Panic in the City!

The city is in a panic!

This was the first thing said to me by many a person this morning.  And my response was… welcome to Canada! 

There was snow this morning when the kids woke up, and the snow is still falling several hours later.  It is very wet snow, not leaving anything but slush on the sidewalks and roads, and only a hint of white on the grass. 

But it was enough to get everyone ready for school in a flash.  And enough to provide tracking entertainment for the few minutes left before school.  And enough to whet the imagination… especially as we have a ski trip planned for the end of February.  Noah even asked me if we could ski today!

Dropping off Noah at the school, the maitresse told me that there probably would not be outdoor recreation today due to the weather. 

When I went out to the bank, they were not open.  It turns out that only the manager made it in to work and she could not open the reception, being the only one there. 

When I went to the grocery, the proprietaire was apologetic as the delivery vans were not able to make it in to the store that morning.  She said that the store had been almost empty all morning.  The same thing happened in the convenience store where I picked up my newspaper.  The front clerk was solving the Sudoku puzzle and there was not a soul in the aisles. 

And in the bakery… all three store-front workers were standing at the front, which never happens, it is always bustling in the bakery.  They told me that no one except the Canadians had been out that morning!  Probably not quite true, but most people seem to be hibernating indoors. 

And so we have our first snow here in Provence.  I hear it may snow again on Thursday!

Avignon

On Monday Ed rented another car and he, my Dad and I took a day trip to Avignon.  When my Dad first arrived there was a brief discussion of where to go, what to see.  But the key word is the word “brief.”  Ed had just recently finished reading a book on the Popes of Avignon, and my Dad, with his infinite brain capacity for world history, also was excited to go and see the Papal palace.  We had heard that there was a good audio-guide accompaniment and that children would not enjoy it.  So off to Avignon we went. 

The drive was uneventful, as we have now driven that way many a time.  The approach to the city is always dramatic because you drive along the river and then suddenly both the palace up on the hill and the bridge of Avignon come into view at about the same moment.  (Cue up the humming… Sur le pont d’Avignon, on y danse, on y danse…) We easily found parking in this non-tourist season and climbed the stairs up.  Right into the plaza at the foot of the palace.  Breath-taking.  It was quite windy and so we entered the palace immediately, rented our audio-guides and were off.  The audio-guide had several hours worth of information and, while we listened quite carefully at the start, eventually we got information overload and started skipping around. 

Each room has a number, which you can punch into your audio-guide upon entering.  There are then additional numbers you can type in, giving you additional facts on more specific subjects related to that particular room. So, for example, upon entering the Jesus Room one can type in the number 3.  After a brief description of the room and how it was used, one could then enter the numbers 31, 32, etc. in order to hear descriptions of each of the Popes and details of their reigns.  In my unfortunate inability to keep straight the names and dates and factoids of history, I listened to maybe two of the 7 descriptions and was relieved to discover that in the center of the room were models of the palace during each of the Papal periods.  Each Pope had made additions and/or changes based on his whims and needs at the time.  Now this was more up my alley. 

I had just finished re-reading Pillars of the Earth and was thoroughly ensconced in the world of cathedral-building.  So for me, the details of the changes in masonry and decorative styles, the improvements made in accessibility for one of the more infirm Popes, the secret passageways meant to lead to the treasure stores, these were the REAL items of interest. 

There was a room that over-looked the gardens with descriptions of both the kitchen gardens and the recreational gardens contents.  There was a large animal collection, both of farm-type animals for consumption, and a menagerie of gift animals such as a camel, a lion, and other exotic animals not meant for the French clime.  Apparently the Popes, as a group, were especially enamored of the bird world, with a number of peacock, ostriches and other outdoor birds as well as larks, nightingales, etc. caged indoors.  There were, indeed, a number of wall decorations and apparently artworks with bird motifs.  I say apparently because the Palace of Popes was literally just that: a palace, but without any furnishings or memorabilia as it was all removed and/or destroyed at varying points in the Popes reigns. 

One of the most interesting rooms was the Tinel, the large dining hall, and the Kitchen connecting to it.  It truly was an enormous hall, meant to host large number of people and visitors.  There were even walls that were dissembled if and when a Pope died, when it was necessary for all the bishops to descend upon the palace simultaneously to choose a successor.  Whereas in the other rooms the accompanying music was somber, as befits the more passive factual absorption, here in the Tinel it was minstrel-like music, reminding the visitor that the Papal times really were a time of wealth and prosperity.  Add to that the descriptions of what was required to prepare a banquet for guests and your head starts to spin: several hundred cows, innumerable barrels of wine, 300,000 plus eggs, 95,000 loaves of bread…

There was one master builder who completed a large part of the palace (sorry, names and details have lost me) as well as one master painter who supervised and/or painted much of the palace walls.  The only visible artwork in the palace is what remains on the walls and floors.  In one room visitors are no longer allowed to linger as the heat, humidity and carbon dioxide of so many visitors has started to take its toll on the paint.  Did you know that in order to paint a fresco the artist needed to work in three layers?  The first layer set the mortar in the frame, the second the painter used to sketch out the painting, and the third was for the actual layer of paint.  However, the mortar would dry in a mere seven hours, so the painter had to be both decisive and fast as well as talented in order to create his masterpiece. 

Near the end of the visit one finally arrives in the large chapel, where the Popes were anointed, buried, worshipped, etc.  It is an enormous hall, and strikingly plain.  One really does have to fill in the sculpture, painting, and altars in order to imagine the services here. 

After a tour of the palace, around 1:00, we finally went looking for lunch.  Not too far from the palace was a small restaurant/boulangerie where we found a table for the three of us.  It was filled with what seemed to be mostly locals, greeting each other for the new year, dressed for daily life and not tourism.  We finally started to warm up with a hot lunch and glasses of wine.  The other striking aspect of life in the Papal Palace was how cold it must have been.  Even with enclosed rooms, we kept our coats, scarves and gloves on for the entire visit.  So a luncheon in a cozy, nicely heated restaurant was just the ticket!

After lunch we went on to explore the city.  There are supposedly some waterwheels that the dyers would use to dye fabrics.  However, given that we needed to be back in order to pick up the children after school, we had to abort my chosen mission and simply wander.  We ended up “discovering” several churches and bell-towers, even one that had been converted to a park/playground!  On our way back we ended up walking through another park at the base of the palace with beautiful foliage and even more beautiful views and overlooks of the surrounding countryside.  There was a very helpful panoramic map that gave an almost 360 degree description of nearby France: everything from the Camargues and Marseille to the Luberon, Lyon and beyond.  Plus we got an excellent, though incredibly wind-swept, overlook of the Pont d’Avignon. 

Heading back to our car we were all struck by what a pleasant, busy day it had been.  The general consensus was that the boys would not enjoy the Papal Palace at all, as there really is very little to look at.  However, given the number of other “random” destinations of interest in the city, we thought that a tour of Avignon with a camera in hand and the mission to take photos of as many different “interesting” structures one could find would be just the thing to hold their interest.  I’ll keep you posted on that.

Language Shock

Ed and I took the kids to Barcelona for our first week of winter break.  Our time in Spain was strikingly different from our experiences in France, but it wasn’t until we got back that the differences fully came into focus.  Add to that a trip to Jacksonville, Florida with my Cuban relatives to pay tribute to the well-travelled life of my grandfather and even another level of culture shock comes into play. 

The most obvious difference is that of language.  In Barcelona they speak Spanish and Catalan, in France they speak French.  (I haven’t really been around any Provencal speakers, although all the street signs are labeled in both Provencal and Spanish.)  In Jacksonville we spoke some English, some Spanish. 

But let’s just say that my brain didn’t sort things out easily.  In Barcelona, I headed out to the grocery store the first day in order to cook in our apartment. Looking for the milk, I was excited to speak Spanish for the first time in a LONG time.  The grocery clerk showed me where the milk was and asked me from whence I came.  I then started instinctively answering in French, so he easily switched to French.  But then my vocabulary halted and I fumbled through my English.  And, you guessed it, the clerk switched into fluent English as well.  It turned out that he was from Morocco and had immigrated many years ago and had had various learning opportunities along the way.  And there I was, unable to speak even one language coherently!

It was the same situation in Jacksonville.  My grandmother, who has lived with Parkinson’s Disease for over 15 years now, has trouble with speech in general, yet Spanish sometimes comes more easily than English.  So I attempted from the get-go to speak Spanish with her.  Attempted is the key word here.  I was not quite fluent in Spanish at my peak, and my Spanish is rusty from lack of practice.  Add to that the last year and a half focusing on the French language and it is even rustier.  Every time I went to speak Spanish the French words would pop out.  Luckily my grandparents had spent a year living together in Paris, so the French was not totally off-putting to Granny.  But everyone else just sort of rolled their eyes and laughed.  It was such a relief to me when I returned home to Aix-en-Provence and realized that I could focus again on just one language. 

I was greeted by my bus driver, who was so incredibly polite (and French) it put me right at ease.  After our requisite exchange of pleasantries, he went on to make it clear that the pleasure was all his… I am sure this is all part of the script, but there is nothing like a Frenchman smooth-talking. 

Another big difference that I noted was the intensity of personal interactions.  When we arrived in Spain, both Ed and I noticed that the Spanish were much more public with their relationships.  Lots of couples smooching deeply, cuddling in restaurants.  Compared with the French double air-kiss on the cheeks, the Spanish are downright physical!  As well, the loudness of people living together was also there.  People in other apartments, people chatting on the subway, people sharing lives.  It was the same thing when I got together with my family in Jacksonville.  Lots of Spanish-speakers in the same room, all competing at louder and louder volumes to tell their version of the same story.  Lots of charisma, lots of emotion...

It was so nice, then, upon both the return from Spain and the return from Jacksonville to experience the orderliness of the French.  Whereas the Spanish cities were modernist and the nearby forests had been clear-cut in order to make room for the greatest creativity of space (which nowadays really means big-box type stores), the French cities, even just over the border were quaint and old-world.  The lay of the land was basically untouched and the cities were built around the natural formations.  The signage was much more frequent and clear.  And the border crossings were brief and civilized. 

So, all to say that I am so glad to be home, in my French life, having had a few spurts of Spanish blood re-infused into my veins.  Viva Espana, and Vive La France!