All tagged France

Becoming A Fan

Becoming A Fan

Dorty Nowak
Historic Travel, Insider's Guide, Travel Tips

by Dorty Nowak

Hot and frustrated, I stared at the pieces of the supposedly easy-to-assemble electric fan that came with nine parts instead of the required ten. My apartment, like most buildings in Paris, has no air conditioning and, after several days of unremitting heat, I was desperate. I picked up the instruction sheet, ignoring the number for the help center that was probably located in China, and folded it into a fan. My makeshift fan worked surprisingly well, reminding me of a museum that I had been meaning to visit ever since I read several years ago that it might have to close.

The Alignments in Carnac, Brittany, France

The Alignments in Carnac, Brittany, France

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Religion, exotic travel

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

We drove around a corner and encountered an astounding sight: row after row of standing stones, stretching to the horizon. “Pull over!” I demanded. Barely waiting for Gary, my husband, to stop the car, I opened the door, jumped out, and ran over to the green metal fence that separated the stones from me. I shook my head in disbelief, in awe. So many stones, lined up and going—where? Why? They fit no category I knew: they were an enormous puzzle of countless granite megaliths pointing to the sky, rooted in the earth. Hundreds, thousands of stones lined up in slightly wavering rows that went on for kilometers, as if the stones were frozen in the act of marching—somewhere. What was the point? What did they mean? What were they for? The stones made no response.

Nowhere in the world has as many megalithic sites as Brittany, and Carnac is in the center of them. The amazing profusion of ancient remains includes isolated standing stones, rows of alignments, earth-covered tumuli, quadrilateral and oval enclosures, and table-like dolmens, each with its own energy and story.

The dolmens with their elaborately engraved interior walls are intriguing, but the 6000-year-old alignments fascinate me. Many of the original stones have been hauled off for re-use in nearby farmhouses and fences, but nearly 3000 menhirs (Breton for standing stones) remain. They are lined up in three sets of slightly undulating rows facing approximately northeast/southwest and extending for kilometers. Starting in the northeast are the Kerlescan alignments, followed by the Kermario alignments, and ending in the southwest with the Le Ménec alignments. The different sets contain from eleven to thirteen rows, and include from approximately 600 to nearly 1200 standing stones. Each set ends in the southwest with an ovoid or quadrilateral stone enclosure (or what remains of one). The cumulative effect of so many stones, so many alignments, extending for such a distance, is awesome.

Healing at Saint Onenn’s Holy Well, Brittany

Healing at Saint Onenn’s Holy Well, Brittany

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Religion, travel essay

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

It was a place you couldn’t find unless you’d already been there—or unless you found someone to take you there, someone with permission to cross from here to there….

While my husband, Gary, and I spent the day in Paimpont, our traveling companions visited a holy well in the nearby village of Tréhorenteuc. By chance, they had met someone in a bookstore who told them about it and led them to it. They had dangled their feet in the water and meditated, one by one. It was a lovely place.

The Black Virgin of Rocamadour

The Black Virgin of Rocamadour

Elyn Aviva
Personal essay, Religion, Spirituality

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

She called to me just as I was falling asleep, exhausted from too much travel. We had had a long, twisting drive to reach her sanctuary, perched on the side of a sheer bluff in the Lot region in southwestern France. My husband, Gary, and I had gone to bed early, around 9:30 p.m., too tired to enjoy a night stroll through the tiny medieval village of Rocamadour, which sheltered her chapel.

I was almost asleep when I heard her loud and clear, as if she were standing next to me. “Get up!” she commanded. “Come visit me in my sanctuary! That’s what you’re here for!”

I groaned. I was tired. Besides, I’d already visited the Black Virgin of Rocamadour in her sanctuary just a few hours earlier, right after we had arrived, because we’d been told her chapel would close at 7:30 pm.

I turned to Gary, lying next to me in bed. “She’s calling me.”

“What?” He mumbled.

“The Lady is calling me to visit her. You want to come?”

He muttered something. Then, “You go ahead.”

Suddenly energized, I sprang out of bed and got dressed. After all, when the Goddess calls you, you have to go. I knocked at the room next door where our friend Anne was staying. I knocked again, louder. After a few minutes she opened the door, looking sleepy.

“The Black Virgin is calling me to go to her. Want to come?”

She nodded. “Give me a minute.”

Soon we were on a night-time pilgrimage to the Goddess, walking through the silent, deserted streets, climbing the 223 steps of the Grand Staircase that lead up to her cliff-side sanctuary. We followed the Rue de la Mercerie to a small square, the Parvis de St-Amadour, center of the holy precinct. Then we walked up to the upper landing and stood in front of the chapel doors. They were locked.

I shook my head, disappointed. “I know we were told the sanctuary would be closed, but I’m sure the Black Virgin told me to come and see her.” Maybe it had just been a daydream, I thought, or a moment of confusion as I drifted off to sleep….

Poetry is for sissies

By J. Eric Eckard
Personal essay

Poetry is for sissies.

Or so I thought.

If you had told me two years ago that I’d not only read a bit of poetry, but I’d write some, as well, I would have scoffed condescendingly. But take one English poet, add the allure of a French countryside and open an often closed American mind a little, and it’s possible to turn even a jaded and cynical hard news journalist into a believer.

photo by Guillermo Fdez via flickr (common license)
The setting was the French House Party located in the Languedoc region of Southwest France. Carcassonne, a 400-year-old medieval World Heritage site, sits nearby, adding to the appeal of the area. The French House Party “Experience” is an all-inclusive creative arts vacation retreat that offers a variety of courses in such topics as painting, movie-making, singing, cooking and creative writing.

As a longtime newspaperman, I knew how to write. Stringing sentences together in a coherent and concise manner is easy for me. What’s difficult as a crime reporter – my job in my previous life – is dealing with the horrors of society without letting them affect your psyche. Writing about rapes, robberies and racketeering were staples of my day. That was my life as a crime reporter. Dealing with death and destruction daily for nearly 20 years definitely hardened my view of the world. And I guess I took some of that cynicism with me when I turned my back on that era to write about less grim and solemn subjects.

So, just 18 months removed from my life as a newsman, I decided to venture out of my comfort zone, take a trip to Europe and check myself in to a creative writing retreat. I had no idea what to expect. Not only was it my first trip overseas, but it also was my first foray into creative writing. I figured character development, setting, dialogue and other novel-writing topics would be covered. And they were.

In A Pig's Ear

In A Pig's Ear

Dorty Nowak
Culinary Travel, cultural immersion, cultural musings

by Dorty Nowak

There are 72 recipes for animal body parts I have never eaten in Le Meilleur Cuisine de France. I purchased the cookbook, a staple in French kitchens, when I first moved to Paris, and over the past five years it has become a trusted guide for my culinary adventures. However, the section titled “Les Cochonailles et Les Abats” (Pork Products and Offal) remains untried territory.

Chasing Fairy Tales In The Dordogne

Kimberley Lovato
Culinary Travel, cultural musings

words + pictures by Kimberley Lovato

Dreams are often born from the most unsuspecting places. Incredibly, mine happened to be delivered by an editor. The assignment that landed in my lap was to head to the Dordogne region of France and follow a chef and her new culinary tour company guests around for a week. No convincing needed, I immediately got in my car in Brussels and drove 10 hours south.   En route I stopped to fuel up and a postcard caught my eye. A picturesque village was enveloped in fog and huddled against a cliff at the edge of the Dordogne River, with a dilapidated rowboat tied to its shore. On the back of the card, in small black and white print, were the words, La-Roque-Gageac, Dordogne.  If fairy tales were depicted on postcards, they would look like this. I bought the card and tucked it behind the visor of my car.

I arrived in Biron, a village of 140 people, at an old priory that sits in the shadows of a 500-year -old castle.  I recall knocking on the weathered wooden doors of the Priory, and hearing the metal against metal slide of the bolt behind it, then a slow creek as the door opened.  Half expecting Frankenstein, I was greeted, instead, by the face of my host, Florida based Chef Laura Schmalhorst. Since then, Laura and I have met up in the Dordogne every year, bonded by our love of a good adventure, good food and wine, and seduced by the convivial people, their passion for the food and their willingness to share it and their stories with us.

While I prefer to travel by bus or local rickshaw, in the Dordogne, a car is essential.  The 2-lane roads are well marked but signs can be miniscule, especially the hand-painted ones directing you to local farms. Be warned: some signs, like those of a walnut farm I was seeking, lead you like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs only to completely disappear. I have learned not to get worked up over this loss of time. We as Americans are programmed for efficiency and if we don’t get where we are going in a reasonable time, our springs pop out and the brain shuts down, reducing us to cursing, yelling idiots.  In the Dordogne, time itself is on vacation. When you live in a fairytale there is no reason to rush, someone once told me. Sometimes it’s good to get off the time track, or be knocked off.

 

A Sixty-Year Love Story from Morocco, Israel and France

A Sixty-Year Love Story from Morocco, Israel and France

Bethany Ball
Personal essay, cultural musings, life

by Bethany Ball

Marco and Aliza descended on our house in Nyack New York with their irrepressible energy.  Aliza, who is visiting from Israel, is the mother of our dear friend Sagi. And Marco is her boyfriend visiting from his home in Bordeaux, France.  They were staying with Sagi in his tiny apartment in Williamsburg and had come over to cook a meal for Sagi and his friends. Marco immediately settled in, a spry, fit man in his early seventies, making the most of our ill-equipped kitchen (I asked myself: Where are my kitchen scissors? Why do I not have large cutting boards? Or serving dishes?). Marco speaks French, Portuguese and Hebrew. Everyone who came for dinner spoke a smattering of one or several of those languages. If we got stuck, Marco spoke to Aliza in French and she translated in Hebrew or English. There was moule (en francais), moulim (b’ivrit) or mussels with a butter sauce that we were instructed to drink. Our friend Anthony (a native New Yorker married to an Israeli) brought lamb kabob and sharpened knives. Kristen, a native Alabaman chopped parsley. Sagi worked the grill, along with my husband. Anthony’s Israeli wife Abi and I chased after our not-quite-two-year olds and filled in the gaps--like searching for kitchen appliances and washing dishes. Abi set the table and tore and folded paper towel for napkins (why do I never have napkins?). Kristen’s boyfriend Etay played DJ, chopped vegetables and teased Marco. “Marco! I put on French music! Just for you.”

“Bah!” he said, making a face, “It is Carla Bruni. She does not sing. She talks!”

“Give us some Yves Montand,” Aliza called out.

Marco served my grilled fish, branzini or Mediterranean Sea bass. He called it by its French name, Loup de Mer.

Now Playing in Paris

Now Playing in Paris

Dorty Nowak
Foreign Language, cultural immersion, travel essay

by Dorty Nowak

Several years ago my husband and I moved to Paris.  Although I was an avid student of French culture and cuisine, my knowledge of the French language was minimal.  Freshman year in college I dropped out of French 101 because partying was much more fun than memorizing vocabulary, a decision I’ve regretted ever since.  Over the years I had accumulated several “French for Travelers” texts, some Berlitz tapes, and enough rudimentary vocabulary to get by on my occasional vacations in France. 

Alone at the Louvre

Jean Kepler Ross
Art and Culture

by Jean Kepler Ross

On a recent trip to Paris to visit a dear friend, I learned an insider’s tip: the Louvre is open Wednesday and Friday nights until 10 pm. Also, it’s a local tradition to use museums as classrooms, so art students are welcome to sit among the treasures studying, drawing, painting, gaping. My friend and I are both art students so we leapt at the chance. While others were feasting on foie gras, we’d be feasting on world-class art.

photo by Robert S. Donovan via flickr The first Wednesday night we packed our drawing pads, pastels and pencils and headed across the Seine to the Louvre, eager for this special treat. “Let’s start with classical Greek and Roman statues,” my friend suggested. “I’m a beginner, we need easier forms for me,” I lobbied. We climbed the stairs past the Winged Victory of Samothrace statue and passed through glorious halls filled with Italian paintings. We saw the crowds in front of La Joconde – the Mona Lisa – and Da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks (famous to Da Vinci Code readers), but we weren’t seduced. It felt liberating to give up trying to take in as much as possible to concentrate on a few pieces.

In a remote corner of the museum, we saw the perfect models – 200-400 year old wooden sculptures from Oceania. Most of the totem figures I drew were from Vanuatu and were basic shapes fun to study. They were male figures, between five and seven feet tall; some were painted, some were streamlined to the essence like Brancusi sculptures, and some were very detailed with carvings. I worked longest with a sculpture of a seated man and woman, arms and legs entwined, which once guarded the entrance of a ceremonial house in the Solomon Islands. Their figures, pedestal and head covers were all carved out of one tree. My friend drew a very detailed study of an unusual and complex hermaphrodite figure, with a crested headdress, that looked warlike and powerful.