Chartres Cathedral

On Tuesday, our group took a train out to the town of Chartres, about an hour outside of Paris. Exploring all these old Gothic churches makes me so glad I got to learn a bit about the architecture from Dr. Hurlbut (and yes, I know I mentioned him two posts ago, but he really is just such a superb professor I'm sure references will keep coming up).

We arrived around lunchtime, and Judy and I decided to begin our exploration of medieval architecture with a much more modern meal: kebabs. We love it, no matter what the name: kebab, gyro, döner... Keep it coming.


After lunch, we headed over to the cathedral, officially called Notre-Dame de Chartres because it was (and I guess still is!) dedicated to adoration of the Virgin Mary. Pilgrims came (and I guess still come!) to see a special relic of the Virgin--a piece of her veil.

It's a masterpiece.

Our tour guide, a remarkably entertaining Brit named Malcolm Miller, who literally wrote the book on Chartres Cathedral, was terribly interesting and insightful. Before visiting the church, we read an Ensign article by Jack Welch on the mise ensemble in one of the Chartres windows (which are by the way world-renowned for their vibrant and irreplecable blue) of the story of the Fall of Adam and the parable of the Good Samaritan. Dr. Welch and Mr. Miller explained that in the Middle Ages, theologians read the parable as an illustration of the fall of man, Christ's rescue, His entrusting humanity to the Church, and then His promise to return. Really, read the article. It's excellent.

The tour of the Cathedral opened my eyes to more than just vibrant colors and medieval theology. I realized (again, this actually happens quite often) that my own culture and upbringing and religious background and historical context mean that I'm blinded to things that would be obvious to others. For example, when I look at stained glass windows, I mostly see beautiful patterns of light and maybe, with help, the story the glass is trying to tell. However, I miss the deep, rich symbolism that would have been second nature to a 13th century pilgrim. Being at Chartres--and further, being in a new culture period--makes me realize again what Clifford Geertz explains in his article "Religion as a Cultural System": religion (and this thing we call CULTURE itself) is
(1) a system of symbols
(2) which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men
(3) by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and
(4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that
(5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

I don't care to explain all of that in great depth, and if you care to read it, the article is on GoogleScholar somewhere. What I'm getting at is this "uniquely realistic" thing. One CULTURE is transparent to those who live within it, but another CULTURE is illegible to outsiders. I don't look at stained glass windows the same way a 13th century pilgrim would because what for him is obvious (or "uniquely realistic"), is hidden to me, who doesn't understand the culture, the symbols, and the theology that surround their interpretation.

Also, credit goes again to Dr. Hurlbut for introducing Clifford Geertz into my life. Thank you, Sensei.

It occurs to me now that I should post some of the pictures I took at Chartres, but like I said about Sainte-Chapelle, you really just need to go have a look yourself. The Cathedral is enormous and beautiful and awe-inspiring.






Go! It's beautiful! But get a tour from Malcolm Miller. Truly an insightful experience.

Saint-Ouen's Labyrinthe: the world's largest flea market (15)

Preface: it's super gauche to take pictures at the flea market, so sadly I have no photos of the actual locus of the walk, just the treasures we found.

The flea market is really set up in two major sections. The first is full of (and please, pardon any racial undertones) North African men making rather offensive and aggressive sales pitches. Their goods are mostly of the mass-produced kind: cheap jewelery, shoes, kitchenware... As for the offensive sales pitches, calling me "sexy" is actually going to make me run away rather than making me want to duck into your tent full of fiddle-faddle-gadgets that I don't want anyway.

There were, I admit, a few stores this tourist-blood-sucking section that appealed to me. First, the proprietors of one store were jammin' out to some Bob Marley and burning some delicious-smelling incense. Good smells are always welcome in Paris, where the smell of latrines will overwhelm your olfactory sensors at any given moment and without warning. Appealing to my sense of smell: a good idea.

The second tent I really liked was a (Portuguese?) guy selling delightful leather bags. If I had had 120€ to drop on the beautiful travel bags I saw, I would be back there in a heartbeat. There's something about that kind of rough-and-tumble-but-still-scholarly leather bag that makes me want to explore Egyptian caves in search of the Holy Grail. Oh, Indy!

The third tent that charmed me was the Indian couple selling some brilliantly colored scarves. All the girls in the group bought (at least!) one. Here's a sampling:


Here's Beth's, a nice mix of colors for a very versatile scarf.


This is the one I bought. The two other scarves I have here (and no that I come to think of it, almost all the scarves I own) are cool colors, so I went for brighter, warmer colors.



And this is Judy's. That deep green... mmm, I like.


If anyone wants me to pick them up a scarf, I'm happy to do it. Just let me know.

Now for the juicy stuff: the real flea market that most tourists don't make it to. My overall impression? A really high-end indie-spirit garage sale. We found some wild things, like gilt fans for 300€ and a lot of really neat period chairs. The shopkeepers all seem to be terribly eccentric--they'll specialize in something like glass beads or silverware or old postcards. It was quite an adventure to dig through row upon row of old postcard, some written and sent, some still waiting for their chance in the mail. I actually rescued a few of these and sent one to my friend Jacob Barrows in Provo, who's an avid postcard collector.

All in all, the flea market, or marché des puces, is an interesting experience, but probably not essential to the average tourist. If, on the other hand, I were refurnishing my apartment off the Champs Elysées with trendy, vintage finds, I would certainly becoming a frequent at the market.

"Paris in Layers" (1)

As I explained in my last post, part of one of the courses I'm taking entails writing up reflections on the touring we do. We have a series of walks to take that BYU French professors have written up for us in order to get us better acquainted with Paris.

The first walk is called "Paris in Layers: Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, Conciergerie." I actually took this walk on Saturday, but as life in Paris tends to get a busy, you're getting my reflection today!



We started here, at the Hôtel de Ville. It's basically an administrative building for the city of Paris. It used to be called Place de la grève. The word 'grève' literally means 'sandy shore,' but thanks to the numerous demonstrations (still!) held on the open square in front of this building, the word has come to mean 'strike,' as in, "Because of the strike, she was unable to repair the lock in time to be able to leave for her holiday" (which phrase I've borrowed from an article on why Artificial Intelligence doesn't work and the philosophy of language sent to me by my friend Timothy Wright). Phew, forgive all that nonsense.

Mostly, Hôtel de Ville is significant for three (equally important) reasons: (a) it's a central meeting point, (b) there are often public demonstrations there, and (c) there's no charge to withdraw cash at the ATM at the post office, and there's one in the building.

The next major stop on the walk was Notre-Dame de Paris, which is probably the most famous and definitely the noisiest Gothic cathedral. Since I took French 361 in Fall from one of my favorite professors of all time, Jesse Hurlbut, I can name all the major features of Gothic cathedrals, including:

the arc-brisé, called a 'pointed' or 'lancet' arch in English (and forgive me, dear architecture buffs, if I'm confusing my English terminology)


the croisée d'ogives, called a 'rib vault' in English


and arc-boutant, or the famed 'flying buttress'


Together, the pointed arch, rib vaulting, and flying buttresses have come to define Gothic architecture. Since pointed arches could support much more weight than earlier arches (en berceau, just plain Romanesque arches), the ceilings in Gothic churches could be way higher, and architects could basically replace walls with windows to let in the light. It's thanks to the innovation of the pointed arch that there are so many stained glass windows in Gothic cathedrals (called vitraux in French).

Another defining feature of Gothic architecture, particularly evident in Notre Dame is the rose window (une rosace in French). A picture isn't going to do the masterpiece any justice, so you'll just have to go sometime, dear friends. Here's a glimpse anyway, though:


Notre Dame is also famous for its gargoyles, a symptom of medieval theology-slash-art-slash-architecture's preoccupation with l'horreur du vide, or 'fear of the void,' which is to say, wherever there's empty space, the devil can come. Medieval architects filled up that void with that ornate stone lace and comical gargoyles to drive out evil spirits!


After Notre Dame came the Conciergerie, which throughout its ridiculously long lifetime has served as a both a royal residence and a prison during the French Revolution, holding such royalty as the (in)famous Marie Antoinette herself. It's an interesting building, but I didn't get any photos of it (although I've been stealing photos from the internet for almost all the photos in this post). We did decide, though, that the big open hall at the entrance, the salle des gens d'armes, would make a great place for a ball (think the Yule Ball out of Harry Potter).

Last of all, but not at all least, came Sainte-Chapelle, which we actually visited on Monday. No way am I going to disgrace that building by putting up photos. You simply have to go. The stained glass is in-cred-i-ble. It will take your breath away--but wait until 2015 to go, because they're doing some heavy-duty restoration work on the stained glass right now, and about 10% of the windows were covered when we went.

But really, Sainte-Chapelle is a sight to behold. Our friend Katherine, when she got to the top of the stairs, said, "Wow! I can feel my heart beating faster just looking at this!" (Then again, those stairs were pretty steep and we took them at quite a clip...)

And there you have it, my friends. A few major historical buildings of Paris, and the promise of more to come!

En fin à Paris...

So, it's Spring in Paris.

Welcome to my newest blog, where you'll be able to get updates on my adventures in the land of cheese, love, Gothic cathedrals, high fashion, baguettes, wine, the apex of absolutism, macarons, and pretty much everything else. As my friends at the Onion put it, "Home to Earth's entire population of 62.7 million people, every single one of the planet's 427 cities, and all of its history, culture, and beauty, France is the only country in the world."

I have now been in Paris for a week, and am loving it. I live outside of the city in a picturesque little suburb called Le Vésinet but have a pretty straight shot to classes on the train. Although by the time I get back to the states in August I may be excited to drive my own car, I relish the accessible and ubiquitous public transportation. I can get every where I need to go on the Metro or the trains that run to the suburbs (the RER). So much time to read, and so much good people-watching.

My host mom Nannick is an elderly woman with four kids, all grown, and grandchildren my age. Her grandson Théo hangs around often and, when he speaks slowly enough, is a great conversationalist. I'm speaking so much French and really loving it. I can see that I've got a lot of improvement to make ("Je balbutie," as I explained to Théo, who cracked a joke about how stilted that sounds, and said, "Ah, tu bégaies!" [Also, sorry if you don't speak French, but there will be at least a bit of that on this blog, so please excuse or Google Translate it]) but am way more comfortable than I had thought I would be.

The food here is delicious: cheese with fig raisins, hazelnut yogurt, passion fruit dark chocolate, goat cheese with ash (yep, that's 'chèvre cindré'!) and everything Nannick makes. Even the apple sauce, compote de pommes, is excellent. We ate it tonight with 'fromage blanc' (literally "white cheese," but more like yogurt in texture), and it was a classy dessert rather than third-grade-sack-lunch-yes-this-counts-as-a-serving-of-fruit food.

For part of one of the courses I'm taking here in Paris, I have to keep a journal of the places I visit. To kill multiple birds with a single stone, I've opted to blog about my experiences to keep you all posted and get my 3.0 credit hours for French 345. Deal?

Well, I hope all goes well wherever you are, dear friends and family! I miss you all and wish you were here!