#2 Veynes---oui içi on parle la langue d'oc

South of Grenoble, the train slides through the long valleys between the foothills that parallel the Alps, first upstream on the River Drac, then coming down into the massive wide valley of the Durace, which itself joins the Rhône further south as a major tributary. The foothills begin to flatten out, and the high Alps recede to the east. One begins to feel the influence of the Mediterranean climate. It is at this point that one leaves the High Rhône and enters the historical region of Provence.

Just west of Gap, at the small town of Veynes, one must change trains if one wishes to continue South into Provence proper. In Veynes, in the vicinity of the plaza by the small train station the street signs are apparently bilingual, in both French and Occitan--- lenga d'òc, aka langue d'oc---the "language of oc," so called because of the word it uses for "yes" (as opposed to the modern French oui, for example).

Occitan is distinctly not a dialect of French. It is actually much closer to Catalan, for example, than French. It is also not the same language as the historical Franco-Provençal, which is a different story. Nowadays when one says Provençal, usually one means the dialect of Occitan spoken within Provence.

It has no official status in France, although it has a dedicated following of people who wish to preserve it (and it is an official minority language in Catalonia). It is used in conversation through a wide region stretching from northern Spain to Alpine Italy, but in the later Twentieth Century the cohort of native speakers has been declining steeply and growing older. It is a common story for unofficial minority languages such as this.

Before arriving in Provence, I had read online that because Occitan is not an official language, one will search in vain to find in written form here.

I can now verify that this statement is true, although via a multilingual pun.

Happy Thanksgiving!

ed. note: not only searched for, but found.

Random Postcard #1: Grenoble---Equilibrium Kills

This one is for Jean, my friend in Marseille whom I am on my way to visit current. From the Citadelle Bridge, looking downriver on the Isère.

Grenoble is a more interesting city than I thought. It is the "Door of France," and the Capital of the French Alps.

Having just come down from Chamonix through historical Savoy, one feels as if one is descending into France proper. Grenoble is still nestled in the Alps and lower ranges here, but another range of low mountains and one is at the Rhône.

Two days to explore it. Yesterday afternoon I walked down to the park, built for the hydrological exposition in the 1920s and later used for the Olympics. The stadium where Peggy Fleming won her gold medal is still in use---a brilliant quartet of hyperbolic paraboloids. On the day I visited, it was being used for a circus. Outside were cattle and two-humped camels, waiting their turn to be on stage inside.

Groningen FTW

"It says Robin and Charlotte on the door bell."

That was the tweet I received on my iPhone as I was walking up past the northside train station, just passing under the tracks. It was from a close friend.

It was our second day in Groningen, our first full day there. We'd arrived on the late afternoon train the day before (hoo was it packed coming up from Amsterdam---we barely found a place to stand coming up from Amersfort after changing). Red had found our bus outside the train and we had hastily boarded it with our bags, after it had arrived so quickly in the hub-bub of the bus station, that was just outside the rail station and by the main canal.

It took us a jolty and jerky ride through the narrow streets of the central part of Groningen---a college town in the north of Holland, teeming with activity. We had jumped off when our smartphone maps told us we were at our hotel, although it seemed nowhere in sight in the thick commercial district, but we had soon found it.

The reception was actually inside a bistro pub. It turned out the entrance to the hotel proper was inside a courtyard of a refurbished chemical lab from the university, and was now centered on the creative arts. The hotel and bistro combo was ultra hip. The rooms didn't have televisions, but were common area. We also had fridge access in the common kitchen. It felt very Dutch.

Upon checking in, I had sent the obligatory text to my close friend, saying we had arrived. We had made a pretense of possibly getting together that first evening, but it seemed rather absurd, given the hullaballoo of getting there, and getting checked in. We'd have plenty of time to see each other, given that we planned to be in Groningen for a while, to catch a breath amidst the pace of our travels. It seemed as good a place as any, especially given that I had close friends who were staying there.

Now on the second morning, walking north past the train tracks, that curved around from the main station, I was texting while walking (and talking pictures of things in Dutch of course). The texts took me to an address on a quiet residential street of tidy small apartment buildings in brown and grey and black and white. I found the address, and the names mentioned.

They were of course not the names of my friend, but the names of their AirBnB landlords in Groningen, from whom they had rented the flat in which they were staying for a couple months that fall.

When they opened the door and I walked in, I greeted them heartily by their real names: Fergus! Audrey!

Old School Amsterdam

We stayed in Amsterdam but two days. Given the length of time we'd been sojourning in the cities of Scandinavia, this was quite brief.  Red was intrigued by the city, as almost everyone is on their first visit, but since I'd spent time there before, I was eager to move on to the other parts of the Netherlands, which I knew were even more rewarding if one gives them a chance.

So on the third day, after Red's obligatory visit to the Van Gogh Museum (which unfortunately was partially under renovation, disallowing visits to several floors and thus destroying the continuity of the timeline of the artist's life work) we wheeled our luggage from the hotel waiting room to the tram stop and rode the vehicle through herky-jerk Amsterdam streets past the canals back to the station, using our country-wide Dutch rail passes (OV-chipkaart, it is called) to check in and check out with the automated readers (the second step is important if you don't want to get dinged with a charge for a full-zone ticket, which is assumed by the system---that indeed happened to Red once, causing her to lose a bunch of her balance on her card). 

Once back at the Central Station (alas the days of shady characters hassling you at the big entrance doors is over), we read the electronic monitors and found our train.

Reading the monitors to find our track was a poignant moment. The electronic LED monitors were new since my last visit. But they were inevitable of course. Still I couldn't help feel a sense of loss from the old style of train station boards in Europe, that any old backpacker would have recognized, the old mechanical ones where the the slats in the boards made a certain unmistakable clicking sound as they flipped through the list of places, as the departing and arriving trains made their way up the board, as each one left in progression.

By watching the slats flip through the lists, one could spy out the places to which trains actually went, and the symbols on the slats that denoted different types of service, in different colors. It was like flipping through an old style encyclopedia, instead of looking something up online---if I can make a certain analogy with a different technology.

Amsterdam is a Shithole

To be frank. It's a dump, the worst part of Holland. It's best known for as the place where diamond couriers working for intelligence agencies wind up floating in the canal with a knife in their back---and other sordid things like that. It's also known for its red light district. Two Japanese girls stopped me and asked if I could point them towards it.

At the time we were far away from the red light district---a couple blocks from the Anne Frank house, (the house was covered up for renovation, as are many places along the old canals like the Herrengracht). I did my best to show them where I remembered the red light being---in back of the Oude Kerk---that's where the black prostitutes were twenty years ago, at least. I pointed them towards the direction we'd come---the Nieuwe Kerk, the plaza of which had been packed full with a fall carnival and the a large crowd of people riding the rides and buying sweet and savory carnival delicacies.

They sell Belgian waffles there, so Amsterdam isn't completely bad.

I jest of course. Amsterdam is a great city, in the best sense of that word. It's just fun to rag on it a bit, especially given the tourist hordes that confront one everywhere you go in the center. Our hotel was decent enough and had a superb breakfast of fine croissants, with scrambled eggs and bacon. On our second and last night we had Indonesian food, a little place across the street where we were lucky to get a table. It was Red's first visit to the Netherlands, so Indonesian food was a must-do. We ordered the whole line-up---the little hot dishes that come on little serving table, placed in front of you. Good stuff.

Dutch Train Disaster

Our Norwegian jetliner took us to Schipol---the big airport just outside Amsterdam. As soon as we landed I started taking snapshots of everything written in Dutch. I had to catch up to Red several times walking through the terminal, but I got distracted with my iPhone.

We navigated from the big airport terminal into the adjacent train station, modern with a massive high ceiling over a dozen escalator portals down to the trains below. We both purchased countrywide passes for the Netherlands---good for all trains within the country, as well as local trams and buses. I put a hundred euros on mine, and expected I would use it all up by the time we left.

Nevertheless we managed to screw up our first train ride. I went down the wrong escalator at first, and also managed to use my new electronic train pass to both check-in and then checkout, so that when the conductor finally came through the train, as we were approaching Amsterdam in the dark of early evening, she told him I had screwed up.

"You've certainly got enough on the card," she said, almost impressed by my purchase. A half hour we were navigating out of the central train station, in the thick of the old city.

Later (when we were in Rotterdam, in fact, and overheard a Serbian woman having a meltdown to her friend in the next room) I told Red about a time when I was twenty that I was at the same station in Amsterdam, with my old backpack. That time in order to fend off all the people approaching me and asking if I spoke English, with the intention of pitching me something, I went to the kiosk that sold international newspapers and purchased the one from Belgrade, printed in the Cyrillic of the Serbian language. I held it up in front of me, as if reading it---a defensive shield within the intense public space. Now it was full circle.

What is Generally True About Sweden and Norway

By the time we left Sweden, we had been there fifteen days. It began to feel normal to hear Swedish on the television at night in the hotel room. I had begun to have my favorite shows, including an athletic-themed reality show. In the talk shows, the hosts interviewed British and American actors in English, without translation provided.

I was to master a few basic exchanges, specifically when ordering coffee. At a coffee shop, you can say "I would like a coffee?" in Swedish, and they will answer the equivalent of "small or large." They then then ask  "here-to-drink or to-with-you-take?" The trick is to be able to go with the flow of the conversation, recognize what they are saying, without forcing them to break into English, which they will readily do. Swedes like to practice English, people say. It is generally true.

For our next destination, we went out to Arlanda airport and flew on Norwegian Airlines. I was hoping to see some Norwegian on the plane, but there was none at all. All was in English.

Stockholm for my (happy) birthday

This year was a "round number" birthday, as I told my friend Fergus. I wanted to spend it some place fun. I figured to make a spontaneous, and by the time we got to Gothenburg, it occurred to me that a splendid place to go would be Stockholm.

What a beautiful city, in a light-filled majestic way. Seeing it the first night, when we were out on the quay near our hotel in Östermalm, with a view across the water through the gap in the city islands, to the illuminated buildings on the cliff on the far shore, I was blown away by the intricate, enticing splendor of it. As I told Red, it was like a few other places that way---Manhattan at night the first time, for example. Or the playa.

Stockholm lived up to all our expectations. We had lots of fun there, and wound up staying eight days in all, in three different lodgings throughout the city. After our splendid time in the upscale Östermalm, we spent two nights in more hip and working class Södermalm, in a hotel boat moored along the foot of the cliffs. Then we switched sides of the river again and spent three more nights in Kungsholm, in a contemporary nordic long-term stay hotel, that seemed to be popular with foreign workers. The hallways were wider than many rooms in the rest of Europe. The breakfast was good, and the wi-fi worked.

The birthday idea worked well. We went to the Abba Museum, and rode a boat around the harbor.

The only negative about the entire Stockholm adventure was my leaving behind, in the first hotel, the last of my US-to-Europe plug adapters allowing me to charge my laptop and iPhone. Red had a back-up as well, but we were now down to one, from our initial collection of three.

Fortunately the woman at the boat hotel front desk gave me good advice about findings the right store in Stockholm to buy a replacement. Her suggestion---in the heart of the Stockholm shopping district on the north side---was right on the mark. I found a replacement---a more complicated device, and more expensive. It was made in Switzerland and cost 99 Swedish krona. I was extremely happy to find one hanging on the wall in the store.

Gothenburg, aka Göteborg---the city of Okkiman

Since we were now in Sweden, of course we had to pay a visit to the hometown of my friend Lars, aka Okki, aka "Okkiman" on the playa, and out in the world at large.

(side note: After quitting his steady job in Boulder, Okkiman sold most of his stuff, put the rest in storage, and is currently in SE Asia on his own epic adventure)

Gothenburg. The locals call it YOO-ti-boar-ee.  It's the second largest city in Sweden. It was built on Sweden's west coast, on the fjord of the Göta River (hence the name). From the Göta, one can reach the other coast of Sweden by canals that go from one large lake to another. Gothenburg is of relatively recent vintage, dating only from the Seventeenth Century.

It is industrial. Coming into town on the railroad, around the foot of the green steep bluff, I couldn't help but be reminded of Portland.

We stayed there five days, rounding our our first week in Sweden. We ate in the train station several times, including a place that served a delicious hamburger. One could sit in a a patio inside the station and watch the folks coming and going, beneath the well-illuminated signs and video screens containing train information.

On one free afternoon, I took the commuter train out to the farflung suburb where Okki himself grew up. Stefan suggested it, as a way to see "the other Sweden."

On the second night in Malmö

On the second night in Malmö, we dined in an Asian themed restaurant right in the station. The food was decent and low-priced. Eating in train stations, where it is possible, is a decent way to mitigate costs in this part of Europe, if you don't have recourse to the ubiquitous shawarma take-out/sit-down places in the larger population centers. Malmö is smaller than Copenhagen, and much less of tourist center, so we ate as the local commuters and students often do.

In the morning we took the afternoon train northbound along the west coast of Sweden. In Sweden you must reserve your place on intercity trains. The trains have power outlets and wi-fi that allows at least intermittent loading of web pages. The seats are in one large open compartment, and all face the direction, as they do in Scandinavian trains.

It was a bright sunny day of late September, perfect for this kind of jaunt through the green Swedish farmland and forest countryside. It rolled beside our passenger coach in a panorama that sped in blur in its own reflection in the window. In mid-afternoon, an hour or so later, we got to our destination,

Copenhagen,

Copenhagen, where we spent a week exploring the city, while staying in a hotel near the train station.

After a week we took the train over the Øresund strait to the Scandinavian "mainland."  We spent two nights in the Swedish city right on the other side, Malmö, including a sunset stroll out to the sea by the Turning Torso.