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| Posing along the canal outside of Montbard |
Vercingétorix is something of a national hero in France, which I find a little odd, since, the French language is a direct descendant of Latin; this means that if Caesar had not conquered the land, the French would not be speaking the beloved language that they are so proud of today. Also, the fact that Vercingétorix lost makes him a bit of an odd selection for a hero; but then again, considering that none other than Charles de Gaulle himself initiated a tradition of leaving flowers at the grave of Marshal Petain, the World War I hero who later led the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime, I conclude that perhaps the French have a broad conception of national heroism.
We had already decided that we were not going to ride the full 90K that day. Instead, we planned on riding about halfway, to the town of Blasy-Bas, the last town before the nasty hill, and then taking the train the rest of the way. However, our plans didn’t quite turn out that way, despite our early departure.
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| Crossing the canal |
We had discovered by this time that looking out of windows was something of a French pastime. Certainly, in Paris, we often saw French men and women, looking down at the street from their apartment windows above the street, watching the world go by. But Paris was an interesting place. I wouldn’t have thought there was much to see in this tiny village, other than, perhaps, to snoop on suspicious-looking foreign bicyclists. In any case, everyone we had met in France up to this point had been very friendly to us, and this was our first actual snub by a Frenchperson.
In the nearby town of Veneray les Laumes, we stopped at a bar across the street from the railway station. Even though we had not ridden long, it was already starting to get hot, it seemed logical to relax a bit prior to the big climb of Mt. Auxois, which lay just outside the town. We sat outside the bar, watching the street activity and drinking our Oranginas. Every bar and cafe in France seemed to sell Orangina, and it it tasted good in the heat of the midmorning sun.
As was frequently the case, the directions on our route sheets were confusing as to the exact route to take to the top of the mountain. It referred to a “five-way intersection” that we never did find. At one point, just to reassure ourselves that all the vigorous uphill pedaling was not for naught, we stopped to pull out our Michelin map and consult our Michelin Green Guide. An old woman happened to be sitting on a nearby bench, and asked us where we were going.
“Alise-Ste. Reine,” we told her.
She smiled and pointed upward. It turned out that the town was just around the bend.The town had a museum, but we first walked our bikes to the summit, which commanded an impressive view of the surrounding countryside, and which included an immense statue of Vercingétorix. I don’t know how accurate a depiction of the man it was, but the statue showed him with a mustache that reminded me of David Crosby’s.
I was starting to feel a little weak. Having been jet lagged for several days, not having slept well, and the incessant heat, all combined were starting to have an effect on me. We went to the museum in town, that showed old Roman relics from the area, and though it was interesting, I had to sit down while Cindi perused the second floor. The woman who sold our tickets also operated a souvenir counter. She was very friendly, and was happy to speak with us despite our inadequate command of the French language. We discussed our mutual impressions of the her native tongue; she said she believed it was a hard language for foreigners to learn. I told her that, to my ears, it sounded truly beautiful.
When we walked outside the museum, we saw Jeff, our trip coordinator, riding up the hill. The first words out of his mouth were, “I didn’t expect to see anyone here.” We rode with him a ways, where he pointed us the way out of town, a way that would indeed be the way to go if we were inclined to climb a second big hill mentioned as an optional detour on the route sheet, but since that wasn’t our intention, I believe that he may not have directed us the correct way. Cindi and I were confused as we came to a traffic circle at the bottom of the hill out of town, so we stopped to look at our maps. Just behind us, Jeff came by, and pointed, without saying anything, to our left as he zoomed past us. So that was the way we went.
After riding for what seemed like forever, we came to an intersection. We incorrectly turned right there, before we realized we were headed up that second optional hill, the one we wanted to avoid. We had done one steep hill detour in the hot sun; a second one was out of the question. The only reason for taking this second optional detour was to see the town of Flavigny, where “Chocolat” had been filmed, and that just didn’t seem worth it, unless Juliette Binoche herself were hanging out in town, and somehow I doubted that. We stopped again to study our maps. A German woman came up in her car and asked us, in English, if Mt. Auxois was worth visiting. While it was rare to find a French person who speaks English, let alone speaks it well, it seemed that we had no trouble finding Germans in France who would speak English to us during the trip.
Anyway, Cindi and I finally figured out where we were, backtracked slightly, and headed--yes, I’m sorry to say it--up a moderate sized hill. Both of us were getting hungry, so we stopped at a shady spot under a tree and made sandwiches with food that we had brought. Unfortunately, the local bugs also seemed to be attracted to the same shady area, so I was constantly swatting them away with one hand while trying to eat with the other. I was starting to run out of water, and what water I did have was quite warm, having been under the sun in a bottle attached to the back of my bike with a bungee cord. I was getting a little concerned about my water supply. In this heat, you had to find water wherever you can, and you had to drink plenty of it. I have the smallest bladder in the world (I haven’t measured it, but I am sure that it is smaller than everyone else’s, including yours), but even with all the water I drank, I found little need to go to the bathroom--I was justsweating it all out.
Now that we knew where we were, we saw that we had only a few hours to make it to Blasy-Bas in time for the train that would take us on to Dijon. We rushed as hard as we could, going through various small towns, the railroad to our right. The heat was miserable, and now, it turned out, we were riding into the wind. I was starting to worry about making it to Blasy-Bas in time. The trains in France didn’t run all that often, and we just had to make this particular train, or we were stuck with trying to ride the whole way into Dijon. As we passed railroad station after railroad station, a thought suddenly occurred to Cindi: “Why are we racing against the train?” All we had to do was stop at the next train station, buy tickets, and get on the train there. There was absolutely no reason to ride all the way in to Blasy-Bas and catch the train there. “Duh,” I thought. Why didn’t I think of that?
The next town was Thennisey, a small place with no apparent amenities. The train would not arrive for two hours, but we didn’t care. At the train station, we had to buy the ticket from a machine, even though there was someone working at the station. 47 francs apiece, one-way to Dijon. We had time to kill. Was there a cafe or boulangerie in town? Yes, just up the road abit, we were told.
The boulangerie was closed until 3:00 PM, the sign on the door said. Well, we had nothing else better to do, so we sat outside the door, drinking what water we had left and relaxing. What we didn’t pay attention to was the fact that the “boulangerie” was being operated on the side of someone’s house, which we were just sitting on the steps of like it was a public place. At about 2:30, an old woman sees us and opens the door.
“Vous n’etes pas ouverte?” I ask in my broken French. Are you not open?
“Si”, she said, expressing the French positive response to a negative question. But she looked grumpy and annoyed at us. We asked if we could buy a “limonade”, which is not a lemonade, but rather a citrus-flavored sparkling water drink. She said yes, and walked slowly down the steps to where they were located. She told us the bottles had to be returned. We poured the limonade into our now empty water bottles and left behind the limonade bottles. She then walked back upstairs and closed the door, the annoyance never leaving her face. We had managed to experience contempt from two old French women in one day.
The train arrived and we made it into Dijon without incident. Cindi and I decided to go out on our own and eat pizza that night rather than eat a three-hour dinner of French food with the rest of the bicyclists in our group. We liked French food in small doses, but already, in the few days we had been there, we knew we didn’t want it every single night. And the typical group dinners started at 8:00 PM and lasted until 11:00. We were tired. We wanted a shorter dinner.
With a population of over 200,000, Dijon was the first real city we had been in, after several days of rural bicycling. We wandered around the streets of central Dijon, seriously considering seeing a movie, since we passed several theaters in the area. But the big concern was finding an English-language movie that was VO, that is to say, “version original”, or undubbed; the alternative was the VF, or “version française”--dubbed movies, which obviously did us no good. We ended up seeing a movie in Dijon later in the trip, when we returned there after the bicycling was over. But on this evening, we instead just wandered around town. The pizza place across from the town market didn’t open until 7:00PM--the French, as a matter of practice, start their dinners later than Americans generally do. We had our dinner outside, sitting next to a table that had a young couple along with their daughter who appeared to be about four years old. At one point the small girl looked at me and I said “Bon Jour.”
She was shy, and didn’t respond. Her mother kindly explained the finer points of politeness to the girl, specifically the need to respond when someone says “Bon jour”; but she just drew her knees up and bent her head down and looked embarrassed for having committed this faux pas. She never did say “Bon jour” to us, even after her mother’s gentle rebuke. Alas, we were snubbed yet again by a French woman, even if the woman in question this time was only four years old.
It had been a long day in Burgundy.