Among the Modern Pilgrims

08/08                     23:30                                     Hotel in Rennes

Mont St. Michel is the site of a millennium-old Benedictine abbey in western France. In visiting, I thought of pilgrims.

Pilgrims are a logical object of thought when visiting an abbey. Mont St. Michel has long been a site of pilgrimage, both as a destination and as an early stopover on the way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Key elements of the site have been built or altered with pilgrims in mind.

I thought of pilgrims the day before when getting off the train in Dol-de-Bretagne. Backpackers and sack-laden bikes were legion on that train. One German my age stood out; he had a red goatee tufting off his chin and a fedora-like hat, and he asked in English at the train station how to get to Pontorson, one stop away on a different train or a short bus ride away, the town closest to Mont St. Michel. He bore the burden of his green backpack well, but not doubt grew tired of it at times.

I thought of pilgrims again at dinner that night. A table away at the crêperie sat a British family. The white-trimmed father plowed away with his French in ordering for the table, dictionary in hand, while the two university-age sons played an actor guessing game, and the mother and older daughter looked on in faint bemusement. Much English was to be heard on the train to Dol, as well as on the streets of the small town. I was now on the north coast of Bretagne, hardly a ferry ride away from the UK, so it stood to reason. The main site in the area, of course, was Mont St. Michel. Pilgrims.

Pilgrims came to mind on my bike ride to Mont St. Michel in the morning. Gîtes and chambres d’Hôtes advertised their proximity to the site. In one intersection, I passed a troop of backpackers. “All their lives on their back and all their hopes in front of them.” There were not many on my side path, but they could be found, in German-plated cars or on bikes.

The historical pilgrims and the modern pilgrims share more traits than it seems at first. Both come from distance, near and far to experience a form of bliss and escape from everyday life. Both are inspired by thick books with solid information and dull prose that speak of strange feats and mystical places. Both get on the nerves of locals but also fuel the nearby economy. Both pack away their lives and carry them as penance for the journey. Both smell bad.

Pilgrims discomfort me. The historical ones are more interesting and more honest in their faith, but the piety and closed-mindedness that usually carried those pilgrims on their path would make me uneasy. The modern pilgrims move like herds with their babble of languages and their incessant memorialization of the present. The expectations for a site rise when modern pilgrims are afoot, and fall because of the presene of those same pilgrims. When I see the packs of modern pilgrims, a part of me tenses up. That part twists over itself even more when I remember: I am one of them.

***

The French verb “dominer” is not quite a false cognate with the English “dominate, but it doesn’t have quite the same meaning either. Dominer is to look over, be higher than, or in a sports context, to lead. There is not the strong sense of power and the judgment of force that the English word holds. The French states a fact, plain and ungarnished.

Mont St. Michel domine and dominates the surrounding area. I approached on bike from the southwest through les polders, open wheat fields just short of the salt marshes in the Baie St. Michel. It was a flat, peaceful route, with only the rare tractor, hiking family, or foreign-plated car to be seen. Also a dog, whose sudden barging run startled me enough to send me crashing in a ditch, head over handlebars, cursing furiously in English and French. I hate dogs.

I made a turn east and now ahead of me the back of a sign. “Great, I thought,” I can make sure I’m on the right path.” Then I by chance looked up to my left and cried, “Oh!” I halted in my pedaling.

If you click on this picture, you can see MSM in the center backgronud.

There past the fields stood Mont St. Michel, dominating the landscape. The abbey stood like a bauble castle, on a rock in the bay and fitting in with nothing, yet fitting with everything since it, the castle, the fortress, the abbey, dominated the landscape. To come on it all of a sudden, to witness its power and splendor in both comparative and absolute senses, is to understand how, why Mont St. Michel is a site of pilgrimage. Awesome, that much-abused word, fits this first sight, some 1300 years on.

***

Mont St. Michel was first conceived, the story goes, by Bishop Aubert after the archangel Michael came to him in a dream and inspired him to build a sanctuary on a rock standing out in the curve of the French coast, on the modern-day border between the regions of Bretagne and Normandy. This was in 708. In 966, it became a Benedictine abbey, though much of the current structure dates from the 12^th or 13^th centuries. The abbey was constructed with military might and held out during the English sieges of the 100-year War, unlike the rest of north and west France. After the French Revolution, the anti-ecclesiastical current turned the abbey into a prison for about 70 years, before at last it became the historic monument it remains today.

There is only one road leading to Mont St. Michel, leading due North from Pontorson 10 kilometers away. One can also reach it by crossing the bay when the tide is out, but bikes ride poorly on wet sand. I joined the Pontorson road about halfway up, knowing I had arrived by the sight of my fellow travelers, picnicking or walking north, undeniably from elsewhere. French families and Spanish speakers, large tour buses of Asians and elderly, bebaseballhatted Americans, German groups and Italian individuals, a few Brasileiros, a melting pot of strangers seeking to behold the abbey, the castle. Pilgrims.

The stream of people approaching the site could not diminish its majesty. We walked on the 19^th century causeway across the bay – one the French are replacing with a bridge to allow the bay its traditional tide and to flush out those salt marshes – and the abbey grew to its full might and stature, a power pictures cannot capture. The hour or so I spent between first espying the Mont and finally reaching the site was among the best parts of the visit.

Indeed, once entering the little town at the foot of the abbey, the majesty is shrouded. We came too close to see, and the pilgrim wave overwhelmed. I walked through the street leading up to the abbey. The street was narrow, four people wide, with the upward flow constant and slow, the downward varied and hurried. Souvenir shops, hotels, and crêperies lined the street, seeking to ease and add to the pilgrim’s load in equal measure.

I arrived at the steps at 13:00. The line, or so I heard, was shorter an hour or two before my arrival. When I left two hours later, it was shorter. I waited, treading slowly up the stairs with limited achievement – shade, indoors, at last a ticket – for about 45 minutes.

And for all that, the abbey itself is the least impressive part of the visit. Not that it lacks highlights: the first staircase is grand; the terrace offers fine views of the dominated landscape; the oft-cited cloister is pretty; the audio guide informs in a restrained manner; and a few quiet corners of green or brownstone beauty can be found. It’s not that the site isn’t impressive, but it is on the order of similar medieval churches, abbeys, and the like. For example, I would rank Mont St. Michel’s abbey, known as “La Merveille”, the wonder, higher than the monastery/castle in the Lisboa suburb of Belem, but lower than the more bewitching, wondrous Alhambra in Granada. What sets Mont St. Michel apart is its setting, and on the site that can be perceived only in passing.

One of those hidden green corners.

 ***

There is another way to appreciate the Mont and its setting: encircling the rock on foot, when the tide is out. The tide was out when I reached bottom. I stripped off my shirt, socks, and shoes, lathered on sunscreen, and took off barefoot.

The dark gray tidal sand rippled beneath my feet, caking my toes in mud, which left over puddles would wash. A small child played naked in one of these puddles with his swimsuit-clad older siblings, parents not plainly in site. Maybe a hundred people in total walked on the sand, including a large group led by a guide and an Asian fellow my age, with glasses and a camera, mud snaking up past his calves. He pointed out a piece of my bike helmet strap which had fallen.

To the north of the Mont, a large rock or a small island stuck out as an afterthought. Above us, the Mont regained its majesty, sundered from the wider landscape by our limited perspective but mighty in its absolute sense, alone. The bay offers one views from all sides, pictures dotted with ant-like pilgrims, a final, sustaining image.

The bay crossing comes with risks. My guidebook talks of the massive tidal variation and the tidal return racing like a horse. I did not see this, but I felt the sands shift beneath my feet. In crossing a large pool of water to complete the circle round the Mont, I picked a path I thought shallow and safe. Just shy of the “shore” I suddenly found no ground, my leg plunging into water mid-thigh deep (only about mid-shin for most people, but still). I worried for a moment of my backpack getting wet, even of quicksand, of becoming an example for why one does not cross the bay alone and unguided. Another foolhardy step, another mid-thigh plunge. I changed direction, kept relatively calm, and found slightly faster than normal but not quite quicksand. I pulled myself from the water, half my shorts damp but no further damage taken.

My feet were fully caked in mud now, and the mud snaked up to my shin. I carried my shoes in hand and walked back on the causeway, sneaking glances over my shoulder at the receding Mont. I smiled at passers-by who gave my muddy feet once-overs ranging from sneering to curious. I heard comments about them in several languages.

My day and, in most senses, my trip were at end. My bike, a short flat ride, a brief train journey, and a hotel in Rennes awaited me. My backpack dug into my bare shoulders and the afternoon sun worked from the South to even my biker’s tan and dry my mud. I was tired, hungry, dirty, barefoot, and mostly satisfied.

I was at journey’s end. I was a pilgrim, turning for home.

The People You Meet, Things You See - The Red Bike Rides in Bretagne, Pt. 7

07/08                                     16:32                                     Train to Rennes

Distance biked since last checked: 109 km (45 km Friday, 7 km Saturday, 30 km Sunday, 27 km Tuesday)

Today marks my first directly eastward journey on the trip. The meaning is clear: I’m almost home.

A portside Rozd in Brest

When it comes to traveling, I find the back half of a trip or the last few days more relaxing. With the return home closer, I feel less bad about thinking ahead to arrival and forgetting to enjoy today. Paradoxically, I find it easier to focus on the trip at hand when there’s less of it to think about. My last two days are all but planned, I have only one more bike ride in front of me, and no tight time constraints except to get up on time for my train home Thursday. This sense of comfort with endings contrasts with how I enjoy books. In reading a good book, my favorite moment is the halfway mark, when I know there’s as much joy ahead of me as that I’ve already uncovered. After that, bittersweetness fills a reading that I know too soon will end, even as desire to finish compels me to continue without undue delay. Perhaps the physical effort that goes into traveling and the mental effort required to plan and manage the trip blunts that bittersweetness, or maybe for all my supposed adventurousness I am just a boring homebody who would be happy reading, writing, and eating peanut butter all day without leaving the house. One can rule nothing out.

In any case, I am on my way home, with room for one last big detour. My trip as realized fell reasonably far from the details I imagined, even as of two days ago. The structure of plans and reality matched, mostly.: head west on the southern shore of Bretagne, then loop back east on the Northern side, but instead of going to a festival on a peninsula that would have required a 40 km bike trip each way with no sure thing on tickets or lodging, I went to Lorient and the FIL for a couple hours; instead of working my way through the northern shore of Bretagne over 2-3 days, I took a train to Dol-de-Bretagne, whence I will make my one stop tomorrow; instead of visiting St. Malo I stayed two nights on l’île d’Ouessant (I realized only in the Rennes train station I could have just as easily stayed in St. Malo tonight. Ah well, save something for next time).

Anyway, I’m happy with how this has turned out. And now for a few anecdotes about people I’ve met or seen along the way.

I’ve spent more time in bars on this trip than I might usually. Actually, in Europe there are few cafes as we Americans think of them, ala the local coffee shop or Starbucks. Of course there are Starbucks, but not many. Otherwise, when waiting for a train, a travel partner, or a muse to roll on through, I’m sitting in a bar cum salon de thé cum brasserie.

(The one main exception I can think of: Ghent, Belgium, where they have cupcake shops. It should come as no shock that I like Ghent).

In Auray, a town of little note for me except its position on two train lines, I had a beer and waited for my train to Lorient. Behind the bad a woman with chestnut-brown hair and the wrinkles of the late 40s worked. A man with a large backpack, a large dog, and both a grizzled voice and a grizzled face stood at the bar and had a drink. A couple of old men sat at the right of the bar. A couple of not quite as old women sat at a table to the left. I sat at a table in the middle, against the wall facing the bar. Across perched on a stool a girl with short dark hair and a turquoise shirt, cute, more or less my age.

In to the bar came two men who sidled up next to the girl. The one, older, bigger, with a bandana over his hair, exchanged kisses with her. The other, wiry build and wired energy, talked with the barmaid about what beers were available. His choices were not. His voice rose. He said something choice to either the girl or the barmaid. His companion asked him to go wait outside. This appeared to be a ritual for the duo.

The older of the two men continued to talk with the girl, standing. The other recurred at the door, anger still on his breath and voice. His only pause was to love up on the dog. The dog, at least, did not get upset at him. The rest of us continued our activities as if all was well. The train of life approached.

The man made a last sally to the bar. The diatribe renewed in his tongue, he uttered a choice word at the barmaid (I missed it). A man working at the bar appeared, furious, yelled at the man, it was about time to stop talking and start punching.

Calmer heads prevailed. The older man banished his companion again. The barman cooled off. I caught the eye of the barmaid, drying a glass and shaking her head. “He was looking for it,” she said.

In a bar on Ouessant, a similar tale.  I sat at the bar and drank a Belle Kriek beer (cherry, Belgian), reading my Polish book and watching the TV, the latter more successfully. Around the curve of the bar to my right, a local drunk stood. A green sweatshirt, shorts, thin graying hair, and a half-conscious, eerie smile on his lips. A box of Kinder Bueno bars rested on the bar next to him. A couple of kids came into the bar, about 14 years old, asking for fruit drinks (earlier, walking, I heard the boys bragging about all this alcohol they had on them – vodka, whisky, etc.). The drunk tut-tutted them but with no authority, unheeded. Instead, he tried offering everyone within reach a candy – me, the kids, and so on. Also to no avail.

Another man joined the first at the bar. This had wild gray hair and a stubbled, attractive face. His yes held a spark and his look was, as yet, sober. He ordered a drink and fell into banter with the first man. The two rearranged chairs in the room, possibly with intentions of emulating the 3000 meter steeplechase shown on the screen behind them but most likely out of the first’s impetuous inebriation). The second joined in the Kinder Bueno game, buying one and putting it on his tab – he had a golden credit card with a company name on it. Again, I turned down an offered candy bar.

The energy finally went sour as the bar staff decided the first had to step outside (they may have picked up on the annoyed looks from me and others at the bar). The second, after asking if he too had to leave and hearing he didn’t, turned his liberated attention elsewhere. He was impressed with my Kriek beer and asked, several times, for the name so he could order one. He asked me about my reading before backing off when he either heard my French or decided he might disturb me. After I moved to a table (in part to avoid the first drunk) he again pointed to my book or my beer and offered to buy me another, flashing his credit card. “Vous êtes très gentil,” I told him, “but I’m leaving after the race.”

Outside, a yell and a tumbling piece of furniture clattered among the din. One of the hotel/bar staff ran outside. A few bar patrons joined. I did not go and rubberneck. The second stayed at the bar, craning his neck towards the door and perhaps finding his beer a little sweeter. A man with a notepad entered a few minutes later.

Usain Bolt won the race, of course. I stepped out, thinking of humanity’s highs and lows.

Outside of the bar, the train is a good place to catch sight of our curious habits. On one train, from Lorient to Quimper, I sat in the entry area with my bike. Across the entry way, a white-haired woman sat next to the bathroom. Perhaps an inappropriate place.

A man in the car behind her came to use the bathroom. He was bald and dressed in a Picasso-striped shirt. He tried the bathroom door. It didn’t give. Once or twice more he tried before leaving, perplexed. The woman said nothing.

A minute later a man left the bathroom; I had not been sure someone was in there. A minute later, a young woman staggered into the bathroom, looking not all there. Our striped-shirt man tried the door again another minute after, again with no luck. He tried once more, then looked at the woman. Only then did she tell him the bathroom was occupied.

Passons… the man, without ever changing his strategy by actually waiting for the bathroom, finally got in. A young woman tried the door, found it locked, and waited. The man left. She entered, did her bit, and exited. She left the door half-open. The woman, not one to speak, stared at the girl with annoyance for a few seconds, then rose from her seat and shut the door.

On a different train, from Brest to Rennes, a man struck up a conversation with me about my bike. As with Jeff, it was another of those French-English foreign conversations. This man congratulated me on my journey.

The Picture I took

In between trains in Quimper, before stopping in the African bar, I walked around looking for an internet café (I traveled on this trip like it was 2005). As I crossed over a bridge a couple blocks from the train station, I stopped to take a picture. A black man with dreads approached me and asked if I was Italian. He had a few teeth missing and a beer in his hand (it was a little after noon). My answer that I was American excited him. He told me he was from South Africa, where the last World Cup was, did I go? My negative response did not dissuade him from giving me a big handshake as we parted.

Before capping this ramble, I’d like to mention something about crêperies that I’ve observed after eating crepes an average of once a day since arriving in Bretagne. That is: one cannot order two crepes at once. The waiters worry that either the second crepe or your appetite will cool off too much for it to be worth it. So one crepe at a time does one progress through one’s meal. Also, when one switches from salty, buckwheat crepes (known as galettes) to sweet white flour dessert crepes, the wait staff changes one’s silverware. This does not (usually) happen going from galette to galette. This makes sense but still amuses me.

On Sunday, I rode my bike to Le Conquet from Brest to catch the ferry to Ouessant. Many dark clouds blew over the city, and the sky was clear enough in its cloudy way that one could see the wind at work. Having a fair amount of time to make my boat, and still tense from the night prior (of the Aching Jaw), I decided to wait out the rain when I could (I avoided the two bigger of the three rainclouds that passed over my head).

It was while waiting out the first, still in Brest, perched under a bus stop with my legs folded under to evade the windblown drops, that a woman joined. She had gray-brown hair to match a gray suit, and a faint blond mustache that was all the same quite visible, and in 15 minutes or so, she told me much about her life.

She has a cousin in the Bay Area who she learned about well into adulthood; the cousin’s father left France before the war and, despite aiding the war effort in the U.S., would have been tried as a deserter if he returned. She lived in interior Bretagne before moving to Brest when she was young and the city not yet rebuilt from the war. She finds native Brest folk (Brestians?) standoffish and unhelpful, making it two people I met who moved to another place in Bretagne and disliked the locals. She similarly dislikes people from Luxembourg and that part of Germany, finding them cold, unlike Germans from Munich. She also dislikes Russians and their difficult literature.

I learned that Mongols fought for Napoleon and then stayed in France after the war, helping to build the Nantes-Brest canal. This woman had Scottish and, she thought, Mongol blood in her. Almost every time she made a reference to Mongols, she pulled her eyes thin.

Such are the people I’ve met and the interactions I’ve seen on this trip.

The Dread of Destinations - The Red Bike Rides in Bretagne, Pt. 4

04/08/12              12:55, Bar outside Quimper train station, en route to Brest

For the first four days of my trip, the journey easily outweighed the destination. I saw a few sites and sights – the forest, the town, the small city, the beach – but mostly, I biked. My diary has reflected this, I think, focused more on how I move than what I see.

Yesterday that changed. I visited three veritable destinations, places that attract tourists, events that are known, items written up in my guidebook. It changed the tone of my trip: expectations about other things entered the picture. With expectations come fulfillment and disappointment. Indeed, yesterday had a bit of both.

***

People sometimes say I'm on the track to nowhere...

The first site belonged to nature. Le Côte Sauvage, the wild coast, marks the western edge of the Quiberon peninsula (peninsula, in French, at least for smaller ones, is “presqu’île” – almost island). Both a coastal road and a worn-in runners’ and bikers’ path mirror the water imperfectly. The coast begins on the Southern tip of the peninsula at Quiberon and runs 8-10 km, stopping just short of Penthièvre, where I was staying.

I took the creaky peninsula train (le tire bouchon – the corkscrew) to Quiberon, loaded up with bread and an apple, and took off. The coast begins with a dramatic stone house or castle just past a roundabout. From there the dramatics continue: craggy clifflets and rocky shores; inlets and mini pools; stark changes in elevation on a small scale; clouds looming and evaporating on the horizon; tall grass and short shorn brush and shrubbery adorned with purple glowers off the coast; and the odd hosue or tourist couple breaking up the scenery. The ocean roars and gulls squawk, but there is no smell of seafood, seaweed, sea stink, just of moist, fresh air. Stone monuments loom on and off shore in all directions, whether ancient or imitative, and in the water a double-bumped “island” 50 meters off shore looks like a beached Loch Ness monster, trapped in shallow sand.

Le Côte Sauvage ends and I drift inland. Inland though a couple kilometers up the peninsula narrows to an isthmus no more than five football fields wide. Later, a small forest encloses the bike path. The peninsula is full of delights. Nature, even when predictable, not stunningly wilder than other natures, is worth it.

 

***

I’ve been reading that large book by the Pole nobody I know knows. It’s also a diary, and old Witold Gombrowicz entertains in his cantankerousness. One of his many targets for rhetorical attack was painting. “Painting is one great resignation from what cannot be painted. It is a cry: I would like to do more, but I cannot. This cry is oppressive.” He argues we only like paintings because everybody else does, and we fear looking stupid. Aspects of the artists’ biographies intrigue us too (he mentions Van Gogh as an example), but the painting itself is static, plastic, and thus of little value.

This idea of liking something because everyone else does infects travel as well. Such is especially the fight with the guidebook. The guidebook is an indispensible source of ideas, phone numbers, and lame essays. One wants to travel to the best sites, but also to do it freely. Hence the struggle with even the best guidebooks; with those less than best, one suspects the must-sees are not quite musts.

My guidebook’s top recommendation for Bretagne was to see the megaliths. Stone monuments dating back 5,000 years, to a time before any reasonably engineering – the wheel, e.g. – existed to help build or erect them. Grandeur on the order of Stonehenge, but less grand and with more stones.

After eating the best crepe I’ve had yet this trip (the complète with onions, ham, cheese, and egg) from a place not in the guide, I rode to the site in Carnac. In the summer, one is not allowed into the actual site without a guide, but can walk or bike around the alignments. I left the “Maison des Megaliths” next to a family of four Italians. The mother took photos and exhorted her children, the father biked eagerly, the teenage daughter fended off her younger brother, and the brother, when not teasing the sister, ripped off sarcasm-tinged lines: look ma, there are the stones. Wow.

And not to be a child, but I empathized with the ragazzo. The site was full of stones. Granite stone monuments, some to a tall man’s height, others two or three times that high, set in long, precise lines, with tall wild grass growing among them. A few of the monuments were shaped differently or set one against the other. A small circular guard tower next to the middle alignment site offered a nice lookout point to see those lines.

My book asks how and why these were erected. How is a question for archaeologists and engineers, why seems obvious enough – with spiritual or religious purposes in mind. Further, this is not as bold a site as I imagine Stonehenge to be, or Easter Island (nor as comic as the version in Spinal Tap). It is a collection of tall granite stones in a grassy field with limited majesty.

Actually, the location excited me. The path led through forests and past ponds. The better question is why here? Presumably, the proximity to water matters, and the forest helps too – we imagine old druids chanting under a canopy, wearing bear skins as a designation of status.

There was also an amazingly life-like statue of an oversized head...

The best collection of megaliths at the Carnac site is “Le Petit Menec.” Just off the last main alignment heading east, this little row hides under trees. These monuments are smaller, shorter than me even. Where the rest of the megaliths stick out as slightly incongruous, like overgrown cemeteries, these felt humble, understated, and in line with their surroundings.

I’m not sure I would recommend the site to other people. Maybe the guided visit would be better. Maybe you really like stones. I cannot confirm the consensus positivity, nor my guidebook’s affirmation of the site. But if one were to go, I would tell him/her to see the trip out to the end, where a little secret hides. Even in the (mild) disappointments, good surprises can be found.

***

Lorient was turning sour on me by the minute. The bus left me two minutes late. The rain doused and delayed me. The music did not deliver on its promise. A bus would leave for my hotel at 21:30, and I was ready to give up for the night, to go back to my room and read and write, such as I do every night.

Lorient was my first real deviation from plan. Instead of biking off the train some 20 kilometers to Concarneau, a small coastal town, I would stay in Lorient, a city big enough to have a first division football club, if one that barely survived relegation last season. The city also hosts the Festival InterCeltique Lorient (FIL), a large gathering of Celts from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England, Galicia in Spain, and, of course, Bretagne. My book claims 600K visitors descend on the city, though strangely Lorient receives no other mention.

Due to the crowds and my last-minute change in plans, I only found a room just outside the city, across an étang. I stumbled into the center, where a genuine buzz emanated from the booths and stages along the port. The sunshine and the ever-young late evening assured me that I had done well to come here, to change.

Less than two hours later, clouds loomed and I found that I had unwittingly missed the bus by two minutes. My legs had logged 45 kilometers on the bike that day, and 165 over the last three days, but I had not choice but to walk another four. The étang crossing, beautiful to the hotel with a lush forest and that sun, was bleak this time. Boats floated off the port to my right like toys in a dingy bathtub.

When the rain came, on the other side of the crossing, I at first pushed on, using the sidewalk trees for scant cover. After five minutes of dousing, I escaped under a bus stop. No bus, of course, and I twiddled my thumbs for ten minutes while the drops, as measured by their impact on the street puddles, slowed.

My plan had been to take the 22:45 bus back after 2+ hours of Celtic fun, with the midnight bus as an option if I was having great Celtic fun. By the time I got to the center, it was about 20:40, I was wet and tired, and the festival had a lot of work to do to re-impress me.

I went to the Celtic tent to eat dinner and avoid drizzle. I bought an Estrella Galicia, a mediocre Spanish beer that would never be sold in France except for the festival. I exchanged seven Euros for plastic tokens and bought a(nother) crepe and fries. By the time I crammed the fries and their three attendant sauces – mayo, ketchup, and orange mystery – I felt ready to go home in a body bag.

Nothing about this distinguished FIL from a typical European festival, each with its own local flavors, except that the music over the loudspeakers often featured bagpipes, and the young folk acting like jackasses wore green hats and kilts.

Really guys? Really?

I left the tent. The rain had stopped, and only music could save my life. The first band I came across had blue-striped white sailor shirts – Picasso was photographed a few times wearing these – a nice, local uniform. Unfortunately, they played corny American music, New Orleans jazz and doo-wop and the like. The music was neither good nor appropriate, costumes aside. Another strike.

The 21:30 bus and the white flag loomed as a more and more tempting option. What can I do if the festival is disappointing, the weather dismal, and staying out late to me disagreeable? Such is me, and fighting my innate sense will only lead to later regrets.

I walked past the bus stop. I’d give another street a try. If no good, either a bus or a cab could get me closer to bed. One must validate one’s choice in destination, after all.

Around the corner, I heard a tone, a reedy sound, the tumult of a crowd. I turned. At the Porc de Lorient bar (or some such name – their emblem included a pig, and I learned French pigs say “groin-groin” instead of oink), a band played on the terrace. Six men from 30-50 years old, the band featured two guitarists, a drummer, a bald bespectacled dude on a wooden accordion/squeezebox, and two, of course, pipes players. These two would alternate, one between bagpipes (or uilleann pipes, I don’t quite know the difference) and a flute, the other between pipes and something like a mini-clarinet, with a tone similar to the pipes. None, by the way, wore costumes.

This last was the leader of the band, calling on the crowd to join in and, when he could, waving a Bretagne flag at his side. The Bretagne flag is great – black and white stripes with triangular figures meant to represent the initial bishoprics in the corner. It looks like a bizarro, pirate version of the U.S.A. flag – I’m sure there’s no connection, though the U.S. flag came first.  

The music was all well and good, traditional Celtic music with a modern rock backing, but what made me stay was the crowd. In front of the stage, 16-20 people danced the appropriate traditional dances, either in pairs or in a circle as called for by the song. None of the crowd was dressed up, and most looked like they were copying what everybody else did, but with joy and honest intent. The exception was a man no older than me with long blonde hair and a long gray kilt. He had a goatee and shining eyes, and when not leading a partner or a group, he danced alone, setting the example, investing his blood and joie de vivre into the mutual crowd/band performance.

I took a seat in the back of the crowd. The band flowed through the set industriously and with attentive joy. The songs were pleasant and evocative the way well-played folk music always is. In a different setting, or for a longer period of time, or with the band wearing costumes, this might have grown dull, tedious, or kitsch.

Instead, the dancing crowd’s number swelled with each song. Around the crowd, an older drunk with a big backpack and a hat pestered the fun, trying to add to (or detract from) the music on a cheap recorder. The staff ushered him off the outdoor premises. The crowd continued; a pair of young women who had fended off the drunk danced together, then split up to dance with others for the next song. A bigger man with no hair struggled to time his claps right. Older couples sparkled in the culture of the moment. Blondie, who I called a “Viking Celt” in my head, sipped on his beer between songs, and disappeared for a song even, but returned to prance up and down the dancing space. The drunk returned through the back and, in moving one of the big parasols, drenched a group of onlookers. There’s always one. The music went on.

***

I don’t know. I’m loath to assign true, wide-spanning unity between vast numbers of people to any moment. I don’t believe the Olympics really bring us together; they just give us something to talk about amongst each other. I don’t believe nations on the scope of the U.S., France, India, even Luxembourg almost, make sense, not on a spiritual level; nation-states are convenient for wielding power, for administrative purposes, but not for identity. It makes just as much sense to build a nation out of the millions of people who own Thriller as out of people born or living in a 100,000 square mile area, say.

But on a smaller, humbler level, there are things we all share, just as humans. We can share in moments, in temporary connections. Even as they dissolve, those connections become more real and satisfying than the connections forced on us.

Nothing is better than music and dance at drawing out those connections. Movement and sound, simple sound, can bring us down to our most basic urges – to react, to thrust and shake, to act like animals. Get on the floor and just freak out: there is no better one time cure-all.

Get on the floor called the bandleader as the band circled through two riffs over and over to close down the set. I sat and watched. I’m not shy about dancing, but I prefer to do it alone or for someone I know, to amuse or irritate or impress. I sat and watched.

The last remnants from the sitting crowd got up. The circle of dancers expanded. In the middle, a few bolder dancers, the two guitarists, and of course the whirling dervish of a Viking Celt, eyes lit and hair aflame. The music both hollowed out as the guitars lost bite in the crowd and heightened to a final crest. 

I put my bag down and walked to the front. The circle had no opening. I stood on its edge, tangent to the dance and clapping with the beat.

The song and the set ended a few seconds later. The crowd dispersed happily. The band went on a break. The tension of the moment eased.

I took the bus home 15 minutes later at 22:45. All in all, I was pleased, both with day and with night.

A Series of Ordinarily Extraordinary Events - The Red Bike Rides in Bretagne, Pt. 3

02.08                      23:00              Hostel Room in Quiberon

Weather: The sun overcomes, the wind still blows fierce

Distance biked: 75 km yesterday, 45-50km today

Jeff was the 3^rd most extraordinary thing that happened to me today. He approached me as I sat at a table in a bar. The bar was not crowded; five to seven locals joked around the bar, and I sat alone, half a floor away. I sat crouched over this very journal, finishing yesterday’s entry. My bike helmet sat on the table in front of my beer. I wore my “civilian”, non-bike clothes, but no doubt still stank. Beneath me lay my bursting backpack. As always, I must have cut a strange figure.

“Where from?” he asked me. He had been walking back from the bathroom. I told him, in French.

A simulation of our linguistic struggles

“Who you?” he continued in English. I don’t mean to brag in saying it, but I will: my French was better than his English. Certainly more fluid.

“Je m’appelle Daniel,” I said.

“Oh, I’m Jeff.” We shook hands. He had long curly brown hair and bright blue eyes and facial hair all over.

He asked me what I was doing, why I was in Bretagne, and where I was staying. He stuck to the English. Rarely am I out-stubborned over which language to use, but I had to hand it to him. I ended up throwing some English in.

“You’re going to Quiberon tonight? Do you have number?” He meant phone. He proceeded to offer me a place to stay at his house. He wouldn’t be there that night, but his girlfriend would. He then told me to see the Côte Sauvage and take pictures (he mimed taking pictures with his hand). By the time we ended our conversation, he had told me work was good in the tourist season – the summer – but not for the rest of the year, that he was from Nantes, and the Breizh (Breton) word for “see you soon” at our parting (Something like Quenavoohoo). We also exchanged a second, more elaborate handshake.

I don’t know why they always come to me, but they do.

(I was not bold enough to take Jeff up on his offer).

***

The fourth most extraordinary thing today was biking through Elven. The town was nothing special, but its name is Elven! (An Elven in Breizh. Vannes is Gwened in Breizh. Pretty cool).

As I said, Bretagne has Celtic roots. Breizh is related to old Celtic languages, with lots of gw, q, k, and ac sounds – the most familiar Breton name to Americans I Kerouac (also Bretagne – Brittany in English – is related to Grande Bretagne in French – you guessed it, Great Britain).

For me, Celtic roots mean nerdy fantasy worlds I ate up as a kid. First Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles, then of course Tolkien’s books. I was not terribly sad about missing Merlin’s tomb, but if you told me where the village Beren and Luthien passed the end of their days, I’d be there yesterday (that’s a Silmarillon reference, uber-nerdy Tolkien stuff). 

If the shoe fits...(though really, I'm more hobbit-like)

Part of the excitement and majesty of this trip for me is to explore a related setting. I trek through forests and wide wheat fields, past mysterious ponds and quiet stone hosues, over hills and to windswept coasts. The interior of Bretagne enchants, and towns named Elven only add to the fun.

Not all of Elven was fun, however…

***

The most dually frustrating and positive thing today was that I bought a map. The map kept me on track – no zigzagging today. The only diversion was when I found a bike path that took me along the canal between Nantes and Brest. This was great, and I only wish it could have been more on my way to Vannes. Biking on flat, quiet bike paths by water is hard to beat.

The frustration is twofold. First, when I have a map, I look at it. A lot. Like every time I come to a significant intersection or a new town. My memory is good but not for pictures, and doubt is strong in me. Most often this is seen in the many photos of me traveling, with a backpack on and my nose in a book. It’s usually a guidebook, and I’m usually checking a map.

More physically frustrating was that my map showed no topography. I had no idea when hills were coming. The ride through Elven felt like one long uphill with brief flat pauses and the rarest of dips in the road. I pride myself on being tough, but 100 km in two days and hill after hill is enough to knock the tough out of me. One of my cycling maxims (I’ve at least two) is that every uphill is rewarded and every downhill paid for. It sure didn’t feel like I was rewarded today. Only on the last 10 kms did I rediscover my gumption and gut it out. A few downhills helped.

***

A few pettily extraordinary things:

-          I’m staying in a hostel. The only thing I don’t like about hostels is sharing my room with strangers. I’ve not done so in a long time, maybe four years. Still, for this trip I thought I could deal with it. What the hell, I want to go cheap. Them’s the breaks.

I showed up at 21:30, a half-hour before reception closed. I got placed in a room with four beds. Alone. Hot damn.

-          I showed up so late due to finally conceding on the train front. I had to take the train one stop before transferring to a train for this peninsula. The earlier train that went was a TGV, the one where you have to pay.

I could have said fuck it, snuck on, and hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with anybody for the ten minutes before I changed. Instead? I took a ticket for a later regional train and went for a drink and dinner in Vannes (meeting Jeff in the process). Maturity, I guess.

-          As mentioned, the sun came out. Ruins my joke that the one thing in my backpack I could do with out is the sunscreen. I did wear my long-sleeved shirt tonight.

-          I kept my Olympics streak alive, watching the women’s gymnastics tonight in the common room. I don’t think I’ve ever watched them so much, at least not since I was a kid – in ’08 I had just moved to Israel (no tv), in ’04 I worked two jobs, etc. Growing up, the Olympics were just about the only really-approved sports programming in our house. My mother liked the gymnastics, swimming, skiing, and figure skating.

-          While writing this, I finished my survival pack for the day – bread already gone, I ate an apple and finished my bar of chocolate. The chocolate only had half a row left. “Who’s been eating my chocolate?” I thought. I always eat it row by row, and the only way I would have left it like that is if I had been interrupted.

I checked in my back pack. There on the bottom was the rest of the chocolate, broken off. Good thing I checked.

***

The second most extraordinary thing I came across today was the beach. I’m staying in a hostel just north of Quiberon, on a narrow peninsula (Jeff described the people here as close-minded, “Quiberon for Quiberon” types, saying that 15 km out in the water, the mentality is bizarre). The beach is right there. So after checking in and claiming my room, I threw on my long sleeves and walked over, hoping to catch a glorious sunset.

There was no sun to be seen, though at 21:35 it was still light out. Plenty of other things demanded attention. I reached the sand and saw little white specks jumping all over. I thought at first that they were specks of trash blown about that looked like bugs. On further inspection, they were bugs. Leaping little whit erratic maggots or something. They popped left and right and up and down like excited gas molecules, with only rare periods of considered crawling. Barefoot and otherwise, I found the buggers all over my feet and ankles. They covered the whole dry sand area, especially congregating around seaweed and such clumps.

The wet sand area was the biggest I’ve seen. Wide as a football filed, the smooth sand was covered with a slim layer of water, not enough to stick up your nose or drown in. It represented a large tidal variation.

I walked barefoot out to the water’s edge. The water chilled me though gulls braved it. I skipped a few stones before my weak shoulder ached. The ocean roar drowned out my singing. Down to my left, on the south of the peninsula, a few lights shone, Quiberon’s agglomeration. Two couples sauntered on the wet sand. 

And then I turned around. Rising above the tree line, not visible closer to the shore, was the full moon. Orange and ripe like the whiffs of stinky cheese I bumped into en route, the moon hung over as if ready to swallow the peninsula. With such a narrow base and 15 kilometers out into the water, with all this as normal, it’s hard to imagine how the locals could have anything but a bizarre mentality.

The most extraordinary thing today? That breath filled my lungs, blessings my life, and that I was able to take part in all of it. And that I have another day to tackle tomorrow.