As the train set out from Paris for the 2½-hour ride to Saint Malo (from there I would take a taxi to Dinard, across the bay), I wondered what I might write about. I had been to this corner of Brittany several times already, so I couldn’t, without putting on false airs of naiveté, write about first-time discovery. As a re-visitor I would have to find another angle, something more personal and insightful than “Brittany, wow!”

I made a list in my notebook of angles to consider based on my expectations of the weekend: seaside walks in Dinard, rampart strolls in Saint Malo, oysters, granite, crepes; or something with more of a storyline: taking a break from city life, visiting friends at their vacation home, spending the weekend with a couple when single. Maybe I would find something new and unexpected while there. I gazed out the window at the passing damp spring countryside and soon dozed off, awaking only as the train, having entered Brittany, approached Rennes before turning north to the coast.

My friends are warm, generous hosts. They laid out an abundance of pre-shucked oysters for lunch. With one of the couple we visited art galleries. We examined ads in the windows of real estate agencies. The other bought pastries, which we ate at teatime while watching a nature documentary on TV during a brief bout of rain. We separated and reunited. We went to their favorite creperie for dinner. Afterward, we lounged on long, deep couches in the living room. We removed our shoes at the door and wore slippers in the immaculate house.

I took seaside walks with the two of them, and with one or the other, and alone. I shot photos and videos as future prompts or reminders for the as-yet-undefined article: a statue of Alfred Hitchcock, cliffside and clifftop houses, rock, sea and sky, and more rock, sea and sky. Once, when taking the seaside walk alone, I watched a water walker, a grey figure in a grey sea against a grey sky. Later, rounding a bend, I observed two women approaching from the opposite direction with the hand of the one holding the crux of the elbow of the other, as friends and couples did more often long ago. Suddenly, one of the gals slipped on the damp seaside walk and let out a high-pitched yelp, but she was held secure by the grip of the other. They stood locked in place and laughed as though on the edge of a precipice. As I passed by, their broad smiles invited me, as their witness, to share in the joy of their accidental choreography. I obliged. Further on, I stared into the crevice of a dark, damp inlet and imagined that a hermit lived there. On the way back, I looked up to a steep-gabled Belle Epoque villa on the cliff and envisioned the ghost of an old aristocrat standing sentinel by a parted velvet curtain. I raised a hand and waved, and was amused by the thought that if anyone was actually looking down at the walkway just then, they would be startled to think that they were the one being watched.

With one or the other of the friends, or when the three of us were together, the conversations were fluid and droll, occasionally mutually mocking, at times requiring political or cultural or gastronomic analysis. We agreed, we disagreed, we informed each other, we told stories. The tête-à-têtes were more personal and jokey with the one, more work-related with the other, equally engaging, none troubling.

I enjoyed a restful, well-fed, sea-bracing stay. There had been but one moment of tension the entire time. At the end of the meal of enhanced leftovers the second evening, and in the midst of a light and teasing exchange about housework, a brusque gesture between me and the less prim of the couple caused the helpless slip of a wine glass that I failed to save and which then crashed onto the sparkling tile floor. The resulting tension was within the couple. My comment that luckily they hadn’t brought out their best stemware for me anyway failed to resonate as humor. Instead, I was told that I was “not helping” and shooed into the living room.

As far as I could tell, and like the shards themselves, no trace of the event remained by the time we all retired to the couches to watch an episode from season three of a Netflix series that the couple had been following. I had never seen the show, so one of them launched into explanation, perhaps excessive, and stopped the episode twice within the first few minutes to provide additional details, which aggravated the other, who then went upstairs for a bath, leaving the first to decide whether to watch the episode with me now or save it for later. I might have been wrong about the shards, I thought, as the one who remained pushed play.

On Sunday afternoon, after 48 hours in Dinard, I hugged and kissed the friends good-bye—they would soon be returning to Paris—and took the small ferry across the bay to Saint Malo. With no obligations in Paris until Monday afternoon, I’d decided to stay in the area another 24 hours. I didn’t have a care in the world. Being alone on a boat at sea after a warm embrace on the quay carried with it the thrill of solitary freedom and possibility. I stood at the stern by the fluttering French flag watching Dinard fall away, then turned to Saint Malo with its central steeple poking out from the level town, then back again to see Dinard receding beyond the bay, then again to Saint Malo growing larger. I felt eager, inspired, untethered and buoyant as I turned back and forth as the ferry approached the granite expanse of the walled town. That—that feeling, that sense of possibility—that’s something I could write about, I thought. It felt like the culmination of the weekend. But I had only just arrived at Saint Malo. I picked up my bag and disembarked.

I set off from the quay for the hotel where just that morning I’d reserved a room. My memory of previous visits to Saint Malo allowed me to find the hotel with a single glance at the map.

The hallway lobby sat still and quiet, with the only light coming from a tall side window. I rang the bell on the counter. After a moment, a door marked Privé opened and a woman with a tea-towel over the shoulder of her pale housedress shuffled out to greet me. She switched on a single light overhead but the ceiling was so high that the twilight atmosphere of the lobby barely changed, though I now saw that her housedress was pale blue and the tea-towel, which she set aside, dark grey. I said Bonjour, Madame, announced my name, and said that I’d called just that morning for the reservation. She repeated my name when she found it in the reservation book, said, “One night,” and asked if I’d have breakfast in the morning. “No thank you,” I replied. She then grabbed a key attached to a red tassel from a hook on the board behind the desk and invited me to follow her. She was welcoming enough, though I thought she could be warmer, even chatty, given that no one else seemed to be around. I supposed that I’d interrupted her cleaning.

While being shown to my room, I remarked on the quiet. She said nothing in return. I inquired if I was the only client for the night, half-hoping it were the case for the eerie pleasure it would give, half-hoping it weren’t for the mystery of encountering one or two other travelers. Her abrupt response, “No, there are others,” indicated that she had been offended by the question, perhaps compounded by my unwillingness to pay for a hotel breakfast.

I was given a large room on the second floor with a high ceiling, a king-size bed, and a view over a little square. It was quite attractive for the price, greatly reduced for this off-season Sunday night. If I cared to write about the hotel—handsome, comfortable, inexpensive—I’d need to ask her to see other rooms, and I’d then feel obliged to take breakfast, none of which interested me. She handed me the key and wished me a pleasant stay.

I set down my bag, removed my shoes to lie on the bed, as though that’s what I’d come for, then immediately put them back on. I took the foldable umbrella from my backpack and went out to explore the walled town.

After a few blocks I climbed onto the ramparts just as the blue sky was being overwhelmed by billowing smoke-like clouds. Wind roughened the sea. A mist enveloped me, then a light rain fell, but it only lasted several minutes before giving way to clear sky, until the smoky and darkening clouds reappeared as if out of nowhere, renewing the cycle of mist and rain before the return of a sky so startling blue that I thought this time it was meant to last through the day.

Across the estuary I spied the seaside promenade of Dinard that I’d walked along several times over the previous two days. The moment had come, I thought, to settle on the topic for an article. I’d lost the wave of feelings and thoughts of the crossing—something about freedom and possibility. I now had nearly the same view as from the ferry, yet the rocks, the sea, the sky, appealingly forceful and unstable as they were, now seemed more inevitable than promising. I tried to think of what I found especially interesting about Dinard or now Saint Malo. Interesting—such a bland word. Looking for “interesting” suggested boredom. I lifted my phone to photograph the statues on the ramparts of the navigator-explorer Jacques Cartier and the corsair Robert Surcouf and, beyond the ramparts, the island where writer-politician François-René de Chateaubriand was buried. Maybe the life or deeds of one or two of them could form the subject of an eventual article. Yet was anyone interested in these historical figures? I wasn’t. Anyway, I didn’t care to think about researching anything. What was left of them but statues for tourists to photograph? And here I was doing just that: taking pictures and making sweeping videos, recording what I saw, without particular interest or attention.

It made me feel like a bored tourist, looking for something to be “interesting.” Was I bored, already, with Saint Malo—rather, with myself in Saint Malo? Did I need to create anything at all from the weekend beyond my immediate enjoyment and thoughts, my time with friends, my encounter with the coast? I put away my phone, telling myself that I’d rather just walk, visit and explore than think that my footsteps or my surroundings needed to be organized thematically. No one was actually waiting for an article from me about Dinard or Saint Malo, or about Brittany at all for that matter. The prospect of not writing one, however, felt now like a failing given my earlier intent. But why feel married to intentions? If the original intent no longer inspired me then… Yet I was a travel writer—was I still?—and here I was.

I am here, I thought. I took in the view of the rugged coast, the powerful seascapes, the rocky outposts, the innumerable skies. I wanted to go out on the beach and down to the water.

I descended from the ramparts and exited the city gate to walk along the beach. It was low tide; water’s edge seemed unreasonably distant. An old fortress was planted on the rocks several hundred yards from the town walls. Vaguely linking the two was a dark, craggy outcrop that became increasingly nebulous as it approached the fortress. Mostly submerged at high tide, the uneven band of rock was now exposed. It promised a sweeping view of the walled town, the fortress, the ambiguous coast to one side, and to the other the wide beach and straight extension of the town with its thalassotherapy hotel complexes.

I stepped over the lower rocks then climbed onto the outcrop for a high central point of view. No, I wasn’t bored in the least. My mind at that moment felt as bright and clear and intangible as the naked blue sky overhead as the wind tugged at my jacket. I put my cap in pocket so that it I wouldn’t fly away. Minutes later, an unsettled and unsettling grey arrived like a lid over the mist that now surrounded me, and I sensed an unsettled and unsettling change within me as well. Turning west, I faced the formidable and uncompromising sea and felt it’s reflection in my churning mood. Then turning east, I fathomed an ambition—or was it a disillusion? —as relentless and stealthy as the remote tideline imperceptibly making its way toward me.

This was what I’d been looking for. I took the phone from my pocket to shoot a video of the full panorama, and in panning the surroundings I wondered if I truly felt any of what I’d just thought. Or was the sight of the changeable skies unattached to any needs, concerns, questions or desires of my own. Had I simply been reciting to myself seaside weather clichés as I stood straddling two boulders? What did I feel in this place? The wind blew strong. I looked away from the screen while still holding up the phone to complete another circular pan of the view, and then another. In doing so, I sensed a gap between what I saw and my own intimate experience of climbing along the rocks and standing there twisting and rotating as I shot the video. I sensed a metaphor of how cliché meets reality the way the sea meets the sky, whether as a clear line along the horizon or with no discernable separation. Or was that a simile? In trying to parse the comparison I lost hold of the original thought. And at that moment, I also lost my balance and slipped. I fell directly onto my rump on one of the boulders, dropping my phone in the process.

I was unharmed, I sensed that immediately, other than possibly a bruised buttock, but I also felt shaken by the realization that I’d come dreadfully close to falling between the rough and slippery rocks and risking serious injury. My phone had landed in a shallow, sandy pool. I climbed down to retrieve it and found with relief that it, too, was unharmed. How stupid, I thought, to have climbed along the slippery rocks, in this wind, with a phone in my hand no less, at my age! I wiped off the phone, placed it in my pocket, then slowly and carefully made my way back across the wet rocks. Once past the higher portion of the outcrop, I stepped over shallow pools of water and circumvented small boulders and rocks to reach open beach.

Yet I still felt the fright of the slip, the quickened heartbeat of a lucky escape. I envisioned the injury that might have occurred—a broken leg, a head wound, a fractured wrist, not to mention a busted phone. As I walked along the beach, I found myself spinning a yarn in which a traveler slips from a boulder, breaks his leg (and his phone) in the fall, and gets his foot caught between two rocks. No one hears him cry out as night falls and the inescapable tide rises.

The smoky sky had returned and was veering to charcoal. As a beating rain then fell, I realized that I’d dropped my umbrella when slipping on the rocks. Should I go looking for it now and truly risk harming myself? No. The rain drove me off the beach and back intra muros. I began to run in the direction of the hotel but after several minutes realized that I was lost. How could I be lost in such a rectilinear town that I’d visited several times in the past? I stopped under an awning to regain my bearings. Eventually, a man with a black labrador walked by as did other people. I didn’t know how long I’d been standing there before it registered that none of the passersby was holding up an umbrella; the rain had stopped. I recognized the shop across the street and was amused to realize that my hotel was just around the corner.

Rather than return to my room, however, I would find a place for dinner. I peered into restaurant windows for a seat and an atmosphere that would suit me, and eventually entered a pub. Strangely, while waiting for my order, I again felt the fright of the fall, as though stuck in that instant of losing control on the rocks, before I had landed unharmed. I remembered the women who’d laughed on the seaside walk when one had slipped, and how they’d invited me to share in their survivor’s joy and how I had. But now, once again, I found myself thinking of the harrowing tale of the man with the broken leg whose foot was stuck between rocks, out of view, in a dip in the outcrop, while the tide inexorably rose. I looked around the room for the type of character who might save me in that story. But why did I keep seeing myself as the protagonist in a panic before the rising tide when here I was, eating fish and chips, finishing a beer, ready to return to a pleasant hotel? Why couldn’t I let go of the tremor of near escape that I felt in my heart?

It stayed with me on the short walk back to the hotel, and into the dimly lit hallway lobby, and up the steep stairwell to my room. Looking at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, I was unable to shake the shiver of what might have happened. And once in the large bed, turned on my side with one arm wrapped around a long, firm pillow, I listened to my heartbeat repeating what-if-what-if-what-if-what-if as the tide rose. I must have fallen asleep before the water reached me.

The following morning, as the train left the station, I took out my notebook and pen. I read the list that I’d written at the start of the weekend: seaside walks in Dinard, rampart strolls in Saint Malo, oysters, granite, crepes; taking a break from city life, visiting friends at their vacation home, spending the weekend with a couple when single. I began to add to the list, starting with “the sensation of solitary freedom and possibility when crossing the bay,” but no sooner did I finish the line than I felt in my heartbeat the cry of the injured man faced with the rising tide: what-if-what-if-what-if-what-if. The train rolled south to Rennes. I gazed out the window at the fleeting tangle of trees. From Rennes the train turned east toward Paris, and somewhere, I wondered where exactly, the train left Brittany. It was in that somewhere that I decided I would have to save myself.

© 2024, Gary Lee Kraut

The post A Brittany Tale: The Fright appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

A food lover, I worked my way through the Breton catalog of culinary wonders during my first few months in Brittany. I ate delicately spun buckwheat crepe-like galettes, my favorite filled with a perfect balance of musky smoky sausage and briny seaweed. I feasted on piles of mussels coaxed to open their shells in a savory brew of mellowed alliums, wine and then the sea broth given up by the crustacean, a baguette there to soak up every single drop of buttery, tangy broth. At my friend’s cottage by the roaring gray ocean, I slathered slices of dark buckwheat bread with the famous brilliant-yellow Breton butter salted by the sea and ate it alongside razor clams we had just dug up from the sandy beach. And my cheeks got round with weekend brunches ending in flaky, caramelly kouign amann pastry.

Those first few months I don’t know if I ate even one potato. “Earth apple” in French and Breton: pomme de terre, aval-douar. I wondered where the produce from all the fields of green went if not to the Breton table. In fact, my introduction to those potatoes – Amandine, Charlotte, Marianna, to name just a very few – began not à table but on the streets of Brest. Literally on the streets.

I was on my way home from school one evening, later than most commuters. It was a typical drizzly gray spring but the eerie silence was more like a city after a winter storm. Farmers protesting low prices had dumped tractor loads of potatoes at major intersections. The piles were now a whispering soft mush like when you add too much milk to the spuds.

Cars quietly shushed through the slush or got stuck, like me, in a foot of puree. A tall lusty gendarme, in the normally menacing all-black uniform, directed traffic with the glee of a child on the first real snow day in December. He lifted up my car’s back right rear where the tire was spinning in the muck with a hearty, “Hop là!” The thrust sent a spray of potato up the front of his jacket and his feet slid out from under him on the slippery sliding mess. He fell flat on his derriere, laughing up at the sky; I half expected him to make a snow angel in his delight. “Oh, la, la, quel bordel!” he laughed.

My introduction to the importance of potatoes to Breton chefs happened at a small café on a blustery winter day, the wind roaring in off the Atlantic. The waitress standing at my table, a round older woman with remarkable posture, tapped a pad with her pencil. Her apron was pristine, white and pressed, a towel tucked on the side to give a table a quick swipe. She was all business and waiting for my order. The special of the day? Lapin chasseur – rabbit, hunter-style. With potatoes.

It sounded lovely. But in my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed naïve American way, I asked in my clumsy French, “What is there as vegetables?”

The waitress, a bit like my stern second-grade teacher, Mrs. Bodfish, who said a lot with a little, stared silently. She must have realized Americans can be dense. “Potatoes,” she repeated.

Not to be deterred I went on, “Well, in my country, potatoes are not truly considered as a vegetable.”

She continued to stare. I matched her ability to be frugal with her words, with my ability to go the extra mile. “It’s like the rice or the pasta? How do you say, a ‘starch’?”

Nothing. Surrendering, I ordered the lapin that the hunter had slaved over with the potato vegetables. The rabbit was tender and fell away from the bone with a simple touch of a single fork tine. Mushrooms melted away on my tongue in a caramelly brown sauce and a medley of herbs teased my palate. And with each bite? A bit of potato to perfectly bind and carry the woodsy meat, mushroom and sauce without disturbing the delicacy of the flavors.

The waitress came by and asked brusquely how everything was. “Très, très bon – délicieux.” She gave a short and sure “of course” nod and went back to the other customers. My stomach gloriously warm and full, the bill paid, I was calling my farewell when the waitress remembered something and gestured for me to wait.

She called to the chef in the kitchen. He appeared at the window where orders were placed – tall and thin, eyes quick and gray-blue like the Breton sea, cheeks red and glossy with the heat of the kitchen. She presented me ceremoniously with a dramatic sweep of her arm. “This,” she emphasized, “is the woman who said potatoes are not a vegetable.”

He looked me over from head to toe and back again. He enunciated. “C’est le légume de baaaaase, madame,” which translates to “Lady, it is the foundation on which all other vegetables rest, on which all food rests, in fact.”

There it was. The reason for the glorious green and rolling fields laying down a carpet from the city to the sea as I passed on the drive to work each day. And from that moment on, I began to see them everywhere. Humble, unassuming potatoes – the necessary support to the dishes that stole the culinary thunder but were not complete without them.

There was Kig ha farz – buckwheat flour dumplings cooked in a linen sleeve alongside boiled meats and vegetables – with potato cooked in the salty, savory broth. Not a restaurant dish but a simple stick-to-your-ribs meal meant to gather family around the table after Sunday mass. Poulet à la Bretonne, simmered on the stove in a Breton cider as fine as any dry white wine, only became a full dinner when served with golden roasted potatoes. Historically, the fisherman of Brittany took potatoes with them for long days out on the water and would add a medley of fish from their catch with a bit of water and sea brine to make the working man’s cotriade, a nourishing soup at sea. And every Breton village had its own recipe for the fisherman’s soup perfectly suited to the many many rainy, windy days of Bretagne.

In 2023, I will be heading back to revisit the land of pommes de terre. I know I can expect some rain, I can expect drives through lovely countryside, and I can expect some incredible meals with the essential foundation of potatoes.

© 2022, Francesca Cannan, for first publication on France Revisited.

The post The Potato Chronicles: Memories of Brittany appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

STOPPING BY VINES ON A SUNNY MORNING

Whose vines these are I think I know.
His cellar’s in the village though;
He will not mind this makeshift bar
To share with Claire an apéro*.

Our Giant bikes could take us far
Yet stop beside this great terroir
Between high woods and valley ring
Where ripen grapes pinot noir.

Our glasses make a little ping
To toast this Burgundy cycling.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and her laughing.

The vines are lovely, green and deep,
But we’ve got a schedule to keep,
Four miles to lunch though not too steep,
Four miles to lunch though not too steep.

*Apéro is an informal way of saying apéritif in French.

© 2020, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Biking in Burgundy: Stopping by Vines on a Sunny Morning (Video) appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I was pleased at their sight. Standing beneath my umbrella I counted eight, no, ten, no, twelve, or more rabbits scattered along the lawn and I felt contemplative as I watched them, though contemplative of what I cannot say. After a minute I heard voices behind me and looked back as two military officers walked by, and they looked at me, a man beneath an umbrella on the edge of the lawn as the museum was closing, and while one offered slightly more than a half-smile to say, “Yes, there are rabbits here,” the other offered slightly less than a half-smile to say, “Don’t you dare step onto that lawn.” I admit that I wanted to despite the little don’t-walk-on-the-grass sign at my foot, but not given to such transgression I stood there on the edge of the lawn, contemplating I don’t know what, as several rabbits looked over to me as though to say “Are you coming or not, because if you are we’re going to run away and if you aren’t we have to keep an eye on you, so make up your mind,” though my mind wasn’t indecisive at that moment, merely pleased, at peace, contemplative and somewhat lonesome for the touch of fur, unless that latter was my heart.

Yes, I did want to touch the rabbits, but I was nevertheless deeply satisfied just standing there, where I felt privy to a communion with nature in Paris on a grey, drizzly day, and perhaps it was that that I was contemplating on the edge of the rabbits’ lawn, that nature, that communion, that satisfaction, that peace, though contemplating may not be the right word for it since I felt, above all, a deep, still satisfaction. I was there, and so were the rabbits. And as though to compare my connection with the wild rabbits with my connection with the history of the military complex they inhabited, I went inside the courtyard of the Invalides, of the Army Museum, and took in the view of its vast orderly space, where Napoleon stood in the shadow on the balcony at the far end and where the gilt dome of Saint Louis beneath which he lay rose beyond, and while I still had in mind the lush green lawn and the hearty grey-brown rabbits, I also now had in mind the expansive and restrained emotion of the courtyard of the Invalides, its pride, its ambitions, its history and ceremonies (Dreyfus, Afghanistan, Saint Barbe), its grandeur.

Between the rabbits and the courtyard, I’d been in the Invalides complex for less than 10 minutes and might have gone home then but I first wanted to use its rest room since I will sometimes decide that I’m going home then not arrive for several hours, either because that’s the way I am or because that’s the way great cities are. There were rest rooms, I knew, near the gift shop, but the museum had closed and I wasn’t sure to get in, but when, after crossing the courtyard, I asked the guard by the entrance to that portion of the building if the rest rooms were still open, he said “Go ahead, downstairs” with a surprising lack of obstruction and I realized that he thought I was on the premises for an event rather than as a straggling museum-goer. Indeed, when I came up the stairs from the rest room the guard pointed to my right, so I followed the direction of his finger and came upon a small crowd of well-dressed men and women entering a hallway outside of which a sign indicated an exhibition entitled Eisenhower – de Gaulle Alliance and Friendship in War and Peace.

A woman with a guest list stood by a desk by the entrance and asked my name, which I gave, and as I did I noticed someone waving in my direction from a few yards down the hallway, and even though he wasn’t waving to me, I waved back, leading the woman to not look at the guest list but rather to say “Oh, OK, I see, welcome” to which I replied “Thanks,” and entered the hallway gathering. I now felt obliged to walk up to the fellow who waved. He was a slight man with kind droopy eyes wearing a uniform the color of wet sand whom I recognized as General Alexandre d’Andoque de Sériège, director of the Army Museum. I introduced myself while shaking his small, warm hand and he said “Thanks for coming.” “My pleasure,” I said, leaving him to greet the person he had actually waved to, and as I turned I nearly bumped into General Christian Baptiste, former director of the Army Museum, wearing plain clothes, nice plain clothes, a suit actually. “Good evening, my general,” I said, and we shook a firm shake.

I looked around at the gathering crowd then down at my blue polo shirt and black pants and brown pleather jacket, clothes I hadn’t given much thought to when leaving home to visit the rabbits, and realized that I was conspicuously the only person present without a uniform, a suit, a skirt or a dress, yet I’d just shaken hands with two generals I’d recognized, so perhaps I did belong. In any case I played it cool and scholarly and began to read the panels of the Eisenhower-de Gaulle exhibition in the long corridor leading to the Museum of the Order of the Liberation. Though I knew a few things about Dwight Eisenhower and Charles de Gaulle and about their relationship concerning plans for D-Day and the Battle of Normandy and the Liberation of Paris, I hadn’t previously thought much about the parallels in their lives: they were born six weeks apart to religious and patriotic families; both were frustrated by their distance from the front during the First World War; both wrote texts promoting the importance and development of tank divisions at a time when both chomped at the bit of their hierarchy; both became generals; each approached the other warily while developing mutual respect after their first encounter in Algiers when de Gaulle began to form the French Committee of National Liberation (Comité Français de Libération Nationale) and sought American recognition.

I read some of the panels in English and others in French, depending on whether I could stand unobstructed closer to the left or the right, and, while the texts appeared to be equal in content, when I read in English I saw de Gaulle as a pompous Frenchman trying to represent in exile a defeated nation and who wanted to be considered its savior whereas Eisenhower was clearly the man of the moment, whereas when I read in French I appreciated de Gaulle’s ambition, his desire to exert Free French control so as to quickly return France to the role of a nation among nations, making him, too, a man of the moment.

I stopped reading when General Alexandre d’Andoque de Sériège, as the museum’s director, walked up to the small podium set up toward the end of the hallway in front of the flags of France, Europe and the United States and began welcoming distinguished guests—a government official, French generals, American military attachés, foundation presidents—who in protocolar order went up to the podium to speak about French-American bonds, the Eisenhower-de Gaulle bond, D-Day and its 75th anniversary. When last the government official spoke she told of a man named Jacques Lewis, a military liaison who was the rare Frenchman to land on Utah Beach, and of his various deeds in favor of French-American military relations and the cause of victory. She said that he was now 100 years old and lived at the Invalides, and I realized that he was present though I couldn’t see him because I was five yards back and we were all standing while he must have been seated. A certificate given to him by the United States Army Europe was read in English and translated in French, and after the applause died down and General d’Andoque de Sériège invited the assembly to a reception, I made my way to the side of the podium until I stood before a handsome, well-dress, decorated man in a wheelchair, Jacques Lewis, who wore the Legion of Honor and other medals and had on his lap a large framed “certificate of appreciation.”

While Mr. Lewis looked to someone to his left I leaned forward to read to myself the certificate whose text I only half heard when it was twice read aloud about the United States Army Europe recognizing Major Jacques Lewis for his contributions on Utah Beach on 6 June 1945 as a liaison officer with the 2d Armored Division, at the start of a long march through France, and, surprised to read 1945 instead of 1944, I bent closer to be sure that I’d read it right, and when I looked up I again I was nose to nose with Mr. Lewis who offered a smile that said “I’m honored, moved, but overwhelmed, so many people fawning over me, I’m tired” and I replied with a smile that said “I came looking for rabbits and don’t really belong here be here but I’ve been to Utah Beach dozens of times and given dozens of lectures about touring Normandy and you’re 100 years old and landed on Utah Beach(even though your certificate mentions 1945) and are now a resident of the Invalides, meaning that you’re at once a living monument to Allied victory and heir to nearly 350 years of pensionnaires at the Invalides, so you represent the entire military history of a place that is now also home to wild rabbits, and since I know all this then I do belong here and would like to shake your hand,” and I did, a large, gentle, human hand that I then covered with my other hand as though to keep it warm.

When finally I let go and straightened up a woman reached her arm out to hand me her phone and asked if I’d take her picture with Mr. Lewis, and I saw from her gracious height and steady coif and the way in which she put her hand gently on the veteran’s shoulder and looked for him to look to her (or to me, the cameraman) that she must be somebody, and as I was backing up to take the picture she was briefly distracted by someone who called out “Mrs. Eisenhower, when you have a moment…” and she responded “Just a moment” and I realized that I was taking the picture of Ike’s granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, so after taking a few shots and after I handed back her phone and she said “Thank you” I asked if she would be kind enough to allow me to take her and Mr. Lewis with my own camera, and she obliged. “Thank you, Mrs. Eisenhower,” I said. “You must have had a busy week with all these ceremonies,” to which she responded, “Exhausting,” and we then talked briefly about the series of ceremonies and events (75th anniversary of D-Day, 50th anniversary of her grandfather’s death, etc.) that she’d been to and that I hadn’t, other than this, which anyway covered the essential. I seemed to remember reading someplace that she now lived in Europe and asked her as much, to which she replied “No, I live in Washington, D.C.,” to which I said, “I must be confusing you with someone else’s granddaughter,” and without skipping a beat she says, “Helen Patton,” to which I said, “Sorry about that,” and we both laughed as though it were an inside joke, though many people know that the two are as unalike as, well, Eisenhower and Patton. A woman then called out “Susan” and Mrs. Eisenhower said to me, “Excuse me” and I shook her hand, which was sincere and long and warm if not as fuzzy as a rabbit’s head.

As people walked away I finished reading the panels of the exhibition—Eisenhower and de Gaulle both became presidents; they had their differences but maintained mutual respect, they visited to each other; Mamie and Yvonne died one week apart; Charles and Ike died 18 months apart—then slowly followed this beau monde of generals and military attachés and foundation presidents and Mrs. Eisenhower into one of the Invalides’s refectory/reception rooms, where, after a glass of white wine and several canapés, I asked a woman with a star-spangled scarf who was momentarily standing alone if she could point out to me the president of The First Alliance Foundation, which was a partner in the exhibition and which I’d never heard of, and she could not only point out Carole Brookins, the foundation’s founder and chairman, but also Dorothea de la Houssaye, founder and director of The Normandy Institute, another recent organization, along with many of the French generals and American military attachés present, and when I told her that I was impressed that she knew everyone she said, “Don’t be, that’s what generals’ wives do in Washington.”

The French generals and American military attachés and foundation presidents were as numerous as rabbits on the lawn, yet more approachable I found as I shook their hands and talked their talk, and even if their palms weren’t fleecy they were genuinely warm and frank.

At the first hint of the gathering breaking up I took my jacket and umbrella from the rack and left.

The courtyard was quiet except for the sound of a gentle rain.

The lawns were empty, as the rabbits had gone into their burrows, yet I stopped there for a moment, beneath my umbrella, to silently thank them for my good fortune.

© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut

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An idea comes to me. Why not an afternoon in a park? I live near the Jardin de Luxembourg, in the middle-class 6th district. It is a formal garden in one part, with tennis courts in another. A fountain created at the initiative of Queen Marie de Médicis has been placed to one side. The garden now belongs to the French Senate. There I can enjoy watching ducks swimming in lines in the center pool, or admire 106 statues, but I must stay off the grass. I don’t feel like going to the Luxembourg Garden today. I know it too well. Since it’s vacation time in Paris, I’m in the mood to try something new and a bit less formal.

I consult Google, make a list of a dozen parks I don’t know. The one I choose is the Jardin de la Folie Titon, on the rue de Chanzy in the 11th district of Paris, a racially mixed working class area some distance from my home. I choose it because it sounds small and cozy, a real neighborhood park, but especially because I have never heard of it before.

When I reach the park I learn that it does have some history connected with it. At the entrance, a sign tells me about it. The Folie Titon was a wallpaper factory built here before the French Revolution, and it participated in that event’s history.

A plaque on a wall on the nearby rue de Montreuil says that on April 28, 1789, a few days before the opening of the Estates General, the factory was burned during a people’s riot that was harshly repressed. Another plaque states that the first manned hot air balloon took off from this site October 19, 1783. The factory was rebuilt, but then demolished permanently in 1880. A middle school now stands on the site, built in the architectural style of the small factories which still exist in the neighborhood. It features broad windows across each floor, overlooking the park. The school is named Pilâtre de Rozier, after the 1783 balloonist.

The Folie Titon Garden is designed with a circular path around a big lawn, where today, couples and families are sitting or lying. There are no “keep off the grass” warnings here. An informational sign tells me about a lily pond at the far end of the park, recently installed to encourage “aquatic biodiversity.” There I see water lilies with tall reeds behind them, and a goldfish swimming around. In front of the pond are a variety of flowering and aromatic plants, honeysuckle, nasturtium, fuchsia, sage, and even a few vegetables, cherry tomatoes and squash.

I sit down on one of the numerous benches placed along the path, and watch the people around me. There are other bench sitters, most of them elderly white men. On the lawn there is a mother with a curly headed brown-skinned boy who looks to be about four. He is having a fine time chasing the butterflies flitting around the plants that separate the lawn from the path. He takes time out from his chase to greet me. “Bonjour,” he says. “Bonjour,” I reply. I can see his mother watching him from the lawn, but she does not get up. She must not consider me scary.

What could be scary is the group of teenage boys clustered near one of the park’s exits, not far from the lily pond. They are blacks and Arabs, and they are talking loudly. They stand very close together, and it’s hard to tell just what they are doing. Are they smoking weed? Could they be a gang? I am apprehensive, but relax when I see that the teenagers are ignoring all of the other users of the park, who are also ignoring them. Nobody seems afraid, so I will not be, either.

Two young women, one white, one black, dressed in summer casual clothes, pass my bench. They must live in the neighborhood, I think.

Just beyond me, they stop and look at the middle school. They have a Paris guide, and one reads to the other from it. Once they have finished reading, they take pictures with their phones, then they leave the park. “Why, they’re tourists!” I think to myself with amusement. I thought the only tourist in this little-known, out-of-the-way neighborhood park was me.

I sit for a while longer, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere, then I leave the park, too. I follow the path the rest of the way around the central lawn. There are fewer people on this side, few trees, no benches.

Then I see the Plaque. It is white marble, with lists of names in columns in black letters.

The Plaque reads:

“Arrested by the Vichy Government police, accomplices of the occupying power (Germany), more than 11,000 children were deported from France from 1942 to 1944, and murdered in the Nazi camps because they were born Jews. More than 1200 of these children lived in the 11th district. Among them, 199 babies who had not had time to attend school.

“Passerby, read their names, your memory is their only burial place.”

The children are listed by name and age, one by one, first the babies under four, then the children four to seven.

I feel like I have been hit in the stomach. None of my research on the Jardin de la Folie-Titon made any mention of this memorial to these deported children, the largest and most detailed of its kind that I have seen anywhere in Paris. Few people follow the circular path in that direction, where there are no trees, no benches. From the other side of the lawn, I myself did not notice the Plaque.

In 1942, when the deportation of these children started, I was seven years old, the same age as the oldest of them. In 1945, after the war ended and the concentration camps were opened, I saw a photo in Life Magazine showing heaps of naked corpses. I was ten, an age none of those Plaque children ever reached. I have never forgotten that photo, which became the root of my choice, as a historian, to study the fate of Jews in France under Vichy.

As I walk home through the Jardin du Luxembourg, my mind is still full of my discovery at the Jardin de la Folie Titon. My pretty, formal neighborhood park now seems stiff and stilted compared to what I just saw. I am so happy to live in this city where I can become a tourist and can find something that is more than just pretty, that has a personal meaning for me.

© 2017, Alice Evleth

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post Paris Parks & Gardens: The Cross-City Tourist appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

If it were to be sunny in Paris on March 20, which it won’t be, what significant event could you witness around the corner from this wall?

And the correct answer, drum roll, is:

A circle of sunlight through a hole in the wall of the southern transept of Saint Sulpice hits a marker on the floor to indicate that the March (or vernal or spring) Equinox has arrived.

Kudos, congratulations, glory and a kiss on both cheeks to those who knew it.

Click here for some images from inside Saint Sulpice and an explanation of why the Church wished to “mark” the date of the March equinox.

Enjoy the spring!

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He has a beautiful backyard, full of all kinds of trees and plants and a vegetable garden and a chicken-n-pigeon coop where he raises birds such as chickens, pheasants, and Texan and Hubbell pigeons.

I like visiting his backyard because I don’t have one of my own.

I see Turkish filberts from my window but no ginkgoes or beeches or pines, as he does.

I see pigeons, but none like this, none I would want to hold.

Then we’ll have lunch, if possible with something from the garden, like the zucchini that’s plentiful right now or those cherries earlier in the month. And perhaps pigeon.

No, just kidding, we didn’t eat one of those beautiful pigeons on Sunday. We ate rabbit.

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I’ve been in the U.S. for three weeks now taking an East-Coast road-trip, doing some consulting, having meetings, and seeing friends and family. When I get back to Paris next week I’m sure to find my plants looking dry and forlorn but alive and willing to be nursed back to health through the spring. The secret to raising plants, I’ve found, is to not get too attached to them.

So I’m trying not to get too emotionally involved with the silky dogwood that I just planted in my brother’s yard in New Jersey, but I confess that I’ve been checking on it several times a day and will probably inquire about it often when I return to Paris. I hope that one day it will take its place among the other hearty blooming trees in the yard such as the pear tree, shown above, near which I’ve planted it.

Living in Paris, I rarely celebrate truly American holiday in the homeland, so I was especially proud to plant the silky dogwood on American soil because today is Arbor Day.

That’s my mother in the photo with the pear tree. I asked her to pose with it in honor of Arbor Day, which she planted many years ago. But as proud as she was to pose for me, she’s quite the fatalist when it comes to my new planting. No sooner had she returned the favor by taking the picture of me below with the newly planted dogwood then she told me that between the deer and the lawnmower I shouldn’t get too attached it. (The sprig of a dogwood is the foot-high twig by the shovel .)

One of the great pleasures of travel is hitting upon a local holiday, even—or especially—when where you’ve traveled is back to your old backyard, in my case to Ewing (aka West Trenton), New Jersey.

Truth be told, I wasn’t aware that it was Arbor Day until I went to the Ewing Public Library and was happy-arbor-dayed at the entrance by two kindly women from the West Trenton Garden Club who were handing out the sprigs of silky dogwood (cornus amomum). They seemed to be the only people in the area who knew it was Arbor Day. For the rest of the day I went around trying to spread the word, but few people believed me. Most assumed that I meant Earth Day, which had just passed. One person suggested that I was confusing Earth Day with some French holiday. Another insisted that Earth Day had actually replaced Arbor Day since he couldn’t recall anyone mentioning Arbor Day after he left elementary school.

Nevertheless, Arbor Day does still exist. It is a great unsung and original American holiday. It is a rarity in that it promotes neither politics, nor religion, nor nationalism, nor veterans, nor an ethnic group, nor much in the way of commerce. In fact, that’s why it passes so unnoticed. No one outside of garden clubs makes an effort to claim or co-opt it as their own because there would be little immediate advantage in doing so.

Arbor Day is also a rarity on the American calendar in that it originated on neither the East Coast nor the West Coast but smack in the middle, in Nebraska, where civic-minded tree-lover J. Sterling Morton organized the first Arbor Day in April 1872. Within a decade it had spread to other states, with school districts often being the local purveyors of the greening of America. National Arbor Day is now celebrated the last Friday in April, though some states prefer the last Monday, others, particularly in the southeast, celebrate it earlier in the year in keeping with the arrival of prime tree-planting season to the region, and a few northern border states opt for May.

Arbor Day has indeed been overtaken by Earth Day on the tree-hugging calendar. Despite the latter’s laudable goal of placing concern and care for the environment on our national agenda, there was something suspicious about Earth Day from the start since it was intended to teach and demonstrate rather than truly celebrate and honor.

I was in 6th grade when the first Earth Day was declared in 1970. As the school bus was approaching the school that April 22 morning there was a tremendous traffic jam since some progressive-minded older students had apparently decided that we should all get out of the bus and walk the remaining half-mile to school. What I remember of the first Earth Day is therefore cars and buses idling for an hour or two and a long walk past a hundred exhaust pipes. What I remember of last week’s Earth Day is radio and television commercials appealing for Earth-loving consumers to drive out to the mall to buy stuff that will biodegrade sometime before North Korean uranium rods.

Earth Day is a fine idea both nationally and internationally, and some day a traveler from Mars will enjoy the thrill of visiting our planet to celebrate it. But Earth Day is too abstract. That abstractness allows it to be used by large corporations trying to out-green each other and by politicians promising cooperation and big ideas, yet it’s difficult for us to have a personal relationship with such a celebration.

Arbor Day, on the other hand, can be easily expressed and understood and celebrated as a day of planting and caring for trees. Other than for your local tree nursery, it has little place in the economy but lots of place in the backyard or in the local park or in the woods. It requires neither faith nor sacrifice; it demands no presents or ritual meal; it can be celebrated alone, with family, with friends or with complete strangers. It is at once a hopeful and nostalgic celebration of life, growth and terroir, a combination that makes it personal for those who take part. In celebrating Arbor Day we (re)affirm our attachment to a given place in the hope that we will one day return to see what we have planted grown. No traveler could ask for more.

For more about Arbor Day and state by state dates see www.arborday.org.

© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut

See the follow-up to this article, Arbor Day and the Award-Winning Travel Writer.

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There I took a picture of the sand:

I then walked along the dune:

The sky changed as I then drove inland. When I think of Vendée, at least southern Vendée where my friends live, I think of this flat, damp landscape.

Near the end of the afternoon I was driving back to my friends’ village when I stopped to admire this path:

By the time I returned, the 2-year-old was awake and tearing apart the dress of the doll I’d given her, the 4-year-old was sucking two fingers while watching “Les Simpson,” and the 6-year-old wanted to show me something she’d written. It went something like this: ANDndeMmleNdrEaAeasssdNrea.

Her name is Andréa.

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The trees don’t seem to have been thrown but rather abandoned. Their like pets that have been purchased on a whim of affection and good cheer that disappears as soon as the animal starts shedding. Except that many of these trees haven’t even started shredding

No matter to those Parisian tree dumpers gone on vacation. I imagine them in Languedoc applauding themselves for enjoying farm-to-table foie gras or in Morocco patting themselves on the back for their interest in foreign cultures while their nursery-to-apartment pines lie in the street or on the canal or in a body bag on a street in the Marais on December 26.

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