I had every intention of taking time to catch everyone up to date, but so much has happened in the past few days that I unfortunately have to make a few cuts, or at least trim the edges of some adventures. I’m currently writing this entry from a small home tucked away in a valley, surrounded on all sides by the Pyrenées, and I would like to spend the next few entries on how I got here. That means I don’t have time to speak thoroughly on the group trip to the Pyrenées-Orientales that took place about two weeks ago. I am posting a link to pictures from the trip and I will give a brief summary, but I really want to move on to Ariège.
With that, here is my brief summary of the Pyrenées-Orientales (October 15-17):
We arrived by mini-bus and spent our first afternoon lounging on the Mediterranean beach with the mountains at our back. The Pyrenées-Orientales refer to the southwestern-most coast of France, where the Pyrenées meet the Mediterranean Sea and nestle up against the Spanish boarder. The purpose of the trip was to learn about Spanish immigration into France at the time of the Spanish Civil War - during General Franco’s violent rise to power in the 1930s, many Spanish refugees sought asylum in France. The Civil War served as a sort of training ground for Word War II, with the Germans providing Franco and his Fascist army with planes, and joined forces with Mussolini to provide military advice. The countries that would become the Allied Forces in WWII declared neutrality, and refused to involve themselves in the conflict, with the exception of permitting volunteers to enter the conflict against Franco’s take over. France, being among those to declare neutrality, was less than eager to allow Spanish refugees to cross the border into France. All the same, thousands of refugees crossed over the border, only to be greeted by unsanitary living conditions in camps established to provide some form of shelter against the harsh winter.
Part of our visit to this region included a hike across the border, taking the same trail the Spanish Refugees took nearly 80 years ago. I firmly believe that you can never fully comprehend history unless you actively participate in it. Two years ago, I studied the history of WWII in Normandy, and I will never see the war in the same way. The same can now be said for the Spanish Civil War. I will never think of the Spanish Civil War or its refugees in the same light (and yes, I do think of these things, I’m a history major after all).
Now moving on to more recent events…
On our day of arrival, everyone met up at the train station for festivities celebrating the beginning of a 10 day séjour in Ariège. Ariège is a region in France tucked away in the Pyrenées along the Spanish boarder, and as my host dad says, Ariège is France’s version of the tip of South America. In other words, it’s the end of the earth, or at least as far as most French are concerned.
Ariège is not particularly far from Toulouse, only a few hours by car, but those few hours make all the difference. As we entered the region, fields and fields of corn appeared and the mountains became all the more defined. On a clear day and from a high point, you can see the Pyrenées from Toulouse, they really are not that far away, but it’s not quite the same to be tucked away in a valley surrounded by them. All I can say is that if this is the end of the earth, it’s doesn’t deserve such a negative reputation, or not from what I can tell.
As I was saying, we arrived in Ariège Saturday mid-day, just in time for the market. The market is truly incredible, and I’ve seen my share of markets. Ariège is an agricultural community and their market reflects that. I’ve never seen carrots this size – it would be more suitable to consider them small trees, really. It was fortunate I had forgotten my wallet because if I had access to money, I would certainly have purchased the ingredients for several full blown meals, which wouldn’t have been much of a problem except that I had no certain access to a kitchen. I also made a very important discovery while at the market. As it turns out, people eat horse here. Yes, horse. National Velvet, Sea Biscuit, Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken horse. I haven’t had any…yet, but you had better believe my guard is up.
After the market, we were welcomed by the tourist office, which had prepared an aperitif and a full blown lunch consisting of, lamb stew, pate au gratin (that’s baked pasta with a cheesy toping), cheese, wine, a dessert of fruit, and coffee (comme d’habitude). Clearly, the meal was enormous, and showing no self control as usual, I ate entirely too much. Not surprisingly, during the meal the Americans isolated themselves, all of us huddling together at one end of the table. I happened to be on the edge, and served as the buffer between the francophone and Anglophone communities.
I tend to take seating arrangements seriously, and feel the need to converse with all my dining partners. I can’t help it, it’s how I was raised, but ultimately it’s good that I was on the buffer, because I had a lovely conversation with the vice-president of the tourist office. So his title didn’t seem that lame at the time, but in hindsight I think I may have misunderstood his official role. At any rate, we ended up talking about one of my favorite subjects: history. This, unfortunately, seemed to exclude the others even more from our conversation, but my dining companion seemed to really enjoy the subject. [For my non-history-phile readership, don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing right now…so stop rolling your eyes at me, I know he was equally interested in conversing over all things past] And it helped that the subject revolved around French history. In fact, he liked the subject so much that the next thing I knew, I was committed to be on the local radio. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I had a date with stardom. All of Ariége was to hear my broken French discussing American perceptions of French history – and no, not the white flag of surrender version. I don’t condone that school of thought. Unfortunately, due to life’s surprises, my debut appearance was not meant to be, but I’ll get to that in due time.
After stuffing us full of heavy “French Mountain” food, the tourist office thought it would be a good idea to have us dance. Yes, dance. It’s a premature Christmas miracle that none of us revisited our meal. The tourist office had arranged for a group of musicians to play traditional music from the region and teach us a few moves. I’m not sure if it’s cool to admit this or not, but I actually really enjoyed the music, and I’m sure if I hadn’t been stuffed with food, I would have enjoyed the dancing as well. From the start of the first note, the ensemble had us spinning, clapping, and polkaing, and before we knew it, we were being filmed for local television. Apparently it’s not every day that a group of young Americans arrive in Ariège and begin dancing the Polka in the main square. It’s rare enough to make the news at any rate.
After our afternoon ball, we returned to the tourist office where we were served dessert wine with a regional specialty, pear tart. If there is one thing I’ve learned from my time in France, it’s that the French are full of regional specialties, many of which closely resemble the regional specialties of every other region in France. But despite similarities between regional cuisines, the food rarely disappoints, and the pear tart was just what I needed to drown out all nervousness at meeting a new host family. The aim of the village stay is total isolation. As such, my study abroad program has managed to choose the most remote region of France, and isolate each student in a different remote village. And with that in mind, each family arrived in turn to sweep another American off into the far corners of the French Pyrenées. My turn came soon enough with the arrival of two girls not much older than me.
The two girls volunteer with their third roommate with a local association that organizes weekly low-key concerts in a local bar as well as full blown monthly concerts at a local venue. Saturday night happened to be the night of the monthly concert and I was invited to attend. I was warned in advance that this would be an all night affair and that they would probably all sleep there. Having fair warning, I accepted the offer – after all, it’s not every day you get to go to a concert in the middle of nowhere France, right? Right.
No comments:
Post a Comment