scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

19.4.09

France

Ever since we came back i have been eating brioche at every opportunity. As a snack, with nutella. For breakfast, with butter and jam. In sandwich form. Stacks of grilled cheese. And i think i might be missing the point by maybe just a hair because i get the brioche from anywhere, including the discount grocery, not even a proper bakery, and sock it away in the toaster and then it is warm and the butter goes all melty.

We landed in Nice and instead of our two friends at the airport it was our two friends and their whole families and i think we'd met a sister before, but we're looking for a group of two and then this very big aggregate of people absolutely descends on us and we kiss and hug and kiss some more and forget how to say nice to meet you in French, because we are staying at their house tonight. And there our introductions all around and our luggage is already there so we truck off towards Italy, Italy, passing through Monaco on the way, and i haven't the foggiest idea if Monaco is part of the Schengen or not but there wasn't a border stop. And Monte Carlo looks just like in the movies: very well architectured, very clean, people in expensive clothes, automobiles so damn luxe i don't have the foggiest idea what they were. And we drove along part of the race track for the Monaco Grand Prix and i cannot freaking believe they drive so fast around those tiny tippy corners, the entire country is built on the side of a mountain going down into the sea, and that is why Europeans get so excited about Formula One. I am going to have to watch it.

And we drove along the coast and it is all Avenue This Fancy Thing, Boulevard So and So, Promenade of the Sun, and then it suddenly changes to Corso and we were in Italy. And we went to their tiny house in Grimaldi, and we had this delicious lamb - i think it was lamb - anyway it was delicious and E was very charming and i love French people and also France and Italy and Monaco. L's family made us feel absolutely at home and as it turned out i think we brought them nice things from Turkey: for them we had brought a big evil-eye charm with a bit of carpet attached which very conveniently doesn't have to be hung anywhere in particular to work but will - what, ward off? absorb? - protect you from bad luck if it is hung above the door like a horseshoe or equally well if it is hung in some other random place. Anyway they liked it and we liked them and E was pretty happy because our friends have a dog N, and L's family also has a dog whose name i forget, and both dogs are very large and E was happy.

We trucked off immediately to another tiny house of theirs - it is a good system, i think, to have many tiny houses - in Saorge, in France again, and we got there only when it was completely dark so this little village gave the impression of hanging off the side of a mountain like a spider. A very old spider with legs called Way of the ancient warrior and Bridge of the blue devils. And there was a pizza place in Saorge that we could walk to and so while we did not have pizza in Italy we had pizza very nearby and it was very good pizza and if it was not already known globally then i would tell all my friends about it. After the travelling - the flight in and then the assorted driving and trying to get to places - we went back to the second tiny house in France and they went back to the first tiny house in Italy and we all fell asleep.

The next day dawned and was beautiful and we walked all around the little village taking pictures until the camera battery died from something like an overload of picturesqueness. And then we got in the car and drove through the French countryside and it was like driving through a painting, seriously. Little rows of pointy trees and dotty bushes, soft hills receding, blue sky and white clouds, and it is crazy because you are driving along a perfectly normal highway and then you come to a particular vantage point and go WHY HELLO, CEZANNE. And then five seconds later you do it again. Van Gogh. Renoir. Matisse. That is really, actually, what it looks like, and i love Europe.

And finally we got to where we were going, which was Lans en Vercours, where all the Grenoble people go to ski, and where A's family lives. And they were very welcoming and we were very tired and the next morning A and her family went off to a baptism and we went with L to a monastery. Where his brother lives. In a Buddhist monastery. In the mountains of France. (Karma Migyur Ling, Montchardon.) So we met his brother and his brother was very happy living in the Buddhist monastery and he showed us around the place and some of it was perfectly normal dormitory kind of housing, that you wouldn't think necessarily belonged to a Buddhist monastery in the mountains of France, if you only looked at the outside of those buildings or in the rooms. And since he lived in one of these rooms, certainly Spartan but not unordinary, a friend of his with an apartment in a different part of the monastery lent us their kitchen so we could have tea and cookies, and L's other brother came with his son who was just a few months older than E, and we all went sledding and walking along the mountain and the roads and there were some very nice donkeys across the street and E took an extended nap in the ergo because we hadn't even brought the stroller, just the car seat. And other parts of the monastery were decorated with gold and with colorful prayer flags and big white seated buddhas, which was very unexpected in the mountains of France. For, you know, me. Yet, there they were, a big row of very large white seated buddhas. Not what you picture when you think "French."

The drive up to the monastery had made me very, very glad that L was driving and that I was not: it was on one of those torturous, switchyback hairpin roads, back and forth and up and up and up, full of gravel and ice and narrow passes between the trees. And the drive back down was the same thing only much more in the dark. I have seen roads that were less like roads, but some of these things - this one, and the road to Lans en Vercours, and the road down to Grenoble - really marvels of civic engineering. It would not have ever occurred to me that someone might want to put a road through the middle of that mountain or across the side of that cliff. Someone must have been really determined, and stubborn, to get a driveable road there. How on earth did people get there, and live there the year round, and get enough fresh vegetables, if they could only rappel across a great yawning chasm with a little stream way at the bottom? How can French cuisine be so great (and oh, it is) if the only things they could possibly get in the middle of winter must have been, at one point, mountain goat and lichen? No wonder they're so good with the cheeses. Huh.

(This is where i pause and go, oh, gods, Raclette. Picture me and Homer Simpson with matching trails of drool.)

The next day we went sledding with L and A and A's family and N the dog (who, one will note, was awfully patient with the baby, especially for a dog not used to babies). Living in the Alps of course they had several varieties of sled and we tried them all between us and made big trains of sledpeople, holding on with our knees and riding down the mountain together, and N the dog would come and herd us. and E was awake, this time, with her giant pink puffy snow coat and her giant pink puffy snow pants and her giant pink waterproof fuzzy boots, and M took her down the little last bit of the hill a few times and she really liked sledding with Daddy holding on to her (she couldn't put her arms down, with the giant pink puffy snow gear) but she made it very clear that she did not want to ride down the hill by herself, nor did she want to ride in the sled and be pulled home.

There was also a big set of Lego things and we had fun taking them apart and building more: the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate bridge, the Pyramids. E was not so into Legos yet but she must have been watching and learning like a very hungry tiger. She had a wonderful time in France: toddling about and going out to play in the snow and following the dog and she'd got several new toys for Christmas (including the puzzle with a lion piece that goes ROAR, and a plinky wooden xylophone) and there were magnets to put on the fridge and one of those wind-up bugs and a decorated tree to look at and a piano to bang on and lots of nice people to boggle around and also many delicious things to eat - we learned midway through that she really likes marinated bits of garlic, and also depitted marinated olives (cut in half) and bits of bell pepper and onion, and of course also lots of nice French bread and fancy fruits, and we'd mentioned that she likes yogurt so our lovely hosts had a lot of happy baby yogurt and she was absolutely loving it. Sometimes now we give her bits of garlic and she dips them in her strawberry baby yogurt. Sometimes now she is somewhat more rational to what our grownup-american taste buds are used to and dips her grilled cheese in soup, but sometimes ... not. For A's family hosting us we had brought several Turkish tiles from Izmir and i think they liked them, or i hope they liked them, because they gave E two goose figurines that they said had been a gift from the baker and she promptly broke them. Both. But then they said they didn't like the goose figurines anyway and it was fine, except of course you still feel bad about it and I wished we had brought them more stuff from Turkey.

Anyway, then we went to the cavern, the Grottes de Chorance, and you go in thinking, okay, some cave, but whatever, caves are cool, and they say not to touch anything because the stalactites take thousands of years to form and you're just going yeah, okay, and then the guide switches to all French and then you enter the cave and there are a kajillion tiny hollow soda straw stalactites and i have seen caves before and i have seen stalactites and (a) this cave is spectacular and (b) my photos are fucking fantastic. E slept through a lot of the cave but enjoyed walking around the hiking paths, and M and L were happy to find some wild Arabidopsis growing on the side of a cliff.

Then it was New Years' Eve and A's mom was kind enough to babysit E for us (she even got her to nap, though i didn't ask how) while we went skiing. Of course they have a favorite ski rental place for people to go - they have all their own skis, those people who live in the Alps - and they had enough warm ski pants for us to borrow everything and keep from freezing our toes. My toes were not even vaguely blue-numb at the end of the day and my toes are always blue-numb - so not only does this prove that the weird socks were warm, but also the ski shoes fit properly, i guess? Right? Anyway we went down the bunny slopes a couple of times with all of the various French telling us things we were doing wrong and mostly in agreement on it. And then we went down the next slopes up a couple of times. And then at the end of the day they took me down a - what, a blue? red? - an incredibly steep and terrifying mountain. Of course i made it down without dying but only just: luckily i am very good at falling over whenever anybody comes near me, at least, so i didn't put too many other people in danger.

Then we went home and then it was New Years' Eve dinner time and everyone got busy tying up stuffed calamaris and rinsing oysters and making sure the snails had enough butter and garlic and, i don't know, there were scallops and mussels and octopi and pate de foie gras, and if it is nice to the geese or if it is cruel to the geese i don't know but it is yummy. M hadn't had it before. And i don't know that i'd ever had a stuffed calamari that was quite so big before. There was music and dancing and silly hats (even for N the dog) and champagne and cheese and olives and wine and chartreuse and other liquers i couldn't even identify, and always apparently when one is an honored guest in France then just when you think you have had all the wine and all the chartreuse and all the desserts, even, they bring out the cheeeeeese. And i go all Wallace and Wensleydale.

On New Years' Day we went skiing again. Of course. This time there were rather more people, or at any rate it seemed like there were more people, and small people, too, whole groups of four-year-olds whizzing past confidently. M and i looked at the small people and swore that E would learn to ski now, while she can. Maybe not this winter, but the next. We went down several more large and steep and really high-grade mountains and standing at the top is very nice, more so than holding on to the lift (they have these funny lifts where you really do have to hold on and pay attention and your skis never leave the ground, it just pulls you up the hill while you grip it as hard as you can through the thick gloves) - standing at the top, waiting for all the other people to go down first so as to not severely injure them, you have a breather to look around at the view, at the little towns, the mountains, the sky, the clouds, the fog. The loopy grace of the people who have been doing this forever. The black paths, tiny, sharply angled trails between the trees, still high above. And then there is a space between groups and you go for it and go for about a second and fall, and L said that i kept falling because i was scared, and i said of course i kept falling because i was scared, i was quite deliberate about that. I just wanted to go slower, on average. And it is easier to not hurt other people when one is, well, stationary. But i didn't run into anybody really and i don't think any of us were severely hurt and it was exhilarating and exhausting and gorgeous and it's like unbridled freedom, finally when it's working, it's like flying, and i was probably still only going twelve miles an hour. I so want to go back. And be terrified again.

Then, sigh, time passes and we drove to Paris and we got to finally give L and A what we'd brought for them, a big mosaic hanging lamp from the markets in Fethiye. I had been waiting and waiting and waiting and holding my breath. In Paris we only had one real day and we had thought of all the things there are to do in Paris, and there are so many things to do in Paris, and in one day you can't do any of them justice anyway that we hadn't already done at one point or another (both M and i had been to Paris before, though separately at the time), so we didn't have to pay and ride up the Tower and we didn't have to go see the Arc de Triomphe and we didn't have to do anything, with the big lines of tourists we didn't have to see the inside of Notre Dame, et c., and one would not think, again, that walking and walking and walking through Paris past the architecture and the street musicians and the little painters shops and the cafes and the music, walking and walking and walking in early January does not sound relaxing. But it was the perfect ending. I couldn't trace where we walked on a map, or find it anywhere again. It was a real vacation, where you go and everything is perfect and beautiful and delicious and behind a curtain from the real world, removed from drama and politics and worry, and committing to plane tickets and long car rides with a toddler is a leap of faith at best, and this was far, far more than i had hoped for.

So now i have been to France twice. And now i can say, i know why people fall in love with it, i know why people go back. Again and again and again.

Labels: festivities, travel

scrawled @ 21:10