Last day in France

I can’t believe that it is my last day in France!  I can hardly quantify how much I’ve learned and experienced these last four months.  Living and participating in a new culture has opened my eyes to new perspectives, that I’m only a part of a larger world of similar and different systems of doing things and looking at life.  It has also taught me that these systems are not so different, and none of them are “right” or “wrong”, just different ways of experiencing life. 

Listening to Smash Mouth’s “All Star” while I write this, a lyric spoke out a truth that I have learned here in France: “What’s wrong with taking the backstreets?  You’ll never know if you don’t go.”  A lot of the best experiences can only be had after exploring off of the beaten path.  This was especially true in Montpellier’s Old Quarter and in Paris’s Montmartre. 

I have made some great friends over the semester and shared many memorable experiences with them.  I regret leaving them all, but earnestly hope to meet up with them again in the not-so-distant future.  My host family has genuinely become like another family.  I couldn’t have asked to live with a more welcoming, more helpful group of people who I have come to appreciate as the de Boutray family. 

I am almost completely packed; there just remains some last-minute things to throw into my suitcase, which is a full kilogram and some under the allowed weight, which is a magical feeling.  My plane leaves at 6:30 in the morning, and I should be stateside a little bit after 4:00 in the afternoon local time.  So here’s to travel!  See you all soon.

Last weekend in France; Congratulations Graduating Chippewas

I've spent the last two days working on my final two papers for my Minnesota Bureau courses, which as you remember are the coursework portion of my internship and my course on French national identity.  I have finished the first paper for the stage class, which is about French immigration and I am over halfway done with my second paper, about the impact of 18th Century Irish immigration on French society (which is overlooked, but very important). 

The weather here today was fantastic: sunny and warm.  My host family and I took both lunch and dinner outside on the patio.  I am really enjoying the warm, sunny weather after the cold rain that I had in the Loire Valley.

It is hard to believe that this is my last weekend here in France before returning home next week.  It is amazing how fast the time flies now that my time here is drawing to an end.

Before I go, I just want to say congratulations to all of my friends at Central who graduated today.  I'll miss you; next semester won't be the same without you around.

Finished all the work for my internship

On Tuesday, the weather was miserable: pouring rain that lasted all day.  That did not stop me from bicycling the 11 miles to Chambord, a massive château that King François I ordered constructed as a super-hunting lodge.  Leonardo da Vinci, who François had given shelter in France, had a hand in the design, including the massive double-spiraling staircase.  This staircase is constructed a bit like DNA, where there are two ascending spirals that will never meet. Chambord, while impressive, was not my favorite château that I’ve visited.  It is simply too large to be effectively lived in.  It had been gutted during the French Revolution, and many of the massive rooms still stand empty despite others having been refurnished with period (and often the original) furniture. 

Yesterday, I took the train back to Montpellier, spending most of the day traveling.  My host-dad picked me up from the train station.  As my host brother and host mom are not back yet from their vacation, my host dad and I made dinner and dined together.  After that, we spent the evening watching television.

Today I went to my internship and finished recording the last of my radio shows.  I am not completely done with my internship, which is a load off, but a little disappointing.  My Irish music radio show has been playing the last three Sundays, and the last episode should be airing next Monday.  Amazing to think that something I put so much time into is over so quickly, but my boss was happy with my work, so that makes me content.

This weekend I will be working on two papers for the classes that I took at the University of Minnesota Bureau, one is about modern day French immigration and the other is about the impact of Irish immigration to France during the 1600s, the migration of Catholic soldiers known as the Wild Geese. 

Chenonceau and Blois

Today was a full day.  I woke up at 7:00 and had breakfast at my hotel in Langeais.  The hostess was very nice and gave me a free jar of their establishment’s blackberry jam.  If you are ever looking for a place to stay along the Loire, I can’t recommend Hotel Errard enough. 

I caught the 8:30 train to Tours and a subsequent train to Chenonceaux.  The name of the château there is pronounced the same, but is spelled without the “x” at the end of the word.  Chenonceau is probably one of the most famous châteaux in France.  It has a covered bridge that forms a hall for entertaining guests that spans the river it sits on. The castle was built by Thomas Bohier and his wife Katherine Briçonnet, and after their deaths, it came into possession of the French State.  King Henri II gave it to his favorite mistress, Diane de Poitiers in 1547.  After the death of the king, his widow Catherine de Medici gave Diane the boot (to reside in another elegant château) and lived there herself.  It has also been inhabited by an outstanding number of people of historical importance.  Mary queen of Scots lived there for a number of years; her Scottish guards made two graffiti inscriptions into the walls of the chapel, which can still be viewed today: “Man’s ire does not accomplish the justice of God” and “Do not let yourself be won over by Evils.”  Apparently the chapel was saved from destruction during the Revolution due to the château’s owner disguising it as wood storage.  There are a number of great tapestries and paintings present in the château.  It has had a rich history right up to the present day.  During World War One, the owner opened up the château as a hospital and during the Second World War, Chenonceau sat on the demarcation line between Nazi-occupied northern France and Southern “independent” Vichy France.  Because its bridge spanned the line, the French Resistance was able to use it to covertly cross the border at will, smuggling hundreds of people to safety in the south.  Chenonceau also has incredible gardens, one constructed for Diane de Poitiers and the other for Catherine de Medici.  Both were in full bloom and the scent was incredible.  Chenonceau might be the best smelling château that I’ve visited, as there were fresh flowers in every room that apparently get replaced every day.

I caught another train to Blois, from which I will set out tomorrow to see Chambord, the other “must-see” château of the Loire.  While in town today, I saw the château in Blois.  It was used as the royal residence by several kings of France, until Louis XIII exiled his mother Marie de Medici there until her death (she may have deserved it, read Alexandre Dumas’s Twenty Years After).  After her death, Louis XIII gave the castle to his brother Gaston d’Orléans as a wedding present.  The bar is set, Matt.  During the July Monarchy in mid-nineteenth century, the chateau underwent immense and much needed restoration.  Today, it is owned by the city of Blois.  The city itself underwent some pretty drastic changes during the 1800s, losing a famous church near the chateau, which was replaced by some manufacturing facility.  In 1940, the city suffered from Allied bombing raids seeking to destroy some key bridges.  This bombing raid, strangely enough, flattened the factory that had replaced the church.  Taking it as a sign of divine retribution, the space now stands empty, with flower gardens marking the bounds of the ancient church.  The rest of the space is used as a little walk with benches looking out over the city in the shadow of the chateau.  It was in this flower garden that I sat, biding my time until dinner.  I heard at least two churches and a cathedral ringing in the 7:00 hour.  It was very pleasant.

The Chateaux of Villandry and Azay-le-Rideux

Leaving Les Bouchettes just afternoon, I took the train from Saumur to Langeais, a village on the Loire.  Here I checked into my hotel and rented a bicycle to take a tour of the surrounding area and see two Châteaux.  The hostess at the hotel was a bit skeptical that I wanted to continue my biking plans, as it was lightly raining, but I was determined to stick with the plan, and I am glad that I did.

The rain slackened off as I set out, striking the bike trail along the southern bank of the Loire.  The river was very pretty and the fifteen kilometer route to Villandry was well marked.  The Château Villandry was first built 1536 by Jean Le Breton, the Minister of Finance for François 1^er, who destroyed an older military fortress of some historical significance.  It was in the old fortress that on 4 July 1189, “la Paix de Colombiers” was signed between Henry II Plantegenet, king of England, was forced to admit defeat before Philippe August, King of France.

The Marquis de Castellane purchased the castle in 1754 and had most of it razed in order to reconstruct it in the more luxurious 18^th Century style.  In 1906, it was purchased by a Spaniard named Joachim Carvallo, whose great-grandson currently owns the place, and he created the 16^th-Century gardens style gardens that go very well with the architecture of the château, but these gardens have really stolen the show.  There are several divisions of the massive complex of gardens.  The ornamental gardens immediately next to the château are divided into four squares representing four types of “love”, earning it the name “the love garden.”  The four types are “Tender Love”, “Passionate Love”, “Fickle Love”, and “Tragic Love”, each using flowers and mini-hedges to create shapes and evoke sentiments.  Next to that is another garden of equal size showing off a Maltese cross, a Languedoc cross,  a Basque cross, and several fleurs de lys (symbols of the French monarchy).  Next is the water garden, which consists of several fountains and a large pond surrounded by lime trees which feeds the water of the moat.  Next is a sun garden with several bushes and flowers which leads the visitor to the hedge maze.  Unlike the Greek style “Labyrinthian mazes” designed with dead-ends and designed to be a genuine puzzle, the maze here is a “Christian style maze” designed to offer many different routes to the structure in the middle, apparently designed to “raise the humanity and spirituality” of the visitor.  There are also a Middle Ages herb garden and a Renaissance style vegetable garden.

The grounds keeping at Villandry is very environmentally conscious: they use natural fertilizers to cut out chemicals and use natural insect/arachnid predators indigenous to the region to eliminate pest insects such as mites.  I was pleased with my visit.  While I was wandering the gardens, the sun came out and cleared away the residual cloud cover.

I then biked about 20 kilometers south and inland to Château d’Azay-le-Rideu, billed in the pamphlet as “a joy of the Renaissance architecture.”  Gilles Berthelot acquired a fortress in 1510 and immediately set out renovating it the new Italian style craze that had been sweeping Renaissance France during François 1^er’s reign.  His father was the superintendent of finances for François 1^er and Bertholet sunk huge amounts of money into renovating the château further in the Italian style, but his father was implicated in embezzlement and was executed, requiring Bertholet to flee France.  The king gave the château to Antoine Raffin.  His descendants occupied it until the 18^th century.  During 1791, during the French Revolution, Marquis Charles de Biencourt bought the property.  He and his descendents added a very beautiful Romantic park.  The last marquis was ruined financially and forced to sell the château, which was bought by the French government and turned into a heritage site open to the public. 

It is incredibely beautiful, the nearby river flows into a beautiful moat and fish pond surrounding the castle, which forms an “L” shape that was perfectly illuminated by the afternoon sun.  There were very intricately detailed portals giving access to the interior.  I really enjoyed it.

On the bicycle ride home, I managed to get lost for a while, probably adding 10 kilometers or more to my route, but it was alright.  The sun was shining and the temperature was warm.  The countryside was absolutely enchanting; the perfect facsimile of a medieval fairy-tale forest with dark woods, singing birds, and mysterious doors in cliff faces that screamed to be explored.  But, I found my way back to Langeais at last, my legs cursing me and threatening to quit my body.  But, the hostess of the hotel offered me a Coke and things weren’t quite as bad (save for the climb up the stairs to my room). 

Well, that’s all for this entry, I’m off to find some place to eat.  Hopefully I’ll have internet access in Blois tomorrow night in order to post my backlog of posts.  I guess you will find out when you read this… maybe I should stop writing in real time.  It is fun, though…

Weekend at Les Bouchettes, Pastoral Pays de la Loire

On Friday I journeyed from Bayeux, Normandy to the Loire Valley by train, meeting up with my host dad to spend the weekend at his mother’s home, in a small village called Les Bouchettes.  Les Bouchettes is a small cluster of farmhouses that is part of a larger sort-of village conglomerate called “Montreuil-Ballay”, which groups about 400 residents under a sort of administrative municipal appellation.  Pierre’s mother is very nice and her home is an old farmhouse that she and her husband bought five years ago and began to restore.  It is a very pretty building, which is divided into two different wings.  The main part has two floors, the ground floor contains the kitchen, pantry, dining room, living room, a study and a lounge with the upper floor containing five bedrooms  The other wing, where I am staying, has more bedrooms and its own bathroom/shower.  It is quite a cozy set up.

On Saturday, I helped Pierre do some chores around the house.  I mowed the lawn in a large enclosure containing the chickens.  The grass had been about knee-high, so it really needed the mowing.  The chickens were evidently happy with the mowing as well, as they followed the path of the tractor, snatching up the suddenly exposed insects.  Some more of Pierre’s family arrived for lunch, which was amazing, and more arrived after lunch for coffee, but these latter relations left shortly after.

In the afternoon, we went to a château called Brézé, which has the largest dry-moat in Europe.  The castle is surrounded by a massive ditch that is deeper than the castle is tall.  Brézé is called a “castle under a castle” owing to the kilometers of subterranean tunnels beneath the château, used as defenses, storage, a quarry, and for wine production.  These “troglodytic” tunnels were straight out of a fantasy story, one could imagine all kinds of monstrous beings guarding a golden hoard or a member of a royal family around every corner.