Culture

Avignon France

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Took the train from Barcelona to Avignon in the Provence area in the south of France. Stayed at Hotel Mignon on rue Joseph-Vernet. Cute little French hotel room but the smallest loo yet! Sitting on the stool, you find your knees sticking out the door!

We tried to eat at Christian Etienne’s famous restaurant so I could report to Josh but they were full up. They referred us to another restaurant with a respected chef, the Piedoie where we had a wonderful dinner at half the price.

At another fine restaurant a woman had her dog sitting on her lap during the meal. Must be acceptable in France.

Avignon is an old Roman city with narrow winding streets and is entirely enclosed by ancient Roman walls. The highlight is the Palace of the Popes-so called because the Vatican moved it’s center from Rome to Avignon for a time. Attached to the Palace is the Church of Notre Dame. Bob went to Easter mass there the morning we left. Capturing some of the incredible music on the camcorder, he reported that the chief celebrant was a cardinal…if a big red hat means anything.

In the 14th century, this city in the South of France was the seat of the papacy. The Palais des Papes, an austere-looking fortress lavishly decorated by Simone Martini and Matteo Giovanetti, dominates the city, the surrounding ramparts and the remains of a 12th-century bridge over the Rhone. Beneath this outstanding example of Gothic architecture, the Petit Palais and the Romanesque Cathedral of Notre-Dame-des-Doms complete an exceptional group of monuments that testify to the leading role played by Avignon in 14th-century Christian Europe. Avignon is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The New Young Brits

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In the train, before crawling into my compartment, I stood out in the hall and had a great conversation with a bright energetic young Brit (Richard) attending Cambridge. He had been traveling by himself on college break all through Morocco. (There were thousands of European students on college break traveling all over Europe during this time.)

He explained, when asked, that in Britain at these schools you pick a subject and then only study that subject-and his subject was Modern History. He was full of questions about my 1965 trip to Europe and about my activities during the Viet Nam War. He was fully aware that in the U. S. more Viet Nam veterans have committed suicide since the war than all the 40,000 men who died during that war.

At first I thought Richard was French because he was speaking so fluently in French with someone else in another compartment but he explained that he grew up bilingual.

My generation in America has grown up with a view of Britain as the great colonialist country but perhaps it’s citizens have learned a great deal from it’s own history and Britain now has one of the most culturally sophisticated generations in the English speaking world. The upcoming generations of Americans would do well to learn from them-indeed it must especially if we are to learn how to get along with the rest of the world. But it won’t happen without exposure to other cultures on a pretty broad scale and at a pretty young age. For example, Richard’s first travel experience was at the age of 15 when he was sent to India alone by his parents for several months. What parents do you know that would allow their 15 year old children the same experience-alone? Richard said that words cannot describe the feeling you have when you step off the plane for the first time in Bombay-and you only have a first experience one time-he noted-and you never forget it.

He left me thinking that if this generation of youngsters will be in charge of the world in the next 20 years we will be ok.

The next morning we took a ferry from Tangiers to Algeciras; ate at a great family run Tapas Bar around the corner from the train station-snails in tomato sauce, Potato Ruso, fried calimari, seafood salad in mayonnaise sauce and beer and then took the train from Algeciras to Madrid. Arrived 10pm in Madrid and picked up another night train to Barcelona. Same kind of sleeping compartments as night before in Morocco but hey-we’re old hands at this now! Even got to sleep in middle beds in the compartment and no one shut the window!

9/11 & Two Muslims

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The next day, we spent the day in Marrakech waiting for our favorite night train back to Tangiers. I spent all afternoon at the Ali Hotel Internet Cafe while Bob went out walking through the city again. Ate dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Square. Bob had great beef stew with onions and raisons. I had a welcome spaghetti with pomodora (tomato) sauce and water. On the way back to the hotel we bought a liter of fresh squeezed orange juice for about 75 cents for the trip back on the train.

By this time I had made friends with a young man who was in charge of the Internet Cafe-Fattah Boutnach. We had been trading cultural information intermittently before we left on the excursion and since I felt there was generally a pretty good feeling between us I decided to ask the big question. The first thing he had said to me when we met was that “Americans and Europeans are very HARD.” This took me by surprise, but we do have a competitiveness that makes us hurried and sharp with each other. In the interest of being task-oriented have we gained everything at the risk of losing our souls? The rest of the world fears this is true and doesn’t want it to happen to them.

He said that my name, Eunice, is the name of a prophet in the Koran-the
‘man that was eaten by the fish” (Jonah) and that Eunice is a name for a man in the Arabic world.

But back to my big question. From Fattah’s perspective I wanted to know “what was the pain that caused 9/11?” Curiously, Fattah didn’t understand my question. The answer was political not emotional.

Fattah’s English was not that sophisticated so he invited a friend to join our conversation-a handome man in his 30’s with clear eyes and resolute but warm and friendly manner. He was clean shaven and had on a beautifully immaculate white cotton jamalla. As it turned out he was very well read in English. When asked, he said that his job was educating very young children but he quickly added that more importantly he was a student of history and philosophy. (Educating the next generation of jihadists, I wondered.) In response to the realities in the Arab speaking world he had written an article for a French publication. He promised to use a translation program on the internet to translate the article into English for me and send it to me via email which I never received.

But following are some of the comments they made during our conversation:

1. “Maybe now Americans, in particular your American government, will try to understand “the other” a people different than yourselves. Your government-and we understand that it is not done by the American people-has chipped away at our identities for years now-has denied us who we are and it is time for this to stop and the American people must understand what’s happening and put pressure on their government to get it to stop doing this.

2. They wanted to talk about the “aggression” in Afghanistan and said that they did not believe Osama bin laden was connected to 9/11 but I tried to steer the conversation away from those topics because I wanted to stay on a more personal level. They wanted to know how we knew for sure that Osama was actually saying what we thought he was saying on the videotape. I explained that the government had four different translators translate the video and that in addition, because they doubted any translation commissioned by the US government, an Arab advocacy organization also translated it. I told him we heard Osama exclaiming how it was a good thing that it happened. Then they dropped the subject but I don’t think they were convinced.

I countered to the first comment that before 9/11 Bush barely was elected president-that our intellectuals were trying to understand but the average American did not have a clue why 9/11 happened and was supporting Bush’s policy on terrorism.

The men wanted to know why and I said that because most Americans do not read and study about what our government does in other countries so they don’t know how our government is perceived by people in other countries. I continued that most American people get their information from the press but that that information was generally considered by our intellectuals to be very shallow. Also most Americans basically were not interested in international news because they are busy working to earn a living and do not see that it is relevant to their lives. So the press does not give us much international news in the first place.

The two men countered that Americans must begin reading because people in other countries are reading and are developing opinions of our government based on what they read. They gave an example-comments that our vice president, Dick Cheney made a few years ago, that is widely read in the Arab world and has them (Arabs) “scared to death.” Then Fattah’s friend gave me a list of books he thinks Americans must also read: Thomas Freeman “The Mind Managers” published by Beacon Press in Boston in 1974 and “Globalisation, The Human Consequences” by Zygment Bowman published by Cambridge Press in 1998.

By this time I had to leave for the train so we traded email addresses and we all affirmed that there is always hope for people to learn to get along with each other. I told them about John Hofer’s imperative that I report back to my friends at home what my travels revealed about what we have become in this world. Fattah told me that this was a very great responsibility. Then they said “lahamdalela” to me as I left-meaning, they said, “Thanks to God.” The conversation left me reeling.

European Popular Culture

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Most days in Europe you would see at least once a wonderful display of affection between two young people-playful and sensuous-mostly kissing-but never offensive. And then they walk on as if nothing had happened. Bob finds it uncomfortable…but no one else on the street seems to pay any attention to it at all. Portugal is a bit more restrained…the play, Vagina Monologues, advertised all over Britain and France but is no where to be seen in Spain and Portugal.

Fashions
In the urban centers you see beautiful people with beautiful clothes (and in Paris the women smelled wonderful as they passed you by on the street) so I caved in and made my first purchase-some perfume not exported by France. Women love sweaters. Fully 2-3 out of all people under 40 wear black leather jackets and often the women are in full length ones. Clothing is very expensive so you know these folks have a little money. In Salamanca, especially on the weekend, early evenings reveal mostly older couples strolling through the streets and in the town square dressed as if they were going to the opera-women in very expensive cloth coats and men in perfectly pressed slacks and jackets with tie-often pushing a stroller with what apparently is the grandchild. They eat dinner between 8pm and 11pm. Then the older folks disappear and the streets become filled with the young. I marveled at what appeared on the surface to be an ideal small village society focused around the family and at the center a cultural center (plaza) where everyone could go and socialize.

Many young women who have good figures seem to get up in the morning and pour themselves into their jeans (a la mons pubis) before they go out-the younger ones in faded ones with the hem rolled up six inches-jeans I mean. Levi Jeans are very popular as well as levi jackets. On the way from Paris to Bayonne we had a three hour layover in Bordeaux so we ate lunch at an outdoor cafe-four people had on levi jackets. Btw, levi material was invented by the Levi Strauss company in a small city nearby. American companies in San Francisco imported the strong material in the 1800’s to sell to workers in the gold mines and on the docks…and the material came to be associated with America.

The Proletariat
After a few days in the city centers, we go looking for the working class. In Paris, the Belleville section was the most colorful and interesting. There are also Muslim and African neighborhoods. In Paris there are no green men with green brooms in these neighborhoods. The subways are full of piss and the streets full of litter. Guess they dn’t expect the tourists to go to these
neighborhoods.

Lisbon reputedly is the gay-lesbian capital of Europe but don’t know why it would be Lisbon. People are generally very kind in Spain and Portugal. Lots of people of African extract in Portugal and they often flash big wonderful smiles!

Continuing saga of the internet: went searching for the internet in Lisbon. An Austrian woman was waiting her turn to pay a $12 deposit which gets returned to you when you are finished. I told her about my internet saga in France and she laughed and laughed. I mentioned that I thought that the French “attitude” was a big act because it was so exagerated. Surprisingly she agreed and said that the French were known all over Europe for it and that no one takes it seriously. So I guess I won’t either.

Spain and Portugal play movies with original language and add their own subtitles. Hilarious, is to see an American made movie in France with George Clooney speaking French!

United Colors of Benneton everywhere. Starbucks on every corner in London but not a one in France, Spain and Portugal-god love them! Actually it would devestate hundreds of local cafes that really are at the heart of the culture of these countries.

Even though most of the little shops and banks and restaurants close down in the afternoon 1-4 in Spain and 1-3 in Portugal, the modern shopping mall businesses stay open. Whole countries of people disappear off the streets during these hours!

Lisbon

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Roosters are symbols of Portuguese culture so we felt that it was appropriate that after staying one night in a boring part of Lisbon, Portugal in a hotel room offered to us by a “tout” at a train station we woke to a rooster crowing at 5am.

The next day we moved to a small two star hotel-Residencial Santana Pensao at Rua Luciano Cordeiro-located up a steep narrow side street on a hill at the center of the city in the Bairro Alto district. (“Lets Go” travel book says “Bairro” is the hip name for Chiado-the Portuguese word for district.) The hotel can also be reached via the Ascensor Gloria from Pr. Restauradoes-like the cable cars in San Francisco. The hotel was up one flight of stairs off street-no lift.

We have learned more history on hop-on hop-off tour buses than we did in all of high school and college put together! In Portugal there is a law against killing the bull in bullfights-and the horse plays a very important role. In 1965 my traveling companion and I saw a bullfight in Pamplona Spain when we were there for the running of the bulls (that Hemingway made famous in the US). It was a sickening thing to watch and we left in the middle before the bull died.

As Bob says, Lisbon has some degree of decay but perhaps that is the charm-by its appearance we realize that it’s hey-day was 4-5 centuries ago. Amazing to think that at one time Portugal was one of the foremost powers of the world! One of the monuments of Lisbon is a huge building that was built as a seminary and church with 15% of the profits that came from the spice trade in India. It is now called the “pepper building.”

Next day, after a lunch of very good chicken and rice and a sandwich of beef slices cooked in broth, we strolled out into an empty square in the rain. I was offered contraband from a guy selling sun glasses…sunglasses in the rain?

Was helped at internet by young woman who was fluent in English. (Very difficult to find anyone over the age of 20 that knows English. This girl, however, had had 8 years of English and told us that all children from first grade on are now taught English in school.)

Ate dinner at restaurant around the corner with Fado Music. Fado is Portuguese old style blues which is a kind of high-pitched lamenting. I had heard that Fado was very beautiful and that the singing would break your heart but I didn’t like the classical version-very loud and harsh singing and then they want to sell you their CDs afterward. Have been told the contemporary Fado is better. The next day we took a train trip to Caicais on the outskirts of Lisbon.

On the last day we took the tram up to the Alfama district-old Moorish district of town-lots of Muslim shop owners. We visited a church that was displaying “Order of Malta” artifacts and we remembered reading about the order in a college history or religion class. We trekked up a steep hill in the rain to the Castile de Jorge, an old Roman fortification, and I took a pee into a little waterfall (urinal) against the fortification wall behind a copper shield with my stand-up peeing device used by women in the US Forest Service.

Sampled port wine (the indiginous favorite in Portugal) in a shop across from the wall with a young woman proprietor who spoke very good English. When my port was finished I told her thank you in Portuguese and she said “that is Portuguese for thank you.” I said, “yes, I know, I am thanking you for the port.” She laughed and said, “oh, sorry, many people say gracias (Spanish) and we find it very insulting!” Bob and I do seem to “get into trouble” on a pretty regular basis with the locals but we were lucky that time. Bob remarked to her that he noticed that she had an American accent. She said that yes, her English teacher from Britain gave her low marks in English class because of her American accent but that she didn’t care!

On the way down the hill, soaked wet and freezing cold, we looked into a small restaurant window and saw a huge pile of crab on the counter with a table full of people eating and laughing loudly-the entire scene pulling us uncontrollably in where we participated in the festivities.

Spanish Trains

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Spanish trains have compartments with room for six people. Luckily ours had two young Swiss girls that we recruited, a young guy from Japan that was studying Spanish in Salamanca for a few months but going to Portugal for a break, a guy from France and us.

I remembered that when my friend Barbara and I traveled on a second class train in 1965 in Spain (once was all it took) the train was full of drunk soldiers who kept bothering us so I crawled up into the luggage rack and fell asleep-I guess leaving Barb to fend for herself!

We, in our compartment, had a lengthy discussion about Spanish culture as we had observed it in Salamanca. The Japanese guy was genuinely shocked by the young kids that were running around the streets at 4:30 in the morning-which was funny because I had been thinking just the opposite-that the Spanish loved the young and made a place in society for them…well what do I know anyway!

Through Others’ Eyes

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In the hotel in Paris at breakfast one morning. I struck up a conversation with a woman that wasn’t speaking French to the waiter and she had avoided talking to me. I guessed that she might be English or Scandinavian and most Sacandinavians speak English. It turned out she was from Poland but knew English very well. She had avoided talking to me because she thought I was French. When I started talking to her and finally told her I was from the states, she said “no wonder your English accent is so good-I thought you were French!”

She was on her way to a business meeting in Lancaster PA. In her slender 30’s she had short cropped blond hair and was wearing a yellow sweater and tan slacks. She said that on a trip to NY several years ago, she was struck by how “big” many American were and she made clear that she meant fat. She guessed that it was because they didn’t get enough “motion.” It is interesting to see ourselves through other’s eyes. I tried to explain “jet lag” the lag part being the most difficult.

Later, an English woman in the hotel in Bayonne said that when she had visited NY several years ago she was shocked at how people, who were dressed up in suits and other nice clothing, were wearing ugly sneakers and walking so fast down the street. We tried to tell her we didn’t find “sneakers” ugly and that when I worked I wore nice shoes to work and carried my tennis shoes in a bag that I then used when walking to/from the car. But she said there were “nice” comfortable shoes you could wear out on the street and she held up her foot whereupon there was a nice black walking shoe.