Morlaix en Bretagne

We have done only a little bit of touring since arriving in Brittany. Earlier this week we drove toward the west to the city of Morlaix. Set in a deep valley, Morlaix has a well-preserved core of late medieval houses (left & right). We have a lot to learn about Brittany’s history, but it is clear that Brittany had a golden age that began around 1350 and lasted into the 1500s. As a peninsula with many bays that could harbor ships, Brittany has a long history of seafaring, commercial fishing, and shipbuilding. Morlaix participated in the maritime trades and also was an important center of linen production and tobacco processing. Morlaix is in the area of Brittany known as Finistère (literally “land’s end). Finistère lies just across the channel from England and so has been militarily important as well as being heavily involved in smuggling and piracy. The largest city in Finistère is the port of Brest; Morlaix has a population of about 18,000.


A unique house form, the pontalez house, developed in Morlaix. Pontalez is a variant of pont allez or “bridge access,” which refers to a peculiar form of staircase and balcony. This is a bit difficult to describe, but I will do my best. The pontalez house is a town house of 3 or 4 stories, narrow across its front, but extending quite far back. In the center of the house is a grand hall that rises all the way to the roof. The two side walls of the house are of stone, with a large hearth on one side of the central hall. On the opposite side is a spiral staircase of wood, providing access to wooden balconies, or bridges (ponts) that lead to a tier of rooms at the front and at the back of the house. The fronts of the pontalez houses are half-timbered, with the upper floors often projecting out a bit over the lower ones. Commonly, statues of wood and stone decorated the facades. Some of the old houses in the cities of Brittany have facades of slate, something I have not seen elsewhere. Many of Morlaix’s houses have businesses on the main floor, making for a somewhat jarring contrast between street level and the view above. We enjoyed walking around the city on a gray afternoon and going into one of the pontalez houses.


In the 1860s, the railroad came to Morlaix, and a huge stone viaduct was built to carry the railway across the deep valley. This two-tiered viaduct (obviously based on Roman models) has become a symbol of the city. The city’s motto—s’ils te mordent, mords les!—is also notable. The translation is “if they bite you, bite ‘em back!”




Teebie (that's Tibi in French) is making himself quite at home here in France. He has taken quite a shine to Christy and likes nothing more than sitting on her lap when she is at the computer. Here he is waiting patiently for her return, or perhaps trying to log onto a web site where he can meet French dogs. Teebie, along with most everyone else hereabouts, feels that spring has yet to fully establish herself and he longs for more sunshine.


I am just beginning to think seriously about my project of making a catalogue of the library at the Chateau de Kerivon. The library is a wonderland for a bibliophile, with perhaps 3,000 leather-bound volumes housed in wall cupboards. The room is at the center of the second floor of the chateau, paneled in wood painted light green. The books date mainly to the 18th century. The collection includes all of the classic French writers--Racine, Corneille, Moliere, Boileau, La Fontaine, Rousseau, Buffon--many histories of Brittany and France, theology and sermon collections, translations of Greek and Roman authors, novels, memoirs of voyages of discovery (Captains Cook and Bougainville), and much more that I have yet to discover. It will be a labor of love to make the catalog of the collection.


On Friday we are heading to Nîmes and Aix-en-Provence for a two-week conversational French course and to view the traces of the Roman presence in Nîmes. Before that, we will spend a couple of days on the southern coast of Brittany, most particularly looking at the prehistoric site at Carnac, which has some three thousand menhirs (standing stones) erected more than 6,000 years ago. Christy has been a wonderful host, but understandably we are looking forward to being in our own place once we return from the South on May 20.

First Saturday in Bretagne

Although we will be living in Lannion, we are staying with our friend Christy in Perros-Guirec, a few kilometers away. Like many of the place names in Brittany, Perros-Guirec comes from the Breton language not French. Perros is a corruption of Pen Ros (head of the rock), and Guirec was the name of an evangelist saint (from Ireland or Wales) who is said to have landed at Pen Ros in a stone tub in the 7th century. Perros is on the coast, with a sheltered harbor that has been used for millennia. Perros was a sleepy fishing village in the mid-nineteenth century, when it was discovered by well-to-do French families as a great place for sea bathing and boating in the summer. Today, the population of Perros increases by a factor of 8 during the resort season. The town is full of stone villas with views of the bay and the sea and an idiosyncratic church with a dome and pyramidal spire (above left) , dedicated to St. Jacques le Majeur. On Monday, we will present ourselves to the town hall here (at right) and apply for our carte de séjour, which will allow us to remain in France for a year.

Because of the Gulf Stream, Brittany has a very mild climate, with plenty of rain. This allows palm trees to grow along with vegetation typical of the American South—azaleas, magnolias, rhododendrons, and camellias, to name four. Christy’s villa is called Les Azalées, for the azaleas in her yard (below).






Mostly we have been getting over jet lag and looking for an apartment to rent. We think that we have found one, but I will wait until we have signed the lease before describing it. I am struggling to express myself in French, something that comes more easily to Madeline. I make many mistakes, but plunge into conversation from time to time anyway, and usually can make myself understood. I surprise myself with the ease with which I can read French newspapers and magazines—the difficulty comes in transforming the words on the page into sounds in my mouth.


Yesterday we had lunch with Christy and Gérald at his Château, the Château de Kérivon, a fine stone mansion dating to about 1740 overlooking Lannion. Later, we took a short drive to Yaudet, where the Tréguer, the river that runs through Lannion, empties into the sea (below). There is a sheltered bay at this point, which attracted iron-age Celts and Roman settlers as well as Viking raiders. We followed a marked trail that took us past ruins ranging in date from the 1st century A.D. to a 19th century customs house. There is, of course, a church at Yaudet. We admired the outside, but by failing to view the interior, missed the “Virgin in bed,” a statue of Mary in an actual bed, the linens of which are changed each year in May. Ample reason to return.


Last night we took in a French movie, “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies.” This is a newly released espionage parody movie, based on a series of wildly popular French novels. Austin Powers with a French twist. No English subtitles, so I understood maybe one-third of the dialogue. Fortunately, it was played very broadly for laughs, and I had no trouble following the (quite silly) plot. The hero finds himself in 1955 Cairo, where he has to foil a plot by an Islamicist sect (the Eagles of Cheops) to overthrow Nasser and seize the Suez Canal. The filmmakers expertly parody the graphic style of the titles and the music of 1960s James Bond movies. I noticed two homages à Hitchcock: scenes recalling the one in “North by Northwest” where a man is knifed at the UN and falls into Cary Grant’s arms and the fireworks scene from “To Catch a Thief.”

Today we are chez Christy, reading and web surfing on a day of steady light rain.

We made it!

Well, we're finally in France! We left Atlanta on Tuesday, April 18 at 7:20pm after a very busy day packing up and mailing the last few boxes to go to France and delivering the last few things to our storage locker. We dropped off our rental car and got a ride to the airport from our friend Jeanie, who had been kind enough to let us live with her for the previous week and a half. Thanks, Jeanie!

The flight was on time and went fine. Our little dog Teebie tolerated being confined to his carrier better than we feared he might. He whimpered a little at one point during the flight (he had to ride under the seat and I think he was lonely there), so we took the carrier out and Bob kept it, with Teebie in it, on his lap for the rest of the flight. This seemed to soothe the little guy – at least he stopped whimpering.

We arrived at the airport (Charles de Gaulle) in Paris around 9:45 Wednesday morning and took the Air France bus to the Gare Montparnasse, one of Paris’ railway stations. From there we took a TGV (high-speed train) to the town of Guingamp in Brittany, near the town of Lannion where we will be living. Our friend Christy picked us up in her car and brought us to her house in Perros-Guirec, a beach community not far from Lannion.

We’ve now been here for 48 hours, and despite jet lag we’ve been very busy. Yesterday we opened a bank account (with Christy’s help – it’s useful to have contacts!), looked at an apartment, and tried to apply for our green card but found that the office that does that wasn’t open until this morning. Today we shopped for mattresses and looked at more apartments. We tried again to apply for our green card, only to find that we were going to the wrong office for it. Monday we’ll try again, this time in (we hope!) the right place.

We are zeroing in on a place to live and may have the decision made by the end of the weekend. We have two more places to see tomorrow (Saturday), but after that we may be ready to decide. So far the first place we looked at is at the top of the list. We’ll tell you more about it (and post pictures) if we end up renting it.

We’ve been eating very well. Our friend Christy is a fabulous cook, and so far we’ve feasted on fish curry, salmon in pastry, flourless chocolate cake, fresh strawberries, great French bread, wonderful salads, and lots of excellent cheese. We’re hoping to avoid getting as big as houses on this new high-fat, high-cholesterol diet! Maybe the red wine will help…

Teebie has adjusted to his new life in France “d’un facon sublime”. He has discovered French cats, and he hates them just as much as he hates American ones. He also barks at magpies, which I think he suspects are some kind of weird two-legged, long-tailed cat. He has made friends with everyone he’s met so far. In short, he’s acting just like he does at home.

The weather here has been cool, gray, and somewhat wet. It’s unusually cold for this time of year, we’re told, so it should get more springlike any day now. This part of Brittany is actually subtropical, with magnolias, palm trees, huge camellia bushes, and lots of other warmth- and water-loving plants. It may not feel like spring, but many of the flowering trees are covered with blossoms.

Stay tuned for more news and some pictures.

Party time!

We had a farewell party! Here are some pictures...

Here's the building where the Krause Gallery, the location of our party, is located:




















Some serious partiers:














Allen and Margo Bohnert:



















Bob entertains Jennifer Dickey:



















A merry gathering of country folk:














More wild carousing:














Scott and Madeline take a breather:














The countdown to our departure is getting shorter: just three more days until we leave. Last night we threw a farewell party for ourselves at the Krause Gallery in Castleberry Hill, a neighborhood just southwest of downtown Atlanta. It was a great success; many of our friends came and celebrated with us. It was also bittersweet because we won’t see many of these people again before we leave.

This past week has been hectic for me (Madeline). I’ve been doing a lot of running around, putting the last few items in storage and taking care of lots of little logistical details, like finalizing our reservations for our French course in Provence (more about this below) and packing and mailing boxes of clothes, linens, books, CDs and other essentials to France.

We aren’t taking a huge amount of stuff, but since we’ll be there for a year, there’s more we want to take with us than will fit in even a large suitcase. Our boxes will go by surface mail and will take 4 to 6 weeks to arrive, but surface mail is so much cheaper than airmail that it’s worth the wait!

Bob had a somewhat more relaxing week; he went to visit family in Florida for a few days. He has an aunt and uncle and several cousins who live in the area around Daytona Beach, and he hung out with them and visited the John F. Kennedy Space Center, which was a lot of fun.

We have a few more things on our to-do list. We’re still trying to find the right sedative for our little dog, Teebie. The vet recommended that he be sedated for the plane ride, which may be stressful for him if he doesn’t have something to calm him down. Yesterday we tested a drug called acepromazine on him, and it had no effect at all! Today we’ll call the vet and find out if we should give him a higher dosage of that or something else.

There are still a few more boxes to mail to France, a few more boxes to put in storage, and a few more things to donate to charity. And there are a few more things we just need to throw away!

About the French class we’re going to take: we felt that it would be helpful to have some intensive instruction in the language soon after we arrive. We both speak French reasonably well, but we’re out of practice. So we’ve signed up to take a two-week class at a language school in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. The course will go from May 8 until May 19.

It’s a combination of three hours of classroom study in the morning and field trips in the afternoon. The theme is “discovering Provence”. We’ll visit various interesting places (Marseille, Avignon, the Pont du Gard), as well as learning about the region’s cuisine and wine. This year is the 100th anniversary of the death of Paul Cezanne, the famous painter from Aix, and a number of the activities in our course will center around him: we’ll visit his studio, and go on a Cezanne-related hike, among other things. If you’re interested in finding out more about this, here’s the web address: http://www.is-aix.com/article.php?id_article=157. It should be lots of fun. Watch this blog for details and photos!

The house is sold!

After a frantic week of getting rid of the things we didn’t sell in our yard sale, packing, taking boxes and some furniture to the storage locker, and cleaning up the house, we finalized the sale of our house this past Friday, the 7th. Whew!

While in many ways it’s sad to say good-bye to the house into which so much time, energy, and money was poured, it’s also very freeing to be ex-homeowners. A great feeling of lightness and liberation quickly descended upon us after the closing, not to mention absolute exhaustion!

Yesterday we went to the High Museum of Art in midtown Atlanta to see the new addition by Renzo Piano that was recently finished. We had lunch while we were there, and sat outside in the beautiful spring weather eating our sandwiches. We suddenly realized that it was the first time in a long time that we were doing something purely for fun, not related to selling the house or moving! It was a great feeling.

We get on the plane for France on April 18, a week from tomorrow, and it’s hard to believe it’s finally about to happen. We have a number of loose ends to tie up this week, and we’re throwing ourselves a farewell party on Friday night, but otherwise life is more relaxed than it’s been in a while.

The weather in Atlanta is spectacular; after a very violent series of storms on Friday night, the air has been crystal clear and the weather has been balmy and sunny every day. The dogwoods and the azaleas are in full bloom, and everything sparkles. It’s a great time to arrive in Atlanta and a great time to leave it as well, in its most beautiful season.