The Winds of Change Pt. 3, Secret Honeymoon Pt. 3 or Something
Archived from August 31, 2009
Thursday was my birthday, and I didn't realize it until late in the day. First time I have ever forgotten my birthday! Felt great. Thirty two years old, I never imagined being so old, but here I am. Should probably think about procreating soon, if it's still possible.
We got up that morning and went to the farmers market, which was awesome. We bought tons of fruit and carrots and bread and olives and a chunk of brie this man was selling out of a truck, and a bottle of grape juice some lady made in her basement or something. We felt really proud of conquering the market with our French ("un demi-kilo des olives, s'il vous plait," "(something unintelligible in French)?" "Uhhh.....oui." Etc.)
Then we packed it all up in a bag, put on some sunscreen, and took our car out of the garage (I should pause here to discuss this garage situation. When we arrived at our hotel, we asked if we could just park in the lot. They told us (or, we THOUGHT they told us) that we actually needed to park in this weird wooden garage that was only big enough for 3 cars, and which wasn't open all of the time, and where all three of the cars had to block each other in. We were confused, but didn't want to be jerks, so we said 'ok,' and parked in there. Then every time we wanted the car it was this huge ordeal of finding the other car owners and getting the keys and moving the cars around, etc. etc. On our final day at the hotel, we finally realized that there had been a devastating misunderstanding on that first day, and that instead of telling us that we HAD to park in the garage, they had actually told us that we COULD if we WANTED TO, which we didn't. So, the whole week we were there, we were thinking the hotel people were super weird about this weird garage, when in actuality they were all thinking "who are these americans who are being so weird about the garage?? What is parking like in America, it must be so weird!" So, we blew that one pretty bad.), and drove out into the countryside to see some medieval castles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This crazy thing was built fully one thousand years ago by some rich family. This obviously blows my mind. The layers of history that European people live amongst are totally staggering. On Friday we took a guided tour of the town (more on that later), and our tour guide was all blasé about pointing out these buildings that are just casually from the 10th century, like, "oh, don't mind me, I'm just a nunnery that was built in the year 900 when fucking Charlemagne was standardizing the Roman Catholic liturgy, HO-HUM." The tour guide was even, like, SCORNFUL of buildings that had been built later than 1700. "Oh that--that was built in 1790, it's really new, I never take the tour groups up there." We got so excited at one point that our tour guide asked, "but surely you also live in an old building, in America?" and we laughed so hard and she was confused. I said the oldest buildings in America that you might commonly live in are from like 1924 but I think she thought I must have mis-spoke my French numbers, because obviously that couldn't be true. The nineteen hundreds! It's like a joke!
And of course we DO have amazing layers of history here, but those layers were made by Native Americans, and have thus been largely obliterated/ignored (or which were, to be more generous (although why should I be?) basically ephemeral in the first place due to the lack of permanent structures), except for the Anasazi ruins, which I admit are totally badass.
There were cows mooing all around this castle, and the wind was blowing, and more church bells were tolling, and you could stand out in front of the castle and see for miles in every direction.
Then we drove to the next castle, which was in Bressieux.
This one was built a couple centuries later, and was much more elaborate and large. It still had a standing tower you could climb to the top of! A man we met in the graveyard at the base of the castle's hill told us that this tower used to be the dungeon. This man was intense. He was the first and only person who spoke to us in English on this entire trip. He told us he used to be an air traffic controller for Air France, and has lived all over the world. He talked at length about how Americans and French people have to bond together to create a barrier against the Chinese. It was kind of confusing, because on the one hand the situation with China is kind of scary in some ways I guess, but on the other hand the old man was being pretty racist, and on the other hand we didn't know if he meant, like, LITERALLY, like France and America should stop letting Chinese people into our countries, or if he just meant that America shouldn't be mad at France for not invading Iraq with us, both of which options would have made for a pretty awkward conversation, so finally I just tried to change the subject by asking him how you say "feather" in French (it's "plume.").
We went up to the castle and scampered around the ruins. I speculated that a cool raised stone platform was "probably where the throne was," but it was probably actually the kitchen or, like, a latrine or something. This castle's "end date" is the "start date" of the French Revolution! YIKES!!!!!
My beardy old man ran up into the dungeon tower and yelled down at me "JE SUIS ICI, DANS LE DUNGEON!" I chased him up a winding staircase that was impossibly narrow and dark and terrifying.
At the top, you could see for miles and miles and miles and miles in every direction. There were like ten churches' bells tolling at once. What is it with rural France and the tolling of church bells? It was really nice. The top of the tower was slightly slanted, and had a cool grooved rain gutter built into it. Medieval architecture! Amazing!
We looked down and saw an old couple coming into the courtyard. Filled with the ebullience that great height and a beautiful view can bring, we unwisely hailed them in French and, yelling, we had the following conversation:
"BONJOUR!"
"BONJOUR! (SOMETHING UNINTELLIGIBLE)?"
"PARDONEZ-MOI?"
"(SOMETHING UNINTELLIGIBLE)?"
"DESOLET!"
"QUOI?"
"ANGLAIS!"
"(.................)"
It was embarrassing. Coming down the steps, we ran back into them, and tried to redeem ourselves, and for once totally did! This was by far the most advanced and long conversation in French that we had on the whole trip, and we felt great about it. They were an old couple from Grenoble, and they wanted to know if the staircase was hard to climb. I told them it was not very far, but that it was extremely narrow. They asked if we were from England, and we said we were from America. They asked where. We said California. They said "oh." I paused for a long time because my conjugations still come super hard to me, then I slowly said "I would like to visit Grenoble." They told us there were many students in Grenoble, but no churches (gesturing toward all the still-tolling church bells around us). I said from the top of the tower you could hear all the bells and that it was very good ("trés bien" being basically the only adjective I could ever get my mouth to say). Gary told them we were on our honeymoon and they got really excited and kissed us on both cheeks and wished us a long and happy life together. Then they said for us to enjoy our picnic, and we said goodbye.
CONVERSATION! WE DID IT! We were so elated!
Then we drove to another castle, but this one was built in the sixteenth century, so it was like "BIG DEAL," we weren't that impressed. Oh, the Renaissance? That was like two seconds ago, people didn't even speak Latin anymore, NO THANKS.
Then I had a very unfortunate public bathroom experience (I use the word "bathroom" in an extremely loose manner, as I would have been (and have been before) ten times happier just going behind a bush) in a little town where this statue inexplicably was:
The unfortunate public "bathroom" experience left me feeling panicky and upset, so we tried to drive to this other town where there might be a real bathroom for me to get my equilibrium back. Luckily there was. Of course, it was across from an eleventh century monastery. BIG DEAL. We bought a bottle of mineral water for four euros to celebrate my deliverance from the limbo of unacceptable bathroom conditions. The lady who sold us the mineral water thought we were weird because we didn't also want glasses. In France I learned that they are wild for glasses. No one drinks out of a bottle or can there. You always get a plastic cup with every single thing you drink. I think this is totally effed up, obviously, but it was as difficult to not get a plastic cup with your drink in France as it was to get workers in a Japanese bakery to not wrap your piece of bread in six sheets of decorative paper, secure each layer with a different cartoon sticker, put the whole bundle into a paper sack, roll the paper sack up, staple it shut with staples with cartoon characters on them, and then put THAT sack into another, slightly larger sack, roll THAT sack up, and staple THAT sack closed. At some point you just start saying "thank you."
I think this night we went to the cool cinema to see this thing where they'd taken a chopped-up version of Orson Welles's "Macbeth" and accompanied it with a live chopped-up version of Verdi's "Macbeth" and billed the whole thing as being by Shakespeare, Verdi, and Welles. It was really good.
up next: other stuff
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