas bar that has been a big success since it opened five years ago. It stays open until 2:00 a.m., to the joy of those who want action in Caunes, to the despair of those who want quiet. The portions are huge, the prices are cheap, the drink potable, it is a successful bar.
I think the classical music concert is due to start at 7:30 p.m., another example of how Anglo-Saxon culture has permeated my thinking, even if I am living in France. I see an arrow near the abbey that says Concert and, seeing some musicians removing instruments from their cars ask them where the concert will take place.
"Right here", one of them says, as he walks into the Cantine. I have gotten my concerts mixed up.
So I walk into the bar and sit at one of the tables by the bar, order a draft beer, and half-orders of grilled cuttlefish and patatas bravas. I have a memoir of Corsica I picked up at Patrice Cartier's bookshop to read, so I settle in. There is a male crowd around the bar, but their French is so local, packed with slang, I can't follow even if I wanted to. Nonetheless, I am seated under a tree, the air is fresh after a shower an hour earlier, and the musicians have not yet set up their amplifiers.
Within a half an hour the bar is heaving with middle-aged English and French tourists and my seat is an object of covetousness. I pay the bar bill and take off, passing the outside tables of Le Mangeoire, where one or two customers are sitting, including a local dealer in African art.
Cutting through the parking lot on the "Esplanade de l'Europe" and its overlook of l'Argent Double, stream that runs through Caunes, another group of people enjoying a Friday night have congregated around a truck that makes pizzas. Among them is one of the two brothers who keep the chicken coop near the old village wall. Walking up the stairs and past the café, I spy another cluster of diners. It is summer, and the living is easy.
***
Yesterday, a Frenchman, Christophe Riblon, became the third Frenchman in the history of the Tour de France to win the stage at the Alpe d'Huez. The stage is 150 kilometers (90 miles) and one of the most grueling of the entire race. This year the organizers of the Tour imposed two ascents of the Alp just to make it tougher. The stage was won by Riblon in the last two kilometers. The other two French winners of the stage are Pierre Rolland (1992) and Bernard Hinault (1986). After watching Jean-Christophe Péraud fall twice, finally fracturing his collarbone the day before, the French victory was not only one for the record books, but demonstrated Riblon's stamina.
The Tour de France is not just a race to the finish, with the one rider who outshines all the others in average speed over the entire course winning the yellow jersey (maillot jaune), it is also a contest of endurance over the mountain climbs built into the course. So the best climber is honored and gets to wear a polka-dot riding shirt for his efforts. The best team is honored for maintaining the fastest overall pace. There used to be an award for last place, but the Tour organizers eliminated the prize as bad for competition.
The riders rid in a pack, or peloton which often includes several members of the same team. There are aerodynamic reasons for doing so, nine riders all going at full speed together create greater momentum than one rider could alone. Being at the head of the peloton makes it possible to breakaway and offers more protection against accidents, as they tend to happen at the back of the pack. Brilliant riders may ride together, as Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault did. However, when the time came, Hinault left LeMond in the dust, having brought LeMond in only to keep his own pace at his fastest possible.
There are rules about what time meals can be taken: today Christopher Froome was docked points because he ate after the designated times, as a result of having to replace a bicycle on the road. Different cycling champions have different strengths, a select few are so gifted they dominate all the groupings. Bernard Hinault, "the Badger" (a nickname associated with his prickly personality) is one of them. Writing a brief column for today's Le Figaro, about Riblon, all he said was, "Welcome to the club".
The Tour may be tainted by doping scandals, but it still brings out the fans, who line the route for kilometers, and run after their favorite riders carrying national flags if they are compatriots. The event is a bacchanal for spectators (most of them men), who come in campers days before to get a good place on the route, those campers loaded with lots of booze. It is, after all, one of the greatest endurance contests ever, fought over a diverse and beautiful terrain at the height of summer. Who can blame fans for keeping the faith even in the light of the doping scandals? If the leader, Christopher Froome, wins --whoever wins-- there will be murmurs. Yet for the moment, all that matters is the race.
I have a ticket for a classical concert in the Benedictine abbey of Caunes, but it doesn't start until 9:30 p.m. Cheek by jowl with the abbey is "Le Cantine du Curé", a warm-season tapas bar that has been a big success since it opened five years ago. It stays open until 2:00 a.m., to the joy of those who want action in Caunes, to the despair of those who want quiet. The portions are huge, the prices are cheap, the drink potable, it is a successful bar.
I think the classical music concert is due to start at 7:30 p.m., another example of how Anglo-Saxon culture has permeated my thinking, even if I am living in France. I see an arrow near the abbey that says Concert and, seeing some musicians removing instruments from their cars ask them where the concert will take place.
"Right here", one of them says, as he walks into the Cantine. I have gotten my concerts mixed up.
So I walk into the bar and sit at one of the tables by the bar, order a draft beer, and half-orders of grilled cuttlefish and patatas bravas. I have a memoir of Corsica I picked up at Patrice Cartier's bookshop to read, so I settle in. There is a male crowd around the bar, but their French is so local, packed with slang, I can't follow even if I wanted to. Nonetheless, I am seated under a tree, the air is fresh after a shower an hour earlier, and the musicians have not yet set up their amplifiers.
Within a half an hour the bar is heaving with middle-aged English and French tourists and my seat is an object of covetousness. I pay the bar bill and take off, passing the outside tables of Le Mangeoire, where one or two customers are sitting, including a local dealer in African art.
Cutting through the parking lot on the "Esplanade de l'Europe" and its overlook of l'Argent Double, stream that runs through Caunes, another group of people enjoying a Friday night have congregated around a truck that makes pizzas. Among them is one of the two brothers who keep the chicken coop near the old village wall. Walking up the stairs and past the café, I spy another cluster of diners. It is summer, and the living is easy.
***
Yesterday, a Frenchman, Christophe Riblon, became the third Frenchman in the history of the Tour de France to win the stage at the Alpe d'Huez. The stage is 150 kilometers (90 miles) and one of the most grueling of the entire race. This year the organizers of the Tour imposed two ascents of the Alp just to make it tougher. The stage was won by Riblon in the last two kilometers. The other two French winners of the stage are Pierre Rolland (1992) and Bernard Hinault (1986). After watching Jean-Christophe Péraud fall twice, finally fracturing his collarbone the day before, the French victory was not only one for the record books, but demonstrated Riblon's stamina.
The Tour de France is not just a race to the finish, with the one rider who outshines all the others in average speed over the entire course winning the yellow jersey (maillot jaune), it is also a contest of endurance over the mountain climbs built into the course. So the best climber is honored and gets to wear a polka-dot riding shirt for his efforts. The best team is honored for maintaining the fastest overall pace. There used to be an award for last place, but the Tour organizers eliminated the prize as bad for competition.
The riders rid in a pack, or peloton which often includes several members of the same team. There are aerodynamic reasons for doing so, nine riders all going at full speed together create greater momentum than one rider could alone. Being at the head of the peloton makes it possible to breakaway and offers more protection against accidents, as they tend to happen at the back of the pack. Brilliant riders may ride together, as Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault did. However, when the time came, Hinault left LeMond in the dust, having brought LeMond in only to keep his own pace at his fastest possible.
There are rules about what time meals can be taken: today Christopher Froome was docked points because he ate after the designated times, as a result of having to replace a bicycle on the road. Different cycling champions have different strengths, a select few are so gifted they dominate all the groupings. Bernard Hinault, "the Badger" (a nickname associated with his prickly personality) is one of them. Writing a brief column for today's Le Figaro, about Riblon, all he said was, "Welcome to the club".
The Tour may be tainted by doping scandals, but it still brings out the fans, who line the route for kilometers, and run after their favorite riders carrying national flags if they are compatriots. The event is a bacchanal for spectators (most of them men), who come in campers days before to get a good place on the route, those campers loaded with lots of booze. It is, after all, one of the greatest endurance contests ever, fought over a diverse and beautiful terrain at the height of summer. Who can blame fans for keeping the faith even in the light of the doping scandals? If the leader, Christopher Froome, wins --whoever wins-- there will be murmurs. Yet for the moment, all that matters is the race.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Deflated; French Catholics:The Bookstore In the Mountains
July 18, 2013
My first day on my own for the next ten days begins with a bicycle ride to Carcassonne, which almost never happens. A little after 8 a.m. I pull out my Xootr Swift and, spying the bicycle pump, decide to replenish the air the tires must have lost over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, I manage to deflate my front tire, instead of inflating it. After several failed tries, I give in. It's too early to bother my cycling next-door-neighbor Bob Thorp, but if I walk down to the café, perhaps someone will know how to properly fix a bicycle pump to a wheel. The cafè is always peopled by men of varying ages and states of sobriety, rough and tumble types. I imagine that at worse, the sunburned drunk who cleans tables between glasses of beer might be my volatile recourse: angry at being thrown out for smoking in the bar one morning, he let fly various curses (Je ... ce putain bar....) before walking outside to have his fag.
However, I get to the outside tables and see in front of the entrance to the café a table of six or seven sturdy-looking men enjoying coffees and cigarettes. They take me in, I greet them, and ask whether one of them might be able to help me fill my bicycle tires with air from the pump I am carrying in the knapsack on my back.
Nothing easier, several say, although there is a bit of a debate as to which one has most experience with bicycle tires. A big guy dressed in beige fatigues gets up and walks over to the bicycle. An older man next to him warns him that 7 kilos of pressure is the maximum the tires can take without exploding, which he fully expects to happen. This bit of good-natured ribbing done with, the two of them get my tires filled with air. I thank the two men and wish all around a good day: How nice to be in a place where being a damsel in distress still means something.
The ride to Carcassonne --about thirty miles back and forth-- is very smooth, as it is early and the sky is overcast, the temperature cool. The Thursday market in Carcassonne has few vendors and everyone seems a bit listless from the last few days of heat. I go to the café I've been taken to before, Café Moka, parking my bicycle next to my designated table. A waiter, very energetic for so early in the morning, comes over and I order a grand crème, a large, strong coffee with steamed milk, which comes out quickly.
As I am enjoying the coffee, a gust of wind sends a card flying off the table and onto the macadam, where the shoe of an older man in shorts stops it. I get up, take it from him and sit down, thanking him. He walks over and starts talking to me, asking me about my bicycle. He too, has a bicycle, a cruiser with high handlebars and no speeds. "It's tough sometimes, but good enough." He asks me where I'm from, probing. When I tell him that my family came from Spain, he tells me his did, too, from Cáceres, a long diagonal west from Carcassonne.
"Where is it? I have no idea", he says. By this point we are speaking Spanish, which he speaks quite well. He is old enough that his parents probably left in consequence of the Spanish Civil War, although Extremadura is a famously poor region --many of the Conquistadores were born there-- so poverty could have pushed them out, too. Amazed I've ridden what, is to him, a very long way, he tells me to be extra careful cycling on the highways. The roads in l'Aude are not difficult to ride, I assure him (he's never ridden in Manhattan traffic), and he is off.
Indeed, riding back is easy: I am back in Caunes by 11:35 a.m., and ride on to the Chapel of Notre Dame du Cros as fast as I can, hoping to make at least part of the Mass that has just begun. I walk in at 11:50 a.m. and find that two little girls I saw there yesterday with their father, mother and two little brothers, are there again, just their father accompanying them today. The girls are close in age, both wearing kerchiefs over their brown hair, in simple dresses. At the end of the Mass they each take a hand of the Passionist priest who has celebrated the eucharist, and walk over to the marble statue of the Virgin and Child, where together they say three Hail Marys.
This is at least the second day in a row that these little girls have gone to Mass before lunch (I have only been to the chapel twice this week). Looking at them, and their young father (who looks educated, rather than a manual laborer, judging from his clothes), I am reminded of the days when Catholic families gave a daughter to a convent, or a son to the priesthood. In the family of Saint Thèrese of Lisieux three sisters all became nuns. What these little girls will grow up to be is a mystery to me, but the memory of standing with the Passionist priest in front of the statue of Notre Dame du Cros, "the Virgin of Tenderness", as she is popularly known, will always form part of their imaginations.
Visiting churches in France, I am struck by the fact that several generations of Catholics attend Mass together. In Mèze I was startled to see three tall, good-looking brothers in their late teens and early twenties standing in a pew at Sunday Mass in Saint Hilaire. What is so striking about all this to me is that, unlike the United States, where freedom of religion is a core principle, France's revolution of 1789 seized all religious property, defrocked those in holy orders and prohibited religious worship. Although the extremes of the Reign of Terror (which subsided with the guillotining of the Carmelite nuns of Compiegne) are no more, a legacy of the Revolution is laicité, or secularism. In France, no Catholic priest, Jewish rabbi, Protestant clergyman or Muslim imam has the authority to solemnize a marriage, as in the United States. The law prohibits the display of religious symbols in the schools, meaning that no type of religious pendant or other identifying mark of adhesion to a religious faith may be displayed by either students, teachers or school officials.
Which makes the intensity of the devotion of French Catholics provocative. I am always surprised that when I go to a Mass in France, there are people attending in significant numbers. There are not enough priests, but there are plenty of congregants, although the former may explain the latter. In the first decades of the 20th century, the Catholic Church was associated with Charles Maurras and his anti-semitic ideology, but today's French Catholic Church seems more concerned with missions in Africa and the inner lives of the faithful. One evidence of this is that La Croix, the French Catholic daily, takes positions that are neither right nor left, but consistent with Catholic social teaching.
Perhaps there is something about being in the decided minority that makes more tenacious the attachment of French Catholics to their churches. It might be a bit like the situation in the former East Germany, where Protestantism (which had formerly been the state religion) was not outlawed, but Protestant practice came at the price of all preferment professionally. For that reason, the sons of many Protestant families chose to become carpenters, the better to live a life in imitation of that of Jesus. (And some attribute Chancellor Angela Merkel's tenacity in no small part to the example of her father, a Protestant minister in East Germany.)
It is easy to think of France as a liberal country, but there is a deep strain of conservatism, too. Not just the Front National's brand of anti-immigrant rabble-rousing, but a deep attachment to the old ways, based on France's history, and in small towns, the history and customs of the region. The divide between Paris and the rest of the country is nowhere more apparent than in the small villages and towns. Paris and its bureaucrats may decide, but the stubborn people of the countryside will outlast them. Paris outlawed the churches, but the faithful outwitted the Revolutionary Committees: local people bought up privately the lands that had belonged to the churches, then turned them over to the commune (the local government), which re-established them as parishes after the Revolution's frenzy subsided.
***
There is no bookstore in Caunes. Indeed, even magazines of any substance are thin on the ground, with the café's offerings limited to a few newspapers, a few horse journals and a lot of celebrity magazines. Carcassonne has a few good bookstores and one very good outlet for lots of newspapers and magazines. Otherwise, books have to be ordered from the Web.
Unless you know about Patrice Cartier. Patrice Cartier lives across the way from Notre Dame du Cros, in the foothills of the Black Mountains, the only other person inhabiting this remote spot. He runs a used bookshop there, where no one can find him. I only knew about him because I had seen a poster for a new book about Languedoc-Roussillon's historic sites on the door of the shop, although there was no sign identifying it as such. Walking out after Mass, I saw that the door was open and walked in.
Inside there were English books, there were lots of books about Marx, about Mitterand, there were magazines from a hundred years ago and two copies of Paris Match of May 1968 when students rioted and de Gaulle threw in the towel. There was bric-a-brac, there were multiple copies of a book about residential swimming pools, there were post cards. Patrice began his career as a journalist, then worked in radio, then wrote articles for a trade magazine about swimming pool construction, which led to the contract for the book about swimming pools. After the book came out the magazine folded. Not because the book was too costly, he told me, but because the publisher of the magazine ruined himself chasing African girls who took him for every cent he had. End of job writing articles for magazine about residential swimming pools, beginning of life as a bookseller.
Patrice had a geography of France for children published in 1896. Its brightly colored pages highlight France's many rivers, and list the départements as they were then, as well as skewing the attitudes of French children in a decidedly anti-German direction: France includes all these départements, minus those Germany took from us, Alsace and Lorraine. Another book, a child's history of France was published in 1916. It too, has a decided slant on history. Who were the Normans? The Norman pirates came from the sterile shores of Northern Europe. Their joy was to die amidst the clash of armies. Then, they believed, a paradise called Valhalla would open to them where they would drink mead forever in a place of honor.
The bookstore is a fun house mirror onto France's past.
My first day on my own for the next ten days begins with a bicycle ride to Carcassonne, which almost never happens. A little after 8 a.m. I pull out my Xootr Swift and, spying the bicycle pump, decide to replenish the air the tires must have lost over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, I manage to deflate my front tire, instead of inflating it. After several failed tries, I give in. It's too early to bother my cycling next-door-neighbor Bob Thorp, but if I walk down to the café, perhaps someone will know how to properly fix a bicycle pump to a wheel. The cafè is always peopled by men of varying ages and states of sobriety, rough and tumble types. I imagine that at worse, the sunburned drunk who cleans tables between glasses of beer might be my volatile recourse: angry at being thrown out for smoking in the bar one morning, he let fly various curses (Je ... ce putain bar....) before walking outside to have his fag.
However, I get to the outside tables and see in front of the entrance to the café a table of six or seven sturdy-looking men enjoying coffees and cigarettes. They take me in, I greet them, and ask whether one of them might be able to help me fill my bicycle tires with air from the pump I am carrying in the knapsack on my back.
Nothing easier, several say, although there is a bit of a debate as to which one has most experience with bicycle tires. A big guy dressed in beige fatigues gets up and walks over to the bicycle. An older man next to him warns him that 7 kilos of pressure is the maximum the tires can take without exploding, which he fully expects to happen. This bit of good-natured ribbing done with, the two of them get my tires filled with air. I thank the two men and wish all around a good day: How nice to be in a place where being a damsel in distress still means something.
The ride to Carcassonne --about thirty miles back and forth-- is very smooth, as it is early and the sky is overcast, the temperature cool. The Thursday market in Carcassonne has few vendors and everyone seems a bit listless from the last few days of heat. I go to the café I've been taken to before, Café Moka, parking my bicycle next to my designated table. A waiter, very energetic for so early in the morning, comes over and I order a grand crème, a large, strong coffee with steamed milk, which comes out quickly.
As I am enjoying the coffee, a gust of wind sends a card flying off the table and onto the macadam, where the shoe of an older man in shorts stops it. I get up, take it from him and sit down, thanking him. He walks over and starts talking to me, asking me about my bicycle. He too, has a bicycle, a cruiser with high handlebars and no speeds. "It's tough sometimes, but good enough." He asks me where I'm from, probing. When I tell him that my family came from Spain, he tells me his did, too, from Cáceres, a long diagonal west from Carcassonne.
"Where is it? I have no idea", he says. By this point we are speaking Spanish, which he speaks quite well. He is old enough that his parents probably left in consequence of the Spanish Civil War, although Extremadura is a famously poor region --many of the Conquistadores were born there-- so poverty could have pushed them out, too. Amazed I've ridden what, is to him, a very long way, he tells me to be extra careful cycling on the highways. The roads in l'Aude are not difficult to ride, I assure him (he's never ridden in Manhattan traffic), and he is off.
Indeed, riding back is easy: I am back in Caunes by 11:35 a.m., and ride on to the Chapel of Notre Dame du Cros as fast as I can, hoping to make at least part of the Mass that has just begun. I walk in at 11:50 a.m. and find that two little girls I saw there yesterday with their father, mother and two little brothers, are there again, just their father accompanying them today. The girls are close in age, both wearing kerchiefs over their brown hair, in simple dresses. At the end of the Mass they each take a hand of the Passionist priest who has celebrated the eucharist, and walk over to the marble statue of the Virgin and Child, where together they say three Hail Marys.
This is at least the second day in a row that these little girls have gone to Mass before lunch (I have only been to the chapel twice this week). Looking at them, and their young father (who looks educated, rather than a manual laborer, judging from his clothes), I am reminded of the days when Catholic families gave a daughter to a convent, or a son to the priesthood. In the family of Saint Thèrese of Lisieux three sisters all became nuns. What these little girls will grow up to be is a mystery to me, but the memory of standing with the Passionist priest in front of the statue of Notre Dame du Cros, "the Virgin of Tenderness", as she is popularly known, will always form part of their imaginations.
Visiting churches in France, I am struck by the fact that several generations of Catholics attend Mass together. In Mèze I was startled to see three tall, good-looking brothers in their late teens and early twenties standing in a pew at Sunday Mass in Saint Hilaire. What is so striking about all this to me is that, unlike the United States, where freedom of religion is a core principle, France's revolution of 1789 seized all religious property, defrocked those in holy orders and prohibited religious worship. Although the extremes of the Reign of Terror (which subsided with the guillotining of the Carmelite nuns of Compiegne) are no more, a legacy of the Revolution is laicité, or secularism. In France, no Catholic priest, Jewish rabbi, Protestant clergyman or Muslim imam has the authority to solemnize a marriage, as in the United States. The law prohibits the display of religious symbols in the schools, meaning that no type of religious pendant or other identifying mark of adhesion to a religious faith may be displayed by either students, teachers or school officials.
Which makes the intensity of the devotion of French Catholics provocative. I am always surprised that when I go to a Mass in France, there are people attending in significant numbers. There are not enough priests, but there are plenty of congregants, although the former may explain the latter. In the first decades of the 20th century, the Catholic Church was associated with Charles Maurras and his anti-semitic ideology, but today's French Catholic Church seems more concerned with missions in Africa and the inner lives of the faithful. One evidence of this is that La Croix, the French Catholic daily, takes positions that are neither right nor left, but consistent with Catholic social teaching.
Perhaps there is something about being in the decided minority that makes more tenacious the attachment of French Catholics to their churches. It might be a bit like the situation in the former East Germany, where Protestantism (which had formerly been the state religion) was not outlawed, but Protestant practice came at the price of all preferment professionally. For that reason, the sons of many Protestant families chose to become carpenters, the better to live a life in imitation of that of Jesus. (And some attribute Chancellor Angela Merkel's tenacity in no small part to the example of her father, a Protestant minister in East Germany.)
It is easy to think of France as a liberal country, but there is a deep strain of conservatism, too. Not just the Front National's brand of anti-immigrant rabble-rousing, but a deep attachment to the old ways, based on France's history, and in small towns, the history and customs of the region. The divide between Paris and the rest of the country is nowhere more apparent than in the small villages and towns. Paris and its bureaucrats may decide, but the stubborn people of the countryside will outlast them. Paris outlawed the churches, but the faithful outwitted the Revolutionary Committees: local people bought up privately the lands that had belonged to the churches, then turned them over to the commune (the local government), which re-established them as parishes after the Revolution's frenzy subsided.
***
There is no bookstore in Caunes. Indeed, even magazines of any substance are thin on the ground, with the café's offerings limited to a few newspapers, a few horse journals and a lot of celebrity magazines. Carcassonne has a few good bookstores and one very good outlet for lots of newspapers and magazines. Otherwise, books have to be ordered from the Web.
Unless you know about Patrice Cartier. Patrice Cartier lives across the way from Notre Dame du Cros, in the foothills of the Black Mountains, the only other person inhabiting this remote spot. He runs a used bookshop there, where no one can find him. I only knew about him because I had seen a poster for a new book about Languedoc-Roussillon's historic sites on the door of the shop, although there was no sign identifying it as such. Walking out after Mass, I saw that the door was open and walked in.
Inside there were English books, there were lots of books about Marx, about Mitterand, there were magazines from a hundred years ago and two copies of Paris Match of May 1968 when students rioted and de Gaulle threw in the towel. There was bric-a-brac, there were multiple copies of a book about residential swimming pools, there were post cards. Patrice began his career as a journalist, then worked in radio, then wrote articles for a trade magazine about swimming pool construction, which led to the contract for the book about swimming pools. After the book came out the magazine folded. Not because the book was too costly, he told me, but because the publisher of the magazine ruined himself chasing African girls who took him for every cent he had. End of job writing articles for magazine about residential swimming pools, beginning of life as a bookseller.
Patrice had a geography of France for children published in 1896. Its brightly colored pages highlight France's many rivers, and list the départements as they were then, as well as skewing the attitudes of French children in a decidedly anti-German direction: France includes all these départements, minus those Germany took from us, Alsace and Lorraine. Another book, a child's history of France was published in 1916. It too, has a decided slant on history. Who were the Normans? The Norman pirates came from the sterile shores of Northern Europe. Their joy was to die amidst the clash of armies. Then, they believed, a paradise called Valhalla would open to them where they would drink mead forever in a place of honor.
The bookstore is a fun house mirror onto France's past.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Ryanair; A Visit to the "Dechetterie"; A True Grease Monkey
July 17, 2013
Returning to Caunes last night, the evening was taken up with packing Jazmin for her flight to Paris this morning. With only two days in Paris, time was of the essence, so the relaxing ride on the TGV from Carcassonne I had foreseen for her was not on the agenda --thanks to Ryanair.
Ryanair, an Irish company, is the leader in no-frills short-haul flights in Europe. Everything has its price; indeed the website is user-unfriendly, dragging the consumer through multiple iterations of its extras before concluding a ticket purchase. A glass of water, for instance, will cost you.
Ryanair shrewdly identifies underutilized local airports in Europe, then approaches the management and offers to fly there in return for landing privileges at below-market rates, if not for free. Ryanair's argument is that it creates new tourist destinations by doing so, bringing money into the local economy that would otherwise not benefit.
The cheapest way to go Ryanair is with one carry-on, which has to weigh 10 kilos or less; anything more, gets pricey. Checking one bag in the hold is 35 Euros; a flight from Carcassonne to Paris is about 30 Euros: much cheaper than the TGV, although you arrive at Beauvais airport, some miles outside of Paris and have to take an inter-city train (at nominal cost) into Paris and take a taxi from there.
Ryanair put Carcassonne on the map twenty-two years ago. Judging from the number of tourists that now visit there from all around the world, let alone the English who have bought homes in l'Aude since the flights began, the argument, in that town's case, is proven.
***
Unlike people who live in apartment buildings in major American cities, where the staff takes recycled garbage out onto the street for pick-up, in Caunes-Minervois, you drive to the déchetterie, the recyling center a few kilometers outside the village. You take a left and drive up the slope to the top, stop, and a uniformed worker walks over and asks what village you are from. Only people from Caunes and the vicinity can use this déchetterie, which like the rest of Caunes, closes for lunch from 12:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
The workers wear citrus green pants and vests and include a young woman. There are giant bins for cardboard, for cans, for plastic, and a giant square-shaped module with portholes on all four sides to dump glass. I love the crashing sound bottles make when they hit --it is one of the chief pleasures of going to the déchetterie. I park at the far end, in the direction of the exit and start to remove items from the blue plastic container in which I place cans and plastic bottles. Usually, someone comes over and picks up the cube for me, throwing things out as we talk. Task accomplished, I put the blue container back in the trunk of the car and drive slowly down the exit slope.
Except last week, when three employees from Meubles Negre (Black's Furniture) in Peyriac, alerted me to damage to my tires, tiny strips of rubber that scraped off when I got too close to a curb driving through one of the villages. For an experienced driver, the narrow village roads, dropped in between high curbs on both sides of the road to slow drivers down, present no problem. Having only had to drive since getting here (I have driven only rarely since obtaining my license at the age of thirty-two), my learning curve has been high.
The guys from Meubles Negre were very excited about the state of my tires.
"You must go to a tire shop and have them looked at. At any moment, a tire could burst! No, no! --You have to have them looked at before you have an accident. You probably have to have the tires replaced."
I asked where I could find a tire dealer.
"Go to the Spar in Peyriac--"
The Spar there is where I fill the car with gas, and not far.
"There's Monsieuir Pneu there, he has lots of types of tires, he probably has them for your car." ("Pneu" is the French word for "tire".)
The guys find my predicament worth talking about, even as I am departing the déchetterie for Peyriac.
"--By the way, you also have liquid dripping from the bottom of your car. You'd better hope it's not oil!"
I find Monsieur Pneu without difficulty; park and walk into the office, where a fit-looking young man with a shaved head, tanned face and arms is looking at paperwork behind the counter.
I explain my dilemma and say that perhaps I will have to buy new tires.
"Well, let's have a look", he says, rising from quickly his chair.
Driving is one of those skills that many believe a measure of general competence. By those measures, I am an abject failure. I am maladroit behind the wheel, although I have been told that driving is one of the few things one gets better at simply by doing more. The GPS and I have still not made friends, although I am getting a better sense of how to read the screen while moving. Yet I still lose time, making a wrong turn in a roundabout and having to turn around, when I am not driving completely off-course. All that is excusable as the growing pains of a new driver. Destroying the tires on a new car, however, represents another level of error, a costly one. What else could go wrong?
The young man and I walk out to the car. He circles around it, taking in the four tires.
"No, you have no problem with the tires. They are completely road-worthy. You have a few strips of loose rubber--"
And he kneels down and slices them off with an Exacto knife.
"Well, I was told that I also have some liquid dripping from the bottom of the car--"
"Let's have a look--"
And the young man flops down on the asphalt and slides his body under the chassis of the car. He lies there a few seconds, then slides out from under and gets to his feet.
"No, nothing to worry about. It's just condensation from the air-conditioner."
"What do I owe you?"
"Rien" (Nothing), he says with a cheerful smile.
"Well, wait--" I say, as he starts to walk away, handing him a 5 Euro note. "At least you can have a glass of wine on me."
"C'est gentil!" (That's nice!"), he replies before bidding me good day.
I now think "Grease Monkey" are two of the most beautiful words in the English language. In French, the term is a literal translation, singe de graisse.
"Vive le singe de graisse!"
Returning to Caunes last night, the evening was taken up with packing Jazmin for her flight to Paris this morning. With only two days in Paris, time was of the essence, so the relaxing ride on the TGV from Carcassonne I had foreseen for her was not on the agenda --thanks to Ryanair.
Ryanair, an Irish company, is the leader in no-frills short-haul flights in Europe. Everything has its price; indeed the website is user-unfriendly, dragging the consumer through multiple iterations of its extras before concluding a ticket purchase. A glass of water, for instance, will cost you.
Ryanair shrewdly identifies underutilized local airports in Europe, then approaches the management and offers to fly there in return for landing privileges at below-market rates, if not for free. Ryanair's argument is that it creates new tourist destinations by doing so, bringing money into the local economy that would otherwise not benefit.
The cheapest way to go Ryanair is with one carry-on, which has to weigh 10 kilos or less; anything more, gets pricey. Checking one bag in the hold is 35 Euros; a flight from Carcassonne to Paris is about 30 Euros: much cheaper than the TGV, although you arrive at Beauvais airport, some miles outside of Paris and have to take an inter-city train (at nominal cost) into Paris and take a taxi from there.
Ryanair put Carcassonne on the map twenty-two years ago. Judging from the number of tourists that now visit there from all around the world, let alone the English who have bought homes in l'Aude since the flights began, the argument, in that town's case, is proven.
***
Unlike people who live in apartment buildings in major American cities, where the staff takes recycled garbage out onto the street for pick-up, in Caunes-Minervois, you drive to the déchetterie, the recyling center a few kilometers outside the village. You take a left and drive up the slope to the top, stop, and a uniformed worker walks over and asks what village you are from. Only people from Caunes and the vicinity can use this déchetterie, which like the rest of Caunes, closes for lunch from 12:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
The workers wear citrus green pants and vests and include a young woman. There are giant bins for cardboard, for cans, for plastic, and a giant square-shaped module with portholes on all four sides to dump glass. I love the crashing sound bottles make when they hit --it is one of the chief pleasures of going to the déchetterie. I park at the far end, in the direction of the exit and start to remove items from the blue plastic container in which I place cans and plastic bottles. Usually, someone comes over and picks up the cube for me, throwing things out as we talk. Task accomplished, I put the blue container back in the trunk of the car and drive slowly down the exit slope.
Except last week, when three employees from Meubles Negre (Black's Furniture) in Peyriac, alerted me to damage to my tires, tiny strips of rubber that scraped off when I got too close to a curb driving through one of the villages. For an experienced driver, the narrow village roads, dropped in between high curbs on both sides of the road to slow drivers down, present no problem. Having only had to drive since getting here (I have driven only rarely since obtaining my license at the age of thirty-two), my learning curve has been high.
The guys from Meubles Negre were very excited about the state of my tires.
"You must go to a tire shop and have them looked at. At any moment, a tire could burst! No, no! --You have to have them looked at before you have an accident. You probably have to have the tires replaced."
I asked where I could find a tire dealer.
"Go to the Spar in Peyriac--"
The Spar there is where I fill the car with gas, and not far.
"There's Monsieuir Pneu there, he has lots of types of tires, he probably has them for your car." ("Pneu" is the French word for "tire".)
The guys find my predicament worth talking about, even as I am departing the déchetterie for Peyriac.
"--By the way, you also have liquid dripping from the bottom of your car. You'd better hope it's not oil!"
I find Monsieur Pneu without difficulty; park and walk into the office, where a fit-looking young man with a shaved head, tanned face and arms is looking at paperwork behind the counter.
I explain my dilemma and say that perhaps I will have to buy new tires.
"Well, let's have a look", he says, rising from quickly his chair.
Driving is one of those skills that many believe a measure of general competence. By those measures, I am an abject failure. I am maladroit behind the wheel, although I have been told that driving is one of the few things one gets better at simply by doing more. The GPS and I have still not made friends, although I am getting a better sense of how to read the screen while moving. Yet I still lose time, making a wrong turn in a roundabout and having to turn around, when I am not driving completely off-course. All that is excusable as the growing pains of a new driver. Destroying the tires on a new car, however, represents another level of error, a costly one. What else could go wrong?
The young man and I walk out to the car. He circles around it, taking in the four tires.
"No, you have no problem with the tires. They are completely road-worthy. You have a few strips of loose rubber--"
And he kneels down and slices them off with an Exacto knife.
"Well, I was told that I also have some liquid dripping from the bottom of the car--"
"Let's have a look--"
And the young man flops down on the asphalt and slides his body under the chassis of the car. He lies there a few seconds, then slides out from under and gets to his feet.
"No, nothing to worry about. It's just condensation from the air-conditioner."
"What do I owe you?"
"Rien" (Nothing), he says with a cheerful smile.
"Well, wait--" I say, as he starts to walk away, handing him a 5 Euro note. "At least you can have a glass of wine on me."
"C'est gentil!" (That's nice!"), he replies before bidding me good day.
I now think "Grease Monkey" are two of the most beautiful words in the English language. In French, the term is a literal translation, singe de graisse.
"Vive le singe de graisse!"
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Bastille Day; President Hollande's Interview; Sarkozy's Game; The End of the "Cumul des Mandats"
July 14, 2013
Bastille Day in Paris is an opportunity for the powers-that-be in France to strut their stuff, and 2014 is no exception. The French president reviews the armed forces detailed to the ceremony, who are lined up from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. He does so standing up in an open car, with the French equivalent of the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff standing next to him. When he reaches the reviewing stand at the Place de la Concorde he joins the other dignitaries and listens to an elite armed force choir, which does a neat bit of choreography visible from the air, and broadcast on millions of French TV screens. The ceremony ends with a designated singer (Florian Marconi, this year) belting out "La Marseillaise" as the French air patrol (La Patrouille de France) flies over Paris, red, white and blue streamers of smoke decorating the skyline.
After that, traditionally, the president gives an interview from the Elysée, although during the campaign last year, Hollande said another place might be more conducive to a freer exchange between the president and journalists. A year later, Hollande arranged to be interviewed by Claire Chazal of Telefrance 1 and Laurent Delahousse of France 2 in the Elysée Palace gardens, a decision said to have been taken by Hollande to turn media attention away from Nicolas Sarkozy, whose speech to UMP leaders last Monday, has created a firestorm of press attention.
If Hollande thought that the prospect of interviewing the French head of state on live television from the Elysée would intimidate his inquisitors, he was very much mistaken. The economy was the first and only topic aside from a few detours about Delphine Batho, Minister for Ecology, bounced a few days ago; and Manuel Valls, the visibly ambitious Minister of the Interior. Laurent Delahousse wanted to know whether taxes on the middle class would increase next year, a question Hollande tried to parry by saying that the government would continue to cut expenses to the greatest extent possible. Delahousse persisted, and Hollande again tried to parry by talking about the increases in the "wealth tax", a tax on incomes over 1M Euros that at the highest end, taxes at 75%.
Hadn't he taxed the wealthiest, whose capital, a magazine recently reported, had increased in value 25% last year? He wasn't trying to spoliate these fortunes, but he wanted the very wealthy to show solidarity with the rest of France.
What about the reforms of the government's role in the economy Hollande said he would make if elected?
The system has to be reformed, Hollande pursued. The job market, particularly the system of retirement benefits, has to be made over: as people are living longer, they will have to contribute longer to have the same benefits.
Turning to a more sensitive question, did Hollande fear the return of Nicolas Sarkozy to public life?
"I have so much to think about from day-to-day, that I do not have time to think about him" came the rejoinder.
What about the lack of confidence a majority of French feel about the country's future?
"We are the most pessimistic country in the world" came the answer.
Finally, the president was asked whether, were an Islamic party to be founded in France, would it be compatible with democracy. "No religion is incompatible with democracy", Hollande asserted.
The interview lasted thirty-six minutes. Hollande, dressed in a navy blue suit and tie, no doubt tailored very well, is nonetheless unprepossessing. Balding and bespectacled, he resembles a middle-aged insurance salesman for whom the business lunches hold no small part of the appeal of the job. Indeed, the former député (representative) from Corrèze in central France is known to enjoy a good meal in the French tradition. He is said to be steady, affable and witty, perhaps too content to lead a country that wants to continue to be thought of as a great power (Hollande repeatedly said in the interview that France was a "great" country), but needs major structural reforms bring down a 10.4% unemployment rate, and to stanch a 450 billion Euro deficit.
***
François Hollande may be too busy solving France's problems to be concerned, let alone afraid of Nicolas Sakozy's return to politics, but for François Fillon, his former boss is proving a major thorn in Fillon's side. Fillon is said to have smarted at pointed public rebukes contained in Sarkozy's speech to UMP leaders last Monday, although he is a man too emotionally disciplined to let it show. Rather, close allies have begun to poke holes in Sarkozy's remarks, pointing out that the former president talked about "big picture" issues, while making no mention of the UMP's enormous campaign debt, a debt created by Sarkozy's losing race for a second quinquennat.
In fact, Fillon is said to have commented that Sarkozy introduced no new ideas, just warmed-over ones. Fillon was indispensable to Sarkozy, softening, with his dignified and ever-so-polite manner, Sarkozy's "Energizer Bunny" persona. French Presidents often sacrifice their Prime Ministers, making them the fall guys for policies that failed. Jacques Chirac fired Dominique de Villepin when the latter's plan for lowering unemployment by creating more jobs for youth was pilloried. Sarkozy reshuffled his cabinet more than once, but he kept Fillon, who was his partner in power.
It is easy to understand why Fillon is rattled by Sarkozy's reappearance. First of all, Sarkozy lost the election. True, had Marine le Pen of the Front Nationale not run, enough of her voters would have voted for Sarkozy to put him over the top. However, ex-Presidents of France are supposed to make a dignified exit, with honors easing their retirement, along with elder statesman status.
Nicolas Sarkozy wants neither, but what he really wants is anyone's guess. To pull the strings, probably, to be a kingmaker, to make his former vassals pledge allegiance once more, even if he knows deep inside he can't be the candidate again. Fillon, who definitely knows what he wants --to be the candidate of the center-right in 2017, has created an organization, Force Republicain, to raise money and structure his eventual campaign.
Fillon finds himself in the position of a man who should be the logical choice of his party, but finds the way littered with obstacles. A distinguished public servant whose public remarks and demeanor are always appropriate to the occasion, Fillon is fighting off challenges, on the one side from Sarkozy, and the other Jean-François Copé, the first secretary of the UMP. Copé is a provocateur, who has taken positions not so far removed from those of Marine Le Pen and the Front National, in an effort to siphon off votes. Copé is no shrinking violet: his father once told a reporter that he thanked God that France had been given his son. Copé is ardent, where Fillon is unruffled.
Fillon is perhaps temperamentally ill-suited to what will be a rough-and-tumble campaign for the nomination of France's center-right voters. He is said to dislike networking via the telephone, which means that sometimes allies find out things they ought to have been told directly through intermediaries like the press. Laurent Wauquiez, a telegenic junior minister in Fillon's cabinet, is one who has distanced himself from Fillon out of frustration with Fillon's mandarin style, and complaints about it are not limited to him.
Copé is a frontal politician who likes confrontation. In response to the gay marriage bill enacted by the French legislature, Copé led a demonstration in opposition. Perhaps to Fillon's credit, rather than march in the demonstration, Fillon went to a road rally.
***
This week the French legislature voted an end to the cumul des mandats. Rather than try to explain it, I will quote Art Goldhammer, a distinguished French translator and student of French politics. Goldhammer's blog, French Politics, is an opinionated, but informed and detailed review of French political life. In his January 16, 2013 post Goldhammer said this about the cumuli des mandate:
As long as I have been involved in the study of French politics, I have been hearing about the reform to end all reforms: the banning of the cumul des mandats. It is telling indeed that French has a phrase for the holding of multiple offices that rolls so trippingly off the tongue, whereas any English circumlocution gives the reader pause. Is le cumul des mandats simply illegal in, say, the United States? I doubt that any law exists that would prevent someone from serving simultaneously as, for instance, Mayor of Indianapolis and representative in Congress. It's just that it's-well, not the done thing.
In France, however, it is not only the done thing; it is practically a necessity of political life. If a man or woman wants to be a player at the national level, it's essential to have a local power base with patronage powers that can be used to groom a loyal staff, a cadre of backers, and bridges to important resources in civil society. Banning le cumul would indeed constitute a major reform, just because it would disrupt so many vested interests. Whether it would achieve any useful goal beyond altering the status quo has never been so clear to me as to the idea's many staunch supporters. Would the quality of representation be increased? If so, why? Might reform not widen the distance between the national and local levels and therefore have the opposite of the desired effect?
That day has now come, with the double mandate (as it is known in English-speaking countries) now threatened. Of course the cumul des mandats (which is as old as the French revolution) violates a concept dear to Americans: the tripartite division of government functions, with a separate legislature, executive and judiciary. That concept of separation of powers was the brainchild of a Frenchman, Montesquieu, who said, famously:
Bastille Day in Paris is an opportunity for the powers-that-be in France to strut their stuff, and 2014 is no exception. The French president reviews the armed forces detailed to the ceremony, who are lined up from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. He does so standing up in an open car, with the French equivalent of the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff standing next to him. When he reaches the reviewing stand at the Place de la Concorde he joins the other dignitaries and listens to an elite armed force choir, which does a neat bit of choreography visible from the air, and broadcast on millions of French TV screens. The ceremony ends with a designated singer (Florian Marconi, this year) belting out "La Marseillaise" as the French air patrol (La Patrouille de France) flies over Paris, red, white and blue streamers of smoke decorating the skyline.
After that, traditionally, the president gives an interview from the Elysée, although during the campaign last year, Hollande said another place might be more conducive to a freer exchange between the president and journalists. A year later, Hollande arranged to be interviewed by Claire Chazal of Telefrance 1 and Laurent Delahousse of France 2 in the Elysée Palace gardens, a decision said to have been taken by Hollande to turn media attention away from Nicolas Sarkozy, whose speech to UMP leaders last Monday, has created a firestorm of press attention.
If Hollande thought that the prospect of interviewing the French head of state on live television from the Elysée would intimidate his inquisitors, he was very much mistaken. The economy was the first and only topic aside from a few detours about Delphine Batho, Minister for Ecology, bounced a few days ago; and Manuel Valls, the visibly ambitious Minister of the Interior. Laurent Delahousse wanted to know whether taxes on the middle class would increase next year, a question Hollande tried to parry by saying that the government would continue to cut expenses to the greatest extent possible. Delahousse persisted, and Hollande again tried to parry by talking about the increases in the "wealth tax", a tax on incomes over 1M Euros that at the highest end, taxes at 75%.
Hadn't he taxed the wealthiest, whose capital, a magazine recently reported, had increased in value 25% last year? He wasn't trying to spoliate these fortunes, but he wanted the very wealthy to show solidarity with the rest of France.
What about the reforms of the government's role in the economy Hollande said he would make if elected?
The system has to be reformed, Hollande pursued. The job market, particularly the system of retirement benefits, has to be made over: as people are living longer, they will have to contribute longer to have the same benefits.
Turning to a more sensitive question, did Hollande fear the return of Nicolas Sarkozy to public life?
"I have so much to think about from day-to-day, that I do not have time to think about him" came the rejoinder.
What about the lack of confidence a majority of French feel about the country's future?
"We are the most pessimistic country in the world" came the answer.
Finally, the president was asked whether, were an Islamic party to be founded in France, would it be compatible with democracy. "No religion is incompatible with democracy", Hollande asserted.
The interview lasted thirty-six minutes. Hollande, dressed in a navy blue suit and tie, no doubt tailored very well, is nonetheless unprepossessing. Balding and bespectacled, he resembles a middle-aged insurance salesman for whom the business lunches hold no small part of the appeal of the job. Indeed, the former député (representative) from Corrèze in central France is known to enjoy a good meal in the French tradition. He is said to be steady, affable and witty, perhaps too content to lead a country that wants to continue to be thought of as a great power (Hollande repeatedly said in the interview that France was a "great" country), but needs major structural reforms bring down a 10.4% unemployment rate, and to stanch a 450 billion Euro deficit.
***
François Hollande may be too busy solving France's problems to be concerned, let alone afraid of Nicolas Sakozy's return to politics, but for François Fillon, his former boss is proving a major thorn in Fillon's side. Fillon is said to have smarted at pointed public rebukes contained in Sarkozy's speech to UMP leaders last Monday, although he is a man too emotionally disciplined to let it show. Rather, close allies have begun to poke holes in Sarkozy's remarks, pointing out that the former president talked about "big picture" issues, while making no mention of the UMP's enormous campaign debt, a debt created by Sarkozy's losing race for a second quinquennat.
In fact, Fillon is said to have commented that Sarkozy introduced no new ideas, just warmed-over ones. Fillon was indispensable to Sarkozy, softening, with his dignified and ever-so-polite manner, Sarkozy's "Energizer Bunny" persona. French Presidents often sacrifice their Prime Ministers, making them the fall guys for policies that failed. Jacques Chirac fired Dominique de Villepin when the latter's plan for lowering unemployment by creating more jobs for youth was pilloried. Sarkozy reshuffled his cabinet more than once, but he kept Fillon, who was his partner in power.
It is easy to understand why Fillon is rattled by Sarkozy's reappearance. First of all, Sarkozy lost the election. True, had Marine le Pen of the Front Nationale not run, enough of her voters would have voted for Sarkozy to put him over the top. However, ex-Presidents of France are supposed to make a dignified exit, with honors easing their retirement, along with elder statesman status.
Nicolas Sarkozy wants neither, but what he really wants is anyone's guess. To pull the strings, probably, to be a kingmaker, to make his former vassals pledge allegiance once more, even if he knows deep inside he can't be the candidate again. Fillon, who definitely knows what he wants --to be the candidate of the center-right in 2017, has created an organization, Force Republicain, to raise money and structure his eventual campaign.
Fillon finds himself in the position of a man who should be the logical choice of his party, but finds the way littered with obstacles. A distinguished public servant whose public remarks and demeanor are always appropriate to the occasion, Fillon is fighting off challenges, on the one side from Sarkozy, and the other Jean-François Copé, the first secretary of the UMP. Copé is a provocateur, who has taken positions not so far removed from those of Marine Le Pen and the Front National, in an effort to siphon off votes. Copé is no shrinking violet: his father once told a reporter that he thanked God that France had been given his son. Copé is ardent, where Fillon is unruffled.
Fillon is perhaps temperamentally ill-suited to what will be a rough-and-tumble campaign for the nomination of France's center-right voters. He is said to dislike networking via the telephone, which means that sometimes allies find out things they ought to have been told directly through intermediaries like the press. Laurent Wauquiez, a telegenic junior minister in Fillon's cabinet, is one who has distanced himself from Fillon out of frustration with Fillon's mandarin style, and complaints about it are not limited to him.
Copé is a frontal politician who likes confrontation. In response to the gay marriage bill enacted by the French legislature, Copé led a demonstration in opposition. Perhaps to Fillon's credit, rather than march in the demonstration, Fillon went to a road rally.
***
This week the French legislature voted an end to the cumul des mandats. Rather than try to explain it, I will quote Art Goldhammer, a distinguished French translator and student of French politics. Goldhammer's blog, French Politics, is an opinionated, but informed and detailed review of French political life. In his January 16, 2013 post Goldhammer said this about the cumuli des mandate:
As long as I have been involved in the study of French politics, I have been hearing about the reform to end all reforms: the banning of the cumul des mandats. It is telling indeed that French has a phrase for the holding of multiple offices that rolls so trippingly off the tongue, whereas any English circumlocution gives the reader pause. Is le cumul des mandats simply illegal in, say, the United States? I doubt that any law exists that would prevent someone from serving simultaneously as, for instance, Mayor of Indianapolis and representative in Congress. It's just that it's-well, not the done thing.
In France, however, it is not only the done thing; it is practically a necessity of political life. If a man or woman wants to be a player at the national level, it's essential to have a local power base with patronage powers that can be used to groom a loyal staff, a cadre of backers, and bridges to important resources in civil society. Banning le cumul would indeed constitute a major reform, just because it would disrupt so many vested interests. Whether it would achieve any useful goal beyond altering the status quo has never been so clear to me as to the idea's many staunch supporters. Would the quality of representation be increased? If so, why? Might reform not widen the distance between the national and local levels and therefore have the opposite of the desired effect?
That day has now come, with the double mandate (as it is known in English-speaking countries) now threatened. Of course the cumul des mandats (which is as old as the French revolution) violates a concept dear to Americans: the tripartite division of government functions, with a separate legislature, executive and judiciary. That concept of separation of powers was the brainchild of a Frenchman, Montesquieu, who said, famously:
"If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are." (Auden and Kronenberger 1966)
and,
"Success generally depends upon knowing how long it takes to succeed." (Auden and Kronenberger 1966)
The end of the cumul des mandats, and the success envisioned for the reform may take longer than François Hollande and the reform's backers think. Perhaps in part because the reformers envision the repudiation of the system leading to a new class of elected officials happy to line up for places the former holders of more than one office enjoyed. In practice, the reality may prove quite different.
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