Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Hello Everyone,
Here is a slice of life on a barge in France.
We are presently in Reims, the champagne capital of France. Although this is not considered a beautiful city, there is the most spectacular cathedral here that I have ever seen! Today we visited the Piper wine caves – an amazing tour that took us about 4 stories underground where the wine is stored. We tasted three of their champagnes (the third, a rose, was served with rose biscuits), and took ourselves over to Tattinger where we bought four bottles untasted. Piper was not to our liking. Tomorrow we will visit Mumms and a few others. These are like little cities underground.
We will spend four days here which will be plenty of time to explore the city. All the cities we have visited have been quite damaged by the wars – evidence of the destruction is present everywhere and it is heart breaking to see the abbeys and churches with bullet holes in the walls; statues and works of art just destroyed. Those who remember, are grateful to the Americans and we have been treated very well everywhere we have been; at least we think we have – very few people speak English. It has been an interesting experience for me to be the sole communicator on the boat for everything from butter for bread at restaurants, to radioing ahead to the lock keepers to get permission to enter the locks. I have managed to have conversations with an elderly gentleman in a lock keepers house about the beauty of the Abbey at Vaucelles; with a Russian countess about the night she found an abandoned white kitten alongside the road, as well as asking for assistance with the various things we have needed for the boat. All this conjured up from my days of college French!
Dave’s friend, John, joined him in London a month ago to assist with the crossing of the channel, along with our London friend Arnold, the ships chief chef, bottle washer, raconteur and log- keeper, who departed from Bruges the day after I arrived. Matt, the electrician, crossed the channel with them and returned to London after the crossing. John left yesterday to go back to the States. Dave’s friends, let’s call them Abe and Babs, arrived on the 16th and joined us in Cambrai, they left for London yesterday to go to Wimbledon but will return tomorrow until the 6th of July. The scenario has been that Dave runs the boat with occasionally help from me and John. John and I handle the lines, Babs follows our course on the chart and Abe observes. A typical day is that we leave around 9 a.m. and travel until about 5. This usually takes us through about 10 locks a day. The locks are typically about 2 – 3 meters high. We have been through more up locks than down; both are about the same as far as handling the lines. The procedure is that John and I decide which bollards (big steel cylinders on the land alongside the inside of the locks) we can reach with the lines due to the placement of the bollards on the boat. Some of the locks have keepers, some we operate with a switch on the land when we get inside, obviously we have to be able to reach the switch. Throughout Belgium, the locks were huge and we would go in with commercial boats as well, so far in France, most of the locks just fit the Shenandoah. Those of you who know me, know that I can’t throw or catch worth a bean. So here we are – we have about one minute to lasso a bollard from the boat onto the land and get it tied onto the boat. If we are in a lock that goes up – in other words we enter and the sides of the lock are about 8 feet above us – that means that we have to throw the line up about 8 feet and secure it around the bollard, and keep the lines taut as the boat goes up in the lock. The locks take about 5 minutes to fill or empty. If we don’t keep the lines tight, the boat will bounce around in the lock and hit the sides. If we are going up, getting the lines off when we are finished the ascent, is a piece of cake as they are at the level of our feet. If we are going down we have to get the lines off the bollards and they are 8 feet above us. If the locks are particularly large, there are bollards in the wall along the way and we have to take them off and keep moving them up or down as the water rises or falls. Abe thought our line throwing skills were pretty funny until I let him try it – he said he would never again laugh at us. Depending upon the canal, some of the locks can be as close together as 1 kilometer. In between the locks we enjoy the scenery which is anything from farm land, factories, charming little villages, fields of wildflowers, and lots of grain silos. Often we see churches or abbeys in the distance. There are all sorts of birds and ducks, cottonwood trees blowing little fluffs of white lint all over us, and huge balls of mistletoe hanging from branches. Sometimes our day ends at a small town which may or may not have a store or restaurant, sometimes we just tie up alongside the canal or next to a lock.
We have gone through 3 tunnels which are just a tad wider than the boat. The first was 5 km long and all the boats line up according to size and are towed through tied to each other. It took 2 hours to get through and was very spooky as Dave had practically no steering ability yet had to try to steer so we didn’t hit the sides. The other tunnels we went through on our own and were much shorter, one was 1 km and the other 2 ½ km long. We have another 5 km tunnel coming up which we will go through on our own. The tunnels are one way so sometimes we have to wait for someone coming through the other way first, or wait for someone ahead of us.
We spent two days in Cambrai, which was a small city – we were able to provision the boat there although we did avoid the stores that sold horse meat. Every town has at least one of those – with a big horse on the sign just outside. No thanks. The groceries have varied from town to town as well as from Belgium to France. In Belgium there is no fresh milk, only boxed. Butter in France is sold in wax paper wrapping. Fruit and vegetables are everywhere and the artichokes are huge – about the size of a cantaloupe. We have found excellent béarnaise sauce in France in jars, great with the artichokes. Bruges is known for lace – which we saw being tatted by women sitting inside their doorways; and chocolate. It seemed that every other store in Bruges sold the most incredible and complex chocolates, they were works of art; it also seems that every window in the houses and canal barges alike, has lace curtains in every conceivable pattern. Bruges also has streets made of Belgian block (surprise) – they are very interesting to ride over on a bicycle – which everyone does in Belgium – it is amazing how many bicycles there are in Benelux, comparatively few so far in France. Cambrai was known for its little hard fruit candies; and I bought a bottle of violet syrup that is mixed with water for a most unlikely but lovely drink. We’ve cooked dinner on the boat about two thirds of the time and excursions into restaurants are an adventure. I would make John sample whatever I was eating and he would take a bit and chew and chew and chew, like small children do when they don’t like the taste of something but know they can’t spit it out. He would open his eyes very wide and just chew – on and on. It was the main source of my delight at many dinners. Abe insists on having butter with his bread. They just don’t serve anything with the bread here – not butter or oil like we are used to. Abe usually consumes about two baskets of bread and about a half a pound of butter with it – the problem is that he always asks for “bear” to go with his “pain” and not one waiter, yet, has any idea of what he wants. He persists until someone intervenes on his behalf. I have gone through the French dictionary to see what it could be that he is requesting but I have not a clue either.
The wine is amazing – you can find great bottles of wine in the store for $2 – $5! Lingerie stores are abundant – sort of like shoe stores in the US, although there are plenty of shoe stores here also. The lingerie is beautiful – all lacy and embroidered and expensive. It is not unusual to see women wearing tops with the lace of their bra showing above the top – might as well let someone know you’ve spent a fortune on that lingerie. Most of the women dress in khaki, black and or white, flat shoes are the fashion. The women we have seen do not dress up although there are lots and lots of stores with beautiful dresses and several shops that will make dresses for you; makeup and hair styling seems to be minimal also. John remarked that he had never seen so many unattractive women anywhere as he had on this trip.
Occasionally we have to walk a mile to the grocery store – we look like the homeless with our push trolley going through the streets laden with groceries. Today Dave bought “me” a new trolly that is purple with a top decorated with an image of lavender! One time John and I bicycled to the store and he insisted on buying a 12 pack of beer and several bottles of wine – I made him carry it home on his bike, hanging from the handle. Dave bought me the most beautiful bike that is sea foam green and only mine, not his, has a basket – so guess who gets to carry the groceries back? Only problem is that I have not been on a bike for years and years. After the first few rides my legs were feeling the pain and on one day I was biking with Dave and said I just couldn’t go any further – it was too hard – turned out that was because my wheel was turned all the way around and the wires to the brakes were clamped and I had been riding with the brakes on the whole time! Guess I won’t do that again; did I mention I hadn’t been on a bike in years??
Trying to experience living over here is very different from having a short-term visitor “mentality”. We are trying to learn the customs along with the language. For instance, when you enter any sort of a shop, except a large grocery store, you speak to the proprietor immediately and say “Bonjour” – that is if they do not say it first; if you do not speak to them it is very rude; also you say goodbye and some equivalent of have a nice day when you leave the store – how very civilized! They are generally very hesitant to speak English, even if they do know it. Once when we went into a lock, the lock keeper was screaming at us from his tower. Unable to understand him, I asked if he spoke any English – his response was to slam the window shut. I gathered all our papers and climbed up the lock and up into his tower. When I got in there I asked him, in French, what he required of us, he responded by telling me that I could speak to him in English, although he proceeded to question me in French! You simply don’t walk on the bicycle trails, you could get run over; there is no such thing as doggie bags – either for food leftover in a restaurant – or for the dogs – you must watch where you step. Most of the stores close from 12 until 2, even the huge grocery or hardware stores. Although wonderful sauces come in jars, there is no jello, onion soup mix, mint jelly, crackers, or
cuts of meat such as we are used to. There are, however, about a zillion choices of cheeses; the pastry concoctions are astounding, and as Dave says, nobody here seems to be fat. When we are near a town, we generally walk about 3 to 6 miles a day to see the sights and find our provisions, which – hopefully – counteracts the amount of bread we consume. Neither the bread, nor the produce has any shelf life, however the boxed milk has an expiration date of about 6 months. On board living requires diligence about all consumption – water must be turned off in the shower while my hair is being shampooed, then again while I shave my legs, then again…and again. If we are running on limited electrical power, only one appliance can be run at a time. Minor inconveniences to be sure but all require thought and planning.
All this being said, we’re off tomorrow to the hardware store and a few more champagne caves, with a lunch of escargots accompanied by a glass of champagne is the plan.