Chapitre 4: Manifestations et Moutard

Dear Readers,
When I last left you, I had gone on a whirlwind tour of several beautiful places, places so beautiful and interesting that I couldn't bring myself to interrupt them with menial details about life in Grenoble.  With that said, although daily life here is not as exciting as a trip to Mt Blanc or exploring Roman ruins, interesting and funny things do happen here day in and day out.  Sometimes these manifest themselves as a simple slip of the tongue.  For example, a few nights ago at dinner with my host family, we were once again discussing the words for various berries in French and English.  My host father, Captian Von Trapp, who speaks English quite well in fact, misheard me when I said, "raspberry" and was under the impression that the english word for framboise was "flaspberry".  We all laughed and moved on, but the memory still makes me laugh out loud, maybe because it brings Willy Wonka to mind.  I've also been enjoying meeting people from many cultures and walks of life.  Two weekends ago, I went out to dinner with a few friends to a little Lebanese restaurant we had stumbled upon during the day.  When we stopped by during the day, the owner and chef at the restaurant was so diligent and earnest in his explanations of the food that we decided to return for dinner.  We were not disappointed, as he once again explained everything on the menu in a wonderful mix of French and English, with the tiniest bit of Arabic thrown in.  After serving us, he showed us the proper technique for eating Lebanese food, told us all about his life, finger fed us a different type of dish he was preparing (he came around to us individually and put the food in our mouths), informed us of the subtleties of baclava and the price of pine nuts in France (which is why he imports directly from Lebanon).  In short, it was a perfectly lovely evening and I was glad to make his acquaintance.  In some ways personal interactions like that are more interesting than all the historical and cultural sites I've seen here, but I guess its hard to quantify that type of thing.  I also met a melancholy Irishman named Luke.  He was an unemployed writer bubbling over with philosophical statements and melancholy.  He's here in France because he can't get a job and a girl he knows invited him on holiday.  I swear that he was an actor practicing for a role in an upcoming film, but he was nevertheless an interesting character to meet.  But I digress.

The weekend before this past weekend (the 15-17), I ventured into the land of mustard: yes my friends, I went to Dijon.  Friday morning, my group departed from Grenoble, with the town of Cluny as our destination.  After a delicious lunch of regional specialties, we headed out for a tour of the Abbaye de Cluny with Lesley, our charming guide.  Despite the fact that it was wintery in Cluny.  L'abbaye de Cluny was the largest church in Europe before St Peter's Cathedral in Rome was built.  Interestingly, it had a direct line to the Pope, meaning it wasn't under the authority of any bishop, etc, except for the Pope.  This gave the Abbey an amazing amount of liberty at the time, liberty which was quickly transformed into power.  The history was truly fascinating, but somewhat complicated, which is why our program director allowed us to have our tour in English.  I was grateful for this, mostly because I felt like I appreciated the tour a little more than I would have if it was in french and also because our tourguide Leslie had the most charming English accent and kept asking us if we "wanted to come along now" and all sorts of wonderful other things.  After our interesting if somewhat freezing tour (it was winter in Bourgogne), we continued on to the city of Dijon.  We had a group dinner that night at a nice restaurant around the corner from our hotel. 

For the entrée, we had a choice of a few things, all regional specialities, including escargots.  Now, we'd been warned that escargot would be an option, so I'd been thinking about it all day, and had already shared with my lunch table that I was a bit scared to try escargot because as soon as I hear that word, I just think of myself as a fifth-grader, walking through the hallways of Webster school seeing piles of sawdust covering the vomit from several 4th graders who tried escargot at the end of the year french party.  When it came down to decision time though, I decided to live on the edge.  I thought of all my other friends who have done adventerous things while abroad - bungee jumping and ostrich feeding come to mind - and decided to have my own adventure.  I ordered the escargot.  I must admit, I was terrified when they brought out a little dish with 6 snail shells on it.  I'd been hoping to avoid seeing them in snail form, but when I finally managed to get one out of the shell (harder than it seems), I was wonderfully surprised to find that I liked it!  It turns out that snails don't have any flavor, so the only thing I could taste was the delicious butter and garlic that it was soaked it.  I was proud of myself for trying something new, however, despite some people's suggestions that I should try grenouille (frog!) next, I think I'll just stick with the snails.

The weeked continued with food indulgence, another wine tasting (they never end...) and, of course, a strike!  On Saturday in Dijon there was a manifestation, a demonstration by people who are on strike and hoping to stop a law that would raise the retirement age.  The manifestation ran its normal course during the day, full of families and older people with signs and megaphones, but as things started to wrap up, the people who remained were the young rabble-rousers, who are called casseurs (breakers, because they break things).  As we were getting off the bus from the wine tasting, our director advised us to avoid the area of the manifestation as things can get a little edgy at the end.  Of course, it happened to be right near our hotel, so we walked past several lines of police men in full riot suits facing a bunch of young french people with bandanas over their faces.  My friends and I ducked into the store H&M as there was a new coat mission in progess.  Much to our surprise, a few minutes later we found ourselves locked in H&M because the manifestation was going on right outside and they were afraid a window or door could be broken.  The young people went about their business lighting trash cans on fire and generally harassing the police, as the police/storm troopers continued to push them away and break up the event.  We were able to escape from H&M out of the side fire escape, but certainly was a memorable event for me!

The fun continued in Dijon when I was able to meet up with a few other students from Colby who are spending the semester in Dijon.  It was really nice to see some familiar faces and to be able to talk about good ol' Mayflower Hill, so I was really glad that I was able to meet up with them! 
We wrapped up the weekend with a stop at Beaune, where they have a lovely tiled roof and one of the oldest hospitals in Europe.  We took a tour there, again with a charming tourguide who was french this time, but dying to speak in english to us.  My favorite parts were 1. when she explained to us in English why they used to call a certain oil "Oil of a thousand flowers": "because it was made from cow poops and cows ate all the flowers" and 2. when she told us they still raise money to take care of 'the needies".  I know that I make mistakes all the time in french, so maybe its wrong for me to laugh a little when French people make mistakes in English, but it was really cute and I couldn't help myself.  I really enjoyed the tour though, and the exquisite lunch that followed.

Beautiful tiled roof on L'hospice de Dieu in Beaune

All in all, another good weekend but Sunday night, I found myself happy to back in Grenoble with a warm bed waiting for me.  So, that was last weekend.  This weekend I found myself in Vercors Regional parc, but that's a whole other story.  Coming soon to a blog near you: KK and Suzie have an adventure in the french countryside. 
Once again, a brief photo explanation:
1. Model of the Abbey of Cluny in its heyday
2. Part of the remaining structure at Cluny
3. Escargot!
4. Colby friends in Dijon
5. Tiled roof