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.
