Bon voyage!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm departing on my next adventure. I'll be spending two weeks exploring France with my friend Carmen.

Brief Itinerary:

4/23-4/28: Guernsey-a small island between France and England (we will have to switch our money to pounds) where we are staying at a cheapish resort and relaxing for 5 days. We plan on exploring the island by bus and by bike, and we are excited about taking advantage of the plethora of museums. Of note are the WWII museum and the postal museum (?).

4/28: Night Train to Antibes (South of France)

4/29: Day exploring Antibes, Night in hostel in Nice.

4/29-5/2: Nice-decent-sized city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. We will be sun bathing and swimming, exploring the city and its ancient ruins, and braving a hostel with possible cockroach inhabitants. Should be fun!

5/2-5/5: Train to Bayeux, a small town next to Caen, that is the only city in Normandy to have escaped the ravages of World War II bombings. We will be visiting the beaches of Normandy and being very American. As for lodgings, we will be trying out Couch Surfing for the first time with a very nice 50-something French woman who is picking us up at the train station and feeding us. Yes!

5/5-5/6: Caen- home of one of the most epic WWII museums in Europe. Rick Steves gives it 3 stars (absolutely must-see!). Do you see a theme here? Couch Surfing some more, this time with a young and hip 30-something who enjoys sky-diving and other extreme adventure sports. Should make for good conversation.

5/6: Return to Rennes

5/7: Versailles. I will see it now in full bloom with fountain shows. Plus my architecture prof is taking us so she should provide us with oodles of good information. So excited!

So that is the trip. I will be without internet for the next two weeks, so I will update with some anecdotes and pictures when I get back.

Tombée amoreuse de Bretagne or Falling in Love with Brittany

In the last two months or so, I have come to the conclusion that Brittany is a pretty wonderful part of France. Two years ago when I first discussed study abroad with my advisor and French professor, Madame Barjasteh, I was somewhat disappointed by the options available to us. We could, of course, go to Paris, but that was more expensive and did not offer a very good program. Our second option was Angers, a city I vaguely knew, and that, again, did not offer a good program. Rennes, she told me authoritatively, was the place to go. All French-majoring Oles went to Rennes, after all. The program there was fantastic and the city was young and vibrant. Rennes? I thought. Where the hell is Rennes?

Boarding the plane in January I knew almost nothing about Rennes or Brittany (Bretagne). What little I knew was exclusively related to student life in Rennes. I had looked at a map and found my future French home, inland of the north-western arm of France that reaches out into the Atlantic and the English Channel. But beyond these small facts, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Since that day on the plane I have learned quite a lot about my home city and the region in which it is located. Between my history of French architecture course, cultural enrichment run by the program, and my daily interactions with the people of this place, I have gotten a taste (literally) of what Breton culture is all about. Because Brittany remained independent from France all the way up to the end of the 15th century, Brittany developed its own culture completely separate from the rest of the country. Also, because of its role as a trading port and its connections (both peaceable and warring) with England it has a slightly Celtic and even multi-cultural flare.

Voilà my encounters with this unique culture:

1. Language: Breton is a language with Celtic roots that is spoken in small pockets of Brittany. The region insisted on maintaining its own language long after it became part of France, but modernization has slowly deteriorated the popularity of the language (which is absolutely bizarre and is hardly related to French at all). Still, it is 200,000 strong today.

2. Food and beverages: I have recently fallen in love with palets bretons au beurre and galettes bretons--or as they say in Breton: Bretonse koekjes--which are little shortbread cookies that come in varying thicknesses. Another Breton classic is cidre, apple cider that (I believe) is brewed somewhat like beer only with apples so that it is slightly alcoholic. Cidre is traditionally served in little clay bowls (this is how we drink cidre in the Berthaut household), though I also like drinking it from the glass in my bar of choice at the moment, O'Connel's Irish Pub.

3. Dance: A couple of weeks ago I had the fabulous opportunity to attend a Breton traditional dance. At Fest-Noz, Celtic-sounding music is played on harps, wooden flutes, and fiddles of some sort and the gathered population (a mixed bag of old, fiercely Breton couples who cruise around the dance floor with confidence and young, crazily dressed hippies making up the moves as they go) link pinkie fingers to form huge circles and chains that snake around the room. As far as the steps go, I choose to just hop from one foot to the other to the rhythm of the music, which seems to work pretty well until one of the intense Breton dancers breaks into your chain to teach you the moves: "Non! Gauche, droite, gauche, droite (left, right, left, right)."

4. Music: Maxime is taking piano right now in school and he has to learn a Breton song called "Tri Martolod." I LOVE this song--it's very catchy and very Breton-y.

Here is my version of choice on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJwI2INm92M

It is a must hear! And I believe the flag being waved in the crowd is the Breton flag of old, but I haven't confirmed this yet.

I had a particularly warm and fuzzy moment when the song came over the bus loudspeakers as we were driving from Carnac to Vannes over the Breton countryside two weekends ago.

Rennes is the capitol of the region and as almost as old as Rome. The remnants of the Roman wall that used to surround the city can still be seen near the canal. Rennes was then a medieval stronghold and village, and now is a bustling city of some 200,000+ inhabitants. It is the smallest city in the world with a métro, which runs on one line between the north and south of the city in about 18 minutes. As a thriving college city, it is rather gauche (left/liberal in English as liberal means that you're conservative in French). It's not very touristy because, as I myself proved, no one knows it exists except for the French and maybe some Europeans in the know, so it is truly what a French city would be if tourism wasn't its number one industry. Despite the lack of tourists, Rennes boasts hundreds of restaurants, bars, and cafés, a few good museums (which I have yet to visit), parks, move theaters, an opera house and theater company, and lots of government buildings. Translation: it's a pretty awesome place to be, and I'm glad I listened to Professor Barjasteh and followed in the footsteps of my fellow French-majoring Oles. And, if I do decide to return to France to teach, I will be more than happy to be in Rennes again.

Reflections on Dominant Culture and the Mother Tongue

First of all, here are the photos as promised. I hope this works: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=110741&id=1013408537&saved#!/album.php?fbid=1866210767682&id=1013408537&aid=110741

Today the météo promised a sunny day in the 20s (Celsius--about 70 Fahrenheit), but alas, it is gray and a tad chilly. Carole and I were outside on the patio enjoying reading the newspaper and completing a Sudoku respectively when rain drops began to fall on our heads, and we retreated indoors. What a bummer.

Saturdays are always very relaxing for me. I sleep in late, then do my minimal homework to the sound of Maxime playing King Kong on the XBox. Carole and Manu make a nice lunch which we enjoy together before the kids have swim practice. We spend the afternoon relaxing, reading, and playing games before we have yet another nice dinner, sometimes in the living room during the nightly news, other times in the kitchen. 

Last weekend we decided to mix it up a bit: we went to play laser tag as a family. The laser tag place was just like laser tag places in the States. We entered the maze and suited up in our flashing vests, and Maxime declared that since he and I were both on the yellow team we should stick together and help each other. So I followed Maxime through the dark, twisting corridors of the labyrinth, aiming my laser gun at all moving lights which signified that a person was lurking there. We especially enjoyed running into Manu, Carole, and Charlotte (all on the red team) and provoking a bit of a family battle. Maxime and I won every time.

What shocks me most about this experience, and indeed about my experience in France in general, is how much English I see and hear everywhere. When I got tagged by a laser in the maze, my vest would chant "Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up." Instead of having "les équipes rouges, bleus, et jaune," the labels "Red Team," "Blue Team," and "Yellow Team" distinguished the battling parties. The sign next to the counter in the lobby advertised "Bachelor Party" and "Birthday Party" deals. In Paris, one of the most visited places in the world and an international center, English is only to be expected. But in Rennes, a rather small city in the heart of Brittany, the dominance of English comes as somewhat as a shock. While most of the menus here are solely in French (though it's definitely not uncommon to have a bilingual menu), the Rennais (people from Rennes) themselves know a lot of English. The other day I was in the grocery store and gave the clerk incorrect change which she took without comment. When she didn't give me back the 10 centimes I had overpaid her, I blubbered in French that I had given her incorrect change. Smiling at me she said, "Oh, are you English? You can speak English to me, ok?" Once they figure out you're a foreigner, the French speaking ceases immediately.

Before coming to France I was determined to prove to myself that the United States is not the center of the universe like it thinks it is. The world is much bigger than the stretch of land between New York City and Los Angeles. In some ways, I was right: the French would be horrified by the thought of America at the center of the world. They have their own ways of being, thinking, and doing, and we have ours. But the fact remains that the music I hear in the métro belongs to almost exclusively American artists; the French news, when it's not obsessing over the nuclear disaster in Japan or the upcoming election, focuses on American pop culture and what Obama's been up to lately; the majority of French students, beginning as early as seven years old, choose English as their second language; The Simpsons is Maxime and Charlotte's favorite show, and Gladiator, E.T., and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer sit on the movie shelf in the living room; most of the information that pops up on the computer is in English, as are nearly all the prompts for the new XBox. What I have discovered here is that the United States is a cultural and political super power--though I'm not sure that's necessarily something to be proud of. Quite to the contrary, I find it a little frightening. If there's one thing that history has taught us (to follow the French method of always looking to the past), it's that power is a dangerous thing. To me, the most terrible thing about the United States' power is its ability to transform hundreds of years of cultural creation into the somewhat homogeneous product of a single nation--not that this has happened yet, but it is definitely inching that direction. I understand now why France has a language committee run by the government to keep French safe from the claws of the American English mainstream.

Speaking of the English mainstream, I think it's time for me and Charlotte to play a game of American Guess Who? (Qui est-ce?) or maybe some Life (Destin). We'll see what she chooses...