The end of the Classics Trip

May 16, 2007

Clos d’Huillas, France

The semester is finally over. We have been sequestered in a small Chateau in southern France, taking our final exams and writing our final papers and generally enjoying each other’s company and the wonderful weather and scenery that surrounds the place. Our trip ended up with a brief trip to Marseilles, and then on to Nimes, the site of the famous and very well preserved amphitheater, and finally to wine country, where the nearest grocery is a 45 minute car ride away, and the only thing that can be seen for miles around are the rolling hills of grapes and the small stone farmhouses that dot the countryside.

We spent the first day out of Florence in a train—one first to Genoa, and then a switch in Nice, I think, finally stopping in Marseilles. It was such a hassle to get on the train, and off the train, dragging our bulging bags behind us the whole way, but it was made a little bit better by knowing that it was one of the last times that we would ever have to put up with so much luggage. In one of the trains, where I was lucky enough to be with Stewart, we got the whole car to play all kinds of camp games, which had us completely entertained for the entire ride. Ambrice sat across from me, and I began a game where you had to guess if a pen “is a stick” by a certain code in the way I moved it. The trick of the game is distraction—I moved the pen in all kinds of directions and every time asked at the end if it was a stick. Most people move immediately to the movment, and ignore the way I phrased the question. Everytime I said the phrase “listen carefully,” the stick was a stick, and when I did not, it wasn’t. The phrase is such a throwaway that most people do not even listen to it—they just look at the hands and the pen. But those in my car gradually began to figure it out—all except Ambrice, who shouted “don’t you tell me to listen carefully! I DON’T KNOW!” at which point I told her the trick and we all started to laugh. We all emerged from that train ride laughing excitedly.

The trains were also equipped with electrical outlets, and Stewart and I passed much of the time on her and my new fixation; an early 90s drama called Party of Five. She had the whole first season on DVD, and as we whirred through the countryside, we got to see the soap opera lives of this group of five siblings, clad in stonewashed jeans that went up past their natural waists. It was really funny, and the show was pure fluff—something my mind really appreciated after all of those hours studying and thinking. And after a good many hours we arrived, to a cute little hotel that really resembled a hostel more than anything else, with bunk beds in the rooms and a vending machine that sold pasta in the lobby.

The next day, Stewart and I went on a search for a bikram yoga place she had looked up online. We grabbed a map and headed out into Marseilles, passing by the harbor area which was littered with masts and ships bobbing at anchor. The day was bright and beautiful, and we enjoyed each other’s company as we searched, passing by a number of pastry places, and the neoclassical architecture with the short roofs that is so characteristic of French architecture. Unfortunately, the yoga place was closed, so we made the most of it, walking down past the hotel to a small monastery right on the coast. It looked more like a fort than a monastery really, with imposing stone walls that tilted inwards, with small slitty windows dug deep into the stone. However, it was a picturesque location, right on the water, and we walked around it a bit before returning to the hotel and starting the day.

Toumazou introduced us to a woman who took us on a walking tour of Marseilles. She helped him in his Cyprus dig over the summer, and spoke English, French, and Greek—which seemed quite impressive to me. She took us to the archaeological museum in Marseilles, which we discovered was an ancient Greek colony, later overtaken by the Romans, and a center of trade. Some of the remains of ancient ships were sunk in the old, silted over harbor, and had been reconstructed inside of the museum, sunken wine jugs and all. It was impressive to see them there, but much of the rest of the museum contained everything that we had seen before—pottery, some statuary, and other relics of the ancient society. I found it hard to stay interested, Marseilles felt like it had so much more to offer than the small museum we were seeing.

Luckily, we were released early, and I wandered back to the hotel to do some internet, and exhausted, red and slept before going to dinner—a small burger joint where we had our first taste of approximated American food than we had had in months. It tasted so good! On the way back, Stewart and I stopped at a pastry shop, where we each got some delicious French dessert—I got a blueberry pie, and she got an apple tart, which we both ate with gusto. Then it was back to Party of Five, and sleep.

The following day was another train ride to Nimes, where we loaded a bus to see the Roman sites there—Pont du Gard, the amphitheater, and Maison Caree. Maison Caree is a perfect example of an Italic type temple, with an atrophied rear, emphasis on the front porch, and a high temple platform. The delicate Corinthian columns embed themselves into the side of the building, graying with pollution. We were given a short lecture and allowed to go inside; stepping up to the temple made us realize just how elaborate the place was. All over the upper mouldings of the temple were delicate scrolls of flowers and vines. We stood, still impressed after all of this time, before hopping back on the bus and blowing right by the amphitheater.

The amphitheater is very similar to the Colosseum, although it only has two stories. Still, the organizational structure that governed the larger structure is still present in the smaller one. Arches arrange themselves in a big circle, and the places between contain embedded columns of varying architectural orders. We did not get to go inside, so I did not get to see as much of the building as I would have liked, but we needed to get to the Chateau, and we quickly loaded onto the bus and moved on.

A few kilometers away we stopped again, to pull into the park that contains Pont du Gard, one of the best preserved ancient Roman aqueducts, that supplied water to the city of Nimes, and at this point spanned a low lying river valley. Rising up in a graduated series of arches, the aqueduct transported water over a huge distance to bring it into the city. Although much of the rest of the aqueduct is destroyed, here it was still used as a bridge, and after giving us a short lecture Dr Toumazou released us to walk around. We walked over the bridge and surveyed the French countryside, which fell away in front of us in a series of rolling hills that reminded me strongly of the mountains in North Carolina, but greener, and brighter. The sun was out, and we basked in it, excited to finally be retreating to a place where we could finally stay for a few days, and where we could finally cook and wake up whenever we pleased.

Unfortunately, the cooking part did not happen until a few days later. The day we were traveling was a national holiday for France, and before Dr Toumazou had realized it, we were stuck with all of the grocery stores closed. And we were about to drive out into the middle of nowhere. We spent the next two hours driving to town after town, searching for food, to no avail. Eventually, Toumazou decided to stop at a bakery and buy tons of bread, a solution that left us practically at our wits end. We had been eating bread for weeks and weeks—it had become the standard fare for breakfast, and we were sick of it, and to find out that we would be eating nothing but bread and water for the next 24 hours was more than enough to get us all really upset. But there was nothing we could do—he trundled back on the bus with loaves and loaves, and we each took our share and said nothing.

We arrived near the Chateau to find it at the top of a big hill in the middle of the rolling French countryside, so steep a climb that the bus we were riding could not take us to the top. The owner of the Chateau, a weathered French man known only to us as “The General,” offered to take some of our luggage. Toumazou took the opportunity to pile his stuff in and hopped in the passenger seat, leaving many of us to hike up the hill with all of our bags. Needless, I was not happy when I arrived, panting, at the top of the hill.

But the beauty of the place calmed me down—the chateau offered a nearly panoramic view of the hills and vine fields that patchworked all over the landscape, and the place contained not one, but two swimming pools, and a variety of little houses, all made of a light stone with small sturdy windows and creaky stairs. We got to pick our own houses and roommates, and Stewart and I picked each other, installing ourselves in the ground level of the Tower House, a recently renovated building with warm yellow walls, dark worn wood furniture, a small kitchen, and best of all, a washing machine.

We were set. We spent the next week and a half lounging by the cold pools, braving the water to tread water for about an hour everyday, making omlettes for breakfast lunch and dinner, running through the fields that spread below us, and taking our exams. Some days it was really hard to focus—the outdoors were so inviting, and knowing that we had a limited number of days made us all really want to relax. We had been going practically non-stop for the past four months, and really wanted a rest. So I compromised—running in the mornings, jumping into the pool to cool off, doing some work, swimming at noon and then preparing lunch, and working in the evenings outdoors on the covered porches or on the picnic tables in the sun, and then going to bed early. It was a great way to spend the time, and if I could pick anywhere on the travels so far to just have a relaxing vacation, that would be it. The Chateau was paradise.

Every run I went on was to a different, new, interesting place. Often I would catch bikers in their full out spandex gear on the road, and they would wave at me as they zoomed by. Other days, I would run past fields of wildflowers and inhale the scent. I would climb hills to beautiful vistas that overlooked the countryside. On one of the last days, I went on a run in a light rain, and feeling confident, turned off some of the main roads and proceeded to get myself thoroughly lost. After an hour of running, I finally spotted an old man doing some repairs to his house and asked him to help me. Although he spoke no English, and I spoke no French, he got out a map and pointed to a town close to him, which was one that I had run by earlier. Through wild gestures and lots of pointing, he asked if he should drive me there. I figured that at the very least the place might have a person who spoke English, or had heard of Clos d’Huillas, or something—so we ventured out in his tiny red and white pugeot until we reached the town.

Unfortunately the town was really more of a cluster of houses. I had abandoned almost all hope of finding the way home when he drove to a little campground that he must have thought I meant when I said “chateau” and made the gesture for sleeping. Luckily I recognized it—I had run by the same place a few days before and excitedly nodded and pointed to the left, where the road should run back toward the Chateau. And after a few kilometers on the road, it eventually did. The man was nice enough to drive me all of the way back up the hill to the Chateau, where I emerged in my running gear to the astonishment of everyone else on the trip, who proceeded to laugh at my predicament. I told the man thank you VERY MUCH, stepped out of the car, and walked back to my house.

That was probably the most exciting event at the Chateau, all of the rest of it was spent hanging out and talking, studying, cooking, and sleeping. Not a bad way to wind down the semester, I would say. The last night we took a train into Nimes, where we all went out to a nice dinner at a Thai restaurant, walking down past the amphitheater which dominated the city scape, and had a last hurrah of sorts that night before we all left the next day. It was a weird feeling, knowing that the following morning we would not be loading a big tour bus to head out together, and that day one of us, Alan, had slipped out without any of us knowing. All we could talk about was what we were going to do next, and we looked around at our new found friends, our only companions for the past few months, and said our goodbyes. It was pretty sad, actually, but I think at the same time we were all relieved to finally be getting away from the regimented schedule of the classics trip and be in control of our own lives again.

The next morning, I woke up fairly early, had breakfast, and headed down to the lobby to watch those who were leaving for the 9:30 train to Paris shuffle down, in various states of awakeness and sobriety. Some of us had already left on the 7 and 8:00 trains, including Stewart, my computer buddy, and Ambrice, Katie and Jess Eisenberg. I was set out to leave on the 1:00 train—I had originally wanted to buy a ticket for a train that would take me directly to Charles De Gaulle airport, but when I went to reserve my ticket I discovered that they were all sold out, and so myself and Anne and Jess Bradshaw decided to take the train to Paris Gare de Lyon, where I would board a metro out to the airport. It was a longer process, but it was the best I could do, and I had to board the flight, otherwise I would miss meeting my sister in Athens.

So, we said our goodbyes, and were left with Jarrett, Sam, Chris Vincoli, Jess Dwyer, and Anne and Jess Bradshaw. We checked out of the hotel, left our bags, and sat for a while, checking internet and finalizing travel plans, until it was close to lunch time. Then we had our second final hurrah—venturing to a part of Nimes I had not seen before, full of shops and botiques and best of all a great little Lebanese food place. We all got a few big dishes and ate family style—falafel, chicken, salad, hummas and all of those wonderful foreign foods that I have only had a few times previously but am so excited about eating in the fall. Then, the boys walked Jess, Anne and I to the train station and saw us off—we gave each other hugs and promises of email and such, and the train pulled out and we were off.

Jess, Anne and I spent a good deal of the ride talking about the trip in general, and one thing we all definitely agreed upon: despite its shortcomings, we have seen more of the world than we were likely to the rest of our lives, and we were so grateful to have seen it all. On the other hand, we were all positively sick of being told when to wake up and where to go every day, and we were feeling pretty claustrophobic from being stuck with the same group of 20 people for the past four months. It was kind of like being on a show like Survivor, except that the Island always moves and no one leaves, except for the tour guides. I was so excited to see my sister that I could barely think about the fact that these, my only companions, would be scattered to the wind. I hope I get to see a lot of my close friends in the fall, but we will be back at Davidson and into our own routines, and it will be much more difficult than just walking next door to the other hotel room. Or picnicking on someone’s porch.

We arrived in Paris right on time, and stepped out into an incredibly noisy and busy station. Luckily, both Anne and Jess spoke French, and they helped me find the right metro to get on to reach the airport. And they sent me off, and I was finally alone. I had to navigate the rest of the trip by myself, looking at the signs and maps as I went, worried that I would miss my flight or that I would never be able to find the gate. Luckily, neither of those two disaster scenarios came to pass. My flight went very smoothly, and I arrived late into Athens, hailed a taxi, and finally got to see my sister.