Chapter 3b Baptism of History (Trekking east)

Picasso at the foot of some spectacular Jura geology.

After getting ourselves un-lost in Burgundy, we headed our Citroën "Picasso" east into a region called Franche-Comté. Like all regions of France (nowadays there are 22),  this one's archeological history goes back to the ancient Gauls.  After that it was the homeland of the Alamanni tribe,  then a Burgundian kingdom, a Frankish kingdom and so on, and so on. The name "Franche-Comté" means "Free County" and dates back to it's second time in a relationship (as we say on Facebook) with Burgundy. "Free" in this case seems to mean "passed-back-and-forth-a-lot" as it subsequently became part of Austria, Spain, then France, back to Spain, back to France again. I imagine their sense of freedom came from not belonging to any one despot long enough for him to really get his hooks into the population. Another factor was the isolation of living in the grand forests, remote valleys and highlands of the Jura Mountains which sweep gracefully into Switzerland on the other side of the border.

Our first up-close encounter with the natural beauty of Franche-Comté was the river Doubs (pronounced "doo" as in "doo-wop") that we met in the little town of Dole. This loopily meandering river traces a letter "M" on the topography of the region, and seemed to show up everywhere we stopped on this trek. 

The "M" of the Doubs.

                                                                           
  






In French, Doubs rhymes with "doux" which means sweet - perhaps the reason I became so very fond of this river. 




It starts out as a freshet in the Jura Mountains, tumbles along rock-     

walled valleys, and ends up looking like a grown-up river in cities of the western part of the region.
















Dole was a convenient stopover along the road, and a lovely little river town.  Here, the Doubs showed itself to be a much more serious river complete with flowered bridges...

 and a "barrage". 

Madonna photographing the barrage.

The barrage

Does anyone know why these "barrage" stuctures were built?
Could they have been used as fords to cross the river on horseback?
Or to use a rope to guide a raft across?
Enlighten me, please!




























Tourists in Dole are led to the old city with brass plaques embedded in the sidewalks. 


Not sure why they used the cat symbol 
but it is gracefully done. 

Dole was the birthplace of Louis Pasteur, and my post-trip reading informs me that Marcel Aymé, the 20th century writer, grew up here. A genre for which he is most well-known is called "literature of the fantastic". A bunch of his stories are described at this link - http://www.uri.edu/artsci/english/clf/n5_a3.html   including his best-known story "Le Passe-Muraille" ("The Walker-Through-Walls"). If you have ever been to Paris on one of my group trips, you would have see this sculpture honoring Aymé in Montmartre. 




Next morning we headed east, to the capital and principal city of Franche-Comté, Besançon. And what a vibrant place it is. Its long history of clock-making has brought the city to its current niche as a center for microtechnology. Here we also found brass pointers to lead us around - and the image chosen refers to the importance of clockmaking in Besançon.

It is also a university town with a well-respected language school offering intensive training in 10 languages.  And then there's the 2000 years worth of architecture and history for us tourists to admire.

The old city of Besançon sits in an oxbow in the river Doubs. An oxbow in French is called a "boucle" - a buckle - and this city is tightly buckled indeed. Notice the smeary black dot in the middle of the old city - that was the location of our hotel, the very nice, very central Hotel du Nord (with great old-fashioned hotel towels).

Notice that all of the streets around our hotel are colored to show that they are ONLY, or MOSTLY, for pedestians. Madonna and I still break into a sweat thinking about what we did to get to the hotel.  Even though we did not mow anyone down, it was hair-raising. At one point I spotted a large sign with map of the city, and a postal truck parked next to it. "Eureka" I thought. "I can ask this postperson, who surely knows the city well, to show me on the map how to get there." After much deliberation, and being told that we needed an official badge to drive on the street we were on, and then that there wasn't any way to get there at all, he threw up his hands and pointed to the next illegal street and said something like, "Oh, just drive that way and make a couple of turns. You'll be there." So we did, and did not get arrested. 

The large brown structure at the neck of the "boucle", and high up on a promontory, is "La Citadelle", an enormous complex of fortifications that looms over the river and once defended against attacks from up or downstream. The first stones were laid in 1668 when Spain was the master of Franche-Comté (see the wild history in paragraphe #1). Once again under French control in 1678, Louis XIV put his favorite military architect and engineer in charge of creating an impregnable fortress to defend the eastern frontier, Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauban

We subsequently ran into Vauban's work everywhere we went. It seems that during his long career of working for the Sun King he upgraded fortifications in 300 cities and designed 37 new fortresses. There are some excellent photos of his fortresses at this site:
http://www.shetellworldtourism.com/haritage-site/fortifications-of-vauban
Above right is his statue at the "Citadelle" in Besançon. We speculated that to accomplish all the work attributed to him he must have had some kind of mail-order fortress plan business. 


In my last entry, I showed the equipment that, like the soldiers of the 409, we had to master and manage on this journey. We also got ourselves into - ok, not "fighting trim" -  but "traveling-trim" with a regimen we called "citadel climbing". Many sites that interested us seemed to be built in places like the one on the left. And while we did not climb with 60 lb. packs, keep in mind, lest you think I'm whining, that we aren't exactly 20 yrs old any more either.


The Besançon Citadel was no exception. So we set off early with our map and headed uphill. On the way we passed through this spectacular Roman Gate called "La Porte Noire" (The Black Gate).

It had just been cleaned, restored and re-inaugurated in September so the beautiful detail work was visible.

To see more, the following link shows the inauguration ceremony last September. Non-francophones might want to skip the speeches and watch the slides of the Porte throughout history at 57 seconds. Then there's another speech, so fast forward to 2 min14 secs for the unveiling and some beautiful shots of the detail work under the lights at the evening ceremony.
http://www.besancon.fr/index.php?p=985&art_id=4890

One fact mentionned by a speaker is that we are seeing the "Porte" as it has not been seen in 5 centuries. Before the cleaning it really was very black. 

We followed the street as it zigzagged in steep switchbacks up the hill. I was thinking that the residents who walked or cycled to and from their homes must be in great shape, but it would be totally worth the climb for me if I could live in this pretty house.

Another sight along the way was this memorial to the resistance fighters executed by the German SS who used the Citadel during the occupation in World War II.

Finally we arrived at the top to see this wall. Interesting how they blended the man-made stonework into the natural stone.

As we arrived to the entry, we noticed a bus stop. We could have ridden up!!! Which we did the next day so we'd have the energy to climb all the stairs to the ramparts, hike along the walls, and visit the museums and the zoo.

La Citadelle viewed from the air. Thank goodness Madonna rented that plane.

The Citadel is home to the Museum of the Resistance. In fact it contained much more than a history of the French Resistance under the occupation. There was a very thorough history of World War II from the rise of Nazism in Germany to the post-war trauma of the purges in France and efforts to re-unite the population. And the germ of the idea to create a united Europe and put an end to such violence. We learned a lot that helped us on the battle routes later.

Here are photos of the incredible fortifications:

Yes, that is a little goat on the roof at left. There was also a petting zoo on the premises. He escaped the kids!

The moat, the drawbridge, the "half-moon", and lots of stairs to climb.

The ramparts walkway.

Madonna in the "guerite".

Shaggy tile roof.

View of the "old city" from the ramparts.

This little guy was not aftraid of heights like some of us.

While exploring this immense structure, we saw signs directing visitors to the zoo - signs with a kangaroo image. As Madonna was reading A Sun-burned Country by Bill Bryson,  a travelogue about Australia, she felt we needed to see those kangaroos. And we found flamingos, gazelles, all kinds of monkeys, goats, warthogs (with a baby!) many species of birds, two lions, and this majestic, if a tad elderly, tiger. No kangaroos at all!

One could watch him pace along his well-established tiger trail through tall windows in a rock-walled tunnel next to his enclosure.  And while his space seemed sad when compared with modern zoos that create huge natural spaces for their big cats, it was awesome to be able to stand so near to this beautiful beast. I noticed that his tiger path went around some shrubs and then led directly towards one of the windows, where a person (me) could stand and watch him approach. In fact he would walk right up to my camera! At this point we (Madonna and I, not the tiger and I) had a discussion about how strong that glass window was, and she was of the opinion that he (the tiger) could break it if he wanted. No, I said - it must be tiger-proof. So I stood at the window, camera in hand, and waited for him to make his way around to me. It actually turned out to be rather scary - and here is my photo which does not show the tiger's face very well, but accurately depicts my suddenly terrified state-of-mind!

With apologies to any National Geographic photographers who might be reading this.

One more magical photograph of Besançon by night.

This illuminated clock adorned the exterior wall of the Museum of "Horlogerie" (clockmaking) and looked out over one of the main squares. The tiny yellow number at the top is a countdown to the inauguration of TGV (superfast train) service to Besançon, making

it even easier to get to this fascinating city. Many thanks to our Parisian friend Bernard for recommending this visit so strongly, or else we might not have perservered through the maze of the old city, nor violated all the local traffic rules in order to get to this fabulous destination.

Chapter 3b Preparation for a Baptism of History (The Trek)

I'm starting with my favorite photo of the day. It appears a second time, in context, below.

In order for us to document this journey, as well as to research on the road, we needed some tools. This seemed simple at first. We would need our trusty cameras and the French cell phone for making arrangements while there and also for keeping in touch with loved ones back home - folks we were leaving for a WHOLE MONTH!!!  But to write blog posts on the road, we needed internet connection. That was all the rationale I needed to buy myself a new toy - a slim, sleek, matte silver-color, 7 ½” X 11 3/4”  MacAir. Just 3 things. So simple.

Yes - 1,2,3.....Netbook, phone & camera in my hands

But then of course there were the accompanying chargers and cords. And once in France, we realized that most hotels rooms are not exactly well-supplied with outlets, so our first shopping trip was to the housewares department of the nearest Franprix to acquire an extension cord and a multiplugger to fit French outlets.  Now the equipment looks more like this:

...and it all needed its own bag.

As we are kind of cheap, and tend to look for the less-pricey two-star hotels, we often encountered interesting outlet arrangements. Thank goodness for all the flexibility training I got in yoga class (Thanks Erica!) My favorite outlet placement was at the very simple train station hotel in Dole where there was an outlet about 7 ½ feet off the floor, right near the ceiling. It was also behind the door to the room, so no furniture was, nor ever could be, under it. Our 3-meter extension cord came in handy there. I just gotta wonder what the electrician who installed that outlet had in mind for it’s use.

Additional equipment needed was our kit of picnic supplies for on-the-road lunches and simple hotel room dinners of cheese, bread and the local red.  This time Madonna brought wine glass tags so there would be no confusion about whose plastic travel wine glass was whose. All of the tags had sayings in different languages, the gist of which was “No wimpy wines allowed”. Mine was in Spanish: “No vino sin huevos” (No wines without eggs, wherein “eggs” is a slang word, for what I'm sure you can guess, indicating that the wine needs to be bold, dammit!)

And then, of course,  the necessary items for the plane flight, including some that we always hope will make the plane flight more pleasant, or at least survivable.

Oh yeah - earplugs for sure

And heaviest of all, we needed the journals of the 409th, the letters, notebooks, other documents, guidebooks for all the regions we were going to visit, maps, city plans, and any & all info brochures to help us find our way.

We left Paris on the morning of September 19, taking a sleek TGV train to Beaune (pronounced “bone”) into the heart of Burgundy. The architecture of the region is heavily influenced by the fact that the dukes of Burgundy had a long history of opposing the French monarchy, and were often more powerful that the sitting king of the moment. It was they who, allied with the English, sold out Joan of Arc to be burned as a heretic. Because of this history, the region is dotted with old fortified towns and grand châteaux. Beaune is one of those old towns, and sits in a hilly region whose slopes are covered with vineyards. The thriving industry of wine-production is supplemented by the tourist euros of folks like us coming to enjoy the beauty of the town, the cuisine for which Burgundy is famous (yes, they were the fattest tastiest snails I’ve ever eaten), and the consistently delicious red wine.

Vats full of grapes 

The heart of the of the old city is surrounded by ramparts,

and full of old stone buildings with tile roofs,

glazed roof tiles typical of important buildings,

belfries,

Iron-work,

and interesting architectural details called something I don’t remember.

Best are the stone churches where medieval architects used the interplay of light, stone, and stained glass to inspire awe among their contemporaries, as well us moderns.

I love encountering the occasional quirky mix of old and new.

After two days in this delightful town, we decided to do the “self-guided” tour of the wine region around Beaune as recommended by one of our favorite guidebook authors, Rick Steves. Fortified with a copious breakfast at our Hotel de la Cloche, 

we set off in our just-rented car, a Citroën “Picasso”, and got lost in no time.  There was a learning curve in regard to driving and navigating the roads of France.  It was an adventure, as they say, and we wound up doing the tour backwards. 


We found a great castle to visit, Le Château de La Rochepot and took the tour.   http://www.larochepot.com/index.html

photo credit: Christophe Finot http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Chateau_La_Rochepot2.JPG

Our guide was animated, funny and full of good stories about the Pot family and their chateau. At one point she was talking about Burgundians and their love of the red wine they cultivate. She sang a traditional type of song called a “chanson à boire” - a drinking song. I sweet-talked her into writing the lyrics down, so here it is in French, with my translation after for  non-francophones:

Point d’amoureuses envies

Qui trouble le repos,

Le soin de cette vie

C’est de banner les maux.

Que le vin de Bourgogne fait d’honneur à Bacchus!

Je veux rougir ma trogne de cet excellent jus.

No amorous desires 

To trouble one’s sleep.

The concern of this life

Is to ban all such wrongs.

Let the wine of Burgundy do honor to Bachus!

I want to redden my kisser (mug?) with this excellent juice.

It would help if you pronounce Bacchus with a long “ooo” sound and accent that syllable. Also note that in using a slang word for face as in the French version, I did not use the one that my children told me I can’t use any more, even though it was very common throughout my life, and has only recently  become vulgar. Don’t you just love how language changes all the time? And aren’t my children glad that I do listen to them?  (Get back to me on that, kids, please.)

Next post: we continue the trek east to Franche-Comté and the region of the Jura Mountains.


Now, one last look at the "raisin" d'être of Burgundy.

(It's a pun. raisin = grape & raison = reason. Raison d'être = reason for being)

P.S. DO please send comments to my email (mcdorf@gmail.com) if you can’t comment otherwise.