After our goodbyes to Phillipe and his wife (and the donkey) it’s onwards to Paris in the car with M and D.
We visit the martyred village of Oradour-sur-Glane, a small town of the Limousin region. On 10 June 1944, a company of German Waffen-SS soldiers entered this town and rounded up all the inhabitants including school children, ordering them to assemble in the Market Square with their identity papers. The men were taken to six barns, shot in the legs, doused in fuel and set fire to. The women and children were locked in the church, shot at, had grenades flung at them, the church was ignited while the SS looted the town. 642 men, women and children were murdered that day. One woman managed to break out from the Church, six men escaped the flames from the barn and an 8 year old boy escaped by fleeing as soon as the Germans tried to assemble his school group. They were the only survivors. This was barbaric murder and terrorism against innocent townspeople by the Nazi’s, a supposed deterrent against the French Resistance movement.
Oradour-sur-Glane remains as it was left that day, a ruin while a new town has been built next door. M, D and I walk around the remains of the old town, with it’s crumbling brick buildings, old rusted cars still in the street or garages, sewing machines inside homes, old bicycles. The buildings are signposted to indicate who lived or worked in the small but probably bustling town that had several cafes, butchers and bakers, and there were plaques on the barns where the men had been massacred. The Church is a sad place with a child’s burnt out rusty pram on the floor. How could humans do this?
We spend the night in the outskirts of a town we’ve never heard of, in the smallest room ever of the esteemed Premiere Classe hotel chain. At first we think the light bulbs need replacing because it’s so dark I cannot see my hand in front of my face. We check with reception about the lack of illumination and the girl at the desk says something in French which I deduce to be an explanation that the motel room is in fact a tiny photo processing dark room, not a motel room at all and how lucky are we to have this novelty theme room all to ourselves. I sleep on one of the shelves on the wall in the darkroom and hold my bladder all night.
Sunday
The hire car is dropped at Charles De Gaulle airport and we make our way to our Paris hotel. There is engineering work on the rail tracks so our journey by crowded shuttle, then bus, train and taxi is exhausting. “Sacré Bleu!” complains D. Our Paris apartment is petite: it has a one-chef-only kitchen and after visiting Gerry says the toilet was clearly designed for someone with no legs the as the door shuts bang onto the seat. Nevertheless the petite apartment is situated in the Latin Quarter, heaving with hip little restaurants and lively bars and we eat a few doors up at a restaurant whose building was once the residence of Ernest Hemingway. Then we take an evening walk by the Seine around Notre Dame. Night cruise boats on the Seine are equipped with hundreds of retina-burning spotlights that magnificently illuminate the buildings and bridges of the river banks.
Monday
I buy croissants and baguettes for breakfast from the boulangerie, then while M and D unpack, do a couple of loads of washing and ironing, rearrange the apartment to their liking and have several cups of tea, I wander back down to the Notre Dame Cathedral which has just opened for visitors and Mass. Inside the dim Gothic Cathedral the bronze crucifix is lit up and glowing. There are scarcely any people here, too early for tourists, but I hear soft hymn singing by the Mass goers. Otherwise it’s oh so quiet. A few hours later there is a 100metre queue to the entrance and armed soldiers keeping an eye on the crowds.
The afternoon comes quickly and I make the heroic attempt to pop in to the Musée du Louvre, most visited art museum in the world. Tourists are hyperventilating in wonderment in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th century ‘Mona Lisa’. It is impossible to get a front row view of the eyebrowless hussy, the most reproduced portrait in the world. Meanwhile there are rooms in the Louvre that I enter that have exquisite works of art and no visitors. Mona Lisa’s celebrity is an enigma as much as her smile (but I still like her).
The most wonderful French painting I see at the Louvre is ‘Liberty Guiding the People’ by Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863). The painting depicts the July Revolution in 1830 against Charles X and inspired the Statue of Liberty. A woman ‘Liberty‘stands on a mountain of rubble and bodies, holding high the tri-colour flag and a bayonet and guides her comrades to fight for freedom.
I also see Dutch and Flemish art including jolly Frans Hals portraits, Rembrandt’s brilliant self portraits and his ‘Bathsheba’ and Jan Vemeer’s ‘Lacemaker’ and ‘The Astronomer’.
The Louvre is too enormous and I don’t see even half.
We dine at the Montebello Restaurant by the Seine, yes THE Montebello of the family legend. A long held ancestral tradition is the sacred pilgrimage to Montebello for a time honoured banquet. Many generations of our flesh and blood have feasted here over the centuries. This is no myth (then again it is slightly exaggerated).
Tuesday
Down 100 spiral steps through a half kilometre tunnel before arriving at the yellowing chalky skulls and femurs and the odd scapula of 6 million dead. This is the Paris Catacombs, the underground system of tunnels, old stone mines that form an ossuary. Why is it here? The Saint Innocents Cemetery had been used during since the 12th century to deal with Paris’ growing population of dead at the time, but by the 17th century, it had become overflowing and unsanitary. In 1785, the State ordered the exhumation of the Paris dead from Saint Innocents and the remains were deposited in these old quarries. The bones are ‘artfully’ or macabrely arranged to form patterns and designs and there are tomb stones from the former cemeteries embedded into the piles of skeletons. There are warning signs at the entrance to the catacombs, that those with cardiac or respiratory conditions or ‘nervous dispositions’ should consider whether they have the mettle for such shocking stuff. But nobody seems particularly spooked. It is clear that their souls have long since left this pile of old bones: dried out body bits that are not needed are not unlike clipped nails or shed hair – a bit gross.
Dinner with the family and I say goodbye to F, G, L, E and A probably for many months as they head back to Australia to reunite with guinea pigs Spokesy, Bro and the dog Bella.
Wednesday
Tried to visit La Conciergerie, prison and waiting room to the guillotine during the French Revolution, whose most famous guest was poor Marie Antoinette but was pushed out of the building like a dog about to piddle on the carpet with cries of Ferme! Ferme! The signs said it was open but there was no point arguing with the half dozen heavy handed official looking people who surrounded me when entered through the ajar door.
Onto Musée d’Orsay. It’s building looks like an extravagant railway station with it’s tunneled roof design and huge clocks and in fact it was built in 1900 as a railway station and only converted to an art museum in 1977. It includes paintings, sculpture and Art Nouveau furniture from 1848 to 1915 so I get to see the gorgeous Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by Manet, Degas, Renoir, Gaugin and Van Gogh. Monet’s works were temporarily on exhibition in another museum. But I was quite happy with the wonderful Van Gogh’s especially his self portrait with the blue background. Outside I am recharged with a Nutella and banana crepe, typical French street food.
Les Invalides was originally built as a hospital and home for war veterans in the late 17th century and is still used today for this purpose. It’s Church has a prominent Baroque dome, gold gilded on the outside and on it’s inside exquisitely decorated with allegorical paintings. Directly beneath the dome is Napoleon’s tomb with six different linings of iron, mahogany, two lead, ebony, and the outer one is shiny red porphyry and so it appears quite huge for such an apparently small man. There are other tombs here including General Foch. Also onsite is the Musée de l'Armée, the military museum of the Army, and I spend ages looking at hundreds of different military uniforms, armoury and weapons that is centuries old and still in mint condition. The French have fought so many wars.Thursday
Goodbyes to M and D who depart for New York to meet Gloria and Harry for the next phase of their adventure whilst I am back to The Hague. Thanks Mum and Dad!
My train is two hours Retard (delayed). When I arrive home Sean has bought me flowers and perfume: Chanel Coco Mademoiselle, so Frenchy, so chic!
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