Latest French escapades

Ok, I guess that's a teensy bit misleading ... I don't really do escapades. Mostly I go to art museums and eat unhealthy amounts of nutella. Although I've been cutting back, I swear! Mind, I've picked up a gummy worm habit instead, so I don't know that my sugar problem is actually getting any better ...

... but that's neither here nor there. What I've really been doing for the last two weeks is vacation. French schools run in 5-7 week sessions - I don't know what else to call them - each followed by a week or two of vacation. Thus after the first session, at the end of October, we had a week of vacation (this is when I went to Île de Ré), then after the second session was Christmas break, and now, at the end of the third, we got a lovely two weeks off.

The family I work for went skiing during the first week, and though they welcomed me to come along, I opted to house-and-cat-sit for the week instead, not being all that athletically inclined. I was a little nervous about being on my own for a week, but I got to spend a lot of time with the other au pairs in the area, and the cat kept me company at night, following me around the house with great dedication and sleeping on my bed.

That week really was nice. It gave me time to relax, get a few things done, sleep in, watch movies, and play the wii game "Just Dance" - which is surprisingly fun and addictive. The other girls and I cooked dinner together several times and generally just hung out.

One of the girls and I visited IKEA, which I think I shall write about next in its own post. It's kind of a big deal here.

The other big adventure of the week was visiting Chartres cathedral.

Y'all.

I have actually visited a fair number of churches. Not tons, but about 20 during interim in Rome, and a couple here in Paris. I have seen more impressive cathedrals, in terms of sheer size (ie. St. Peter's) but Chartres was, without a doubt, one of the most stunning buildings I've had the privilege to visit. From the inside, it's a fairly simple floorplan, but the outside of the building is warrened with flying buttresses and open corridors and the bulging outsides of rooms that you can't see from the inside:

It's wonderful, and huge. And the best part is how much is original - it's almost entirely the original medieval building, which means there are tons of statuary (literally) and all of the figures are unique and individual, from the huge sculptures next to the doors to the thousands of tiny figures around the tops of the arched entrances. Stunning.

You can see that they're cleaning it, which is a five year process. But the parts they've got done, like the top levels here at the front of the cathedral, are gorgeous, as you can see.

Also, I'd seen pictures of Chartres before (we studied some of the stained glass in an art history class), but somehow I'd never heard about the wall around the choristry, or whatever you call the place where the choir hangs out. It's a long wall, inside the church, that's absolutely encrusted with carvings: (Sorry for terrible picture quality - not a lot of light in this part of the church)

Pillars and decorative patterns, but also rows of round pictures around the bottom, and, best of all, huge scenes from the life of Christ, all about, oh, 10-12 feet off the ground. So sue me, I suck at estimating. Anyway, they're not really carvings, because all the statues are fully carved out. The statues are fully carved out, not attached the wall except at their bases. I estimate the standing adults are about 3ft tall. And they're beautiful, and moving. Here's the adoration of Christ by what I think are Magi, but which look sort of shepherd like:

We also walked the tourist circuit through the medieval part of the city, which was, well, picturesque. And old. It still amazes me, every time I'm in Paris, or Chartres, for example, how old things are! It's hard for me, and if I dare generalize recklessly, Americans as a whole, to understand how the weight of so much history shapes a country and its culture. Oh, we have history, to be sure, but in Europe you can feel it everywhere you go. There's much (MUCH) more consciousness of it, and more consciousness of (relatively) recent events such as WWI than I have ever seen in the US. WWI still affects people's attitudes on a daily basis. And while it had a huge effect on the national psyche of the US as well, it's not really something we still talk about much. Here it is.

All of which came out of a discussion of Chartres' medieval city, which was, on a more superficial note, picturesque:

My new obsession: glassware. Also: inappropriate laughter in art museums.

Sometimes I think I ought to waste less time and work more, because I find myself obsessing about things like glassware.

Let me explain - no, there is too much, let me sum up. I had been trying to figure out what would be a good thing to take home when I leave France, because while I like souvenirs, I don't like useless ones. I like to have bigger, and more memorable souvenirs of places I've been, but only if they're something I use regularly. That way I can think, "Oh, I remember when I bought this [notebook/tea strainer/dress/pair of earrings]! It was when I was in [Rome/Disney World/Nairobi/PARIS]!

And then I'm all excited and reminiscent. It's great!

BUT the problem is that many of the things I would like to get here are things I would be able to buy in the US just as easily and probably more cheaply. This has led me to contemplate some interesting and possibly unwise purchases. Most recently, glassware.

Now I am aware that buying a set of wine glasses here, while cool and very French, is impractical in the extreme. How will I get 10 wineglasses in my suitcase - because of course I want extras - and haul them across the Atlantic without a) breaking them or b) ruining all my socks by inadvertently filling them with shards of glass?

It's a dilemna (I'm sorry, I have a deep-seated need to spell that with an n. I can't explain it) that I have yet to solve. And I think that the fact that I've spent so much time on it says less than flattering things about my current preoccupations.

So, lest you think I have been consumed by a mire of (irrelevant) pedestrian concerns (like: and once I get to the US, would I need to replace ALL my socks?), I would like to add that I spent my time this weekend in a much more intellectual frame of mind: I visited the Centre Pompidou.

For the unenlightened, the Centre Pompidou is a modern art museum in Paris. It has all it's pipes on the outside, and it caused a big brouhaha when it was built. Now it's pretty much accepted as a colorful and, well, pipe-covered feature of the city. I saw Duchamps' "Fountain," and several Calder sculptures (mobiles?), as well as a Picasso that I'd never seen and really loved. There was also an interesting room with a video projection called Echo, which was a violinist playing a violin at the edge of a massive cliff in the middle of the mountains - and he was harmonizing with himself by playing along with his echo. I loved it.

Unfortunately I then proceeded to disgrace myself in the eyes of quite of few of my fellow museum go-ers by laughing out loud when I came across an exhibit of a bookshelf covered in junk with trash strewn (artfully) around the floor in front of it. I couldn't help myself, though - someone was photographing the thing! And it was just so stereotypical of "modern art." Oh, and I giggled at the copy of a Mondrian block painting where the colored blocks were furry. I concluded that Modern Art is not my thing, although I am glad I went.

So the Musée d'Orsay remains my favorite art museum - but next week, if I can, I am going to the Rodin Sculpture museum - kind of VERY excited!