Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys

This is what our nation's greatest President, Josiah Bartlett, said about the French. Yeah, he was in a bad mood when he said it, so I think we can ignore the animosity behind the sentiment and focus on the positive: the cheese.

Cheese is delicious.

Okay, well that's the end of this blog... hope you enjoyed it!

Just kidding.

But really, cheese is awesome. And for those of you who have never been to France; I'm sorry, but you can only have a theoretical idea of what I'm talking about. Yeah, there are some places in the States where you can get good cheese, but it's always prohibitively expensive, and those pesky government regulations can stand in the way of some really excellent bacterial processes. I rediscovered my love of cheese last week when I met one of my best friends, Elsa (see earlier post... much earlier) to take the south of France by storm. It was a much needed sojurn after two months of moving on every couple of days. Even though I've begun to really love my transitory existence, I can totally see the value of a place to call home. Even if it is only for four days.


We met up in Marseille, which Elsa tells me is a city with which the French have one of those relationships where you either love it or you hate it. She also told me that it's sort of the Naples of France. This didn't give me a wholly positive preconception of the place, since Naples is (I've heard... from everyone who has ever mentioned the place to me) is patently the sketchiest place in existence, and you should only go there if you're heading for Pompeii or somewhere in the vicinity but not the actual place. I didn't find this to be true with Marseille, at all. Granted, we were only there for one night, but it seemed to me that it's a beautiful town on the sea, not a sketch-as-hell litter city in the middle of the south-ish.

We wandered around and talked; I was pretty much just happy to talk to someone again. Elsa has been one of my best friends since I began college, and so she knows me well enough that I don't have to censor the sometimes really dumb observations that come out of my mouth. And the fact that I've had basically two months by myself means that I've thought about a lot of really random things, and that Elsa was subjected to hearing me talk about them, even though they really had no context. That's friendship, baby.

Marseille didn't strike me as the kind of city one should have a violent reaction to; it's very nice, but nothing exceptionally good or bad. Apparently, a French soap opera which Elsa's host-mom is obsessed with, called Plus Belle La Vie, takes place there, as did the almost as renowned story by a little known writer called Alexandre Dumas... perhaps you've heard of The Count of Monte Christo? Yeah. That took place there. And around there. You don't know the book? Well, then, you certainly remember the movie, don't you? The one with Mel Gibson's Jesus and Dumbledore? Look it up. Worth a watch. When I went to see it in eighth grade, I got my head stuck in the movie theater seat from hunkering down during a particularly intense sword fight. I can give no higher recommendation than that. But I digress.

We ate dinner at an Indian restaurant, which had literally the best samosas I've ever tasted in my life, and where we experienced a little bit of French immigrant culture; living proof that France is absolutely not the homogenous country of smelly men in striped shirts and berets that some people named Glenn Beck would like you to think it is. Usually, you would expect dinner at a restaurant in France to last for a long time, with plenty of time spent not eating, but just shooting the shit. Not so in this place. Elsa actually had to put her coat on outside, that's how fast they seated some other people at our table when we'd paid. This wasn't entirely impressive to me, because I personally enjoy the European way of dining better than the 'eat it and beat it' style favored by many Amuhricans, but the tikka masala was so good, I'll let it go.

We had originally planned to spend four days in Marseille, but circumstances lead to us being able to spend three days with some friends of my mom's from her time in France. They're pretty wonderful people named Christy and Pierre Marre, and they really reinforced my conviction that the best tour guides are real locals or pseudo-locals (read: college kids) who really love the place where they live.

Christy is an American from Chattanooga, TN. who went to France for study abroad when she was 20, met Pierre, and pretty much the rest is history, from what I understand. Christy is, in spite of 20+ years of living in France, pretty much still very American. Or maybe our presence brought that out in her, but it was fun to see how she and Pierre, who is very, very French, interact. Of course, they've been married a long time, so their interactions are those of people in that situation, but it was interesting to witness a mixed-nationality marriage in practice.

Pierre and Christy were wonderful hosts, and their house in Carnon is nothing short of incredible. You know how in the States you entertain that wistful fantasy of moving to the south of France and living right on the beach, walking barefoot along the sand and collecting sea shells? Yeah, they actually have that. It's a pretty sweet setup. And they were so generous in letting us stay there... do you know that it was actually the first time since leaving the United States of America that I slept in a room that didn't also have another person in it? It was weird, but it was refreshing, too.

The best part about visiting with Pierre and Christy (besides the amazing, delicious food in copious amounts, the proximity to the beach, the late-night viewing of French Kiss and hearing about the crazy shit my mom did when she wasn't yet my mom...) was getting to see the area around Montpellier with people who live there and who love it. Here are some of the highlights of what we did:

Nimes and Pont du Gard: I've lived in Rome. Sure, it wasn't for as long as I would like it to be, but still. I was there long enough for the Colloseum to get a little standard, and ruins of an empire long-fallen but not forgotten to become kinda situation normal. Pont du Gard blew me the frick away. You hear about aqueducts. You might even see the remnants of some if you're in the right place, but you ain't seen nothing like this thing. It's huge. And in the middle of this beautiful, windswept, rocky river valley, with the sun hitting it and olive trees all around. It's a miracle. I honestly think the most exciting part for me was how very impressed I was by it. I thought I had become one of those jackasses who can be all blase (no accent mark... sorry) about the miracles of human ingenuity and say "Eh. I've seen better." No. Apparently I retain my childlike wonder. It made me think of something Professor Gadeynne said in class one day: "If the Romans were tourists going to American today, the things they would go to see would be our superhighways." So right on. The people were engineers of the highest echelon. Higher. Go to Pont du Gard.

Saint Marie de la Mer: I think that it's pretty evident that I'm the type of person who, when she has access to it, watches way more History Channel than is good for her. As such, I have a vague list in my head of all the historically and, let's be real, mostly historically conspiracy-theory-related significant places that I someday want to go. These include DallasTexas, Jerusalem and wherever the heck the Mayans lived. But one of the big ones was definitely Saint Marie de la Mer. You've heard of it, or you will recognize it's significance, because of three little words that pretty much ruined the world: The DaVinci Code. Yeah. This is that place from that godawful book (that's completely, incidentally, ripped off from another godawful book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail) in which Dan Brown postulates that OMG Jesus had a kid, and her name was Sarah (you know it was Jesus's kid because her name means princess in Hebrew... compelling.) and she and her mom, Mary Magdalene, lived in the south of France and she mothered the line of Merovingian kings who eventually produced that chick from Amelie. Are you with me? So you understand why going to this town and seeing this church and this cool statue which have featured in so many hours of the History Channel was fun for me! I can check that one off the list of places I pretend to be disdainful of but am secretly absolutely ecstatic I got to visit! YAY!

La Camargue: Is beautiful, and looks an awful lot more like Ireland than I had any right to expect from France. Including the houses, and the extra-hairy horses, one of whom I named Elmer, because his bitchy attitude is going to end him up where all bad horses go. Or maybe I smell. I don't know. But it's beautiful, and there are indiginous flamingoes there. Go figure.

Saint Guilhem de la Desert: Looks exactly like you really want a French village to look. Well, what I want a French village to look like. It was literally built into a canyon in these beautiful, rocky mountains, and literally the light was all golden... we went in the late afternoon and wandered around for awhile, and then went to Vespers and listened to the nuns sing. Let me tell you something: you ain't no real Catholic until you've been to one of those things. And this one was in French. Oh my goodness. That was some very intense Catholicism. It was beautiful and moving, but mostly I was laughing at Elsa, who got thrown into the deep end of religion on her very first lesson. Giggles. It really was a beautiful service, and a great experience of the town. Loved it.

Montpellier: A very cool college town. There's a lot to see, and there's a lot to talk about, but mostly it's one of those towns that you just have to experience. So go do it. I'll wait. Say hi to that foxy waiter at the crepe restaurant for me.

But mostly it was just fun to hang out with them and hear all the cool things they've done and their experiences (especially Christy's) of making your life in a foreign country. It's something that I think about, so it was cool to hear the good and the bad from someone who has made that decision. They're delightful people and I was so happy to be able to meet them.

Off to Toulouse! La Ville en Rose!

Long story short: Elsa and I vegged out in Toulouse. We made an effort at being touristy one day by going to Carcassone, which is unbe-freaking-lieveable... it made me want to drink mead and joust something. I spent way too much money there. But I digress. Other than our amazing trip to beautiful Carcassone, we cooked dinner in our swanky little hotel/apartment, watched a lot of TV online, went to two movies, went shopping, ate at a delicious vegetarian restaurant and took a lot of showers because the water pressure at this place was amazing. And this was exactly what I needed. I can't speak for Elsa, who might think that I totally killed her vacation, but it was so much fun to just hang out and do all the stuff that we do at home that I am honestly not bothered that I can't tell you what the biggest tourist attraction in Toulouse is. This is maybe how I know it's time for me to come home.

Speaking of that: the day is fast approaching. It's this Thursday, in fact. I'll try to get in one more post about Florence: Revisited and Rome, who is going to break my heart, before I leave this continent indefinitely. But really, if you're at all interested, stay tuned, because I'm going to try and wrap this mother up with some re-entry observations that could either be entertaining or really offensive. Stay tuned.