Les said, the better II

Friday morning, I awoke at the crack of dawn (actually, before dawn, but it’s pretty far north here) and got onto a slow train to Tours. It’s 1 hour by TGV and much cheaper and 3 hours by the slower train. I arrived in Tours early in the afternoon and walked to the tourist office to get a hotel room. They highly recommended a hotel in the center of the town for 20€/ night. That’s cheaper than the youth hostel! Oh, but it’s closed. Why is it closed? Because nobody travels after new years. It’s the lowest season of the year. We asked the tourist office folks about wine tasting. “Take the #61 bus to Vouvray” they told us. They don’t run tours from Tours. Also, they warned, a lot of things will be closed for winter.

After getting our room in the one star hotel, we went to look at the Cathedral. It’s really really really old. There were a series of stained glass windows from the 13th century describing the life of St Martin of Tours. He used to be the most important patron saint of France. He converted pagans, lived as a hermit and as a bishop, all that good early christian stuff. After wandering around the inside of the cathedral, we went to look at the cloister. One must purchase tickets, but it’s free to students. “Are you a student?” the ticket seller asked. “I am, but she’s not.” I replied. “Oh, what do you study? History? The Loire valley? This region?” errr “music.” Her enthusiasm subsided. The cloister was cool, though.
Then, walked along the Loire. It was a bit chilly. (brrrrrrr) We crossed the Pont de Fils to the north side and walked along the river a bit. Descartes used to stroll along the river, but as it’s become less important for trade, the town doesn’t pay much attention to it anymore. It didn’t look navigable. There’s a point where it’s possible to see ruins of a medieval bridge into the city, but, the placard explained, only when the water is really low. We saw the ruins, so maybe that’s why it looked like you couldn’t boat up the river.
Then we looked at the remains of the castle at Tours. It had two towers (in french: tours) left standing and that was about it. Still, cool looking.
We went back to our hotel room so that Cola could borrow some of my thermal underwear. All the Parisians I talked to before leaving kept saying “It’s going to be SOOOOO cold” So I packed three pairs of long johns and a bunch of sweaters. Cola thought they were exagerating (they were) and packed some light sweaters and springtime wear. Alas! So she put on some of my warmer stuff and I pondered what makes a hotel only receive one star. Maybe it was that the room was kind of cold? Was it the peeling paint on the ceiling? Naw, that’s not so bad. The room’s not even that small. Oh, it’s because the people walking around above us are shaking the chandelier! They sound like sounded elephants! Anyway, if this is the standard fron 1 star, then go for it!
The next day, we went to look at the medieval section of the city. Oh my god, it was cold walking down the empty narrow streets. There were pictures on the walls of the closed cafes, showing how it’s bustling and exciting in summer. Nothing was open. We went to the bascillica of St Martin. In the crypt, there was a chapel where mass had just let out. Every catholic church must have a first class relic (an actual piece of a dead person who is a saint) in the altar. This chapel just went ahead and used a coffin for an altar. Weird weird weird. It was kind of a cheerful crypt though, and a lot warmer than anyplace else I’d been that morning. The bascillica was built I think in the 19th century. It’s too bad the older one got knocked down. The new one is not very exciting except for the weirdness of the religion.
Then we got on the #61 bus to Vouvray. It’s about 10 km away from Tours. On the way, we passed oodles of Troglodyte dwellings including a troglodyte hotel! (Some of you are clicking away to a dictionary. Others of you (like me) learned this word when you watched the movie Delicatessen (a fine film!). “Troglodyte” mean ‘cave dweller’ with connotations of being prehistoric. However, some of these caves were obviously inhabited. Chimneys, emerged from grassy hills and belched smoke!
We got to Vouvray and it looked like the town was deserted. We went to the tourist office and they gave us a map and a list of wineries. Wine cellars are called “caves” in French. All of the wine places in Vouvray are called “caves”, which is entirely appropriate. We got lunch at a mostly empty braserie and then started walking towards the castle and caves. The castle was closed. Winter? Lunch? Saturday? Who knows. We kept walking towards the wineries and passed a bunch of cave dwellings. I want to go inside of one of them! Some looked cozy. Some looked like the residents had moved to free standing houses and now used their caves as garages. Some looked just like hobbit holes, except the satalite dishes attached to the chimneys. We kept walking, probably half way back to tours and nothing was open. Some places said “open” but weren’t. One place said it was open and a guy came out, but when I said something about wine tasting (in my broken terrible french) he told me I had the wrong address. (Oh, that’s why there’s a giant sign that says WINE TASTING in your DRIVEWAY! Because this is the WRONG ADDRESS!, I did not say in a snarky, sarcastic tone.)
Finally, I walked into the driveway of a place that said it was open and alarm went off. I waited for a moment, wondering what to do when a woman appeared and lead Cola and I into a cave. A real cave! It had a chimney carved into to. There was a carving in the chimney which was dated 1944. The room was darkish (outside was darkish too, to be fair, it was a grey, cloudy day) and rounded on top. It was white, maybe painted, but I think the stones were just a whitish color. There were itty hols in the walls that it looked like water leaked out of. There was moss growing spots. Other stuff growing in other spots. It didn’t look cozy and hobbit like from the inside, but this was just a cave de vins and not a living room. “What kind of wine do you want to try?” The woman asked. I dunno, what have you got? I don’t know a darn thing about wines from Vouvray. “Are they all white?” I asked, showing my ignorance. Yes. White and something in fast french. uhhh. From this brief exchange I can tell you that Vouvray wines are white and I suspect they specialize in sparkling wine. However, I didn’t try the sparking wine. I tried the still wine. She looked at me patiently, while I sipped the dry white wine. She spoke only a smidgen of English. I was having a bad French day (maybe it was the accent). Her whole demeanor conveyed a certain forced patience. I bought a bottle of semi-sweet white and left. “No more wine tasting” I whispered to Cola.
We kept walking up the cold gray street, occasionally, diving for cover as a car careened past at high speed, until we got to the grape fields. We took a walk through one of them, looking at the vines, died back for winter. Crows flew overhead and the dark sky brooded. A dead, twisted tree stood darkly in the distance, at the top of the hill. The icy wind blew. “This kind of sucks” I said. We walked back down towards the village. And saw the first sign of life (aside from speeding cars). A grey haired woman on a bicycle came peddaling up the street. She shouted greetings at her family member, who stood near the entrance of their cave. It had lace curtains in the windows. On the back of her bike was a basket, filled with some groceries and several baguette. here was the heart of France! The deep Frenchness! This woman back from the bakery, ready to do some gardening outside of her cozy cave!
We caught the bus back to Tours and then wandered for a long time, searching in vain for vegetarian food. Half the restaurants were closed and the ones that served vegetarian french fare were all filled up (dear restaurant owners: please note that YOUR restaurant could also be filled up if you served vegetarian food). We got back to the hotel room. “Tomorrow is sunday. Is there going to be ANYTHING open in Chinon?” Cola looked at the guide book. “Um, the castle.” But it’s all ruins except for like three rooms. And the town is supposed to be cute. The michillean guide, however, advocated spending three hours in Chinon. In the summer. When everything is open. We discussed coming back early. We woke up the next morning (which was this morning) and it was raining, so we walked to the train station and got the next slow train back to Paris.
Yeah, I’ve never really travelled in the “off-season” before. It’s off, though. If you want to go in the winter, you need to go during a festival or other special event or season when things are going to be open. As it happens, the fête of the patron saint of vineyards is on the 22nd in Vouvray. A bunch of stuff will be going on. Contact the tourist office by the 17th to reserve your place. It’s not far from Paris by train.
It is way better to go wine tasting in a tour group because somebody will explain to you what’s what and what kind of wine to expect and how it’s mad and all sorts of stuff. The vinter will give a little speech. People will be expecting you. You will learn something about the region’s wines. Bordeaux does tours like that year round, but Tours doesn’t, alas. I’m planning on coming back in the summer as a part of my planned summer bike trip, so I’ll get another chance to try the wine and see Chinon,
Tags: Tours, Vouvray, Celesteh

Before I talk about the Loire, I want to talk about what I did on Thursday: The Musée d’Orsay. This museum specializes in the 19th century. Specifically, the guy who wrote Paris to the Moon alleges, academic art from the 19th century. There is a plan where one can see this museum without gnawing their own arm off to escape:
At one end of the museum there’s a series of escalators and a sign that says direct access to the impressionists. Go up that escalator!! The good stuff is all the tippy top of the museum. Go up to the top and work your way down. When you feel like you can’t stand it anymore, then leave. You’ve already seen the best stuff and it just gets worse from there on (although do try to see the Rodin on your way out).
Ah, the 19th century! The century of genius! The century of (white) man’s domination over nature (and other people)! The century of huge paintings of battles! The century of a bunch of really ghastly art starting outside the museum and spreading to the first couple of floors. Outside, while standing in line, look behind you. See the statue of the elephant? See how it’s foot is caught in a snare? See how a much smaller predator is going to bite it and eat it before it even dies? Ok, now look to your right. See the statue of the horse? She how it’s falling onto the anti-horse battlefield weapon? See how alarmed the horse looks? Ok, now look between. See the rhino? Something bad is about to happen to that rhino. We don’t know what will happen. Maybe it will fall on the prickly pear somehow. Maybe somebody is lurking, waiting to kill it. Maybe a snare has not yet been sprung. But really, only disaster could possibly await that rhino. Now it’s your turn to enter the museum!
Anyway, why would you put all the crap right in the part most easily accessible and then hide the good stuff so far away? This is why I did not go into any museums this last weekend.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

Off to Tours and Chinon for the weekend. Tours sounds familiar because of St Martin of same. I don’t know anything about it, actually. Chinon, of course, is a wine appellation. It’s also where the Dauphin hung out during the Hundred Years War and Joan of Arc miraculously recognized him hiding in a crowd, according to legend. For a while, I would buy wine from Chinon because I recognized the name from that story, but I was not buying the RIGHT wine form Chinon. Hopefully, this will soon be settled. (Right now, I’m all about Graves. That’s some good wine!)

It’s going to be damn cold along the Loire. Snow everywhere. Bringing my thermal underwear and an array of sweaters. See y’all later
Tags: France, Celesteh

Last night, I went to Isabelle’s for Zach’s going away party. I had gotten about a block, when I realized that I forgot to write down the TWO door codes that her building requires. Almost all the buildings here have keypads by the door, where residents and guests must dial an at least 4-digit code using base13. (0-C) You must know the code before you can even get to a buzzer with your friend’s name on it. Isabelle’s building has a code to get to the buzzers and another code to get to the stairs or the lift. So, I turned around and walked back into my apartment.

On the way, I had noticed that my building’s dumpster was outside with a Christmas tree sitting next to it. Aha! This is how one disposes of them! So I wrote down the codes and then Cola grabbed the tree. This tree was barely two weeks old, but it was two weeks indoors, in a warm dry place with no water. It was the driest Christmas tree that I’ve ever encountered. There was a green carpet on the ground beneath it and a few twigs (ones that people might brush against) were already completely bare. By the time Cola got the tree to the door of the apartment, two sides of the tree were completely bare. There was a trail of needles left all the way down the stairs, with an incriminating termination at my door. Yikes.
So, covered in pine needles and running late, we tried a shortcut . . .. There are no shortcuts in Paris. It is a labyrinth of a city. If there are two parallel streets, it’s an accident that somebody is waiting to correct. In stead, one must think of Paris as a series of more and less desirable locations. The more desirable a place is, the more roads will lead to it or from it. The Arc de Triomphe is exceedingly important, so roads come at it from all sides. All those roads lead to places that are important enough to get a road. Some places, it seems, are important to send people TO a particular destination. Others are important for a return. Just because there is a broad boulevard from A to B does not mean there is a direct route from B to A. Despite Isabelle’s logement, her street is not very important, although I did see some stuff I’d not seen before.
Eventually, I got where I was going and once we were all assembled, we all went downstairs to the Chinese Takeaway. Isabelle loves this Takeaway. It wouldn’t be much by Bar Area standards, but for Paris, it’s pretty good. We all sat down at a long table with Zach at the end. I was near the other end when Isabelle called down to me, “Tell them about your Christmas tree!” How did she know I just made a mess of my building’s stairs? “What about it?” I hedged. Turns out that she wanted to me to talk about my questions regarding watering it. “You wanted to put water on it???” the French woman across from me was shocked! Does she water flowers? Yes, but trees are much bigger than flowers. Crazy Americans want to put water on Christmas trees! Who ever heard of such a thing? (It must be normal to drop half the needles off the tree on the way out.)
Anyway, at the end of the evening, Cynthia, who will one day be famous in America, suddenly attacked me! She tried to push me to the ground! She failed to do so, but did a short victory dance! «Yay France beats America!» she said. okaaaaay. So I told her to come over so I could give her a CD.
I hadn’t really realized what a mess the tree had made on it’s way out until we arrived back at my place. A thick line of needles all the way up the stairs. And once I opened the door, the floor was green with pine needles. It looked like grass. Also, very slippery. Cola brushed the needles off a couple of stairs so Cynthia and Michelle could sit down. I gave Cynthia a CD. It’s kind of awkward having people over when your apartment is actually a disaster. They left shortly thereafter and then I swept up a least a liter (maybe 1,5) of needles form the living room and hallway. Then I went to bed. The end
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

In 2006, I will

• Actually become fluent (or at least very conversational) in French
• Play some gigs in France and elsewhere in Europe
• Develop zen-like calm
• Write some music influenced by the pedagogy I’m involved in
• Finish some projects that I’ve been procrastinating on
• See the head of St John the Baptist at Avignon
• Spend summer biking around france: plan it, train, get gear, do it
• visit armagnac-producing region
• keep track of important dates and show up to things I ought to show up to

Tag: Celesteh

I’m probably forgetting things. Here’s my list:

• First symphony performed
• Tuba solo in a Bill Dixon concert
• Hard disk died
• Wrote Master Thesis and got degree
• Recorded album with Anthony Braxton (should be out soon)
• Moved my self and my stuff from Connecticut to California (while briefly being stranded with a broken car during the trip)
• Learned French (sorta)
• Fled a tsunami (only 1 cm high, but, you know…)
• Garden of Memory Concert laptop improvisation
• BRINK series laptop music performance in SF (highest profile concert to date – profiled in the SF Weekly)
• Moved to France
• Saw Venice Biannual
• Went Wine Tasting in Bordeaux

Also: Music I wrote and recorded in 2005
Resolutions in next post

Tag: Celesteh

Happy New Year!

Paris apartments are still full of blasting dance music, but I headed home early. Went to Isabelle’s place to celebrate. We ate home-made fois gras on top of ginger bread (well, I didn’t, but everybody else did . . . this is apparently traditional) and potatoes with baked cheese and everybody else had various baconish types of jambon. And drank oodles and oodles of wine and then had champagne. We weren’t keeping track of time, but when people outside started yelling and honking horns, we looked out the window and saw the Eiffel Tower all lit up for the new year, with a beacon flashing on top and then we heard fire works.
I burst into Auld Lang Sine (or whatever it’s called) but apparently the french custom is to yell “bonne année!” give everybody kisses on the cheek and then start SMSing everyone you can thing of and call you your family members to have the party scream “bonne année!!” in the direction of the phone. Also, switch on the TV to see topless vegas-type dancers doing high kicks to verify that in fact the new year has begun. (Later, I will post about French variety shows, as they’re really nuts)
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

I finally got around to watching the Dr Who Christmas special. It’s the first episode with the new (10th) Doctor. It was an episode worthy of the old series, as is the Doctor himself. It was silly, with people being attacked by alien Christmas trees. Also, the acting is not as good as it was with the previous doctor. Silly bad guys + bad acting +camp = excellent!! They couldn’t resist the classic pun (originally seen in maybe the second episode of the orignal series) “Doctor? Doctor who?” hahahaha. That’s comic gold, folks. For real.

I wish Rose had been a little less helpless. Why doesn’t the doctor show her how to use the sonic screwdriver, for X’s sake? The episode featured one of my favorite characters Harriet Jones, MP from Flydale North. Only in this one she was Prime Minister. She’s exactly the sort of person you wouldn’t want as your PM or whatever, until the end, when the writers suddenly betray her character. She does wrong and her government falls. It was a strange ending. But She’s in the previews clip for future episodes, so at least she might get a chance to redeem herself.
Also noteworthy: the Doctor is sword fighting a bad guy on the edge of a space ship. You can see the city below. Suddenly darth vader the alien cuts off the doctor’s hand with a lightsaber sword. “Luke, I am your father!” he says. After this lovely allusion, the doctor finally comments on the fact that he’s been running around for the entire episode in his pajamas, saying something about Arthur Dent, wondering what happened to him since the last time they met. It would be quite nice if they could do a few cross-over episodes with the Hitchiker universe. Maybe introduce some Vogons or something.
So when when when is the next episode? Spring time??? Are we talking early spring? Late spring? Does this depend on groundhogs seeing their shadows? How much longer must I wait? Why did they just do the one episode by itself?? The preview clip had some images of K9!!!!! I want to see K9 noooooow. I seem to recall that the 4th doctor left him behind on some planet that needed him, partially because he was a dog shaped super-computer ans was much too smart for dramatic effect. A literal Deus-ex-machina who even had a laser weapon mounted in his nose. The inspiration for Aibos, I’m sure. Every episode had to start with K9 being damaged in some unpredictable way or else he would foresee and solve every problem. Maybe he will need repair when they stumble across him. Didn’t see Captain Jack in the preview clip, alas. Maybe K9 will fill that roll by being a swashbuckling bisexual woman+manizer.
Find Doctor Who in Bittorrent
Tags: Doctor Who, Celesteh

So I went today to a doctor. There was nobody in the waiting room. Just some chairs and magazines. You sit down and you wait. Presumably, the doctor figures out that you’re there when s/he buzzes you into the building. So I sat and waited, in a small, windowless, smooth surfaced, echoy-as-heck room and the doctor came out. He spoke more English than I speak French. In general, I hate doctors. They make me anxious. He was ok, though. We talked for a few minutes. He took my blood pressure, listened to my heart and breathing. Told me my heart is fine. Asked as many questions as he could given the language issues. Told him that the first time I had a panic attack was when my mom had cancer. He said, I was freaking out about the death of my mother (ok, possible). It makes people more fragile. (ok, possible). Whatever. He gave me a prescription for Xanax. I walked across the street afterwards and got some generic Xanax. woot. Nobody said anything to me about any side effects or not to take it with alcohol or anything else. Nicole bought aspirin the other day and it doesn’t even say how often to take them. I guess that if you speak French, the pharmacist explains it to you, or maybe you have to ask. The aspirin’s drug info is all in French. I haven’t looked at the Xanax yet.

I don’t have health insurance in France, so I had to pay cash for a longish doctor’s visit and a prescription. The whole thing set me back 25€. Thank goodness the American government is saving us from the hell that is a socialized medical system! I can’t imagine living under a regime where I can call up a doctor, have an appointment the next day and walk out to fill a 2€ prescription, where even if the national health isn’t covering any part of it for some reason, it costs less than my new pillow did. God forbid that government regulation lead to easy, accessible, affordable healthcare.
Anyway, I’ve been getting better every day since Christmas, so maybe I won’t need to take any of my prescription. I remember some very drama-causing insult from over the summer where one person in my french class called another a xanax-popping old lady or some such thing. Oooh, how the sparks flew! You don’t mess with people who need tranquilizer prescriptions. If they could keep perspective on such things, they wouldn’t have the prescription, right?
So I’m fine. This blog is now set to return to news commentary, music commentary and wine reviews.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh