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darcydodoPlans. They're interesting things, almost animate, protazoa-like creatures in their mutability and their tendancy to shift under your very gaze, especially when you least expect it. And, in my case, particularly when everything's going just slightly too well....
So today I had planned to go with Sharon to the Fête Médiévale at Provins, a small mediaeval town at the eastern edge of the Ile-de-France. This meant waking up awfully early, because the train time she'd gotten off the web said 9:15, and I didn't have a ticket yet. Given that it would take me at least a half hour to get to Gare de l'Est, where the the train left from, and given my experience last time with waiting in line for a ticket, and given that I knew I'd end up fooling around on the computer at least "briefly" in the morning, I decided I'd wake up at 6:30. I also had to phone Sharon and let her know what our meeting place would be, and what our alternate plan was in case the strike caused the trains not to be running. And I still had to do laundry. Heh. I had that one sorted; I would stuff everything in the machine before I left and put it in the dryer when I got back in the evening.
So I woke up at 6:30. I did computer-y things, got ready to go, phoned Sharon, rolled my clothes all into a bundle, and went to put them in the laundry. Only to see a sign on the door that said Horaires Ouvertes: 9H à 22H. (This was, mind you, at around 7:45.) Well, the door was open, so I went in. I couldn't, however, open the door of the washing machine. Maybe I should've tried another, but one of the other two was broken anyway, and the third one had its door already open. I didn't want to put my clothes in only to shut the door and find that the machien wouldn't start and the door wouldn't open. So I ran upstairs, dumped my clothes on the bed, and skedaddled off to the train station.
There were mild fun and frolics at the train station, but amazingly nothing major. There was a train leaving for Provins, I didn't have to wait in line for an eternity, and I even got a youth discount on my train ticket. The train was, for some reason, and hour later than Sharon's information had claimed, but what's an hour? It was, I assumed, à cause de la grève. Sharon showed up, we waited around, took the train, arrived in Provins. Amazingly painless.
Unsurprisingly, the Fête was rather like a Renaissance Faire. Difference being: We were in a mediaeval town. Such things actually happened there. The buildings around us weren't mocked up to be half-timbered or lichen-covered stone, they actually were. And also, there were touristy sorts of things to do in Provins, like go down into the subterranean caverns or up into the Tour César. There was a tithe barn, too, but I figure that seeing an Anglo-Saxon tithe barn, which I've done, is more impressive than seeing a mediaeval one ever will be. Besides, there ended up being absolutely masses to occupy us at the Fête proper, so we only went up into the Tour César for our touristy experience. Which was fantastically cool. It has, since, been turned into a bell tower, and in fact we ended up being right up in the belfry at 2pm. So we got an awfully loud clang ringing in our ears.
The other thing that was cooler about this fair than the Ren Faire at home is that there were lots of teaching display sorts of things here. So there were stalls that just had arrays of spices that were used (it's amazing, the similarity of most spice names and the complete randomness of the rest), and a little medicinal that listed the virtues of various herbs, and a stall with chirurgeons' tools and diagrams of where to cut and with which implement for what maladie, and all sorts of fun things like that. And I wandered around and talked to people and understood really quite a bit of French. I seem to do a lot better when I have a context for conversation. There was also a "leproserie," and there were posters outside it with lots of really cool information on lepers in the middle ages. Sadly, it was so much information that I would've taken quite a while to read it even in English, and although I was doing fine with the French, Sharon looked like she was getting bored and I didn't want to insist on staying there reading the posters for twenty minutes while she had next to nothing to do.
Before we got the fair, though, we stopped at an outdoor market. This is the first proper outdoor market I've been to (i.e., one that's set up in a square, rather than one that's essentially extensions of permanent stores), and my parents will be very pleased to hear that I've finally made it to one! There were clothes stalls and fruit/vegetable stalls and bread and cheese... So we got some random type of Pérail and some camembert, and a baguette, and strawberries, and we wandered up towards where the fair was and sat on a stone stairway from some unidentifiable era that led from nowhere to nowhere, and ate our lunch.
The fair was pretty much as I've described, plus the usual assortment of chintzy stuff and expensive stuff sold at Ren Faires. There was some very good music, played by an ensemble called Aux Couleurs du Moyen Age; they're really quite impressive. Apparently I've got a far longer attention span than Sharon, so there was one point where I was having fun looking at all the different displays and she said she didn't want to stand up for a while and went and looked at a book that she'd gotten; I checked with her a little bit later to make sure she wasn't bored, and she said no, she was fine, she was reading a book and I should take as long as I liked. Fine; I did, but this ended up making her cross because apparently we missed some spectacle she wanted to see. So I explained about my principles of saying what I'm actually thinking and tending to take people at their words, and she said OK (though I think she was still a bit cross), and I made peace by agreeing not to stop for longer than a minute anywhere. Which basically worked, though there were a couple of stalls we passed that I would've loved to stay and look at. And some stalls in the display area in which we had been that I failed to see all together. But I survived. :)
At 7:30 we tried to find the "Divertissement Musical" that had been promised in the program (comprised of the excellent instrumental group and some local madrigal-ish group); we went where we thought it should be, but no one was there; we asked the stall-holders around if they knew, and they weren't sure but thought that it might be back where we had just come from. So we wandered back there and saw the musicians, whom we knew would be playing, packing up their instruments and heading off somewhere. So we followed them, and it turned out to be where we had originally thought, except inside the church there, and of course we hadn't thought of looking there. Just as we entered the church, they were in the process of singing... you'll never guess,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leech... Contrapunto Bestiale Alla Mente! But that wasn't the strangest bit about it. They did the fa-la-las at the same speed we do, but then suddenly dropped to about a fifth of the speed for the animal bit. Very, very odd. (Oh, tangentially, Sharon told me about a four-part madrigal I think we should do next year. It's called "Un Jeune Moyne," and it's about a monk who goes off looking for a compatible nun. *grin*) Anyway, then "Aux Couleurs" played three or so songs, one of which was "a little Judeo-Hispanic romance"; I'm figuring it was one of the Sephardi ballads inspired by the French epic tradition, but I could be wrong. The madrigal group sucked fairly badly, to be frank, but it was worth it anyway. And then, seeing as how it was already 8:30 or so, we decided to head home.
Sharon's information that she'd gotten off the web said that there was a train at 8-something which we'd already missed and another at 9:30. That was fine; we could easily get to the train station by then. So we went directly there, and saw a train sitting at the quai just as we arrived. We called to the man standing in the door and asked if it was heading to Paris. He looked mightily amused and told us we'd already missed the last train to Paris. "But..." we sputtered, and asked if the train times were different because of the strike. No, was the answer, it's always that way. My backup plans that I'd researched last night included catching an autocar between Provins and Marne-la-Vallée. So I asked about that. No, no more autocars running, either. In fact, the train station was just about closing. We turned to the woman who was in the process of closing up the station and asked if there was a youth hostel in the area. "It's going to be full," she said. Was there another way to get to Paris? "There's a train tomorrow morning... or you could hitchhike."
Well, there were two of us. We couldn't find a place to stay. We couldn't take a traditional method of transport. So... we decided, after a bit of deliberation, to try this daring plan. We wandered along the road out of Provins and stuck out our thumbs, and realized after a bit that possibly the sign of thumb-in-the-air isn't quite so universal as I had thought. Some people in their cars simply gave us a thumbs-up back, others smiled and waved. (Although I'm fairly positive that the train lady made this sign when she said "autostop"!) So I found a piece of paper and wrote "À PARIS ?" on it in as big of letters as I could, and tried holding this out every time a car whizzed by. We walked for half an hour; no luck. The people who didn't simply ignore the sign indicated that they weren't going to Paris. There was a young trucker who stopped, said he wasn't going to Paris until tomorrow, but he did have two beds in his truck. We smiled and declined, said we'd try hitchhiking. "It won't work," he assured us. "We'll try anyway," we replied. After said half hour, we'd made it to what I think was probably the next little town along. "How long do you think it would take to simply walk back to Paris?" I asked, only half joking. Well, the train ride was two hours....
We decided that we might be better to head back to Provins and try and catch people coming out of the sound and light show that was offered as part of the Fête. Some of them might be driving towards Paris, after all. So we turned around and started trudging back up the road. The sun was sinking further; I consider 10pm to really be sundown. Before that it's relatively light; after that it just gets darker and darker. Cars were starting to have their headlights on, and I knew that at right around 10pm our little sign would cease to be visible. I kept holding out the sign as cars whizzed by, but no luck. And then... one stopped. Middle-aged guy, no passengers. I held up the sign hopefully, and he sort of shrugged vague acquiesence. We got in the back, and.... got taken to Paris!
He was really very nice, actually; named Gilles, has three little boys (5, 8 and 10) whom he says are utter terrors; he lived outside London for a few years working for an American company that made air products (like air-fresheners, apparently); he currently works in data management in Provins but lives in Paris and hence commutes every day. It was, therefore, a very good chance to practice French and get corrected if I said something really wrong, and he spoke enough English that complete lacks of understanding could be solved. Also, my French is much better than Sharon's, so I think she probably liked it when he spoke English.
So, umm, yeah. He eventually dropped us off at a métro station on line 8, and we made our respective connections, and I got home. End of story. Exciting day, my shoulders are a bit sunburned again (and yet this morning I thought I might actually be regretting having worn such short sleeves due to the coldness of the air...), and I've hitchhiked for the first time in my life. I have also learned that apparently I simply cannot make plans that work the way they're supposed to. So far, everything's gone exactly right, just... not quite as it should do. Taking the RER a few hours late to Chantilly, going to see the Matrix somewhere completely random and getting there with so little time to spare, and now this. I'll assume that tomorrow will be a bit less boring. I'm going to do laundry at 9 o'clock in the morning, or maybe a tad later, and go to the Musée d'Orsay. I want to see the Impressionist paintings....
So today I had planned to go with Sharon to the Fête Médiévale at Provins, a small mediaeval town at the eastern edge of the Ile-de-France. This meant waking up awfully early, because the train time she'd gotten off the web said 9:15, and I didn't have a ticket yet. Given that it would take me at least a half hour to get to Gare de l'Est, where the the train left from, and given my experience last time with waiting in line for a ticket, and given that I knew I'd end up fooling around on the computer at least "briefly" in the morning, I decided I'd wake up at 6:30. I also had to phone Sharon and let her know what our meeting place would be, and what our alternate plan was in case the strike caused the trains not to be running. And I still had to do laundry. Heh. I had that one sorted; I would stuff everything in the machine before I left and put it in the dryer when I got back in the evening.
So I woke up at 6:30. I did computer-y things, got ready to go, phoned Sharon, rolled my clothes all into a bundle, and went to put them in the laundry. Only to see a sign on the door that said Horaires Ouvertes: 9H à 22H. (This was, mind you, at around 7:45.) Well, the door was open, so I went in. I couldn't, however, open the door of the washing machine. Maybe I should've tried another, but one of the other two was broken anyway, and the third one had its door already open. I didn't want to put my clothes in only to shut the door and find that the machien wouldn't start and the door wouldn't open. So I ran upstairs, dumped my clothes on the bed, and skedaddled off to the train station.
There were mild fun and frolics at the train station, but amazingly nothing major. There was a train leaving for Provins, I didn't have to wait in line for an eternity, and I even got a youth discount on my train ticket. The train was, for some reason, and hour later than Sharon's information had claimed, but what's an hour? It was, I assumed, à cause de la grève. Sharon showed up, we waited around, took the train, arrived in Provins. Amazingly painless.
Unsurprisingly, the Fête was rather like a Renaissance Faire. Difference being: We were in a mediaeval town. Such things actually happened there. The buildings around us weren't mocked up to be half-timbered or lichen-covered stone, they actually were. And also, there were touristy sorts of things to do in Provins, like go down into the subterranean caverns or up into the Tour César. There was a tithe barn, too, but I figure that seeing an Anglo-Saxon tithe barn, which I've done, is more impressive than seeing a mediaeval one ever will be. Besides, there ended up being absolutely masses to occupy us at the Fête proper, so we only went up into the Tour César for our touristy experience. Which was fantastically cool. It has, since, been turned into a bell tower, and in fact we ended up being right up in the belfry at 2pm. So we got an awfully loud clang ringing in our ears.
The other thing that was cooler about this fair than the Ren Faire at home is that there were lots of teaching display sorts of things here. So there were stalls that just had arrays of spices that were used (it's amazing, the similarity of most spice names and the complete randomness of the rest), and a little medicinal that listed the virtues of various herbs, and a stall with chirurgeons' tools and diagrams of where to cut and with which implement for what maladie, and all sorts of fun things like that. And I wandered around and talked to people and understood really quite a bit of French. I seem to do a lot better when I have a context for conversation. There was also a "leproserie," and there were posters outside it with lots of really cool information on lepers in the middle ages. Sadly, it was so much information that I would've taken quite a while to read it even in English, and although I was doing fine with the French, Sharon looked like she was getting bored and I didn't want to insist on staying there reading the posters for twenty minutes while she had next to nothing to do.
Before we got the fair, though, we stopped at an outdoor market. This is the first proper outdoor market I've been to (i.e., one that's set up in a square, rather than one that's essentially extensions of permanent stores), and my parents will be very pleased to hear that I've finally made it to one! There were clothes stalls and fruit/vegetable stalls and bread and cheese... So we got some random type of Pérail and some camembert, and a baguette, and strawberries, and we wandered up towards where the fair was and sat on a stone stairway from some unidentifiable era that led from nowhere to nowhere, and ate our lunch.
The fair was pretty much as I've described, plus the usual assortment of chintzy stuff and expensive stuff sold at Ren Faires. There was some very good music, played by an ensemble called Aux Couleurs du Moyen Age; they're really quite impressive. Apparently I've got a far longer attention span than Sharon, so there was one point where I was having fun looking at all the different displays and she said she didn't want to stand up for a while and went and looked at a book that she'd gotten; I checked with her a little bit later to make sure she wasn't bored, and she said no, she was fine, she was reading a book and I should take as long as I liked. Fine; I did, but this ended up making her cross because apparently we missed some spectacle she wanted to see. So I explained about my principles of saying what I'm actually thinking and tending to take people at their words, and she said OK (though I think she was still a bit cross), and I made peace by agreeing not to stop for longer than a minute anywhere. Which basically worked, though there were a couple of stalls we passed that I would've loved to stay and look at. And some stalls in the display area in which we had been that I failed to see all together. But I survived. :)
At 7:30 we tried to find the "Divertissement Musical" that had been promised in the program (comprised of the excellent instrumental group and some local madrigal-ish group); we went where we thought it should be, but no one was there; we asked the stall-holders around if they knew, and they weren't sure but thought that it might be back where we had just come from. So we wandered back there and saw the musicians, whom we knew would be playing, packing up their instruments and heading off somewhere. So we followed them, and it turned out to be where we had originally thought, except inside the church there, and of course we hadn't thought of looking there. Just as we entered the church, they were in the process of singing... you'll never guess,
leech... Contrapunto Bestiale Alla Mente! But that wasn't the strangest bit about it. They did the fa-la-las at the same speed we do, but then suddenly dropped to about a fifth of the speed for the animal bit. Very, very odd. (Oh, tangentially, Sharon told me about a four-part madrigal I think we should do next year. It's called "Un Jeune Moyne," and it's about a monk who goes off looking for a compatible nun. *grin*) Anyway, then "Aux Couleurs" played three or so songs, one of which was "a little Judeo-Hispanic romance"; I'm figuring it was one of the Sephardi ballads inspired by the French epic tradition, but I could be wrong. The madrigal group sucked fairly badly, to be frank, but it was worth it anyway. And then, seeing as how it was already 8:30 or so, we decided to head home.Sharon's information that she'd gotten off the web said that there was a train at 8-something which we'd already missed and another at 9:30. That was fine; we could easily get to the train station by then. So we went directly there, and saw a train sitting at the quai just as we arrived. We called to the man standing in the door and asked if it was heading to Paris. He looked mightily amused and told us we'd already missed the last train to Paris. "But..." we sputtered, and asked if the train times were different because of the strike. No, was the answer, it's always that way. My backup plans that I'd researched last night included catching an autocar between Provins and Marne-la-Vallée. So I asked about that. No, no more autocars running, either. In fact, the train station was just about closing. We turned to the woman who was in the process of closing up the station and asked if there was a youth hostel in the area. "It's going to be full," she said. Was there another way to get to Paris? "There's a train tomorrow morning... or you could hitchhike."
Well, there were two of us. We couldn't find a place to stay. We couldn't take a traditional method of transport. So... we decided, after a bit of deliberation, to try this daring plan. We wandered along the road out of Provins and stuck out our thumbs, and realized after a bit that possibly the sign of thumb-in-the-air isn't quite so universal as I had thought. Some people in their cars simply gave us a thumbs-up back, others smiled and waved. (Although I'm fairly positive that the train lady made this sign when she said "autostop"!) So I found a piece of paper and wrote "À PARIS ?" on it in as big of letters as I could, and tried holding this out every time a car whizzed by. We walked for half an hour; no luck. The people who didn't simply ignore the sign indicated that they weren't going to Paris. There was a young trucker who stopped, said he wasn't going to Paris until tomorrow, but he did have two beds in his truck. We smiled and declined, said we'd try hitchhiking. "It won't work," he assured us. "We'll try anyway," we replied. After said half hour, we'd made it to what I think was probably the next little town along. "How long do you think it would take to simply walk back to Paris?" I asked, only half joking. Well, the train ride was two hours....
We decided that we might be better to head back to Provins and try and catch people coming out of the sound and light show that was offered as part of the Fête. Some of them might be driving towards Paris, after all. So we turned around and started trudging back up the road. The sun was sinking further; I consider 10pm to really be sundown. Before that it's relatively light; after that it just gets darker and darker. Cars were starting to have their headlights on, and I knew that at right around 10pm our little sign would cease to be visible. I kept holding out the sign as cars whizzed by, but no luck. And then... one stopped. Middle-aged guy, no passengers. I held up the sign hopefully, and he sort of shrugged vague acquiesence. We got in the back, and.... got taken to Paris!
He was really very nice, actually; named Gilles, has three little boys (5, 8 and 10) whom he says are utter terrors; he lived outside London for a few years working for an American company that made air products (like air-fresheners, apparently); he currently works in data management in Provins but lives in Paris and hence commutes every day. It was, therefore, a very good chance to practice French and get corrected if I said something really wrong, and he spoke enough English that complete lacks of understanding could be solved. Also, my French is much better than Sharon's, so I think she probably liked it when he spoke English.
So, umm, yeah. He eventually dropped us off at a métro station on line 8, and we made our respective connections, and I got home. End of story. Exciting day, my shoulders are a bit sunburned again (and yet this morning I thought I might actually be regretting having worn such short sleeves due to the coldness of the air...), and I've hitchhiked for the first time in my life. I have also learned that apparently I simply cannot make plans that work the way they're supposed to. So far, everything's gone exactly right, just... not quite as it should do. Taking the RER a few hours late to Chantilly, going to see the Matrix somewhere completely random and getting there with so little time to spare, and now this. I'll assume that tomorrow will be a bit less boring. I'm going to do laundry at 9 o'clock in the morning, or maybe a tad later, and go to the Musée d'Orsay. I want to see the Impressionist paintings....
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You daring girl, you!
Date: 2003-06-14 09:05 pm (UTC)Oh, yes, and I am endlessly amused by the trains. It makes me miss France :(
Well, back to the father's day Simpson's marathon...
Hey, while I'm thinking about it, how long will you be you in France?
Re: You daring girl, you!
Date: 2003-06-15 01:23 am (UTC)Oh goodness, we forgot to ask if Gilles had a dog! ;)
Hey, while I'm thinking about it, how long will you be you in France?
In France until about July 16. In Paris until June 29th or 30th. And then again like the 10-12 of July, or something. Why, are you heading over here at some point?
Re: You daring girl, you!
Date: 2003-06-15 09:21 am (UTC)It's more that summer in Berkeley is a dank hell, with only Kurt, Justin, Kieran, Frederik and Mira to socialize with. It's so quiet and overcast. At least for the last week and a half, it has been, which is why it seems like forever.
Ah, well. I'm sure it's not much warmer in Paris.
Oh, I forgot - is it silly to giggle because he was named Giles?
Re: You daring girl, you!
Date: 2003-06-15 10:18 am (UTC)Ah, well. I'm sure it's not much warmer in Paris.
Hah. That's a very amusing comment. Even when it rains it's usually warm. When I went to Disneyland, and again yesterday, I wore a tank-top, and my shoulders got a bit sunburned.
Oh, I forgot - is it silly to giggle because he was named Giles?
*giggle* No, I did too. (In my head, of course, it wouldn't be a wise decision to laugh at the nice man who's giving me a ride!)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-15 01:23 am (UTC)Enjoy the Musée d'Orsay. I am so jealous!