Perhaps saying that I have to rush my letter will become a tradition for starting these emails. I have to get up at 7:00 AM to go to Reins and Lille tomorrow, and on Monday, I am taking a day-trip to Chartres. In the future, I will try to avoid rushing around quite this much.
First, a few things that I forgot. Arles had the remains of a hippodrome, which I did not bother to visit, as it was in the middle of nowhere (a few hundred meters from the edge of the old town -- I was feeling lazy) and had fallen into total ruin. Secondly, Annecy had free bathrooms (probably not everywhere, but at least one) and even water fountains (again, at least one); it appears to be a city that was designed to be livable!
I am going to put off Lyon and Clermont-Ferrand for just another moment. Some of the more interesting moments that I have had on this trip have been little snapshots into people's lives. As I was taking a picture of an alleyway in Arles, an old woman who was pouring out water from her laundry smiled and waved at me, and in Annecy I saw a middle-aged man trimming his hedges, as nonchalant as though he did not live in one of the most beautiful places in Europe, outside of the old town.
In short, Lyon is amazing, the most beautiful moderately-sized French town that I have seen by a long shot, and Clermont-Ferrand sucks. I did not have much time to see Lyon this morning, as I had already decided to see Clermont-Ferrand and had a free day on my rail pass to burn regardless, but what little I saw of it and of my tourist map indicated that it was a cosmopolitan city full of theaters, museums, and government buildings like the palace of justice and chamber of commerce; it is clear that advances in the arts, sciences, and public life have been very actively cultivated. Clermont-Ferrand, on the other hand, is a city in which those things have been actively eschewed. It has essentially nothing worse seeing beyond its incredible, black cathedral; it was a bit of an Amiens (a neologism or something with one attraction that is otherwise disappointing). It was a very pleasant late evening when I returned to Lyon, but I had both gotten onto the subway and transferred to a new line without having to wait more than a minute, and I was already tired. If I had had another hour in the morning; if I had gotten back an hour earlier from Clermont-Ferrand; if I had not been so tired of rushing about to begin with... I would have liked to have seen more of the historical center of Lyon, but it was not fated to be, and it is sometimes more pleasant to leave a place wanting more than to be glutted with it. (An interesting point here is that I partly went to Clermont-Ferrand because I felt that my having paid the money to do so (in the form of my rail pass) obliged me to, as well as because I figured that I should see the cathedral given that I had the chance. This ties into some of the stuff that Zev talks about regarding human behavior and psychology.)
Finally, the hills outside of Lyon were very pretty. The number of beggars in France is extraordinary; I expect that unemployment rates here are high. I had one other such overarching comment to make, but I cannot remember what it was. Since I finished today's email, I will only have one to write tomorrow, which should give me ample time to polish my fellowship application; by the time I am in Germany, I might actually be able to start my blog up again. I should have a more restful time in Kortrijk and Ghent, if not in Brussels, after which I will turn to rushing around for several days (in Germany). Ironically, by a stroke of luck, I had initially planned three days here, having realized that it would be nice to have a relative rest day and that Lyon was beautiful enough to warrant my spending a full day exploring it. Who could have guessed that my original plans, in this lone instance, would have been so well-laid and that they would end up being changed? Such is the life of the traveller. My experiences in Lyon and impressions of it have been interesting. I missed climbing the cathedral towers by a half-hour or so, as I had to get to my train to Clermont-Ferrand. Again, such is life.
(Clermont-Ferrand was described in Wikipedia as the center of an industrial area, and it lived up to its reputation. The impressiveness of its religious architecture probably ties in to the city's having been Christened, so to speak; the Visigoths were chased out of it when Christianity was adopted there, and one assumes that people who did not convert were killed or expelled.)
Some of my most interesting interactions with people, ones that I forgot to mention earlier, have involved their describing things in way too much detail when I was in a rush to do something. When I got to this hostel and asked if there were any grocery stores nearby, the man working here proceeded to describe the whole city in detail, including outlining places outside of the city center that I would not have visited for all of the tea in China, when all that I really wanted to do was use the bathroom and head out of the door. Similarly, a man in Annecy, who had already told me that one could not climb the monastery tours except on Saturdays, proceeded to perorate about the town, viewpoints that I might be able to find, his uncertainty that I would find those viewpoints, the monastery's history, and so on, when I had already gotten all of the information that I needed from him. Some people just cannot stop once they get going.
First, a few things that I forgot. Arles had the remains of a hippodrome, which I did not bother to visit, as it was in the middle of nowhere (a few hundred meters from the edge of the old town -- I was feeling lazy) and had fallen into total ruin. Secondly, Annecy had free bathrooms (probably not everywhere, but at least one) and even water fountains (again, at least one); it appears to be a city that was designed to be livable!
I am going to put off Lyon and Clermont-Ferrand for just another moment. Some of the more interesting moments that I have had on this trip have been little snapshots into people's lives. As I was taking a picture of an alleyway in Arles, an old woman who was pouring out water from her laundry smiled and waved at me, and in Annecy I saw a middle-aged man trimming his hedges, as nonchalant as though he did not live in one of the most beautiful places in Europe, outside of the old town.
In short, Lyon is amazing, the most beautiful moderately-sized French town that I have seen by a long shot, and Clermont-Ferrand sucks. I did not have much time to see Lyon this morning, as I had already decided to see Clermont-Ferrand and had a free day on my rail pass to burn regardless, but what little I saw of it and of my tourist map indicated that it was a cosmopolitan city full of theaters, museums, and government buildings like the palace of justice and chamber of commerce; it is clear that advances in the arts, sciences, and public life have been very actively cultivated. Clermont-Ferrand, on the other hand, is a city in which those things have been actively eschewed. It has essentially nothing worse seeing beyond its incredible, black cathedral; it was a bit of an Amiens (a neologism or something with one attraction that is otherwise disappointing). It was a very pleasant late evening when I returned to Lyon, but I had both gotten onto the subway and transferred to a new line without having to wait more than a minute, and I was already tired. If I had had another hour in the morning; if I had gotten back an hour earlier from Clermont-Ferrand; if I had not been so tired of rushing about to begin with... I would have liked to have seen more of the historical center of Lyon, but it was not fated to be, and it is sometimes more pleasant to leave a place wanting more than to be glutted with it. (An interesting point here is that I partly went to Clermont-Ferrand because I felt that my having paid the money to do so (in the form of my rail pass) obliged me to, as well as because I figured that I should see the cathedral given that I had the chance. This ties into some of the stuff that Zev talks about regarding human behavior and psychology.)
Finally, the hills outside of Lyon were very pretty. The number of beggars in France is extraordinary; I expect that unemployment rates here are high. I had one other such overarching comment to make, but I cannot remember what it was. Since I finished today's email, I will only have one to write tomorrow, which should give me ample time to polish my fellowship application; by the time I am in Germany, I might actually be able to start my blog up again. I should have a more restful time in Kortrijk and Ghent, if not in Brussels, after which I will turn to rushing around for several days (in Germany). Ironically, by a stroke of luck, I had initially planned three days here, having realized that it would be nice to have a relative rest day and that Lyon was beautiful enough to warrant my spending a full day exploring it. Who could have guessed that my original plans, in this lone instance, would have been so well-laid and that they would end up being changed? Such is the life of the traveller. My experiences in Lyon and impressions of it have been interesting. I missed climbing the cathedral towers by a half-hour or so, as I had to get to my train to Clermont-Ferrand. Again, such is life.
(Clermont-Ferrand was described in Wikipedia as the center of an industrial area, and it lived up to its reputation. The impressiveness of its religious architecture probably ties in to the city's having been Christened, so to speak; the Visigoths were chased out of it when Christianity was adopted there, and one assumes that people who did not convert were killed or expelled.)
Some of my most interesting interactions with people, ones that I forgot to mention earlier, have involved their describing things in way too much detail when I was in a rush to do something. When I got to this hostel and asked if there were any grocery stores nearby, the man working here proceeded to describe the whole city in detail, including outlining places outside of the city center that I would not have visited for all of the tea in China, when all that I really wanted to do was use the bathroom and head out of the door. Similarly, a man in Annecy, who had already told me that one could not climb the monastery tours except on Saturdays, proceeded to perorate about the town, viewpoints that I might be able to find, his uncertainty that I would find those viewpoints, the monastery's history, and so on, when I had already gotten all of the information that I needed from him. Some people just cannot stop once they get going.
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| Go to hell, Clermont-Ferrand. |
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