We started yesterday morning in Cluny. We had arrived there after the Verdon Gorge and we walked around in the evening. We had dinner at a little tiny bistro/bar there and the locals found us fascinating since Cluny is now a small small town. One man was talking to Tabea and thought it was interesting that she was from Germany until I came back and he found out I was from the States. "But that's so far away" he said shocked. To Cluny it must be terribly far away. Also the owners had their dog, Chablis, in the restaurant, not an uncommon thing in Europe, and she kept coming over and leaning against Tabea, a big white Golden Retreiver, probably mixed with something. It was a nice dog. We saw it again the next day as we walked through the city. We went to the ruins of the Abbey, once the largest church in Chrisendom, prior to St. Peter's being built in Rome, for hundreds of years one of the most important places of Christian scholarship and monastic life. It was dismantled and the stones were sold for other buildings in the 1790s because, basically, the French Revolution had made such things not particularly acceptable. So it was in that place for about 1000 years and then just dismantled.
The next morning we went over to the museum of the abbey and there they had an amazing display of old books, which I was amazed by, the Chapter Annals from the 15th century, some illustrated copy of Eusebius, the argument, which happened in Cluny, of whether Mary was, in fact, a virgin. There was a death record book "of the saints" listing the death date of all the people in the monastery and associated abbeys and monasteries. Tabea really really liked the stones displayed on the first floor of the museum, and they were interesting, but for me the books were the best.
After that we went 12 KM north to Cormartin (or something like that) to the Chateau there. It was amazing because it had been restored very nicely. The gardens were especially nice with a great hedgemaze with a tower in the center. I found the middle, Tabea didn't. Of course it was totally luck. It was a boxwood hedgemaze that was grown just above my eye level, so you could really get a sense of being a little lost and trying to find your way.
After that we went stopped at a vinyard and bought some wine to bring back to Germany and then went to Metz. The Cathedral there is amazing actually. I wasn't expecting it to be so grand. But the outside was a little too elaborate for me with all sorts of flying buttresses and statues of saints and pictures of Jesus separating those on his left to be eaten by a monster and those on his right to go into the gates of heaven. A bit much for my taste. But it was a neat city, very baroque in many places. And it was the most modern of the cities we'd seen. Tabea said you could really tell that people there worked.
Then we went home all the rest of the way "shot the moon" as it were because we were only 5 hours away. We saw a nice sunset on some fields in France and thought it was interesting that immediately after going over some little hills you entered Germany and forests. There weren't really any forests in France-- except a little in the mountains. But Germany is all forest. We got home at 2 and then I slept in late this morning, went shopping in Regensburg while Tabea did her laundry at a laundromat and stopped by the office. Now I am packed and ready because now we will go to Munich for a birthday party for our friend Clemens and then for Katarina (the one whose wedding I went to earlier) is having a picnic by the river the next day. And then I leave. So the journey is almost over. And I am ready to come home to test if I am actually able to speak to people in English anymore and if I am able to drive a car and use a cellphone. It's been a long journey here. And a good one. An interruption of my life as it is and was. I've learned a lot.
I had no idea that southern France was so sort of poor and rural. We never went over to the Cote d'Azur region because we just decided we were already doing enough and we didn't need to drive that much more in the mountains and there were so many crowds everywhere it wasn't worth it. It was enough for me in France. The people I talked to were wonderful. One little girl who was with her mother at their fruit stand on the Valensole Plateau (famous for lavendar) in the Provence was reading the Twilight series of books. It was funny because when she heard I was American she showed me her book because she was so excited to meet me. Of course most of you know that I have a personal hatred of those books because I think they do a grave disservice with their underlying messages. So it was funny. I told her I hated them. Her mother laughed. We had a great conversation, mostly in French, but a little in English. The mother told me she had been a very very good student of English when she was in school but that it had been a long time ago. Tabea was shocked at how big the tomatoes were that she had for sale and she explained that her husband planted them inside in March and then outside when the weather permitted and that he loved them and cared for them like children. It was funny. We told her to thank him for being so loving to them so that they were so nice. We bought some and ate them and tehy were good. We stood and talked to her for a half hour or 45 minutes. This is the sort of thing that Tabea and I really enjoy doing. And there was a great gal at a boulangerie (deli basically) in a little village 100 KM north of Aix en Provence. That woman helped me when I was trying to ask the other gal which of the awesome looking tarts was her favorite. But I clearly don't know how to ask that question because I tried asking several people that several different ways in French and they always look very confused. But if they know English, then I can always ask them and they understand. So there is somehting I am doing wrong in the French there. But that gal was very nice and she talked to me for a while, in English and asked how we came to be in the village and etc. And then there was the man who owned the internet cafe in Riez. He was super super nice to us. He could speak English and was one of those people that you wonder how he is in the small town he is in. He is married and the family owns this business, so it makes sense, but he clearly has a sense of the larger world. He's been to the states and Canada and Mexico-- a 6 month trip. And he knew computers so well and helped us. Tabea finally was able to charge her phone with him and he let us sit there with it. He kept coming over and talking to us. Probably there are some tourists in his cafe from time to time because Riez is one of the Provencal towns that is famous for lavendar, on the Valensole Plateau, or near it, but I think he really had fun talking to us.
The dogs and people of France are indeed warm and amazing. The landscape is so incredibly varied, the architechture so consistent.
I really loved France.
Source: http://wendyineurope.blogspot.com/2010/08/more-from-france.html
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