I left Montpellier Sunday morning just before ten and
arrived in Toulouse around noon. The
train ride offered me a wonderful morning view of the Mediterranean
coastline. Toulouse itself was
wonderful. It was filled with several
amazing ancient churches and their spires and bell towers peaked out over the
roofs all over the city. There was the
ancient Basilica of St-Sernin, named after the first bishop of Toulouse who was
martyred by being tied to a sacrificial bull of the Saturnarian and dragged
through the streets until dead. Brutal
stuff, but there is now a church (whose name translates to Church of the Bull)
standing at the spot where he was tied to said bull. The Basilica of St.-Sernin is a pretty
impressive sight, with a beautiful interior and ornately painted sacristy. I also went to Notre-Dame de la Dauraude which
had been famous for possessing the “Black Virgin”, a black wooden statue of the
Virgin Mary. Apparently there had been a
quasi-heretical cult following of the Christ’s mother in the region that had
been (barely) tolerated by the mainstream Catholic Church. The celebrated black sculpture was unfortunately
burned during the French Revolution by overzealous revolutionaries, but it was
replaced in the 1800s. I went to an art
museum that played host to many of the works of artists from the region,
including the aptly named Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted the Montmartre
(Moulin-Rouge) district of Paris during the last decade of the 19th
Century. I walked along the banks of the Garonne River, which had been made
especially wide so as to facilitate pedestrian access to them and the many
parks along the water. After that, I
strolled through the city’s gardens, which were an extension of the Natural
History Museum. The flowers were in full
bloom and the air smelled wonderful. The
gardens were filled with families picnicking and basking in the sun. I also visited the Cathedral of St-Etienne,
a church that had been constructed over such a long period of time that it is a
strange fusion of at least three very different architectural styles. Nearby, I went to an old monastery, the Musée
des Augustins, that had been appropriated by the State during the French
Revolution. It now functions as an art
museum; its collections feature religious statuary, secular statuary, an assortment
of gargoyles, and many wonderful paintings, including some by my favorite
French painter, Eugène Delacroix. One of
things I appreciated the most about Toulouse is the large number of public
squares and fountains that are in the city.
Seriously, the city loves its
fountains. The city also has a
remarkable odor: the regional flower is the lavender and they are planted and
strung all over the city.
Boarding the train once more around 7:00, I joined with my
host sister Laure, at whose apartment I am staying in Bordeaux. The countryside was illuminated by the
sunset, basking the vineyards and ridges of the foothills in a golden
sheen. Every now and again, a small
château could be seen perched on the top of a hill overlooking the
valleys. It is a very endearing
countryside.
Laure had packed us a picnic dinner and everything was going
fun until the train unexpectedly stopped.
A voice on the intercom told us that there had been an accident
involving the train and that we could expect a two hour delay. Laure told me that that was a euphemism for
somebody having just committed suicide by train. I felt really horrible about that. There followed a three hour delay as the
gendarmes and fire/medical technicians came and investigated and did their
work. We finally got into Bordeaux after
midnight and to Laure’s apartment not long after that.
In the morning, I took the tram to the train station and
caught a bus to St. Emilion, a nearby village known for its wine. The walk up to the village from the station
provides a great view of the terraced wine vineyards stretching out from the
village in all directions. The village
itself is built on top of a massive plateau of limestone. It takes its name from an 8th
century hermit who was born in Normandy.
When he was a clerk to the local lord, he began to steal bread from the
kitchen in order to feed the starving poor in his city. The lord found out about it and sent guards
to try and catch him in the act. When
they accosted Emilion, the story goes that he changed the bread into firewood,
and thus the guards were unable to arrest him for bread smuggling. Because everyone knows that firewood
trafficking is a misdemeanor at best.
Robin Hooding bread made St. Emilion a rather popular figure among the
people, but he was shy and didn’t like the celebrity. So, he went south and joined the Benedictine
Order of monks. One day, he was going
about his daily baking duties when his second bread-based miracle
occurred. The monastery prankster
decided that he would steal St. Emilion’s bread baking utensils just after his
brother had put the dough in the oven.
Not wanting to let good dough go to waste, St. Emilion just walked right
in the oven and pulled an Ashac, Meshac, and Abindigo on that oven. His fellow monks were, quite reasonably,
impressed by this feat of a fire fortitude and St. Emilion’s fame soon spread
around the countryside. As before, he
just wanted to be left alone to communicate with God and ponder the mysterious of
theology, so he went to a backwater village in the middle of nowhere in
Aquitaine and dug a grotto into the limestone with the work of his own two
hands and lived there alone for the last sixteen years of his life. Inspired by his example, a group of fellow
Benedictine monks established a monastery on the same hill. And then some Franciscans did the same. And the some Dominicans. And then a group of Ursaline nuns, who
brought with them the recipe for making macrons, which are greatly enjoyed in
the region today and attributed to originating from St. Emilion (the
village). The village bearing the
saint’s name eventually became a very big pilgrimage stop, being close to two
different routes to the church of St. John the Compostal in Spain.
A man returning from the crusades just happened to discover
very cool underground churches in present day Turkey, so he brought the idea
back to St. Emilion. The monks thought
that this was a great idea and began to work at carving out an immense
subterranean church and catacombs for burials and for housing the relics of St.
Emilion. The Church of the Monolith is so called because it is carved entirely
out of one giant rock (Greek: mono =
one, lith = stone). Today, it is the single largest monolithic
church in all of Europe. The inside is
very impressive, reminding a viewer of the final resting place of the Holy
Grail in The Last Crusade. Fortunately, there were neither Nazis nor
booby-trapped puzzles/cups.
The immense structure was carved in a period
between 20 and 70 years, which is remarkable because a church of the equivalent
size built above ground at that time would have taken anywhere from 300 to 400
years to build. The Church of the
Monolith had a number of factors going for it, however: they were following the
example of their patron saint, who had lived underground in a similar (albeit
smaller) cave for 16 years not ten meters away; and the trade of the majority
of St. Emilion’s 10,000 people at the time was stone quarrying.
The town of St. Emilion was famous for its
limestone quarrying. It sold the stone
that built the nearby cities, including much of Bordeaux, which was flourishing
as the major port on France’s west coast.
There are kilometers of quarries beneath the city, but all new digging
has been stopped since the 1800s, when they began to worry about cave-ins. At that time, they began to wonder what they
could use the empty caves for. So, they
took stock of the cave’s unique properties: they were much cooler than the
surface, they were always a consistent 12 to 14 degrees Celsius, and they were
humid. In short, they were perfect for
aging wine. French wine is always aged in a constant temperature between 12 and
14 degrees Celsius and the humidity in the caves reduces the amount of wine
which evaporates through the barrel during the aging process. Therefore, a bustling wine trade boomed
around St. Emilion and it is today what the area is known for.
I was able
to tour a wine vineyard and the caves directly below the property. It was a very neat experience and I highly
recommend it to anyone visiting the region.
I also learned this tip, for those of you who are planning on buying
wine soon, the years 2009 and 2010 were very
exceptionally good years for wine.
France received the right temperatures and rains at exactly the right
moments in the season to produce two great back-to-back vintages. So, if you are buying, buy 2009 and
2010.
Back in
Bordeaux, I strolled through the streets, admiring the bourgeois architecture
of the 18th Century that still marks the glory that the époque of
colonial trade brought to the city. I
saw a very impressive gothic cathedral, complete with towering spires and after
that I went to an art museum because my Frommer’s guide had promised me that
they had some Delacroix. Unfortunately
for me, a large portion of the museum as undergoing renovations (the main
tourist season does not start until late-May), but I was able to see some very
nice pieces from the Holland school, which is my favorite European art
movement.
Tonight I am dining with Laure and her roommates. I bought a bottle of wine in St. Emilion to
share, which was well received.
Tomorrow, I leave early in the morning for a nearly-all-day train voyage
to Bayeux, Normandy, on the north coast of France.
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