Reims, Épernay and Soccer!

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This weekend was one of the excursions sponsored by CEA, who arranged my housing and enrollment in Paris. The trip was to the Champagne region, with main stops in the cities of Reims, Épernay, and Meaux with a night being spent in the small town of Montmort.

First we visited Reims. The Cathedral at Reims (Notre-Dame de Reims) is where the Clovis was baptized on Christmas Eve in the year 496 by Saint Remi, thus establishing a Christian tradition for the Kingdom of the Franks. Clovis wanted to be baptized and a huge crowd had gathered because it was a huge deal for the monarch to become Christian. The story goes that there were so many people present and it was so crowded that the person bringing the chrism (holy oil) to Saint Remi couldn’t get through the crowd. This posed quite the problem, for the King couldn’t be baptized without the oil. Saint Remi prayed and (I believe I’m remembering this correctly from the tour guide) a dove miraculously appeared carrying the oil to Saint Remi and then departing for the heavens. For more than a thousand years (until 1825) thereafter, the Kings of France would travel to Reims to be anointed with the chrism from the Holy Ampulla. This anointing showed the people (supposedly) that the sovereigns were chosen by God, and therefore the people were less likely to oppose the monarch. The same chrism was used for all of the coronations and still exists today in the museum next door to the cathedral, though I’m told it isn’t so oily but rather a solid after 1500 years.

At one of the entrances to the cathedral is the “Smiling Angel of Reims (Rheims),” which is one of the most well-known and best examples of French Gothic sculpture. She is really quite beautiful. I’m not sure what caused the holes in her wings, but the popular story in our group was that they are bullet holes from when the cathedral sustained massive damage during World War I and also some more damage during World War II. Luckily the cathedral has been repaired from the damages brought during the wars, though it still looks a bit in need of repair. The cathedral was restored with great help from Americans (the Rockefeller Foundation). In World War II, Reims was the sight of the signing of the unconditional surrender of Germany on May 7, 1945. The cathedral was also the sight of the Franco-German reconciliation on the 8th of July, 1962, when De Gaulle and the German chancellor attended services together (there is a picture on this page of the plaque commemorating the event).

We also visited Épernay, which is one of the leaders of Champagne production. Here we got to visit the cellars of Moët & Chandon, which was founded in 1747 and makes more champagne than anyone else in the world: they even claim that at least one of their bottles is opened every single second somewhere in the world. They have had many famous customers, including Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson and nearly all the royal houses of Europe use their product, and I’m sure you would recognize their best-known label, Dom Perignon. Dom Perignon was the name of the Benedictine monk who supposedly discovered the process of making sparkling wine and is thus called the "Father of Champagne." Just this company has more than 80 miles of underground cellars, a portion of which we had the opportunity to visit. Another interesting thing is that while anyone can make sparkling wine, only sparkling wine made in this small region in France can be officially called “Champagne.”

We visited a chocolate factory and saw how they make these chocolates with liquor (even champagne) inside. Later that night we had a wonderful dinner (with wine of course) and spent the night at a hotel in the small town of Montmort. It was such a charming little town, and I really enjoyed staying there, although there wasn’t much to do. The next day we went to another vineyard, this time a small family-run operation. There we had a demonstration on different influences that you can taste while drinking champagne.

Later in the day we arrived in Meaux, to attend a presentation on cheese-making and also a cheese-tasting. Meaux is one of the two places that is certified to make official Brie cheese. The cheese presentation was okay interesting, and the tasting/wine drinking was okay too. I didn’t particularly like the Brie-de-Meaux cheese, but surprise suprise, we had more wine to accompany the cheese. (Are you starting to see how common and popular wine is here? Some people have it at every meal except breakfast.)

We then left and caught the heavy traffic of everyone trying to get back into Paris after spending weekends in the country. Another thought from this trip was how nice the roads were. Imagine the nicest interstates in Oklahoma or even the whole country . . . that is the kind of roads we were driving on (I’m not saying it is like that everywhere, but at least in that region it is true). The Canadian teacher of my “Architecture of Paris” class even made a joke about how the French may do a lot of things backwards, but they do know transportation. He was referring to the state of the roads in France, the Paris Metro (subway), and also their rail system (they apparently are leaders in high-speed train technology).

I also got to go to a soccer match this week. France qualified for the 2006 World Cup by beating Cyprus 4-0 in a qualifying match at Stade de France. The stadium is really nice and holds about 80,000 people. The mood was electrifying (because France was winning of course). It cost about 30 Euros for my ticket (with 1 Euro being worth roughly $1.25), but it was well worth it to see a match in such an exciting venue. Stade de France is in the outskirts of Paris and was built to host the 1998 World Cup finals in which France was the champion. Something funny from the game: there was this man next to us (my roommate went too) who kept saying “Oh la la, ce n’est pas possible” or something like that. I think this would be like an American saying, oh my, this can’t be (happening). Anyways, there are some stereotypical things that you expect French people to say. These include “C’est la vie” (that’s life), “On hon hon” (big nasal snorting sounds), and “Oh la la.” I really don’t hear either of the first two things ever (except from visitors to France); I do hear “oh la la” fairly regularly, but it was cracking me up for this guy next to us to keep saying it, again and again, and again.

I’m sorry I haven’t posted sooner (this is actually typed like a month after I was in the Champagne region), but I am going to try to do better. . . I have the pictures already uploaded for when I went to Barcelona the next weekend and partly loaded from when I went to London two weekends later, but I am still working on writing the stories

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