It is entirely evident that my attempts to post shorter blog updates more frequently during the winter break died the death of a thousand procrastinations. Don't worry, though! I made it up to you all with some explanatory pictures...from Google images. As soon as I have figured out how to organize my picture library I will be getting that online. Until then, let's make do with what we have...
This leaves the challenge, then, of how to effectively organize and summarize two months of incredible opportunities and experiences here in France into a few highlights, so I'll stick to the original space/time convention of proceeding regionally and chronologically.
Sciences Po gave its students an incredibly long (= about a month) break from courses between the two semesters, so I actually had enough time to see two other regions of France before returning to Paris. I have many more "touristy" things to share from Normandy, so that region unfairly dominates the blog post; be forewarned.
Normandy
Early on in the break, Louise (my Sciences Po "buddy"), her good friend, Clémence, Dmitry (another exchange student buddy of Louise's), and I all took a road trip to Normandy to see le Mont-Saint-Michel, les plages du débarquement (the landing beaches, of D-Day), and Etretat.
Le Mont-Saint-Michel is a breathtaking monument. A walled abbey-citadel atop of a hill immediately surrounded by beaches on the coast of the English channel - themselves bordered to the south by flat and cultivated farmlands - it is the imposing sight of the area.
We arrived in the late afternoon, parked, and took a bus to arrive at the mont.
I honestly have no other temporal source of comparison that comes to mind; the only places to which I could compare it were entirely fictional. It was, from afar, the city of Tashbaan from The Horse and His Boy, immensity rising up out of the desert sands. Upon a closer examination and a realization of scale, however, it became Redwall Abbey from the Redwall series, remarkably or ridiculously plucked out of Mossflower Wood and fixed in the sea. Perhaps the most apt comparison would be the one suggested by my friend, Jeremiah: Cair Paravel, the magical castle city isolated from the rest of the shoreline by the steady churning of waves and time:
You may make your own comparison, but I doubt it will be to any other real, earthly place, but, if it is, please do tell me to which one, so that I might visit it.
The mont itself was open all night till early morning, but the abbey tours closed just minutes before we arrived there. Still, the exterior was incredible, and walking the ramparts and the gardens' wet grasses as the light faded and the sea sounds filled one's ears was enough to complete the sensation of being in another world, or, more accurately, in another time. The artistic lighting, contrasted with the gray skies and gray beaches made for a beautiful aesthetic (though not as beautiful in my camera as in a Google's image search, admittedly):
The following morning we traveled along the length of the D-Day beaches. While we were not able to see all of the beaches, we did get to see Gold Beach (a British beach), Omaha Beach (a well-known American beach), the American cemetery in Normandy located directly above Omaha Beach, and Pointe du Hoc (a key location in the German coastal defense that was seized by US Rangers on a harrowing mission).
(All of the stories of D-Day are harrowing and incredible, nigh unbelievable, at times, as history, being so far removed from my reality. If you do want to read a good history text that reads like a novel about it, I suggest The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan.)
Gold Beach saw the 47th Royal Commandos spread out over 10 times as much coastline as they anticipated, 9 of the 14 landing boats having evaded mines to make it ashore; it took three hours under enemy fire before the surviving commandos regrouped for their 12 mile trek inland toward the enemy.
Omaha Beach has been made fairly well-known through films, books, and other popular culture mediums, mostly because it was where some of the heaviest fighting took place on 6 June 1944, and the days following. When the fighting was done, 4000 men on both sides had lost their lives.
Pointe du Hoc lies just west of Omaha Beach. 75-foot cliffs served as the natural defense to this protrusion into the English channel. Situated between what became Omaha and Utah Beaches, it might have served as a key location for German defensive batteries. US Army Rangers were called on to neutralize it before the fighting picked up speed, and, while the guns were ultimately located inland, standing on top of the German defensive casement that became the site of the spire-shaped monument to those Rangers was nevertheless a thrilling brush with history:
Above Omaha Beach is the American Memorial Cemetery in Normandy. Their museum there is very well done, choosing to focus primarily on Operation Overlord and the individual soldiers' experiences the day of, rather than the historical context, which is covered by other exhibits.
The iconic white marble crosses (and stars of David) that serve as the headstones of the American troops I had seen, of course, several times, in films, photos, and books, but as I stood alone (there are few other tourists in the region in December) in the quiet, cold rain, I felt a strange (or, incongruous, at least) sense of patriotism. While many, possibly most wars could have been averted and need not have been fought, and, while in this war, particularly this battle, many of the German soldiers were pressed, untested teenagers, here was one instance where the fight incontestably ought to have been fought, and so my silence honored the fallen warriors as being more than victims of war:
The final scheduled location of our trip, after a brief pit stop for pizza and sleep in Deauville (a typical French tourist town further West up the coast), was, the next morning, Etretat. We were only able to stay in Etretat for a couple of hours, but it was gorgeous as a coastal town. It is dominated by the two cliffs on either side, the westernmost being the site of the beautiful golf course and needle-shaped cliff formation (see the picture below) and the easternmost being the site of a beautiful old church with some grotesque fish-shaped gargoyles (not pictured below).
As it happens, however, we also decided to stop at Rouen on our way back from Etretat to Paris. Rouen is home to an incredible cathedral that rivals Notre Dame de Paris in some peoples' opinion, and also the site where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake during the 100 Years War. Here is a partial picture of that cathedral, by which we picnicked in a little square:
Some of you more folks more cultured than I might recognize the cliff formation from Etretat and the cathedral of Rouen as that which was painted by a number of impressionists over the course of their art studies. I didn't realize this until seeing the paintings later at the Musée Orsay, but that just goes to show you how much I know about art, I suppose...
A final note to wrap up Normandy...the road that I live on, boulevard des Frères Vigouroux, is actually named after two individuals caught up all of the history of D-Day, and, more generally, WWI; I did not realize this until after I saw a small plaque up on the side of a building that I pass each day on the way to the train station.
According to the Malakoff township website, the two brothers, Robert and Paul Vigouroux ("Vi-gou-rhoo"), while living, with their parents, in that house on whose wall this plaque is affixed, founded a résistance movement in 1940. They then left their family two years later, when obligatory service for the French was enacted by the Nazi occupation, and headed for Normandy, where they joined a resistance movement for the "liberation of the north." Four days before D-Day, Robert and Paul were arrested, the younger being 20 years old - my age - and the older only two years the elder. They were interrogated, tortured and imprisoned at Caen and then, the morning of D-Day, they, along with 80 other prisoners where they were held and many, many other prisoners around France, were executed, in part as reprisal to the hundreds of Free French attacks on Nazi railways and other infrastructure orchestrated for the night before D-Day itself. Their bodies were never found.
To think that a youth my age left home - right down the street from where I live - to go to Normandy - where I just visited - to fight in the Résistance there, and then, two years later, when his younger brother is of my age, they are both tortured and executed for it...well, it really brings that part of WWII closer to home.
Sorry; I got a bit carried away there, but, well...that's history for you:
Alsace
Etienne, a good friend from le 72 Sèvres, the church I go to, was incredibly kind and invited me to spend my Christmas vacation with him and his family in Alsace. It was absolutely wonderful, truly some of the best days I have spent in France, and certainly among the most memorable. His family was incredibly chaleureuse (= warm, welcoming, and kind) in welcoming me to share the Advent with them, and I am incredibly grateful to have gotten to know them.
The first day that I was there we all went to the Christmas market in Strasbourg, which was, of course, in full swing, it being the 24th of December. The city of Strasbourg itself is nothing if not charming; the houses and taverns constructed with colombages (timber framings visible from the outside on second and third stories of buildings), the river running through charming quarters where restaurants and tradesmen bustled, and of course, the Christmas market stalls selling sauerkraut, spiced wine, roasted chestnuts, gingerbread, and various woodworkings and straw-workings with which one could decorate the tree:
The Strasbourg cathedral is another of the many wonders of the city. Constructed from reddish-pink sandstone, it is incredibly tall (Wikipedia says it was the world's tallest building in 1873 and the tallest building from the Middle Ages) and incredibly intricate in its construction. Scaling the inside of the main building and seeing the breadth of Strasbourg below was a treat, of course, but it was the outside of the cathedral that was the most incredible to look at...don't you agree?
Christmas day itself and the following days afterwards were an absolute blessing. To be surrounded by my friend's younger siblings, parents, and the general atmosphere of a home, and of a family, made for a wonderful present for the Christ's mass that rendered their thoughtful goody basket full of Alsatian cuisine to me no less delicious or appreciated but entirely unnecessary. While it made me miss my own home and family, it also nevertheless somehow made missing them easier, too, and I am immensely grateful to have gotten to celebrate the love of Christ Jesus with them.
Paris
When I returned to Paris, I still had weeks of winter break left before me. While I don't want to drone on to the point of exhausting those readers attentive enough to have gotten this far in this blog post, and while I trust that most have a general mental image of Paris well-developed enough that my rendering one for them is entirely unnecessary, I nevertheless want to situate you walking along the rive droite (the north bank) of the Seine at night with the cold breeze off the river, on your face, the Jardin des Tuileries (the gardens outside the Louvre) up above you to your left, listening to the slapping of the river against the concrete bank to your right and watching the boats bobbing up and down along rive gauche, the spotlights of the Eiffel Tower twirling in and slicing through the cloudy sky behind you and the towers of Notre Dame becoming visible in front of you, on the right.
(note that this picture is taken from the touristy section of rive gauche, not the more interesting section of rive droite, which would be beyond Notre Dame on the right in the photo...)
While the museums and the fountains and the parks and squares and towers and monuments and generally quite markedly tasteful Parisian architecture are each and all beautiful by day, I do enjoy the city most by night, when the gargoyles on the outside of churches are legitimately frightening and the twisted, unintuitive streets, long since emptied of people who have sought shelter in the metro stops and restaurants, become a truly challenging labyrinth.
Day or night, Paris is certainly, wherever in this city of historic and aesthetic density I find myself, captivating. Et il est pour cela que je l'aime.
I do have other stories and memories I would love to share with faithful readership, but, for now, I find myself growing tired and staring down a heavy schedule of a second week of classes (entirely in French, to boot!) at Sciences Po.
I thus leave you all now with a bonsoir and an au revoir.
- Joseph
