REFLEXIONES

Tuesday, September 11, 2024

BRITANNY

THIS ENTIRE TRIP IN BRITANNY HAS BEEN A CONSTANT reminder of my elementary school teacher, my beloved Madame Tron. I feel I must write this in French because it brings back exceptional memories. I really started, through the geography lessons, my discovery of the world and, later on, of France. I remember looking at an illustration in a French dictionary where people were sitting on a sunny beach and the caption read “Noel in Rio de Janeiro”. Since none of my fellow students were impressed, the teacher explained that, in France, during Christmas time, it is winter and snow and rain are prevalent. That brought up to me the first difference in countries. I also started learning the names of rivers, mountains, cities, villages in French, since this was France. And the memories were so strong that, later on, as I went to the Lycée, I remembered all these places and features from long before. These certainly came back as I started planning our trip in Brittany. On another project, I was looking at a Mexico City plan on Google maps, when I suddenly found Avenida Coyoacán 7 (photo on this page). This was Madame Tron’s schoolhouse where I went through my elementary courses.

This long introduction serves to convey how important and significant this Brittany trip has been to me and how each village, each river, each geographical feature has been a reminder of those early years of my life, where I was discovering the world. All this came back as we left Roscoff and visited the Parish Closes, incredible sites in small villages with churches in a Brittany Gothic style that have a smidgen of Mexican Baroque in their retables. These religious monuments certainly are worthy of a trip.

ONE OF MY DREAM PLACES TO VISIT WAS POINTE DU RAZ. I could not believe that I had finally arrived at the many times mentioned landmark of so many geography lessons. The westernmost point of the European continent, this iconic piece of land had been part of my aspirations throughout my life. It had been so important to learn about it, to imagine it and now, finally we were here! Very fortunate indeed that we were the only people walking about this desolate piece of land, yet symbolically so important. If my imagination saw it as a feature on a map of France for 70 years, my feet were actually planted in it and I could feel the wind, the humidity of the ocean, the vastness of space, the solitude, the reference for sailors for so many centuries. The horrible ugliness of a full scale weather station almost at its extremity celebrated the ultimate stupidity of the bureaucrats that designed, approved, build and have kept it in place, although no longer needed. But this monument to absolute idiocy could not hide the elation and celebration I felt to be in one of nature’s universal landmarks. This dramatic place of crashing waves and strong winds has the word raz, borrowed from Norman by the Bretons and shares the same etymology as the English word race, which means "strong current of water"; both are from Old Norse rás, the word being a tribute to the multiversity of Brittany. It also marks the western end of the 3,200 km E5, European Long Distance Road from here to Venice in Italy.

QUIMPER HAS BEEN THE SYMBOL OF ALL MY CHILDHOOD EFFORTS at learning names of places, their importance and significance. We drove from Douarnenez to Quimper and discovered a gorgeous cathedral that was decorated for a wedding. As we started visiting the church and admiring the splendid stained glass windows, the organist decide to rehearse his pieces for the upcoming ceremony. We were overwhelmed by the grandeur of the stained glass and the incredible feeling of lightness, despite the heavy stones used in its structure. Sabâ, as she is prone to do when she follows her heart, commissioned a Mass for Mamita the Sunday after her birthday, when her name will be read aloud at the Mass in the city that I learned about, at the time of my life when Mamita and I had picnics in front of Madame Tron’s school to entice her to offer to feed me properly in her home during the school lunch break. Moments filled with emotion and childhood memories rushing into my heart. With happy hearts and our minds full of wonder we left Quimper for Concarneau.

LIKE ROSCOFF AND DOUARNENEZ, CONCARNEAU is a marvelous fishing port where there is a criée (literally a shouting) every day, which is the auction of the catch of the day of absurdly fresh fish, which just a few hours earlier was bait for larger fish in the Ocean. After walking in the market, fortunately (no time for shopping) closing for lunch at 1 pm, we set our sights on a marvelous restaurant where we enjoyed sole and plaice with a chorizo polenta and sufficient quantities of ice cream to keep us alert until our next stop.

THE CARNAC LODGE AND SPA was a wonderful change of pace for our hotel accommodations during this part of our trip. It is run by a wonderful couple who used to live in St Martin in the Caribbean before deciding to move to the cold and wet part of Brittany (is there any other?) and create a simple but relaxed environment for relaxation and fun. We rested our tired bones and went the following day to St Pierre de Quiberon, a beautiful town where we also would love to live (Does that make five villages in this trip?)

DOLMENS AND MENHIRS WERE PART OF MY EDUCATION because these large stones, often mentioned in my history classes, were some of the earliest presence of organized life in the prehistory of France. The better known site where some of these stones are found is called Carnac, another name from my childhood. In this area is an exceptionally dense collection of megalithic sites, consisting of stone alignments (rows), dolmens  (table stones), tumuli  (burial mounds) and single menhirs  (standing stones). More than 3,000 prehistoric standing stones in Carnac were hewn from local granite and erected by the pre-Celtic people of Brittany and form the largest such collection in the world. The stones were erected at some stage during the Neolithic period, probably around 3300 BC but some may date to as early as 4500 BC. Modern beliefs by ignorant people associated them with 1st century CE Roman and later Christian occupations.

Stones have been removed to make way for roads, or as building materials, just like in other sites around the world, like Egypt and Mexico. An English commentator said: "These weren't erected by Neolithic farmers, but by Mesolithic hunters" which shows clearly he has no clue what he is talking about. He wants to place them in a different category from Stonehenge in England, which has been claimed to be the work of Early European Farmers. Unfortunately, the question of which people Carnac stones are to be attributed to is still debated. French archaeologists have always been more interested in Egyptian and Maya sites than their own, sort of a reverse chauvinism.

A superb visit ending of our Brittany expedition.