Our house in Venasque

We’ve spent a relaxing first couple of weeks in Venasque, France. Venasque is “One of the most beautiful villages in France”, apparently a much coveted title but fairly liberally handed out. Mind you, we’re tourists following advice from guidebooks so it bears to reason that we see the best and most beautiful.

Our first glimpse of Venasque was driving up in the evening, the sun low in the sky, illuminating a village perched atop a cliff. We didn't take a picture that evening so you get the light grey version instead. Not knowing where we were going to end up, Tom said, “I hope that’s it”. We wound our way up the hill, traversing the narrow switchbacks like old pros.

We drove through the arched passage at the top, to arrive a dry fountain that looked as though pedestrians could navigate it easily but anything larger than a mini was a risk. Our GPS, Pierre, pointed us into a passage that could only have been for horses. We opted to return outside the walls to park and explore instead on foot.

Following the ramparts we arrived at an open parking area with arched gates into the city on either side. We discovered our street sign behind the parking lot wall and eventually located a door with the correct name on it. It is an interesting system of addresses in Europe. You have no house number, simply your name and street.

The house is stone, just like the ramparts but the house has a layer of plaster over it. It was built around the 16th century possibly as the gatekeeper’s cottage. In the picture below, you can see how narrow our street is yet it is open to vehicles. We haven't driven it; maybe because of the stairs that go down just beyond the door? The rampart wall is on the right. Our front door is open on the left and those are our window shutters. There are three floors which seems generous for the time but perhaps the floors were put to different uses. It seems like the whole place may actually be two old homes made into one because of its size. Today, the main floor is the kitchen and living area with a wonderful wood burning fireplace. The remains of a second blocked fireplace are by the front door, lending support to our theory that this is two residences combined into one. We’re allowed to burn wood, which is good as it is our main source of heat. There is central heating but we have been warned it cuts out quite frequently and cannot be relied on. As back up, there are two gas heaters and an electric space heater. Seems like overkill but we have used them all at various points. After one week the living room lights stopped working. Tom believes this is because of the transformer.

It may sound like we are freezing to death but it is really quite toasty in the main living space and our home has a wonderful woodsy smell. The main floor is quite dark, although there are several windows. The windows are all set into the thick outside walls and with such narrow streets and tall buildings, little sunlight penetrates. It gives a cave effect and feels positively medieval…if you discount the 21st century creature comforts.

Upstairs is a whole different world. The spiral staircase with steps emulating wedges of Brie cheese rises into a bright, cheery sitting room. This floor has skylights and if the upstairs heaters worked better, I’d spend more time there. Rhys sleeps upstairs and his room is separated from the sitting area by a curtain. He has his own sink and toilet as well so essentially he has his own pad. You can see a picture of the sitting room on the left below.

The rest of us sleep on the bottom floor. Strangely, the basement floor is the warmest in the house. The rooms feel a bit cave-like without windows though both have a door that exits onto the side street. Julia’s room is more spacious but as it had the canopied bed graced with lavender chiffon and oozing feminine charm, Tom and I opted for the low-ceilinged room closest to the bathroom. Two bathrooms feels particularly luxurious after six months of sharing.

There are wonderful “old world” touches throughout and I’m not just talking about the suspect plumbing in the bathrooms. Many of the walls have odd recesses for shelves, the doorway is arched, the windows shuttered and there is a ladder stairway leading to a tiny rooftop terrace overlooking the rest of the town roves. I’m hoping a bit of heat will pass our way so we can enjoy the view out there while sipping wine and eating cheese and tapenade and feeling very Provencal.

Ordour-sur-Glane

Every European country we’ve visited so far has its own WWII story to tell and France is no exception. In Normandy, we saw the D-Day beaches and read about the Allies liberating France. In the south however, the game was a bit different. This appears to be the heart of the Résistance. The south was run by the Vichy government, a Nazi puppet regime, while the north was controlled directly by the Nazi’s. The Vichy government was led by Petanque (not sure of the spelling), the General of the French Army who decided France’s best chance for survival was to side with Hitler. All over the Dordogne Valley are plaques and memorials to the fallen Résistance fighters. Plaques commemorate sites of skirmishes between the Nazi’s and Résistance, and unless the Dordogne was a hot seat of unrest, there are more than one would expect.

As the Allies drove further into France that fateful summer, the Germans did not go peacefully. The Germans realized the Résistance fighters in France created a particularly difficult problem as they could be anyone, anywhere and strike from within what the Germans considered their home turf. This is the problem when you take over a country by force. After D-Day, the Germans began a campaign of terror in order to prove their superior power and prevent French citizens from getting any ideas about joining the Résistance.

Ordour-sur-Glane was a small village about two hours north of Sarlat. It had about 300 inhabitants during WWII and was unremarkable in most ways. The Germans chose this town to use as an example of how they could annihilate anyone at anytime. The actually had a written document on how to carry out a mass murder. On their chosen date of execution, the population in the town had doubled. It was handout day for cigarette rations and vaccination clinics were being held.

German troops surrounded the town, forming a net and then walking in, sweeping outlying homes and fields, then emptying local schools and businesses to ensure everyone was gathered in the town centre. They then separated the women and children from the men, sending them to the village church and locking them in. They broke the men into small groups and spread them out around the town. On a command, the soldiers around town simultaneously opened fired, executing all the men. Then they built pyres over the bodies and set them on fire.

The soldiers lobbed tear gas and grenades into the church, then opened the doors and shot into the chaos of 400 screaming women and children. They set explosives to the roof of the church to try to cave it in and set fire to the building. They then raced through the town looting and taking whatever valuables they could carry before setting each of the town buildings on fire. They sat guard watching the town burn all night. In the morning, they dragged whatever human remains still existed to a mass burial site.

Of the 200 or so men, six escaped a burning barn but only five survived. Of the more than 400 women and children executed in the church, only one woman managed to escape. One boy also escaped because he ran when the Germans came into his school. He somehow made it out of the village.

During the Nuremburg trials after the war, very few of the soldiers involved were brought to justice. Of those tried, 14 were French citizens who had been pressed into German service as times got tough for the Germans. The 14 Frenchmen were not convicted. The French president used this town as an example of the atrocity of the war crimes the Germans committed against the French. The town was left exactly as it stood June 10, 1944. Today visitors can walk through the quiet streets and see the rusted remains of the fire that ended this town more than 65 years ago. A plaque at the village entrance states simply, “Remember”.

Walking the streets was eerie and sad. Many building fronts still stand though the interiors are rubble overgrown with plant life. Many buildings have signs to show what kind of business was there and who owned it. Signs of human daily life still sit inside; the sewing machine in the wool shop, the pot still on a stone shelf, the husks of cars behind the mechanic shop wall. The telephone poles sag and tilt and here and there a bouquet of fresh flowers reminds you that there are still people now who knew the people lost that day.

The church is roofless and the sunlight spills in, casting beauty in a place of horror. The altar still carries the pock marks of the bullets but more chilling still are the burned remains of a pram nearby. It is hard to prevent the disturbing images and feelings of disgust that shiver over you on seeing it. Even the large groups of teenagers clutching their notebooks and pens walk softly and murmur quietly. This town is in the school curriculum. The French motto surrounding this war is “Forgive but not forget”. It is difficult to imagine how the people here have been able to embrace this motto.

Aquaducks...oh, ducts.

OK, yah so Romans. Alrighty, for me, history gets worse to live in the farther back you go. The Romans, though, had it going pretty well for themselves when there empire was tops, better than medieval times. Romans ruled all over Europe, (and some of Morocco, Jordan and such) one of the things they were good at was keeping the people happy. It’s sort of why they were successful (they were also successful because they were good at fighting). Back then water was a sign of wealth, so the more you had the wealthier you are[don’t worry I’m getting to the point!]. Then the Romans decided that to make the towns look richer they would find away to get more water into the towns [almost there…]. They came up with Aquaducts [Yes, that was the point.], Aquaducts are basically pipes or water transportation.

How: They made them by lying down a solid, rectangular, flat piece of clay with edges that are a bit higher than the middle. Then took a hot stamp and stamped that into the clay. After they had their mould they poured the liquid-medal into the mould and when it cooled they rolled it up and sealed it. The width and length of the mould varied depending on what sizes they wanted their pipes. When they were done making their pipe they stuck it together with another pipe to make a longer one.

Why: They made them mostly to flood water in the city. They also wanted to impress the people they defeated, like now the richer could get cold and hot water out of taps in their houses. The Romans could also turn the water flow on and off in different areas. They had that so they were prepared for times of droughts.

Where: Everywhere they ruled they had Aquaducts. Which was most of Europe and some of Africa and Asia. The biggest Aquaduct bridge (left standing) is in France and we saw it today.

When: The Aquaducts time was about 40 A.D. The Romans prime time was close to 0 A.D, The Romans ruled from 500 B.C to 500 A.D, though. Their Empire started to fall in 400 A.D and fell for good in 500 A.D. After the Romans left the ‘Dark Ages’ started.

What: They used pressure to push the water through the pipes and into the baths.

Who: Uh...the Roman's :)

La Roque St Cristophe

When you sightsee you are naturally going for the most interesting places a country has to offer. We’ve seen the unusual and magnificent all across Europe. The town of La Roque St Cristophe was no exception.

This place is once again built into the side of a rock face. The medieval types in this area really saw the value of a good rock. It could have just been a case of using what was available but you’d think after millennia of use, people would come up with a new idea. On the other hand, perhaps those in the 15th century also thought it quaint to live in a place inhabited by humans for thousands of years. La Roque St Cristophe is perhaps the best protected medieval village we’ve seen yet; a kind of poor man’s castle.

Forget all the imposing castles; this place had one entrance, a narrow path along the rock face. Below is a nasty drop. Above is a serious climb. To get to the village, you had to pass along this path through a gate composed of stone. You weren’t going to be bringing in the cannon or even a wagon because although the path was narrow, the gate was narrower. You probably didn’t even want to be dressed in a bunch of armour with multiple weapons for this attack. People could throw down things from above and if you didn’t have the sure-footed balance of a goat, you were gone.

Once through the gate, things got a little easier. The stone widened, providing an overhang with a natural roof. This roofing technique looked awfully good to Tom and I. Those of you who are familiar with our roof problems this year or have ones of your own, may commiserate. We’ve seen a lot of rooves in our travels and if a thousand year old roof made of stones and no mortar or filler can still be leak-proof, what’s with ours? But I digress. The stone here had been carved out by human hands over time to include stairs, cupboards, higher arched ceilings, passages and even feeding troughs and tie-ups for animals. None of the wooden structures remain so it is up to one’s imagination to fill in the details in most places.

This was a thriving community with a whole market area and church, complete with bell, all clinging to the rock face. Friends of the rock have recreated many of the tools of the time to help understand how the people got so many things in and out of the village. They had to lift it all in and out! It seems like a ridiculous amount of work until you think about the uncertainty of the times.

Vikings and other brutish sorts were raiding the area and would sail up the river at the foot of the cliff to attack. The community had set up a clever system of lookouts up and down the river. Each lookout could see the next one. If one spotted raiders, they’d signal to the next point and it would travel up the river. In 6 minutes they could send a message 15 miles! That’s not bad for a place with no cell phones. Once the village knew an attack was imminent, they’d haul up the ropes and voila, the fortress is secure. Even if the attackers did manage to send up fire arrows to do damage, they weren’t going to get in. I’m not sure I’d have wanted to set up camp here but given the option of serfdom or this, there had to have been an appeal.

Thanks Mom!

We were sitting quietly in our dimly lit living space, each working on a separate task, when Tom got up to get more firewood and discovered a slip of paper from the post office attached to the door; a package had arrived!

Immediately, the calm working atmosphere I had struggled to create erupted in a flurry of “I’ll get it!” I announced that as Rhys and Julia were working on their schoolwork, I would pick it up. “I’ll open it!” was next. I announced that we would not open it until the time for working on school was finished. Aren’t I cruel?

As I traipsed happily off to the post office, I pondered why we hadn’t heard the post person. We had been there all morning. When other people had arrived at the house we had heard them. Guiltily, I wondered if I had been in the middle of my fishwife screaming routine when the notice had arrived. I know it probably surprises you to hear life isn’t just one happy event after another, and even more so that I would raise my voice. I’d like to remind you that I am traveling with two teenagers.

School has been most difficult this year. I had heard before we left that Europe was very well connected and finding Internet would not be an issue. This was important if the kids were going to do correspondence online. It seemed to be true when we arrived in England. A mobile internet stick cost about $50 and lasted the entire month we were there. We were told the stick would work throughout Europe and it seemed this was going to be the answer. We could get internet anywhere, even while driving, although that was sporadic. It was still August, though, and the online teachers were on holiday. The kids couldn’t get started until September.

After we left England, Internet became a whole new ballgame. In Greece, we spent two days and five whopping hours in the Vodaphone shop trying to get the newly purchased mobile stick to work. The one from England simply would NOT work under any circumstance, even with a new card and although the Vodaphone technician was a computer guru with the patience of a saint, we only managed to get the brand new $75 mobile stick to work. On arrival in Turkey a few weeks later, the Greek stick no longer worked and the English stick remained silent as well. It appeared this was not going to be the simple process I had anticipated.

We decided we would have to rely on Internet connections in our various apartments but as I hadn’t included that criterion when I booked them the previous summer, it was hit and miss. We also found that the pace of travel left very little time to focus on assignments. We would awaken at around 7 or 8 in the morning and return to the apartment around 5 or 6 in the evening most days. After dinner, emails and the occasional Skype call we’d all collapse into bed to repeat the process the next day. Life was a whirl of the new and unfamiliar. Information was bombarding our brains but little of it was the kind one answers questions about.

By Christmas, things were getting a bit intense. Very little school had been accomplished and I realized that we had to PUSH school during the weeks we stayed in one place for longer. Over the Christmas “holidays”, the kids worked on school every morning for a few hours. This routine seemed to work. Then we left for Paris and the whirlwind sightseeing schedule was back.

We had been able to find Vodaphone stores everywhere in Europe but apparently France missed the memo and has only Orange. Fine. We went to the Orange store to get a new chip for the sticks. I don’t know why I figured this would be as easy in France as it was in England. More fool I. The $60 chips didn’t work. I returned to the store and spent two hours with the technician to finally be told the Orange chips would not work with the Vodaphone sticks. One new stick would cost $130. Uh-huh. Once you buy a computer chip, you can’t get your money back so once again we had spent a fruitless $60. Were we going to make it a fruitless $320 for two new sticks? I don’t think so.

Now, we are in Provence for a month and there is Internet at our apartment. We have decided that the kids will do four hours of concentrated work each morning and we’ll sightsee in the afternoon. On weekends we’ll take the longer full day trips. This is an excellent plan. If only the two students would agree. It seems that waking up to do school is completely different from waking up to sightsee. I have never seen such exhausted specimens of life. Rhys can barely open his eyes and Julia appears to be getting a cold.

The day the package arrived was day two of our new plan. I had spent the morning using various tactics to get Rhys downstairs to work; many of which included loud verbal barrages. It would be just my luck to have the post person hear this.

I handed over the postal slip to the clerk at the office and she quickly retrieved the package and released it to me; no id, no questions, nada. Obviously, they didn’t realize the value of the goods inside.

The package sat on our counter in the kitchen, calling loudly to us all. The children focused studiously, giving the package and I furtive glances for the rest of the morning. Finally, the great moment arrived. Julia was elected to open. The rest of us grabbed our cameras. This was the biggest excitement since Christmas! As she opened the box, three cameras flashed furiously before we had to ask her to turn the box around so we all could see what was inside.

Oh, the treasures! Tom had his new glasses. Rhys had his new 5 block Rubics cube. Julia had her new book, Terry’s chocolate and Kraft Dinner. There was even a new t-shirt and article on Italy for me. We all shared the chocolate and the kids ate the Kraft Dinner for lunch. Rhys hasn’t put the cube down since it arrived and Tom announced his glasses to be perfect.

Thanks Mom!

Pont Julien Bridge

We came across a bridge just like many other stone bridges we had seen but it was a little older and has a more prominent history.

Pont Julien situated in Provence France, over the Calavon River, is a limestone three arch Roman built span. It is said to be 2000 years old. In fact they had a 2000 year celebration in 1997. It was part of the Via Domintia roadway linking France and Rome. The road still exists to the east of the bridge and is a cyclist route now. The bridge is built of local limestone and it uses no mortar. It is just finely fitted stone. It closed to car traffic in 2005 after 2000 years of service. You can still walk or ride your bike across. It replaced an earlier and therefore older bridge and you can still see the location of this previous foundation.

Sarlat and the Dordogne

The Dordogne Valley is home to foie gras, walnuts, truffles, cave paintings and us for a week. People have lived in this area for over ten thousand years. We spent our time here in a little town named Sarlat-le-Caneda. It has a nice ring, doesn’t it? Our place was just lovely. An English couple had restored an old barn and the loving care put into the restoration plus the attention to amenities (It had English TV!) made this one of our better weeks.

The Dordogne is well known for producing several different gourmet foods. First, it is the centre of fois gras country and we tried not to get too close to the details of that. While the town practically worships geese, it is not on the goose tourist map. Geese have been traded here for centuries and one can’t get far without tripping over a tin of fois gras. We tried some and it was quite yummy. This is also a big truffle area and winter is truffle season. Truffles are in the neighbourhood of $750/kg so we didn’t test those. We did try some truffle flavoured chocolate covered nuts, however. They were yummy. Nuts also figure prominently on the “things the Dordogne does well” list. They even have a “Routes des Noix”, or Nut Drive which we naturally found ourselves following on more than one occasion. No comments, please.

Sarlat was just as cute as a town could be, with twisty old streets lined with fairytale like structures. It had a distinct Italian feel to it and with good reason. Catherine de Medici, a powerful mistress to one of the Kings (more on her later, I’m sure) had a boyfriend who was an Italian Bishop and she set him up here in Sarlat. There are so many things morally wrong in that sentence, it begs a story. Just to further whet your appetite for that tale, the Italian Bishop stole the Sarlat’s money and ran away, leaving behind a town rich in Italian architecture, if not gold. It was fun rounding each corner of the narrow streets to reveal yet another charming scene. I mean, get a load of those crazy church doors in the picture to the right.

We all agreed Sarlat was the best place to stay but it had some stiff competition for “cute”. Driving around the valley, we came upon so many picturesque scenes it would be hard to describe them all. The most fantastic part of this was probably the fact that it was early February and the weather was spectacular and warm. I can imagine how gorgeous this place would be in the summer time but so can about a zillion other tourists and I think the crowds would detract from the charm.

The weather is probably one of the reasons people have inhabited this area for so long. The high cliffs on either side provide natural protection from the elements. There are caves where people and other animals have lived over the millennia. Even during the second ice age the inhabitants of this area were able to survive as the valley never completely froze. A narrow strip of vegetation provided snacks for all. A wide, slow river that flows through the area created an easy transportation route along the valley as well as providing a fresh water source. With its steep, high sides the animals would be channeled through the valley, so the people had the food coming right to their doorstep rather than having to seek it out. This has been the perfect home for almost as long as people have been around.

Roque Gageac is a town build between a lovely river and a cliff. There is just enough room to fit the road, which floods every winter after a heavy rain, and a line of buildings before one has to start moving up the side of the cliff if one wishes to reside here. One building even shows the record high water marks. The 1940’s really weren’t a great time for France. Okay, so this is a VERY cute place but whose idea was it to build in a spot with so little space? What kind of a defense system does one employ when one’s back is to the wall? We can only surmise that the town planners were way ahead of their time and realized what a great little tourist trap they had created. While the rock may not have been very forgiving space-wise, it did provide heat and this town is able to grow tropical plants that won’t grow easily anywhere else around. The picture on the right looks like a different country, n'est-ce pas? Lastly, I just had to include this picture of the Leper House. The town didn’t win any friendliness awards back in the day as visitors who arrived in times of plague had their boats confiscated and were thrown into the leper house for a time to see if they carried any disease with them. Fortunately, the town was fairly disease free when we visited so we didn’t see the inside of this building.

The Dordogne Valley is also filled with castles. In France we call them chateaus. My favourite chateaus were very close to each other. One was the Castelnaud (on the right) and the other Beynac. Castelnaud perched high on a cliff overlooking the river. So did Beynac. They were about a 10 minute horseback ride from each other, so close together you can almost wave to each other from the turrets. What I liked about them is their history. During the Hundred Years War, the French occupied Beynac on one side of the river and the English occupied Castlenaud on the other side. But that wasn’t good enough, so the English built a second castle on their side of the river, closer to Beynac so they could spy on the French. Not to be outdone, the French built a second castle closer to Castelnaud in order to spy on the English. The ridiculousness of this given the situation of the river and the castles still amuses me.

Castelnaud had a great tour with lots of interesting weaponry from the middle ages. Beynac (on the left), however, was my favourite of the two. I love the fact that the French occupied it because it looks just like the castle Monty Python’s gang clip-clops up to during the quest for the Holy Grail. Standing on the grass below, I could easily imagine the French soldiers glaring disdainfully over the edge casting aspersions on the hapless English knights. It is the straight-walled castle we build with Lego bricks and there is something completely familiar about it, though it in no way resembles the fairytale castles in which princesses lived. Perhaps it is the male equivalent.

There were plenty of other adorable towns. Martel with its towers, Carennac with its completely captivating creekside settings and Rocamadour, the pilgrimage site built up the side of a cliff. Each town had something unique to offer and each was a delight to explore but in the end, we were glad we had based ourselves in Sarlat.