Besançon

Yesterday I tagged along with Emilie and Cécile to Besançon, a city in Eastern France that about 90 minutes from Lausanne. They planned to spend the afternoon shopping, so I decided to take the opportunity to explore the city in parallel.

The layout of the city is pretty neat – the old town consists of a horseshoe-shaped peninsula that’s surrounded by the Doubs river. Here’s an aerial photo that I found online.

As we crossed a bridge into the old town, we had a nice view of the autumn leaves and their changing colors. It definitely felt like Fall out and was a bit crisp, but at least there wasn’t any rain.

Once we reached the old town our paths diverged and I began my sightseeing. First I headed to the Cathédrale Saint-Jean, which dates back to the 11th century and has a large clock tower.












The tower houses an 18th century astronomical clock that is a bit more intricate than any of the clocks that I've ever seen before.

During the walk to the cathedral, I passed some ancient Roman ruins. Apparently there are a couple of sites with Roman ruins in the area.

Next I walked to the nearby citadel, a fortification at the neck of the Besançon peninsula that served as a defense for the old town. The walk took me above the cathedral and through a park showing more signs of Fall.










The citadel is indeed a massive fortification. I didn’t go inside since I didn’t have a lot of time, but it was nonetheless impressive from the outside.










Given the citadel’s position atop Mont Saint-Étienne, it offers nice views of the old town below.










I then walked back down to the center of the old town and briefly stopped in a plaza with another church – the 18th century Église Saint-Pierre. You can't from the picture, but there were actually a ton of people out since it wasn't overly cold and the rain never materialized.

I then traversed the bridge at the end of the peninsula to see the nearby Église de la Madeleine (another 18th century church). I really liked the architecture, with the two front towers and large internal columns.











After touring the Madeleine, I walked back across the river to the old city and simply wandered the streets to take in the atmosphere.










I really liked the style of the buildings – some of which are stone and date back (at least in some form) to the middle ages. There is also apparently a Spanish Renaissance influence (at least according to Wikipedia).

Return from Yemen

Today Emilie returned from her two week vacation in Yemen. Let’s just say I’m glad she’s finally back – particularly given the developments over the past 24 hours regarding some cargo flights departing Yemen.

Based on Emilie’s description, it sounds like Yemen is a truly amazing place that offers a once in a lifetime experience for those visitors who make the trip. While there are indeed dangers that exist, the same can be said with respect to any travel destination that one might choose.

There are clearly rewards for those who go places that the average traveler won’t even consider –in the form of the people you meet, the perspective that you gain and the unique things that you see. And because of that I am definitely jealous of Emilie’s trip. But at the same time, it would have been difficult for me to gather the courage to go on such a trip (even if much of the perceived danger is far from the reality of the experience).

Fortunately, Emilie took hundreds of pictures so I have been able to experience Yemen a bit vicariously. The following are of my favorites.

Socotra Island

Morning calisthenics with Emilie’s father and the neighborhood kids...

Back on the mainland

Sana’a

Yemen Update

I spoke with Emilie last night and got the full update on her first week in Yemen. She and her father are doing well and it sounds like they’re having a pretty unbelievable experience. Here are some camera phone pictures that she text-ed me.


After spending the first couple of days in / around Sana’a (the capital), they flew to Socotra island and stayed the balance of the week there. Thus far they’ve basically done a lot of sightseeing and hiking. And it sounds like they’ve really been “roughing it”. In fact, last night was the first time that they’d had indoor plumbing in nearly a week, I believe.

Now they’re back in the capital for a day and will then spend the balance of the trip visiting different towns and hiking / camping in the mountains. They have a local guide for the entire trip, so everything is planned out pretty well. They’re even going to spend some time with the guide’s family, which I’m sure will allow for a truly local’s perspective.

It was nice to hear about all the good things Emilie had to say about Yemen / her trip and it definitely made me feel (a little) more comfortable about her vacation choice. Nonetheless, I have no doubt that I’ll continue to check cnn.com fanatically over the next week to ensure that there are no Yemen-related breaking news stories. (For any of you who notice some newly gray hairs on my head come Thanksgiving / x-mas, you can thank Emilie’s vacation choice…)

La retraite

I’m not sure how much press the French strikes are getting in the U.S. but they’re all over the news here. It appears that the general retirement age will be raised from 60 to 62 (both the executive and legislative branches seem to support the initiative) and millions are taking to the streets in protest.

Thus far there have been some fairly serious repercussions for a number of industries. In particular, the petrol industry has more or less come to a standstill as workers at nearly all the refineries have joined the strike. As a result, many gas stations simply are going dry and people are unable to fill their tanks.

The major airports have also been affected by the de facto fuel shortage, with a significant number of flights being cancelled because there’s simply not enough fuel getting to the airport. And if you decide to take a train rather than fly, your odds of success aren’t necessarily much better since the strikes are resulting in the cancellation of many trains as well.

As for when all the protests will come to an end, that remains to be seen. The legislative votes are in the coming weeks and – if successful – Sarkozy intends to sign the related bill in early November. Nonetheless, one French citizen in a newspaper article offered his view on the likely timeline – basically, the strikes can’t last much longer because the fall vacation period is coming up and no one wants the strikes to get in the way their vacation.

That made me laugh.

First Class

Last night I had my first private French class and I think that the one-on-one instruction will be a good use of time. The lesson began with me telling the teacher about my background, my family, etc. This part was fairly straightforward as I’m generally comfortable discussing such topics because I can rely on verbs and vocabulary that I’m familiar with.

For the balance of the class, the teacher selected articles in the local paper for me to read and then we would discuss them afterward. This type of exercise is much more difficult because I’m less familiar with the topics that are being discussed and I often run into dead ends in which I want to express a word that I simply don’t know in French. But it’s also a much more helpful exercise because it takes me out of my comfort zone and challenges me a lot.

For future classes, I think we’re basically going to continue with the newspaper exercise. As a result, I think that my teacher has one of the easiest gigs ever. She basically just has to show up, pick out a few articles, suffer through my pronunciation and then respond to what I have to say.

Déjeuner ou cours de français ?

Today I had lunch with Emilie’s mother and sister at the nearby Café Beau Rivage. They were headed to the Edward Hopper exhibit at the Fondation de l'Hermitage in Lausanne this afternoon and were nice to invite me to join them for lunch beforehand.

During the five minute walk to the restaurant I could definitely tell that fall has arrived. There was a chill to the air and a brisk wind coming off Lac Léman.

I had never eaten at the Café Beau Rivage before, but had heard that it was very good. And that turned out to be the case. I went with grilled tuna for the starter, a chicken dish for the main course and tiramisu for desert. Needless to say, I ate much better than I would have if left to fend for myself back at my apartment.

I was exhausted by the end of lunch given that French was spoken the whole time. It basically required a couple of hours of intense concentration on my part to follow as much of the conversations as possible and also make (somewhat) coherent contributions. Lunches like this are definitely much better for my French than any language class.

Bon Voyage

Today Cécile and I took Emilie to the airport so she could begin her two week vacation in Yemen. Yes, you read that right…vacation and Yemen in the same sentence. She’s heading there with her father, though the trip was her idea and he (thankfully) agreed to join her after she had already planned it.

My knowledge of Yemen is probably in-line with that of most westerners – i.e., very limited and biased negatively by media reports. Aside from the Yemen-related cnn.com headlines that I’ve seen on occasion (often terrorist-related) and Chandler’s “I guess I’m going to Yemen” quote in a Friends episode, I really haven’t had much exposure to the country.

It turns out that there are many positives to Yemen that unfortunately get obscured by the more highly publicized negatives. For example, the country offers an environment that is relatively untouched by the Western (and in many cases modern) world. There is also the beautiful Socotra island, which is even more untouched than the Yemen mainland and is home to countless animal and plant species that exist nowhere else on the planet.

That said, I’m still having a hard time getting past my apprehensions about the safety of traveling to Yemen. Even if it’s statistically no more dangerous than traveling to many of the world’s most popular cities, something tells me that I’m not going to get much sleep over the next two weeks…