I have always been interested in the French region of Brittany. I love the legend of Arthur, in which Lancelot ruled the area. Brittany's culture and history was always quite distinct from France's, and until 1532 Brittany was a seperate Duchy that was sometimes aligned with England and other times with France. Camille, another AFS 2009-2010 student, comes from this area and has always insisted that she comes from Brittany, not from France, so it was great to see what she had always been talking about.
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| Me, Camille, Emilie and Florian |
I got there on Friday afternoon and just took a nap while Camille went back to uni for her afternoon classes. She is living in student accomodation, a little studio apartment, in the city of Nantes, which historically was the main city of Brittany but is now the capital of a different region. After she finished we headed into town to run a couple of errands, and then her friends came around for drinks that evening. Most of them don't speak much english at all, despite it normally being compulsory throughout school - like Spain, France doesn't do too well at language education compared to the rest of Europe (although I keep reminding myself that NZ is even worse and we rely too heavily on being an english-speaking country). I don't know if I've mentioned this before but I've now concluded that a lot of this is to do with both Spain and France being former world powers, especially France as French used to be the main international language, as the nationalism (or arrogance if I'm being less PC) that is entrenched in their culture prevents them from accepting english as the dominant language and putting a lot of effort into learning it as most other european countries do. I don't know if I've articulated that very well, but no French people I have spoken to so far have opposed this theory. Personally I have no issues with people who don't see a need to learn english, that would be cultural arrogance on my own part, and its so much fun trying to do simple things like buy beer in another language, but the reasons behind France's lack of english really interest me.
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| crazy drinking vessel |
But anyway. One of Camille's friends, Florian, apparently keeps getting told he looks like Justin Beiber, and he learnt from my expression at this comment that I am not a big fan of his, which led to a lot of the night being filled with his attempts at singing all of Beiber's songs just to annoy me. What is it with french speakers and such bad kareoke! Eventually a couple of us headed into town and went to the Delirium bar, one of the franchise that has the bar in Brussels that holds the record for the most beers available in the world, where I went with Arthur. We drunk a few beers and ate saucisson, a kind of french salami that you cut thick slices of and eat alone. Eventually we decided to move on and chucked the uneaten half of the saucisson into Camille's handbag. I do have to admit to also stealing a Delirum beer glass as a momento, as I'd been unable to at the Brussels bar (they use plain glasses there as obviously otherwise they'd lose far too many to unscrupulous people like me!). We spent the rest of the night in a spanish bar where you pour into your mouth who knows what alcohol out of a strange kind of jug from way above your head, very messy, and later in a normal club. We finished the night off by walking the hour and ten minutes home. One thing I miss in Europe is the way we have transport available to us to get home from bars in Wellington, either in the after-midnight bus or in free vans run by the bars. Here you're on your own, which I think leads to much more stupidity, like driving drunk, sleeping in strange places, walking home alone or staying in bars way past the point where you should have called it a night because you're waiting for public transport to start up again in the morning. I was not impressed with Florian because he kept telling me we weren't yet halfway there and played Justin Beiber on his mobile most of the way, but all in good fun!
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| Coast in Brittany, notice the old cross on the cliff |
Saturday afternoon we got up and headed to Surzur, a village of about 4000 in Brittany where Camille's mother and brother live. Camille had just gotten her license a couple of weeks earlier, so she proudly collected her car from her mother's place and drove me around for the afternoon. The French license system seems a bit relaxed compared to ours, here you have to firstly pass a theory test, but its not like ours in that you have to pay a lot of money to attend classes about it first, and then you sit a driving test after doing a minimum of 22 hours of practise (NZ is changing their system to make it 120 hours of practise before passing your restricted license, let alone your full license). The whole process costs a ridiculous amount of money, and most people fail at least once, I'm told because the driving schools are run by the testing places. Camille is a cute driver because she is so short she has to sit on a special cushion to reach the wheel, and watching her try to park is very entertaining, even the dog sat and watched her park at one point!
We headed out for a walk along the cliffs, it was great to see the sea again and the coast is beautiful, it looks a bit like the west coast of the South Island of NZ, and I'm told by people not from Brittany that it rains as much in Brittany as it does there too (flatly denied by any one from the region of course). We then drove to see a couple of ports and had a drink with some of Camille's old friends from school before heading back to have dinner at her mum's. While crepes are considered a French national dish (and I got addicted to buying nutella-filled crepes for a couple of euros as a snack in Paris), they actually come from Brittany, and her mum made them for dinner for us. We were meant to go out after dinner to a party at her friend's, but we were both so tired from the night before that we just collapsed into bed instead.
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| Vannes |
Sunday was her mother's birthday, so we went out early to the village to buy flowers and a cake, and bread (french bread has to be eaten fresh, it only lasts a day or so, so you're forever making trips to the bakery!). The village centre is really cute. One of Camille's sisters joined us for lunch, and afterwards we headed to Vannes, the closest city. Its over 2000 years old, so we had a great walk around the old buildings and wall, although we had to stop at one point when the rain got too heavy. It was funny, everyone in the city just stopped what they were doing and waited under awnings until the downpour subsided back to drizzle before carrying on. We took their dog as well, and just like Tim's dog he is quite lazy and had to be prodded along! I don't get what it is with European dogs! We then dropped Camille's brother off where he works during the week and drove back to Nantes, an interesting journey without a map or GPS that took us twice as long as it should have! I told Camille not to worry, we were just taking the 'scenic route' like dad does at home!
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| Me on the rampants of the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany |
Monday morning we ate crepes for lunch. The traditional way of eating them is just with butter and sugar, but I discovered that Belgian speculoos is amazing on crepes, and vegemite isn't too bad either. Then we went for a walk around town, passing by Camille's uni where someone had graffitied "welcome to hell" on the law faculty building! We went to the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany, it was cool, we could walk all around the ramparts. It made me remember playing games of knights and invaders at primary school, it would have been so cool to be let lose inside a building like this back then! We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around town shopping, and then had a really dinner with Camille's dad and stepmum, where I also helped Camille with her english homework - making a poster to describe herself. I guess if that is the homework for her first-year uni class, despite the students having studied english for years at primary school, I can see why none of her friends can have a conversation with me!
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| Giant mechanical elephant |
Tuesday we headed to the 'Machines of the Isle de Nantes', a crazy project where for reasons I don't quite understand a guy from a theatre company decided to create giant machines. A bunch of engineers and artists work in a workshop that is open to the public, where they've already created a giant 12m tall mechanical elephant that takes about 50 people at a time for rides, and they are now working on a huge merry-go-round of sea creatures, im not sure how big this is supposed to end up but each of the already completed sea creatures is a couple of metres tall and its going to be three or four levels of these sea creatures to ride in. Their final plan is a 25m tall, 48m diametre tree, made of metal that supports plants and hanging gardens that you can wall all over, with two giant herons circling above that you can ride on. Wierd as, but very cool. I wish dad could see it.
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| Florian trying vegemite |
Finally, we finished Tuesday night off with friends coming around again, although this time we drunk tea and ate biscuits. Florian made as all laugh by creating origami animals, telling me a story, and then looking up and me and saying "sex, or no?" - apparently he often uses sexy as an adjective in French and was actually asking for my opinion of the story, not propositioning me, but it was hilarious! I also initiated everyone there into the joys of vegemite (normally I'm a marmite girl but vegemite has been all I've found here). The first guy ate some only to run to the kitchen and wash his mouth out, so I'm not really sure why everyone else complained so much when they went on to try it too! Our 2am bedtime was probably not that smart considering we had to be up really early for me to catch the 7am train to Lyon, but oh well!
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