16.2.07

Mont-Saint-Michel, Château Fougères, & Rennes

Whee, the week of traveling around northern France! It's too bad I can't just say Normandie or Bretagne (pronounced Bret-tanye; anglicized Brittany), but I was in both and they each have cool things, and you are not allowed to get them confused, at all. If Normans are like the Californians of France, then Brittany is the Texas.

So! The Mont-Saint-Michel. It is definitely justly called a wonder of the world. There are three very stunning things about it, which all work in stunning harmony; it is just full of stunning, especially considering that from a distance it looks like a large stone wedding cake.

The first is the bay, and the way the tides flow in and out around the island (-ish thing... what do you call it when it's an island for half of every day and a hill for the other half?). The Abbey stands at the top of the hill-island hybrid, which henceforth shall be known as the hisland, and the tides come through the bottom. They used to surround it more completely, but the water has been dumping sediment around the base for thousands of years -- the causeway didn't help either -- and now it's very sandy. (Also I was there at low tide.) The people there are very big on the Mt-St-Mich being "where sea and sky meet," and they're less than pleased with this development, because "where sky and sand and some rivers and also sheep meet" sounds sort of like a really bizarre hippie dating service. So there are efforts underway to move all the sand back out, including, as I understand it, the construction of a very modern dam-like structure and the conversion of the causeway into an actual bridge. The bay itself is awesome, though, and added to the prestige of going on a pilgrimmage to the Mt.-St.-Mich is that it's a) totally full of quicksand, and b) at times completely impossible to navigate because of quick moving fogs. They tell you all this at the museum, because idiot tourists still die. (I'm willing to bet it sounded better four or five hundred years ago, when they got to call them unworthy scum and say that God was sending them a message.)

So! Awesome thing Number Two is the architecture. I know nothing about architecture, but I can tell that this was wicked cool, because you don't usually see gothic ceilings required to moonlight as supports for even larger gothic ceilings. Because of the way the hisland is shaped, half of the rooms are sort of halfway dug into the dirt and act as supports for the other half. The view is also completely incredible.

Awesome thing Number Three is the history associated with the place. I've discovered that although I enjoy the longish historical backgrounds associated with French monuments, the things I really love are always the convoluted stories of someone's crazy life, like the Princesses at Versailles. In this case, it was someone's crazy death, namely one of the Ducs or Comtes or whatever of the hisland -- I think he was a duke, but I could be making that up. Anyway, he and his wife lived in this sort of mini castle type thing, and they were very in love. So he died while on a trip to the south of France, but he wanted to be buried with his wife. So his followers, get this. They set up a fake (empty) grave in the south, where he died. Why this was necessary, I'm not sure. Then they start carrying him on horseback up north. Over the course of this long trip, he starts to smell kind of ripe. So they take out his entrails and bury those in a second grave. That works for awhile, but they trip takes a long time, and he starts to smell again, so they take out -- I think -- his muscles and skin and burn those and spread the ashes. Then, they finally get to Brittany and bury his heart in the same grave as his wife. But he is so well known (or something) that they eventually inter his bones with those of the kings of France, in Paris. FIVE GRAVES. Tell me that is not AWESOME.

They also have a real live PIRATE CHEST. Sometimes I totally love France.

Anyway! So, those were my impressions of the Mt. St. Michel, and also that the person who took me there, for whom I have not yet invented a clever pseudonym, is AWESOME also and deserves lots of props and snaps.

So, then on Wednesday, I was on the way to Rennes with my tutor, who is also awesome and who also doesn't have a clever pseudonym yet, but I think when she gets one it will involve the word 'super' in some way. We stopped at Fougères to see the Castle and the church there. The castle is totally fantastic -- picture the ideal locale where you would like to be sitting while reading Ivanhoe, in the way that Kennsington Gardens in London is your ideal setting to be reading Peter Pan and the Alaskan tundra is the perfect setting to be reading White Fang, not that I ever have, because Jack London is my own personal insomniac remedy. But! The castle! It has a keep, for reals, which English castles never do, and holes in the walls to pour out boiling oil or lead or whatever (or cold water, like the Psammead children), although they didn't use boiling oil because olive trees don't grow so far north, no joke. And crossbow openings, and seven foot thick walls, and a totally awesome moat with a waterfall.

The church roughly next door is Gothic on the outside and Baroque on the inside, which means I know not what, but seems very cool. The best part about it is the stained glass windows which actually recognizably depict scenes from recognizable sources, unlike certain other stained glass windows that I have no shame in pointing out belong to the Sainte Chapelle in Paris.

Rennes was very cool too; it's like three Berkeleys put together, each with its own university. There was shopping (I got three books in English for ten euros, which is the price of ONE English book around here, so that was awesome); there was eating (yummy crêpes, and the new and exciting knowledge that noix st.-jacques, though the word noix means nuts, are actually clams); there was going to the movies (a university presentation of O Brother Where Art Thou? and a French film called La Môme at the cinema); there was much talking and hanging out and fun. There was the university library, too, where I started a literary criticism book and came to the uncomfortable realization that there is a part of me that wants to write essays again. I know. I checked for a fever directly I realized it. But I sort of want to sit down and reread Jane Austen and write critical essays about character development. I am very disturbed.

So! That is my travelogue for today. Stay tuned for thoughts on Life, the Universe, and Vienna and Prague next week, though sadly no Veronica Mars reviews until I get back to school. Whee!

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