So. 20 of us from Reid Hall arrived in Lyon on Thursday night. We were all farmed out to families in the area, and most people agreed that they were happy with their hosts, but I think I got the best deal of all. I had mentikoned on my info sheet that I was Jewish, and so, accomodatingly, the liason gave me a big, wonderful Jewish-Moroccan family: Isaac, Rachel, Samuel, David, and Benjamin Rimokh. Rachel was an absolute doll. She totally mothered me, helped me with my French without making me feel ignorant, and was a wonderful cook (expect recipes soon). She was so glad to have another girl in the house! Isaac I didn't reallly get to know well; he was very nice and made me feel at home right away, but I spent more time with Rachel in the kitchen - they had a pretty old-fashioned family dynamic - or with the boys. The boys... I wish they were my cousins! Samuel, 25, is a law student and lives at home, so we spent tons of time horsing around. David, 22, is getting his master's in Paris; he came home for the weekend and we hit it off, so I look forward to hanging out with him here.
(David's on the left, Sam uncooperatively on the right in the photo.) Benjamin, the baby of the family at 15, was really funny and absolutely loves America. He spoke English really well, so while I spoke French almost exclusively with the rest of the family, we spoke English together to he could practice. (He's also really into rap music, which created some funny situations in which he'd repeat lyrics that he didn't completely understand.) He wants to go to college in the states... I'm obviously pushing Columbia. They had a big, beautiful apartment in the Chinatown neighborhood just to the east of the Rhône, with a WC and two bathrooms (something I've never seen before) as well as a kesher kitchen and high ceilings with pretty moulding. It really was the ideal homestay situation; I was treated as one of the family - teasing and all - and I learned so much about French/French-Jewish culture.We - the group - spent nights and the weekend with our family. Nights were relatively calm, mostly because the boys had school and Rachel and Isaac work, but Shabbat was crazy. We did a service at home on Friday night and ate this stupendous meal that Rachel had been cooking since Thursday night. She made all her own challah... 6 loaves in all. Yikes! On Saturday morning, Isaac, Benjamin, and I went to services while Rachel prepared lunch and the older boys slept. (We'd gone out the night before and although I came home to zonk out at 1:30, they stayed out till 3:30.) We came home to a table set for 10 - they had invited two older couples, one from Israel, over for lunch. This lunch... I have never eaten like that in my life! 5 courses, mostly traditional Moroccan dishes, and wine and fresh challah and yumm. The whole thing took three hours. All I wanted to do afterwards was take a nap, but four more friends came over for tea and cake and Jewtalk. I think most of the Lyonnaise Jews are Sephardic, because everyone made a big thing about how I was Ashkenazic. Like, a big thing: it was usually one of the first things the guests commented on, and they all asked what kind of food my mom cooked and what traditions we had and stuff. Yikes again. When everyone finally left, it was time for Havdalah, and then I think we all passed out.
Saturday night, Sam and David and I went out again. We started out at a bar around the corner where they knew everyone, including the bartenders. It was tons of fun, especially since a lot of kids came in to see David, who didn't come home often. They told me we were just starting off there, but we ended up staying until they closed at 3am. (Don't worry, Nana, I don't do this often.) We then moved - with some of the kids from the bar - to an underground club called La Marquise that was aboard a boat on the Rhône. It was very crowded and very loud and very, very fun. I wanted to dance - they had a great DJ - but we couldn't even make it past the bar to the dancefloor. Sam ended up knowing a lot of people there, and I got introduced to so many people who wanted to speak English I nearly screamed - but then one of them bought us a bottle of champagne and all was well with the world.
Rachel and Benjamin and I went to see a production of Sartre's Huit Clos on Sunday afternoon in this tiny theater in the Croix-Russe, the arty quarter of Lyon. It was creatively done: although Sartre gives pretty explicit set directions (there's a bronze statue and three Restoration (I think) sofas of different colors), the walls of the set were brushed metal, the sofas metal blocks, and the bronze an upside-down triangle stuck to the wall. I liked the interpretation, and the guy did a wonderulful job, but the woman who played Ines was terrible. She wasn't a subtle actress at all; she obviously wanted the audience to hate the character, and so was lous and obnoxious, but it came off as one-dimensional. I felt very sophisticated, discussing the play in French after it ended.
During the weekdays - Friday and Monday through Wednesday morning we went on group tours.
Friday: Lyon, fyi, is very hilly.
On Friday morning we went to the Basilique de Fourviers, which is on top of the highest hill in the city. I got to the meeting place - the bottom of the hill - late, and found that my group had left without me. My host mother had told me that there was a finicula, but I didn't see signs for it. I did, however, see signs for the Basilique, and so followed them. I followed them all the way up the 800 stairs (actually 800; I got this number from the guide) that pilgrims used to use. It killed me. Thankully, the Basilique was enough to make the climb worth it, and the view was spectacular. We then went to the Musée Gallo-Romain, and it has the potental to be a really good museum, but our tour guide was so awful I don't want to relive the experience by writing about it here. Sorry.In the afternoon we went back to the bottom of the same hill because it's kind of the center of Vieux Lyon. We had a tour of the Cathedral of St. Jean; it's the smallest cathedral in Europe and definitely one of my favorites. French churches have this weird habit of putting CDs on their sound systems (to provide a fuller experience or something, I guess), and I was totally freaked out by hearing Mendelssohn's Laudate Pueri and not finding the choir. (What is this with France and Mendelssohn pieces I know?) Anyway, the cathedral was really pretty, and has a mechanical astonomical clock that still has all it's original workings from the 15th century. We were there at 3pm and saw it chime and all the little figures on it do dances. Very cool. We then walked around the two quarters of Vieux Lyon - St. Jean and St. Georges - and got to go into the traboules. Because the city is so hilly, back in the day people built little tunnels and walkways through their buildings to make things easier, and sometimes they open up into pretty courtyards and hidden architectural gems. Lyon kind of reminded me of the Washington, DC to Paris' New York; it was definitely a city, but had a smaller-town feel.
Monday: Best. Morning. Ever.
The wine region of Beaujolais is about 45 minutes away, so we drove through picturesque fields and villages until we got to Domaine des Terres Vivantes, a small estate from which a couple run classes and a restaurant. (Side note: for some reason, I never think of villages as still in existance. I always picture them in a WWI scenario in which the hardy men are off fighting the Krauts and the women at home, knitting socks to send to their boys on the front.) The day was kind of misty, but that made the landscape even more beautiful. There were vines covering the rolling fields as ar as the eye could see, and you could just barely make out the mounting hills in the distance. The wife, Marie, is a baker; she spends Fridays baking and then sells her yummies at the market. Her husband trained as a sommelier and now grows his own vines, so after Marie taught us how to bake bread, he showed us his land and explained the process of cultivation and wine-making. He then took us inside and taught us how to properly taste wine: first, he said, you smell the wine quickly to determine whether or not you like it. You then take a more leisurely sniff to determine if the wine is more flowery, spicy, or fruity. You then swirl the wine in the glass to open it up to the air and smell again, trying to detect specific notes within the wine. When you finally taste it, you should do so while adding oxygen to the mouthful and determining whether the wine is more acidic, tanin, or alcoholic. Needless to say, none of us really knew what we were doing and we all looked rediculous, but we definitely learned a lot. We tasted three wines at they had made themselves: a 2005, a 2003, and a nouveau 2006. My favorite was the 2005, which was fruity, with hints of strawberries and raspberries, and was less acidic. His wife then served us a million course lunch: fresh-baked bread, cheese bread, a carrot salad, salad with chèvre and walnuts, a pork paté-y thing, beef bourgingon with rice, a butter cake, and finally cookies and coffee. I think everyone slept on the bus back. (In the photo from lunch, clockwise from top left: Ashley, Jessie, Luke, Hillary, Betsy, and Ben.) In the afternoon we went to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, and I fell in love with a couple statues (a Rodin of Eve and a 19th century marble of Adam and Eve and the body of Abel), but no one was really in the mood for a guided tour after our morning.
On Tuesday we had a tour of the Croix-Russe, the arty quarter of town, which I skipped cause I wasn't feeling well (but they tell me the tour guide was awful), and in the afternoon a tour of the Musée des Tissus et des Arts Décoratifs, which was awesome. Lyon used to be a major center of silk production; the industry began there in the 15th century, and Charles V granted the city an official monopoly in 1532. They had tons of fabrics and embroidery and clothes and lace dating from the 16th through the 20th centuries. The dec arts section had amazing furniture, complete rooms, and - my favorite - china and silver from the past few centuries, tooo. I wish I knew more about this stuff... I still can't really tell the difference between Louis XV and Restoration styles. (I think Louis XV is curvier and more elaborate, but I could be totally wrong.)
We spent Wednesday morning at the Centre d'Histoire et de la Déporation; Lyon was a major force in the French resistance during World War II. The permanent exhibit included journals and newspaper articles and documentaries and interviews and propaganda videos from Pétain's government... I can't really describe it all, because it was too heartbreaking and moving, but you should definitely go. It took a while before anyone was really ready to talk again after we left. We had our last lunch at Brasserie Georges, a famous Art Deco restaurant that serves Lyonnaise specialties and has been around forever, with the group and some of the host family members. It was lovely, and I had a wonderful time, but - like I said - I'm glad to be home.
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