Advertisement
Published: September 25th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Pau
Talk about a City on a Hill Ok, well maybe its not actually that big. Maybe it just feels that way because I don't know my way around yet. Oh, and for those of you who are interested, the town's name rhymes with "Toe", but you have to say it with your jaw dropped and your mouth really rounded in order to get that obligitory "French" sound. I know the other question you're all dying to ask, besides how you pronounce the name of my new home, is "When the heck is she going to stop updating!" Well, sorry to dissapoint you, but I'm making full use of the free wireless internet at the hotel while I have it, which means tant pis pour vous! (too bad for you).
So, having caught you up on my meandering and misadventures in Versailles, I'm getting ready to tackle my new home town. The first thing you should know about Pau is that it's high. When I walked out of the train station, I found I was looking UP at my new city of residence. You have to take either the funiculaire (big elevator), or climb a heck of a lot of stairs to reach the town itself. The first
Pau
The town center, where my hotel is, as well as all the chic stores I can't afford. thing you come to is the Boulevard des Pyrenees, so named for the spectacular view it affords of the Pyrenees mountain range. It's kind of like the Promenade des Anglaise in Nice, but at a much higher altitude. About 100 meters down the road is Pau's famous Chateau, where the good king Henri IV, first Bourbon king of France, was born. The town is really pretty in some areas, with fountains and gardens, but other parts have sort of the "dirty city chic" thing going for them. There's a bus system, but it looks hopelessly complicated and I doubt I'll ever figure it out, so I plan on walking a lot. Pau is in the Bearn region, so despite my being a part of the Bordeaux acadamie, I'm not really anywhere close to Bordeaux. I'm much closer to the Pays Basque, and I'm only 60 km from the Spanish border. Back in good ol' Henri's day, this part of the country was a seperate nation, knowns as Navarre.
Two of the English teachers from College Clermont, Laurence and Cecile, were there to meet me at the train station. Cecile is very funny, and has a biting sarcastic wit, but
The Pyrenees
Here's a shot from the Boulevard...it's ok, I know you're jealous she talks so quickly I can hardly understand her, and she's a little on the pessemistic side. Laurence is very sweet natured and rather quiet. She brought me a "chocolatine", which is what they call pain au chocolat in the south-west of France, to welcome me to Pau. They took me to my hotel, and Laurence said she'd be back after school closed to drive me around and show me the town some, and start looking into housing possibilities. When she picked me up, we drove by both the school, and we actually went in and toured College Clermont. The facilities leave a bit to be desired, as the school is kind of rundown looking, but I'm sure I'll like it once I start working there. After the grand tour of the town, Laurence dropped me off with a bunch of "petit annonces", or classified ads, to look through.
Like the diligent little apartment hunter that I am, I circled several of them and started making calls today. There are a couple things that might pan out, and Laurence and I are supposed to go and look more tomorrow. This morning, after making some calls and fueling myself with
The Chateau
Henri IV, the man himself a shot of espresso in a cafe, I walked around and explored the "centre ville", or center of town, a little on my own. Then, at 1 o'clock, I headed back down to the train station to meet two language assistants from Bordeaux who were coming to Pau for a couple of days. Of course, I really didn't know the town any better than they did to show them around, but it was nice to have some human contact for a few hours. Mitchell is from Florida and Evan is from Massachussetts, and they both seem like pretty cool people. walked along the Boulevard des Pyrenees and then went and toured the Chateau.
We had a phenomenal guide at the chateau. He was this cute little older man who was full of risque stories and jokes. The most impressive thing about the decore is probably all the tapestries. Sorry for the lack of photos, but because they're so old, photos with flash damage them, and without a flash you really can't see anything anyways. The colors are remarkably brilliant for being 500-odd years old, but that's because all the pigmentation is natural, from plants or animals. In the 19th
The Chateau
Not a bad place to be born, huh? century there were some ill-fated attempts to restore many old tapestries using silk and wool dyed with chemical elements. The french call these artificial threads the "dejeuner du soleil", or "sun's lunch", because sunlight just eats them alive and zaps all the color.
Now, as French historical figures go, Henri IV was definitely one of the more colorful. It takes a pretty strong man to survive having Catherine de Medici for a mother-in-law! To start with, he was born in a Tortoise shell...no joke. His grandfather rubbed his lips with garlic and wine, and so was born the head of the Bourbon dynasty that would last all the way up until the Revolution. He had a recorded 56 mistresses, but that only counts the ones who were members of the French nobility, so we don't know how many maids and shepardesses and foreign women figure into that count as well. There's a joke that everyone alive today in France is somehow related to Henri IV. There's a story of the time his current "maitresse en titre" was entertaining another lover when he came to see her. She quickly hid him under the bed, and Henri pretended not to notice. He sat down at the table to eat with his mistress, and halfway through the meal he gets up and chucks a piece of chicken under the bed saying "after all, everyone needs to eat". So, it goes without saying that Henri IV is sort of a personal favorite of mine among the French nobility. Dubya would probably call him a "flip flopper" for the number of times he went back and forth between Catholic and Protestant, but Henri was smart enough to know that "Paris vaut bien un messe", or in other words, that Paris (and the throne of France) was worth a mass.
In other news, I could defintely get to like the Bearn cuisine. Tonight I went to a creperie where I had a galette (savory crepe) with piperade, which is a mix of tomatoes, peppers, and onions sauteed with olive oil. They also eat a lot of duck here, something called "gesiers" (trust me, you don't want to know what that is), and lots of sheep's milk cheese, called Brebis.
So I'll leave you with these charming pictures of my new mountain home which I go comb the classifieds some more.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.052s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0261s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Murdock
non-member comment
Cool!
"sun's lunch" what a beautiful turn of phrase!