What I saw in France

Travel Journal: Before familiarity sets in and kills curiosity one must write. Freshness serves as a stimulant for a mind to commit its observations in to writing. And yet keeping travel journals may not be a habit many of us have cultivated.  More often when a white man travels, he leaves his experience of the place, people and time mostly in print. But his experience is not ours. For instance, I wanted to understand the French culture and its landscape through the eyes of my African ancestors. I am mostly disappointed as the records of their experience are mostly nonexistent.   

For some one attracted to the life of ideas, the French thinkers naturally come to mind. The first challenge may not be the difficulty to understand the concepts the authors deal with but to say their names correctly.  My hosts inquired if I am familiar with French literature and philosophy. Proudly I give all the names I knew, about 11 authors in total. Every time I mention a name, my hosts say “nous ne savons pas” (we don’t know) with sympathetic grin on their faces. I was lucky only in one instance: the name Plaise Pascal.

It was only later that   it dawned to me that they were not ignorant about their philosophes after all but the way I said confused them. As a compliment for knowing the works of their leading man, they took me to the house, now turned to museum, where he lived and the university named after him. Pascal is known mainly for his contribution to mathematics and defense of the catholic religion.

My interest in him was not chiefly informed by his invention of a calculating machine nor for his Christian apology but for his insight into “dark realities” of human condition and how its understanding may help to console us. I got photographed in his residence with some pride in my heart. I saluted his memory and didn’t feel an obligation to pray for his departed soul of 400 years. After all he was the man of God.

I visited several renaissance and Gothic style churches and marveled at its architecture. I was particularly impressed by the Gothic Cathedral (I have sown the picture) and climbed up to the tower after 250 steps. I was told it is one of “French national monument”.  It is located in the town of Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne, incidentally the region I stay at.

It was time for lunch but deep down I was wondering where once confident Church ambition in architecture disappeared in this country. Secularism has not been the best invention for organized religion.   For a French nation meals are “a serious affair”. Our lunch was an elaborate celebration of food and our relationship with it. The meal took close to 2 hours with all type of starters, main dish and dessert. In between, we discussed everything from French culture, to European Union, literature, migrant issues and so on.  Except occasional disruption by a young waitress inquiring our satisfaction level and frequent “merci” (thank you) replies, it was exceptionally pleasant time.  I made my fear explicit to my hosts if this style of life may continue in France considering fierce competition in global commerce.

At any rate, I encountered people who have trained themselves to remain still, at least during meals, unlike distractions one may encounter elsewhere.  After our lunch session, I bid farewell to my hosts and headed to my village in La Bourboule, in Auvergne region.  In this small country town surrounded by wheat fields and green trees, there is quietness and beauty frightening the mind.  

While appreciating art work doesn’t come easily for untrained eyes like mine, depiction of provincial life by Vincent van Gogh’s does really struck a chord after experiencing this place. To say the French villages ─for that matter most European villages in summer ─ are beautiful is to state the obvious. For open minded soul, this place offers a shelter from tiring American election, unending Middle East crisis, wearing Ethiopian ethnic politics, and mostly from drudgery of everyday life to be grounded on the present moment.  But then one learns physical travel requiring heroic adventures may not be necessary for reflection. One could simply do it from home. And that too I leaned from a French man named Xavier De Maistre(1790) who wrote “Journeys around my bed room”. It is an interesting account of his room travel for those who are “neither as brave nor as wealthy as those explorers” circumventing the world. Vive la République!