Lions, tigers, bears, Oh My! (asyndeton).

09.08.2007

In the past 9 days I’ve been inside 6 châteaux (castles) and seen countless others from the outside. None of them have been within 10 miles of Paris. Pretty much all were royal at one point or another.

Personally, I am a fan of castles and palaces—and why not? Sheer richness, magnitude, art, furnishings, secret passageways…all hearkening to a time far (or not so far away). Before the narrative, I’ll give the interesting particularities of the French castles I saw as a whole:

• All have little letters carved into the ceiling/decorations signifying in one way or another who built them. For example, a salamander and a big ‘F’ for François I; a porcupine and an ‘H’ for Henri II; a big ‘N’ for Napoleon III.
• Fontainebleau was the first palace/castle that I have ever seen a royal bathroom in. This particular one was lived in as late as 1870 I think, by Nappy III who was a big builder and modernizer, but the bathroom dates from the time of Louis XIV. The bathtub was regal and the color was cool, though I couldn’t come close enough (glass/cordon) to see the WC, though I assume it exists.
• This point deserves special consideration—I’ve been to an awful lot of Palaces in Russia and elsewhere, and none had bathrooms open to the public.
• My opinion—Louis XIV ‘the sun king’ was a pretty damn smart guy and he liked the luxuries of life == the royal bath and adjoining crapper.

o Dancing in every château (at least 1 spin) was obligatory.

o I learned that I am not a big fan of tapestries as an art form, save perhaps the Bayeux tapestry and the tapestry of Martin the Warrior from the Redwall series I adored in childhood (Yeah Brian Jacques!).

Rendering distance obsolete

09.06.2007

Sorry I haven’t written for awhile—2 trips this past weekend and 2 presentations and an interview this week.

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Don’t worry, this isn’t a treatise on science (philosophy maybe).
It’s merely some shoutouts of the people I’ve seen in the past 3 weeks who don’t live in Paris, but are part of my life…

…to Steve Gorodetskiy for traveling with his family and having to do touristy things with Russian tour groups. Believe me, we’ve all been there. I always happen to see Russian tour groups on the bridges between Quartier of Boulevard St. Michel (Latin Quarter) and the Plaza in front of Notre Dame.

…to Ben Brabston for studying in Paris for a month, living on the Seine, and having a great time overall.

This one requires a story: “Serendipity” or “Just another day in Paris”

So Monday night, nothing to do, I decided to go with a friend from the foyer/program to Monmartre. I hadn’t been, and it was around nighttime and I figured it’d be cool. All of the metro stops west of Monmartre are surrounded by Cabaret establishments (eg. Le Moulin Rouge, and other Moulins) and noticeably strip clubs and sex shops.

We climb the ‘mount’ of martyrs or whatever, the Cathedral Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart) is amazing, at night even. Plus, from there you can see the whole center and south of Paris, breathtaking. There was also mass at 22h00 for some reasons, but, you know, why not?

Leaving the cathedral, we find the square where you can get your portrait drawn, and then turn down the other side of the hill. A couple blocks, and sufficiently far from the tourism, we turn into a dark looking road. Walking along, I start staring at a girl walking on the other side of the street. My companion tells me to quit it, that I should ‘leave the poor girl alone’.

However, it turned out to be Mariel Vinge from Minnetonka. How’s that? Shit like that always happens to me, serendipity. She was en route from Amsterdam to Bonn, Germany.

I’m all for chance encounters.

Ching-Ching to all further encounters. (The French say ‘à la santé’ –to your health, or tching-thcing (the sound glass makes if it gets hit together) when they drink, brilliant).

...More encounters to come...soon.