Friday evening I had my second UC Visontin practice (the name of the Ultimate team). My arrival at the practice was complicated by the fact that the car belonging to Fred, my ride, broke down right after he arrived around the corner from my apartment. We had to call the team captains and they brought a handful of people to help push the car into an actual parking space. As of this evening the car was still there (I think Fred said his mechanic doesn't work on the weekends). But we got there eventually! This practice is inside a gym. In Europe, there are two seasons of Ultimate: indoor and outdoor. Personally I don't really like playing inside, but I guess winter is so cold and so long that most parts of Europe wouldn't get to play without an indoor league.
After practice about half of the team (we were only 15 or so on Friday evening, but you play 5 v. 5 indoor) went to a bar/brasserie. Someone explained to me that there are really only 2 big bars in the c-v, so whenever they go out it's to one of those. Luckily both are only a short walk from where I live. The special of the night was Maredsous 10, a Belgian beer which is sweet but also very strong. One was plenty! I had a great time though -- it was good to see that I could hang out and chat easily with people from the team outside of playing Ultimate (where there is a lot less talking required).
Then Saturday was the big apple festival at the Coudel's (see blog title: "A Day at the Coudel's")! I arrived in Leisle around noon and, a bit to my chagrin, they were already well into the process. Apparently they picked most of the apples on Friday and started pressing them very early on Saturday morning. So while I got to participate for about 2 hours, that was only a small percentage of the total. Here are some pictures:
Adding apples to the slicing/mashing component. To me the apple-mashing machine appeared to be identical to the machine the Davey Tree people use to cut up branches that fall in the street, just smaller.
Diced/mashed apple bits spurting out into the tubs below:
The pressing element: you heap handfuls of the mashed apples into a mold, lay a piece of cheese-cloth on top, then add another layer. The metal bar at the top has a winch attached, so that the bar descends and presses the apple bits down tightly, extracting all of the juice:
Turning the winch below. The cheese cloth is brown, which is why you can't see the layers of mashed apples:
And the juice flows into the waiting buckets:
And then the contents of the bucket are poured into these:
Then around 3pm we went back to the house (this whole process was taking place in the yard and barn of a house-turned-hostel on the other side of the village) for a giant meal. 19 people necessitated two tables, and we had a sumptuous meal including a salad of beets, endives, apples, and pine nuts, then a lamb, apricot, and fig tajine over couscous, then the requisite cheese, bread, coffee, and cake.
We spent most of the rest of the afternoon just lazing around the house, chatting, playing games, reading. A little later some people went back to start pasteurizing the juice (all but a few of the 400 bottles would be pasteurized so that they could be drunk throughout the year, not just in the next two weeks). The pasteurizing process really only required three people, so we couldn't all work there at once, but I got to see it before I left (it just meant heating the apple juice, small barrels at a time, to a certain temperature for a certain amount of time).
I took a train back to Besançon a little before 7pm and turned in early. Then this morning I went to a service at the Église Reformée de Besançon (a protestant church). It's in the c-v, right by art museum in the Place de la Republique. It's a really neat chapel: probably about the same size as my church at home's sanctuary (without the balcony), but made of stone with vaulted ceilings. I'll have to find out more, but I bet the chapel itself was once a Catholic church.
I was really surprised by how many young people there were there! I went to church once in Dijon and was wholly unimpressed by how dingy the space was and how cryptic the service seemed to be (although possibly it was my own shortcomings in comprehension that made it so). There were probably 45-50 people there this morning and the majority appeared to be under 40 years old. This is certainly unusual for churches in France, at least based on everything I've ever heard. We sang probably 8-9 hymns throughout the service -- they were much shorter than hymns I've sung at services in the US. At home I've often thought the hymns have too many verses, but today I saw the value in having 4-5 versus instead of 2-3. It takes about two for the congregation to get a hang of the rhythm, and with these hymns they were over before we really ever sang them in unison. The sermon was on the victory at Jericho (Joshua 6) and how the "peaceful" victory can be a metaphor for approaching the problems we encounter in our own lives. Don't ask me to go any further into detail than that, not only did I have a bit of trouble following the sermon, but there was a baby two rows behind me that squawked intermittently throughout the service (they did invite the children to go to Sunday school but either that's not available for infants or these parents didn't want to go that route, because the crying definitely lasted the whole service). Despite the small-child wailing, I really enjoyed the service and will definitely go back again.
After church, I spent about 2 hours reading Au Bonheur des Dammes in Parc Micaud (I posted pictures of it in an earlier entry, it's the one right by the banks of the Doubs). I really like that park a lot!
Then at 3pm I met up with Candice and Laurie, two other assistants who are living together, at the Musee du Temps (Museum of Time) for a tour of the Palais de Granvelle, the building in which the museum is located. It was the "palace" (I put it in quotes because it's closer to my idea of a French chateau than a palace) of Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle who became an advisor for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Fifth. The palais is remarkable because it was built in 1534 and reflects a style of architecture which was then unknown in the region. Nicolas Perrenot traveled extensively on behalf of Charles Quint, including to Spain and Italy, where he saw the new styles of architecture and art which would come to be known as the Renaissance period.
His palais is an adoption of those styles, with some modifications to make it work in Franche-Compte (the region where Besançon is located). For instance, it has severely angled roofs, to help channel the snow and rain which fall regularly. You can see too that the roof tiles were done in the toit bourguignon style (the patterned roof tiles which are commonly found in Bourgogne, the name of the region where Dijon is located). I'm sure that the roof tiles are more recent than 1534, but they're still cool. You can see from these pictures (to the left and right of this paragraph) that the attempt at Renaissance-inspired symmetrical design didn't last very long -- look at the photo on the left and follow the lines up from the columns on the ground floor to the inset columns on the floor above. Now look at the picture on the right -- oops! In fact none of the four "corners" of the building are set at right angles either, because of flaws in the execution of the design or because the foundations shifted after the building was constructed. The visite (tour) was really informative. It blows my mind that this structure has been in Besançon for nearly 500 years! After the tour we went up to the tower and I got to take some cool pictures of the city:
St. Jean's Cathedral! (and the construction cranes for the Citadel):
Looking down Grande Rue ("Big Street," or Main Street), past the toit bourguignon roof of the Palais de Granvelle:
A closer look down the same street:
And then the afternoon/evening turned into a series of (unexpected) social occaisons: one with Janice, an American and former assistant who now lives in Besançon with her French husband and two kids (don't worry Mom and Dad, I will come back). Candice had arranged to meet with her just to hear her advice and suggestions, and Laurie and I ended up tagging along. Then after dinner I met up with Pierre, the guy I sat next to on the train from Paris to Besançon. He was home again this weekend and sent me a message earlier today asking if I'd like to meet him for coffee during the time between when he arrived in Besançon from Pontarlier (the town about an hour away where his family lives) and when his train left for Paris. Traffic delays on his way to Besançon meant that we only chatted briefly in the gare café, but it was kind of cool to see him again. It's weird to think that it's only been two weeks since I arrived; it feels like I have been here forever -- and at the same time like I moved in with Steph and Charly last night. Then, when I got back from the gare, Steph and Charly asked if I would like to join them in their Sunday evening beer. I keep forgetting to write down the name... they've invited me to join them once before and we had the same beer; it's definitely a German variety but I can't recall the name. We also had some of the apple cake Steph made this afternoon -- it was quite good! Charly leaves tomorrow for Bordeaux. He'll be there for a week using the lab equipment at the university to analyze his soil cores in other ways than he can here.
And now I am off to bed! I'm not even going to check the word count as I most certainly over 1200 works, but thanks for sticking it out to the end! Tomorrow is my "first day of school" (observing) and I'm very excited! Bonne nuit (goodnight)!
No comments:
Post a Comment