Le marché d'Arles

Today is a holiday here in CH, so here is a lazy posting from last week's vacation. I usually find other people's market pictures to be rather annoying so I vacillated a good deal about putting this up. But lavender is pretty. And so French. Just one can't hurt.

Avignon Theatre Festival

Now that the pope has left Avignon, the minstrels are out of control.

recruiting for the theatre festival and generally acting creepy; frankly, the stuff of weird dreams

"La bonne mère"

A few shots of Notre-Dame de la Garde, the basilica overlooking Marseille, which is actually interesting enough to comment on. It has, among other things, battle wounds from WWII, a drawbridge, several walls of photos reminiscent of an Italian restaurant, miniature sailboats hanging from the ceiling, a unique Romanesque-Byzantine style hated by many, a crypt rumored to be creepy cool (but sadly, only open on weekdays), and a prayer chapel that is hotter than –  well, better not say. And to top it all off (hehe) it's crowned by a gigantic golden mother and child. Who would guess little baby Jesus' wrist to be 1.1 meters around?

En français!

Trying not to have a complex about the languages you speak (or don't) is difficult in France, where, as we discovered on our recent first visit, the clichés are true: they do not like to (or won't) speak languages that are not French. French, as we all know, though easy to imitate (mon dieu! zhey haf feenished zeehr meal en just deux houroz! zhat vill vreally make zhem fet!) is much more difficult to fake in real life, and even more difficult to use properly. What you know of other languages may make you a good reader of museum placards and menus, but it will not make you a good communicator at the pharmacy or at the newsstand, where blank stares are the lingua franca. (Even French you thought you knew, like croissant or concierge, will turn out to be useless in this nouveau monde.)

Out of all the languages I would like to pretend I know, French ranks the highest. I know this is very liberal and elitist of me, but it is just an aurally lovely language that I have always wanted to know, even before I knew that the smart prep school kids learn it to read Proust or whatever and (though secretly at this point) even while I was learning Spanish, "a much more useful language," in high school (in fact at least since the time of Kylie Minogue's one US hit, if you'd like to get technical).

At least at the Marseille police station, English turned out to be the next most useful language, but really only because there was a smart 10-year-old there able to translate to the very CSI-looking receptionist that we needed to file a report for our stolen license plate. Somehow our being American was very remarkable to everyone we met. I couldn't get a read on why exactly this was, but eyebrows always went up and américain! was exclaimed. But anyway almost everyone during our visit was exceedingly nice and only mildly disdainful of our good faith yet apparently pitiful attempts at their language.

Teatro alla Scala

This week we had the very good fortune to see La bohème at La Scala in Milano. I am having a hard time keeping my gusto about this performance in check; pretty much everything about it was amazing. I have already talked several ears off about the brilliant Zeffirelli set, the Puccini bust in the ballroom, our amazing seats, how I felt like a Victorian lady, the tassels on the drapes in our opera box, the lovely tear-inducing voices, and the beautiful conductor. 

Our view of the orchestra pit was somewhat limited, but we could just catch the top of Dudamel's head. Sigh. My infatuation with curly hair is fairly well established – if one married for hair I might be elsewhere at this moment – so it is perhaps needless to say that I have a Jason Bourne-sized crush on this brilliant, handsome conductor. He is at least 50% of why we went, though I don't think Swiss Mr. knows this. (Don't blame me; blame S&P for introducing us. Gustavo and me, I mean. Ahem.)

Err... off to France for a few days!