Saturday, July 13, 2013
Anglo-Saxons think the 14th of July is called Bastille Day, but actually the French merely refer to "La Fête Nationale Française". Confusingly, while everyone celebrates it, some municipalities do so on the 13th, others on the 14th. In Caunes, for instance, the holiday is celebrated on the 13th so anyone who wants to go to see the fireworks over the Cité of Carcassonne, the walled, medieval town, can do so on July 14, when Carcassonne celebrates the holiday.
In Mèze, there are festivities Saturday and Sunday, starting with the petanque competition, which lasts two days. There is also a fireman's ball. These balls, organized by the local fire brigade for their support, are ubiquitous throughout France. Even in Paris, there is a Bal des Sapeurs Pompiers in each arrondissement, with young and trim junior firemen selling tickets on the sidewalks, accosting anyone they think might buy a ticket. I have bought one every year, without regret, just for the fun of talking with one of the firemen.
This being Saturday, it is market day. I am staying in Mèze, a half hour away from Pézenas, whose market is always a treat, provided you are up early enough to find parking comfortably. Pézenas has lots of parking, but Pézenas being a center of fine craftsmanship, a place to buy antiques and, on Saturdays, to enjoy the market, the town is jammed.
I and my sister Jazmin (who is making her first trip to France) get to Pézenas by 8:30 a.m. and find one of the last spaces in the Voltaire parking lot near the Tourist Office. Several people, the early birds, carrying full market baskets, make their way to their cars; they must have arrived at the market at 7:30 a.m. to be done so early. We walk on past the Tourist Office, an 18th century building near the market's start. We walk over to the market and note that, although it is almost 9 o'clock, many vendors have not yet completed setting up their stalls --last night must have been a night on the tiles.
Walking past the cheap sunglasses, knapsacks, striped tops; beyond the oilcloth paper in Provençal designs, the orthopedic sandals, the embroidery depots and the scented soap sellers, you come to the food vendors. Out of cast iron skillets of Brobdingnagian size, some are selling paella, cous-cous or, strangest of all, whole cuttlefishes. The latter are white globes, the size of light bulbs, simmering in a sizzling tomato sauce.
Further on, there is a food truck featuring all manner of Vietnamese food, operated by a handsome Vietnamese man. Other stands feature traditional French foods --cheeses, hams, roast chickens, charcuterie, breads and viennoiserie, local candies, nougats in ten different varieties. And of course, fruits and vegetables: giant purple bulbs of garlic, orange-red tomatoes, and melons de cavaillon (cantaloupes).
At the end of the food market, just before the start of the used-clothes market, there is a new vendor, one I have never seen before. He has a unique selling tool: a small, black, hairy pet pig standing on a box on a small table. The seller is about five years old, dressed in a sleeveless striped top and shorts, with a bead necklace around his throat. He asks me, in a soft, gravelly child's voice, whether I would like to buy some Bonbons Résineux du Père Dépret --Father Dépret's Resinous Candies.
This child, who is a blond charmer, is accompanied by a little sister about a year older, wearing glasses and taking the money --and their father. The boy first tries to sell me a metal box of candies for 30 Euros, then a smaller one for 15. When I ask for just one, at 5 Euros, he tells me that if I take two, he will let me have them both for 7 Euros. The father, is meanwhile, watching all the proceedings with an baleful eye, and the boy's sister with an impassive one.
I ask the boy whether he is from Pézenas, and he says he comes from Paris. The candies, though, are made in Bouchain, in the Vosges, from a family recipe created by a botanist from Bouchain named Dépret. Bouchain is in the Belgium-bordering Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, considered the ugliest area of France, partly because its weather is like that of southwest England, rainy and colder than the rest of France. I think that it is likelier that he is from Bouchain than Paris, but Paris sounds more romantic a place to be from than Bouchain.
"We are collecting money for the animals", the little boy tells me, as I hand the money over to the urchin. "Thank you on behalf of the animals", he says, as his sister hands me change of a 10 Euro bill. I have just paid about $10 USD for two boxes of cough drops. I don't believe for a second that the money is going to benefit animals, but a good salesman deserves his reward.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Tans And The Quest For Eternal Youth
July 11, 2013
Tanning is such an obsession in France that an entire segment of Tele-Matin, the French equivalent of the Today show, was devoted to new products to protect against the sun, to fake a tan, to prepare the skin for tanning, to soothe the skin after tanning, and to give a golden shimmer to a tan.
In fact, for every pale-faced, delicate French beauty, there seems to be an equivalent nut brown. The French are very fond of clothes and accessories made in the color orange, because of its association with the sun, but also because it sets off a tan well. Unlike the United States, where skin cancer risks are well-publicized, in France, the association of the sun with the sensual takes precedence. With the result, especially in South, that many show the effects of too much sun: deeply-lined, if bronzed faces and crêpe-y skin.
Women, in particular, seem particularly addicted to sunning. In the South, the fashion is beach-driven, so casual-wear, is king. This being France, though, whether it is a top or a cut-off jean, the look will include revealing cut outs, the better to show off a tan. Animal prints are popular; so are glittering fabrics; and not least, chain accents. Think cut off shorts with ocelot-print borders worn over a gold lurex sleeveless top with a bias-cut neckline mimicking a Greek toga's, the other side of the top held on the shoulder by gold-chain links. All worn by a deeply-tanned woman of sixty-five with streaked blond hair.
I saw this woman checking out at the giant Carrefour Hyper Marché in Balabuc, near Sète, earlier today. Her perfect features paid testament to a woman who must have been eye-catching in her younger days, but which the pressure to continue to look like a twenty-five year old had turned into a caricature of faded beauty.
In the summer beach resorts in France, everyone is living a golden dream of a summer. Many men are in their Speedos, whatever their age; they too, are not excluded from the pressure to project virility and sensuality, implicitly youthful attributes. Other men eschew Speedos, preferring bathing trunks, walking around with open shirts over bathing suits, their chests thrust out over their bellies in a gesture of psychological triumph over a sagging waistline. They are probably men from laboring backgrounds, while the Speedo wearers seem more intellectual, more distant.
Walking along the water at Bouzigues, the village on the Bassin du Thau renowned for its oysters, I see a solitary man swimming in the ocean between the buoys marking the outer limits of the permitted swimming area. His head bobs above the water, up and down, as he dog paddles comfortably from one buoy to another. It is evening, and the sun is sinking in the sky. The lonely swimmer is completely at ease in the water, surely enjoying the contact of the water against his skin now that the sun is mercifully low in the sky. He is the only person I have actually seen swimming in the ocean. He is untanned.
--A very strange fellow, a dingue, (a nutcase), I can hear the beach-goers saying. Beaches are for tanning, not for swimming.
Tanning is such an obsession in France that an entire segment of Tele-Matin, the French equivalent of the Today show, was devoted to new products to protect against the sun, to fake a tan, to prepare the skin for tanning, to soothe the skin after tanning, and to give a golden shimmer to a tan.
In fact, for every pale-faced, delicate French beauty, there seems to be an equivalent nut brown. The French are very fond of clothes and accessories made in the color orange, because of its association with the sun, but also because it sets off a tan well. Unlike the United States, where skin cancer risks are well-publicized, in France, the association of the sun with the sensual takes precedence. With the result, especially in South, that many show the effects of too much sun: deeply-lined, if bronzed faces and crêpe-y skin.
Women, in particular, seem particularly addicted to sunning. In the South, the fashion is beach-driven, so casual-wear, is king. This being France, though, whether it is a top or a cut-off jean, the look will include revealing cut outs, the better to show off a tan. Animal prints are popular; so are glittering fabrics; and not least, chain accents. Think cut off shorts with ocelot-print borders worn over a gold lurex sleeveless top with a bias-cut neckline mimicking a Greek toga's, the other side of the top held on the shoulder by gold-chain links. All worn by a deeply-tanned woman of sixty-five with streaked blond hair.
I saw this woman checking out at the giant Carrefour Hyper Marché in Balabuc, near Sète, earlier today. Her perfect features paid testament to a woman who must have been eye-catching in her younger days, but which the pressure to continue to look like a twenty-five year old had turned into a caricature of faded beauty.
In the summer beach resorts in France, everyone is living a golden dream of a summer. Many men are in their Speedos, whatever their age; they too, are not excluded from the pressure to project virility and sensuality, implicitly youthful attributes. Other men eschew Speedos, preferring bathing trunks, walking around with open shirts over bathing suits, their chests thrust out over their bellies in a gesture of psychological triumph over a sagging waistline. They are probably men from laboring backgrounds, while the Speedo wearers seem more intellectual, more distant.
Walking along the water at Bouzigues, the village on the Bassin du Thau renowned for its oysters, I see a solitary man swimming in the ocean between the buoys marking the outer limits of the permitted swimming area. His head bobs above the water, up and down, as he dog paddles comfortably from one buoy to another. It is evening, and the sun is sinking in the sky. The lonely swimmer is completely at ease in the water, surely enjoying the contact of the water against his skin now that the sun is mercifully low in the sky. He is the only person I have actually seen swimming in the ocean. He is untanned.
--A very strange fellow, a dingue, (a nutcase), I can hear the beach-goers saying. Beaches are for tanning, not for swimming.
July 11, 2013
Non-alcoholic wine and pastis; Noilly-Prat; Muscat de frontignan; A Mésalliance?
Leave it to the French to invent good-tasting non-alcoholic wines: shopping in the wine section of Intermarché Hyper (Intermarché's Superstore) near Carcassonne, I come across an entire line of alcohol-free wines: Rosé, rosé flavored with grapefruit, merlot, syrah, chardonnay. Some may scoff, but the brand, Bonne Nouvelle, offers a beverage that is more than grape juice, but less than the hard stuff. That is good news for those of us who often find the fruit of wine with a meal a migraine. Mitt Romney --a young Mormon missionary assigned to France in the 1960s-- might have been able to meet locals on something closer to common ground had Bonne Nouvelle been around then.
More surprising is the non-alcoholic, sugar-free pastis. For those who have not read Hemingway or Pagnol lately, pastis is an anisette-based liqueur 40-45% alcohol which is mixed with water and drunk in the South as a summer thirst-quencher. Absinthe --which has been re-mixed without deadly wormwood and marketed legally again-- has a similar taste, but an alcohol content as high as 68%. Pastis has an almost-legendary status in the French imagination: it is what the masquisards --the Resistance fighters-- drank. The non-alcoholic, sugar-free version is made by Les Succeseurs de Manuel Limiñana (The Heirs Of Manuel Limiñana), a pastis-manufacturing company of Spanish origin established in 1884. The product is sold in a large, brightly-labeled bottle that could pass for tequila, although the white liquid is anything but in flavor and kick.
For those whose metabolisms absorb alcohol without distress, particularly those drinkers who like a dry Martini, Noilly Prat white vermouth is a must. It is made in nearby Marseillan, where the Canal du Midi flows into the Bassin de Thau. Noilly Prat is also a favorite of cooks using a recipe that calls for white vermouth.
Non-alcoholic wine and pastis; Noilly-Prat; Muscat de frontignan; A Mésalliance?
Leave it to the French to invent good-tasting non-alcoholic wines: shopping in the wine section of Intermarché Hyper (Intermarché's Superstore) near Carcassonne, I come across an entire line of alcohol-free wines: Rosé, rosé flavored with grapefruit, merlot, syrah, chardonnay. Some may scoff, but the brand, Bonne Nouvelle, offers a beverage that is more than grape juice, but less than the hard stuff. That is good news for those of us who often find the fruit of wine with a meal a migraine. Mitt Romney --a young Mormon missionary assigned to France in the 1960s-- might have been able to meet locals on something closer to common ground had Bonne Nouvelle been around then.
More surprising is the non-alcoholic, sugar-free pastis. For those who have not read Hemingway or Pagnol lately, pastis is an anisette-based liqueur 40-45% alcohol which is mixed with water and drunk in the South as a summer thirst-quencher. Absinthe --which has been re-mixed without deadly wormwood and marketed legally again-- has a similar taste, but an alcohol content as high as 68%. Pastis has an almost-legendary status in the French imagination: it is what the masquisards --the Resistance fighters-- drank. The non-alcoholic, sugar-free version is made by Les Succeseurs de Manuel Limiñana (The Heirs Of Manuel Limiñana), a pastis-manufacturing company of Spanish origin established in 1884. The product is sold in a large, brightly-labeled bottle that could pass for tequila, although the white liquid is anything but in flavor and kick.
For those whose metabolisms absorb alcohol without distress, particularly those drinkers who like a dry Martini, Noilly Prat white vermouth is a must. It is made in nearby Marseillan, where the Canal du Midi flows into the Bassin de Thau. Noilly Prat is also a favorite of cooks using a recipe that calls for white vermouth.
Another alcoholic wine type that is popular in Languedoc-Rousillon is muscat, a slightly sweet wine that is drunk as an apéritif or as a desset wine. There are six types meriting the appellation d'origine controlée ("AOC") désignation, four of them from the region: Le Frontignan, Le Saint Jean-de-Minervois, Le Mireval, Le Lunel. (The other two are Beaume de Venise (Rhone Valley), and Muscat de Rivesaltes ((Hautes-Pyrenées). )
Visiting Mèze again for a few days, this morning I shop in the boulangerie, the covered and the outdoor markets, and at the wine store. I buy freshly-made seafood salad for lunch; tomato confiture and oil-cured Spanish black olives; a head of lettuce and some tomatoes; fresh rye bread, savory tielles, and sweet pâtes de Pézenas; apricots and fresh strawberries. All this before going into the wine store before it (and all the other stores) close at 12:30 p.m..
The wine store carries fruit-flavored rosés, Minervois red wines, sparkling and "foaming" wines (vins petillants et mousseux), as well as local muscats. The most interesting feature of the store is, however, the giant metal vats of red, rosé, white and muscat wine, which are each about 1.50 Euros cheaper than the already cheap bottled wines (6-9 Euros). The tub wines are sold at 4.50 Euros the liter, and plastic litre bottles are provided. I buy a liter of rosé and a liter of muscat. Several locals have taken away bottles of the tub wines, so I figure they must be passable.
Back home, with lunch, I opt for a glass of cold muscat with the seafood salad. They are wonderful together. Yet I have made a major wine-pairing mistake, taking muscat for muscadet --a white wine with a crisp, dry taste, made near Nantes in the Loire Valley. Muscadet, not muscat, is the classic wine to serve with seafood. I have been drinking nothing but non-alcoholic wine and pastis for a week, so perhaps my palate has degraded. Nevertheless, on a blazing 91-degree day in the Midi, what wine experts would decry as a mésalliance of food and wine (literally, a marriage with a person of inferior social position), seems inspired and a Bonne Nouvelle, if you like French puns.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
On The Road: Toulouse and Back
July 9, 2013
My sister is visiting from New York for the week, so I set out at noon to meet her flight, which was scheduled to arrive at 2:05 p.m. from Charles de Gaulle. I set the GPS, but by now I knew the road: D620 past Villalier, then Villegly, then the entrance to the péage, toll road A61, straight to Blagnac. I did fine until I got to the point where I had to take the side road to Blagnac/Auch and missed the exit. No harm done, I went around Carcassonne on the periphérique, the ring road around the town, and picked up the Blagnac exit in the other direction.
Returning with Jazmin in the car, I travelled for a bit on the Carcassonne road that is part of the national road system, but not a péage. Eventually we picked up the toll road to make it to Caunes sooner: Jazmin had been up for about 24 hours, and deserved to enjoy her rest, sooner rather than later.
Jazmin is a much better driver than I am. For one thing, she got her license in her teens, and so has been driving for almost forty years. She also drives a stick shift, as well as an automatic transmission, although she prefers the manual. As an experienced driver, she understands what someone behind the wheel is supposed to do and not do. Like Francine, she finds my bad habit of touching the gas pedal, then removing my foot, reprovable.
And it is understandable. I now know that doing so can create motion sickness in a passenger, or at least jostle them more than necessary. The thing is, I don't trust myself to keep a steady speed. And when I see a driver at a crossing perpendicular to the road on which I am driving, if the driver rolls forward, rather than stopping sharply, I want to ease up on the gas.
Jazmin has explained to me that it's important to trust that the other driver will stop and let me have the right of way; but for me, it's easier to be told such a thing than believe it.
Driving an automobile at an allowed speed, but one that, should there be a miscalculation, could result in serious injury or death is a bet millions of people make every day. There are so many actions and decisions made behind the wheel in a matter of seconds --do I enter the roundabout after the big truck but before the passenger car; do I enter the fast lane to pass the truck in front of me and do I have enough room between the front of the truck and the car in front of it to slide back into the slower lane well in front of the truck? Even if the cars in front of me are moving at a steady, fast pace, do I change lanes, to keep my eyes from glazing over at the road in front of me? Are my reflexes as sharp as they were when I started driving in the morning?
Someone told me that I display the traits of an anxious person. This is because someone unanxious would not think how something might go wrong while they were performing an action they were trained to do. Hearing this, I am reminded of a study of the relationship between accurate perception of reality and psychological state. That is, "Do optimistic people perceive the world accurately, and do depressives perceive it through a glass darkly?"
The result of the study demonstrated that actually depressives had a more accurate view of situations than those not depressed. Which is sort of how I feel about driving.
And by the way, the GPS completely loused up the return trip from Toulouse back to Caunes-Minervois. Except that this time, ignoring its catatonic drone, I followed my instincts and arrived in Caunes without a hitch.
My sister is visiting from New York for the week, so I set out at noon to meet her flight, which was scheduled to arrive at 2:05 p.m. from Charles de Gaulle. I set the GPS, but by now I knew the road: D620 past Villalier, then Villegly, then the entrance to the péage, toll road A61, straight to Blagnac. I did fine until I got to the point where I had to take the side road to Blagnac/Auch and missed the exit. No harm done, I went around Carcassonne on the periphérique, the ring road around the town, and picked up the Blagnac exit in the other direction.
Returning with Jazmin in the car, I travelled for a bit on the Carcassonne road that is part of the national road system, but not a péage. Eventually we picked up the toll road to make it to Caunes sooner: Jazmin had been up for about 24 hours, and deserved to enjoy her rest, sooner rather than later.
Jazmin is a much better driver than I am. For one thing, she got her license in her teens, and so has been driving for almost forty years. She also drives a stick shift, as well as an automatic transmission, although she prefers the manual. As an experienced driver, she understands what someone behind the wheel is supposed to do and not do. Like Francine, she finds my bad habit of touching the gas pedal, then removing my foot, reprovable.
And it is understandable. I now know that doing so can create motion sickness in a passenger, or at least jostle them more than necessary. The thing is, I don't trust myself to keep a steady speed. And when I see a driver at a crossing perpendicular to the road on which I am driving, if the driver rolls forward, rather than stopping sharply, I want to ease up on the gas.
Jazmin has explained to me that it's important to trust that the other driver will stop and let me have the right of way; but for me, it's easier to be told such a thing than believe it.
Driving an automobile at an allowed speed, but one that, should there be a miscalculation, could result in serious injury or death is a bet millions of people make every day. There are so many actions and decisions made behind the wheel in a matter of seconds --do I enter the roundabout after the big truck but before the passenger car; do I enter the fast lane to pass the truck in front of me and do I have enough room between the front of the truck and the car in front of it to slide back into the slower lane well in front of the truck? Even if the cars in front of me are moving at a steady, fast pace, do I change lanes, to keep my eyes from glazing over at the road in front of me? Are my reflexes as sharp as they were when I started driving in the morning?
Someone told me that I display the traits of an anxious person. This is because someone unanxious would not think how something might go wrong while they were performing an action they were trained to do. Hearing this, I am reminded of a study of the relationship between accurate perception of reality and psychological state. That is, "Do optimistic people perceive the world accurately, and do depressives perceive it through a glass darkly?"
The result of the study demonstrated that actually depressives had a more accurate view of situations than those not depressed. Which is sort of how I feel about driving.
And by the way, the GPS completely loused up the return trip from Toulouse back to Caunes-Minervois. Except that this time, ignoring its catatonic drone, I followed my instincts and arrived in Caunes without a hitch.
Monday, July 8, 2013
A Visit To The Doctor; The Return Of Nicolas Sarkozy?
July 8, 2013
Last week while riding my bicycle in the countryside, I suddenly felt a sensation like a needle piercing the skin below my right knee, a novel feeling. A flying insect had nailed me while I was in motion. I got off the bicycle and looked at the bite and took an insect off the point of impact, got back on the bicycle and kept riding.
After a few minutes the bite began to hurt. It never itched, but felt sore. I have never been stung by a bee or a wasp or a hornet, so I do not know whether I am allergic to their stings, but I knew I ought to see whether the area swelled up and I showed other symptoms of anaphylactic shock, like wheezing and continued swelling.
None of these symptoms materialized, fortunately, and I rode home soon after. The bite continued to hurt a bit, but not terribly. I went about my business for the next week assuming the bite would disappear.
Except that it didn't. The skin around the bite became an angry red and the bite itched a bit. The red area even seemed to grow larger, and I began to think that perhaps I had an infected bite. So I went to the doctor in Caunes.
The doctor in Caunes is Laetitia Salomon, a graduate of the medical school in Strasbourg in Alsace-Lorraine. She has office hours every day, people walk in and wait until she sees them. By the time I arrived at 10:00 a.m., every seat but one was taken. I waited 90 minutes to see her.
When she called me in, I explained my reason for being there and showed her the bite. She touched it, as well as the same area on the opposite leg. She could not identify what caused the bite.
"You are the second person who came in today with that type of bite. The other patient is a woman, who was working in her garden when she felt the bite."
Dr. Salomon gave me a prescription for a week's worth of generic powdered arithromycin to be taken with a glass of water, and for a cortisone cream to be used if the wound itched.
The she handed me her bill: 23 Euros, about $30, probably reimbursable by my travel insurance. One thing she wanted to know: had I been at the World Trade Center when the Twin Towers were attacked? She had never met anyone who was an eyewitness, so she asked me a variety of questions, including why did Rudolph Giuliani not succeed in his quest for the presidency. More than ten years later, 9/11 still animates fantasies about New York by people who have never been there.
The other thing Dr. Salomon wanted to know whether New York was fun to visit at Christmas. If I could, would I write out a few hotel recommendations and put them in her boîte à lettres --mailbox?
I agreed to happily, and then she asked me whether I liked Caunes. When I mentioned I liked it very much, and was thinking of buying a house in the village, she told me she had the name of a good mason for me, when I needed it. Dr. Salomon's house is famed throughout the village for having been completely furnished in the red marble of Caunes, so she knows what she is talking about.
After that, I walked quickly to the pharmacy a few feet away, to try to get the prescriptions fillled before the pharmacy closed for the long lunch hour. The pharmacy looks, I believe, very much like what it looked like fifty years ago. The couple that run it, I venture to say, look like their grandparents fifty years ago. Both are morbidly shy and seem to exist in their own little world.
When I handed over the prescriptions, the wife walked over to the near-empty shelves and pulled the two medications off plain wooden shelves. There was no electronic conveyor to restock drugs, as I had seen in a fancy pharmacy in Mèze. There were no toiletries on offer, no reading glasses, just a simple counter and two people wearing white smocks over their street clothes, which were plain in the extreme. My paperwork required the pharmacist to write in some specifications, which she did in a cursive, 19th century hand. She stamped the prescriptions and handed all the paperwork back to me, then asked me if I wanted a bag, and handed me a simple white paper bag. She explained which copies of which forms I would have to submit to my insurance company. I paid the bill for the medicines, which came to 21 Euros, about $30, and went home to take my medicine.
***
Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech to assembled big-wigs of the UMP this afternoon, provoking a tidal wave of news coverage about whether the speech --which addressed itself not just to party finances (the UMP is bankrupt)-- but to the question of Europe, the French economy, and Sarkozy's conception of his politics. "I am not a man of the Right, nor of the Left", he is reported to have said, a clear sign that he is trying to lead the UMP away from postures that necessarily lead to comparisons between it and Marine Le Pen's Front National.
Of course, François Hollande has only been President since last May, and it could look unseemly for Sarkozy to campaign for the UMP's nod so early in the poitical season (Hollande has another four years of his Presidency left). Yet Sarkozy resigned his appointment to the Conseil Constitutionnel just before his speech. This is France's highest court, which pre-determines the constitutionality of proposed laws before they are voted (contra the American system, which only does so after). French Presidents are usually appointed to it once they leave office: it is a dignified way of exiting the stage. Sarkozy (who set up a legal practice after losing to Hollande last year) resigned from the court to avoid being charged with a conflict of interest in relation to his moves to direct the UMP, riven by the rivalry between François Fillon, Sarkozy's former Prime Minister; and Jean-François Copé, the party leader.
Outside La Mutualité, the UMP headquarters in Paris, Sarkozy militants gathered to hail their man. Sarkozy duly came out, and then shook hands with people in the crowd, to shouts of "France needs you!"BFMTV, the 24-hour news station, had a reporter waiting for Sarkozy when his car arrived at the home he shares with Carla Bruni and their infant daughter. The anchor at BFMTV asked the reporter --who was able to get up close to Sarkozy and tried to engage him in conversation-- to tell us what Sarkozy said in response to his questions about a return to politics.
A quick camera shot showed a smiling Sarkozy holding the palms of his hands together in a gesture of supplication that meant "No questions, I beg of you!" The next shot showed the camera capturing the macadam on the Sarkozy driveway.
"There we have a shot of the Sarkozy driveway!", said the anchor. "Fascinating!"
For the time being, Sarkozy is playing the Sphinx, while François Fillon and Jean-François Copé are relegated to background roles, neither of them liking it one bit.
Last week while riding my bicycle in the countryside, I suddenly felt a sensation like a needle piercing the skin below my right knee, a novel feeling. A flying insect had nailed me while I was in motion. I got off the bicycle and looked at the bite and took an insect off the point of impact, got back on the bicycle and kept riding.
After a few minutes the bite began to hurt. It never itched, but felt sore. I have never been stung by a bee or a wasp or a hornet, so I do not know whether I am allergic to their stings, but I knew I ought to see whether the area swelled up and I showed other symptoms of anaphylactic shock, like wheezing and continued swelling.
None of these symptoms materialized, fortunately, and I rode home soon after. The bite continued to hurt a bit, but not terribly. I went about my business for the next week assuming the bite would disappear.
Except that it didn't. The skin around the bite became an angry red and the bite itched a bit. The red area even seemed to grow larger, and I began to think that perhaps I had an infected bite. So I went to the doctor in Caunes.
The doctor in Caunes is Laetitia Salomon, a graduate of the medical school in Strasbourg in Alsace-Lorraine. She has office hours every day, people walk in and wait until she sees them. By the time I arrived at 10:00 a.m., every seat but one was taken. I waited 90 minutes to see her.
When she called me in, I explained my reason for being there and showed her the bite. She touched it, as well as the same area on the opposite leg. She could not identify what caused the bite.
"You are the second person who came in today with that type of bite. The other patient is a woman, who was working in her garden when she felt the bite."
Dr. Salomon gave me a prescription for a week's worth of generic powdered arithromycin to be taken with a glass of water, and for a cortisone cream to be used if the wound itched.
The she handed me her bill: 23 Euros, about $30, probably reimbursable by my travel insurance. One thing she wanted to know: had I been at the World Trade Center when the Twin Towers were attacked? She had never met anyone who was an eyewitness, so she asked me a variety of questions, including why did Rudolph Giuliani not succeed in his quest for the presidency. More than ten years later, 9/11 still animates fantasies about New York by people who have never been there.
The other thing Dr. Salomon wanted to know whether New York was fun to visit at Christmas. If I could, would I write out a few hotel recommendations and put them in her boîte à lettres --mailbox?
I agreed to happily, and then she asked me whether I liked Caunes. When I mentioned I liked it very much, and was thinking of buying a house in the village, she told me she had the name of a good mason for me, when I needed it. Dr. Salomon's house is famed throughout the village for having been completely furnished in the red marble of Caunes, so she knows what she is talking about.
After that, I walked quickly to the pharmacy a few feet away, to try to get the prescriptions fillled before the pharmacy closed for the long lunch hour. The pharmacy looks, I believe, very much like what it looked like fifty years ago. The couple that run it, I venture to say, look like their grandparents fifty years ago. Both are morbidly shy and seem to exist in their own little world.
When I handed over the prescriptions, the wife walked over to the near-empty shelves and pulled the two medications off plain wooden shelves. There was no electronic conveyor to restock drugs, as I had seen in a fancy pharmacy in Mèze. There were no toiletries on offer, no reading glasses, just a simple counter and two people wearing white smocks over their street clothes, which were plain in the extreme. My paperwork required the pharmacist to write in some specifications, which she did in a cursive, 19th century hand. She stamped the prescriptions and handed all the paperwork back to me, then asked me if I wanted a bag, and handed me a simple white paper bag. She explained which copies of which forms I would have to submit to my insurance company. I paid the bill for the medicines, which came to 21 Euros, about $30, and went home to take my medicine.
***
Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech to assembled big-wigs of the UMP this afternoon, provoking a tidal wave of news coverage about whether the speech --which addressed itself not just to party finances (the UMP is bankrupt)-- but to the question of Europe, the French economy, and Sarkozy's conception of his politics. "I am not a man of the Right, nor of the Left", he is reported to have said, a clear sign that he is trying to lead the UMP away from postures that necessarily lead to comparisons between it and Marine Le Pen's Front National.
Of course, François Hollande has only been President since last May, and it could look unseemly for Sarkozy to campaign for the UMP's nod so early in the poitical season (Hollande has another four years of his Presidency left). Yet Sarkozy resigned his appointment to the Conseil Constitutionnel just before his speech. This is France's highest court, which pre-determines the constitutionality of proposed laws before they are voted (contra the American system, which only does so after). French Presidents are usually appointed to it once they leave office: it is a dignified way of exiting the stage. Sarkozy (who set up a legal practice after losing to Hollande last year) resigned from the court to avoid being charged with a conflict of interest in relation to his moves to direct the UMP, riven by the rivalry between François Fillon, Sarkozy's former Prime Minister; and Jean-François Copé, the party leader.
Outside La Mutualité, the UMP headquarters in Paris, Sarkozy militants gathered to hail their man. Sarkozy duly came out, and then shook hands with people in the crowd, to shouts of "France needs you!"BFMTV, the 24-hour news station, had a reporter waiting for Sarkozy when his car arrived at the home he shares with Carla Bruni and their infant daughter. The anchor at BFMTV asked the reporter --who was able to get up close to Sarkozy and tried to engage him in conversation-- to tell us what Sarkozy said in response to his questions about a return to politics.
A quick camera shot showed a smiling Sarkozy holding the palms of his hands together in a gesture of supplication that meant "No questions, I beg of you!" The next shot showed the camera capturing the macadam on the Sarkozy driveway.
"There we have a shot of the Sarkozy driveway!", said the anchor. "Fascinating!"
For the time being, Sarkozy is playing the Sphinx, while François Fillon and Jean-François Copé are relegated to background roles, neither of them liking it one bit.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
A Medieval Day: The Cathedral of Carcassonne; Michael Lonsdale at the Cistercian Abbey of Villelongue
July 7, 2013
A Medieval Day: The Cathedral of Carcassonne; Michael Lonsdale at the Cistercian Abbey of Villelongue
Perhaps it was fitting that today, Sunday, was devoted to medieval influences. Of course, Languedoc-Roussillon is jam-packed with medieval churches, abbeys and cathedrals, but it can be overwhelming to try to tackle that world, which resembles our own so little. I have held off visiting the famous towns --Castelnaudary, and Albi, to mention two-- because staring at stones to stare at stones held less appeal than cycing or driving through the countryside.
However, on Sundays I go to Mass, so I thought I would go in Carcassonne, to Saint Michel, the Cathedral at Carcassonne's center, and the town's largest church after Saint Nazaire, the church built inside the Cité, the walled city.
Entering the cathedral a few minutes before the start of the 11 o'clock Mass, a little girl in a white caplet handed me a program. I sat in one of the forward pews to get a better view. All around me were walls and tall columns painted with stenciled repeats of the Cross of Rousillon-Languedoc and other symbols. The painted symbols stood out against deeply-hued painted backgrounds, each column with a different motif: column beside column, pattern beside pattern. The sight reminded me that, contrary to our vision of medieval castle interiors as being grey, medieval splendor contemplated bright color, even if the palette was limited to colors derived from vegetable and sources.
The young woman in the caplet was one of several companions to "Elisabeth", a young girl who was celebrating her First Communion today. The church was packed with people, several generations of families, children of retirement age escorting ancient parents, long-married couples. I saw a Tahitian couple across the aisle, and behind me sat a Haitian couple, but most of the parishoners were from l'Hexagone.
The church was not particularly noisy, but noisy enough that, a few minutes before the start of the service, the celebrant, a young priest wearing a black cassock, walked up to the microphone and uttered a long "Shhhhhhhhh....", and then another. The church immediately became still.
The procession down the main aisle began almost immediately after, with the priest (now in vestments) following the group of girls associated with the First Communion. Everyone sat down and the service began. Today marked a change in the liturgy: the mention of Saint Joseph, father of Jesus, who had been overlooked until now. Otherwise, the Mass was like any other.
Except that just before the homily, the priest said "And the children will now withdraw."
And every child in the church --about twenty in all-- stood up and left their pews, accompanied by a Sunday school teacher. The homily over, the children returned for the eucharistic celebration.
The priest was assisted by two acolytes, who shadowed the priest at the altar. The choreography was exact: all three bowed together, genuflected together, rose together. The priest was handed a censer by one of the altar boys: he swung the censer twice to the left, twice in the center and twice to the right, then walked around the front of the altar table and repeated the motion, bathing the altar table in incense. As the smoke rose, I was reminded that incense was purifying. (Perhaps that is the origin of our exclamation "Holy smoke!") This priest --serious, thin, and dark-eyed, his hair razored at the sides as if tonsured-- served the most perfectly choreographed Mass I have ever attended. Watching him, I was reminded of an observation about the medieval world's dependence on display and symbols: in a largely illiterate world, dress and gestures stood in for words. Even if the medieval parishioner could not read or understand the Bible, the panoply of the Church on display at Mass inspired awe.
After the Mass, people gathered in the plaza outside the Cathedral, where the priest, his duties now completed, relaxed and chatted amiably with his flock. Before I turned and left, I saw a woman of about sixty-five or more put a helmet on and throw a leg over motorbike. I do not think she is unusual: the French love practical things --from freezing ice in plastic bottles (see yesterday's post) to motorbikes, and older people in France do not like making concessions to their age.
After Mass I planned to spend the afternoon and part of the evening at Villelongue abbey. Walking through Carcassonne last week, I saw a poster for a reading inspired by "Of Gods and Men", the film about the 1996 murder of seven Cistercian Trappist monks in their abbey at Tibhirine, Algiers during that country's last civil war. Michael Lonsdale, who played Brother Luc, the doctor who ran the clinic at the abbey serving the Algerian community, would be reading, accompanied on the piano by Nicolas Celoro.
I had to attend this performance: Michael Lonsdale --or Michel Lonsdale, as he is known in France-- is an actor whose films I grew up with: Lebel in Day of the Jackal, Hugo Drax in Moonraker, the hatter with the buttocks-exposing pants Buñuel's La Fantôme de la Liberté, Papa in Munich. In Souvenir, with Christopher Plummer, he played the Mayor of Oradour-sur-Glane, the site of a Nazi massacre of the town's citizens in retaliation for a Resistance incursion; in Remains of the Day he was Dupont D'Ivry, a French politician attending a conference aimed at preventing World War II. In 2010 he won a César (the French equivalent of an Academy Award) for his performance in Of Gods and Men. He is an actor incapable of giving a frivolous performance.
I gave myself more than enough time to drive to the abbey, which is now not only a tourist destination but a small inn. I was the first to arrive, three hours before the performance. After I paid for my ticket (15 Euros, about $20 USD), I entered the abbey. To the right of me were a group of diners enjoying their lunch. At the head of the table was Michael Lonsdale. I did not ask for his autograph, and I did not say a word, although I saw him register my entrance. Later I found out from the abbey proprietor that a group of visitors to the abbey (which had not yet closed in anticipation of the performance) had interrupted his lunch, asking Lonsdale for autographs and pictures. "After that, he went into his room, and won't be out until the performance" she told me.
The performance was held in the ruined chapel of the abbey. About two hundred people attended, many of them snapping pictures. (My camera conked out as soon as Michael Lonsdale made his appearance on stage.) Each of the eight readings --from Saint John and Saint Luke's Gospels, from the letters of one of the martyred monks, from the superior of Cistercian order--was associated to a piece of music by Liszt or Nicolas Celoro, who writes in a florid, pianistic style. (Earlier Celoro told me his music was opposed to the ugly contemporary music created by Arnold Schonberg and his disciples, which he called brutisme -noise-music.)
Lonsdale was Lonsdale: shambling, wise, quiet. A devout, life-long Catholic, he has lent his talents to raise money to help maintain monasteries and monks. Born in 1931 in Paris, he was first raised in Jersey and London. His family had relocated to Morocco (where his father planned to start a business), when France fell on September 1, 1939. He only returned to Paris after the war, when, after a few years studying art, he switched to acting. In 1962, Orson Welles cast him as the Priest in his film of Kafka's The Trial and he never stopped working since. In 2012 he even lent his voice to a video game, 007 Legends, which reprised his role as Hugo Drax.
Present for the performance were two Cistercian priests, slender young men in cream colored robes, as well as a French nun in a blue habit. Seats were reserved by row, rather than individual seat; the earliest to reserve were seated closest to the stage. There was a main aisle in the center which was kept clear.
I had a good seat on the aisle in Row H, which became even better when out of nowhere a brindled Staffordshire terrier walked down the aisle and sat beside me. The dog's heavy breathing was inadvertently comic: I stroked its head several times (as did the man in the aisle seat opposite), hoping it would not pant so. The dog, of course, could not help himself, and after a short rest, got up and walked down the aisle as the piano played, walked right up to Michael Lonsdale --and then turned right and left the building. The tone of the performance was unaffected, although I know Lonsdale saw the dog.
A Medieval Day: The Cathedral of Carcassonne; Michael Lonsdale at the Cistercian Abbey of Villelongue
Perhaps it was fitting that today, Sunday, was devoted to medieval influences. Of course, Languedoc-Roussillon is jam-packed with medieval churches, abbeys and cathedrals, but it can be overwhelming to try to tackle that world, which resembles our own so little. I have held off visiting the famous towns --Castelnaudary, and Albi, to mention two-- because staring at stones to stare at stones held less appeal than cycing or driving through the countryside.
However, on Sundays I go to Mass, so I thought I would go in Carcassonne, to Saint Michel, the Cathedral at Carcassonne's center, and the town's largest church after Saint Nazaire, the church built inside the Cité, the walled city.
Entering the cathedral a few minutes before the start of the 11 o'clock Mass, a little girl in a white caplet handed me a program. I sat in one of the forward pews to get a better view. All around me were walls and tall columns painted with stenciled repeats of the Cross of Rousillon-Languedoc and other symbols. The painted symbols stood out against deeply-hued painted backgrounds, each column with a different motif: column beside column, pattern beside pattern. The sight reminded me that, contrary to our vision of medieval castle interiors as being grey, medieval splendor contemplated bright color, even if the palette was limited to colors derived from vegetable and sources.
The young woman in the caplet was one of several companions to "Elisabeth", a young girl who was celebrating her First Communion today. The church was packed with people, several generations of families, children of retirement age escorting ancient parents, long-married couples. I saw a Tahitian couple across the aisle, and behind me sat a Haitian couple, but most of the parishoners were from l'Hexagone.
The church was not particularly noisy, but noisy enough that, a few minutes before the start of the service, the celebrant, a young priest wearing a black cassock, walked up to the microphone and uttered a long "Shhhhhhhhh....", and then another. The church immediately became still.
The procession down the main aisle began almost immediately after, with the priest (now in vestments) following the group of girls associated with the First Communion. Everyone sat down and the service began. Today marked a change in the liturgy: the mention of Saint Joseph, father of Jesus, who had been overlooked until now. Otherwise, the Mass was like any other.
Except that just before the homily, the priest said "And the children will now withdraw."
And every child in the church --about twenty in all-- stood up and left their pews, accompanied by a Sunday school teacher. The homily over, the children returned for the eucharistic celebration.
The priest was assisted by two acolytes, who shadowed the priest at the altar. The choreography was exact: all three bowed together, genuflected together, rose together. The priest was handed a censer by one of the altar boys: he swung the censer twice to the left, twice in the center and twice to the right, then walked around the front of the altar table and repeated the motion, bathing the altar table in incense. As the smoke rose, I was reminded that incense was purifying. (Perhaps that is the origin of our exclamation "Holy smoke!") This priest --serious, thin, and dark-eyed, his hair razored at the sides as if tonsured-- served the most perfectly choreographed Mass I have ever attended. Watching him, I was reminded of an observation about the medieval world's dependence on display and symbols: in a largely illiterate world, dress and gestures stood in for words. Even if the medieval parishioner could not read or understand the Bible, the panoply of the Church on display at Mass inspired awe.
After the Mass, people gathered in the plaza outside the Cathedral, where the priest, his duties now completed, relaxed and chatted amiably with his flock. Before I turned and left, I saw a woman of about sixty-five or more put a helmet on and throw a leg over motorbike. I do not think she is unusual: the French love practical things --from freezing ice in plastic bottles (see yesterday's post) to motorbikes, and older people in France do not like making concessions to their age.
After Mass I planned to spend the afternoon and part of the evening at Villelongue abbey. Walking through Carcassonne last week, I saw a poster for a reading inspired by "Of Gods and Men", the film about the 1996 murder of seven Cistercian Trappist monks in their abbey at Tibhirine, Algiers during that country's last civil war. Michael Lonsdale, who played Brother Luc, the doctor who ran the clinic at the abbey serving the Algerian community, would be reading, accompanied on the piano by Nicolas Celoro.
I had to attend this performance: Michael Lonsdale --or Michel Lonsdale, as he is known in France-- is an actor whose films I grew up with: Lebel in Day of the Jackal, Hugo Drax in Moonraker, the hatter with the buttocks-exposing pants Buñuel's La Fantôme de la Liberté, Papa in Munich. In Souvenir, with Christopher Plummer, he played the Mayor of Oradour-sur-Glane, the site of a Nazi massacre of the town's citizens in retaliation for a Resistance incursion; in Remains of the Day he was Dupont D'Ivry, a French politician attending a conference aimed at preventing World War II. In 2010 he won a César (the French equivalent of an Academy Award) for his performance in Of Gods and Men. He is an actor incapable of giving a frivolous performance.
I gave myself more than enough time to drive to the abbey, which is now not only a tourist destination but a small inn. I was the first to arrive, three hours before the performance. After I paid for my ticket (15 Euros, about $20 USD), I entered the abbey. To the right of me were a group of diners enjoying their lunch. At the head of the table was Michael Lonsdale. I did not ask for his autograph, and I did not say a word, although I saw him register my entrance. Later I found out from the abbey proprietor that a group of visitors to the abbey (which had not yet closed in anticipation of the performance) had interrupted his lunch, asking Lonsdale for autographs and pictures. "After that, he went into his room, and won't be out until the performance" she told me.
The performance was held in the ruined chapel of the abbey. About two hundred people attended, many of them snapping pictures. (My camera conked out as soon as Michael Lonsdale made his appearance on stage.) Each of the eight readings --from Saint John and Saint Luke's Gospels, from the letters of one of the martyred monks, from the superior of Cistercian order--was associated to a piece of music by Liszt or Nicolas Celoro, who writes in a florid, pianistic style. (Earlier Celoro told me his music was opposed to the ugly contemporary music created by Arnold Schonberg and his disciples, which he called brutisme -noise-music.)
Lonsdale was Lonsdale: shambling, wise, quiet. A devout, life-long Catholic, he has lent his talents to raise money to help maintain monasteries and monks. Born in 1931 in Paris, he was first raised in Jersey and London. His family had relocated to Morocco (where his father planned to start a business), when France fell on September 1, 1939. He only returned to Paris after the war, when, after a few years studying art, he switched to acting. In 1962, Orson Welles cast him as the Priest in his film of Kafka's The Trial and he never stopped working since. In 2012 he even lent his voice to a video game, 007 Legends, which reprised his role as Hugo Drax.
Present for the performance were two Cistercian priests, slender young men in cream colored robes, as well as a French nun in a blue habit. Seats were reserved by row, rather than individual seat; the earliest to reserve were seated closest to the stage. There was a main aisle in the center which was kept clear.
I had a good seat on the aisle in Row H, which became even better when out of nowhere a brindled Staffordshire terrier walked down the aisle and sat beside me. The dog's heavy breathing was inadvertently comic: I stroked its head several times (as did the man in the aisle seat opposite), hoping it would not pant so. The dog, of course, could not help himself, and after a short rest, got up and walked down the aisle as the piano played, walked right up to Michael Lonsdale --and then turned right and left the building. The tone of the performance was unaffected, although I know Lonsdale saw the dog.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
France on Holiday; The Tour de France; The Ride of My Life
July 6, 2013
France on Holiday
Today is the day after the end of the school year in France, and the start of the summer vacation period so beloved of the French. From today until the end of August, 22 million Frenchmen will take the road in pursuit of recreation in the sun. One out of every two will vacation during these eight weeks. Due to the poor economic situation, only 30% will take foreign vacations. The majority of these will be in Spain, Portugal and Greece, which are the cheapest places in Europe now.
The remaining 70% will relax in-country, 10% of them opting for the hospitality of their parents or grandparents. The average budget for a week's vacation for a French household this year is 1,240 Euros, about $1600 USD, down from last year. Renting a trailer, strapping some bicycles on the back and driving to seashore campsites on the Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts is popular this year, as well as renting a small cottage in a campsite in the woods, for those who prefer the mountains.
Trains will be packed, and woe betide those who did not make reservations well in advance. In Paris, many south-bound travelers waiting at the Gare de Lyon had taken the precaution of setting out for the station several hours before their trains were to depart, to avoid missing a train due to traffic.
It is said that the French holiday period is such a focus of life here that whatever issue might have been roiling French politics before, it fades from memory until the fall, as if it, too, were taking a holiday. As with most things in France, it is important to know the history.
Until the Popular Front government of Leon Blum was elected in 1936 and the Matignon Agreements were signed between the leading trade unions and the French state, French workers worked without a right to any vacation. In June 1936, following the terms of the Matignon Agreements, the French Senate legislated a mandatory two-week vacation for all French employees.
Since then the lot of French workers has improved to the point that French workers receive five weeks of paid vacation a year, plus holidays. With so much free time, planning vacations naturally becomes a major focus of French life. As summer approaches, vacation planning edges out considerations of politics, which -the French do not seem to think has much point. when one's vacation is imminent.
The Tour de France
I erred earlier when I mentioned that the Tour de France is celebrating its 99th year. This is actually the centennial of the race. Today's stage, 195 kilometers from Castres, not far from here, took the riders through Revel, Castelnauraday, Limoux, and Quilland, before ending at Ax les Thermes in the Pyrenées, a grinding climb. Christopher Froome, born in Nairobi 28 years ago and a U.K. citizen, won the stage in 5 hours 3 minutes and 18 seconds. He is also the overall leader . Today's hill climbing stage began the sorting out of riders that will only intensify as the race goes on. Froome is one to watch.
The Ride Of My Life
Being on my own for the next few days, I have naturally wanted to catch up on my cycling, which has lagged on account of the need to show visitors around. Awaking to the tweet-tweet of the birds early this morning, I got myself out on the bicycle by 9:00 a.m. The thing about cycling here that is exciting to me is the sense that I can set my route and track the landscape, each time learning something more about the geography of the Minervois area.
I had already been to Homps and Olonzac, about twelve miles away, and a pleasant ride, so I set out in that direction. However, by the time I got to Olonzac, it was still early, and I did not want to ride home just yet. Which is when the idea of pedaling to Minerve took hold of me.
As I have already said, Minerve was the site of a famous battle during the Albigensian crusade, a battle made all the more dramatic to those who have been there and seen Minerve's location between two mountain gorges. Minerve is a sort of Shangri-La, a place that time forgot, which ought to be seen more than once. So I decided I would cycle to Minerve.
Nominally, the distance between Caunes-Minervois and Minerve is about fifty kilometers. However, much of the road to Minerve once you leave Olonzac is on an upward slope. I was undaunted by that because I was riding early in the day, before the sun was at its height. I reached Azillanet, where the road winds upward; by combining riding and walking, I was able to make it to Minerve by noon. Where my first trip to Minerve was a nerve-wracking experience, this time I felt like an old hand, and I could take in the town from all angles. After walking into the village for some water and an ice cream cone, I turned around and retraced my steps, stopping at the ladies' room as a precaution.
Inside I applied more sunblock, while a middle-aged woman holding the bathroom stall door open for her elderly mother watched.
Avez-vous de l'eau? (Do you have water?)
I said I had already drunk more than a liter of water, but she insisted that I should have water with me on the road. She wanted to give me a plastic bottle that had been filled with water and frozen.
--C'est pratique (It's practical), she said. She did this all the time, to make sure that she and her passengers had enough water on trips, she said. After helping her mother out to the waiting car, she got me one.
I knew when I accepted the water that it would not do: only the largest water bottles fit the bottled water clamp on my bicycle. So I drank the liquified portion and put the bottle with the ice into a trash can. My return to Caunes would not follow the route I took to get to Minerve, but a route with fewer hills that would take me through Cesseras, then on to Trausse and finally Caunes.
By now the heat was blazing, but I managed to get myself to the crossroads for Cesseras, located high in the mountains. This is where the ride, already memorable, became spectacular. The road to Cesseras is a cyclist's dream, one endless, easily curving descent that took ten minutes to make. I could have been on a motorbike, the bicycle was moving so swiftly and smoothly through the landscape. Cesseras, at the very bottom, was surrounded by vineyards on all sides.
I wasn't home yet, though. I had to keep riding, and by now I was starting to flag. I made it to Pepieux, a village of no particular distinction, where I stopped to enter a bar where six people were eating and chatting noisily. One of them, a sixtyish man with a head of silver hair, a cataract in one of his hazel eyes and black glasses, went behind the bar and asked what I would like. I asked whether there was draft beer and he said only bottles, so I said I would take water.
We got into a conversation about the need for riders to drink water and keep their body temperatures low on days like this one. How many times had he seen cyclists near death because they had not bothered to keep water with them. Once, driving along the road, he saw an abandoned bicycle and found a Dutch rider in the bushes, practically unconscious, incapable of speech. Raymond (that was his name), quickly got out the water bottles he had in the back and ran over to the cyclist, pouring the ice water over his head.
I still felt pretty good, but if Raymond would be so kind as to offer me some cold water from the tap, I would pour it over my head, I said. Nothing easier, said Raymond, and handed me a large metal bowl full of ice cubes and water. I gave my name and thanked him, saying that I would perform the ritual just outside the bar, so as not to make a mess inside. Before I did so, Raymond offered me a bottle of his frozen water. Like the woman at Minerve, he too, took out a small bottle of frozen water from his freezer in the back.
This time, I turned down the offer.
--Vous le regretterai (you will regret it), he insisted.
I explained that I could not accept the water bottle, because the clasp on the bicycle was not small enough for it to keep from falling out. Perhaps they could Scotch tape it to the clasp?
Mais on trouvera un autre, plus grand! (But we'll find a bigger bottle!)
And indeed, he and another man walked over to the freezer and rifled through it until they found a plastic bottle large enough to fit the clasp. I offered to pay for the bottle, but Raymond said I'd already paid for the earlier mineral water and there was no need.
Like the woman who gave me the smaller bottle, Raymond saved the bottles after they were drunk to fill them and have them handy for cyclists.
It was now time for the dousing with ice water. I walked outside, and in full view of everyone, poured a tub of ice water over myself. We all laughed about it, and after thanking them, I took off.
Raymond had explained that I was still on the highland, and I would be near Caunes before the road descended. Raymond directed me to ride straight through, not turning off onto any of the side roads at the rotaries or crossroads, straight through to Caunes.
It was more difficult than I thought it would be: by now it was two o'clock and the sun was at its height. I pedaled through fields and fields of vines, an endless green sea. At one point I wondered when I would ever see a road marker. When I did, it said I had 10 kilometers to go to Caunes. I took the ice water out of the clamp, drank some and poured the rest of the melted water over m head. There was still a block of ice in the bottle to get me to Caunes. Raymond had been right: without the extra water to throw over my head to bring my body temperature down, I would have had heat stroke.
I passed one more marker: 2.3 kilometers to Caunes. Walking and cycling, I made it to Caunes' outskirts.
Barely inside the village's limits, a slender young man wearing the cycling jersey serious (and sometimes pretenious) cyclers wear, said hello, as he passed me slowly.
-Antoine! he said, identifying himself.
-Marta! I said, from my end.
I guess I looked like I was serious about cycling.
I
France on Holiday
Today is the day after the end of the school year in France, and the start of the summer vacation period so beloved of the French. From today until the end of August, 22 million Frenchmen will take the road in pursuit of recreation in the sun. One out of every two will vacation during these eight weeks. Due to the poor economic situation, only 30% will take foreign vacations. The majority of these will be in Spain, Portugal and Greece, which are the cheapest places in Europe now.
The remaining 70% will relax in-country, 10% of them opting for the hospitality of their parents or grandparents. The average budget for a week's vacation for a French household this year is 1,240 Euros, about $1600 USD, down from last year. Renting a trailer, strapping some bicycles on the back and driving to seashore campsites on the Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts is popular this year, as well as renting a small cottage in a campsite in the woods, for those who prefer the mountains.
Trains will be packed, and woe betide those who did not make reservations well in advance. In Paris, many south-bound travelers waiting at the Gare de Lyon had taken the precaution of setting out for the station several hours before their trains were to depart, to avoid missing a train due to traffic.
It is said that the French holiday period is such a focus of life here that whatever issue might have been roiling French politics before, it fades from memory until the fall, as if it, too, were taking a holiday. As with most things in France, it is important to know the history.
Until the Popular Front government of Leon Blum was elected in 1936 and the Matignon Agreements were signed between the leading trade unions and the French state, French workers worked without a right to any vacation. In June 1936, following the terms of the Matignon Agreements, the French Senate legislated a mandatory two-week vacation for all French employees.
Since then the lot of French workers has improved to the point that French workers receive five weeks of paid vacation a year, plus holidays. With so much free time, planning vacations naturally becomes a major focus of French life. As summer approaches, vacation planning edges out considerations of politics, which -the French do not seem to think has much point. when one's vacation is imminent.
The Tour de France
I erred earlier when I mentioned that the Tour de France is celebrating its 99th year. This is actually the centennial of the race. Today's stage, 195 kilometers from Castres, not far from here, took the riders through Revel, Castelnauraday, Limoux, and Quilland, before ending at Ax les Thermes in the Pyrenées, a grinding climb. Christopher Froome, born in Nairobi 28 years ago and a U.K. citizen, won the stage in 5 hours 3 minutes and 18 seconds. He is also the overall leader . Today's hill climbing stage began the sorting out of riders that will only intensify as the race goes on. Froome is one to watch.
The Ride Of My Life
Being on my own for the next few days, I have naturally wanted to catch up on my cycling, which has lagged on account of the need to show visitors around. Awaking to the tweet-tweet of the birds early this morning, I got myself out on the bicycle by 9:00 a.m. The thing about cycling here that is exciting to me is the sense that I can set my route and track the landscape, each time learning something more about the geography of the Minervois area.
I had already been to Homps and Olonzac, about twelve miles away, and a pleasant ride, so I set out in that direction. However, by the time I got to Olonzac, it was still early, and I did not want to ride home just yet. Which is when the idea of pedaling to Minerve took hold of me.
As I have already said, Minerve was the site of a famous battle during the Albigensian crusade, a battle made all the more dramatic to those who have been there and seen Minerve's location between two mountain gorges. Minerve is a sort of Shangri-La, a place that time forgot, which ought to be seen more than once. So I decided I would cycle to Minerve.
Nominally, the distance between Caunes-Minervois and Minerve is about fifty kilometers. However, much of the road to Minerve once you leave Olonzac is on an upward slope. I was undaunted by that because I was riding early in the day, before the sun was at its height. I reached Azillanet, where the road winds upward; by combining riding and walking, I was able to make it to Minerve by noon. Where my first trip to Minerve was a nerve-wracking experience, this time I felt like an old hand, and I could take in the town from all angles. After walking into the village for some water and an ice cream cone, I turned around and retraced my steps, stopping at the ladies' room as a precaution.
Inside I applied more sunblock, while a middle-aged woman holding the bathroom stall door open for her elderly mother watched.
Avez-vous de l'eau? (Do you have water?)
I said I had already drunk more than a liter of water, but she insisted that I should have water with me on the road. She wanted to give me a plastic bottle that had been filled with water and frozen.
--C'est pratique (It's practical), she said. She did this all the time, to make sure that she and her passengers had enough water on trips, she said. After helping her mother out to the waiting car, she got me one.
I knew when I accepted the water that it would not do: only the largest water bottles fit the bottled water clamp on my bicycle. So I drank the liquified portion and put the bottle with the ice into a trash can. My return to Caunes would not follow the route I took to get to Minerve, but a route with fewer hills that would take me through Cesseras, then on to Trausse and finally Caunes.
By now the heat was blazing, but I managed to get myself to the crossroads for Cesseras, located high in the mountains. This is where the ride, already memorable, became spectacular. The road to Cesseras is a cyclist's dream, one endless, easily curving descent that took ten minutes to make. I could have been on a motorbike, the bicycle was moving so swiftly and smoothly through the landscape. Cesseras, at the very bottom, was surrounded by vineyards on all sides.
I wasn't home yet, though. I had to keep riding, and by now I was starting to flag. I made it to Pepieux, a village of no particular distinction, where I stopped to enter a bar where six people were eating and chatting noisily. One of them, a sixtyish man with a head of silver hair, a cataract in one of his hazel eyes and black glasses, went behind the bar and asked what I would like. I asked whether there was draft beer and he said only bottles, so I said I would take water.
We got into a conversation about the need for riders to drink water and keep their body temperatures low on days like this one. How many times had he seen cyclists near death because they had not bothered to keep water with them. Once, driving along the road, he saw an abandoned bicycle and found a Dutch rider in the bushes, practically unconscious, incapable of speech. Raymond (that was his name), quickly got out the water bottles he had in the back and ran over to the cyclist, pouring the ice water over his head.
I still felt pretty good, but if Raymond would be so kind as to offer me some cold water from the tap, I would pour it over my head, I said. Nothing easier, said Raymond, and handed me a large metal bowl full of ice cubes and water. I gave my name and thanked him, saying that I would perform the ritual just outside the bar, so as not to make a mess inside. Before I did so, Raymond offered me a bottle of his frozen water. Like the woman at Minerve, he too, took out a small bottle of frozen water from his freezer in the back.
This time, I turned down the offer.
--Vous le regretterai (you will regret it), he insisted.
I explained that I could not accept the water bottle, because the clasp on the bicycle was not small enough for it to keep from falling out. Perhaps they could Scotch tape it to the clasp?
Mais on trouvera un autre, plus grand! (But we'll find a bigger bottle!)
And indeed, he and another man walked over to the freezer and rifled through it until they found a plastic bottle large enough to fit the clasp. I offered to pay for the bottle, but Raymond said I'd already paid for the earlier mineral water and there was no need.
Like the woman who gave me the smaller bottle, Raymond saved the bottles after they were drunk to fill them and have them handy for cyclists.
It was now time for the dousing with ice water. I walked outside, and in full view of everyone, poured a tub of ice water over myself. We all laughed about it, and after thanking them, I took off.
Raymond had explained that I was still on the highland, and I would be near Caunes before the road descended. Raymond directed me to ride straight through, not turning off onto any of the side roads at the rotaries or crossroads, straight through to Caunes.
It was more difficult than I thought it would be: by now it was two o'clock and the sun was at its height. I pedaled through fields and fields of vines, an endless green sea. At one point I wondered when I would ever see a road marker. When I did, it said I had 10 kilometers to go to Caunes. I took the ice water out of the clamp, drank some and poured the rest of the melted water over m head. There was still a block of ice in the bottle to get me to Caunes. Raymond had been right: without the extra water to throw over my head to bring my body temperature down, I would have had heat stroke.
I passed one more marker: 2.3 kilometers to Caunes. Walking and cycling, I made it to Caunes' outskirts.
Barely inside the village's limits, a slender young man wearing the cycling jersey serious (and sometimes pretenious) cyclers wear, said hello, as he passed me slowly.
-Antoine! he said, identifying himself.
-Marta! I said, from my end.
I guess I looked like I was serious about cycling.
I
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)