Avignon, Idleness, Tour de France

Forgive me, dear reader, it has been over a week since my last post. This is not because I haven't had access to the internet or because nothing is happening. Rather, it is because I have had more than enough time to write things down. Anyone who knows me is familiar with my procrastination skills.

Krisztian and I rode slowly to Avignon, wanting to give our friend Cecily time to prepare for our arrival. Also, we were trying to time our viewing of the Tour de France, whichhas a circuit starting in nearby Nimes. We stayed for about four days in her small studio apartment, which was called a "cruce." I have no idea how to spell that word or what it means, but that's what it was. Avignon is a walled medieval city in Provence, and it happened to be hosting the largest theater festival in Europe when we arrived. The streets were overflowing with people; there were minstrels and breakdancers and jugglers and unicyclists and every other type of spectacle imaginable.

It was strange for me to learn that what Americans might call a "show" or "performance" is called "l'espectacle" in French. If anyone else has read Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, you might understand how I felt. Spectacles were constantly permeating the real, the everyday. Rather than the traditional spectacle of advertising, theater groups would come sing a song to a group at a caffe, hand out handbills, or attempt some other more clever way of getting peoples' attention. This spectacle took quite the strange twist for me.

I was walking with Cecily and some of her fellow literature graduate students who were in Avignon for the summer studying French. We we taking a long walk to a park on the banks of the Rhone and crossing a bridge when a woman ran up to us yelling frantically in French. She looked frightened, but I did not understand what she was saying and it seemed to be an especially disruptive attention-grab for a play. A few moments later, I was with a group of men pulling a man over the railing of the bridge and subduing him on the sidewalk. He was trying to jump. We held him there until the ambulance came. More than any time I can remember, I wondered why I happened to be there at that particular moment. And if it was my role to interfere with the fate of another life that I knew nothing about.

The incident at the bridge may be my most vivid recollection of Avignon, but I did a number of fun things there. I saw a Hungarian play adapted by Romanians and performed in French, I drank wine with these aforementioned Romanians, I ate mussels and french fries, we had a mini dance party in an overcrowded studio apartment. Krisztian and I also scaled the city wall by climbing up a dumpster and busting out some parkour moves. I am convinced time and time again that climbing things can only lead to goodness. We tried to circumambulate the whole town on top of the wall, but we didn't make it too far before we came up to a gate and had to retrace our steps. Regardless, I got to pretend to shoot arrows and pour boiling wax on invaders. AKA, getting medieval on Avignon's ass.

Sometime towards the end of our stay in Avignon, Krisztian and I rode out to to a small town called Saint Remy-en-Provence to watch the Tour de France. We had to ride up a small vestige of the Alps, the Alpilles, on the way. After the most difficult climb of the trip, we were rewarded by a high-altitude lake with a giant rock face and a late and luminous sunset. As we did for every meal, we sat and ate some sort of meat, cheese, a baguette, and some fruit with our hands. Sometimes I forget that utensils exist.

We ended up setting up camp on the edge of a parking lot for an archaeological site from the 3rd century BC. I wanted to climb another wall to get a look, but we decided it was better not to push our luck any further. Rising early in the morning, we found a site to watch the racers on a stone wall at the bottom of a two-tiered cascade. As we sat there for hours, drinking wine before noon because it seemed appropriate, people slowly began picking their own spots around us. Like so many Europeans, a man across the street and his son were wearing t-shirts in semi-coherent English: the son was wearing a "Street America" tank top, and his father was wearing my favorite of the trip, "Trash User." Eventually, Mr. Trash User and his friends invited us across the street to enjoy the festivities with them. They fed us, offered us wine from a local family vineyard, and plenty of an annis-based drink called Ricard.

We ran back across the street when the race seemed to be coming, but it always seemed to be a false alarm. Being drunk and excited about seeing the world's biggest cycling event for free, we were extra eager to hold up our "Tour de Awesome" banner for the film crews. There were so many false alarms, and the French tradition of spectacle continued. For two hours, cars and floats drove by advertising every imaginable product, tossing samples over our head and into the river. Finally, almost as an an afterthought, the lead pack and the peloton passed us in what seemed like 10 seconds. Some people left before the bikes even came by. That's like watching the Superbowl just for the commercials. Weird.

Anyway, Mr. Trash User and his friend, a retired sheriff of Avignon, slowly led us back to their place in their cars, as we pedaled behind wobbly. After a long day of playing card games we didn't understand and drinking delicious wine, Jean Claude, the retired sheriff, gave us a ride back to Avignon in his 60s Citroen dune buggy. And gave us homemade honey. Really.

So, after our time in France, I have to conclude that French people are really confusing. I have found them to be the most welcoming AND the most standoffish. They honk at you in support and they honk at you in anger. They laugh with you and laugh at you. I had a great time in France, but it was time to hop on the train and skip some terrain. Next stop, Milan.