The Flying Adventures of DOUG

Wait. Scratch that; reverse it.

It's been a while since I last posted, and I have heaps to write about. Speaking of writing, I've been writing every day in my journal, usually quite a lot, and I'm now well over half-way through, maybe even 3/4! I've found writing almost as effective as reading, for escapism, and far better for sorting through thoughts. In fact, now I very often feel compelled to write, so maybe a career as an author wouldn't be so impossible as I previously imagined.

Anyway, back to the story of my life (of the last few days). I just went and checked what my last post was about and I am seriously out of date!

Rouen: On our last night in Rouen, Dad and I went out for dinner at a little Brasserie. It took us ages to decide where to eat, and then once we had chosen we found out that they didn't start serving dinner until 7pm, so we had to wander around for another 20 minutes (woe was us, we were both hungry and footsore by this time). Once seated, we decided to order the "menu", which means that you pay one flat price and choose one entrée, one plat principale (main) and one dessert from a list of options. What we call a menu in New Zealand - ie. the piece of paper with meals written on it - is called a "carte", hence the term, "à la carte". We both ordered salads for entrée (it's easy to get vege-starved when travelling). Dad ordered salmon for his main, and I thought I liked the look of the word "Andouillette". Don't you think it sounds nice? Such an elegant word! I asked the waiter what it was, but as he spoke no English and I only had my excruciatingly poor French, all the information I took in was that it was something fairly flat (I understood that from his gestures). So I ordered it anyway. When the cutlery arrived and the waiter put down one of those serrated steak knives, I got a bit worried. I thought it might be a horse steak, or something bloody, so Dad (who loves a good flesh-feast) volunteered to swap mains with me if mine turned out to be something I couldn't handle. Ah, poor Dad.

The mains arrived, Dad's salmon looked pretty appetising, and an "andouilette" appeared to be a sausage. I cut it open, and it looked like it was filled with shaved ham. That, and the fact that we were in France made me suspicious enough to request the swap with Dad. We (I should say 'I') waited until the waiter wasn't looking, then swapped plates. I ate the salmon (which, by the way, was delicious) and Dad, taking significantly longer to finish, ate the andouillette. Then we surreptitiously swapped plates back again so that I could eat my fries and Dad his croquettes, and so that I could look innocent in front of the waiter. Dessert was yummy. I had nougat ice cream and raspberry coulis, and I can't remember what Dad had. When we got back to the hotel, we looked up andouilette in Dad's Lonely Planet book, which has a guide to regional French cuisine. An andouilette is a sausage made from pig tripe (basically: pig intestine filled with bits of chopped up pig intestine). It's a bit of a regional delicacy, apparently. Thanks Dad!

Also in Rouen was a free show at night called, "De Monets Aux Pixels". There is a Cathedral in Rouen which was much loved by Monet, and which he painted several times (pictures of it, not the cathedral itself - it's just bare stone). What they did for this show was to project Monet's paintings onto the front of the cathedral, so that painting and real object were seamlessly interposed. There were about 10 or so paintings in total and each stayed up for a few minutes and was accompanied by sounds/music that fitted the different depictions. It was, I can honestly say, one of the most striking and amazing things I have ever seen in my life. Honestly, the crowd was so overwhelmed (myself included) as some of the paintings appeared that they gasped and applauded. The projectors must have been super-powerful, because the coulours remained intense and the picture was perfectly clear, and believe me, this Cathedral is massive! The pictures went right up to the top of it's two huge, assymetrical towers. Ah! It was so amazing! It became hard to tell what was painting and what was cathedral, and some of the paintings were so striking; there was one with intense peacock blues and greens, and intense shadows around the doorwells. Another was grey, white and lots of rusty red that made the cathedral appear to have been painted in blood with cold precision. The last painting was probably the most stunning, an almost pointilist (sp?) work just in black and white that exploited the shade-and-light of the ornate (and creepy) gothic style. Definitely a highlight.

Pontorson: We left Rouen the next day and headed for the quiet village of Pontorson. The only reason this quaint (sweet, but boring) little place has a youth hostel (in fact several hotels and restaurants) is because it lies only a short bus-ride from Mont St. Michel. We stayed here two nights, visiting the Mont on the middle day and leaving on the next. The best thing about staying here was that there were a few English speakers in the hostel, including a Canadian girl called Carol who asked around if people wanted to play cards. It was such a good night! I stayed up with Carol, a French girl called Floren (sp?), a Spaniard called Ouné (that's a total guess at the spelling, I write it differently every time) and another French woman whose name I didn't find out. We played Scum at first. Man, everyone knows that game! All of us already knew how to play, and in Canada it even has the same name. Amazed. Later Floren taught us (mainly me, as I think I was the only one who had never even heard of it) a French card game called Tarot (has NOTHING to do with the reading of the future kind of tarot). This took a wee while, as Floren can understand a little English but doesn't speak any, and it is a very complicated game. Luckily it's a lot like 500, except with an extra suit of 21 cards which is always trumps, a totally different scoring/bidding system and six cards in the kitty (which, by the way, is "chien" in French, which means dog. Funny, huh?), so I picked it up fairly quickly.

Le Mont St Michel is a tidal island (or it was until they built the causeway) on the coast of Normandie, very near the border with Brittany. The first buildings were erected there in the 8th century as a little sanctuary. Then, in the 10th century, Benedictine monks built the first abbey (I think, I could be mixing this up). Pretty soon, they enlarged and improved the abbey until it was a big enough to be a proper monastery. A village began to build up on the island below the abbey and the island became highly fortified. Now pretty much the whole island is surrounded by massive walls and ramparts, and there are more walls and battlements further up. The abbey itself is like a big fortress with a cathedral on top. At the top of the spire is a gilded statue of St Michel, the archangel Michael. The Mont is especially significqnt because it turned back every English attack during the Hundred Years War, which is not at all surprising when you see it. Because of this, it became a symbol of national identity and victory. St Michel is the patron of knights and battle. Definitely worth a visit, especially inside the abbey, which has amazing, beautiful, often very simple architecture. Dad and I got there pretty early, so we were among the first inside. We got to see many of the rooms with no people in them. This was just as well because, by the time we left, the place was crawling with tourists and the day had become scorchingly hot.

Concarneau: is right in Brittany. In the Lonely Planet it said this was a "quiet fishing village", but we have discovered otherwise. We caught the train from Pontorson to Rennes, and from Rennes took the TGV to Quimper, where we had to wait three hours for a bus to Concarneau. We arrived to find a bustling seaside town that reminds us both of Nelson. To me it seems like a resort town, though compared to somewhere like Ibiza or Biaritz, "a quiet fishing village" probably isn't too far off. There is a refreshing cool sea-breeze most of the day, which is a relief, and an old fortified island which is now a busy tourist shopping area with live entertainment like fire jugglers and music. Man, it was so good to hear music! I don't have my discman and I miss is a lot. It was cool music, too; French, but with a strong Celtic influence, which is typical of Brittany. Basically, that means panpipes, mandolin, drums and accordian. Pretty cool.

Funny story: It was at the station in Rennes, I think, when I went to use one of the pay toilets. There was a British family figuring out how to use the toilet, which was a fancy one that cleans itself after you've used it. The wife went in first, did her business, and came out. Now, you have to press a big red button to get out, so the toilet "knows" when one person has left. This lady, however, held the door open so that her husband could go in after her. The door closed with a satisfied sound, and strange, wet, whirring could be heard from within. After a few seconds, a very sheepish looking Brit figured out how to open the door and reappeared, with sodden sandals, just as the cleaning really got underway behind him and shifted from ankle-high strafing to tempestuous, overhead bombardment. He got out just in time.

Funny quote: from the wall of the Cyber Café I am in,

"Please save yours mails all 3 minutes.
Or work out of connection.
Servers, like Hotmail, shoot them when you want to send us."

Wrap-up
You may have noticed that I've been using some of the appropriate accents in the French words written in this post. That's because I'm using a French keyboard. I hate French keyboards. You have to use the shift key to type a full-stop or any numbers. And their letters are in annoying places, so I keep on making mistakes and having to correct them, and it takes me ages to write anything AND this CyberCafé is very expensive. So... I should go!