Travelogue
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John Marchioro
Jul 6, 2018, 5:48:36 PM7/6/18
to not-honyaku-redux
As promised, a travelogue (from what I have sent family members and
friends thus far):
June 28th
With some perseverance I cleared out my former apartment and was able
to reach Paris yesterday. I came directly on to Rouen, and will go to
Caen later in the day. Hoping to see the beaches and cemeteries in
Normandy on Saturday, and then Mont St. Michel on Sunday, before
spending a few days in Brittany. More about all that later. I survived
this ordeal, not feeling very good, stiff as a board from moving all
that stuff, mostly by myself, but I got it done, and will feel better
in a week or so. And it is nice to be back in France again..... Had a
nice chat with an Irish couple on the packed train in, a nice chat
with the cab driver in Rouen in my rusty French, and a nice chat with
5 guys from Beijing in my still fairly fluent Chinese (they were all
stunned, of course, the invariable reaction when a foreigner suddenly
starts jabbering away in fluent Mandarin) when I reached the
hotel..... always fun to get out and meet people this way, learn a bit
more about what they are doing and why..... Best part of a trip (and
sometimes the worst part of a trip too), the people you encounter on
the road.
Off to see the big cathedral here, which I saw in 1981.... Then a cafe
au lait and a croissant, and some random strolling around the town and
along the Seine, before heading on to Caen.
June 29th
Now in Caen. Just before dawn here. On to see Omaha Beach (where the
Overlord Museum is) and perhaps Utah Beach, as well as the cemeteries,
in an hour.
July 1st
Now in Pontorson, 10 km to Mont St. Michel, which I will see tomorrow
AM before heading on to Rennes. All is well, and feeling 100% better.
I had a lot of muscle and joint pain the last few days after that
brutal push to get everything into storage and the brutal flight here
(details forthcoming), but I am feeling vastly better after a lot of
sleep and a lot of Ibuprofen.
Saw Omaha Beach, the American cemetery (the one that is shown at the
start and end of "Saving Private Ryan") and the Overlord Museum
yesterday. A headache to do it by myself (meaning to do it without
paying some outlandish price for a bus tour or a private taxi), but I
did it. Thank God I remember some French, I could not have done it on
the cheap otherwise. more about that soon as well, for now a nap and
then some work this evening and tomorrow AM, a translator's day is
never done.
July 2nd
Well, I came, I saw and I thought.... Hmmmmm.... Pretty commercialized.
I stayed in Pontorson, the closest train stop to Mont St. Michel, a
sleepy little town about 10 km away. Most people apparently stay at
the facilities nearer to the place, or even IN the place (I saw a
couple of hotels within Mont St. Michel this AM at the lower level,
believe it or not..... Not sure if that includes breakfast in bed
served by monks doing Gregorian chant, but presumably that can be
arranged for a price). Just like with Omaha Beach (more about it
later), it is hard to do this on the cheap. I took the 10:10 AM bus to
Mont St. Michel from Pontorson, got there at 10:25 AM, saw the place
in about 2 hours.... And then had 2 hours to kill before the bus back
to Pontorson. Now, I could have just gone to one of the restaurants on
the lower level of the place and had a meal of coquilles St. Jacques
for 30 Euros or whatever, but instead I just found a bench and read a
book and waited. Gotta do this on the cheap, folks, long road ahead
and I cannot have any money burn now.
To phrase it differently. You get to Mont St. Michel and you see an
awesome site. It is quite something to see. But once you go through
the gate, it is one shop and restaurant after another, selling the
usual crap, for a walk about of 15 minutes. I bought a couple of
postcards and a Normandy plastic bag (yes, it is in Normandy, even
though everyone tells you it is in Brittany; the border between the
two is about a mile from MSM) for toting light groceries, and then
went up to the Abbey. The Abbey is quite interesting and as usual I
did not join a tour but loitered nearby some in English and French and
picked up some interesting detail about the place. Unfortunately it
turns out that Monday is the monks' day off and no mass at noon is
held, so I missed out on that. But frankly I thought it was not as
interesting as a lot of places I have seen, such as the Papal Palace
in Avignon. I do not want to run it down, no, but it is what it is, a
beautiful monastery built in a remote and imposing seaside location,
infested with tourists (and I was lucky, because once school lets out
in France next week there will be far more visitors, and I went on a
Monday to boot). My advice would be to visit in June or September and
do so on a weekday with good weather, and if you want to see monks (I
saw nary a one) do not go on Monday.
OK, now in Rennes, will see a bit of this backwater this AM, then on
to Brest, the westernmost town in France, at the very tip end of
Brittany.
July 4th
Now on day 3 in Brittany. Rennes was a dump, though perhaps when all
the construction is done it will be a more enjoyable place.... I did
not think much of Brest. It was not impoverished or anything like that
(and the Irish guy from Cork that I met on the train in from CDG to
Paris had warned me to expect that, he told me that he had been there
a few decades back and it was really, really poor), it actually seemed
pretty well scrubbed and a lot of the housing stock appeared to be
new, clearly some serious urban renewal had been, and presumably that
is what is going on in Rennes (the provincial capital of Brittany) now
as well, probably to thwart local separatist or nationalist
sentiment.... But there really was not much to see there, though I did
go down to the port, which has one of the largest roadsteads (look up
the definition of that word, it does not mean what you might think) in
the world, and it was nice enough though nothing to ululate over. I
also did a quick walk through of the following place:
http://www.oceanopolis.com
A rather nice aquarium, with good polar and tropical exhibits.... I
waved to the penguins, nodded to the walrus, acknowledged the
suffering of the seals in their small pond.... And also read about the
sharks. I was completely ignorant of this but according to display 60
million sharks are killed each year.... I found this figure hard to
believe. Sharks are known as top predators, meaning that they are at
the top of the food chain.... Top predators like bear and tigers and
the like, they tend not to be too numerous, precisely because they are
at the pinnacle of the pyramid. And do the math.... That means about
180,000 area killed every day around the world.... It seems
improbable. But it is true that the Chinese think that shark fins put
graphite in a man's pencil, if you know what I mean, and they are
being horribly overfished around the world as a result (often the fins
area harvested and the finless shark is dumped back in the sea.....
pathetic). Anyway, depressing stuff, but just about everything to do
with the world's seas is, and not only the seas....
Now in Vannes. Interesting little place, best site in Brittany so far.
I just bought a couple of CDs at a local folklore shop, and had a 20
minute chat with the proprietor. One thing you see in Brittany is that
the street signs and signs of train stations and the like are
bilingual,. in both French and Breton. But there are no TV shows in
Breton, no announcements in the stations in Breton.... So I asked the
proprietor, who appeared to be around my age, what gives, and also
mentioned that there was supposedly a movement towards
decentralization under Mitterand, which I remember reading a little
about many years back. And he said yes, there was a little of that in
the 1980s, but all power was recentralized in Paris under Chirac and
there has been no change since. He told me quite a few interesting
tidbits. One is that there are four regions of linguistic and cultural
opposition to centralization in Paris, namely Brittany, the French
Basque area, Corsica and the Alsatian region. The Basque region has
fared best because the Spanish Basque region has obtained a certain
measure of autonomy owing to Madrid's relatively lenient policies
towards it (and more importantly towards Catalonia, a key economic
region of Spain that Spain does not want to become independent no
matter what). So there are Basque TV shows and Basque radio
programming, the whole bit. Brittany has fared very poorly. There is
just a small amount of TV and radio programming despite decades and
decades of militant advocacy by many groups in the province.....
Basically Paris ignores everything. There is the further problem that
the French media market is largely dominated by a small number of
massive conglomerates (something that I actually read a book about
recently, by Andre Schiffrin, a book about the increasing
concentration of media power in European countries and its baleful
effect on the publishing of creative literature and the rest). I asked
him if Breton is still spoken and he said yes, absolutely, but the
problem is that because of the century-long policy of forced use of
French by the central government, there are fewer and fewer young
people who can speak and write it properly, and the number who want to
make the effort is also decreasing..... He did mention that a few
young people had written their Baccalaureat exams (the equivalent of a
college graduation exam) in Breton, thus provoking rage among the
Mandarins in Paris, and running a serious risk of going without their
degrees.....
He also contrasted this situation with other European countries,
mentioned the existence of federal structures and devolution of powers
to local regions in Germany, Spain, Italy.... But not in France.
So I finally said to him, gesturing to his store (which was of course
full of books in Breton and local folk music and the like), "So you
can support Breton language and culture by hang a bookshop like this,
but..... not much more." He smiled a bit bitterly but still genially
at this, and said, "Well, we are doing what we can, it is open combat
with Paris and we are not going to give up", or words to that effect.
For the curious, this is the URL for the network of stores that he is
part of:
www.capbrittany.com
The man I spoke to is Lenn Ha Dilenn, a true Breton name if ever there
was one. On his counter as I chatted was a thick book entitled "The
Black Book of the Reality of Brittany", no doubt a screed against
Paris accusing it of crimes going back to Julius Caesar.... I also saw
this on one of the shelves:
http://www.capbrittany.com/produit/le-breton-pour-les-nuls/
Breton for Idiots.
No, I did not buy one.
OK, back to the hotel to fetch the bags then on to Nantes, where there
were riots the other night..... Something to look forward to, perhaps.
My credit card somehow did not work for the hotel at Angers for Friday
night and the asshole there cancelled my reservation despite my pleas
not to, so I decided to spend Friday night in La Rochelle instead. If
there is some way I can swing it, I am hoping to visit the museum
about La Vendee (the area that rebelled against the French Revolution,
and which was suppressed in a sea of blood) that is located in Les
Lucs-sur-Boulonge about 50 miles south of Nantes.... But it may not be
possible, it is out of the way and I have my bags to tote around, will
not be an easy thing to do, at least not without hiring a cab and I do
not want to spend the Euros on that. We'll see. More from Nantes.
July 6th
One other thing that Lenn Ha Dilenn said to me was that the devolving
some decision-making to local areas in the way that is being demanded
by Breton activists is actually a way of strengthening both civil
society and the state overall... It will inspire the locals to take a
more active role in civic life, to feel more engaged, and so on. It is
an interesting point and one that I have heard more than once when it
comes to China, which of course has a similar problem of
centralization of power among Mandarins in Beijing and refusal to
grant substantive autonomy to local regions.
But it goes deeper than that, of course. There has always been a
debate about democratization in China, going back to at least the 19th
century, about what the goal of democratization is. It is fairly clear
that the liberal reformers in the late Qing period like Kang Youwei
did not really think much of the masses, but they wanted instead to
broaden the social base of the Qing regime and strengthen China by
concerting the relatively well off strata of the population towards
feasible political ends. In essence, the original notion of res
publica as conceived of by the Romans, the idea that affairs of state
were too important to be left to a king and his court, and required
the active deliberation and participation and action of a broader
social strata of elites.... I remember auditing Philip Kuhn's lecture
course on modern Chinese history and him talking about precisely this
issue. It puts the whole issue of democratization in a rather
different light, and makes it clear that liberal reformers are not
necessarily advocates for the common man, rather, it is possible to be
an elitist reformer whose goal is to counterbalance the untrammeled
powers of an authoritarian state by asserting the rights of the elite
strata to have a voice in affairs of state, without this meaning of
course advocacy for the less well off. This is a pretty widespread
mindset among middle class and elite reformers (I think of Gandhi, who
had a very negative view of the lower strata of Indian society,
thought of them as a rabble in fact), though a lot of people who
should know better hear a student at Peking University calling for
"democracy" in China and they read things into it that are not really
there, not in the mind of that student at any rate.
But of course that does not apply to Lenn Ha Dilenn... Another facet
of this is that from the standpoint of the state, this whole ball of
wax is a zero-sum game. Any power ceded to a Breton activist group is
power lost to the state... And it is indeed dangerous, because it
could result in separatist tendencies, and the demonstration effect on
places like Alsace and Corsica could lead to worse still. But from
Lenn Ha Dilenn's standpoint a French national identity is entirely
compatible with a Breton regional identity, and the two can
co-exist.... It is an interesting question. When does a regional
identity achieve a kind of critical mass, as it has with so many in
Catalonia and perhaps in the north Italian areas where the Lega Nord
is strong, that it becomes fissiparous and leads to outright calls for
independence? You can see this sort of thing playing out with Quebec,
of course.... it is an interesting question, and not an easy one to
digest, and you can see why central state Mandarins are reluctant to
make any concessions... You never know where it might lead.
Anyway, I went back to my hotel, got my bags, but no one was there so
I had to find someone at a store to call a taxi. The taxi driver
showed up and took me to the station. He was my age, and had been born
and raised in Nantes, and when I mentioned that I had seen on TV that
there had been riots in Nantes, he launched into a lengthy screed that
went something like this (very loosely):
"Yes, I am from Nantes myself. You know, when I was 12 or 14 years
old, we had an incident where one of these North African dirtbags
fired some shots at the cops, and the fucking cops did NOTHING, and I
mean NOTHING, about it. They won't even go into these suburban
districts where these people live. Listen, I have been driving this
taxi for 20 years, right? I have never had an accident, never had a
fine. But the fucking cops are busting my balls all the time about
this and that. But then one of these scumbags commits a serious crime
and they won't do shit about it.... I remember when that prick Sarkozy
got elected, he said he was going to send all this riffraff back home,
but then there was some backlash and he buckled immediately, did not
do shit, the little prick..... These asshole cops, they won't even
shoot a person in the head, they are armed but they play footsy with
the scum. If you ask me, any cop and any person in military service
should have an absolute right to shoot anyone they have to for the
purpose of public order, that's what the cops and military are for,
right? You know, in Great Britain, everyone respects the cops, a bobby
[he used the word "bobby"] shows up and everyone respects his
authority... Not with these worthless asshole cops in France...." And
then he added (in a manner reminiscent of Trump's comment about
Mexican rapists), "Of course, there are some good cops too...."
To lighten the mood and change the subject, I asked him how long he
had been in Vannes. 30 years. What did he think of the changes in
Vannes over that time? "A catastrophe. A total fucking catastrophe!
You know, it used to be you could go somewhere and have a smoke and a
glass of alcohol, and joke about this and that and talk about anything
you wanted, say whatever you pleased. Now it is like we are in fucking
prison! [He held up his hands, bound together, to brandish the virtual
shackles that had been imposed on him] And you know what? It is the
fucking US that is responsible! We learn every BAD thing from the US,
all this PC bullshit!"
I am sorry to say this but the whole screed sort of made me laugh....
On top of everything else, apparently this taxi driver's son has some
kind of job at Harvard! Doing what I am not sure, probably working as
a mid-level administrator in some capacity.... At the end he told me
that he was going to go live in the Canaries. I somehow doubt that he
will find that an improvement on Vannes (which BTW is a very nice
little medieval city well worth a visit, and which I am glad I saw
because I was rather disappointed by Rennes and Brest and would have
had a negative view of Brittany had I not spent some time in Vannes).
Anyway, clearly a guy who voted for Le Pen.
So that was that. Then I went on to Nantes. Worked late at the hotel,
then saw the city for 5 hours or so this morning. Quite an interesting
place. Nantes has a ducal palace that you can see pretty quickly, a
place with mixed architecture including a 14th century tower and then
some buildings added later in the 16th century, and some surrounding
walls, some of which also date back to the 14th century or even
earlier. From the ramparts you can see the following:
http://monumentsdefrance.com/tour-lu-nantes
Which is the original site of Lefevre Utile, the company that makes
those Petit Beurre biscuits that are now sold worldwide....
In addition, Nantes is similar to Genoa and Sevilla and similar cities
in that its fortunes were closely tied to the rise of the Atlantic
economy in the early modern period of European history, and in
particular to the slave trade. There is in fact a monument to the
abolition of slavery in the city, and the local art museum has current
exhibitions about the subject bib a local artist from Rennes and a
Congolese (now Canadian) artist.... And one thing you notice about
Nantes walking around is the large number of monumental public squares
dating of course from that era, clearly built with money derived from
Atlantic trading and the slave trade in particular. And there are also
a lot of city blocks with massive three and four story buildings in
stone, with the ground floor dedicated to all manner of shops and then
the upper floors presumable serving as nice apartments and condos for
the well heeled. You can see some of this in other French cities
(Nancy, which I visited last year, has one very large public square
like this, as does Strasbourg), but I had never seen as much of it as
I did in Nantes today.... It was very reminiscent of Paris, where such
architecture can be found all over the city. And it also reminded me
of the nice street in Genoa with all the merchants' mansions paid for
by that city's trading empire, though the amount of Genoa occupied by
such mansions is small and the city has its squalid districts,
especially near the port.
So I went and I saw and I took it all in. And then got the train to La
Rochelle, a charming little seaport with an interesting history of its
own:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Rochelle#Born_in_La_Rochelle
Very crowded in the old port this PM, so I will go back and see what I
can early tomorrow Am when hopefully the locals and the other tourists
are sleeping off their drunk following today's World Cup match, and
things will be a bit quieter. And then on to Poitiers, to see its
famous cathedral, and then on to Chartres on Sunday, before returning
to Paris on Monday.
JKM
friends thus far):
June 28th
With some perseverance I cleared out my former apartment and was able
to reach Paris yesterday. I came directly on to Rouen, and will go to
Caen later in the day. Hoping to see the beaches and cemeteries in
Normandy on Saturday, and then Mont St. Michel on Sunday, before
spending a few days in Brittany. More about all that later. I survived
this ordeal, not feeling very good, stiff as a board from moving all
that stuff, mostly by myself, but I got it done, and will feel better
in a week or so. And it is nice to be back in France again..... Had a
nice chat with an Irish couple on the packed train in, a nice chat
with the cab driver in Rouen in my rusty French, and a nice chat with
5 guys from Beijing in my still fairly fluent Chinese (they were all
stunned, of course, the invariable reaction when a foreigner suddenly
starts jabbering away in fluent Mandarin) when I reached the
hotel..... always fun to get out and meet people this way, learn a bit
more about what they are doing and why..... Best part of a trip (and
sometimes the worst part of a trip too), the people you encounter on
the road.
Off to see the big cathedral here, which I saw in 1981.... Then a cafe
au lait and a croissant, and some random strolling around the town and
along the Seine, before heading on to Caen.
June 29th
Now in Caen. Just before dawn here. On to see Omaha Beach (where the
Overlord Museum is) and perhaps Utah Beach, as well as the cemeteries,
in an hour.
July 1st
Now in Pontorson, 10 km to Mont St. Michel, which I will see tomorrow
AM before heading on to Rennes. All is well, and feeling 100% better.
I had a lot of muscle and joint pain the last few days after that
brutal push to get everything into storage and the brutal flight here
(details forthcoming), but I am feeling vastly better after a lot of
sleep and a lot of Ibuprofen.
Saw Omaha Beach, the American cemetery (the one that is shown at the
start and end of "Saving Private Ryan") and the Overlord Museum
yesterday. A headache to do it by myself (meaning to do it without
paying some outlandish price for a bus tour or a private taxi), but I
did it. Thank God I remember some French, I could not have done it on
the cheap otherwise. more about that soon as well, for now a nap and
then some work this evening and tomorrow AM, a translator's day is
never done.
July 2nd
Well, I came, I saw and I thought.... Hmmmmm.... Pretty commercialized.
I stayed in Pontorson, the closest train stop to Mont St. Michel, a
sleepy little town about 10 km away. Most people apparently stay at
the facilities nearer to the place, or even IN the place (I saw a
couple of hotels within Mont St. Michel this AM at the lower level,
believe it or not..... Not sure if that includes breakfast in bed
served by monks doing Gregorian chant, but presumably that can be
arranged for a price). Just like with Omaha Beach (more about it
later), it is hard to do this on the cheap. I took the 10:10 AM bus to
Mont St. Michel from Pontorson, got there at 10:25 AM, saw the place
in about 2 hours.... And then had 2 hours to kill before the bus back
to Pontorson. Now, I could have just gone to one of the restaurants on
the lower level of the place and had a meal of coquilles St. Jacques
for 30 Euros or whatever, but instead I just found a bench and read a
book and waited. Gotta do this on the cheap, folks, long road ahead
and I cannot have any money burn now.
To phrase it differently. You get to Mont St. Michel and you see an
awesome site. It is quite something to see. But once you go through
the gate, it is one shop and restaurant after another, selling the
usual crap, for a walk about of 15 minutes. I bought a couple of
postcards and a Normandy plastic bag (yes, it is in Normandy, even
though everyone tells you it is in Brittany; the border between the
two is about a mile from MSM) for toting light groceries, and then
went up to the Abbey. The Abbey is quite interesting and as usual I
did not join a tour but loitered nearby some in English and French and
picked up some interesting detail about the place. Unfortunately it
turns out that Monday is the monks' day off and no mass at noon is
held, so I missed out on that. But frankly I thought it was not as
interesting as a lot of places I have seen, such as the Papal Palace
in Avignon. I do not want to run it down, no, but it is what it is, a
beautiful monastery built in a remote and imposing seaside location,
infested with tourists (and I was lucky, because once school lets out
in France next week there will be far more visitors, and I went on a
Monday to boot). My advice would be to visit in June or September and
do so on a weekday with good weather, and if you want to see monks (I
saw nary a one) do not go on Monday.
OK, now in Rennes, will see a bit of this backwater this AM, then on
to Brest, the westernmost town in France, at the very tip end of
Brittany.
July 4th
Now on day 3 in Brittany. Rennes was a dump, though perhaps when all
the construction is done it will be a more enjoyable place.... I did
not think much of Brest. It was not impoverished or anything like that
(and the Irish guy from Cork that I met on the train in from CDG to
Paris had warned me to expect that, he told me that he had been there
a few decades back and it was really, really poor), it actually seemed
pretty well scrubbed and a lot of the housing stock appeared to be
new, clearly some serious urban renewal had been, and presumably that
is what is going on in Rennes (the provincial capital of Brittany) now
as well, probably to thwart local separatist or nationalist
sentiment.... But there really was not much to see there, though I did
go down to the port, which has one of the largest roadsteads (look up
the definition of that word, it does not mean what you might think) in
the world, and it was nice enough though nothing to ululate over. I
also did a quick walk through of the following place:
http://www.oceanopolis.com
A rather nice aquarium, with good polar and tropical exhibits.... I
waved to the penguins, nodded to the walrus, acknowledged the
suffering of the seals in their small pond.... And also read about the
sharks. I was completely ignorant of this but according to display 60
million sharks are killed each year.... I found this figure hard to
believe. Sharks are known as top predators, meaning that they are at
the top of the food chain.... Top predators like bear and tigers and
the like, they tend not to be too numerous, precisely because they are
at the pinnacle of the pyramid. And do the math.... That means about
180,000 area killed every day around the world.... It seems
improbable. But it is true that the Chinese think that shark fins put
graphite in a man's pencil, if you know what I mean, and they are
being horribly overfished around the world as a result (often the fins
area harvested and the finless shark is dumped back in the sea.....
pathetic). Anyway, depressing stuff, but just about everything to do
with the world's seas is, and not only the seas....
Now in Vannes. Interesting little place, best site in Brittany so far.
I just bought a couple of CDs at a local folklore shop, and had a 20
minute chat with the proprietor. One thing you see in Brittany is that
the street signs and signs of train stations and the like are
bilingual,. in both French and Breton. But there are no TV shows in
Breton, no announcements in the stations in Breton.... So I asked the
proprietor, who appeared to be around my age, what gives, and also
mentioned that there was supposedly a movement towards
decentralization under Mitterand, which I remember reading a little
about many years back. And he said yes, there was a little of that in
the 1980s, but all power was recentralized in Paris under Chirac and
there has been no change since. He told me quite a few interesting
tidbits. One is that there are four regions of linguistic and cultural
opposition to centralization in Paris, namely Brittany, the French
Basque area, Corsica and the Alsatian region. The Basque region has
fared best because the Spanish Basque region has obtained a certain
measure of autonomy owing to Madrid's relatively lenient policies
towards it (and more importantly towards Catalonia, a key economic
region of Spain that Spain does not want to become independent no
matter what). So there are Basque TV shows and Basque radio
programming, the whole bit. Brittany has fared very poorly. There is
just a small amount of TV and radio programming despite decades and
decades of militant advocacy by many groups in the province.....
Basically Paris ignores everything. There is the further problem that
the French media market is largely dominated by a small number of
massive conglomerates (something that I actually read a book about
recently, by Andre Schiffrin, a book about the increasing
concentration of media power in European countries and its baleful
effect on the publishing of creative literature and the rest). I asked
him if Breton is still spoken and he said yes, absolutely, but the
problem is that because of the century-long policy of forced use of
French by the central government, there are fewer and fewer young
people who can speak and write it properly, and the number who want to
make the effort is also decreasing..... He did mention that a few
young people had written their Baccalaureat exams (the equivalent of a
college graduation exam) in Breton, thus provoking rage among the
Mandarins in Paris, and running a serious risk of going without their
degrees.....
He also contrasted this situation with other European countries,
mentioned the existence of federal structures and devolution of powers
to local regions in Germany, Spain, Italy.... But not in France.
So I finally said to him, gesturing to his store (which was of course
full of books in Breton and local folk music and the like), "So you
can support Breton language and culture by hang a bookshop like this,
but..... not much more." He smiled a bit bitterly but still genially
at this, and said, "Well, we are doing what we can, it is open combat
with Paris and we are not going to give up", or words to that effect.
For the curious, this is the URL for the network of stores that he is
part of:
www.capbrittany.com
The man I spoke to is Lenn Ha Dilenn, a true Breton name if ever there
was one. On his counter as I chatted was a thick book entitled "The
Black Book of the Reality of Brittany", no doubt a screed against
Paris accusing it of crimes going back to Julius Caesar.... I also saw
this on one of the shelves:
http://www.capbrittany.com/produit/le-breton-pour-les-nuls/
Breton for Idiots.
No, I did not buy one.
OK, back to the hotel to fetch the bags then on to Nantes, where there
were riots the other night..... Something to look forward to, perhaps.
My credit card somehow did not work for the hotel at Angers for Friday
night and the asshole there cancelled my reservation despite my pleas
not to, so I decided to spend Friday night in La Rochelle instead. If
there is some way I can swing it, I am hoping to visit the museum
about La Vendee (the area that rebelled against the French Revolution,
and which was suppressed in a sea of blood) that is located in Les
Lucs-sur-Boulonge about 50 miles south of Nantes.... But it may not be
possible, it is out of the way and I have my bags to tote around, will
not be an easy thing to do, at least not without hiring a cab and I do
not want to spend the Euros on that. We'll see. More from Nantes.
July 6th
One other thing that Lenn Ha Dilenn said to me was that the devolving
some decision-making to local areas in the way that is being demanded
by Breton activists is actually a way of strengthening both civil
society and the state overall... It will inspire the locals to take a
more active role in civic life, to feel more engaged, and so on. It is
an interesting point and one that I have heard more than once when it
comes to China, which of course has a similar problem of
centralization of power among Mandarins in Beijing and refusal to
grant substantive autonomy to local regions.
But it goes deeper than that, of course. There has always been a
debate about democratization in China, going back to at least the 19th
century, about what the goal of democratization is. It is fairly clear
that the liberal reformers in the late Qing period like Kang Youwei
did not really think much of the masses, but they wanted instead to
broaden the social base of the Qing regime and strengthen China by
concerting the relatively well off strata of the population towards
feasible political ends. In essence, the original notion of res
publica as conceived of by the Romans, the idea that affairs of state
were too important to be left to a king and his court, and required
the active deliberation and participation and action of a broader
social strata of elites.... I remember auditing Philip Kuhn's lecture
course on modern Chinese history and him talking about precisely this
issue. It puts the whole issue of democratization in a rather
different light, and makes it clear that liberal reformers are not
necessarily advocates for the common man, rather, it is possible to be
an elitist reformer whose goal is to counterbalance the untrammeled
powers of an authoritarian state by asserting the rights of the elite
strata to have a voice in affairs of state, without this meaning of
course advocacy for the less well off. This is a pretty widespread
mindset among middle class and elite reformers (I think of Gandhi, who
had a very negative view of the lower strata of Indian society,
thought of them as a rabble in fact), though a lot of people who
should know better hear a student at Peking University calling for
"democracy" in China and they read things into it that are not really
there, not in the mind of that student at any rate.
But of course that does not apply to Lenn Ha Dilenn... Another facet
of this is that from the standpoint of the state, this whole ball of
wax is a zero-sum game. Any power ceded to a Breton activist group is
power lost to the state... And it is indeed dangerous, because it
could result in separatist tendencies, and the demonstration effect on
places like Alsace and Corsica could lead to worse still. But from
Lenn Ha Dilenn's standpoint a French national identity is entirely
compatible with a Breton regional identity, and the two can
co-exist.... It is an interesting question. When does a regional
identity achieve a kind of critical mass, as it has with so many in
Catalonia and perhaps in the north Italian areas where the Lega Nord
is strong, that it becomes fissiparous and leads to outright calls for
independence? You can see this sort of thing playing out with Quebec,
of course.... it is an interesting question, and not an easy one to
digest, and you can see why central state Mandarins are reluctant to
make any concessions... You never know where it might lead.
Anyway, I went back to my hotel, got my bags, but no one was there so
I had to find someone at a store to call a taxi. The taxi driver
showed up and took me to the station. He was my age, and had been born
and raised in Nantes, and when I mentioned that I had seen on TV that
there had been riots in Nantes, he launched into a lengthy screed that
went something like this (very loosely):
"Yes, I am from Nantes myself. You know, when I was 12 or 14 years
old, we had an incident where one of these North African dirtbags
fired some shots at the cops, and the fucking cops did NOTHING, and I
mean NOTHING, about it. They won't even go into these suburban
districts where these people live. Listen, I have been driving this
taxi for 20 years, right? I have never had an accident, never had a
fine. But the fucking cops are busting my balls all the time about
this and that. But then one of these scumbags commits a serious crime
and they won't do shit about it.... I remember when that prick Sarkozy
got elected, he said he was going to send all this riffraff back home,
but then there was some backlash and he buckled immediately, did not
do shit, the little prick..... These asshole cops, they won't even
shoot a person in the head, they are armed but they play footsy with
the scum. If you ask me, any cop and any person in military service
should have an absolute right to shoot anyone they have to for the
purpose of public order, that's what the cops and military are for,
right? You know, in Great Britain, everyone respects the cops, a bobby
[he used the word "bobby"] shows up and everyone respects his
authority... Not with these worthless asshole cops in France...." And
then he added (in a manner reminiscent of Trump's comment about
Mexican rapists), "Of course, there are some good cops too...."
To lighten the mood and change the subject, I asked him how long he
had been in Vannes. 30 years. What did he think of the changes in
Vannes over that time? "A catastrophe. A total fucking catastrophe!
You know, it used to be you could go somewhere and have a smoke and a
glass of alcohol, and joke about this and that and talk about anything
you wanted, say whatever you pleased. Now it is like we are in fucking
prison! [He held up his hands, bound together, to brandish the virtual
shackles that had been imposed on him] And you know what? It is the
fucking US that is responsible! We learn every BAD thing from the US,
all this PC bullshit!"
I am sorry to say this but the whole screed sort of made me laugh....
On top of everything else, apparently this taxi driver's son has some
kind of job at Harvard! Doing what I am not sure, probably working as
a mid-level administrator in some capacity.... At the end he told me
that he was going to go live in the Canaries. I somehow doubt that he
will find that an improvement on Vannes (which BTW is a very nice
little medieval city well worth a visit, and which I am glad I saw
because I was rather disappointed by Rennes and Brest and would have
had a negative view of Brittany had I not spent some time in Vannes).
Anyway, clearly a guy who voted for Le Pen.
So that was that. Then I went on to Nantes. Worked late at the hotel,
then saw the city for 5 hours or so this morning. Quite an interesting
place. Nantes has a ducal palace that you can see pretty quickly, a
place with mixed architecture including a 14th century tower and then
some buildings added later in the 16th century, and some surrounding
walls, some of which also date back to the 14th century or even
earlier. From the ramparts you can see the following:
http://monumentsdefrance.com/tour-lu-nantes
Which is the original site of Lefevre Utile, the company that makes
those Petit Beurre biscuits that are now sold worldwide....
In addition, Nantes is similar to Genoa and Sevilla and similar cities
in that its fortunes were closely tied to the rise of the Atlantic
economy in the early modern period of European history, and in
particular to the slave trade. There is in fact a monument to the
abolition of slavery in the city, and the local art museum has current
exhibitions about the subject bib a local artist from Rennes and a
Congolese (now Canadian) artist.... And one thing you notice about
Nantes walking around is the large number of monumental public squares
dating of course from that era, clearly built with money derived from
Atlantic trading and the slave trade in particular. And there are also
a lot of city blocks with massive three and four story buildings in
stone, with the ground floor dedicated to all manner of shops and then
the upper floors presumable serving as nice apartments and condos for
the well heeled. You can see some of this in other French cities
(Nancy, which I visited last year, has one very large public square
like this, as does Strasbourg), but I had never seen as much of it as
I did in Nantes today.... It was very reminiscent of Paris, where such
architecture can be found all over the city. And it also reminded me
of the nice street in Genoa with all the merchants' mansions paid for
by that city's trading empire, though the amount of Genoa occupied by
such mansions is small and the city has its squalid districts,
especially near the port.
So I went and I saw and I took it all in. And then got the train to La
Rochelle, a charming little seaport with an interesting history of its
own:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Rochelle#Born_in_La_Rochelle
Very crowded in the old port this PM, so I will go back and see what I
can early tomorrow Am when hopefully the locals and the other tourists
are sleeping off their drunk following today's World Cup match, and
things will be a bit quieter. And then on to Poitiers, to see its
famous cathedral, and then on to Chartres on Sunday, before returning
to Paris on Monday.
JKM
John Marchioro
Jul 7, 2018, 5:19:10 AM7/7/18
to not-honyaku-redux
July 7
La Rochelle
OK, just spent four hours roaming around La Rochelle, an absolutely
charming place that was not even on my radar 48 hours ago. Here is
what happened. I made a reservation at the Hotel Moliere in Angers,
which is not far from Nantes, due east of it. The original idea was to
see Angers, then go on to Le Mans, but the hotels in Le Mans all cost
a fortune for some reason (and I do not think it is racing season or
anything, it was just some glitch with Booking.com, a mediocre site in
my experience). So I scrubbed Le Mans and decided to go south to see
Poitiers (which has a famous cathedral that I have always wanted to
see) instead. OK, so far so good. Only about 4 days ago I got an
e-mail from Dickwad at Hotel Moliere informing me that my credit card
does not work (unfortunately, this is what you get when you have a
bank in New Hampshire, the banks are completely hopeless when it comes
to international travel and the like) and my reservation would be
cancelled within 24 hours. So I tried to say, hey, I will pay in cash
on arrival, etc. etc. etc., but Dickwad (not sure if it is Monsieur,
Madame or Madamoiselle Dickwad, Dickwad did not provide details about
his or her gender and marital status) said Non Non Non! Reservation
annulle! Which just goes to prove that while France is infinitely more
tourist friendly today than when I studied here 40 years ago, there is
still no lack of assholes here.
So I started considering alternatives, and saw that La Rochelle was an
alternative.... And this is similar to what happened to me last year.
I wanted to stay a night in Nevers (Nevers is the little town from
which the female lead in "Hiroshima Mon Amour" hails, has a couple of
old buildings, nothing special, but picturesque in its own way) after
staying in Bourges and before staying in Dijon. For some reason all
the cheap hotels in Nevers were booked and the expensive ones were
simply too expensive to justify it... So I went to Auxerre instead.
Auxerre had not been on my radar to that point, but it is a wonderful
little town and happens to have a lot of early Christian ruins that
are near unique in France, stuff dating back to the 6th and 7th
centuries.... A pleasant surprise, purely by chance.
Ditto with La Rochelle.
First though, the train ride. The first stop about 30 minutes out of
Nantes was this place:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Roche-sur-Yon
The heart of La Vendee, which as I mentioned was the locus of a revolt
against the revolutionary regime in 1793, said revolt ending in a
bloodbath that claimed upwards of 240,000 souls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vendée
Unfortunately a visit to Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne was not possible this
time around.... It would be hard to do without a car, truth be told,
it just is not easy to get to where that museum is by public
transport.
The countryside as we travelled south was fairly non-descript, very
rural, cows here and there, fields with fresh cut bales of hay here
and there, fields of maize and wheat here and there as well..... Very
little evidence of human habitation, not even a small village or
two.... It is hard to judge from a train line, of course, but this
appeared to be a pretty depopulated region, and probably is one of the
poorer areas of France from what I could see, certainly nowhere near
as prosperous as Brittany, still less Normandy, with its rich
agriculture and ubiquitous cows.
I got into La Rochelle around 2 PM, dragged my bags and rear end over
to the Ibis..... Finally a room with air conditioning. No air
conditioning in either Normandy or Brittany, but I finally went far
enough south that it was obligatory.... But then I thought, hmmmm,
need some food, need something to drink. So I asked at the front desk.
It turns out that La Rochelle is a one supermarket town for the
car-less.... There is one Monoprix in the center of the city about 15
minutes from my hotel, so I once again dragged my rear over there. The
old port and the city center were packed. Classic French scene, lots
of cafes and restaurants in the port area, with huge crowds of people
there already around 3:15 drinking grog at tables in expectation of
the match against Uruguay. I found the Monoprix, bought some food
(delicious duck pate, Italian bread sticks flavored with olives, Gouda
cheese.... I love Gouda cheese) and then thought, hmmmm, I am trying
to quit drinking, gotta lose some weight, but.... It is the World Cup,
right? So for a minute I pondered whether I should buy one beer for
just the afternoon match, or one each for both matches.... And then I
comprised and bought a 6-pack of Kronenbourg, three beers for each
match. (Hey, listen, that is just French Cartesian logic, if you do
not understand it, you will have to consult a book about la pensee
franchise, don't blame me.... but between the beer, the food, the
matches and the air-conditioning, it was a wonderful long and restful
Friday night pour moi). And then I dragged my rear back to my hotel
room and enjoyed both matches.
This AM I got up around 6 AM and did a slow tour of the port area,
then the adjacent city center. Charming place, but one obvious point
is that it exists almost entirely off of tourism.... I would bet 75%
of this town's economy is directly related to the tourist industry.
There is a marina with a lot of sailing boats, no doubt there are
wealthy Frenchmen in Paris and Bordeaux and the like who maintain
sailboats here and come down to use them this time of year.... And
there is a large port area and no doubt some economic activity
generated from that, and perhaps some fishing as well.... But from
what I could see walking around this is a tourist town, a charming
one, yes, but a tourist town nonetheless. And I will have more to say
about that shortly, but no time to write it up just now, I am down to
30 minutes before I have to go to the station to catch my train to
Poitiers so I need to wrap this up.
One thing I noticed as I walked around was a lot of people standing in
front of a multiplex down in the port area. Apparently there is a
summer international film festival. I glanced at the schedule of the
films being shown today. Three directors were being showcased:
Bergman, Bresson and Kaurismaki. Many showings of many of their films.
But I also noticed some new films that looked pretty interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Souls_(2018_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Can_Eat_Buddha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoplifters_(film)
The last of which is by the great Japanese director Kore'eda, who made
the brilliant "Maborishi".... Among other great films. And
"Shoplifters" won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this past spring, no doubt
a film well worth seeing.
But I have no time. Train leaves in about one hour, my ass and baggage
dragging await me once more, then a 95 minute train ride to Poitiers
ahead. More shortly, but do remember La Rochelle, a place that is
worth a day or two. If I had had an extra day I would have taken the
boat over to Fort Boyard.... Maybe next time around. Nice little town,
glad I happened upon it by chance.
La Rochelle
OK, just spent four hours roaming around La Rochelle, an absolutely
charming place that was not even on my radar 48 hours ago. Here is
what happened. I made a reservation at the Hotel Moliere in Angers,
which is not far from Nantes, due east of it. The original idea was to
see Angers, then go on to Le Mans, but the hotels in Le Mans all cost
a fortune for some reason (and I do not think it is racing season or
anything, it was just some glitch with Booking.com, a mediocre site in
my experience). So I scrubbed Le Mans and decided to go south to see
Poitiers (which has a famous cathedral that I have always wanted to
see) instead. OK, so far so good. Only about 4 days ago I got an
e-mail from Dickwad at Hotel Moliere informing me that my credit card
does not work (unfortunately, this is what you get when you have a
bank in New Hampshire, the banks are completely hopeless when it comes
to international travel and the like) and my reservation would be
cancelled within 24 hours. So I tried to say, hey, I will pay in cash
on arrival, etc. etc. etc., but Dickwad (not sure if it is Monsieur,
Madame or Madamoiselle Dickwad, Dickwad did not provide details about
his or her gender and marital status) said Non Non Non! Reservation
annulle! Which just goes to prove that while France is infinitely more
tourist friendly today than when I studied here 40 years ago, there is
still no lack of assholes here.
So I started considering alternatives, and saw that La Rochelle was an
alternative.... And this is similar to what happened to me last year.
I wanted to stay a night in Nevers (Nevers is the little town from
which the female lead in "Hiroshima Mon Amour" hails, has a couple of
old buildings, nothing special, but picturesque in its own way) after
staying in Bourges and before staying in Dijon. For some reason all
the cheap hotels in Nevers were booked and the expensive ones were
simply too expensive to justify it... So I went to Auxerre instead.
Auxerre had not been on my radar to that point, but it is a wonderful
little town and happens to have a lot of early Christian ruins that
are near unique in France, stuff dating back to the 6th and 7th
centuries.... A pleasant surprise, purely by chance.
Ditto with La Rochelle.
First though, the train ride. The first stop about 30 minutes out of
Nantes was this place:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Roche-sur-Yon
The heart of La Vendee, which as I mentioned was the locus of a revolt
against the revolutionary regime in 1793, said revolt ending in a
bloodbath that claimed upwards of 240,000 souls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vendée
Unfortunately a visit to Les Lucs-sur-Boulogne was not possible this
time around.... It would be hard to do without a car, truth be told,
it just is not easy to get to where that museum is by public
transport.
The countryside as we travelled south was fairly non-descript, very
rural, cows here and there, fields with fresh cut bales of hay here
and there, fields of maize and wheat here and there as well..... Very
little evidence of human habitation, not even a small village or
two.... It is hard to judge from a train line, of course, but this
appeared to be a pretty depopulated region, and probably is one of the
poorer areas of France from what I could see, certainly nowhere near
as prosperous as Brittany, still less Normandy, with its rich
agriculture and ubiquitous cows.
I got into La Rochelle around 2 PM, dragged my bags and rear end over
to the Ibis..... Finally a room with air conditioning. No air
conditioning in either Normandy or Brittany, but I finally went far
enough south that it was obligatory.... But then I thought, hmmmm,
need some food, need something to drink. So I asked at the front desk.
It turns out that La Rochelle is a one supermarket town for the
car-less.... There is one Monoprix in the center of the city about 15
minutes from my hotel, so I once again dragged my rear over there. The
old port and the city center were packed. Classic French scene, lots
of cafes and restaurants in the port area, with huge crowds of people
there already around 3:15 drinking grog at tables in expectation of
the match against Uruguay. I found the Monoprix, bought some food
(delicious duck pate, Italian bread sticks flavored with olives, Gouda
cheese.... I love Gouda cheese) and then thought, hmmmm, I am trying
to quit drinking, gotta lose some weight, but.... It is the World Cup,
right? So for a minute I pondered whether I should buy one beer for
just the afternoon match, or one each for both matches.... And then I
comprised and bought a 6-pack of Kronenbourg, three beers for each
match. (Hey, listen, that is just French Cartesian logic, if you do
not understand it, you will have to consult a book about la pensee
franchise, don't blame me.... but between the beer, the food, the
matches and the air-conditioning, it was a wonderful long and restful
Friday night pour moi). And then I dragged my rear back to my hotel
room and enjoyed both matches.
This AM I got up around 6 AM and did a slow tour of the port area,
then the adjacent city center. Charming place, but one obvious point
is that it exists almost entirely off of tourism.... I would bet 75%
of this town's economy is directly related to the tourist industry.
There is a marina with a lot of sailing boats, no doubt there are
wealthy Frenchmen in Paris and Bordeaux and the like who maintain
sailboats here and come down to use them this time of year.... And
there is a large port area and no doubt some economic activity
generated from that, and perhaps some fishing as well.... But from
what I could see walking around this is a tourist town, a charming
one, yes, but a tourist town nonetheless. And I will have more to say
about that shortly, but no time to write it up just now, I am down to
30 minutes before I have to go to the station to catch my train to
Poitiers so I need to wrap this up.
One thing I noticed as I walked around was a lot of people standing in
front of a multiplex down in the port area. Apparently there is a
summer international film festival. I glanced at the schedule of the
films being shown today. Three directors were being showcased:
Bergman, Bresson and Kaurismaki. Many showings of many of their films.
But I also noticed some new films that looked pretty interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Souls_(2018_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Can_Eat_Buddha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoplifters_(film)
The last of which is by the great Japanese director Kore'eda, who made
the brilliant "Maborishi".... Among other great films. And
"Shoplifters" won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this past spring, no doubt
a film well worth seeing.
But I have no time. Train leaves in about one hour, my ass and baggage
dragging await me once more, then a 95 minute train ride to Poitiers
ahead. More shortly, but do remember La Rochelle, a place that is
worth a day or two. If I had had an extra day I would have taken the
boat over to Fort Boyard.... Maybe next time around. Nice little town,
glad I happened upon it by chance.
John Marchioro
Jul 9, 2018, 10:08:13 AM7/9/18
to not-honyaku-redux
Report on Poitiers coming soon, no time now.
July 9, AM
Just saw the cathedral.... Purely by chance, I was sitting there
inside gazing at the stained glass windows, and while I had seen a lot
of people milling around outside when I had entered the place around
9:30 AM, I did not realize that a funeral was scheduled for 10 AM. And
the 10 AM bell rang and sure enough, the main doors of the cathedral
were thrown open and they all marched in led by a couple of priests
and a casket, about 400 mourners in all.... It was an odd experience,
and after watching for a few minutes I decided this was not the time
for any more gazing at stained glass windows and exited.
Anyway, one of the world's most remarkable cathedrals, with its
amazing stained glass windows, quite a site. The first time around I
came on a cloudy day, did not get the full effect. This morning there
was nary a cloud in the sky, and it was magnificent. Not that I am
going to start attending mass again, no.... But these cathedrals
really are awesome buildings.
I remember a few years ago I was chatting with old friend Steve Young
about Mahalia Jackson, and he insisted on how great a singer she was,
and my response was, "OK, fine, but how can you listen to her wailing
and blubbering on and on about Jesus like that?" I just have never
been able to appreciate Mahalia Jackson (or other gospel singers)
because of all the holey moley stuff for material. Fortunately I do
not feel that way about Gothic cathedrals. They are an amazing thing
to see, especially one with stained glass windows like you see at
Chartres. Nothing like it anywhere, really quite overpowering.
July 9, PM
Now in Paris, at a little Chinese hotel chain called Hipotel. I stayed
at the one in the 20th arrondissement last year. Cheapest digs in
Paris short of a youth hostel. No frills. Though this time I am at the
one near the Gare du Nord, and unlike last year, when I had to use the
communal shower and toilet (and it was a headache at times), I have
facilities in my room. I even got a towel and little bar of soap! They
are spoiling me.... 50 Euros per night.... I don't get cheaper than
that, folks.
OK. I took the 12:52 train from Chartres to Gare Montparnasse, which
is the train station for traveling to places like Bordeaux and
Toulouse, the French southwest. Got off, had to wait about 20 minutes
for a taxi, long line, and ended with a guy from Angola for a driver.
He said little for about 15 minutes, then a woman walked right out
into the street against a red light and he nearly hit her, and he
screeched on his brakes, sounded his horn, yelled abuse at her, the
whole bit. This launched him on a long tirade. I agreed with the early
part of it (namely that that woman was a complete idiot, and also that
had he hit her, it would have been HIM who got screwed in the deal, no
two ways about it), but then started railing about Bush, Clinton,
Bush, Obama..... And it got loopier as we approached my hotel. At one
point he claimed that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was
actually killing off Africans under the guise of vaccinating them....
I have heard some wild conspiracy theories in my time, but that one
took me by surprise. And then he repeated the stuff about Pizzagate,
the story that the Clintons were running some kind of child sex
trafficking ring out of a pizzeria in Alexandria or Arlington,
Virginia, cannot remember which...... Wild-eyed tin-foil hat stuff. I
was not sure whether I should give him a tip or buy him a stiff dose
of thorazine.... Weird, weird, weird.
The Gare du Nord, North Station. Well, this was where all the Gypsies
congregated for years. They begged and begged while you would be
sitting at a cafe having a cafe au lait or whatever, endlessly (if you
sat for 30 minutes, chances are three or four Gypsies would pass by in
that time). They also begged in front of the station. But the noxious
thing was the children, who would particularly target travelers who
were arriving from England on the Eurostar, usually unsuspecting
wide-eyed Americans and Canadians and the like who had started their
European vacations in London and had no idea that they would be
besieged by Gypsy children aiming at stealing their belongings the
minute they descended from the Eurostar. There were multiple roundups
and deportations of these Gypsies despite stern protests from the
European Commission (whose members apparently do not take the
Eurostar).... Even the spineless Hollande, who promised not to deport
them, did exactly that within a month or two of assuming the French
presidency. There were few left in 2012 Sophie, her friends and I took
the Eurostar to London to see the London Olympics.... But I am not
sure what the situation is today. At least as far as the Gypsies are
concerned, that is. What I can report is what I just saw, which is
that there are hundreds and hundreds of Africans milling around the
streets around my hotel, which is right across from the Gare du Nord.
And you will not believe this, but I really did just see the
following. I checked in, put my bags in my room, and then went to the
City Supermarket around the corner to buy some Gouda cheese,
croissants, etc., and some orange juice (it is hot and humid, not
terribly so but enough that it is uncomfortable). As It turned the
corner a police car pulled up. Three cops jumped up and went up to two
guys who standing on a street corner. Behind them was a low chain link
fence around some trees. The cops surrounded the two, and immediately
went after a white plastic bag that was sitting at the bottom of one
of the trees, just inside the fence. Now, I do not know what was in
the bag, but the two guys were asked a few questions and then put into
handcuffs and dragged off. Along with the bag. They were not
sub-Saharan Africans though, and it was hard to tell where they might
be from,. If I had to guess I would say Turkish or perhaps Syrian....
But very hard to tell. They are in deep shit now, that is for sure.
So then I bought my Gouda cheese etc. and returned to my room.
I stayed near the Gare du Nord, at a Novotel, 6 years back. What I
remember most from the experience was all the sirens all night long,
that and the constant police patrols whenever I went out. I also
remember walking from the Gare du Nord a few blocks looking for a
place to eat lunch, and seeing a sign in the window of a restaurant
(closed, did not open until dinnertime) that said, "Chers Monsieurs,
Please do not piss in the doorway of this restaurant. The smell is
overpowering and it drives potential customers away!" Or words to that
effect.
Charming neighborhood.
Now it is time to work, a lot to do in the next 74 hours before my
flight to Berlin.
July 9, AM
Just saw the cathedral.... Purely by chance, I was sitting there
inside gazing at the stained glass windows, and while I had seen a lot
of people milling around outside when I had entered the place around
9:30 AM, I did not realize that a funeral was scheduled for 10 AM. And
the 10 AM bell rang and sure enough, the main doors of the cathedral
were thrown open and they all marched in led by a couple of priests
and a casket, about 400 mourners in all.... It was an odd experience,
and after watching for a few minutes I decided this was not the time
for any more gazing at stained glass windows and exited.
Anyway, one of the world's most remarkable cathedrals, with its
amazing stained glass windows, quite a site. The first time around I
came on a cloudy day, did not get the full effect. This morning there
was nary a cloud in the sky, and it was magnificent. Not that I am
going to start attending mass again, no.... But these cathedrals
really are awesome buildings.
I remember a few years ago I was chatting with old friend Steve Young
about Mahalia Jackson, and he insisted on how great a singer she was,
and my response was, "OK, fine, but how can you listen to her wailing
and blubbering on and on about Jesus like that?" I just have never
been able to appreciate Mahalia Jackson (or other gospel singers)
because of all the holey moley stuff for material. Fortunately I do
not feel that way about Gothic cathedrals. They are an amazing thing
to see, especially one with stained glass windows like you see at
Chartres. Nothing like it anywhere, really quite overpowering.
July 9, PM
Now in Paris, at a little Chinese hotel chain called Hipotel. I stayed
at the one in the 20th arrondissement last year. Cheapest digs in
Paris short of a youth hostel. No frills. Though this time I am at the
one near the Gare du Nord, and unlike last year, when I had to use the
communal shower and toilet (and it was a headache at times), I have
facilities in my room. I even got a towel and little bar of soap! They
are spoiling me.... 50 Euros per night.... I don't get cheaper than
that, folks.
OK. I took the 12:52 train from Chartres to Gare Montparnasse, which
is the train station for traveling to places like Bordeaux and
Toulouse, the French southwest. Got off, had to wait about 20 minutes
for a taxi, long line, and ended with a guy from Angola for a driver.
He said little for about 15 minutes, then a woman walked right out
into the street against a red light and he nearly hit her, and he
screeched on his brakes, sounded his horn, yelled abuse at her, the
whole bit. This launched him on a long tirade. I agreed with the early
part of it (namely that that woman was a complete idiot, and also that
had he hit her, it would have been HIM who got screwed in the deal, no
two ways about it), but then started railing about Bush, Clinton,
Bush, Obama..... And it got loopier as we approached my hotel. At one
point he claimed that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was
actually killing off Africans under the guise of vaccinating them....
I have heard some wild conspiracy theories in my time, but that one
took me by surprise. And then he repeated the stuff about Pizzagate,
the story that the Clintons were running some kind of child sex
trafficking ring out of a pizzeria in Alexandria or Arlington,
Virginia, cannot remember which...... Wild-eyed tin-foil hat stuff. I
was not sure whether I should give him a tip or buy him a stiff dose
of thorazine.... Weird, weird, weird.
The Gare du Nord, North Station. Well, this was where all the Gypsies
congregated for years. They begged and begged while you would be
sitting at a cafe having a cafe au lait or whatever, endlessly (if you
sat for 30 minutes, chances are three or four Gypsies would pass by in
that time). They also begged in front of the station. But the noxious
thing was the children, who would particularly target travelers who
were arriving from England on the Eurostar, usually unsuspecting
wide-eyed Americans and Canadians and the like who had started their
European vacations in London and had no idea that they would be
besieged by Gypsy children aiming at stealing their belongings the
minute they descended from the Eurostar. There were multiple roundups
and deportations of these Gypsies despite stern protests from the
European Commission (whose members apparently do not take the
Eurostar).... Even the spineless Hollande, who promised not to deport
them, did exactly that within a month or two of assuming the French
presidency. There were few left in 2012 Sophie, her friends and I took
the Eurostar to London to see the London Olympics.... But I am not
sure what the situation is today. At least as far as the Gypsies are
concerned, that is. What I can report is what I just saw, which is
that there are hundreds and hundreds of Africans milling around the
streets around my hotel, which is right across from the Gare du Nord.
And you will not believe this, but I really did just see the
following. I checked in, put my bags in my room, and then went to the
City Supermarket around the corner to buy some Gouda cheese,
croissants, etc., and some orange juice (it is hot and humid, not
terribly so but enough that it is uncomfortable). As It turned the
corner a police car pulled up. Three cops jumped up and went up to two
guys who standing on a street corner. Behind them was a low chain link
fence around some trees. The cops surrounded the two, and immediately
went after a white plastic bag that was sitting at the bottom of one
of the trees, just inside the fence. Now, I do not know what was in
the bag, but the two guys were asked a few questions and then put into
handcuffs and dragged off. Along with the bag. They were not
sub-Saharan Africans though, and it was hard to tell where they might
be from,. If I had to guess I would say Turkish or perhaps Syrian....
But very hard to tell. They are in deep shit now, that is for sure.
So then I bought my Gouda cheese etc. and returned to my room.
I stayed near the Gare du Nord, at a Novotel, 6 years back. What I
remember most from the experience was all the sirens all night long,
that and the constant police patrols whenever I went out. I also
remember walking from the Gare du Nord a few blocks looking for a
place to eat lunch, and seeing a sign in the window of a restaurant
(closed, did not open until dinnertime) that said, "Chers Monsieurs,
Please do not piss in the doorway of this restaurant. The smell is
overpowering and it drives potential customers away!" Or words to that
effect.
Charming neighborhood.
Now it is time to work, a lot to do in the next 74 hours before my
flight to Berlin.
John Marchioro
Jul 9, 2018, 10:09:16 AM7/9/18
to not-honyaku-redux
This AM I was in Chartres. I am talking about Chartres cathedral in
the post about this AM below. Sorry I did not identify it better.
the post about this AM below. Sorry I did not identify it better.
John Marchioro
Jul 11, 2018, 3:14:37 PM7/11/18
to not-honyaku-redux
Paris:
July 11
You probably saw this....
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/books/review/10-french-novels.html
Yesterday I found a copy of Blas de Robles novel about Brazil, "There
Where the Tigers Are at Home".... And I bought 5 Le Clezio novels, the
Slimani novel, and a bunch of other stuff that won one of the three
big prizes for best novel (Prix Goncourt, Prix Medicis, Grand Prix de
l'Academie Francaise). I also bought a copy of Pierre Billard's bio of
Louis Malle, which won the Prix Goncourt for best biography.... But I
could not find Carriere's "The Kingdom" and a few other things.... I
bought one book ("This Blinding Absence of Light") by Tahar ben
Jalloun but may go back and get a couple more of his novels today,
apparently he wrote some earlier books that got a lot of attention,
back in the 1980s. Very interesting guy, quite prolific (like a lot of
these French writers are… or in his case like a lot of these Moroccan
writers who write in French are).
Do you know anything about Volodine? Looks interesting, and one of his
books, which I could not find yesterday either, "Terminus Radieux",
also won a big award....
Anyway, there is a post office a couple of blocks from here, so I am
going to ship it all to Japan tomorrow, along with the postcards and
refrigerator magnets and the rest of the detritus that I picked up
along the way. Send me your address, Tom, and I will send you a nice
postcard of Chartres.
Great match yesterday, by the way. Fuckers were baying like hounds and
beeping their horns all night long here..... Still hearing some horns
in the distance. I would bet France will be the strong favorite in the
final. A France-England final would be great.... I will watch it in
Luebeck.... Where I will be spending two nights after two nights in
Berlin, starting tomorrow.
OK, back to work, gotta "feed the bear"... Sigh. A pain in the ass to
have to work while here, but it is life.
K.
Paris
Well, I dragged my rear back over to Gibert Jeune, among other things,
today.... Bought a few more novels, will throw them in a box and ship
them off to Tokyo tomorrow morning.... Something to keep me busy in
the years to come. I found "Black Moses" and the earlier books by
Tahar ben Jalloun, and also bought the book by NDiaye that was
recommended in the NYT article.... And a few other odds and ends. I
wanted to get some works by Claude Simon, who like Modiani and Le
Clezio won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but it all seemed a bit
much.... Maybe next time around.
I also did a quick trip to the area around the Pompidou Center, always
a 24-hour circus there. There is a really good DVD store there and I
was looking for the following film:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent,_François,_Paul_and_the_Others
By reputation a great film. Have never been able to download it, and
it is obscenely expensive on Amazon.... sadly the guy there said he
was sold out, had it in stock but now all gone. I will try at FNAC on
the Champs-Elysees tomorrow AM. Grrrrr.......
I did buy a couple of films by Jim Jarmusch, another by Gus van Zant
(appears to be a thinly disguised biopic of Kurt Cobain), and also
"The Lobster", which sounded interesting enough that I thought it
would be worth the 5 Euros I paid for it.... Like I said, this shop is
great, you can get a slew of films from all over the world for prices
from 3 to 10 Euros.... An amazing place. FNAC is not so amazing, it
has great stock, but it also has prices to match.
As I walked around the city today I noticed lots of empty beer and
wine and other grog-containing bottles, drained to the last drop and
cast in the nearest gutter or base of a lamppost..... Clearly last
night's match was a Durkheimian moment of collective solidarity, or
perhaps a Freudian one of collective mass orgasm, I am not sure which.
What I do know is that the French are going to be favored against
either of the two teams playing tonight, and if they lose on Sunday
the collective solidarity/collective mass orgasm will quickly be
transformed into a moment of collective angst that makes the annual
self-flagellation of Red Sox fans seem minor by comparison. It sort of
makes you hope France loses, just to take them down a notch..... A
victory could make them all as insufferable as they were just a
decades ago, all over again.
Anyway, back to my Ulysses-like meanderings around the globe. I just
bought some Sri Lankan food down the street (yes, real Sri Lankan
food, which of course I have eaten since I spent a week in that
country a decade ago, and remember it as being incredibly spicy but
also quite delicious), but I think that now (less than 2 hours before
the match is going to start) I will also go get a burger and fries at
the place around the corner (called, of all things, "Beni Mac",
apparently an Algerian or Tunisian fast food joint) just to facilitate
matters tomorrow, when I have to a) visit the post office; b) go see
Notre Dame again for the first time since 2001; c) go over to FNAC;
and d) pack up my stuff and head out to CDG for the flight to Berlin
at 5:55 PM. Better to have the food bought and available for scarfing
down, than to be trying to deal with all of the above on an empty
stomach.
And on that happy note, over and out from Paris. I will be in touch in
a couple of days.
Addendum:
Well, I was packing my bags and sorting out my stuff, and believe it
or not the following just happened.
I went to Beni Mac and ordered a burger and fries. There was a wait,
so the middle-aged guy at the counter gave me a little cup of very hot
tea. It was delicious, so I gave him 1 Euro as a tip, took my burger
and fries and left.
Around the corner from the Beni Mac is a Carrefour City market, and I
went there to buy a so-called "Sticker Album" for my sister Joan. I
bought and left.
Then I went to the newsstand across from that low chain link fence
that I referenced earlier to buy a copy of "Liberation", which has
become a major French daily rivaling older staid publications like "Le
Monde"....
And then this happened. I put "Liberation" in my bag and walked
towards the same corner where I saw the two guys dragged off two days
back. This time there was a big crowd of Africans but also.... two
very burly guys, perhaps North African, perhaps Turkish or Syrian, I
do not know. And the two burly guys had large tree branches, about 4
feet long each, from which the smaller side branches had been
carefully stripped... Clearly they had prepared for this moment. And
then words were exchanged and one of them started swinging his
branch... A melee ensued and I was unfortunately in the middle of it,
purely by bad luck. Some people intervened to calm things down, but
then it spread to the Bar des Capuchins (or Bistrot or Restaurant or
something des Capuchins, it is right there in the same place) and some
Africans seated there were assaulted, and they responded by jumping up
and throwing things. Including a beer glass, which was hurled right at
me, but which fortunately glanced off something on the person standing
in front of me (I think it was probably his wrist watch, since I heard
a clinking sound that made it clear that the glass hit something made
of metal). And I am not exaggerating here, the glass was deflected a
foot or so before it would have hit me in the head, just a fact. Wrong
place, wrong time. Then ensued chaos, but fortunately it moved to the
left and my hotel was on the right, so I beat feet rightward when a
path opened.
I asked the guy at the front desk of the hotel (a North African) what
gives. He said that the situation is as follows. Humanitarian
organizations show up and hand out food at this place, which is why
all the people congregate there. And I said, OK, but I have seen
people selling drugs and cigarettes and other contraband.... And he
shrugged and said, well, it is all mixed in, right? And I asked what
the conflict between the Africans and the others was about, and he was
no more helpful about that one.
He also assured me that the police were in control.
I told him the one thing that I did not see during the fight was any cops.
This really did just happen to me. I am not making this up. It was
7:30 PM, the sun was still out.... Never again. Not this place.
July 11
You probably saw this....
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/books/review/10-french-novels.html
Yesterday I found a copy of Blas de Robles novel about Brazil, "There
Where the Tigers Are at Home".... And I bought 5 Le Clezio novels, the
Slimani novel, and a bunch of other stuff that won one of the three
big prizes for best novel (Prix Goncourt, Prix Medicis, Grand Prix de
l'Academie Francaise). I also bought a copy of Pierre Billard's bio of
Louis Malle, which won the Prix Goncourt for best biography.... But I
could not find Carriere's "The Kingdom" and a few other things.... I
bought one book ("This Blinding Absence of Light") by Tahar ben
Jalloun but may go back and get a couple more of his novels today,
apparently he wrote some earlier books that got a lot of attention,
back in the 1980s. Very interesting guy, quite prolific (like a lot of
these French writers are… or in his case like a lot of these Moroccan
writers who write in French are).
Do you know anything about Volodine? Looks interesting, and one of his
books, which I could not find yesterday either, "Terminus Radieux",
also won a big award....
Anyway, there is a post office a couple of blocks from here, so I am
going to ship it all to Japan tomorrow, along with the postcards and
refrigerator magnets and the rest of the detritus that I picked up
along the way. Send me your address, Tom, and I will send you a nice
postcard of Chartres.
Great match yesterday, by the way. Fuckers were baying like hounds and
beeping their horns all night long here..... Still hearing some horns
in the distance. I would bet France will be the strong favorite in the
final. A France-England final would be great.... I will watch it in
Luebeck.... Where I will be spending two nights after two nights in
Berlin, starting tomorrow.
OK, back to work, gotta "feed the bear"... Sigh. A pain in the ass to
have to work while here, but it is life.
K.
Paris
Well, I dragged my rear back over to Gibert Jeune, among other things,
today.... Bought a few more novels, will throw them in a box and ship
them off to Tokyo tomorrow morning.... Something to keep me busy in
the years to come. I found "Black Moses" and the earlier books by
Tahar ben Jalloun, and also bought the book by NDiaye that was
recommended in the NYT article.... And a few other odds and ends. I
wanted to get some works by Claude Simon, who like Modiani and Le
Clezio won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but it all seemed a bit
much.... Maybe next time around.
I also did a quick trip to the area around the Pompidou Center, always
a 24-hour circus there. There is a really good DVD store there and I
was looking for the following film:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent,_François,_Paul_and_the_Others
By reputation a great film. Have never been able to download it, and
it is obscenely expensive on Amazon.... sadly the guy there said he
was sold out, had it in stock but now all gone. I will try at FNAC on
the Champs-Elysees tomorrow AM. Grrrrr.......
I did buy a couple of films by Jim Jarmusch, another by Gus van Zant
(appears to be a thinly disguised biopic of Kurt Cobain), and also
"The Lobster", which sounded interesting enough that I thought it
would be worth the 5 Euros I paid for it.... Like I said, this shop is
great, you can get a slew of films from all over the world for prices
from 3 to 10 Euros.... An amazing place. FNAC is not so amazing, it
has great stock, but it also has prices to match.
As I walked around the city today I noticed lots of empty beer and
wine and other grog-containing bottles, drained to the last drop and
cast in the nearest gutter or base of a lamppost..... Clearly last
night's match was a Durkheimian moment of collective solidarity, or
perhaps a Freudian one of collective mass orgasm, I am not sure which.
What I do know is that the French are going to be favored against
either of the two teams playing tonight, and if they lose on Sunday
the collective solidarity/collective mass orgasm will quickly be
transformed into a moment of collective angst that makes the annual
self-flagellation of Red Sox fans seem minor by comparison. It sort of
makes you hope France loses, just to take them down a notch..... A
victory could make them all as insufferable as they were just a
decades ago, all over again.
Anyway, back to my Ulysses-like meanderings around the globe. I just
bought some Sri Lankan food down the street (yes, real Sri Lankan
food, which of course I have eaten since I spent a week in that
country a decade ago, and remember it as being incredibly spicy but
also quite delicious), but I think that now (less than 2 hours before
the match is going to start) I will also go get a burger and fries at
the place around the corner (called, of all things, "Beni Mac",
apparently an Algerian or Tunisian fast food joint) just to facilitate
matters tomorrow, when I have to a) visit the post office; b) go see
Notre Dame again for the first time since 2001; c) go over to FNAC;
and d) pack up my stuff and head out to CDG for the flight to Berlin
at 5:55 PM. Better to have the food bought and available for scarfing
down, than to be trying to deal with all of the above on an empty
stomach.
And on that happy note, over and out from Paris. I will be in touch in
a couple of days.
Addendum:
Well, I was packing my bags and sorting out my stuff, and believe it
or not the following just happened.
I went to Beni Mac and ordered a burger and fries. There was a wait,
so the middle-aged guy at the counter gave me a little cup of very hot
tea. It was delicious, so I gave him 1 Euro as a tip, took my burger
and fries and left.
Around the corner from the Beni Mac is a Carrefour City market, and I
went there to buy a so-called "Sticker Album" for my sister Joan. I
bought and left.
Then I went to the newsstand across from that low chain link fence
that I referenced earlier to buy a copy of "Liberation", which has
become a major French daily rivaling older staid publications like "Le
Monde"....
And then this happened. I put "Liberation" in my bag and walked
towards the same corner where I saw the two guys dragged off two days
back. This time there was a big crowd of Africans but also.... two
very burly guys, perhaps North African, perhaps Turkish or Syrian, I
do not know. And the two burly guys had large tree branches, about 4
feet long each, from which the smaller side branches had been
carefully stripped... Clearly they had prepared for this moment. And
then words were exchanged and one of them started swinging his
branch... A melee ensued and I was unfortunately in the middle of it,
purely by bad luck. Some people intervened to calm things down, but
then it spread to the Bar des Capuchins (or Bistrot or Restaurant or
something des Capuchins, it is right there in the same place) and some
Africans seated there were assaulted, and they responded by jumping up
and throwing things. Including a beer glass, which was hurled right at
me, but which fortunately glanced off something on the person standing
in front of me (I think it was probably his wrist watch, since I heard
a clinking sound that made it clear that the glass hit something made
of metal). And I am not exaggerating here, the glass was deflected a
foot or so before it would have hit me in the head, just a fact. Wrong
place, wrong time. Then ensued chaos, but fortunately it moved to the
left and my hotel was on the right, so I beat feet rightward when a
path opened.
I asked the guy at the front desk of the hotel (a North African) what
gives. He said that the situation is as follows. Humanitarian
organizations show up and hand out food at this place, which is why
all the people congregate there. And I said, OK, but I have seen
people selling drugs and cigarettes and other contraband.... And he
shrugged and said, well, it is all mixed in, right? And I asked what
the conflict between the Africans and the others was about, and he was
no more helpful about that one.
He also assured me that the police were in control.
I told him the one thing that I did not see during the fight was any cops.
This really did just happen to me. I am not making this up. It was
7:30 PM, the sun was still out.... Never again. Not this place.
John Marchioro
Jul 12, 2018, 1:33:41 AM7/12/18
to not-honyaku-redux
This happened 12 hours ago. I am not shaking or quaking, but I will
never stay in this fucking neighborhood again after this.
July 11, early evening
Well, I was packing my bags and sorting out my stuff, and believe it
or not the following just happened.
I went to Beni Mac and ordered a burger and fries. There was a wait,
so the middle-aged guy at the counter gave me a little cup of very hot
tea. It was delicious, so I gave him 1 Euro as a tip, took my burger
and fries and left.
Around the corner from the Beni Mac is a Carrefour City market, and I
went there to buy a so-called "Sticker Album" (a French World Cup
team, in which you paste 96 stickers that you collect, presumably at
places like Carrefour City though I honestly do not know) for my
sister Joan. I bought it and left.
never stay in this fucking neighborhood again after this.
July 11, early evening
Well, I was packing my bags and sorting out my stuff, and believe it
or not the following just happened.
I went to Beni Mac and ordered a burger and fries. There was a wait,
so the middle-aged guy at the counter gave me a little cup of very hot
tea. It was delicious, so I gave him 1 Euro as a tip, took my burger
and fries and left.
Around the corner from the Beni Mac is a Carrefour City market, and I
team, in which you paste 96 stickers that you collect, presumably at
places like Carrefour City though I honestly do not know) for my
sister Joan. I bought it and left.
John Marchioro
Jul 15, 2018, 10:57:32 AM7/15/18
to not-honyaku-redux
Berlin
I was working the entire time, did nothing.
Luebeck, July 15
OK, just spent 6 hours walking around the place.... Quite a nice
little city, touristy but not excessively so.
First of all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Lübeck_in_World_War_II
Obviously this happened only a few months after Pearl Harbor but a
long while after the start of WWII, and nearly couple of years after
the bombing of Coventry..... So Luebeck was certainly not spared.
The first thing I saw was the Holstentor, about 5 minutes from my
hotel. After that I crossed the canal (perhaps formerly a moat) around
the city. There was an Italian gelato place right there (another thing
I have seen many of along with Thai Massage Parlors and sex toy
shops), and it claimed to have "authentic" gelato, so I decided to be
the judge of that and went in for some pistachio gelato and coffee.
Quite delicious, but not entirely Italian....
Then I saw a church on the right and made my way over there. St.
Peter's. Which had a tower that cost 4 Euros to access, but I thought
what the hell, this way I can see the entire city. I asked the woman
at the counter if it was arduous to climb up and she so "No, there is
an elevator". So all that WWII bombing did have a positive effect
insofar as the facilities were upgraded.
I got up to the top and while the view was nice I was disappointed not
to be able to see the sea.... It is a bit distant from the city
itself. And then I asked a family there, in my miserable German, "Do
you know where the Buddenbrooks Haus is?" They turned out to be
tourists, though they had a map. I figured out from some interaction
between them that they were Italians, so I switched into my equally
miserable Italian and had a short conversation with them. They were
from Torino. They did not know about the Buddenbrooks Haus or the
Willy Brandt Haus, but it was easy enough to locate them on the map.
And so we said farewell and off I went to see the Marienkirche.
On the way I passed by the Rathaus (for those who do not speak German,
no, it does not mean what you think, it means City Hall or something
of that sort. Unfortunately the sign there said no visits allowed if
you are not on a tour..... Rats.
Then I went to the Marienkirche, but it was too early, visits were
only allowed starting at noon. But I did see this:
http://www.travelsignposts.com/Germany/sightseeing/the-cutest-devil-in-lubeck
The wine bar was not open for business any longer, but I did notice an
Italian restaurant about a block away that was named Restaurante
Diavolo Pizzeria, the Restaurant Devil Pizzeria, apparently an Italian
attempt to cash in on old Satan....
So then I went to see the Buddenbrooks Haus, a few steps from the Marienkirche.
Like the Marienkirche, the Buddenbrooks Haus got smashed in WWII.
There were no photos inside of the damage but apparently it was
obliterated. The facade has been restored, but inside the best you get
to see of the original home are some photos, a few pieces of
furniture, an organ and a few other things. Presumably the same is
true of the Mann's home in Berlin, which was similarly pulverized in
the war.
The Buddenbrooks Haus focuses primarily on Heinrich Mann (most famous
for the scandalous "Professor Unrat", better known as "The Blue
Angel", a film made in both German and English in the early talky
years and that made Marlene Dietrich an international sensation) and
his better known younger brother, Thomas, but also covers the entire
Mann family starting with the brothers' grandparents and coming all
the way down to the present day. There is a lot of stuff about the
rivalry between the brothers for literary fame, but also the whole
issue of how a well-to-do bourgeois family running a large and very
successful trading firm found itself incapable of reproducing itself
by generating a competent and willing successor at a certain point, a
topic at the heart of the novel "Buddenbrooks". And other stuff as
well.... The many suicides in the Mann family, including both of the
brothers' sisters, and also Klaus Mann, Thomas Mann's first son. Klaus
(who wrote the novel "Mephisto", the basis for the great film by
Istvan Szabo) apparently had a morbid disposition and lived in a sorry
age for such a disposition. In his early 40s, weighed down by his
inherent psychological difficulties and burdened further by a drug
addiction, he bemoaned in 1947 or so the division of Europe "between
American money and Russian fanaticism", and convinced himself somehow
that the way to set things right was wave of mass suicides by
prominent writers and other artists. That must have been some powerful
hallucinogen that he was addicted to, if he truly believed that.
Anyway, the one thing that I did NOT notice in the Buddenbrooks Haus
was any mention of Thomas Mann's homosexuality, something that did not
get much discussion for many years but which has become a case of
something hidden in plain sight since the publication of this book in
the 1990s:
https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Mann-Literature-Anthony-Heilbut/dp/039455633X/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531685348&sr=1-5&keywords=anthony+heilbut
At least in the US.... Perhaps discussion started earlier in Germany,
I do not know. I did ask the woman at the ticket counter about it, and
she said, oh, well, you can read about it if you read the exhibits in
the museum, to which she gestured with her hand. I replied, "I see. I
guess I must have missed that." I did not miss it. I read every
exhibit carefully, there was no mention of it at all. She also told me
that Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann were all repressed
homosexuals as well. I nodded my head and said, "Oh really?" There was
no mention of that either, and I seriously doubt it is true. (FWIW,
the evidence for Mann's repressed homosexuality derives from his
diaries, which were not made public until 1975, 20 years after his
death.)
The exhibits had a lot of detail about "Buddenbrooks" in particular,
since it is about a family modeled on the Mann family, written in the
local German dialect and set in a city that is a thinly disguised
version of Luebeck. But apparently the shadow of Luebeck loomed very
large in the writing of both brothers, starting with Heinrich's
interesting sounding early book "Small Town Tyrant" and including
"Professor Unrat", a book that is viciously critical of narrow-minded
Protestant and bourgeois morality.... And for such writings the
brothers were called "Nestbeschmutzer", someone who fouls his own
nest, though there are less kind ways to translate the word. The
family's relationship to Luebeck is complicated and would take too
long to recap here. Suffice it to say that after Mann's father (a
distinguished tradesman loyal to the town's Protestant and bourgeois
ethic) died in 1891, the family relocated to Munich, and return visits
were few and far between (Heinrich never came back). Things were made
worse by the local displeasure generated by the brothers' literary
works and then anti-Nazi political stances later on, and reached a low
point when after the bombing of Luebeck in 1942, Thomas Mann said from
his new home in Pacific Palisades, CA, "As someone who comes from
Luebeck, I am sorry to read about the bombing of my hometown. But in
light of the bombing of Coventry, I also remember this lesson, that
everything must be paid for". This comment dogged Mann for the rest of
his life, and when he was made an honorary citizen of Luebeck in 1955
half of the city council boycotted the award.
Then I walked around a bit, saw the Marienkirche and a few other
churches, a hospital that was founded in the 13th century (most of
which could not be visited), and a street with a lot of merchant homes
(only the facades). It was hard to tell what was genuinely old and
what had been restored.... Same everywhere I guess. You just have no
way to go back to 1945 and see what it was like then, and see the
process of change with subsequent restoration and rebuilding. The
Marienkirche was almost certainly destroyed, however. Now one enters
the building on the side, but if you go to where the front porch is
(now closed up) you see photos of before the war, during the war (the
church on fire just after the bombing) and after the war. The prewar
church, a gothic structure dating back to the 14th century with the
usual additions and rebuildings, was quite ornate.... the current one
is rather spare. In the apse there were some statues of Jesus on the
cross and some saints and the like that had apparently decorated the
facade or aisles of the pre-WWII church. There was also a stele
commemorating the war dead of 1914-1918.
There was no such stele for the next war.
As I walked around the town, I noticed two like yellow metal squares
on the ground, implanted in the brick sidewalk. I looked at them. One
said something like this.
Hier lebte Herta Alexander
Im 1880 geboren
Deportierte in 1940
Ermordet in Riga
And another one, about her sister, whose name was Erika, I think.....
Here lived Herta Alexander. Born in 1880. Deported in 1940. Murdered in Riga.
Just the kind of thing that you see here that cheers you up. But you
it not only here, you see this stuff all over France now too.... I saw
a memorial like this in Poitiers and another like it in Chartres...
They are everywhere if you stop and look.
I ended up at the Gunther Grass Museum. Grass apparently lived in the
vicinity of Luebeck for many years, presumably because it reminded him
of his native Danzig (now Gdansk). Unfortunately there was a
Kinderfest there today, meaning the place was free because families
were allowed to bring their kids and engage in various artistic
activities. So a lot of the museum (the parts displaying Grass' work
in other media, particularly sculpture) were closed. And there were a
lot of families milling around and it made it hard to do much there.
Grass - another Nobel Prize winner, like Thomas Mann - is also known
as a Nestbeschmuzer for his "Danzig Trilogy", especially the first
volume of it, "The Tin Drum" (of which I read about 100 pages on this
trip.... slow going, but I will finish it at some point in Russia in a
couple of weeks). That book is partly political but a lot of the
scandalous content deals with topics of sex and religion.... Grass
became much more open about his political views later, and attracted
no lack of criticism for that as well. At the entrance to the museum,
there is a wall with tributes to Grass by many other writers, such as
Mario Vargas Llosa and John Irving, little quotes honoring him. One of
them is from Elfriede Jellinek, another Nobel Laureate whose works,
IMHO, should be collected and burned, or perhaps better repulped and
reprocessed into low cost toilet paper delivered free of charge to the
indigent. There was also this priceless quote from the Bavarian
rightist politician Franz Josef Strauss: "This so-called writer is
completely ignorant of the Bavarian soul. He considers all Bavarians
to be illiterate, more or less, this uppity German poet on his
Pegasus." This was clearly offered for comic relief....
The museum's raison d'être is to show work by artists working in more
than one media, the purpose being to stimulate creativity. The
majority of the space is occupied by Grass's works in sculpture and
drawing, but there is a second floor that is now devoted to George
Bernard Shaw, whom I today learned was an accomplished photographer
(and a failed painter and sculptor). it would be nice to go back and
see the second floor, mostly closed off today, apparently to avoid any
damage caused by rampaging 6 and 7 year olds, and try to develop some
sense of what Grass' accomplishments as a sculptor truly were.
Difficult question, and probably beyond my ken..... I sort of throw
met hands up about this stuff at this point, above my pay grade, or
perhaps below it, hard to say.
Anyway, that was that. Bought some nasi goreng (a Malaysian dish that
Steve Y. and I like to consume at a Malaysian place near MIT, and that
Sophie also hankers for) and a duck curry dish at a Vietnamese place
on the way back (a word to the wise: I cannot vouch for the Chinese
food anywhere in Europe, it is pretty lousy, but if you see a
Vietnamese place in Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic or
Poland, go for it, the food is invariably delicious).... now getting
ready for the big match, which starts in 25 minutes. Hope the above
was diverting, hope some of you can visit this place, it is well worth
the effort, a truly beautiful city, whether the stuff you see is
really the way it looked a century ago or not..... A very nice place
to spend a day, and if you have two days there is a boat cruise that
takes you all the way out to sea, which unfortunately I could not see
from that church tower this AM.
JM
I was working the entire time, did nothing.
Luebeck, July 15
OK, just spent 6 hours walking around the place.... Quite a nice
little city, touristy but not excessively so.
First of all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Lübeck_in_World_War_II
Obviously this happened only a few months after Pearl Harbor but a
long while after the start of WWII, and nearly couple of years after
the bombing of Coventry..... So Luebeck was certainly not spared.
The first thing I saw was the Holstentor, about 5 minutes from my
hotel. After that I crossed the canal (perhaps formerly a moat) around
the city. There was an Italian gelato place right there (another thing
I have seen many of along with Thai Massage Parlors and sex toy
shops), and it claimed to have "authentic" gelato, so I decided to be
the judge of that and went in for some pistachio gelato and coffee.
Quite delicious, but not entirely Italian....
Then I saw a church on the right and made my way over there. St.
Peter's. Which had a tower that cost 4 Euros to access, but I thought
what the hell, this way I can see the entire city. I asked the woman
at the counter if it was arduous to climb up and she so "No, there is
an elevator". So all that WWII bombing did have a positive effect
insofar as the facilities were upgraded.
I got up to the top and while the view was nice I was disappointed not
to be able to see the sea.... It is a bit distant from the city
itself. And then I asked a family there, in my miserable German, "Do
you know where the Buddenbrooks Haus is?" They turned out to be
tourists, though they had a map. I figured out from some interaction
between them that they were Italians, so I switched into my equally
miserable Italian and had a short conversation with them. They were
from Torino. They did not know about the Buddenbrooks Haus or the
Willy Brandt Haus, but it was easy enough to locate them on the map.
And so we said farewell and off I went to see the Marienkirche.
On the way I passed by the Rathaus (for those who do not speak German,
no, it does not mean what you think, it means City Hall or something
of that sort. Unfortunately the sign there said no visits allowed if
you are not on a tour..... Rats.
Then I went to the Marienkirche, but it was too early, visits were
only allowed starting at noon. But I did see this:
http://www.travelsignposts.com/Germany/sightseeing/the-cutest-devil-in-lubeck
The wine bar was not open for business any longer, but I did notice an
Italian restaurant about a block away that was named Restaurante
Diavolo Pizzeria, the Restaurant Devil Pizzeria, apparently an Italian
attempt to cash in on old Satan....
So then I went to see the Buddenbrooks Haus, a few steps from the Marienkirche.
Like the Marienkirche, the Buddenbrooks Haus got smashed in WWII.
There were no photos inside of the damage but apparently it was
obliterated. The facade has been restored, but inside the best you get
to see of the original home are some photos, a few pieces of
furniture, an organ and a few other things. Presumably the same is
true of the Mann's home in Berlin, which was similarly pulverized in
the war.
The Buddenbrooks Haus focuses primarily on Heinrich Mann (most famous
for the scandalous "Professor Unrat", better known as "The Blue
Angel", a film made in both German and English in the early talky
years and that made Marlene Dietrich an international sensation) and
his better known younger brother, Thomas, but also covers the entire
Mann family starting with the brothers' grandparents and coming all
the way down to the present day. There is a lot of stuff about the
rivalry between the brothers for literary fame, but also the whole
issue of how a well-to-do bourgeois family running a large and very
successful trading firm found itself incapable of reproducing itself
by generating a competent and willing successor at a certain point, a
topic at the heart of the novel "Buddenbrooks". And other stuff as
well.... The many suicides in the Mann family, including both of the
brothers' sisters, and also Klaus Mann, Thomas Mann's first son. Klaus
(who wrote the novel "Mephisto", the basis for the great film by
Istvan Szabo) apparently had a morbid disposition and lived in a sorry
age for such a disposition. In his early 40s, weighed down by his
inherent psychological difficulties and burdened further by a drug
addiction, he bemoaned in 1947 or so the division of Europe "between
American money and Russian fanaticism", and convinced himself somehow
that the way to set things right was wave of mass suicides by
prominent writers and other artists. That must have been some powerful
hallucinogen that he was addicted to, if he truly believed that.
Anyway, the one thing that I did NOT notice in the Buddenbrooks Haus
was any mention of Thomas Mann's homosexuality, something that did not
get much discussion for many years but which has become a case of
something hidden in plain sight since the publication of this book in
the 1990s:
https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Mann-Literature-Anthony-Heilbut/dp/039455633X/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531685348&sr=1-5&keywords=anthony+heilbut
At least in the US.... Perhaps discussion started earlier in Germany,
I do not know. I did ask the woman at the ticket counter about it, and
she said, oh, well, you can read about it if you read the exhibits in
the museum, to which she gestured with her hand. I replied, "I see. I
guess I must have missed that." I did not miss it. I read every
exhibit carefully, there was no mention of it at all. She also told me
that Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann were all repressed
homosexuals as well. I nodded my head and said, "Oh really?" There was
no mention of that either, and I seriously doubt it is true. (FWIW,
the evidence for Mann's repressed homosexuality derives from his
diaries, which were not made public until 1975, 20 years after his
death.)
The exhibits had a lot of detail about "Buddenbrooks" in particular,
since it is about a family modeled on the Mann family, written in the
local German dialect and set in a city that is a thinly disguised
version of Luebeck. But apparently the shadow of Luebeck loomed very
large in the writing of both brothers, starting with Heinrich's
interesting sounding early book "Small Town Tyrant" and including
"Professor Unrat", a book that is viciously critical of narrow-minded
Protestant and bourgeois morality.... And for such writings the
brothers were called "Nestbeschmutzer", someone who fouls his own
nest, though there are less kind ways to translate the word. The
family's relationship to Luebeck is complicated and would take too
long to recap here. Suffice it to say that after Mann's father (a
distinguished tradesman loyal to the town's Protestant and bourgeois
ethic) died in 1891, the family relocated to Munich, and return visits
were few and far between (Heinrich never came back). Things were made
worse by the local displeasure generated by the brothers' literary
works and then anti-Nazi political stances later on, and reached a low
point when after the bombing of Luebeck in 1942, Thomas Mann said from
his new home in Pacific Palisades, CA, "As someone who comes from
Luebeck, I am sorry to read about the bombing of my hometown. But in
light of the bombing of Coventry, I also remember this lesson, that
everything must be paid for". This comment dogged Mann for the rest of
his life, and when he was made an honorary citizen of Luebeck in 1955
half of the city council boycotted the award.
Then I walked around a bit, saw the Marienkirche and a few other
churches, a hospital that was founded in the 13th century (most of
which could not be visited), and a street with a lot of merchant homes
(only the facades). It was hard to tell what was genuinely old and
what had been restored.... Same everywhere I guess. You just have no
way to go back to 1945 and see what it was like then, and see the
process of change with subsequent restoration and rebuilding. The
Marienkirche was almost certainly destroyed, however. Now one enters
the building on the side, but if you go to where the front porch is
(now closed up) you see photos of before the war, during the war (the
church on fire just after the bombing) and after the war. The prewar
church, a gothic structure dating back to the 14th century with the
usual additions and rebuildings, was quite ornate.... the current one
is rather spare. In the apse there were some statues of Jesus on the
cross and some saints and the like that had apparently decorated the
facade or aisles of the pre-WWII church. There was also a stele
commemorating the war dead of 1914-1918.
There was no such stele for the next war.
As I walked around the town, I noticed two like yellow metal squares
on the ground, implanted in the brick sidewalk. I looked at them. One
said something like this.
Hier lebte Herta Alexander
Im 1880 geboren
Deportierte in 1940
Ermordet in Riga
And another one, about her sister, whose name was Erika, I think.....
Here lived Herta Alexander. Born in 1880. Deported in 1940. Murdered in Riga.
Just the kind of thing that you see here that cheers you up. But you
it not only here, you see this stuff all over France now too.... I saw
a memorial like this in Poitiers and another like it in Chartres...
They are everywhere if you stop and look.
I ended up at the Gunther Grass Museum. Grass apparently lived in the
vicinity of Luebeck for many years, presumably because it reminded him
of his native Danzig (now Gdansk). Unfortunately there was a
Kinderfest there today, meaning the place was free because families
were allowed to bring their kids and engage in various artistic
activities. So a lot of the museum (the parts displaying Grass' work
in other media, particularly sculpture) were closed. And there were a
lot of families milling around and it made it hard to do much there.
Grass - another Nobel Prize winner, like Thomas Mann - is also known
as a Nestbeschmuzer for his "Danzig Trilogy", especially the first
volume of it, "The Tin Drum" (of which I read about 100 pages on this
trip.... slow going, but I will finish it at some point in Russia in a
couple of weeks). That book is partly political but a lot of the
scandalous content deals with topics of sex and religion.... Grass
became much more open about his political views later, and attracted
no lack of criticism for that as well. At the entrance to the museum,
there is a wall with tributes to Grass by many other writers, such as
Mario Vargas Llosa and John Irving, little quotes honoring him. One of
them is from Elfriede Jellinek, another Nobel Laureate whose works,
IMHO, should be collected and burned, or perhaps better repulped and
reprocessed into low cost toilet paper delivered free of charge to the
indigent. There was also this priceless quote from the Bavarian
rightist politician Franz Josef Strauss: "This so-called writer is
completely ignorant of the Bavarian soul. He considers all Bavarians
to be illiterate, more or less, this uppity German poet on his
Pegasus." This was clearly offered for comic relief....
The museum's raison d'être is to show work by artists working in more
than one media, the purpose being to stimulate creativity. The
majority of the space is occupied by Grass's works in sculpture and
drawing, but there is a second floor that is now devoted to George
Bernard Shaw, whom I today learned was an accomplished photographer
(and a failed painter and sculptor). it would be nice to go back and
see the second floor, mostly closed off today, apparently to avoid any
damage caused by rampaging 6 and 7 year olds, and try to develop some
sense of what Grass' accomplishments as a sculptor truly were.
Difficult question, and probably beyond my ken..... I sort of throw
met hands up about this stuff at this point, above my pay grade, or
perhaps below it, hard to say.
Anyway, that was that. Bought some nasi goreng (a Malaysian dish that
Steve Y. and I like to consume at a Malaysian place near MIT, and that
Sophie also hankers for) and a duck curry dish at a Vietnamese place
on the way back (a word to the wise: I cannot vouch for the Chinese
food anywhere in Europe, it is pretty lousy, but if you see a
Vietnamese place in Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic or
Poland, go for it, the food is invariably delicious).... now getting
ready for the big match, which starts in 25 minutes. Hope the above
was diverting, hope some of you can visit this place, it is well worth
the effort, a truly beautiful city, whether the stuff you see is
really the way it looked a century ago or not..... A very nice place
to spend a day, and if you have two days there is a boat cruise that
takes you all the way out to sea, which unfortunately I could not see
from that church tower this AM.
JM
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