From Paris: let there be music and a dog

Well, it happened that I missed my train from Bordeaux to Paris.

It was like this: I get up before 6. I finish packing, tightly, oh so tightly fitting things into two bags, one backpack, with an added painting and a purse swinging from whatever limb can bear it.

I pack up the car and wait for breakfast. I could have skipped this meal I suppose, but it is perhaps my favorite moment of the day to sit there over a café au lait with croissant and some other surprise pastry and I am not about to give it up for some random train reservation.





Then, I fall in love with a placemat. Really, I think it is just an excuse to not go, but I actually take precious minutes to find out from madame if such placemats are to be had in her little village store selling cloths from the region. She checks. No, it is an old pattern. I would probably find it still somewhere in St Jean de Luz, but she no longer sells any here in Sare.

I say good bye and head out toward the highway. But before I reach the highway I pull over and think. I am a few minutes off schedule. What if I miss the train? There would be another one several hours later but there I would be, sitting awkwardly with my bags, killing time in Bordeaux, whereas I could be, for example, in the port town of St Jean de Luz (and by chance, if I find an old fashioned placemat, why, it would be fate).

And who would not pick St Jean de Luz over an afternoon in Paris?

So here I am in St Jean de Luz instead of Paris and loving every minute of it. The streets are crowded with shoppers, the ports have emptied out the fish for the day, the markets are brimming.



symbol of Basque pride at the market










And because it is St. John’s Day (a very important day for most Europeans and for me: longest days are to be celebrated!) and I am in the town that sports this name, it is all rather festive.






Inevitably I must get myself to Bordeaux and find another rapid train to Paris. It’s not as if Paris is a punishment after all. Still, I already miss the sheep and cows and goats. And vineyards. And cherries. And warm sands and mountain peaks… Oh, let me switch gears.


I look outside my tiny Parisian room and sigh. It’s an okay view, but I do not hear bees humming nor roosters crowing.





Still, June 21st is a fantastic night to spend in Paris. December 31st gets the spotlight and the glamour, but this night outshines it. For one thing, it’s warmer.

Twenty-five years ago the Minister of Culture proclaimed: on this longest day of the year, let there be music in all of France! Everyone and anyone who can play anything can set up on the street, no permit, nothing needed except some amplifiers and a song or two.

And the crowds are out, filling every street, pushing cars out of the way, and the music is heard over the roar of city life.

I decide to skip the traditional meal at standby places and go to a more modern spot (Ze Kitchen Gallerie), ripped from the book of talented young chefs that Alain gave me back in the Savoie. The food is excellent, the atmosphere is city-impersonal.



Shrimp, frogs legs, softshell crab, roquette, flowers of herbs

At the table next to me, a couple sits down with a monstrously big dog. It is hard to fit him in, but I tell them he can sleep on my leg, all 500 pounds of him. He is my companion.





In every restaurant I ate during the last six weeks, I have been the only solo diner (in part, this has to do with the fact that I ate outside the big cities). Even though it goes against the grain of how I feel about dining (it ought to be a communal affair), I have to admit, I do not mind eating out alone in this country. French waiters treat me superbly. I get wonderful tables and attentive service.

But on this night, I welcome the warmth of the dog on my leg. I appreciate this city each time I am here. I love its vigor, I love the way young people find quiet spots for their own pleasure…










But just this one time, I also liked having a dog on my foot.



from Basque: let there be music

from Sare: pastures and peppers

Not that we are looking to make Madison a mega tourist destination. Certainly that would have its drawbacks. I already regard our farmers market as too crowded with south of the (Illinois) border types who think it’s quaint and charming and take up all credible sidewalk space each Saturday on the Square.

Nonetheless, wouldn’t it be interesting to pick something and make it a Madison special and really hype it up some and then the world would know that we were the capitol of, say, lilacs? We could have a lilac fair in May and we could develop artisanal lilac wines and cheeses, or at least bath salts and linens… No, that doesn’t quite cut it. Too matronly. Madison is hip. Maybe we could try growing extreme amounts of garlic. Garlic is cool across ages and cultures.

The little village of Espelette, some 15 kilometers from Sare, is the pimento center of the world. They not only grow the peppers, but they make them into all sorts of things and peppers have thus become one of the symbols of Basqueness. Everyone has linens with stripes at home, of that I am certain and everyone has towels or plates or something with three little peppers. It looks like a regular New Mexico here, with all the peppers.

I chose village and country hopping over hiking on my last full day in southern France, not because I was down on exercise, but because foliage is still dripping from the early morning rains. Good excuse, don’t you think?

And since I am so close to Spain, I know I also have to ride over and back, just to check things out.

It appears that it is a completely open border. I note that the booth stands empty, probably because I am driving to Spain during lunch time and no way is anyone going to choose border patrol over eating and napping.

It is not that interesting on the other side of the border as there is no village there and all I got for my efforts were road signs in several languages I did not comprehend (Basque and Spanish) and so I probably did the fastest visit to another country known to anyone: 90 seconds flat.

On the French side, I stopped at a flower designated village dripping with Basqueness (Ainhoa). Everyone told me I should see it and I am glad, because it has an abundance of older Basque houses, though one might observe that they are sort of similar and once you get the feel for them you can turn around and go home.




Except that I did not go home. I went next to the capital of the pimento world (population: probably around 400). Before immersing myself in all things pimento, I searched for a place that would offer a warm chevre-on-toasts salad. No luck there. A café did sell Basque cheese with cherry jam and I thought this was a fine enough substitute. Especially with a glass of rose wine.





It happened that the waiter got every part of the order wrong before he got it right, and there are not many mistakes you can make with “a plate of cheese and a glass of rose wine.”

I have observed that the French are very patient with poor service. Here, the couple next to me was getting a tad upset, but that was only because they had to wait for half an hour for a slice of cake and the place had only two other tables occupied.

At the third table, another couple finally did get their order, and it was wrong as well and had to be sent back (he confused tea with coffee). Both of them looked our way and the gentlemen stretched his legs out, shrugged and smiled. “Can’t stress about it,” he said. Indeed, he looked very unstressed. I suppose if you take three hour lunch breaks routinely, a half an hour wait for a café isn’t going to make you or break you.

Anyway, the village was charming and it indeed had tons of pimentos and pimento products, though it will look even more colorful come fall and last year’s darkened peppers are replaced with this year’s red ones, strung out to dry.








In the pimento town parking space I noticed that someone had backed into my rental car and cracked the tail light. Now isn’t that a bum deal? I have driven through Sicily’s tight mountain alleys, sped through the Languedoc and worked my way up and down to Pierrerue and incurred no dent or damage and here, standing absolutely still I get smashed into. A regular hit and run.

So what do I do? I go back to Sare, stretch out for a tiny siesta and listen to the bees outside. Can’t stress about it.


Later that evening I get motivated and take one last hike into the country. These photos may mean nothing to you, but for me, they are all about southern France and how I have come to know it – through villages and pastures and forests rather than towns and cities. Making friends with cows and sheep. I think I am rediscovering my agrarian roots (of course, ultimately, we all have agrarian roots).







mountains in clouds, Sare in the background, sheep



My last country dinner is at the country auberge where I am staying. I like this place quite a lot. It is run by one big Basque family: brothers, wives, sisters of wives, even a cousin or two, all there, doing their various tasks. I don’t know if there are some rough spots, but as I sit downstairs in the mornings and work on my computer, I find it ever so pleasant to listen to them go about their business, calmly, confidently moving this great ship of food and rooms forward. Their young children are scampering about, except during the actual lunch and dinner service when they retreat with one of the many who are there to care for them.

I had Basque fish for my first course and Basque duck for my second one, with a Basque aperitif and Basque rose wine for the dinner itself, capped with a noisette and I wish I could say my plate is full but really it is quite empty because in the morning I have to speed like a demon to Bordeaux and catch the train to Paris so that the next day I can catch the flight back home.



pear gratin, to finish things off

from Sare: turn of the century update on travel to southwest France

I am only 45 minutes by car from Biarritz and even less minutes away from St Jean de Luz, a major fishing town on the Atlantic. I’ve read all about the posh times when Biarritz pandered to the wealthy and came to have an international reputation for its glitzy hotels and promenades along the ocean front. I cannot be so close and not take a look.

Much to my surprise, that reputation not withstanding, I like the town. The twenty first century has changed it somewhat. The beaches here have a pounding surf and surfboards give it a California-like relaxed look. And, of course, women tanning their breasts cannot have been common in the early 1900s.

True, it is dangerous to place me in a French town with good stores, particularly as the weather isn’t especially beachy, but I tell myself firmly that I must stop after that cropped pair of pants and I hold (basically) to my resolve.

Lunch in an out of the way patio reinforces my belief that from now on, grilled chevre on a salad will be my midday routine. Okay, I’ll eliminate the rose wine, reluctantly. So long as there is no time for a nap, there can be no room for a midafternoon rose.





It is, of course, unfair to compare the southern stretch of the Atlantic to the southern stretch of the Mediterranean, but who cares about fair – I do it anyway. That cool surf sure can knock you down flat here. And I miss the winds of Languedoc. And the way one village doesn’t quite hook into the next – there are stretches of countryside in between.

Still, Biarritz is pretty and I like pretty.





But I like St Jean de Luz even more. If Biarritz has Basque allegiance, it seems rather forced. You want to say – yeah, sure, you’re as French as anything. If anything, you’re jet-setty which doesn’t quite fit with the authentic language bit and traditional Basque way of life.



Biarritz Basque pride


St. Jean de Luz is an authentic and vibrant fishing town. Most of the houses are Basque houses.





Store after store sells Basque linens – beautiful fabrics, plain white, with stripes of blue, red or green and an embroidered Basque cross. The food is Basque, the language on the streets is unrecognizable and therefore Basque, shoppers shout out adio rather than bonne journee at the end of a visit.

It’s also cheaper than Biarritz and therefore likely to pose a significant threat to my credit card, since cheaper means bargain and bargain means purchase and purchase means credit card debt. I am reasoning like an American already, I am transitioning to my home country.



I eat dinner at the same place as last night, right on Sare’s main square. It’s run by an older Basque couple and the emphasis is on country food. It’s not a fussy place and I am tres happy to be here. The proprietor knows that I like the Basque aperitif and he brings me one right away. I order a mixture of appetizers and a grilled fish and a small pitcher of rose wine. All important decisions being made, I look around.

A family to the side is speaking American English. Unusual. I listen. The preteen daughters are vegetarian. They fuss at the menu which, indeed, would make a no-meat-on-my-plate person cringe. They fuss at the vegetables as well. The waiter fixes them special plates with lettuce, baby artichokes, white asparagus and little tomatoes and it turns out they dislike every item on said plate. They want fruit plates. Dad reassures them that every good restaurant will have a fruit plate. This place does not have a fruit plate. Bummer.

Only one daughter speaks French and it is the French of bonjour and merci. It does not allow for the cider that the mother wants, nor the boudin on the menu, which has her guessing wildly and very incorrectly. I want to suggest a great little food dictionary for further travels, but they all seem to have faith in 6th grade French language instruction and so I stay silent.

Having finished the complicated matter of ordering and rejecting foods, they notice me. And they begin to talk about me – why I would be sitting alone in a restaurant, why I looked their way (perhaps my look of horror as the girls licked the rims of wine glasses to see if they would make noise was too strong), on and on. As if I weren’t there. It really did not strike them that speaking French to the staff does not preclude me from understanding English. American English especially.

So I am transitioning already. I’m on French soil but I am letting go. I am accepting an inevitable return, truly I am. I like my home. I like that quality of life, however defined, matters for so many Madisonians. But on this evening, as I get up to leave the restaurant, I do the French thing. I say bon soir to the people on the left, bon soir the people on the right, and bon soir to the family of Americans in front of me. Why mess with their bubble.



basking in Basque foods

from Sare: natural progression

It dawned on me that I have become physically lazy lately. For, faced in the past weeks with fantastic hiking opportunities, I wasn’t taking them.

Here, in the Pyrenees, things have got to change. There are trails. There are paths. There are maps. Get moving!

Still, I don’t exactly rush the morning. Eventually I do stumble down to this:





…and by the time I finish and get around to putting up a post, the village clock has done its maximum number of hour clangs.

I do want to set out right then and there, I do I do. But everyone around me is eating the big Sunday lunch. It is my last Sunday in France. How can I not partake?

Reason prevails and instead of sitting down to a big four course meal, I go to a little café-bistro type place (“taberna” says the sing) and order a salad with grilled goat cheese and pine nuts. And I vow that in commemoration of my months in France, I will, hereafter, always eat a Sunday mid afternoon meal of a salad with grilled cheese and pine nuts. With a glass of rose wine. After which I will probably do the nap things. Sorry, I’m digressing.



everyone eats



I eat


I had the presence of mind to purchase a detailed map of the area, trails and all. But for my uneducated eye, it was merely a mess of lines on a piece of paper. I had asked the pretty little desk/waitress person (emphasis on young) where I might go for a nice walk/hike in the country and she told me (in her youthful enthusiasm) that there is this ballade I should take. It sounded so lyrical! Yes, definitely, the ballade is just the thing. How long? Maybe four hours…

As I set out, I think of the essentials: food. Just in case I lose my way in the Pyrenees and have to survive on nuts and berries and whatever else I will have brought, for days.

In Sare, it is crucial that you bring home with you baguettes and a Basque cake for the Sunday meal. For any meal, actually. They sell Basque cakes everywhere: flat, cookie like cakes, sometimes laced with cherry jam.





And so I, too, must have a Basque cake-let.
And now off I go. But which way? The map does not fuss with the Sare streets and I get lost even before leaving the village. Remarkable. I ask the madame at the hotel (she is closer to my age and has less of that youthful optimism): which way is the path in the direction of the grotto?

Do you intend to walk there? She looks so incredulous that I think I am perhaps in over my head. It’s only four hours, isn’t it? I ask meekly. She shrugs and points in the direction of the mountains.

As always, these paths are easy at the beginning. I hum to myself, walk briskly, think of all the calories I am burning while taking photos of children playing, as parents dine, at picnic spots and in the shades of trees by their farms and homes.









But then, quite suddenly, the path narrows. And obstacle number one appears.





Can you identify the problem? I’ll help: a few steps back, there was a road sign that read: Watch out for the dog. I had noted it, thinking: wow, that must be some special dog, deserving of its own road sign.

And now I know that if there is anything special about this dog it is his viciousness. The animal is growling and barking so fiercely that I stop completely and consider my options. I take a lame step forward (the path passes close to the house), the dog tightens his circle around me and growls louder.

And so I shout toward the house: excuse me! hey you there! The dog is barking, I am shouting, what’s the matter with these people?

Eventually the woman of the house comes out. Yes? Are you looking for the path? It goes behind the house.
But the dog! She shrugs her shoulders and says – he’s nothing.
And so now I understand: the road sign is there to protect not me, but the dog: "slow down, dogs playing." I walk past, the dog whimpers and goes away.

The path is, for the most part, well marked. Where there is a fork, a blue arrow points in the direction you want to go. I concentrate on the scenery, which is stunning.





But it is hard going. Elevations change, so there is a lot of up and down. And there are the usual stones and muddy spots. Unlike in the Languedoc, where the wind moves the air around constantly, the air here is still. The sun comes in and out from behind a hazy sky. Flies buzz. I am the only hiker. I encounter exactly one living soul and it is her:





She crosses from one fern field to the next and throws me a “what are you doing here” glance. After the dog encounter, I am bolder and throw her one right back: “I’m hiking, so move out of my way.” She does.


[Ocean warning: readers who are sensitive to blood and gore should maybe just skim the next several paragraphs]

Eventually, the path shoots down to a creek and bends in a wide arch around pastureland. I am in good spirit. I’ve had no mishaps but for a mud splash (I had been so preoccupied with a photo op that I missed the entire mess in front and thus went in ankle deep; a stream helped fix that one).

But now, right in my path, I see a bone. Rather large. Too big for a picnic discard. And there are many many flies. And feathers everywhere. As the path bends once more, I see right before me a dead horse. Or, rather, three fourths of one, fine mane, still glossy brown hide, but parts missing entirely, having obviously provided much nourishment to vultures and such.

No, I did not take a photo. It seemed disrespectful. And no, I did not faint or vomit, even after observing … well, the details of the dismemberment. I walked briskly past, making as big a loop around the poor thing as I could.

And only after I was well past it did I began to wonder: why is there a dead horse here? Why did he die? What (nearby?) beast attacked him to begin with? What the hell happened there? And: hadn’t anyone passing along this path noticed? Don’t they, like, remove road kill on signed paths?

And it is at that point that it strikes me that I had seen no blue arrows lately. I walk further. It is so still there between the ferns and forest. Bird noises, flies buzzing. Nothing more. Possibly, somewhere lurking, the beast that killed the horse.

Ten minutes more and I realize that I am lost. I have to go back, past the horse, that same dead horse that obviously was not on the path because this was not the path, this was some road leading who knows where.

I wish I could say it was, after that, downhill all the way, that I sped like lightening and got to the grotto in no time.

In fact, it suddenly turned uphill all the way. And after three hours of hiking it also became clear that this trail was not a four hour loop but a four hour final destination designation and the destination was not the grotto, but the summit.




toward the top: where the wild ferns grow


In the middle of all these ferns, I came across a hut that acted as a shelter. A couple of French hikers were sitting enjoying a wine break (really). I asked about the location of the grotto and was told that I had passed it some 500 meters below.

I loop back, find the grotto, stare with amazement at this apparently ancient burial spot and place where cave people frolicked…





…and start thinking about heading back. And this is where I completely show my hiking weakness: I hate retracing my steps over difficult terrain. If you don’t know what’s coming, you can pretty much hike through anything and either you die or you survive and blog about it. But reliving the experience? No. I opt for the paved road for a more relaxed 10 km jaunt back to the village, sidetracking just toward the end, to get some more of that Basque countryside, farm animals and all.



regarding each other




they all look basically like this


BTW, is there anything wrong with feeding a little piece of Basque cake-let to these guys? They came right over when I paused for a photo and I neglected to carry with me a carrot or a lump of sugar. They appeared surprised, as if they had never tasted it before. They sloshed it in their drippy lips for a long time and then nudged around my bag for more. They’re not allergic to cherry jam, are they?



is there more?


Dinner is at an outdoor spot on the square. It is lively and brisk and absolutely delicious. Did I, the evening before, have trepidations about some of the foods in this region? All gone. I love it all.



white asparagus, scallops



fish, zucchini with egg



Basque cakes




looking up: a furled up France, a partly unfurled Union, in full glory: Pays Basque

from Sare: what’s in a song?

It is late afternoon when I finally pull into the village square. Chaos!

Inflated slides, a bull ride, tents with food and drink.

Oh, it’s just today, madame, it’s the school fete.
My hotel sits right on the small village square. I love children, but the inflatable slides are, well, not village-like and so I breathe a sigh of relief.



slides



bulls



girls watching


As would be expected, the school fete is that by name only. The focus isn’t only on kids. It is tres important that the adults get something out of it as well. Kids play, everyone eats and drinks. Good deal.

I look at the food. I am no longer in the Languedoc. I buy a plateful…





Spicy eggs with fish, beer. I am in Pays Basque.

In the lobby of my small inn, I have, for the first time during my entire French travels, WiFi. Here, in the mountain village of Sare, 3 kilometers from the Spanish border, I can finally cut my blogging time by a half.

Sare has a designation – I can’t remember, it’s flowers or prettiness or some such award. As a result, it does have souvenirs and a handful of tourists passing through. But tonight, the locals have reclaimed their own. They dominate the square.

But it is not a private party.

I am sitting in the lobby, posting at a mile a minute and I hear it: boom, boom boom (in the oompah oompah sense)! I look up at monsieur le proprietair.
They are playing our music. They’re dancing too. You should go watch, it’s very nice.










I am reminded of scenes from movies, in your face scenes, where directors want to let you know, through music, the political allegiance of a class of people (Cabaret, for example). Here, in Sare, it is not some traditional costume thing, where older men and women remind themselves of how it was when. This has the energy and participation of the young.

Sometimes the very young.




watching, imitating


In case I hadn’t noticed that signs, menus, everything appears in the Basque language, in case I hadn’t seen the Basque flag hanging over the food tent, in case I missed the little note at the bottom of the Inn’s menu (Exte huntako Nagusiak: Esukal Herrian Sortuak -- with the translation, in French: the proprietors of this house were born and raises in the Basque Country), it is as clear as anything to me now that I am not entirely in France. The Pays Basque. And they are proud of it.

For dinner, I plunge, perhaps too forcefully. I am okay at the level of artichokes, cepes and Basque ham...




...but I falter at the second course. I asked for a typical Basque dish, I got it. And though I always say that I will eat anything so long as it is fresh and honest, tonight I have to modify that: sometimes, in small doses only. I cannot finish it. It is delicious, it is finely done, but I can eat at best half. I am a failure. I am, as plain as anything, a stranger in this land, someone who cannot finish her mound of shrimp and sweetbreads.

I wake up on and off, listening to the singing out on the square. I remember the spray paint on the cliff outside the village: the Basque problem: solutions through negotiation! In the mean time, they sing and dance.

[In the morning, I hear a conversation at the table next to mine. The mother asks the daughters: qu'est ce qu'on dit a papa? -- what does one say to dad? They look puzzled for a minute and then the bulb goes off: Ah! Bonne fete, papa! To all dads out there, but especially to one remarkable dad who gives his life and soul to his daughters -- bonne fete, papa!]



around the village, mountains