Museums, Brive, and Clermont-Ferrand: The Road Not Taken
On Amber's last day in Bordeaux I was feeling pretty terrible, but my protracted illness has kept me largely indoors lately, so I wanted to go out anyway. We looked around online for things likely to be regional and interesting, and we ended up finding a wine museum near the river that seemed promising. It was all about the wine trade through Bordeaux and the process of negotiation between growers and brokers and sellers, and not about the growing or the wine-making itself, but the venue was pretty cool. It'd been the home/store/barrel-building shop/bottling "plant" of a wine merchant in Bordeaux back in the day, so the building was pretty small, and when we were walking in the cellars we all had to duck under the stone archways that were forming doorways. The house belonged to the merchant before the modern laws that require vintners to bottle wine at the chateau. Apparently, at the time it was also popular to "speed-age" wine by putting it in barrels and shipping it to India, because by the time it had weathered the heat and been rolled around in the barrels on the ship, it'd return and be ready to drink. I think that was the most important piece of information I gleaned -- it was pretty spectacularly disorganized. Some European museums have this idea that, instead of posting information by the article to which it pertains, they should give it all to you in a book, which may or may not be dubiously translated, and make you figure out what goes to what by yourself.
Our next museum adventure was to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art (CAPC), which was confusing on a number of levels. They were setting up for a piano-building workshop on the ground floor, which was pretty intriguing. We wandered around looking for art for a good fifteen minutes. We found ourselves on the roof before we found art, which was pretty strange. Luckily for us, it was a courtyard of sorts, with some landscaping and some seating and a lot of artists sitting around sketching things. All the rooms that opened off of the courtyard seemed to be studios, maybe for group classes, and I began to despair of finding art. When we did find it, I began to despair of understanding it. Contemporary art doesn't always make that much sense. For instance, the four feet by four feet splotch of yellow paint on the floor that was a piece. Or the two inflatable globes glued to a canvas such that one was above the other and the bottom one was filled with dead flies. It was interesting, to say the least.
The next morning we met up with Anthony and his friend who was in from McGill to take a train to Brive together. It was on the way to Clermont-Ferrand and he was going to show us around. We sat down at a group of four seats arranged so that two seats faced the other two. One of us didn't have a reserved seat and my seat was actually in the quad across the aisle, but since the French don't tend to respect lines or assigned seating we didn't really think anything of it. Well, someone threw a fit. Some woman was standing in the aisle demanding that everyone sit in their assigned seat, but there was a pair of 9-year-old boys in the pair of seats to which mine belonged. They got yelled at, too, and we all swapped, only to find that that woman who threw the fit was nowhere near us, and some random guy ended up in the seat where I'd been sitting. He clearly realized we were all together and then didn't offer to switch us, which I thought was pretty awkward. I tried and failed to take a nap on the train, only to discover that the train was actually the least comfortable train ever created.
When we arrived, we dropped our baggage off at a salon near the train station, which was owned by some family friends of Anthony's. We walked around the city, which was somewhat hilly and full of what I now know to be called "platanes" in French. They're trees of the genus Platanus, and they're pruned super-awkwardly in France and in Switzerland. We called them "Weird Swiss Trees" over Christmas. I've since come to call them "Amputee Trees" and "PSO-victim Trees". My new working hypothesis is that they're popular because they look like the grape vines do in winter -- all gnarly and leafless and growing in one plane. The two previous photos are just these ridiculous trees, for your North American reference.
Brive was really nice. The town was a lot bigger than I'd been led to believe it was, and it looked pretty similar in architecture to Bordeaux, I thought. It's in the Limousin department rather than Aquitain, but I wasn't able to tell much of a difference except that no one we encountered tried to speak English with me. Not that we encountered many people -- just Anthony's friends at the salon and the guy who served us our croques monsieur at a brasserie. A croque monsieur, by the way, is a sandwich made on sliced bread with ham and cheese that's heated, with cheese melted over the top (gruyère in this case). You can get a croque madame as well, and the only difference is that one has an egg on top. They like to put eggs on top of things here -- like pizzas.
We spent a few hours seeing the main sites -- opera house, government buildings, things Anthony thought were cool. This church somewhere there on the right was pretty cool inside, and we got to go down into the crypt, which was one tiny room packed with stone sepulchers. I wondered if that's what those nobles thought they were getting into -- all crowded together in a tiny chamber, behind a glass wall where the public can just wander in and out, gawking. Who knows.Anthony walked us back up the hill to the station, and Amber and I spent another three and a half hours on a train, napping, mostly, and repeatedly presenting our tickets to the controllers.
We arrived in Clermont after dark, and I was without energy, due to illness and very little sleep from the night before. We went to her favorite pizza place in Clermont, which was called Pizza Maestro, and ate some pretty tasty pizza. Then we were lame and just watched a movie and went to bed early.
The next day was a better one for exploring. It was reasonably warm (colder than Bordeaux, but at least the snow had melted while Amber had been in Gironde) and I felt better, having had some sleep. We had a friend from OU French classes, Jason, in town from Vichy with two of his friends from study abroad, and we met them at a crêpe restaurant in the center of town, by the cathedral, for lunch. The restaurant is called 1513, apparently because it was opened in 1513. I was trying to think of things that were happening in 1513, for perspective. The internet tells me this:- Juan Ponce de Leon was landing in Florida. He thought it was an island.
- Vasco Núñez de Balboa becomes the "first person" to see the Pacific Ocean.
- Machiavelli writes The Prince.
- Louis XII was King of France.
- Da Vinci is in Milan, under the protection of the Medicis, where he meets Raphael.
After lunch we walked Jason and co. back to the town center so they could go to Carrefour in search of Dr Pepper. After only a week and a half in France, they were already craving it. I fear for their sanity this semester.
We wandered back up the hill to the cathedral, and got to see it inside. It's massive, in comparison to the cathedral by my house, and it's made of volcanic rock from the area, so it's super ominous-looking, all black and massive and atop a hill. Inside, it's beautiful.
It was just outside the time span that my art history class covered. Construction begun in the 13th century and continued, I think, until the 18th, whereas we stopped studying after the 12th century. Still, I think I was able to notice a lot more things after having taken the course than I would have beforehand. I even got to nerd out when they put the plan of the structure on the wall for visitors to see. I think they just intended it to show the color-coding of which parts of the building were built when, but I enjoyed seeing it.
We found the door to go up the steps to the top, but the door was mysteriously locked. We waited around for a few minutes, while I was feeling silly, and then someone came down the stairs. We grabbed the open door and walked up behind them.And let me tell you, my sick, asthmatic lungs were just not prepared for climbing a cathedral. I should have, at the very least, brought an inhaler, but I hadn't thought about it. We climbed lots and lots of stone stairs, twisting all the way up the tower past tiny windows for progress reports. The only sounds were the huffing of strangers and the scuff of shoes on stairs.
When we finally made it to the top, it began to snow. This snow was more like the suggestion of snow. It took me a few seconds to figure out what was happening, and none of this alleged snow showed up in any of the copious photographs I took while up there.
The first thing I noticed, looking out, was a general aviation airport. I guess that says something about me, but it really looked, from that height, as if we were really low and almost perfectly lined up to land toward the east (assuming the cathedral was lined up east-west like it should have been). Of course, judging by how my hair was blowing in my face as I tried to get a picture with Puy-de-Dôme in the background, wind was out of the west, so that wouldn't have been the best approach ever. I miss flying so much that it was refreshing just to have the illusion of flying -- higher than the third story of a building is my new standard. It's a pretty low standard. It'll be amazing if I remember where the throttle is, when I finally get home.
You can see the volcano in this picture. It's called Puy-de-Dôme, and apparently played an instrumental role in proving Toricelli's theory of barometrics as well as having been the site of a Gallo-Roman temple to Mercury. I'd have liked to go see it, and some times of year there's a shuttle that goes out there, but it's only available in May, June, and September. I may have to go back in May to see it, but we'll see what happens. There's so much Europe to see, and so little time remains.The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the city and seeing various things. We stopped into a cafe to find something to drink and found the end of a rugby game on tv. The Clermont team, the ASM, was playing Albi, and won by a kind of ridiculous margin. They play in bright blue and yellow, and later there was a flood of fans, already in their gear, to their gift shop in the center of town.
This was my favorite thing in the gift shop, because it uses my favorite Latin phrase from high school: "Nunc est bibendum". It means "Now it's time to drink" or "Now it's time for drinking" and was featured prominently in our textbook's chapter on meals and banquets my sophomore year. As it turns out, Bibendum is the name of that Michelin tire-monster you see in all the ads, and he was created in 1898, with the promise that Michelin tires "eat obstacles". I guess so you don't have to? Here's Bibendum's original appearance, printed on a t-shirt. I managed to resist buying it, but I was considering sending it into my old Latin teacher, since she used to give us extra credit for Latin sightings "in real life". Then I remembered she no longer teaches Latin, and my spirit was a little crushed.
That night we ended up turned away from several restaurants at which we'd tried to make reservations, notably a French restaurant that was highly recommended and a Tex-Mex restaurant, just because I'm craving spicy food like no one could possibly understand until they move from Oklahoma to here. We ended up eating sushi, and while wasabi is not quite salsa, it was pleasantly flavorful.
Later that night, Amber took me to some of her favorite places to hang out. We went to an Irish pub called The Still, where, unlike in Bordeaux, the workers were not Irish. We played darts, though I'd never played before and was somewhat miserable at it. Also, there were some uncomprehending Frenchmen who were applauding our failures, even though we kept trying to explain that we were losing.
We went to a Belgian bar called Les Berthom, where we drank lambic. Because what else are you going to get at a Belgian bar? I ordered blackcurrant flavor, because every time it's offered here, that's what I do. Since I found out, recently, that the reason it's not ever a flavor option in the US is because it was made illegal in the early 19th century because their parasites were a threat to our logging industry, I've been interested in trying a variety of blackcurrant things.
Lastly we went to a bar called L'Appart, which is decorated like the several rooms of an apartment, such that you can sit in the bathroom or the sitting room, etc. We were just about to go home when a brass band came in, sporting ASM's letters and playing some songs that other people in the bar seemed to know. The tuba had, not only ASM's letters, but also a little Michelin man on the bottom. I wasn't able to get very good pictures, since the band was surrounded with people.
The next day was, unfortunately for us, Sunday. Luckily we'd planned ahead with a trip to Carrefour, and we made lunch out of a baguette and a variety of Auvergne cheeses. I guess Auvergne, the region where Clermont-Ferrand finds itself, is to cheese what Bordeaux is to wine. We had some St. Nectaire (which Amber only got to humor me, as she doesn't like it -- I found it pleasant, but I'm not sure I've met a cheese I didn't like), a young cantal and some kind of bleu cheese, and they were all delicious. I'd managed to find Dr. Pepper at the Carrefour, which I'd been told could happen but had been trying to avoid, as I've only recently broken my addiction. Still, it was really pleasant -- even if the Dr Pepper did come from the UK.
We spent the afternoon riding the tram from one end of the city to the other and stopping at the places we wanted to see, notably Notre Dâme du Port, where some friends of my brother's had been married. It was a very interesting church because it was Romanesque, and the first basilica I'd yet been into that had fallen into the time period of my art history class from last semester. There were some really intricate capital carvings that I wished I could have seen up close (too high in the air!) There were, unlike most of the churches I've paraded through in recent times, people praying -- and nuns! I felt weird about walking through it, but since there were far more tourists than parish members, we stayed for a while.
Again, we found a war memorial. I am reminded often how much of an impact the World Wars had, locally. It seems really far way, from my end of history.
With that, the afternoon's activities were pretty well concluded. We watched some movies and then headed across the courtyard to renovated building A, to use their kitchen. Apparently the ones in Amber's building, C, don't work well if at all, so we packed up skillets and dishes and utensils and condiments and ingredients and walked over there. The kitchen turned out to be two burners and some counter space with a sink -- there was no trash can, or microwave, or oven, or any number of any other useful things. Skillet or bust, I guess, since you're not allowed to have anything like a toaster or microwave in your own room, either.
It reminded me of my adventure in Switzerland with Rachel and the coin-operated hot plates. At least these burners weren't coin-operated -- but you did have to keep pushing the light switch above the stovetop in order to keep electricity flowing to them.
This morning, Amber took me to the train station and I got on a 10:09 train. I spent all day looking out the window and lamenting that there was no food to be had at any of my connections, and have since re-evaluated the visual images my brain associates with small towns. Small-town America is, predictably, not at all like small-town France -- but some of those places, built on hills and next to streams and, in a few cases, in the middle of rivers, were really beautiful. I wish we hadn't been in a moving train -- there were some post card worthy shots in there, somewhere.
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