Good “Marne”ing to Luxembourg
June 4: Continuing eastward and a minor and major serendipity. We are still sticking to small roads which today was some fairly monotonous wheat fields, broken up with delightful little villages every 10 to 20 kms. The first was a rest stop in Sezanne, where we came upon the Saturday market in the square. These markets are a bit more expensive than the supermarkets, but much more fun observing and interacting with the locals.
Shortly after Sezanne we pulled over in a wheat field to brew up some coffee. As we were relaxing, a little white van pulled up behind us, and an older fellow got out and approached us. We thought maybe he was going to chastize us for parking in his little wheatfield road, but it turned out he lives nearby and was checking to see if we were lost.
We ended up chatting for almost half an hour with him quite enjoying the challenge of communicating with us. He spoke no English, so I was rather pleased to manage a 30 minute conversation with him, even if it was only 5 minutes of actual content. He began by talking about something to do with a carrot and a monument. We have course figured that he was trying to say something else altogether, but once we started looking at a map he showed us a nearby World War I monument which turned out to be quite extraordinary, and indeed did resemble a big carrot, if not something else of similar shape. So we drove towards the area that he was describing to us, and we discovered this huge pillar like thing, which is a monument to the 1914 victory of the French over the Germans in the Marne.
I wasn’t really aware that it was in this particular valley that the French stopped the German advance in 1914 at a cost of some 185,000 lives, resulting in the bogged down trench warfare of the next 3 years. I can’t help but reflect on the current circumstances in Ukraine. Madness!
We put another couple hours driving under our belt (literally hard on the butt on the bumpy twisty roads). One sidelight was this amazing gothic basilica that confronted us in an otherwise nothing little town.
Following a couple of nights in parking lot free campings, we are happy to be in a lovely little orchard campground for only 14 Euro. On to Metz tomorrow.
May 5: some exciting weather with some very heavy downpours last night and this afternoon. But then you BCers know all about that.
WARNING: The next few paragraphs are for car nuts. Skip to the Metz section below if you’re not a nut.
I read about a car show in a little town just south of Metz, and it had an art show attached, so Pat was happy. There were only about 20 cars, but some were pretty classic. There were 5 or 6 British cars, including the three wheel Morgan with the engine out front.
Some nice classic French cars including the rare roadster version of the Citroen traction avant… the blue one with the two inverted V on the grill. The blue sporty looking thing where I am looking at the engine is a rare Panhard coupe.very unusual front wheel drive with two horizontally opposed cylinders. I managed a bit of a chat in French with the owner.
The art show was a mixed bag of local artists. It was supposed to be automotive related, but only about half the works were. Some were really good, others not so.
Metz: OK, if you’ve managed to either read or bypass all the car stuff then here we are in Metz we were going to stay at the municipal campground, but the office was closed for lunch hour so we settled in to the free camping parking lot right next-door, and right on the banks of the Moselle river. We have now decided that this free camping is just as nice if not nicer than the paid campground, so here we are for the night.
It rained hard enough I we are having lunch that you may not be able to tell the difference between the windshield and the Moselle River. It did stop raining long enough for us to have a nice little ride through the town, and to the Pompidou Metz art gallery which turned out to be a wonderful experience. The gallery was featuring a temporary exhibit of the works of Eva Aepelli. We both agree that this exhibit was one of the most breathtaking and emotional art exhibit that either of us have seen. We are surprised that we have never heard of her before, and especially because she was apparently such an influence on such as Andy Warhol and other 1960s and 70s avant garde artists. Her primary milieu is fabric art, in the form of fabric sculptures and costuming.
Particularly awesome, in the best sense of the word, was her piece entitled The Table. It is her reflection on The Last Supper, but with an entirely different perspective. The central figure, instead of Christ, is Death. Her notes indicate that the intention is to reflect the hypocrisy of elements of Christianity especially in light of warfare. The faces on the apostles were incredibly emotionally evocative.
Comments
Post a Comment