Vacances de Toussaintes 2011

Hello again my wonderful friends and family and those (very few) who I imagine might just stumble across this blog in their ramblings online.

I promised you a blog on my vacation! So here it is. I had a week and two days off for the “Vacances de Toussainte” this year. Sort of like a spring break, but in the fall. And boy did we profiter des vacances!

The Friday that school let out JP pack Vero and I into his car and toted us off to his family home. We got to meet his wonderful mom and her two dogs (I got to chill with dogs again! Be happy for me, I was a little blissed out.). She treated us to a raclette dinner. Raclette is something I fell in love with in Poitiers. You have a heater thing that you put on the table, you get a little dish thing on a stick that you put cheese in, and put it into the heater. The cheese melts and you pour the hot cheese over potatoes and charcutrie (sausage, salami slices, sometimes chicken). It’s like a make your own fondu set and it’s utterly brilliant on cold nights.

The reason we were out and about was that Saturday was the day of JP and one of his closest friends birthday party. And what a party. We helped cook and setup all day, then danced and ate and drank and spoke lots of French. Good times were had.

Sunday was a recovery and clean up day. I got to chat more with JP’s family. His brother and I had quite the discussion on health care and governmental systems and organization. I felt quite good that I kept up in French, and a bit ashamed that I didn’t know more details about our own system in the US. Time to get educated I think. I want to be able to hold my own in these little chats. I can sort of do so, but not to my own satisfaction.

Well, now on to vacation! On Monday JP very kindly ran me up to Caen. I met Caro at the train station and our week of hijinks began. We found our hotel by getting lost once (Caen is the perfect city to get lost in. You can’t not get lost. I swear.), re-tracing our steps and getting on the tram. Our hotel was tinsy and quite adorable. We dumped our stuff and struck out in search of food. We ended up at a creperie. Crepes are a big deal in Normandy, you can find them everywhere and they are really really good. We ate lots of them all week.

We then did the tourist thing. Caen has a really lovely castle (which I already knew the walls of quite well. This is the castle that we kept running into while lost trying to find our stage: see the previous post and accompanying video starting around minute 5 for the role the castle played in that little drama), and we went right up onto the walls. I still can’t get over the fact that I get to walk on castle walls in this country. I had been warned by several of JP’s friends and family that the ducal castle in Caen was really not that impressive. Either they don’t like history, or they are just WAY to used to being in France, because that castle is awesome. Most of the walls are still standing; you can go up one of the turrets, and talk about a view over Caen. Whoof.

That afternoon we just sort of wandered around and saw the town. We were doing mostly window shopping as neither of us had been paid yet, but good times were had. And then, once again, I prove that the world is way small. We are walking past a row of cafes, and there, sitting in one of the steats is one of my students from the lycee in Domfront. Bam. So we stopped and I got to chat with him. He’s actually an exchange student from Mexico, here for a year before going back to University. He had decided to spend some time in Caen during the break, and we just happened to cross him in the street. Super bizarre.

That night we met up with some other assistants that are posted in Caen, another American and a girl from Mexico. Both lovely.

For our second two nights in Caen we switched from a hotel to the French version of a Bed n’ Breakfast. The government of France supports people with extra rooms financially to open them up to travelers. They are called gites or chambers d’hotes and if you are travelling in france, I totally recommend them. You are staying in a real French household, run by the French, and with a legitimately French breakfast (bread, jam, coffee or tea, and more bread). They also tend to be less expensive than a hotel. The one we stayed in was adorable, and run by a lovely elderly woman who was nothing but kind to us.

The next day we just sort of wandered around, visited churches, ate good food, the usual tourist thing. The day after we did Le Memorial. It’s the memorial museum for the Second World War. [French lesson side note: In French we say le seconde guerre mondial rather than le deuxième gurre mondial. Both seconde and deuxième mean “second” in French, however there is an implicit difference between the two. Seconde means second, with the understand that it’s both 2nd and last. If you use deuxième you are implying that there is (or could be) a third. It’s these little things that make me like French so much.] The museum is huge and crammed with information and artifacts and totally overwhelming. But amazing. We only did half of the museum, without audio guides, and that took us more than two and a half hours. At that point both Caro and I were too wiped to go any further. I’d already gotten teary more than once.

I could go on and on about the museum. They really did an excellent job with it. You keep moving smoothly along, the flow is excellent, and the amount of information they have crammed into every corner… Wow. I had been previously, as part of the tour of France I went on in high school. But I think it’s one of those museums where you take something different away every time you go. I also didn’t really remember much of it. I think by the time we made it to this part of France it was the end of the tour and everybody was sort of done with “tourism” and ready to just sleep for about a week. I do remember that.

What I walked away from feeling the most this time was the propaganda posters. The posters that went up to support the war, to encourage, to shock, wow. The art and the slogans on some of the posters are nothing short of brilliant. They were all across the world at that point, in all languages. I went to pieces in front of one that England put out about carrying on alone once France had surrendered but before the Allies had come into existence. Oh. It was just a solider, back to the viewer, flag raised under the stars on an empty battlefield. The slogan was “Onwards Alone” or something similar. Propaganda knew what it was doing back then. Inspiring.

I think that sometimes my view on the war is sheltered. I didn’t live it. I didn’t have to deal with the fallout. And other times I think my view might be entirely too academic. I am impressed by Hitler. He did terrible things—that I do not dispute. But his ability to unify and motivate and entire country… that I respect. I sort of astounded a guy I was talking to later in the week by mentioning this. Simply because one instigates terrible things does not mean that one is wholly evil. Or even if you can say that one is utterly evil, I think that is all the more reason to study them. Why were they evil, what did they do to garner support, or power, how did they come to be the way they were? I think these are important, and worthy of note. We cannot dismiss someone as “simply evil”. There is no such thing as a simple evil. Living beings are inherently complex, and understanding that complexity is part of why I think I enjoy history so much.

But any way! Back to vacation. That night! We got to go dancing! If you know me at all, this is a big deal. This is made an even bigger deal by the fact that I haven’t been dancing in over a month. That’s probably the hardest thing about being in Domfront. No dance. So I forced Caro (who doesn’t know salsa at all) to come with me to the Che, a salsa bar that has lessons and dancing Wednesday nights. Caro, being the wonderful good sport that she is, allowed me to drag her along.

Oh I forgot how good it feels to dance, just like I do every time I go without for a while. The re-discovery almost makes it worth it. Che does mostly Cuban-style salsa, with some Puerto thrown in for good measure. I had a lovely time, even if I didn’t get that many dances. (Part of the problem of not going regularly to a specific salsa bar is that the regulars don’t recognize you, so nobody knows if you are actually capable of dancing or not. I’m not the eye-catching sort that everybody wants to dance with because of my looks or my very short skirt; I rely on my actual skill to get dances. Which works really well [I’m a good dancer man] when the leads know me. But if nobody knows you can dance, you have to woman-up and ask yourself. Not always my strong point there… but I did darn good that night!)

Well, we ended up heading out a bit after midnight. It wasn’t really that late, but it was clearly down to the regulars and the couples in the bar and Caro was hungry. We began an epic quest for food. After midnight pretty much everything was closed. We accosted a pair we crossed who had kebab-frites and asked them where they had found the food. We were directed to what may have been the only open store in the whole city.

We were in line behind a group of four quite drunk French guys. They eventually got out of the way and went and sat at a table on the sidewalk. Caro and I ordered large frites to split, with sauce samourai on top. Samurai sauce is possibly the best thing ever. It’s the only spicy thing that you will ever find in France, and it’s really really good. Well, the guy sticks our frites in the barquette and then starts adding sauce. He also asks us if we want cheese. We figure, why not? So then he adds cheese, some sort of powder, and a dash of something green… So Caro and I take our fries and go sit down at another table on the sidewalk.

Yeah… we didn’t get sauce samourai. Nope. It was mayo with lemon in it, we finally decided. And some cheese. And paprika (the powder). And…wait for it… mint.

…

Yup.

Mint.

No, I have no understanding either. This is why we travel? For mint-cheese-mayo fries, garnished with paprika at 12:30 at night.
So we finished our fries and went home to bed. After being asked if we “had fire” by one of the tipsy French boys. They also called us “coquette,” probably because we were speaking in English and laughing, and they were really drunk. My nights out are never just normal nights out.

The next day we were scheduled to leave in the late afternoon/early evening for our next stop, the city of Rouen, further north in Haute-Normandie. Francoise, the woman who ran our Bn’B graciously allowed us to store our bags for the day.

We wandered around before heading back to our favorite hangout that we had discovered. We had stumbled across a street corner with opposing bookstores. One…oh I swear if they offered me a job I might pass out from joy. Old books, older books, illustrated, not, comic books, novels, histories, natural science books…I could have spent forever in there. (And spent far too much money. I instead bought a police thriller for a euro, and promised myself I’d come back when I had been paid.)

The bookstore on the opposing corner is your basic madhouse second-hand bookstore. NO order, NO method, and every possibility that a tower of books might topple over on you and you’d never be heard from again. It was really quite overwhelming. However, if you ascended to the étage, there was a quite nice coffee shop wedged in amongst the overflowing shelves. If you dared to settle at one of the tables (keeping your elbows tucked in to avoid causing an avalanche on any of the shelves surrounding you), you could pass a lovely afternoon sipping chocolate chaud and reading.

We had just settled in for a session of journal-writing, novel reading, and coffee drinking, when Caro gets a text-message from the guy we were Couch Surfing with that night. (Yes, I Couch Surfed, more on that later, in the meantime, try not to die of shock.) She had said that we were coming at one time, but he wanted to know if we could come sooner, so that we could join him for a dinner party he was throwing. Well, that meant catching the next train. We had about 45 minutes to get to our B n’ B, get our bags, get to the train station, buy tickets, and catch that train.

I drank that hot chocolate really fast.

Somehow, we made it. Of course, as soon as we exit the B n’ B, bags in tow, to haul booty to the bus stop… it starts to rain. The only rain we had all trip. An auspicious moment that. But, we get to the bus stop just before the bus we want pulls up. This is a mini-miracle as neither Caroline nor I had bothered to look up time-tables for the bus. We were just really lucky. We get to the station with something like 11 minutes to spare. Grâce à dieu, there was no line for tickets, so we even got to buy our tickets before we hopped on the train. Awesome.

The train ride from Caen to Rouen is lovely. Really pretty countryside, especially as the trees are starting to turn colors. I didn’t appreciate it as much as I probably could have as Caro was teaching me to play Cribbage. She creamed me the whole way up (but I won the next time we played, so clearly I can be taught!).

On arrival in Rouen we proceeded to the apartment of Ludo, our first couch surfing (CS) host.

Yes, I did CS. Caro had done it before, and I thought why not try it with someone who knows the ropes. We spent two nights with Ludo, a man in his 40s, and his adorable 10 year old son. The best part of that was getting to teach the son how to play Speed. He didn’t know any card games at all, which I was personally offended by. I feel that playing cards is an essential part of one’s upbringing. So we taught him speed, and I taught him a magic trick, and we worked on shuffling decks of cards. Ludo also introduced us to some of his friends, all of whom are also part of the CS community.

Our second two nights we stayed with Helene, she is a student in medical school, specializing in infectious diseases, with a focus on AIDS. And she was lots of fun! Both hosts were amazing and welcoming. Ludo gave us tips about what to visit in Rouen, and Helene shared her entire social group with us. We even went to a party that her boyfriend was having (more on that later).

But Rouen. Oh Rouen is great! It’s one of the few cities of Normandy that wasn’t bombed to hell and back during WWII, so it’s actually got the streets and buildings of the Middle Ages intact. Just walking around there is like going back in time. You take little windy side-streets where you have to duck your head because the buildings curve in and nearly touch. Everything is cobblestones and woodwork. And there are more massive churches than you can shake a stick at. Most of these churches are really gothic, but there is one modern church built on the site where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. (Yeah, that’s why the name Rouen was vaguely familiar; Joan was tried and burned as a witch here.) Rouen is also split by the Seine (the same river that runs through Paris), and Caro and I spent some time down by the water. There was an uncharacteristic amount of sunshine for the time of year, and we spent about an hour basking in it by the water.

Possibly my favorite tourist thing we did was visit Le Grand Horloge. That’s the Big Clock. It’s one of the oldest clock towers in Europe, and it is really really cool. You can pay a little fee and actual climb up in the tower. Oh yeah. Freaking awesome. It was famous as the first clock that worked based on a pulley system to connect the clockwork to the actual clock face. So you can actually walk into the room that backs on the two faces of the clock. The actual clockwork is stored two floors further up, and the bells of the tower are another layer up.

We were actually on the stairs right outside the room with the bells in it when the hour rang out. I’ve never been more terrified! We, of course, being on vacation had no idea what time it was. Well, I can definitively tell you that we were in that clock tower at 3 in the afternoon. Those bells are LOUD. Holy crap. It’s a miracle I didn’t stumble and bounce down all several hundred stairs of that teensy tower. I would have taken out most of the tourists on the way down.

The face of the clock is really cool. It only has one hand, but it also has rotating mechanisms that show the fazes of the moon and the days of the week. It’s highly decorated and the thing to look for, hidden in the clock face, is the sheep! The sheep is the symbol of Rouen, and there is apparently more than a dozen sheep in the detail work of the clock.

Right, enough historical and touristy information. What did we actually do? We had lots of fun is the short answer. I think probably my favorite was the party we went to our third night in Rouen. We had just showed up at Helens (really perfectly adorably French) apartment, when she told us that her boyfriend was throwing a party that night, and would we want to go? Answer: Yes! [Lucy travel tip: meet people. Say yes, go to parties, on weird expeditions, walk down odd streets or into restaurants you might not normally. I don’t like parties generally, especially if I don’t know the people, but I thought I’d stray from my comfort zone a bit. The payoff? Worth it!]

A quick run to the grocery store later, and we are waiting for our bus.
The party was great. They were all students, or recently finished with studies, so they were my age. We cooked, and ate, and talked, and drank (lots), and danced in the attic. We made une tartiflette, which is basically cream, bacon, potatoes, cheese, and more cream. Hmmmmyes please. The people we met were all really nice and super inclusive, and it ended up being a wonderful evening. If I didn’t live four or five hours from Rouen I would be actively working to insert myself into their social circle. But as it is, I think if I ever go back I’m going to see if I can’t at least track Helene down again.

Well, I’m sure I could go on and on. But this post has already reached rather titanic proportions, so I’ll stop it here. I hope it was interesting. Pass any questions you’ve got on, and I’ll address them in the next post. (written or video, at this point it’s potluck…)

Hugs to all and sundry. And I hope you all had a lovely Halloween! (It’s the first year I didn’t really do anything to celebrate. Though I did put on the soundtrack to Rocky Horror and danced like a loon in my kitchen. So I guess that counts. ☺ It certainly was fun, though I mourn the lack of dress-up.)

Until the next time~