An Embarrassment of Riches

We returned to Aix on June 3 and have easily slipped back into the rhythm of life in Provence. Pictures from this period can be found here.

Unexpectedly cold and rainy in winter, the region gave us its nicest weather for the first three weeks: sunny but coolly invigorating. We are staying in a two-bedroom apartment in a complex of about four large buildings. We eat on the terrace which runs along two rooms: shady in the mornings when it stays cool til about 9:30. Then it gets into the mid-90s by early afternoon but usually drops back into the low 70s after dark. (Today, and for the last ten days, the famous Mistral wind is keeping it cool at least through the morning.) There is no air conditioning but a nice pool with just enough shade trees provides a pleasant escape from the furnace of mid-day.

First priority was to buy a car. The requirement of an automatic transmission radically narrowed down our choices, because only about three percent of French drivers buy them and we had to rent a car to drive around the region to check them out. Ours is a small Ford diesel crossover, unlike anything sold in the US but roomy and practical.

I had been waiting for the NY Times guide to summer festivals to plan our travels, only to find that there are literally a hundred times more of them taking place all over France but especially in this area than we had ever heard about at home. The three southeastern provinces (“PACA” for Provence, Var and Alpes-Cote d’Azur) publish a 250 page book with about eight events per page: jazz, classical, rock and world-music concerts, theater, dance, photo and art exhibits, lectures and discussions.

Avignon has its high-end serious festival over 20 days, but it’s “doubled” by the fringe-like “Festival Off” which brings over 800 different troupes to perform 1,000+ long and short performances in every nook and cranny of the town. You just stroll around and respond to the pitches that come at you at every street-corner. And whether for a clown show or a snippet of Samuel Beckett, the leaflets and programs invariably resound with lofty references to Life, Art, Humanity etc.

It’s this high-aspirational artistic and intellectual energy that I find so exciting about France, even though the precious or narcissistic end-product often makes little sense to me. Educational standards are high and people like to celebrate, rather than denigrate, the life of the mind, and are willing to spend public money doing so. But admittedly, sometimes important details get overlooked. Last week we drove to “Jazz a Toulon” for a free 5:30 concert in that port town -- in a lovely little square where we sat at cafe tables and listened to a charming trio of guys accompanying themselves on guitars and percussion. Then we walked three blocks down to the quay to grab a commuter boat across the bay to La-Seyne-sur-Mer, with tickets for a Cuban orchestra coming on at 10 pm as part of its Festival Cubain We walked all over the little resort village without ever finding the concert venue Fort Napoleon; no one had bothered to install any posters and the locals had no idea where it was.

So we have calendared more events than we’ve had the energy to attend, but we’ve done quite a lot. June 21 was the national Fete de la Musique in which every town in France tries to put on as many free musical performances as it can, running all day and as long as possible into the night. We heard a concert in a public park here in Aix: a trio from La Ciotat, the industrial/beach town where we lived last winter. Only they sang in Occitane, an old language similar to Catalan and Provencale, all of them formerly spoken and currently reviving in that band of territory running from northern Spain all the way to the north of Italy.

On July 4 it was provencale (non-lethal) bullfighting before the Queen of Arles, annual contest winner in a town of beauties celebrated in story, song and paint by (Bizet, Daudet and Van Gogh). In Fos-sur-Mer, a newish industrial port near Marseille with none of its own food, history or other “patrimony” to celebrate, they instead put on a festival that revels in a particular color. This year’s was pink; the parade featured men in pink tutus, can-can girls, a rolling piano accompanying a chantoosie singing Edith Piaf songs, pink-suited rockers and a cartoonish machine that blew huge pink confetti over the crowd, plus a group of artists (“Avis de Pas Sages”) from all over France who travel around the country displaying their work in wonderfully decorated small travel trailers.

I never planned to be enticed by tourist diversions like lavender watching, but after one trip to the Vaucluse on a “lavender route,” I was transfixed. The concentrated purple color which I’ve never seen anywhere else in nature, against a backdrop of rich green trees, bright golden wheat and orange poppies, is just hypnotic. We have also driven to a fairly remote area where Provence meets the Alps, and the Verdon River has carved an 2,300 foot slot through the limestone that looks somewhat like the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado. It’s great hiking, rock climbing (not for us), bungee jumping (maybe for me), kayaking and swimming in the dammed up Lac de Sainte Croix.

Tonight we’ve been invited to dinner by an English guy who is trying to promote Jewish pluralism as against the growing ultra-orthodoxy of the largely North African Sephardic community in Provence. Tomorrow it’s a picque-nique in the Alpilles (near Les Baux and St. Remy) with a French group that seeks to help integrate foreigners, the Acceuil des Villes Frances, which we’ve recently joined.

Next week we have jazzmen Joe Lovano and McCoy Tyner in a former quarry in the nearby town of Rognes, a wine festival on the main boulevard of Aix (buy a glass for three euros and “taste” from 10 am til six if you can last that long). Then it’s to Avignon, where there’s a high-culture theater and opera festival which is doubled by a massive “OFF Avignon” fringe festival which has 900 theater groups (over three weeks) from all over the world enticing audiences to performances on street corners, shops, cafes and churches all over town, all day long. And then to Carpentras, once the home of a vibrant Jewish community under the protection of the Avignon popes (13th-14th centuries) who were then known as “the Pope’s Jews.” We plan to attend a klezmer concert in the old synagogue which is part of a festival of “les Musiques Juives” put on by the Tourist Office and the 80 Jewish families who remain.

I could go on and on, but if you’re still reading this you’ve gotten the idea. Far more than just keeping busy in retirement, we are drinking deeply of an rich culture in an environment of incredible natural and man-made beauty.

Why Provence?

On our first visit in 1985, Aix-en-Provence had an irresistible charm. When we came back with our kids in 1999 we thought “wouldn’t this be a great place to live?” When we arrived in France last fall we thought we’d settle in either Aix, Montpellier or Toulouse. Each had its attractions, but we when we stopped first in Aix and were taken in by Servas hosts Sylvie and Philippe Halle, the choice quickly became clear.

Sylvie housed and fed us for six days, took Karen to markets, connected us with other special people, and took a personal interest in our finding a nice place to live in or around the city.

Since then we’ve had many great times with the Halles: home-and-home dinners, parties with new friends, field trips such as to the Salon du Chocolat, and a guided visit to Le Corbusier’s iconic “Cite Radieuse” in Marseille, hiking in the Calanques (see http://picasaweb.google.com/rpwildau/HikingTheCalanques#) and visiting Philippe’s elderly parents in their amazing home near the Luberon village of Vaison-la-Romaine, built on the third century foundations of a house that apparently belonged to St. Quenin, an early bishop of the town. This weekend I even got to fly over the local area in Philippe’s plane.

So we had every advantage in getting established here, but between Provence and any other region in France where we might have settled, there’s just no comparison. Within 90 miles of Aix we have

• Cannes and the start of the French Riviera (the “Cote d’Azur”)
• The fascinating flora and fauna of the Camargue -- Rhone delta rice fields, marsh grasses, flamingos, black bulls (for fighting or eating), white horses, gypsies and their own breed of cowboy.
• The “alternate-papal” capital of Avignon and towns like Nimes and Arles built on Roman foundations and full of Provencal color that has attracted artists in all ages.
• Marseille, the third-largest city in France with great art and culture, food and folklore, and its international airport just 25 minutes from Aix.
• The exquisite high-perched ancient towns of the Luberon range and the foothills of Mont Ventoux made famous by Peter Mayle in “A Year in Provence” and other books.
• Gorgeous beach towns east of Marseille from Cassis to Bandol -- less chic and less overbuilt but just as beautiful as the famous places on the Riviera.
• Vineyards and olive groves almost everywhere, but especially north and south of the jagged Alpilles where you find Les Baux and nearby St. Remy de Provence.
• The Mont Ste. Victoire range visible from most of Aix: “Cezanne’s Mountain” criss-crossed by beautiful hiking trails and sheltering Picasso’s last home at Vauvenargues, 50 minutes by bike from where we live.

Aix itself is the perfect size. It's a brisk walk of 15 minutes across the whole central city; you don't want to drive across it because there's no place to park. There are numerous colleges and universities and an active cultural life. The Anglo-American Group of Provence (AAGP) brings together the large Anglophone expat community (arguably a mixed blessing) and puts on a bunch of programs every month. A mile-and-a-half beyond the peripheral boulevard you're in gorgeous countryside.

And that’s without mentioning the food! Provencal cooking can be salty and features some of my less-favorite items like capers and anchovies. One misses the taste of a juicy steak; the French way of butchering produces more thin cuts and small roasts. The spicy Asian foods I love are at best under-represented. But French food is so good everywhere that one is never unsatisfied. The little snacks you find at bakeries and chocolatiers on every block, the cheese, sausage and bread tastes you are offered in the markets, and even the by-the-slice pizza we get in Aix are a never-ending wonder.

Fortunately my beautiful wife and companion is also a skilled and adventurous cook, so I glide by fine restaurants knowing that there will always be something good on the table at home.

The weather has been a real surprise. We thought the famous South of France would be like a nippier Northern California, but what we got has been colder than Atlanta even in normal years. There have been two major snowstorms and no temperate (above 55 F.) days since early December. (I know we'll be singing a different tune--along with the cicadas--in the heat of summer.) But it’s remarkable how many people are still out and about, jauntily swathed in big scarves, walking, hiking, hanging out, even sitting in cafes!

Finally, it’s amazing to walk down the Cours Mirabeau--the main boulevard of Aix--on a golden winter day, with the facades of 17th century mansions gleaming behind still-leafless plane trees and the streams of the big round fountain catching the sunlight in the Rotonde at the foot of the Cours, and realize that this is home for us, at least for now. So much so that after 10 weeks back in Atlanta, we are coming back here on June 1 for a whole year.

We’ll have a nice apartment for the summer months, and a beautiful house in the nearby country from September onward, and count on having lots of guests.

You’ll find but a small collection of pictures recapping these past months at http://picasaweb.google.com/rpwildau/ProvenceHighlights?pli=1#

Just a-Looking for a Home

The day after our last classes at the Alliance Francaise in Bordeaux ended on November 13 we picked up our Peugeot 308 in Bordeaux and headed south in a big swing that would take us to five days in Spain where my brother Rich and his wife Sharon were trying out their own pre-retirement. This route took us through the departmental capital of Bayonne, the tony resort town of Biarritz and the seaside resorts of St.Jean de Luz on the French side and San Sebastian on the Spanish side. (In the new Europe, the average passenger vehicle such as ours, sweeps into and out of France across international frontiers with Belgium and Spain without even a wave from a border official.)

(Pictures roughly tracking this entry are at http://picasaweb.google.com/rpwildau/LookingForAHome#)

I don't know why I should have been surprised at how prosperous and comfortable these areas are. Maybe I’d gotten the wrong idea from hearing that for a long time the onlypeople who would accept work as sheep-herders in the American West Basques. The Basque language sharing street signs, restaurant menus and museum materials, and the characteristic brightly colored half-timbering on building facades suggest that Basque cultural pride is alive and well, though the secret separatist organization ETA has been quiescent in recent years. The many famous chocolate makers in Bayonne (though unknown to us) were Jews who had fled the Spanish Inquisition; Bayonne also gave us the bayonet as well as wonderful hams which hang in rows over the bars all over the region with little inverted umbrellas inserted at the bottom to catch the fat that drips out as they dry.

The most distinctive eating goes on in pintxos bars, see http://weuropetravel.suite101.com/article.cfm/pintxos_in_san_sebastin_spain where the tapas can be as complex and imaginative as the smorrebrod of Copenhagen. [I know, again it seems to be all about the food!] We were able to find a nice little hotel for two nights on a hill above San Sebastian and enjoyed walking around the town whose beaches are divided by mountainous promontories somewhat like Rio de Janeiro’s. Before heading toward Barcelona we nipped over to Bilbao to see Frank Gehry's Guggenheim museum, of which I may write separately.

Having had almost no previous exposure to Spain, we hated to rush from the Atlantic coast almost to the Mediterranean. The changes of terrain were striking, from the rich green of the Basque country to areas of rocky near-desert in the middle of the trip. Our destination, Girona, is a wonderfully-located place favored especially by big-time bicycle racers who gather there to train in the off season. Rich rented his apartment from one such, Timmy Duggan, http://justgoharder.com/, a contact from Boulder. We took the 75-minute train ride into Barcelona for a two-day stay, heavy on Gaudi architecture, walking the neighborhoods and eating in the marketplace near our hotel. On two other days out of Girona we drove into the Pyrenees and along the Costa Brava, miraculously empty of tourists.

We left Spain with two days to spend on the road to Brussels where we were all to spend Thanksgiving with my cousin Jessica Landman, her husband Dan Mullaney (U.S. Trade Rep to the E.U.) and their two children. The first night we were royally received and housed by my sister Jackie's friend Eric Simon and his wife Isabella in their elegant old apartment in the heart of Lyon. The second we spent in Reims, Champagne country, where the holiday shopping season was just kicking off in earnest with the construction of a Christmas market ("Marche de Noel") consisting of little wooden huts along the main central boulevards, selling handicrafts, clothes, hot wine and edibles of all kinds. We would find that every French town and village decorated with its own particular lighting, consisting of more-or-less elaborate but always artful displays hung in series over the streets. As the holidays approached, these were joined by little ice-rinks where parents and kids skated under the lights and a central venue featuring local music acts, typically announced by radio DJs. The tone of the Christmas commercials have become more and more like ours, but the pace seems just a little less frenetic with whole families seen out doing their things together.

The move from Spain to the Low Countries took us into the heart of winter -- temperatures rarely below freezing but the sun making only occasional appearances. It was a shame not to stop in some of the places we passed through, especially the battlefields of European wars going back at least to Napoleonic times, and the common invasion routes from Germany through Belgium and into France: monuments like Sedan, Verdun, and Bastogne (not to mention Waterloo,a Brussels suburb). Roomy but bursting with our families, Jess' and Dan's home was furnished largely with U.S. government-issue residential pieces and the kids chowed down on such PX-delicacies as stovetop stuffing and instant mashed potatos, but the shortage of electrical outlets is typically European. (As everywhere else we've been, every single socket sprouts its own plug-multiplier or terminal strip.) Mostly it was home-y and satisfying to work on preparing the big feast with family. Over the next four days we tripped off to Antwerp and Bruges for a day each, explored Brussels neighborhoods around the Grand Place and checked out museums including a detailed tour of the Rene Magritte Museum and the former home of Victor Horta, nominally the founder of Art Nouveau. And naturally, there were also the mussels and the frites ("Don't call them French fries," we were scolded) ... and the chocolates. I might have said that we’ve now seen the apotheosis of chocolate, but the surprises just keep coming.

The weather discouraged us from continuing the tour up to Amsterdam, and too often chased us indoors. We didn't have time to go beyond the courtyard of Rubens' house in Antwerp, http://www.rubenshuis.be/smartsite.dws?id=MCE_LANDING&ch=MCE, and I felt like I'd missed the anticipated overdose of florid Old Master art work. I particularly enjoyed the Beguine House in Bruges, http://www.trabel.com/brugge/bruges-beguinage.htm, a community (founded in the 13th century when wars and plagues had reduced the population of men) where unmarried women of faith who didn't want to take nun's vows could live a safe and decent life. The cozy layout of Bruges, in which every view in every direction pleases the eye and car-free zones and splendid public transport preserves the old quality of life, exemplifies the bourgeois richness of those countries. It's certainly attractive in its own ways; it just lacks the charm we find in France.

By the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, we were really ready for some warmer weather and a place to unpack our suitcases for a while. The search for a location until our return home in March had always theoretically focused on three places: Aix-en-Provence, Montpellier and Toulouse. En route to the south, we stopped overnight in Dijon, in a funky kind of Left-Bank hotel with some nice modest restaurants nearby. The town looked infinitely more attractive than when we'd stayed there by the railroad station 24 years earlier. The next morning we avoided the expressways -- stunningly expensive, typically costing as much as the diesel fuel for our comfortable but thrifty car -- in favor of the road down the middle of the Cote d'Or to Beaune, the main stem of the Burgundy wine country. Busily consulting our guidebooks for weather patterns as we drove, an affirmative response from Aix-en-Provence from the first Servas host we'd ever called upon gave us a big morale boost. (Avoid a long explanation of what Servas is by looking at http://joomla.servas.org/).

We stopped for the next night in Orange, just 100 km north of Aix and statistically the warmest town in France. It boasts nice Roman ruins including the most complete theater anywhere, featuring the wall behind the stage which is missing from almost all the others and which creates a rare acoustical environment that has long attracted major opera and other musical productions to the town. On the way from there we stopped in Chateauneuf-du-Pape for a two-hour tasting in the company of a charming young woman with whom we talked about the wine and almost everything else under the still-rare sun. Finally we rolled into Aix at dark and found our way to the lovely home of Sylvie and Philippe Halle -- formerly a barn next to the "big house" of the original owner of the farm, but just ten minutes drive from the center of town. We stayed in a guesthouse connected by a breezeway. Sylvie happens to be the local coordinator of Servas in the region, the mother of three grown children and a true master of every domestic art: such as picking and preparing her own olives, jams, fruit wines, and composing beautiful lunches every day for Philippe, a soils engineer who has built a significant regional business working building sites.

Not only a generous host, Sylvie took us to look at surrounding towns and put us in touch with various websites and local organizations connecting with apartments to rent. She also put us in touch with Marie-Chantal Alinat, a retired psychologist and Servas counterpart in Ceyreste just above La Ciotat, a town 45 minutes to the south, right on the Mediterranean where the weather on average is actually a few degrees warmer. Chantal also couldn't do enough for us, driving us through her own and the neighboring towns including Marseille where we'd never set foot. Though we would return to Chantal's for a party later in the week, after three days in Aix we'd seen the ideal place (though costlier than we'd anticipated) and rented it through mid-March, though it wouldn't be available til January 5.

That left us a week from December 12 within which to check out alternatives for future trips, perhaps in different seasons. First Montpellier, about 100 miles to the west but part of the Languedoc, which has quite a different culture and history than Provence. We stayed there two days with Andre and Joelle Serol, a wonderful Servas couple about our age, also with grown children. Joelle took us into the city on its beautiful new tram (color scheme: orange and chartreuse), showed us around and invited a friend to dinner with us. The center city is the same appealing size as Aix, the surrounding communities maybe less so, but the town is full of students and all the life they create. Definitely worth looking into further.

From there we raced up to Bordeaux so Karen could retrieve her hard-won carte de sejour and we could pick up our checkbook and K's credit card, both too precious for the French banking system to confide to the mail! We took the Fourcherauds out to dinner at l'Entrecote, a small national chain of restaurants where the only item on the menu is a salad, sliced steak in a sauce (Bordelaise, naturellement!) with all-you-care-to-eat fries, and dessert, but hugely satisfying and successful. The next day we met for lunch with our Atlanta friend Vicky Greenhood's sister Jane and her husband Arthur, a Boston couple who have a house near St. Remy de Provence where we later spent a particularly nice overnight visit.

Finally, we stopped in for two nights in Toulouse with Servas hosts Philippe and Josette Chamelat, both recently retired professors, Josette continuing to serve on the Conseil General of their suburban town and on commitees (specifically women's issues) of the Toulouse regional governments. They could not have been friendlier or more fun; Philippe and I stayed up drinking late one night after he'd shown us into and around some of the city's attractions. This is now France's fourth largest city, center of aerospace and high-tech. close to all kinds of outdoor activities so would also be a great choice in any other season.

There were five inches of snow on the ground the day we left. We arrived at Albi, a favorite spot from a previous trip, when everything was closed so we pushed on to Roquefort, where our presence on the snowy last day before the start of Christmas vacation only boosted the population from 700 to 702. We saw all stages of Roquefort production from the happy cows to the curdling of their milk, pressing the curds into molds and hiding them in the unique structure, steady temperature and moisture of the caves, to wrapping etc., shipping, display and ... consumption (ours). On the way south we drove under, but a traffic jam kept us from riding on Norman Foster's beautiful 2004 Viaduc de Millau, http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/ -- just the most recent of the series of architectural marvels to which we've had exposure.

Meanwhile back on the Mediterranean, Chantal took off on a six-month backpacking trip around the world, and left us her house where we've now stayed since December 19. I've taken one breathtaking bike ride over the surrounding hills and we've hiked around the calanques, the beautiful cliffs and inlets along this stretch of the coast. We ate bouillabaisse in a landmark restaurant overlooking the water in Marseilles and were invited for a New Year's Eve drink and ended up being invited to stay for dinner -- fois gras and the whole shootin' match -- with the couple who live next door.

Which brings us up to date. Gilda and John, Karen's sister and our brother-in-law, arrive Sunday night to spend a week with us here and in the new place in Aix. And we haven't even scratched the surface!