It happens at borders

Posted on June 14, 2007 by robhunt510

On her way to Naples and another world

Sanji is 34, but looks younger. “How come you stayed so calm when the one girl took one hour to buy a ticket?” she says. “It wasn’t a purchase it was an act of therapy.” I say. I had an hour and a bit to make the train – and made it by a “bit”.

“Calm is good,” Sanji says. She’s a muslim Serb, born in Novi Sad, now married to an Italian living in Naples. So why is she at La Chambre railway station taking a train to Mondane high in the French Alps? “I’ve been in jail for four days – it’s just a film.”

Sanji makes mosaics in Naples, has a busy work life. Her husband was away in Japan for a while, so she took a trip to Dusseldorf to see her friend. They drove back in a borrowed car. At La Chambre the French police found 63kg of marawana in the boot. “Eight or nine bags.”

“My friend, she told me in jail, she met a nice boy on the train in Germany…I didn’t know anything; I was asleep when they stopped us, they saw that I was surprised. They wrote it down; it was part of the Avacatto’s defence of me.”

The pair went before the Judge in La Chambre, after four nights in windowless cells; they were there with two Dutch men who’d been caught with a much smaller amount. “They thought the Dutch boys were the leaders, they only had a little to disguise us. We’d never seen them before.”

At the trial Sanji was asked couldn’t she smell the drugs? Her defence: “we both wear powerful perfume, she Chanel, me Dolce & Gabanna. The judge laughed. He said: ‘well at least you will know the smell now.’”

Sanji said her defence lawyer was very good, had seen a lot of this kind of thing over the past 20 years. “It’s my job, and I knew they did not have enough evidence on you.” The same was not true for her friend, who today begins four years in jail at Chambery. “During the trial she told the judge she was so sorry to have hurt me. I will come to see her.”

Sanji wears a necklace from the RAEL movement; in Serbia, Montengro and Macedonia she organises conferences and lectures about the movement’s beliefs. Which are: that millions of years ago extra-terrestrials made an experiment of the earth, used a bomb to create the continents…embedded its sophisticated technology for us to discover. The virgin birth was a Raelian (Joseph) and Mary (Earthling). The immaculate conception was done with lasers.

Sanji’s mother is a Bosnian muslim. She lost five brothers in the Yugoslav wars. “One of my uncles was killed by his own side because he was a pacifist, he wouldn’t fight.” The family moved to Serbia, though they no longer practice the muslim faith. In fact her mother is attracted to the Raelian beliefs, is coming to a conference about it near Naples. “She sees that I am happy, that I am calm, and she says: ‘then it is good.’”

One of Sanji’s other jobs is for a non-profit organisation in Naples, it has raised ten thousand euros for a clinic in Burkino Fasso. “You know how in some African countries they have the operation for women, they remove the clitoris? Well we are establishing the first clinic, using stem-cell techniques, so that the women who have been operated on can grow a new clitoris. We call the project clitorate.”

Raelians believe in freedom and no jealousy, though I am pleased when Sanji’s husband gets through here in Mondane and organizes a flight for her from Turin tonight. There is freedom and freedom.

I’m reminded of stories Olen tells about Serbs who believed The Matrix to be true. Sanji tells me that a woman called Brigitte Bonsoleil is doing much stem cell and cloning research. “You know the first baby that was cloned? “’Eva’? Well in Serbia there are ten cloned babies now, for parents that can’t have children. It is good. The founder of RAEL, he was a Formula One driver, he predicted all this 30 years ago.”

How did she stay calm in the jail cell? “I meditated. My beliefs are anti all drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, because it ruins the DNA. So I meditated. In fact I sleep better in the jail than in the hotel last night. I couldn’t get angry, Rael says it is just a loss of our conscience when we are angry, or get jealous.

“Serbian are good people, but the politics is bad, the sides at each other like cats and dogs. Even now. That is why I found such peace with Rael,” she says. The phone rings: Sanji and her Italian husband speak and SMS in English, the new Language of pan-European Love. “Sweetie, I’ll ask,” she says. The couple met in Slovenia, in the countryside between Celle and Maribor. “When we first slept together I couldn’t sleep at all, I just looked at him. I thought he was an angel.”

Sanji has to go: she wants to get her hair washed, cut and blow-dried before she takes the bus to Turin. “Mama mia, I was so lucky,” she says. “But now I have freedom again. What does money mean if you don’t have that? You should come to my conference, Brigitte Beausoleil will be there: check it out on the internet. You are the archer, Sagittarius, I think.” We exchange ciaos.

Cut and blown she is with a Frenchman when I see her get onto her bus for Italy 90 minutes later. She has the white Cavalli bag, the small suitcase, the mini-back-pack and the necklace from outer-space. And most of all she has her freedom, and her
way of seeing the world.

Meanwhile another world lives on.

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Tryptich

Posted on June 14, 2007 by robhunt510



More when I recover from the uplifting moment not of crossing the Alps, but finding the internet again…

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And now for something a little different

Posted on June 14, 2007 by robhunt510

This is what they are frightened of: from Modane, betwixt La Chambre and the Cenis Valley

“Everyday it happens, habitually at four. The rain, the lightning.” It has been true for almost my journey, since Paris definitely. Everyday in the later afternoon: thunder, storms, café terraces packing up at speed. This conversation took place in Chambéry on Sunday; on Monday I moved higher into the mountains.

“I want to go to La Chambre.”
“To sleep? Or something more?”
Cue mass laughter in the ticket office at Chambéry station.

In La Chambre there are only two hotels; one of everything else. It is a transit town with a railway station, a smoke stack factory nearby, and up the hill a high street. Tourist office closed on Mondays. It is not quite the season for the dedicated hikers. In my café, advertising wi-fi but it is “lost today” Julie arrives by scooter from the next village to check her email. She has just returned from Thailand, “holidays”. Tomorrow she travels up to the “Two Alps” to begin her summer job working as a hiking guide. “It’s families, enjoying nature, taking walks, seeing the lakes,” she says. “They are mostly French, once the school holidays have begun. Sometimes strangers, English even.” If it goes well for Julie she’ll stay on for the ski season. “Now that,” she says, “is the rock and roll.”

La Chambre is surrounded by the big mountains. In five hours it and they see at least that number of weather changes, sun, clouds, wind – a pink sunset – and, just about four, the lightning. “It is predictable these days,” Valerie, the hotel manager says. “Every day.”

“Everyday since Paris,” I say. But Paris isn’t a conversation point high in the mountains, just – I suspect – a Babel of Bureaucracy and Tax Inspectors. One thing I’ve already noticed: strangers wear either Leather or Lycra. Thank goodness, then, for the McQueen…

The worst wayes that ever I travelled in all my life in the Sommer were those betwixt Chamberie and Aiguebelle, which were as bad as the worst I ever rode in England in the midst of Winter: insomuch that the wayes of Savoy may be proverbially spoken of as the Owles of Athens, the peares of Calabria and the Quailes of Delos.

“…I commended Savoy a pretty while for the best place that ever I saw in my life, for abundance of pleasant springs, descending from the mountains, till the last I considered the cause of those springs. For they are not fresh springs, as I conjectured at the first, but onely little torrents of snow water, which distilleth from the toppe of those mountains, when the snow by the heate of the sunne is dissolved into water. Of those torrents I think I saw at the least a thousand betwixt the foote of the ascent of the Mountaine Aiguebelle and Novalaise in Piemont, at the descent of the Mountaine Senis; which places are sixty two miles asunder.

The swiftest and violentest lake that ever I saw, is that which runneth through Savoy, called Lezere, which is much swifter than the Rhodanus at Lyons, that by the poets is called Rapidissimus amnis. For this is so extreme swift, that no fish can possible live in it, by reason that it will be carried away by the most violent fource of the torrent, and dashed against huge stones which are in most places of the lake. Yea there are many thousand stones in that lake much bigger then the stones of Stoneage by the towne of Amesbury in Wilt-shire, or the exceeding great stone upon Hamdon hil in Somerset-shire, so famous for the quarre, which is within a mile of the Parish of Odcombe my dear natalitiall place. ..The cause of the extraordinary swiftness of this lake is, the continuall fluxe of the snow water descending from those mountains, which doth augment and multiplie the lake in a thousand places. There is another thing also to be observed in this lake, the horrible and hideous noyse thereof. For I thinke it keepeth almost as terrible a noyse as the river Cocytus in Hell, which the poets doe extol for the murmuring thereof, as having his name Cocytus from the olde Greeke word…which signifieth to keepe a noyse.

The “King”, “JSB” (John Sliding Bike), The “Eagle”, “One Wheel”, “Mr. Mille” and the “Rocketman” make up a biker road trip. At six they are relaxing after another long day: they’re away a week, from the middle of Holland. They drive a selection of big machines: Ducatti, Honda, Aprillia, Suzuki; and they drive them fast.

600 kilometres is an “average” day, the “Eagle” says. When I ask where they’ve stopped in the evenings it takes a long time to remember the names, in an hour and a half nobody remembers the third night’s name. They don’t take the motorways, because “that’s boring,”; they search for good roads – and speed. “We like good corners,” JSB says. “Twistys” adds Rocketman, the only non-Dutchman: he’s English but lived all over the world, crewing on boats in the Med and the Caribbean, living in Antibes, Canada, and now – finally – Holland, where is wife and family are.

What has he learnt about life after such a nomadic time. “You learn who your friends are, the true ones. If I was in deep shit there’s people who I can phone from anywhere who’d help me.”

“You don’t see much ‘culture’ on these trips,” Rocketman says, “it’s about being with the boys – no women allowed. About pushing it to the limits, knowing how fast you can get it to go.” Over their time as bikers the machines have got faster; everything is about knowing it intimately enough to keep control. They’ve ended up here, “because it was time, we were getting tired, and the weather looked as if it was going bad.”

“Weather is so important, you can’t take chances,” The Eagle says.

Chance or not, both hotels have large signs welcoming motorbikes; the bikers’ has a bike stuck to the wall, just to make sure. A poster advertises a biker convention in July. Half my hotel, and most of theirs is full of strangers passing through on motorbikes; mine has four older Australians from Adellaid who are cycling about 40k a day on a three-month tour of Europe. But they, and I, are the exceptions.

“I hate the English abroad, they’ve become twats,” says the English Rocketman. He grew up in the New Forest, bought his first bike, a BSA 125, when he was “nine.”
When he occasionally goes home, “I don’t like what I see. I think it’s about divorce, about families falling apart.”

The Dutch, I venture, are a sociable lot; anywhere in the world they’ll talk. “We’ll talk to anyone, even Germans if they are bikers.”

“We met the Hells Angels on a previous trip to Spain,” says the “King” who has been watching a video of himself riding that day: on the Sony video camera that belongs to “One Wheel” an image of the back of a bike travelling along a “road” plays and plays. “One Wheel” tapes the camera to the gas tank.

“They were fine: Hells Angels have this strange view that “normal” means riding bikes real fast, preferably Harleys, and “odd” means not doing this. There was this guy who wanted to ask them some questions, but he didn’t have a bike. Don’t have a bike, don’t get to talk with the Hells Angels.”

“But they’re bad people, no?”
“You know the answer, we saw them as guys who like bikes. So do we.”

They can go fast, these guys. In English terms the fastest so far on this trip was around 185 miles per hour. There are accidents, sometimes. “Like nasty.” says The King. In a way their ambitions are not unlike Davide in Chambery: control of the mind and body – in this case at over 200 kilometres an hour. “You calculate the risk, without calculating: we calculate, but are no good at maths,” Rocketman says.

Amongst the men is the back and forth banter of a tight-knit group. “We show the videos to friends when we get home but nobody really gets it: the jokes, the things that we get obsessed with. It’s just for us.”

“We bought a helmet yesterday; German bike helmets are the best – not the bikes though. And we’ve been laughing about it ever since. German bikers are good guys though. They’re the most common nationality we see on our trips,” the King says. There’s another story, in discrete loud Dutch, that seems to involve urination, a Belgian, and his wife…

They’ve been doing this for most of this century, it’s a week of release from family life at home. “In two months I could be back here with the caravan, the wife, the kids. We wouldn’t speak to you, we’d say: who the hell is that?” the King says. It’s not cheap: two tanks of fuel a day at fifteen Euros a go, new tires at 700 Euros, “for the Ducatti maintenance, that’s about 50 per cent of any Ducatti’s expense.”

“But they are the cool bikes, no?”
“That’s what all non-bikers think.”
“Keep them in the garage, put them in the living room as art,” The Eagle says.

Then there are the hotels, the beers, the food. “It’s expensive but money isn’t about how much you have, but what you do with it,” the King says. “This is our ‘Second Life, you know: that computer game. Except with us it is real.”

Tomorrow, 20k of highway, then a 17k tunnel. “We put the bikes in first gear and rev as hard as we can. The noise is intense in the tunnels. Like a Jumbo Jet taking off. It’s just part of the fun.”

“We sell the bikes after these trips,” the King says.
“One careful driver, woman – trips to the supermarket only,” says the Rocketman.
“Once a week,” adds JSB.

At dusk a tall thin man in sportswear walks past us with a tiny dog on a lead. “You ask us why we do this,” says the King. “It’s so we don’t become him.” We all turn to look. “Yeah,” says Rocketman, “that’s what we’re all scared of, ending up like that. Like I said, biking is just a long struggle against maturity.”

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Race

Posted on June 14, 2007 by robhunt510

“…I never saw so many roguish Egyptians together in one place in all my life as in Nevers, where there was a multitude of men, women and children of them, that disguise their faces, a our counterfet western Egyptians in England. For both their haire and their faces looked so black, as if they were raked out of hel, and sent into the world by great Beelzebub, to terrifie and astonish mortall men: their men are very Ruffians & Swashbucklers, having exceeding long black haire curled, and swords or other weapons by their sides. Their women also suffer their haire to hang loosely about their shoulders, whereof some I saw dancing in the streets, and singing lascivious vaine songs; whereby they draw many flocks of foolish citizens about them.

In Nevers, and elsewhere, Tom commits the sin we’d now call racism; it is more accurate, I suspect, given where he eventually travelled, to call this the fear of the “other”. In Lyon over dinner “Elvis”, one of those traveling wheeler-dealer whatever you want, businessmen talked a little about the troubles in St. Dennis, the northern suburb of Paris where I stayed, and where Turkish, African, Tunisian and Moroccan “banlieu” youth has rioted, over the years. “Those places, there’s a lot of trouble there, people are lazy,” he says. I liked my time there: it was a healthy antidote to the judgments of Paris. Elvis hadn’t been there for a while, he’d been in Indonesia, India, Thailand…but it was bad there.

There are so many assumptions we make about race; the elections here brought in a President whose position is – or has been – hard-line about immigration. In Lyon I watch a policeman (with a van of policemen parked outside) ask for papers before buying his kebab. “Sarkozy has a quota system. Numbers. People are going to suffer more now,” John says. At Lyon station I watch two young Tunisians try and buy a ticket without their passports, in the 30 minutes I queued they made little progress, and met several officials.

Somewhere out there is a heavily-trafficked website called “FuckFrance”. It’s American, I think. Political in its way; but not the way we like it: thoughtful, nuanced, balanced. It represents “freedom of speech”; there are plenty of counter-balances, of course, but because views, about race, politics or national identity, are genuinely under threat from the good side of globalization, the economic and social nomadism of so many people, as well as the bad side (the racism, the targeting of specific groups, the fear of “terror”) then perhaps the “centre” breaks. And with this breakage, the balancing toleration that should be a by-product of the digital modern. It hasn’t shaped that way yet: just read the news blogs.

Watching the Champions’ League Final in Abbeville it is obvious that the men at the bar were firstly Pro-Anything-Not-English (that’s to say, Liverpool). Secondly that each time an African (or home-grown player that wasn’t clearly white) touched the ball they shouted: “The Black, The Black.”

A few days ago the Lithuanian Football Association was fined thirty thousand Euros because it its match against France the home crowd waved a flag of Africa painted in the French colours, because to the great black players who have graced the blue shirt over the past 30 years.

Behind my attempt to understand Tom Coryat, and his journey, is a desire to “see” as he did; not what he saw, but “how” he saw. For, in Abbeville, whilst kids are SMS-ing whoever, wherever; whilst in Amiens boys are battling in online worlds with players from Iceland, Nigeria and Peru; whilst Zinedine Zidane, despite the “head-butt” is close to God here in France, it’s still an unsettling sight to see how little we’ve moved towards being “betwixt” when it comes to race.

In La Chambre, high in the Alps, I sit down to lunch. A local with a medicine-ball head, and an “Ethnique: Francaise” logo, says to his wife: “Thank goodness the tourist is white. And this one is all white.”

And there I was thinking I had a healthy tan.

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Chambery before J-J R

Posted on June 14, 2007 by robhunt510

“Chambéry which is called in Latin Camberinum, is the capitall City of Savoy, wherein they keep their Parliament. It is seated in a plaine, and is but little, yet walled, and having certaine convenient gates. Many of their houses are built with faire free stone. Therein is a strong Castle which seemeth to be of great antiquity. Here was wont to be kept a very auncient and religious relique, the shroud wherein our Saviours blessed body was wrapped (as they report) when it was put in the Sepulchre; but within these few years it was removed to Turin in Piemont, where upon speciall days it is shewed with great ceremonies…One thing I observed in this towne that I never saw before, much of their tile wherewith they cover their Churches and houses is made of wooded. Here is a Jesuitical Colledge as in Lyons: the Windows are made of paper in many places of the City as in Lyons. Here came Nunnes to our chamber to begge money of us as in Lyons.

The people of this Country which are now called Sabaudi, were heretofore called Allobroges, from a certain King who name was Allobrox. The Metropolitan City that they inhabited was Vienna, which is situate by the River Rhodanus.

“…There was another Duke also of that name of the Amadei, which was the Nephew of this first Amadeus, of whom Munster writeth a most memorable history, that being once demanded of certaine Orators that came unto him, whether he had any hounds to hunt withal, he desired them to come to him the next day, and when they came he shewed them out of his gallery a great multitude of beggars in one side of his house sitting together at meat, & said loe, these are my hounds that I feede every day, with whom I hope to hunt for the glory and joys of heaven…”

They are from the Horticulture school on the edge of the town, out on a Saturday night: Etienne, Maurice and Ann. Etienne is worried about a new project, “almost a new town” that’s going to be built nearby. “A new community for the rich, it will be the village that isn’t there, won’t give anything back to the region. There will be problems,” he says. He’s a soil scientist, wants to work in the environmental sector. “Tourism is good for the economy, bad for the ecology. Obviously. Here they think about these things a lot more than many places, but it’s not enough. The skiers, the hikers, everything is leading to more problems.”

A few kilometers away there is an industrial park for start-up companies looking at these issues: there are many “sustainable” architecture projects, one even has “self-washing” concrete – the first in France. It’s obvious from walking the city that young people stay here, this isn’t a town to escape from on the TGV as soon as possible.

The three are fit, they walk, yes they ski, fitness is important. I’m reminded of the good novel (a French, existential policier thriller) and so-so film known in English as “The Blood Red Rivers”. I’m not sure where it is set, but it fits in here perfectly. The plot revolves around a tough Parisian cop coming south to solve a series of murders; in time it appears there is a serial killer. Underlying the murders is an academic institution with phenomenally high over-achieving students: academically and sportingly. What is revealed is a story of bloodlines, baby-swapping, racial purity, and closed-knit ties. It’s good. I’m wondering, surrounded by healthy Chambéry and its youthful peoples, if that is the silent backdrop here.

It doesn’t feel so, though this is a “white” town; only in a side-street cyber café do I find Turks and Tunisian men phoning home via the internet. On the main pedestrian street I’m stopped by a local woman. “Are you a tourist? We don’t get many of them. London? Oh they are bad boys.” She says. “Most people come here, get into a car or a coach, and go off to expensive hotels in the mountains. They miss so much. Thank you.”

Was Tom hating all this? The mountains, the health, the fine air? Or was he stuck with his Duke’s palaces?

“Breton is mystical, Chambéry is spiritual,” Davide says. I’ve seen him first (and will do last) at prayer in the Cathedral, now it is late and we are in his handy local (precisely 50 metres from the Cathedral). “I lived in Breton a long time, learned my music there – I was in Rennes for three years [hi AnneMarie], now I was drawn down here, because everything is about the spirit.”

“God, or some idea, like Buddhism, or nature?”
“Oh, God; God though nature. It is everywhere.”

Davide is a folk musician. In a way he is the heir of the troubadours who have traveled Europe for at least 600 years, earning their way with their art. He lives in his car at the moment, “until my music makes me some money here; at the moment my best audience are the cows. They adore my music.”

With his car he can be outside the town and in steep Alpine valleys in a few minutes. It changes things, he says. His life is about a journey, an inward one perhaps, but who can criticize? “I hate noise, electronic music, the boom-boom-boom of life. Here I find the silence and the space to play my music. It has very old traditions, it keeps me connected with the world.”

At Jean Jacques Rousseau’s house, Les Charmettes [I’ll write separately…] Catherine is taking a rest. She is 31, a sort of Lara Croft in Red and White, she looks as if she could kill Lyonaise Cops with her little finger. She carries a spiked baton. “For the smaller mountains, I’ve just walked 25k.” She talks to an older French woman, the tour guide/teacher to a large group of American students, here to learn “French”. She’s very like the mysterious heroine of “Blood Red Rivers”.

“How old do you think I am,” the older woman asks. “I’m 62 [looks 40]. Why? Because I walk every day, I exercise, I make love.” She must weigh at least 70lbs. Think Birkin-body with Moreau-face. Catherine laughs: “A good recipe,” she says, and she’s off for the next leg. Is this really how Tom travelled, baton in hand? If so, he was one of the greatest walkers of all time. And he had time for to take notes.

Spiritual, environmentally engaged, fit, sex: it sounds almost utopian. At the café, named O’Cardinals (which makes me want to write a novel with a character in it named Chambéry O’Cardinal: some kind of female Private Detective. The novel would be called “O’Cardinal’s Sin”, of course.) the noise is livening. Clermont play Paris in the final of the domestic Rugby cup. Paris doesn’t have many fans down here, but they win in the last minute. The silence is deafening. Outside a crowd of women of all ages, and in white t-shirts, arrive, each with something written on in pen. They take a large table, from all around there is a little booing from the muted late-night college crowd. There is a collection pot. Songs are sung. “What is this?” I ask.
“I get married on the 23rd, this is a celebration. Some songs, perhaps some donations.”
Then it all gets a little louder and very unspiritual.

It’s a hen-night. An Easy-Walk Weekend Crew in from the suburbs. In a way I am relieved: Chambéry was feeling a little too much like a yoghurt advert.

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Chambéry couples now internet is back

Posted on June 14, 2007 by robhunt510











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Chambéry couples

Posted on June 13, 2007 by robhunt510

more to come…the stationery shop has to close for lunch.

Thus Much of Blogging

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Sun: simple

Posted on June 13, 2007 by robhunt510

All above in La Tour du Pin, staging post for Chambéry, and a gentle introduction, for a while, to the sun.

It is as simple as the sun coming out in a town that is big enough, but not too big: charm comes rushing down from the, very new, mountains and streams all around. Even the tallest chateau of the Dukes of Savoy, or most hi-tech Mediatéque Rousseau, is not quite tall enough to hide the fact this is alpine territory. Chambéry: home of Rousseau and Favre.

There really are blue distant hills, and heat.

Patrick retires next January, after living here in Chambéry for the past 17 years. He is a financial consultant, not yet fully understanding what retirement will mean. He and his wife are moving south next year, to the place they’ve had near Cassis for a dozen years. The children are gone, one is in Geneva, the other Canada, so why not?

During the last months here Patrick is filming the city, his memory on digi-cam: we meet close to the Duke’s palace. Built in the time when Savoy was as promiscuous, or as bad at defending itself, as a Venetian courtesan. “The old town, they’ve done marvellous things in restoration, particularly as this whole area is built on rivers,” he says. “They built on wooden poles, drilled deep, and now…it’s fantastic. A lovely city. And the style, very special, Savoyard, like Italy. Like Piedmont. All around the city you find courtyards and squares hidden away, it’s not like most of France. For a time the Turin Shroud was here, did you know?”

Wiki did; I didn’t.

Tom had big adventures getting this far; without the pleasures of the tunnel, or the train, he was already climbing mountains. (and it is worth remembering that in this pre-Rousseau, and very pre-Romantic era, mountains were thought evil, pagan, places of evil spirits and thoroughly bad times).

“I went from Pont de Beauvoisin about halfe an houre after sixe of the clocke in the morning, the eight day of June being Wednesday, and came to the foote of the Mountaine Aiguebelette which is the first Alpe, about ten of the clocke in the morning. A little on this side of the mountaine there is a poore village called Aiguebelle where we stayed a little to refresh our selves before we ascended the Mountaine. I observed an exceeding great standing poole a little on this side the Mountaine on the left hand thereof.

The things that I observed betwixt Pont de Beauvoisin, and the foote of the Mountaine were these. I saw divers red snails of an extraordinary length and greatnesse, such as I never saw before. Barely almost ripe to be cut, whereas in England they seldome cut the rathest before the beginning of August, which is almost two moneths after. Likewise I saw such wonderful abundance of chestnutte trees, that I marvailed what they did with the fruit thereof: it was told me that they fedde their swine therewith.

I ascended the Mountaine Aiguebelette about ten of the clocke in the morning a foote, and came to the foote of the other side of it towards Chambéry, about one of the clocke. Betwixt which places I take it to be about some two miles, that is a mile and a halfe to the toppe of the Mountaine, and from the toppe to the foote of the descent half a mile. I went up a foote, and delivered my horse to another to ride for me, because I thought it was more dangerous to ride then to goe a foote, though indeede all my other companions did ride: but then this accident happened to me. Certaine poore fellows which get their living especially by carrying men in chairs from the toppe of the hill to te foot thereof towards Chambéry, made a bargaine with some of my company, to carry them down in chaires, when they came to the toppe of the Mountaine, so that I kept them company towards the toppe. But they being desirous to get some money of me, lead me such an extreme pace towards the toppe, that how much soever I laboured to keepe them company I could not possibly performe it: The reason why they led such a pace, was, because they hoped that I would give them some consideration to be carryed in a chaire to the toppe, rather than I would leese their company, and so consequently my way also, which is almost impossible for a stranger to find alone by himselfe, by reason of the innumerable turnings and windings thereof, being on every side beset with infinite abundance of trees. So that at last finding that faintnesse in my selfe that I was not able to follow any longer, thous I would even break my hart with striving, I compounded with them for a cardakew which is eighteen pence English, to be carryed to the toppe of the Mountaine, which was t the least half a mile from the place where I mounted the chaire. This was the manner of their carrying me: They did put two slender poles through certaine woodden rings, which were at the foure corners of the chaire, and so carried me on their shoulders sitting in the chaire, one before, another behinde: but such was the miserable paines that the poore slaves willingly undetooke: for the gain of that cardakew, that I would not have done the like for five hundred. The wayes were exceeding difficult in regard of the steepnesse and hardnesse thereof, for they were al rocky, petricosae & salebrosae, and so uneven that a man could hardly find any sure footing on them…

…Then might I justly and truly say, that which I could never before, that I was above some of the clouds. For though that mountain be not by the sixth part so high as some others of them: yet certainly it was a great way above some of the clowdes. For I saw many of them very plainly on the sides of the Mountaine beneath me.

I mounted my horse againe about one of the clock at the foote of the mountaine, on the other side towards Chambéry, so that I was about three houres going betwixt the two feete on both sides, being but two miles distant. From the place where I mounted my horse I had two miles to Chambéry, and came thither about two of the clocke in the afternoone…

“It is a shame the Duke’s Palace is closed today; next week there are great shows here,” Patrick says. “If you can get up into the bell tower, it is marvellous. And the cathedral, in the centre, look up…you will see something special.”

I tell Patrick about Tom. “That is great, that is travel. And he came here: think of that. It is easier than thinking about my retirement.” He laughs, films a little more in the bright-white sun, and returns to his wife, waiting patiently.

With sun comes the realization I’m au Sud, in a way: life is – like more northern Lyon – lively and outdoor here, even when the inevitable 4pm thunderstorm kicks in as it has done every day for three weeks. Jean Jacques Rousseau came here from Geneva, I’ll write when I’ve seen his house, but it is no surprise that he formed his ideas here: nature is very present. Town and country feel very close – in harmony even.

Solar power plays a big role in Chambéry and the hinterlands; environmental concerns are plain. And Patrick is correct, Italy’s shadow is here to be felt in the architecture.

Or perhaps it is just the sun, a little solar power on white arms that have been shackled in rain-resistant leather for too long.

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Late, Lost Lyon

Posted on June 13, 2007 by robhunt510

The reason for the delay in writing about Lyon more fully is mostly about processing: Tom had three years; Tim Moore perhaps one. Here, with the imperative to post several times each day, a different kind of writing emerges, more hesitant – less prone to definitive judgment. The choices are too great.

Bawdy, blasphemous, boisterous, bon vivanting, Lyon has the Rabelesian set. It is here that Tom stops for a few days and meets some people:

“…the other Turk was a notable companion and a great scholler in his kinde; for he spake six or seven languages besides the Latin, which he spake very well: he was borne in Constantinople. I had a long discourse with him in Latin of many things, and amongst other questions I asked him whether he were ever baptized, he tolde me, no, and said he never would be. After that wee fell into speeches of Christ, whom he acknowledged for a great Prophet, but not for the Sonne of God, affirming that neither he nor any of his countrey men would worship him, but the onely true God, creator of heaven and earth: and called us Christians Idolaters, because we worshipped images…

…At mine Inne there lay the Saturday night, being the fourth of June, a worthy young nobleman of France of two and twenty years olde, who was brother to the Duke of Guise and Knight of Malta. He had passing fine musicke at supper, and after supper he and his companions being gallant lustie Gentlemen, danced chorantoes and lavoltoes in the court. He went therehence the Sunday after dinner, being the fifth day of June.

…At the south side of the higher court of mine Inne which is hard by the hall (for there are two or three courts in that Inne) there is written this pretty French poesie: on ne loge ceans à credit: car il est mort, les mauvais paieurs l’ont tué. The English is this: Here is no lodging upon credit: for he is dead, ill payers have killed him. Also on the South side of the wal of another court, there was a very pretty and merry story painted, which was this: A certain Pedlar having a budget full of small wares, fell asleep as he was travelling on the way, to whom there came a great multitude of Apes and robbed him of all his wares while he was asleepe: some of those Apes were painted with pouches or budgets at their backs, which they stole out of the pedlars fardle [small pack], climbing up to trees, some with spectacles on their noses, some with beades about their neckes, some with touch-boxes and ink-hornes in their hands, some with crosses and censour boxes, some with cardes in their hands; al which things they stole out of the budget: and amongst the rest one putting down the Pedlers breeches, and kissing his naked, &c. This pretty conceit seemeth to import some merry matter, but truly I know not the morall of it.”

One senses he fell upon these conversations with a happy heart: just as I am pleased to have Connie and John and their friends when I arrive late. Connie is 31 and has seen a lot of the world, one way or another. She quit the corporate world at 23, having been instrumental in setting up “Yahoo” in Asia. She first left home at 13, adopted by a brother for a while. Connie is Canadian Chinese, with some Jamaican blood somewhere, she says. She’s been married to a Frenchman, lived in Dublin, knows her way around many places. “We were put up in Madonna’s suite, at the Home House, Porchester square – do you know it? [This is London]. We had the whole friggin’ floor – we just didn’t know it. The room service people kept knocking at the wrong door.”

This was the dot com world, a long time ago now. These days when girlfriends come around Connie is giving away her old designer executive clothes to any who are the right size. Connie is still a poster-girl for the betwixt world of the digital. She’s at home with the technology, and it forms a central focus: for learning, for writing (she blogs as LadyC), for communications and organisation. Because music is such a passion Lyon is a great place to be, much happens here – and Paris for one-off concerts is two hours away by train; festivals and raves happen a lot in the region.

“I have no home except here,” Connie says, “It’s this, my apartment for the next few months – then perhaps we’ll move outside, find somewhere in the country nearby.” Her friends are French, Moroccan, Irish, Indian, Trinidadian…from everywhere. When we are out people know her, thought the very Rabelasian greeting from one friend: “I want to eat your pussy,” did seem, ah, extravagant, even for libidinal Lyon.

Music is bought, ideas found, movies watched, via the computers (though there is a new small collection of vinyl growing in the corner – how funny the way these things come around). Connie and her partner John are time-shifted, start late and work and live through to the late small hours – then start again. They don’t have much money; but their needs are minimal: somewhere to work on their many projects, somewhere to sleep; life not too far away.

I’m always a little nervous-protective in the presence of the truly rootless, a product of always having had a family base in London – in the end. Yet here in their temporary home Connie combines the fluidity of the traveller and the solidity of the “at home.” Perhaps Lyon, its people and its presence – its sheer easy balance – takes the place of the family.

Connie met John at “Burning Man,” the yearly desert festival in Nevada, America. A courtship began – in time they were living together, first in Dublin, then here in Lyon.

John is 25; he also quit a high-tech start up young. He was hired the day he completed his studies and within a couple of years was managing his own team of four. The work was punishing; not just the cutting-edge (literally) technology – lasers cutting silicon wafers to make chips, the cheapest being £2 million, Hewlett Packard bought 89 of them – but also the hours, and the travel. Promotion at 24 would have meant living in Asia training engineers on the project; instead he now makes hand-made musical instruments, guitars, “theramins”, a project that might be named “Fotosis”…he’s interested in “circuit bending”, the reprogramming of ancient chip-based forms, such as dolls or children’s games. He has a studio space in a local-government approved squat close to the Lumiere museum which houses installations that look like houses and houses that look like installations. Here he has vice and power tools. A home he can work on computer-based projects.

He knew the party life of Dublin, these days he thinks that perhaps it is too much. “It’s a great city, but its wild, really wild these days. A kind of madhouse.”

“We’re going to build a tandem, “ Connie says, as we climb the long stairs back up to the Croix Rousse area in which they live right now. “You saw off one wheel frame from each of the two bikes, there are these braces….” I’m lost very quickly in the conversation, admiring of the practicality, the physical understanding of material. “Most of the great parties and raves happen outside the city,” Connie says. “And there’s never a way to get home. Once we were trying to find a taxi and ended up on the grounds of Lyon airport in a bit of a messed up state. Better to have your own transport…

“We don’t go out so much, we don’t have tons of money,” Connie says. In their apartment there are piles of “National Geographic” magazines: so much more of the world to see. “We’re lucky, we know people from all over the world, we meet in queues at bus stations, people come and stay, we go back. One friend, an Indian actress, she came through, stayed three weeks, one day we’ll go and see her in India. One day soon.” Both are extremely clued up to what is happening in the world: they think the Guardian newspaper has gone off, the Independent got a little better. They know about the very latest music, and about Miles Davis’s 1970 phase. They put most music “fans” to shame with the scope of their knowledge.

“Everything is out there now. People can teach themselves, about technology, the very latest open source things, about anything at all. If you are online you can find it out. The only times I’m surprised is when it isn’t there. And then it’s usually because the article is badly tagged and doesn’t come up in the search. Of course we have to learn how to search, there are more things than Google,” John says.

Neither miss the start-up culture world: “One of my bosses, on his third start-up, he’d already made a lot of money, had a heart attack at 32, I don’t want that, but that’s how the pressure is.” The life they have chosen, abroad, rootless, nomadic and striving, has many pressures of its own, but these are people who make it seem quite delightful. They seem to get Tom’s trip straight away: one email and I am staying at their apartment.

Rabelais would approve – from his blasphemous heaven, wherever

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Heartbeats

Posted on June 10, 2007 by robhunt510

If the pulse of a small town is its railway station then Moulins fails and La Tour du Pin wins: it has a healthy heart. On Saturday mornings it is full of young and old, arriving from Grenoble and Lyon, and going there. Perhaps it is for a weekend break, big overnight bags are the norm. The centre is still busy I’m accosted by the Red Cross, asking for money, the shops full, the cafés too.

Perhaps it is the sudden arrival of sun, rather than the station, but La Tour du Pin seems more alive than the towns of the Loire – maybe travel options are closer, the “south” and the “mountains” are asserting their allure. People here look less weighed down, though there are plenty of small and large young families around. Asking for a cyber café I’m told three times in less than an hour, “we are too small for that,” but size isn’t everything. Looking outwards helps. Last night at dinner in the square I sit next to an Irish couple who speak so softly, so happily – and so un-understandably – that I can’t bring myself to talk with them: whatever their secret it is better it stays that way. The square ebbs and flows, fills with kids playing soccer and families having dinner. Sphinxes with their secrets; but not for the likes of me.

Thre are expensive “retreats” around here, spas and health farms, cycling holidays being advertised. This is less than an hour from Lyon’s steamy embrace, it’s fluid, fluent night-life for all tastes, but that hour brings on another kind of experience.

In Tom’s day these were staging posts to the alps, and the “horror” that would bring. I imaging these days would have been punishing. His methods of writing must have been by forcing himself: following his schedule would kill a modern writer, nothing getting done. At least his options are narrowed: a church, somewhere to stay. Perhaps everything was so new it stayed in the memory to be written up in Venice. Now there are too many options, things to observe as “meaning” something. Betwixt the alternative hipsters of Lyon and the smiling but silent types of La tour du Pin.

At the station the train is delayed – indeterminately – and the likely lads start playing their music. Instead of conversation they flip thumbs over the phone keypad on some kind of game:

“What score?
“No problem.”

Then the music goes public: French rap, they say it is very political. Just as acclimatisation begins the track jerks to Gwen Stafani and the boys grunt along; then it is just mainstream US rap.

In this desire to play out loud anything more than just trying to establish a root, a meaning, in a place?

“Look me in my eye.”
“Look me in my eye.”
“Look me in my eye.”

Just another public show, another anxious attempt at self-definition?

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