Helene Hanff and "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street"

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I had a big stack of books all set to read once I reached this point of my treatment / recovery: textbooks, novels, history, Latin, et bleeding cetera.

Yes, let's have a good big laugh at my planning.

I am not much in the mood for new books. The idea of cracking "De bello gallico," or Thomas Pynchon's new novel, or the pre-calc book my student assistant very thoughtfully provided for me, makes me utterly apathetic. I managed to read a science-fiction novel, and the first half of "Little Dorrit," and I am afraid that's about it.

But rereading  - !

I was fumbling around the shelves the other week and my hand fell upon Helene Hanff's "84, Charing Cross Road." I devoured it, for the thirty-fifth time. It's a charming little epistolary (!) novel in which Helene enters into correspondence with a little London bookstore back in the early 1950s. Her style is chatty and wise-guyish, and the bookseller's letters are starchy and informational. They get to know one another. She gets to know everyone in the bookstore. She sends gifts of food (rationing was a grim fact of life in England in those days), and talks about Isaak Walton and John Donne as if she knows them personally, and the bookstore staff send her snapshots and tablecloths and - upon occasion - the books she orders.

If you haven't read it - well, it's a gem.

In the sequel, "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street,"  Helene finally goes to London (in 1971) and stays for about six weeks, and keeps a detailed travel diary. This book was never so much a favorite of mine as “84 Charing Cross”; it seemed perfunctory, tacked-on.

Now I have read it twice more, and I have changed my mind.

This book is a minor masterpiece of travel literature. It works under one simple premise: if you dream of visiting a place for long enough, the place you dream of will be there waiting for you when you finally get there. There will be all kinds of U-turns and surprises, but at the end of the day, you will have discovered your dream.

Helene's descriptions of London are peachy. Her observations are wry. She is unexpectedly wise. (She notes, for example, that you could take any block of a London suburb and plop it down into Queens or Brooklyn, and no one would be the wiser. You could never, however, get away with substituting a block of downtown London with a block of downtown New York.) Her descriptions of her traveling companions are poifect. She is irascible and sometimes unhappy and disappointed. It’s one of the truest travel books I’ve ever read.

Put this on your reading list, kids.

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Alphonse Allais

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I was avid to visit the town of Honfleur, up on the damp coast of Normandy, when Partner and I visited France in 2012, because one of my favorite composers - Erik Satie - was born there. (I should note that, to paraphrase Lily Tomlin, Satie left Honfleur as soon as he realized where he was.)

Honfleur is a dour little fishing port with boggy streets and old sad-looking houses. Satie's childhood home has been converted into a very neato little museum, good enough to be featured by Rick Steves on his excellent European travel TV show, but once you've seen the museum - as Partner and I quickly realized - you've seen the shank of the town, and the best thing you can do is bid Honfleur a modest au revoir.

Except that one little detail caught my attention: a life-sized plastic cow in the visitor center, with a bande dessinee painted on the side. (Two Rick Steves-type comments: Normandy is a farm region, so the cow motif is everywhere, and Partner begs me to remind everyone that the restroom in the Honfleur visitor center was the most toxically horrible he ever came across in Europe.) Anyway, the comic strip on the side of the cow depicted Erik Satie and Honfleur's other favorite son, humorist Alphonse Allais, grabbing one another's chin and singing a little children's song. Then one slaps the other on the cheek, very hard (I have no idea if this is part of the children's song or not) and runs away, leaving the other in tears. I was so baffled by this that I don't even remember which one does the slapping and which one runs away.

This led me to Alphonse Allais, whose "oeuvres anthumes" I purchased on an appropriately soggy day in Paris about a week later. (“Anthumes” is meant to be a cute parallel to “posthumes,” meaning “posthumous” – see, I bought the stuff he published while he was still alive, get it?) It turns out that Allais was an essayist / journalist / humorist in a way that no longer really much exists. (If you can imagine the New York Times's Gail Collins without the politics, or "CBS Sunday Morning"'s Bill Geist without the peripatetic folksiness, you've almost got it.) Allais created characters and situations and wrote about them for a page or two. Generally there's a punch line. If the characters or the situations amused Allais, he revisited them.

He was, in a word, a feuilletonist.

Do they exist in American literature? Did they ever? Most assuredly. It was a late 19th / early 20th-century thing to be and do. Mencken was a feuilletonist, as were Don Marquis and H. Allen Smith and Harry Golden. See? You haven't been reading those guys recently, have you? But it's not because they're not entertaining or that they don't write well; it's only that the style has fallen out of fashion.

Allais had the famous dry Norman sense of humor, the "pince-sans-rire" ("pinch without laughing" - basically, "tell a joke all the way to the punch line, but tell it so seriously and drily that no one is sure if you're joking or not." Isn't French neat to be able to put all of that in three words?) Satie used pince-sans-rire all the time in his music, writing pieces of fantaisiste music with titles like "Dried Embryos," and ending them with long strings of Beethovian tonic-dominant-tonic chords.

Allais needs to be translated for a modern American readership.

Now who could do something like that?

Hmm.

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Vermont versus New Hampshire

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New England is made up of six smallish states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

The territory is small, but the terrain varies greatly, and the weather varies from state to state: Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine get snow in October and November sometimes.

There are other subtle differences too.  I swear, when Partner and I drive over the border from Rhode Island into Connecticut, I can see a difference: Connecticut is more rural, and woodsier, and wetter. What happened? Did Rhode Island farmers do something that Connecticut farmers didn’t do? Or is it just my colorful imagination?

Maine is different from the rest of the New England states too. Portland aspires to be a hipster / cosmopolitan destination, but the state itself is – as Parter said recently – “Tennessee North.” It’s visibly poor and rural. No wonder it elects Republican senators to Congress.

And then there are Vermont and New Hampshire.

Vermont feels liberal and free. I love it there. I love the breeziness of Burlington, and the wind off Lake Champlain. I loved the time we spent in Bennington. I loved Rutland.

New Hampshire? Meh. It’s dull and conservative.

When you drive north into Vermont, it feels as if you’ve entered a different country. (It was a different country, for a couple of years there.) When you pass from Massachusetts to New Hampshire, it feels like – hmm – like you’ve never left Massachusetts. You really haven’t gone anywhere.

Vermont is different. Vermont is independent. It’s strange, and funny, and determined to be so.

New Hampshire is dull and New Englandish. It’s got all the things you expect it to have.

Vermont is independent and hippyish. It wants to be different. It has all the things that New Hampshire has – mountains and lakes and forests – but they’re more interesting, somehow.

Kids: if you have a choice between New Hampshire and Vermont, visit Vermont. Eat some ice cream. Have some cheese.

And tell the Vermonters that I sent you.

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The Visigoth crowns in the Cluny Museum

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For a long time I only knew the Visigoth crowns from a poem by Elinor Wylie, which a friend recently quoted to me:

I cannot give you the Metropolitan Tower;
I cannot give you heaven;
Nor the nine Visigoth crowns in the Cluny Museum;
Nor happiness, even.

When Partner and I were in Paris last October, I noticed that the Cluny Museum was very close to our hotel. We went there on our last full day in Paris. It’s an old building with a Roman foundation; there are lots of old relics from the days when Paris was called Lutetia. As you ascend through the building, you find all manner of other works of art: later Roman, Dark Ages, Holy Roman Empire, medieval France.

And among those works of art are the Visigoth crowns.

They are not big chunky Burger-King style crowns in the Halloween-costume sense. They are delicate circlets encrusted with sapphires and pearls and other polished stones, festooned with slender strands of gold. (I counted only eight of them, and was a little disappointed. Then I learned that the ninth, the crown of King Suinthila, was stolen in 1921 and has never been found again.)

They were never meant to be worn; they were to be hung above a church's altar, as a symbol of royalty. With a little modification, however, they would look like something an Elf might have worn in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

I want lots of things from museums the world over. I want Suzanne Valadon’s portrait of Erik Satie, which hangs in the Modern Art Museum in Paris (though I’ve never seen it in person). I want the Salomon Ruysdael waterscape that hangs in the RISD Museum only a few blocks from our apartment here. I want Ilya Repin’s gorily tragic “Ivan the Terrible and His Son” from the Tretyakov in Moscow, which would look nice over the sofa. I want a Rembrandt here and a Koons there, and a couple of the Monets from the Metropolitan in New York. Also I might throw in a couple of the Unicorn tapestries from the Cloisters, and I wouldn’t mind the Bayeux Tapestry (if only I had a room big enough to display it in).

But I think I would trade all of the above for one – just one! – of the Visigoth crowns from the Cluny Museum.

Is that so much to ask?

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Unhygienic travel stories

 

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It’s lucky that most of us do our heavy-duty adventure traveling while we’re young. We’re more resilient, and can take it in stride, more or less, when strange things happen. (And we know that it’ll make a kick-ass story when we get back home.)

 

 

For example: my student assistant Jennifer told me that, in China, you can use a dirty public toilet for free, but you have to pay to use a clean one.

 

 

But that’s nothing.

 

 

How about the time I chased a rat down the hallway in Morocco, until I saw it jump into the toilet and disappear?

 

 

How about the time I was having kamounia at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Tunis, and found weevils cooked in with the couscous? (I just picked them out and put them on the side of the plate. I didn’t complain. I’d just paid twenty-five cents for dinner; I certainly didn’t expect the Waldorf-Astoria.)

 

 

How about those kvass dispensers in the USSR back in 1978? (Kvass is a light beer, very refreshing, and I wish they sold it here. I think they make it by soaking bread in water and fermenting the result.)  It was sold in drink machines, just like soft drinks and coffee in the US, except that everybody used the same glass. (There was a little water-spout you were supposed to use to wash the glass out when you were done.)

 

 

But the best story of all belongs to my friend Mike, back in Morocco, as follows:

 

 

He moved into a simple house in El-Jadida, a beautiful beach town on the Atlantic coast. The house had no toilet; you had to use a privy out in the garden.

 

 

His first night there, he went out in the dark to use the privy. As he sat, he could hear an odd rustling around him. This gave him the creeps, so he finished his business, went in the house for a flashlight, and came back out to see what the noise was.

 

 

It was bugs. The walls and ceiling of the privy were alive with insects, mostly huge flying cockroaches, more than he’d ever seen.

 

 

He shrieked, ran back in the house, grabbed the insect spray (which, in Morocco in 1984, was probably straight DDT), and ran back to the privy to kill the bugs.

 

 

Do you see the flaw in his reasoning?

 

 

He went into the privy and started spraying, and they all started dying. And as they died, they fell, by the dozens and the hundreds, all over him.

 

 

I still twitch whenever I think of that story.

 

 

I dare you to top it.

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Caen

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Partner and I stayed in the city of Caen, in lower Normandy, while we toured northern France. In the four days we stayed there, we both fell in love with the city. It is modest and charming, and has wonderful medieval structures still standing – the Abbaye aux Hommes and Abbaye aux Dames and Palais Ducal, all built by William the Conqueror, and the St. Pierre church built by William’s grandfather.

 

 

Caen has streets full of shops and bakeries and bistros. We had our best French meal in Caen, at Le Bouchon du Vaugueux.

 

 

Ah, we thought: a real French town, unchanged since the Merovingians.

 

 

But then we talked to the concierge of our hotel.

 

 

It was at the Hotel Kyriad on the Place de la Republique, which I highly recommend to you if you’re ever staying in Caen. It was charming, and it had a wonderful breakfast buffet, and some really nice concierges. Our first was a funny skinny dark-haired guy with glasses, very French, very animated and helpful. Then, after a day or two, he was replaced with a tall blondish Norman-looking fellow with a doleful/cheerful expression.

 

 

On the day we were checking out to go to Paris, I noted a postcard behind the counter, a picture of the hotel in days gone by: LE VILLA DES CLOCHERS, the Belltower Building. The building has no belltowers now, so I asked the tall blond Norman concierge, in my (still halting) French: “Is this a picture of this hotel?”

 

 

He smiled sadly. “Yes and no. Look –“

 

 

It turns out that he was something of a history buff. He pulled out some old photos, from the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. He even had an aerial view of Caen in August of 1944. In it, you could see that the city had been almost completely flattened. “You see,” he said very calmly, “a lot of the old churches survived. Medieval stone – who knows? It stood up. Maybe you saw the Church of St. Etienne-le-Vieux?

 

 

“Across from L’Abbaye aux Hommes?” I said. “We thought it was a ruin -”

 

 

He nodded sadly. “Yes. From World War II. It was left unrepaired, as a reminder of the war. But most of the rest of the city has been rebuilt.”

 

 

“What about the bombs?” I asked.

 

 

He shook his head and smiled. “They estimate that maybe two out of ten are still unexploded. People find them all the time when they excavate or build new foundations for buildings. They have ‘controlled explosions.’”

 

 

Partner and I left Caen about half an hour later via train to Paris, but as we left, we saw the city through new eyes.

 

 

We’d seen Caen as a clean beautiful city, nicely preserved. We hadn’t realized that it had rebuilt so completely.

 

 

How very frail we human beings are, and how frail our creations are: our cities, our civilizations.

 

 

But sometimes, even if they’re destroyed, they can be rebuilt.

 

 

(Somehow this gives me hope. I don’t know.)

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Disneyland Paris: the happiest place in northern Europe

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While in France, we spent an afternoon in Disneyland Paris.

 

 

In a word: it’s lovely. The castle in the middle of the park is a sweet delicate French castle with slender turrets, Sleeping Beauty’s castle, “le Chateau de la Belle au Bois Dormant”:

 

 

 

 

We were there in early October, and the park was decorated for Halloween. Europeans don’t quite understand the American concept of Halloween yet; they understand ghosts and pumpkins and such, but aren’t quite what they have to do with anything. Disneyland Paris was calling it “Helloween,” which would be a little spicy for an American Disneyland. But there were pumpkins everywhere!

 

 

Disneyland Paris has the Haunted Mansion, and the Tower of Terror, and the Thunder Mountain Railroad. The lines (in October, anyway) were very short; we never had more than a five-minute wait for any ride. We were surrounded with mostly Spanish and German tourists, and a few Brits; not many French, really. (A colleague of mine, who actually studied the business model of EuroDisney, told me that the Disney folk at first expected the local French population to flock there, and were sorely disappointed to find out that this wasn’t the case. Now they market to the rest of Europe, and they’re doing just fine.)

 

 

Disneyland Paris is small, compared to Orlando. One advantage to being smaller, by the way, is that kids don’t get as tired, and parents don’t get as worn out. Is there a lesson here for American theme parks? Too late. They’re already too big.

 

 

There are Disneylands everywhere now. Japan and China have their own versions. And Orlando keeps evolving: there’s a New Fantasyland now, with a Beast’s Castle / restaurant, and a Little Mermaid ride, and (forthcoming) a Seven Dwarves ride.

 

 

And there’s that little old park in Anaheim too, I suppose.

 

 

Whatever it’s called.  

 

 

I forget.

 

 

 

 

Travel tips from yours truly

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Don’t you hate people who try to give you travel advice? I know I do.

 

 

Here’s some travel advice:

 

 

-          Make sure your electricals are in good order before you leave. I was startled to discover that my iPad was perfectly happy with French-style 220-volt current. I still, however, needed a plug adapter, since every country in the friggin’ world uses a differently-shaped plug. A company called Walkabout provides a very nice transformer / plug kit for a reasonable price.

-          Use the Internet. We did everything online: hotels, dinner reservations, the works. Once there, I discovered that everyone has either a website or – better yet – an app. (The Paris Metro system, for example, sells an adorable app on iTunes for ninety-nine cents; it shows you the whole system, finds you on GPS, and helps you get to the station of your choice.)

-          Look for bargains. Partner found a five-day Paris Visite card, which saved us lots of money; there’s also a Paris Museum Pass (the museums aren’t terribly expensive, but if you go to more than two or three, those admission prices start to mount up).

-          Take the train as much as you can. I always marvel at the European train system; it’s easy, it’s inexpensive, and it’s comfortable.

-          Make sure you set aside some time to relax. We didn’t relax enough, and ended up exhausted much of the time. Plan a down day here and there.

-          Don’t get trapped into eating tourist food. If (like us) you stay in a touristy neighborhood, you can be sure you’re paying a premium for your steak and frites. Explore the side streets instead. Bakeries sell nice sandwiches and pastry; little groceries are everywhere, once you know where to look. We were paying an average of $2 for a small bottle of water at first; then I discovered that I could buy a two-liter bottle in a grocery for $1 or less.

-          Use Skype. Before leaving, I purchased a real phone number from Skype (three months for thirty bucks); it even had a Rhode Island area code. We were able to call back and forth from France to the USA for approximately two cents a minute, using my iPad. And it even had voice mail! (No camera necessary, by the way; Skype works just fine with audio only.)

 

 

And now you know everything you need to know.

 

 

All together now:

 

 

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The French stereotype

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What do Americans look like? Well, apart from the Hispanics and blacks and Asians who make up 50% or more of our population, we look like – well, we’re all over the map. Look at me: I’m Italian / Polish / Dutch / English, with graying hair and blue eyes; some days I look like a Calvinist cleric, and other days I look like a doughy Polack.

 

 

And what do the French look like?

 

 

This should be easier. Most of them are descended from two thousand years of local stock. They’re –

 

 

Well, they’re all over the map too.

 

 

The classical authors, including Julius Caesar, couldn’t agree on what the Gauls looked like. Some said they were tall and fair; others said they were short and dark. Everyone agreed that the later invaders, like the Normans, were big and blond. The Germanic tribes were blond, almost certainly (maybe they were the ones Caesar was describing).

 

 

Mostly the people I saw in France were short and dark, and very lean. Young people were mostly very skinny; older people seem to get (at most) a little stocky, but not grossly so (nowhere near American obesity). We ran into a few tall/fair individuals, but mostly in Normandy, where the Vikings came ashore a thousand years ago.

 

 

When I was living in North Africa, I got used to being the tallest person in the room (I’m a gigantic five-foot-ten). It was pretty much the same in France, with very few exceptions.

 

 

What are we supposed to look like? And where did any of us come from in the first place?

 

 

Beginnings are mysterious; origins are obscure.

 

 

Who can say?

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For Sunday: "archy at the tomb of napoleon," by Don Marquis

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The first time I went to Paris was in March 1984. I was hopping from the USA to Morocco and had only about six hours to waste, so I raced into the city from the airport, had a cup of coffee and a brioche, and visited the Hotel des Invalides, which houses the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte.

 

 

 

Why? Because Archy the Cockroach went there back in the 1920s and wrote a whopping good poem about it.

 

 

 

Partner and I visited the Invalides again in October. Napoleon is still there, in his gigantic stone tomb that looks like a cross between an overstuffed sofa and an enormous old-fashioned radio. And, like Archy, we left feeling “solemn but likewise uplifted.”

 

 

 

Herewith: “archy at the tomb of napoleon,” by Don Marquis.

 

 

 

paris france

i went over to

the hotel des invalides

today and gazed on

the sarcophagus of the

great napoleon

and the thought came

to me as i looked

down indeed it

is true napoleon

that the best goods

come in the smallest

packages here are

you napoleon with

your glorious course

run and here is

archy just in the

prime of his career

with his greatest

triumphs still before

him neither one of us

had a happy youth

neither one of us

was welcomed socially at

the beginning of his

career neither one of

us was considered much

to look at

and in ten thousand years from

now perhaps what you said and did

napoleon will be

confused with what

archy said and did

and perhaps the burial

place of neither will be

known napoleon looking

down upon you

I wish to ask you now

frankly as one famous

person to another

has it been worth

all the energy

that we expended all the

toil and trouble and

turmoil that it cost us

if you had your life

to live over

again bonaparte would

you pursue the star

of ambition

i tell you frankly

bonaparte that i myself

would choose the

humbler part

i would put the temptation

of greatness aside

and remain an ordinary

cockroach simple

and obscure but alas

there is a destiny that

pushes one forward

no matter how hard

one may try to resist it

i do not need to

tell you about that

bonaparte you know as

much about it as i do

yes looking at it in

the broader way neither

one of us has been to blame

for what he has done

neither for his great

successes nor his great mistakes

both of us napoleon

were impelled by some

mighty force external to

ourselves we are both to

be judged as great forces of

nature as tools in the

hand of fate rather than as

individuals who willed to

do what we have done

we must be forgiven

napoleon

you and i

when we have been

different from the common

run of creatures

i forgive you as i know

that you would forgive

me could you speak to me

and if you and i

napoleon forgive and

understand each other

what matters it if all

the world else find

things in both of us that

they find it hard

to forgive and understand

we have been

what we have been

napoleon and let them laugh that off

well after an hour or so of

meditation there i left

actually feeling that i

had been in communion

with that great spirit and

that for once in my

life i had understood and been

understood

and i went away feeling

solemn but likewise

uplifted mehitabel the

cat is missing

archy

 

The Moulin Rouge

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Before we left for Paris, Partner got us tickets for the Moulin Rouge. The tickets were hard to get; the show sells out very quickly.

 

 

And now I know why.

 

 

First of all, the neighborhood is exactly what you want it to be: it’s a slightly less grubby version of the old Times Square in Manhattan, or Boston’s late lamented Combat Zone. We arrived early and had a drink in a sidewalk café, and watched a pretty young prostitute pick up a nice young man at the next table. Romance!

 

 

The show was old-fashioned burlesque: big costumes, big musical numbers, and a little dash of Cirque du Soleil. The theme was “Feerie”: Fairyland.  There were two jugglers, one serious, one very funny. There was a big “exotic” musical number that couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be Indian, or Chinese, or Japanese. There were little ballads. There was, of course, the Can-can. (We were seated at a table with two very serious Frenchwomen, who only applauded the Can-can.)

 

 

Then there were the breasts.

 

 

They were everywhere, and they gave me quite a turn. I think I must have seen seventy or eighty of them. They were (mostly) very pert. (There were lots of bare behinds too, but they made less of an impression on me, for some reason.)

 

 

There was very little beefcake. There was one very nice number with two handsome acrobatic male dancers, one shirtless and the other in a t-shirt, who did elaborate handstands and carries. I could have done with a little more of that.

 

 

Upon leaving the club, I realized I’d left my American cap behind. To hell with it! I thought. I went to a street vendor and bought a very rakish hipster hat for seven euro.

 

 

So now I take a piece of the Moulin Rouge wherever I go, and my little American cap is floating around Montmartre somewhere.

 

 

Who knows? Maybe that prostitute has it.

 

 

Vive l’amour!

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Travel tips from Apollonia

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My colleague Apollonia has been to Europe many times over the past few years (she has family in Italy), so naturally I sought her advice before our recent trip to France.

 

 

 

She gave me ten euro in bills and coins, and some travel tips.

 

 

 

Here are the tips, and some commentary:

 

 

 

#1: “Wear this scapular on the plane. I wear it when I fly. It couldn’t hurt. You don’t want anything to happen, do you?”

 

 

 

No, of course I don’t want anything to happen. I wore the scapular on the flight from Boston to Paris, and sure enough, nothing happened. Then, as a control experiment, I carried it in my hand luggage on the return trip. Nothing happened then either. (Actually, the return trip was faster and easier than the away trip.)

 

 

 

#2: “You’ll need the change I’m giving you. You have to pay to go to the bathroom, you know.”

 

 

 

Only partially true. Some bathrooms have an attendant (whom the French call, charmingly, “Madame Pipi”) who collects her fifty cents as you go in. Some have an honor system: a little box outside the bathroom into which you can drop a few coins. Many are free altogether (we encountered many of these). Some, interestingly, are self-cleaning. Here’s how they work: you put in your money (usually thirty cents) and the door unlocks. You do your business and leave. After the door closes behind you, an infernal device sprays the toilet – and the whole room – with water and disinfectant.

 

 

 

(At the Deauville train station, an elderly couple taught us how to get around this: you pay your thirty cents, use the facilities, exit – but you don’t quite close the door. Your accomplice / partner dashes in while you hold the door, and voila! Free bathroom!)

 

 

 

(Of course, if you were to let the door close while your friend was in the bathroom, he’d get a blinding faceful of disinfectant.)

 

 

 

(Which would be very funny.)

 

 

 

#3: “Versailles was filthy. There were dust bunnies under the furniture. All the glass surfaces in the Hall of Mirrors were dirty. It was worse than Nazi Germany in there.”

 

 

 

Okay, I didn’t see any dust bunnies in Versailles. The mirrors are plenty warped, but – hey – they’re over three hundred years old.

 

 

 

As for Nazi Germany, here’s Partner’s comment:

 

 

 

“I used the bathroom in the Visitor’s Center in Honfleur. It smelled worse than a barn in there. I still have the stink in my nose. Please tell Apollonia that, if she wants to experience Nazi Germany, she should go to Honfleur and give that bathroom a try.”

 

 

Travel is so broadening, isn’t it?

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Les Maisons Satie, in Honfleur

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Erik Satie, one of my favorite composers, was born in Honfleur, on the coast of Normandy, in 1866. His birthplace has been transformed into a –

 

 

 

A what?

 

 

 

Not really a museum. Not really a performance space.

 

 

 

A happening.

 

 

 

Satie was an oddball: a medievalist, a surrealist, an independent. He wrote his odd little pieces of music while working as a cabaret pianist. He wrote pieces called “Dessicated Embryos” and “Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear” and “Next-to-Last Thoughts.” He was probably at least a little mentally ill. He died of acute cirrhosis (too much bourbon and absinthe) in 1925.

 

 

 

The good people of Honfleur have transformed his place of birth into a kind of performance / representation of Satie’s music. In one of the first rooms, you encounter a six-foot-tall pear, slowly flapping gigantic albatross wings. There’s a room of shadow puppets and cutouts. There is – outrageously, unexpectedly – a carousel, which you are invited to ride. I mounted one of the bizarre-looking bicycle-creatures and began to pedal, and the mechanism activated itself, and a cabaret piece of Satie’s – “Le Picadilly” – began to play, and the carousel opened up, brandishing peculiar hybrid musical instruments: shoe-trumpets, umbrella-trombones. An inscription on the wall says (in part): “It won’t hurt you to be ridiculous. And remember: Satie is watching you.”

 

 

 

Then there’s the white room: white walls, white benches, and a white player piano. The piano, eerily, plays one Satie score after another:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, you enter a small movie theater. You’re greeted by Satie himself – a voice from an empty armchair. He narrates a film showing scenes from some of his late ballets – “Parade,” “Mercure,” “Relache.” I knew the music to all three, but I’d never seen the dancing; it was beautiful and odd and otherworldly. Picasso designed the costumes and sets for “Parade,” and it shows: the circus managers who open each scene wear bizarre cubist outfits that look completely alien.

 

 

 

I was idiotically happy through the whole museum.

 

 

 

Here’s a video that gives you a nice impression of the place, through the eyes of an excited child:

 

 

 

 

 

 

My dears, do yourselves the favor of a lifetime, and visit Normandy. Sample the cheese and the fish. See the churches, and the villages.

 

 

 

And visit the house of Monsieur Satie in Honfleur, and ride the carousel.

 

 

 

It won’t hurt you to be ridiculous once in a while.

 

 

 

And remember: Satie is watching you.

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French rudeness! (Or not.)

 

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We do love our cultural stereotypes, don’t we? Germans are regimental and precise; Spaniards are passionate; Italians are argumentative; Russians are moody and unpredictable.

 

 

 

And the French, of course, are supercilious and rude.

 

 

 

Right?

 

 

 

On our second day in France, we took the train from Paris to Caen, and then took a cab to the hotel. Our driver was a big cheerful bloke who hoisted our suitcases into the cab’s trunk while grunting the word “Hop!” (I’d only ever seen it written. It’s closer to “Hup!” in English, but it’s also indefinably different. You kind of have to hear it to get the distinction.)

 

 

 

I struck up a conversation with him in the cab. He was very animated. He wanted to know where we were from, and when he found that we were American, he brightened. As it turned out, he had a brother in Sacramento, and visited him a few years ago. He went to Las Vegas, and the Grand Canyon, and a place called Yosameet (I’ll let you figure that one out on your own), and he loved it all. He wants to go back, and he tells his kids that they need to go to the United States.

 

 

 

All that in a five-minute cab ride!

 

 

 

Then there were the concierges at the various hotels. All of them were cute, and most of them were funny. (But none of them had names. Even when they wore nametags, the “name” field was blank. Why? Are their names unpronounceable? Are they too high-pitched for human ears? Do they not have names at all?) One in Caen, a tall blondish fellow who looked like a slightly more soigné Jason Segel, turned out to be a passionate history buff, and regaled us with stories about Caen during World War II. (I’ll tell you that story another time.)

 

 

 

Then there was the saleswoman working outside the department store near our hotel in Paris (they had sidewalk stalls every day). I was pawing through the shirts, not sure what size I was, when she glanced at me and chirped (in French), “Forty-one.”

 

 

 

“You can tell just by looking at me?” I said.

 

 

 

“It’s my job,” she shrugged, grinning.

 

 

 

We went through the stack of shirts together. (They were only ten euro each, so they’ll probably melt in the washing machine, but – hey – I have shirts from Paris!) We both exclaimed over a nice pink one. “Rose!” she said. “J’adore cette chemise rose!”

 

 

 

“Moi aussi,” I said, and we put that one aside.

 

 

 

The next two were bright red and dull gray. (The French, for some reason, are favoring dark colors this year; we didn’t see many people wearing bright colors in the streets.) “This gray is very nice,” she said.

 

 

 

“I like the red one,” I said.

 

 

 

She regarded me very gravely. “But the gray is very nice,” she said in an almost-stern tone.

 

 

 

Well, I got the red one, and the pink one. But I think the clerk was unhappy with me, a little.

 

 

 

How about the lady in the Deauville train station? I was buying tickets for Partner and myself for the next day, Caen-Bayeux, round trip. She regarded me with the famous Normandy deadpan. “May I ask your ages?” she said in a quiet regretful voice.

 

 

 

“He’s sixty-six,” I said. “And I’m fifty-five.”

 

 

 

She shook her head at me very ruefully. “You, monsieur, are too young.”

 

 

 

I exploded into laughter, and then tried to do the Norman deadpan back at her. “You, madame, are the first person who has ever said that to me.”

 

 

 

So Partner got his ticket at a reduced price, and I got a good laugh out of it.

 

 

 

Then there was the candy store next to our hotel in the Marais in Paris. I was browsing there one day early in our stay, and a funny bright young man waited on me, and gave me a chocolate for free, and told me (in French – funny how much they open up to you when you speak French!) he’d lived in Boston for a year and a half, and been to Cape Cod (“Les baleines!” he said. “The whales!”).

 

 

 

We ended up spending over a hundred dollars in that store, and let me tell you, it was worth it. On our last visit, our clerk was a very sweet young woman.  “There’s a little ceramic tajine candy dish over here,” I said. “Can you tell me what it costs?”

 

 

 

“Oh, a couple of euro,” she said. She rummaged under the counter, and then she looked up at me slyly. “Is it a gift?”

 

 

 

“No, no,” I said. “It’s for me.”

 

 

 

“No,” she said. “You misunderstand. It’s a gift. For you”

 

 

 

And she handed it to me with a serene smile.

 

 

 

Don’t let anyone tell you the French are rude, kids.

 

 

 

They’re just fine in my book.

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Restaurant review: Le Bouchon du Vaugueux

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Food in France is wonderful and plentiful, but it is generally not cheap. Even lunch at a corner bistro will set you back maybe thirty or forty euro. We lunched one day at McDonald’s (well, you need to touch home base once in a while), and even that was nearly twenty euro for the two of us.

 

 

 

As a result, we ended up eating prepared sandwiches and pastries a lot. This was not a problem, really; these are very inexpensive, and easy to find, and really pretty good most of the time.

 

 

 

But Partner and I agreed that we needed a few really good meals, just to complete our France experience.

 

 

 

Before our departure, Partner did a lot of web-surfing, and found a small restaurant in Caen called Le Bouchon du Vaugueux. The pictures were charming, and the menu was tempting. Here’s the current prix-fixe menu (a few items have changed since our visit):

 

MENU A 20 EUROS

Persillé de jambon et palette de porc aux lentilles  ou
Velouté de potiron toast au fromage de chèvre  ou
Salade de joue de porc et saucisson de volaille, vinaigrette de châtaigne.
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Carré de porc épais et moelleux , laqué à la moutarde douce et cornichons ou
Pavé de colin à la plancha beurre blanc poivre rose et ciboulette ou
Lapin braisé aux raisins et confit d'oignons.
********************************
Assiette de 3 fromages Normand ou  
Crème chocolat-café et nage de poires à l'anis ou 
Mousse ivoire aux litchis pulpe de framboises  ou
Pudding façon pain perdu au rhum.

 

 

 

(I do not translate, on purpose. I want you to get the full flavor of the place.)

 

 

 

Partner corresponded with the manager, Mme. Poussier, and she confirmed our reservation well before we left.

 

 

 

We ate there on the evening of Friday the fifth of October.

 

 

 

I will remember that meal for a long time.

 

 

Mme. Poussier welcomed us warmly. “I know, I know!” she said when we arrived. “From the Internet!”

 

 

 

We both started with the celery soup, garnished with sesame seeds and served with toasted bread and cheese. Does that sound too simple? It was very simple. It was also wonderful. (I know we should have had two different appetizers, but we’re stupid tourists, and we both thought that the soup sounded too good to pass up. It was.)

 

 

 

For a main course, Partner chose the “carre de porc epais et moelleux” (thick juicy pork steak), with sweet mustard and French-style pickles as a garnish.

 

 

 

I had the rabbit.

 

 

 

Yes, I know.

 

 

 

(My mother long ago told me that, when she was growing up, her mother would serve rabbit from time to time, and tell the kids it was chicken. Grandma’s father, who lived with them, would wait until Grandma’s back was turned and then make little hippety-hop motions with his hands. And the kids would refuse to eat it, and Grandma was invariably furious, and never did figure out how the kids knew.)

 

 

 

Rabbit, if you’ve never had it, is delicious. You can certainly make believe that it’s chicken, but it’s really like nothing else. The rabbit I ate at the Bouchon – served in a sauce flavored with onions and raisins – was heavenly.

 

 

 

Dessert? I went with the cheese plate. Partner had the grilled pineapple with chocolate sauce. Both of us were very happy.

 

 

 

When we arrived at seven-thirty, the place (which is not large) was almost empty. By eight-thirty, it was packed: a few tourists like us, and lots of very contented-looking locals.

 

 

 

The service was immaculate. Mme. Poussier had the dining room running like a Swiss watch: I saw her more than once give instructions to a waiter with a nod of her head or a glance.

 

 

 

And all of the above, with the addition of a few beers and mineral waters and two cups of coffee, ran to sixty-five euro, which is approximately twice the price of two burger-and-fries combos at a Paris bistro.

 

 

 

I am also pleased to tell you that Le Bouchon has earned a Bib Gourmand citation from the Michelin guide, which means they provide “excellence on a budget.”

 

 

 

I know, dear reader, you’re probably not planning a trip to Caen in the near future.  

 

 

 

But if you are: please go to Le Bouchon du Vaugueux, and treat yourself to a wonderful meal.

 

 

 

And, when you’re there, please let Mme. Poussier know that we think of her daily.

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Off to France

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Attention, mes copains et mes copines!

 

 

Partner and I are leaving for France today. We will be there for about ten days; we will mostly be in Paris, with an excursion to Normandy (Caen, Honfleur, Rouen, Bayeux). We already have a dinner reservation for Friday evening at a really charming-looking place in Caen, Le Bouchon du Vaugueux, with a tremendous menu which includes rabbit and local fish and Norman cheeses. We have tickets for the Moulin Rouge in Paris. We have tickets for EuroDisney.

 

 

I know you cannot live without me, so I have set up automatic posts over the next few weeks, on general topics, which you can discuss among yourselves.

 

 

I will come back from la belle France with beaucoup d’histoires, you can just be sure.

 

 

Think of us as Eloise in Paris.

 

 

Oh my lord!

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The Darlingtonia preserve

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In 2005, on one of our trips to the Pacific Northwest, Partner and I were running up and down the Oregon coast: Lincoln City, Yachats, Florence. 

 

 

On our way to Florence I noticed an odd sign pointing to a DARLINGTONIA PRESERVE.  The name rang a very faint bell, but I couldn’t quite place it, and I suggested that we stop.

 

 

I am so glad we did.

 

 

It is a small park which serves as a natural preserve for a rare local plant, the Darlingtonia californica, aka the cobra lily.

 

 

Darlingtonia is a carnivorous plant resembling the pitcher plant.  Its body is a cup of water, topped by a cobra-like hood.  Insects blunder inside and fall into the water to drown; the hood helps keeps them inside if they try to escape.

 

 

Once they’re dead, Darlingtonia californica eats them up, slowly, by dissolving them and absorbing their delicious little bodies.

 

 

Bloodthirsty, I know. But the plants were gorgeous, and you have never seen so many together in one place in your life.  They were shining bright green in the fitful Oregon summer sunlight, hundreds of them in their damp little peat bog, humming to themselves, waiting for the little buggies to arrive for lunch.

 

 

Plants are remarkable.  We animals have always had an advantage over plants, seemingly; we move faster, anyway. But plants are sneaky and malevolent. Some are poisonous, like nightshade and datura and pokeweed. Some sting and burn, like nettles and poison ivy. Some are beautiful and dangerous, like the foxglove. Some can gash the hell out of you, like the cholla cactus. Some of them can poison the ground beneath themselves, so that nothing else can grow (many conifers do this).

 

 

But all of them, just like Darlingtonia californica, are beautiful in the sunshine.

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New Hampshire

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Partner and I just came back from a couple of days in New Hampshire.

 

 

I have lived in New England for almost thirty-five years, and in that time, I have spent maybe three weeks in New Hampshire. So that makes me an expert on the subject.

 

 

Partner and I have vacationed in New Hampshire a couple of times, and went up a few years ago for a wake, and have gone a couple of times just for the hell of it (the state line is barely 90 minutes from Providence).  It always struck me as Massachusetts North: gritty and industrial (at least in the south: Manchester, Nashua).  The state line between Methuen, Massachusetts and Salem, New Hampshire is almost invisible: trees and gravelly hillsides on one side of the border, trees and gravelly hillsides on the other.

 

 

If you go farther north, you end up in the White Mountains, which are very Robert Frostish and picturesque. A few years ago we made the obligatory drive up Mount Washington, and marveled at the view from the visitor center.  We’ve been to Franconia Notch. We’ve walked around the Flume, which is lovely (Partner still remembers going there when he was young).  We’ve explored the Polar Caves, which have ice in them, even in August.

 

 

But then there’s all the other stuff.

 

 

New Hampshire, for some reason, is a conservative state. (I much prefer Vermont. Vermont is like your aging hippie cousin, who’s funny and manic and very liberal; New Hampshire is like your conservative uncle, who thinks Obama is a socialist and a fascist at the same time.) On this most recent trip, I saw Romney signs everywhere. (Have you seen his campaign logo? It’s a double-image “R,” something like the Rolls-Royce logo. I think he’s trying to suggest “Ronald Reagan,” and doesn’t realize that he’s also conjuring up the Rolls-Royce thing. Or maybe he knows and doesn’t care.)

 

 

Then there’s the whole “Live Free or Die” thing. It’s on their license plates! It’s the state motto! It’s a little – hm – heavy. (Partner always rephrases it: “Live free, then die.” “Live free and die.” I like his rephrasings better than the original motto.)

 

 

Also: there is the Old Man of the Mountain. This was a big stone profile on Cannon Mountain, visible for miles, that looked like the profile of an old man with a beard. New Hampshire still uses it on its road signs (all of the New Hampshire state route numbers appear in an “Old Man of the Mountain” frame). It’s on their 2002 state quarter.

 

 

The Old Man of the Mountain collapsed in 2003. It looks like exactly nothing now, except maybe a big pile of rubble. (I remind myself that I grew up within sight of Mount Saint Helens, and it blew up. Then I lived within shouting distance of the Old Man, and he fell apart. Is it me?)

 

 

Anyway: New Hampshire is green and lovely and full of wild scenery (if you go far enough north, anyway).

 

 

(But I’ll take Vermont any day of the week, if you give me the choice.)

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Tunis and Dream-Tunis

 

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I lived in Tunis for two years. It was (and, I’m sure, still is) a beautiful city.  I lived in a house not far from the shoe market and the gold market and the perfume market, down the street from the coppersmiths' district, within shouting distance of the az-Zeytouna Mosque. My walk to work took me through the busiest part of the tourist / merchant area, past the rug merchants and the spice merchants and the olive-wood merchants, past the British Council library, out through the Bab Bhar, down Avenue Habib Bourguiba, past the French-built Cathedral of Saint Vincent de Paul, past the statue of the fourteenth-century Tunisian historian Ibn Khaldoun holding his book against his chest.

 

 

It was a sunlit city, warm, funny, full of unique and wonderful neighborhoods.

 

 

I dream of it all the time.  Dream-Tunis is not quite the same as the real Tunis in which I lived.  Dream-Tunis is full of dramatic landscapes and vistas.  In Dream-Tunis I’ll walk down a boulevard and see the entire city from a height, or realize that there’s a whole stretch of seacoast I never visited.  Or a mosque, or a whole stretch of old buildings.

 

 

I think it’s because the real Tunis was (to me, in the mid-1980s) just as dreamlike.  I remember, one Saturday, deciding to walk north (an unfamiliar direction) through the medina, to see what I’d find.  I found residential areas, and more markets, and roofed streets, and unroofed streets.  I found a housewares market, like an open-air Walmart.  I found another shoe market.  I found quiet neighborhoods full of palm trees growing between the houses. 

 

 

I didn’t want to go home.  I wanted to keep going forever. 

 

 

I think that’s why I still dream about it.  Tunis was a labyrinth, but all of its secrets and revelations were beautiful.  I always wonder: what would have happened if I’d turned left instead of right?  What doorway would I have found?  Another spice market?  Another thousand-year-old mosque?  Another Turkish palace?

 

 

My friend Nejib (who now directs a large technology operation in the city) keeps inviting me back to see “the new Tunisia.” 

 

 

Maybe I will someday. 

 

 

I hope it’s still as intricate and beautiful as I remember.

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The travel checklist

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About ten years ago, an Internet acquaintance came to visit New England.  He was a San Franciscan, very funny and witty (on the Internet, at least), and wanted to see Boston.

 

 

And he had a list.

 

 

He wanted to see the State House.  He wanted to see Mother Goose’s gravesite.  He wanted to see the Old North Church.

 

 

Literally.  See them. I still remember: we walked in front of the State House, and he said “check.”

 

 

See, he’d asked Internet “friends” what he should see in Boston.  They’d volunteered ideas, and he had made a list. And he was literally just “seeing” them. Mostly from a distance.

 

 

Recently, on Facebook, I saw this thing called “100 Places To See Before You Die.”  Being a world traveler and a sophisticate, I took the quiz.  I got 10%.  I have seen 10 of the 100 places they listed.

 

 

And then I thought: Well, Jesus!  I have seen Casablanca, and Tunis, and the Tophet in Carthage.  I have seen the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington state.  I have visited Cabo Rojo in Puerto Rico, and I have looked across the Caribbean at the misty shore of Hispaniola.  I’ve looked across from a café in Tangiers at the Rock of Gibraltar.  I have gone to the Hotel des Invalides in Paris and looked down at the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte.

 

 

Aren’t these enough?

 

 

Why do I need to check things off a generic list?  I’ve seen some amazing things that most people will probably never see.

 

 

And I didn’t just walk past them.  I stood and marveled at them. Most of the time I actually touched them.

 

 

So nyah.

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