September 30, 2014
I spent twelve days away from Beauregard and Caunes, and it did me good. I learned several things: 1. that the Mediterranean coast of the département nearest Italy, Alpes Maritimes, is full of Russians, that real estate agencies bear signs in Russian, hoping to attract their custom. The same is true in San Remo, Italy, another redoubt of 19th century royals, if less intimate now than the nearby French villages of Menton, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Cap Ferrat and Villfranche-sur-Mer.
I also learned 2. that driving on the French toll roads from the Italian border to Toulon is a driver's dream. The tolls mount, but the roads are fleet and well-maintained, curling through the mountains that hug the Meditrranean. For the first time ever, I enjoyed driving very much.
I also learned 3. how pleasurable it can be to be on a sailboat at rest in a beautiful harbor, specifically that of Hyères. The village has beautiful areas, notably the old town; and students of the European avant garde in the 20th century will find it worthwhile to mount -and mount, and mount to reach the Villa Noailles, the concrete villa created by Robert Mallet-Stevens for the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Noilles, between 1923 and 1927. The concrete has not aged well and the right-angled rooms are not to my taste, but the overlook is worthy of an emperor and empress.
Returning to Caunes Saturday, I had a weekend before I had to pick up Beauregard, who did well by his stay with Madame Froment. I found a calmer dog, perhaps due to the naturopathic capsules Madame Froment gave Beau each morning: sprinkled over the dog food, the taste mimics that of a canine mother's milk. Eager to see Beau's transformation continue, I visited Dr. Mougin and signed up for a month's supply, the normal course of treatment.
Now it is time to attend to the tasks associated with closing the house: Monday I went to the Trésorie Publique to pay the taxe foncière and set up the mensualité (auto-pay) for it and the smaller tax levied in late November, the taxe d'habitation, which includes the yearly tax on televisions.
In paying the tax I discovered something surprising: the notaire who handled the real estate transaction identified me by my late husband's name, "Barbeosch", rather than mine, "Varela". Of course, this suggests that the deed filed is also in Bill's name. And while it might not be particularly serious in the case of the taxes, as the funds will be deducted automatically from my French bank account, should I wish to sell --or the house pass under French estate law-- the notaires' error will complicate matters.
Another error I discovered relating to the house is that once again, my internet, telephone and television company, Orange, signed me up for a contract for a house that belongs to someone in residence year-round, rather than someone who has signed up for an Orange contract for a second residence. All of which means that next year I will have to set up the service from scratch, paying contract cancellation fees meanwhile and losing what I had thought would be my permanent phone number. La Marbrerie may once again, become my office next summer.
All these inconveniences are as nothing relative to what the average Frenchman is going through. Yesterday the news reported that the number of salaried employees asking their employers for an advance on their salaries for the purpose of paying their tax bill has exploded. Today the news reported that for the first time the French national debt passed the two billion Euro mark. That means that a baby born today can be said to be responsible for 30,000 Euros of the debt.
Tomorrow the Air France pilot's strike, which has lasted two weeks and stranded passengers all over the world, ends. The strike stranded passengers far and wide: the France 2 correspondent in Moscow explained that a particular problem for travelers whose fights were cancelled there was that they were forced to overstay their visas. Those that could grabbed flights out of Russia to anywhere in Europe, for instance, Frankfurt, the third busiest airport in Europe after Heathrow in London and Charles de Gaulle in Paris. The strike is estimated to have cost Air France $355 million dollars. The reason for the pilot's strike? Their opposition to the development of a low-cost airline by Air France.
Other unhappy news:
- Senior citizens were told that as inflation has not increased, they would not receive a cost-of-living allowance expected by many of them.
-Parents of families learned that the allocation familiale --paid to any family with two or more children under twenty, regardless of income-- would be reduced.
-Pharmacists were told that legislation would end their monopoly on the sale of over-the-counter medications and permit sale of the products at shopping centers. (Some pharmacists say the sale of over-the-counter medications accounts for 25% of their sales.)
Meanwhile, the Front National picked up two seats in the Senat. The French senators are not elected directly, but by the mayors and conseillers of French départements, regions and towns. Their power to express dissatisfaction with a President and his government is more limited than that of the Assemblée Nationale, which is necessarily of the same party as the president's. The election of two FN Senators is not expected to shift the balance of power --overall the Senate elections shifted power to the right. However, the election of two Senators is a symbolic first for the party of the Le Pen family and illustrates the increasing reach --and sophistication-- of the party.
The Front National is gaining support among France's disparate working classes, which both parties have written off. The FN is attracting young supporters and more, leaders who would never have a chance in either the Parti Socialiste (PS) or the Unton pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP). "Without a degree from one of the "Grands Écoles" it is impossible to get anywhere in either the PS or the UMP," observed a French political scientist. "In the FN, if you are talented, you rise."
In fact, one of the new Senators, David Rachline, the mayor of Frejus in the Var, is twenty-six years old. (In France, one can hold both offices.) Activist from the age of 15 years of age, Rachline plies the anti-immigrant line, popular in Frejus, where many pieds noirs (French returned to France after the country abandoned its colonies in North Africa) live. Stéphane Ravier, the mayor of the seventh district of Marseilles, won the other Senate seat.
This is the third defeat of the PS by the FN: earlier this year the FN took twelve mayoral contests, before winning 24 or 74 seats in the elections for French representatives to the European parliament on the strength of almost 25% of the votes.
France's working class has been relegated to the periphery of national politics by the two major parties and the FN has taken advantage of that to broaden its base beyond the original anti-immigrant base of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the eighty-five year old founder of the party. His daughter Marine is shrewd enough to articulate a party line that buries the anti-immigrant impulse (which is less acceptable outside France's Midi) in rhetoric that speaks of France, of civility, of traditional values --a line that appeals more in France's industrial northeast.
Hollande's term has two and a half years more to run. Little is anticipated from his government, besieged from within and without. With the beheading in Algeria of Hervé Gourdel, the French mountain guide, many French are re-evaluating their attitudes towards the Muslim population. Combined with the economy's moribund state and the worsening of conditions for its improvement, it is not a happy time to be a Frenchman in France.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Cannes and "Saint Laurent"
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
It rained last night and early this morning, so there was some question in my mind about whether the excursion to Cannes today would take place. I brought my umbrella and a sweater --the temperatures have dropped, perceptibly, since Monday-- and walked to the ticket office to get the last word on the sailing.
"The ship will go, the captain has indicated he will sail at the usual time, 9:15 a.m.", the woman at the ticket counter --who has gotten to know me by now-- assured me. "It may be cloudy in the morning, but it should clear in the afternoon."
I arrived at the embarkation point, as is my custom, early. Being the first there did not make me the first to board, however: there was a group of elderly Austrians in bright-colored and expensive sailing gear, led by an enormous Frenchwoman speaking German, who got on first. I headed for the top deck to escape the crowd, and the boat's crew let slip the ropes.
The sea was not as rough as on yesterday's brief ride to Saint Tropez, but once we were on the open sea the swells would abruptly peak --and fall. At first, my compatriots on top deck laughed it off, but there was no let up. To try to keep myself from sliding off the bench I was sitting on when the ferry lurched, I gripped the rope that divided the passenger area from the wheel and the captain, but it was no help. I found I could grip the underside of the plastic bench with my left hand, and hold my position, so I did that for the rest of the two hour trip.
I have been sick to my stomach at sea, very sick, in fact. A dramamine patch administered two days before a long sea voyage now makes travel by sea comfortable for me. However, I did not have even dramamine tablets for this trip, and after an hour at sea and no respite from the swells, I began to wonder how long I could hold out before seasickness overcame me. In my mind, I heard myself saying, J'ai le mal de mer --je vais vomir-- to the crew member sitting among us on the upper deck.
At first, I thought I was the only one under the weather. A glance at the faces of my fellow travelers, told me I was not: the joking, smiling Austrians were now keeping their lips firmly closed, all conversation ended. When we got into Cannes harbor the boat slowed down and the violent rocking subsided. Lively conversation began again, everyone relieved the morning's journey was at an end.
I wanted to see Cannes because I thought that with the yearly film festival being perhaps the most prestigious international film competition short of the Oscars, Cannes would have lots --perhaps too much-- of its economy devoted to the movies. I could not have been more wrong. There is no museum devoted to filmmaking of any kind. There is no art museum, except for a museum of primitive art. The only other public attraction is the aquarium.
Cannes is, however, a very fashionable city. It is the first city I have been in in the south of France where the locals dress with dash and style. Even on a cloudy day like today, the women and men were well-turned out, in general. The Croisette, the promenade along the sea, allows strollers to take in the many sailboats in the harbor. Indeed, this week there is an international regatta, and a stretch of stands selling sailing clothes. The presence of one boat's young crew all dressed in traditional Breton caps and linen smocks posing for a professional regatta photographer excited the attention of daytrippers: "Snap! Snap! Snap!" too, went their cameras.
I walked on, having decided that, as the day was overcast and cool, the best way to spend my time in Cannes was to go to the movies --and Cannes does have a lot of movie theaters, with the first day a movies plays in France being Wednesday --not Friday, as in the United States. So it was my luck that the new biopic about couturier Yves Saint Laurent was about to have its first showing in Cannes at 1:10 p.m., forty minutes and an easy walk away.
How was the movie? Well if you have no interest in fashion or Saint Laurent and especially haute couture, it's not for you. The film is mainly the story of the years this fragile man with a febrile imagination descended into his own private hell, a hell he never really escaped. Gaspard Ulliel impersonates the designer as he was in the days when he was at the height of his fame and cultural influence, opening ready-to-wear boutiques under the Rive Gauche label, posing nude (discreetly) for advertisements for his men's cologne, taking his influence from street fashion --safari shirts, military jackets --and, a break with everything that came before-- a pant suit inspired by men's tuxedos, which he called le smoking.
The film spends little time explaining any of this, as most of it is devoted to Saint Laurent's self-destructive relationship with J.J. Bascher, a gay libertine.. Saint Laurent almost killed himself --and his longtime partner in business and love, Pierre Bergé-- before both were free of him. However, Saint Laurent's self-destruction --several packs of cigarettes a day, lots of scotch and still, pills-- ravaged him physically. He retired from designing in 2002, becoming increasingly reclusive. He died of brain cancer in 2008.
The first showing was well-attended, but the queue for the second, which I passed, was very long. The line was full of women who take great care in their appearance in the way Saint Laurent's mother did, discreetly but expensively. These were the women for whom Saint Laurent first designed, before he became interested in playing with fashion's codes by putting women in pantsuits, by designing transparent black blouses to wear with them, by updating styles from the 1920s through the 1940s. The graphic scenes of group sex and the frontal nudity may be too much for them. Perhaps like me, they wanted a celebration of a brilliant and tormented craftsman, not a study in decadence.
Perhaps to underscore that aspect of Saint Laurent's life, the director, Bertrand Bonnello chose, for the role of Saint Laurent in his last, withdrawn years, the Austrian actor, Helmut Berger. The women on line might remember Berger's performance in a film equally scandalous in its day, Luchino Visconti's,The Damned, made in 1969. When released, The Damned received an "X" rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Berger perfectly mimics the aged Saint Laurent's halting speech, with its stops and starts and pauses for breath, as well as his mental abstraction.
A moth batting its wings relentlessly towards the flame, almost burning himself out, then withdrawing --just enough-- to do it again. Until the wings could beat no more. Saint Laurent's life could have been brought to the screen in this spirit. But --as an eighth grade teacher of mine used to say, "We live in an age where we like to see the feet of clay of our idols." So Saint Laurent serves them up, eclipsing the man's accomplishment in the process.
***
The trip back was uncomfortably cold, and my impressions of the film I had just seen dominated my thoughts. My head ached when I descended the boat. I was glad to return to little Saint Maxime for my last evening here and a hot shower.
It rained last night and early this morning, so there was some question in my mind about whether the excursion to Cannes today would take place. I brought my umbrella and a sweater --the temperatures have dropped, perceptibly, since Monday-- and walked to the ticket office to get the last word on the sailing.
"The ship will go, the captain has indicated he will sail at the usual time, 9:15 a.m.", the woman at the ticket counter --who has gotten to know me by now-- assured me. "It may be cloudy in the morning, but it should clear in the afternoon."
I arrived at the embarkation point, as is my custom, early. Being the first there did not make me the first to board, however: there was a group of elderly Austrians in bright-colored and expensive sailing gear, led by an enormous Frenchwoman speaking German, who got on first. I headed for the top deck to escape the crowd, and the boat's crew let slip the ropes.
The sea was not as rough as on yesterday's brief ride to Saint Tropez, but once we were on the open sea the swells would abruptly peak --and fall. At first, my compatriots on top deck laughed it off, but there was no let up. To try to keep myself from sliding off the bench I was sitting on when the ferry lurched, I gripped the rope that divided the passenger area from the wheel and the captain, but it was no help. I found I could grip the underside of the plastic bench with my left hand, and hold my position, so I did that for the rest of the two hour trip.
I have been sick to my stomach at sea, very sick, in fact. A dramamine patch administered two days before a long sea voyage now makes travel by sea comfortable for me. However, I did not have even dramamine tablets for this trip, and after an hour at sea and no respite from the swells, I began to wonder how long I could hold out before seasickness overcame me. In my mind, I heard myself saying, J'ai le mal de mer --je vais vomir-- to the crew member sitting among us on the upper deck.
At first, I thought I was the only one under the weather. A glance at the faces of my fellow travelers, told me I was not: the joking, smiling Austrians were now keeping their lips firmly closed, all conversation ended. When we got into Cannes harbor the boat slowed down and the violent rocking subsided. Lively conversation began again, everyone relieved the morning's journey was at an end.
I wanted to see Cannes because I thought that with the yearly film festival being perhaps the most prestigious international film competition short of the Oscars, Cannes would have lots --perhaps too much-- of its economy devoted to the movies. I could not have been more wrong. There is no museum devoted to filmmaking of any kind. There is no art museum, except for a museum of primitive art. The only other public attraction is the aquarium.
Cannes is, however, a very fashionable city. It is the first city I have been in in the south of France where the locals dress with dash and style. Even on a cloudy day like today, the women and men were well-turned out, in general. The Croisette, the promenade along the sea, allows strollers to take in the many sailboats in the harbor. Indeed, this week there is an international regatta, and a stretch of stands selling sailing clothes. The presence of one boat's young crew all dressed in traditional Breton caps and linen smocks posing for a professional regatta photographer excited the attention of daytrippers: "Snap! Snap! Snap!" too, went their cameras.
I walked on, having decided that, as the day was overcast and cool, the best way to spend my time in Cannes was to go to the movies --and Cannes does have a lot of movie theaters, with the first day a movies plays in France being Wednesday --not Friday, as in the United States. So it was my luck that the new biopic about couturier Yves Saint Laurent was about to have its first showing in Cannes at 1:10 p.m., forty minutes and an easy walk away.
How was the movie? Well if you have no interest in fashion or Saint Laurent and especially haute couture, it's not for you. The film is mainly the story of the years this fragile man with a febrile imagination descended into his own private hell, a hell he never really escaped. Gaspard Ulliel impersonates the designer as he was in the days when he was at the height of his fame and cultural influence, opening ready-to-wear boutiques under the Rive Gauche label, posing nude (discreetly) for advertisements for his men's cologne, taking his influence from street fashion --safari shirts, military jackets --and, a break with everything that came before-- a pant suit inspired by men's tuxedos, which he called le smoking.
The film spends little time explaining any of this, as most of it is devoted to Saint Laurent's self-destructive relationship with J.J. Bascher, a gay libertine.. Saint Laurent almost killed himself --and his longtime partner in business and love, Pierre Bergé-- before both were free of him. However, Saint Laurent's self-destruction --several packs of cigarettes a day, lots of scotch and still, pills-- ravaged him physically. He retired from designing in 2002, becoming increasingly reclusive. He died of brain cancer in 2008.
The first showing was well-attended, but the queue for the second, which I passed, was very long. The line was full of women who take great care in their appearance in the way Saint Laurent's mother did, discreetly but expensively. These were the women for whom Saint Laurent first designed, before he became interested in playing with fashion's codes by putting women in pantsuits, by designing transparent black blouses to wear with them, by updating styles from the 1920s through the 1940s. The graphic scenes of group sex and the frontal nudity may be too much for them. Perhaps like me, they wanted a celebration of a brilliant and tormented craftsman, not a study in decadence.
Perhaps to underscore that aspect of Saint Laurent's life, the director, Bertrand Bonnello chose, for the role of Saint Laurent in his last, withdrawn years, the Austrian actor, Helmut Berger. The women on line might remember Berger's performance in a film equally scandalous in its day, Luchino Visconti's,The Damned, made in 1969. When released, The Damned received an "X" rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Berger perfectly mimics the aged Saint Laurent's halting speech, with its stops and starts and pauses for breath, as well as his mental abstraction.
A moth batting its wings relentlessly towards the flame, almost burning himself out, then withdrawing --just enough-- to do it again. Until the wings could beat no more. Saint Laurent's life could have been brought to the screen in this spirit. But --as an eighth grade teacher of mine used to say, "We live in an age where we like to see the feet of clay of our idols." So Saint Laurent serves them up, eclipsing the man's accomplishment in the process.
***
The trip back was uncomfortably cold, and my impressions of the film I had just seen dominated my thoughts. My head ached when I descended the boat. I was glad to return to little Saint Maxime for my last evening here and a hot shower.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
The Debt To Pleasure: Saint Tropez
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
The First Day of Fall
I am, I know, frugal: I have not had a meal in a restaurant since I arrived in Sainte Maxime, economizing by buying nourishment in the local grocery store or boulangerie. Breakfast in the hotel is 9, 50 Euros and I cannot spring for it, even though I dearly wanted a decaffeinated coffee. However, at 6,00 Euros (about $7.70 USD), I could not justify it. I was thrilled when I found that La Tarte Tropezienne has a sophisticated machine that makes all different different kinds of coffee: the white plastic cup descends, the divine liquid is expressed and at the end, a tiny clear plastic spoon drops into the cup. This is where the local builders get their coffee before going to work first thing in the morning at 6:30 a.m. There's no decaffeinated coffee, but at 1,00 euro a cup ($1.29), I'll go back on caffeine.
I did, however, come here because I wanted to "pretend that France isn't in the state its in for a few days", as I wrote on August 20, "hoping to rub shoulders with that world that never changes, the world of wealthy people on the Riviera". Now that I'm installed in Sainte Maxime, a place that fulfills every need of mind at present, I realize what a silly characterization of what I wanted I sketched: the towns and villages of Villefranche-sur-Mer, Beaulieu, and Menton are lovely and they are certainly filled with wealthy people, particularly in their environs. So is Sainte Maxime as well as the neighboring villages: St. Raphael, Le Lavandou, Ramatuelle, Saint Tropez.
What I find in Sainte Maxime is a studied quiet, the appearance of effortless tranquility --which is, of course, the product of a village consensus to keep Sainte Maxime attractive to residents and visitors who like it the way it is, unsexy --certainly in contrast to Saint Tropez. Even more so, Port Cros, one of Îles de Hyères, two hours away by boat, which I visited yesterday. The island, a nature preserve, has few residents, among them, Jean-Arthus Berthand, the famous photographer. He bought the dilapidated fort on the point and built a farmhouse next to it, a place to which he can retreat after his journeys photographing around the world. There are few other houses and only one hotel. There is one boat a day there, six days a week, which is how Port Cros stays as quiet as it is --there were twenty-five people on the Plage du Sud --a beach that can be reached only after a thirty-five minute hike-- there yesterday. Swimming in the waters of its tiny bay, I splashed like a child, completely happy: no foreign noises fouling the air, only the birds, the water, the sun, the hills and the fresh air.
Giving myself over to pleasure isn't easy, my sensibility has never liked second-best and the third rate. I am lucky that I can permit myself the indulgence of this vacation, but noticing how completely I have abandoned all but the lightest exercise and taken to enjoying afternoon naps, I can also say that inwardly I yearned for this, even if I never expressed it to myself. The French have an expression, se replier sur soi, to withdraw inwardly. For me to be happy, I have to allow myself to do this from time to time in some location that fulfills my dream of beauty and tranquility, and allows me to reconnect from my obsessive-compulsive orientation to measure the value of my days by the number of tasks accomplished.
I'm reminded of the story of Jesus' visit to the sisters of Bethany, Mary and Martha. Mary sits at Christ's feet to be near him, while Martha bustles to make sure the house is worthy of the honor of his visit. Christ gently reproaches Martha, saying her sister "has the better part" --contemplation versus action. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, as the Jesuits teach: laborare est orare --to work is to pray-- is their motto.
But all work and no play makes Marta a very dull girl, so I am going to enjoy reading the books I've put off reading and nap and contemplate the Golfe de Saint Tropez and amble through old Sainte Maxime, doing nothing, forgetting everything, paying off my debt to pleasure.
--Incidentally, Saint Tropez isn't about any of this, it's about something else, much less lasting, conspicuous consumption and fleeting thrills. Bulgari, Chanel, Armani --these temples of international style are well-represented, along with many other global brands, alongside less well-known, but equally expensive French ones. The yachts in the harbor have Cayman Islands, Kingston, Jamaica; Road Harbour, British Virgin Islands, Valetta, Malta and similarly posh registries: their young crews can be seeing washing down the boats first thing in the morning, the owners below deck or absent. Roman Abramovic, the billionaire, has a house nearby, Alain Delon lives in the hills; Helmut Berger returns every summer. The tide of fame washes in and out here, stranding some a long way from home.
I didn't take a single picture: it was too ugly.
The First Day of Fall
I am, I know, frugal: I have not had a meal in a restaurant since I arrived in Sainte Maxime, economizing by buying nourishment in the local grocery store or boulangerie. Breakfast in the hotel is 9, 50 Euros and I cannot spring for it, even though I dearly wanted a decaffeinated coffee. However, at 6,00 Euros (about $7.70 USD), I could not justify it. I was thrilled when I found that La Tarte Tropezienne has a sophisticated machine that makes all different different kinds of coffee: the white plastic cup descends, the divine liquid is expressed and at the end, a tiny clear plastic spoon drops into the cup. This is where the local builders get their coffee before going to work first thing in the morning at 6:30 a.m. There's no decaffeinated coffee, but at 1,00 euro a cup ($1.29), I'll go back on caffeine.
I did, however, come here because I wanted to "pretend that France isn't in the state its in for a few days", as I wrote on August 20, "hoping to rub shoulders with that world that never changes, the world of wealthy people on the Riviera". Now that I'm installed in Sainte Maxime, a place that fulfills every need of mind at present, I realize what a silly characterization of what I wanted I sketched: the towns and villages of Villefranche-sur-Mer, Beaulieu, and Menton are lovely and they are certainly filled with wealthy people, particularly in their environs. So is Sainte Maxime as well as the neighboring villages: St. Raphael, Le Lavandou, Ramatuelle, Saint Tropez.
What I find in Sainte Maxime is a studied quiet, the appearance of effortless tranquility --which is, of course, the product of a village consensus to keep Sainte Maxime attractive to residents and visitors who like it the way it is, unsexy --certainly in contrast to Saint Tropez. Even more so, Port Cros, one of Îles de Hyères, two hours away by boat, which I visited yesterday. The island, a nature preserve, has few residents, among them, Jean-Arthus Berthand, the famous photographer. He bought the dilapidated fort on the point and built a farmhouse next to it, a place to which he can retreat after his journeys photographing around the world. There are few other houses and only one hotel. There is one boat a day there, six days a week, which is how Port Cros stays as quiet as it is --there were twenty-five people on the Plage du Sud --a beach that can be reached only after a thirty-five minute hike-- there yesterday. Swimming in the waters of its tiny bay, I splashed like a child, completely happy: no foreign noises fouling the air, only the birds, the water, the sun, the hills and the fresh air.
Giving myself over to pleasure isn't easy, my sensibility has never liked second-best and the third rate. I am lucky that I can permit myself the indulgence of this vacation, but noticing how completely I have abandoned all but the lightest exercise and taken to enjoying afternoon naps, I can also say that inwardly I yearned for this, even if I never expressed it to myself. The French have an expression, se replier sur soi, to withdraw inwardly. For me to be happy, I have to allow myself to do this from time to time in some location that fulfills my dream of beauty and tranquility, and allows me to reconnect from my obsessive-compulsive orientation to measure the value of my days by the number of tasks accomplished.
I'm reminded of the story of Jesus' visit to the sisters of Bethany, Mary and Martha. Mary sits at Christ's feet to be near him, while Martha bustles to make sure the house is worthy of the honor of his visit. Christ gently reproaches Martha, saying her sister "has the better part" --contemplation versus action. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, as the Jesuits teach: laborare est orare --to work is to pray-- is their motto.
But all work and no play makes Marta a very dull girl, so I am going to enjoy reading the books I've put off reading and nap and contemplate the Golfe de Saint Tropez and amble through old Sainte Maxime, doing nothing, forgetting everything, paying off my debt to pleasure.
--Incidentally, Saint Tropez isn't about any of this, it's about something else, much less lasting, conspicuous consumption and fleeting thrills. Bulgari, Chanel, Armani --these temples of international style are well-represented, along with many other global brands, alongside less well-known, but equally expensive French ones. The yachts in the harbor have Cayman Islands, Kingston, Jamaica; Road Harbour, British Virgin Islands, Valetta, Malta and similarly posh registries: their young crews can be seeing washing down the boats first thing in the morning, the owners below deck or absent. Roman Abramovic, the billionaire, has a house nearby, Alain Delon lives in the hills; Helmut Berger returns every summer. The tide of fame washes in and out here, stranding some a long way from home.
I didn't take a single picture: it was too ugly.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Valerie Trierweiler's "Thank You For This Moment"
Monday, September 22, 2014
I devoured Valerie Trierweiler's book, Merci Pour Ce Moment in less than a day. It is unlike any other political memoir I have ever read in its singularity. It was published --and republished-- while its main subject, the President of France, is still in office. The only other book I can recall with similar timing, is historian Eric Goldman's The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, which criticized LBJ's politics, particularly concerning Vietnam.
Trierweiler's book is of a different order, it is a memoir written within months of her dismissal from François Hollande's life, public and private In the book she limns the personality of a thoroughly political animal, detailing his duplicities. This is nothing new: Any book about a man who arrives at the summit of political power must of necessity either criticize, or defend policies associated with the personality-in-chief. Scholars labor over facts to make a coherent narrative of a term in office, former intimates tell stories the press overlooked or never found out, the more revelations, the better the book sells. Trierweiler's book surpasses any political memoir ever written with publication in mind because her story is about how the political and the personal became inextricable and the consequences of it for her.
Trierweiler has been criticized without let-up since the book was published, although she was hardly the darling of the press once her relationship with François Hollande was published. When she was "first girlfriend", she was criticized for being manipulative; when she published her book, she was excoriated for piercing the veil between the private and public life of a politician. However, years ago François Hollande and the former candidate for the French presidency by whom he has four children, Ségolene Royal, melded their private life with the public one: Ségolene Royal invited French television cameras into the hospital room where she and her new offspring were recovering after the birth. Hollande and Royal also invited cameras to film the Royal-Hollande ménage at home. None of this had been done in French politics before.
Trierweiler is frank about her illusions about François Hollande --and the disillusion that came with his accession to power. The two --she a respected political journalist from a family with little, her father a double amputee, her mother a cashier; he the son of a doctor, a specialist in ear, nose and throat diseases, her mother a social worker, the family well-off-- crossed paths over twenty years before drawing closer when Hollande became the head of the Socialist Party and she was assigned that beat.
Trierweiler was married, the mother of three when the closer proximity to Hollande began to feed the rumor mill. Hollande had never married Royal, whose defeat in 2007 paved the way for her equally ambitious partner to seek the Socialist nomination in 2012. By 2007, what had begun as privileged relationship that served both Trierweiler and Hollande's purposes --she wanted "scoops", he wanted to be written about favorably as a presidential candidate-- had taken a more volatile turn.
Trierweiler writes she knew of the rumors, but as she knew them to be false, laughed them off --and continued to see Hollande privately for intimate dinners to talk politics. She knew she was strongly attracted, but she knew she had a happy marriage and home life to lose. Rationalizing that she was only trying to get the inside track on stories, she let herself get close not only to François Hollande, but to his circle.
Cole Porter once said, "Nothing propinks like propinquity." Indeed, the spark between Trierweiler and Hollande burned, Trierweiler, according to her account, not quite realizing that the relationship had become very serious for Hollande. When --instinctively sensing the relationship was on dangerous ground-- she avoided Hollande, an aide tracked her down to tell her Hollande --in love with her-- was miserable. She capitulated to his demands shortly after --consummating their passion in April in Limoges all the while Royal was campaigning for the French presidency. Royal lost the election in May 2007; in June 2007, Hollande and Royal announced they were separating.
Revealing that their first physical intimacy took place in Limoges --le baiser de Limoges, she calls it --is inadvertently ironic, although I am sure Trierweiler did not intend it to be. One of the words for firing someone in French is "limoger". Which was her fate, to be fired from Hollande's political and personal life in January 2014.
The book is a kind of apologia pro vita sua, and the story of Trierweiler's re-invention, which is in progress. She writes with immediacy: Trierweiler plunges into her affair with Hollande, despite the cost to her family life; she plunges too, into the campaign for Hollande's election, writing stories favorable to his candidacy in Paris Match until November 2007 when its public disclosure requires Trierweiler to take a leave from the magazine.
With the assumption of power in May 2012, Hollande becomes distant and visibly dissatisfied with Trierweiler. The president's political aides keep her at a distance, and she is required to see his secretary to see him. His falling popularity makes him privately taciturn and caustic and disinclined to take the counsel he once sought from Trierweiler. There are rumors he is seeing Julie Gayet, a young actress, clandestinely, but Trierweiler chalks them up to the rumor mill. Only when Closer publishes a photo of the French head of state wearing a motorcycle helmet entering the apartment building where Gayet lives; and of Hollande's driver bringing croissants into the building the next morning, does Hollande admit something of the affair.
There is no going back at this point for either of them, although Hollande seeks to have his cake and eat it, too: he forces Trierweiler out of his life by giving her the silent treatment, provoking an overdose of sleeping pills and Trierweiler's nervous collaspse. Trierweiler says that the collapse at learning of Hollande's deception was exacerbated by the administration of the maximum dose of antidepressants. She says this was a clinical decision in keeping with Hollande's desire to keep her sedated until he could figure out how to extricate himself from his self-created media storm. Eventually Trierweiler returns to the apartment on rue Couchy she shared with Hollande and tries to put the pieces back together. She gave up all journalistic assignments but one at Hollande's request, and now, bereft of lover, realizes all she has lost: she is on her own financially and emotionally.
Hollande, nevertheless (certainly sensing Trierweiler is capable of publishing catastrophic disclosures) wants to keep her on a leash. He tries to do so by tweeting her daily, frequently. He sends her flowers, compliments her, says positive things about her charitable activities --activities, she bitterly reminds us, he never cared to interest himself in when she was Premier Dame de France.
What is unique about Trierweiler's book is that while Hollande's faults are those of many political men, few of them have an adversary as close to them as Trierweiler was --or as articulate. Having spent some time in New York City politics in particular, I can write with confidence that Hollande's faults -his self-centeredness, his infidelities, his calculation-- are not unique to the species. However, by writing and publishing a book about her life with the man while he remains in office, she etches deeply. Trierweiler's portrait of François Hollande may not be indelible, but it is trenchant.
A little anecdote about Hollande's inauguration --that would have been just trivia had Trierweiler not tamped on it--suggests the ruthlessness of the man: To distinguish his inauguration from that of his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, who had his children of both marriages present at the swearing-in ceremony at the Elysée-- Hollande forbids his children from attending. Their pleas do not change his mind, the swearing-in is limited to a very few.
Up until Dominique Strauss-Kahn met Nissafatou Diallo in a room at the Meridian Hotel in New York, the French press did not pursue stories about the private lives of politicians. The French in general --and the press, in particular-- were critical of the American press for doing so. Now that Valerie Trierweiler's memoir has pulled down the walls of the temple, things will never be the same: the personal life, at least in the case of François Hollande, is political. And if anyone denies that, Hollande's designation of Ségolene Royal as Minister for Ecology is undeniably a melding of the personal and political. It reminds me of the elevation of the king's mistress to positions of power and influence at court. But obviously, that thought never crossed François Hollande's mind.
Royal has become one of Hollande's chief supports since Trierweiler's book sparked a media firestorm, with Hollande's popularity at a nadir and calls for his resignation openly voiced. Hollande has announced he will stay the course. Meanwhile, sales of Trierweiler's book are breaking all records. The die is cast --if not for Hollande --at least not immediately--, certainly for Trierweiler, whose professional and personal future is anyone's guess. Hollande may one day look back on the end of his liaison with Trierweiler and say, as Napoleon did of Josephine, "I loved her, but I did not respect her."
In Hollande's case, at least, that may have been a fatal mistake.
I devoured Valerie Trierweiler's book, Merci Pour Ce Moment in less than a day. It is unlike any other political memoir I have ever read in its singularity. It was published --and republished-- while its main subject, the President of France, is still in office. The only other book I can recall with similar timing, is historian Eric Goldman's The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, which criticized LBJ's politics, particularly concerning Vietnam.
Trierweiler's book is of a different order, it is a memoir written within months of her dismissal from François Hollande's life, public and private In the book she limns the personality of a thoroughly political animal, detailing his duplicities. This is nothing new: Any book about a man who arrives at the summit of political power must of necessity either criticize, or defend policies associated with the personality-in-chief. Scholars labor over facts to make a coherent narrative of a term in office, former intimates tell stories the press overlooked or never found out, the more revelations, the better the book sells. Trierweiler's book surpasses any political memoir ever written with publication in mind because her story is about how the political and the personal became inextricable and the consequences of it for her.
Trierweiler has been criticized without let-up since the book was published, although she was hardly the darling of the press once her relationship with François Hollande was published. When she was "first girlfriend", she was criticized for being manipulative; when she published her book, she was excoriated for piercing the veil between the private and public life of a politician. However, years ago François Hollande and the former candidate for the French presidency by whom he has four children, Ségolene Royal, melded their private life with the public one: Ségolene Royal invited French television cameras into the hospital room where she and her new offspring were recovering after the birth. Hollande and Royal also invited cameras to film the Royal-Hollande ménage at home. None of this had been done in French politics before.
Trierweiler is frank about her illusions about François Hollande --and the disillusion that came with his accession to power. The two --she a respected political journalist from a family with little, her father a double amputee, her mother a cashier; he the son of a doctor, a specialist in ear, nose and throat diseases, her mother a social worker, the family well-off-- crossed paths over twenty years before drawing closer when Hollande became the head of the Socialist Party and she was assigned that beat.
Trierweiler was married, the mother of three when the closer proximity to Hollande began to feed the rumor mill. Hollande had never married Royal, whose defeat in 2007 paved the way for her equally ambitious partner to seek the Socialist nomination in 2012. By 2007, what had begun as privileged relationship that served both Trierweiler and Hollande's purposes --she wanted "scoops", he wanted to be written about favorably as a presidential candidate-- had taken a more volatile turn.
Trierweiler writes she knew of the rumors, but as she knew them to be false, laughed them off --and continued to see Hollande privately for intimate dinners to talk politics. She knew she was strongly attracted, but she knew she had a happy marriage and home life to lose. Rationalizing that she was only trying to get the inside track on stories, she let herself get close not only to François Hollande, but to his circle.
Cole Porter once said, "Nothing propinks like propinquity." Indeed, the spark between Trierweiler and Hollande burned, Trierweiler, according to her account, not quite realizing that the relationship had become very serious for Hollande. When --instinctively sensing the relationship was on dangerous ground-- she avoided Hollande, an aide tracked her down to tell her Hollande --in love with her-- was miserable. She capitulated to his demands shortly after --consummating their passion in April in Limoges all the while Royal was campaigning for the French presidency. Royal lost the election in May 2007; in June 2007, Hollande and Royal announced they were separating.
Revealing that their first physical intimacy took place in Limoges --le baiser de Limoges, she calls it --is inadvertently ironic, although I am sure Trierweiler did not intend it to be. One of the words for firing someone in French is "limoger". Which was her fate, to be fired from Hollande's political and personal life in January 2014.
The book is a kind of apologia pro vita sua, and the story of Trierweiler's re-invention, which is in progress. She writes with immediacy: Trierweiler plunges into her affair with Hollande, despite the cost to her family life; she plunges too, into the campaign for Hollande's election, writing stories favorable to his candidacy in Paris Match until November 2007 when its public disclosure requires Trierweiler to take a leave from the magazine.
With the assumption of power in May 2012, Hollande becomes distant and visibly dissatisfied with Trierweiler. The president's political aides keep her at a distance, and she is required to see his secretary to see him. His falling popularity makes him privately taciturn and caustic and disinclined to take the counsel he once sought from Trierweiler. There are rumors he is seeing Julie Gayet, a young actress, clandestinely, but Trierweiler chalks them up to the rumor mill. Only when Closer publishes a photo of the French head of state wearing a motorcycle helmet entering the apartment building where Gayet lives; and of Hollande's driver bringing croissants into the building the next morning, does Hollande admit something of the affair.
There is no going back at this point for either of them, although Hollande seeks to have his cake and eat it, too: he forces Trierweiler out of his life by giving her the silent treatment, provoking an overdose of sleeping pills and Trierweiler's nervous collaspse. Trierweiler says that the collapse at learning of Hollande's deception was exacerbated by the administration of the maximum dose of antidepressants. She says this was a clinical decision in keeping with Hollande's desire to keep her sedated until he could figure out how to extricate himself from his self-created media storm. Eventually Trierweiler returns to the apartment on rue Couchy she shared with Hollande and tries to put the pieces back together. She gave up all journalistic assignments but one at Hollande's request, and now, bereft of lover, realizes all she has lost: she is on her own financially and emotionally.
Hollande, nevertheless (certainly sensing Trierweiler is capable of publishing catastrophic disclosures) wants to keep her on a leash. He tries to do so by tweeting her daily, frequently. He sends her flowers, compliments her, says positive things about her charitable activities --activities, she bitterly reminds us, he never cared to interest himself in when she was Premier Dame de France.
What is unique about Trierweiler's book is that while Hollande's faults are those of many political men, few of them have an adversary as close to them as Trierweiler was --or as articulate. Having spent some time in New York City politics in particular, I can write with confidence that Hollande's faults -his self-centeredness, his infidelities, his calculation-- are not unique to the species. However, by writing and publishing a book about her life with the man while he remains in office, she etches deeply. Trierweiler's portrait of François Hollande may not be indelible, but it is trenchant.
A little anecdote about Hollande's inauguration --that would have been just trivia had Trierweiler not tamped on it--suggests the ruthlessness of the man: To distinguish his inauguration from that of his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, who had his children of both marriages present at the swearing-in ceremony at the Elysée-- Hollande forbids his children from attending. Their pleas do not change his mind, the swearing-in is limited to a very few.
Up until Dominique Strauss-Kahn met Nissafatou Diallo in a room at the Meridian Hotel in New York, the French press did not pursue stories about the private lives of politicians. The French in general --and the press, in particular-- were critical of the American press for doing so. Now that Valerie Trierweiler's memoir has pulled down the walls of the temple, things will never be the same: the personal life, at least in the case of François Hollande, is political. And if anyone denies that, Hollande's designation of Ségolene Royal as Minister for Ecology is undeniably a melding of the personal and political. It reminds me of the elevation of the king's mistress to positions of power and influence at court. But obviously, that thought never crossed François Hollande's mind.
Royal has become one of Hollande's chief supports since Trierweiler's book sparked a media firestorm, with Hollande's popularity at a nadir and calls for his resignation openly voiced. Hollande has announced he will stay the course. Meanwhile, sales of Trierweiler's book are breaking all records. The die is cast --if not for Hollande --at least not immediately--, certainly for Trierweiler, whose professional and personal future is anyone's guess. Hollande may one day look back on the end of his liaison with Trierweiler and say, as Napoleon did of Josephine, "I loved her, but I did not respect her."
In Hollande's case, at least, that may have been a fatal mistake.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Sainte Maxime
Sunday, September 21, 2014
I slept marvelous well in Room #26 of l'Hôtel Royal Bon Repos. The day dawned lovely, and I took my time before leaving to walk over to the Casino Supermarché down the street. With so many small sailboats and motorboats in the harbor, there is a need to have provisions between easy reach, hence the existence of the good-sized supermarket across from the port.
Which works to my advantage as a frugal traveler. I have to eat anything I buy outside, though: the rules of the hotel are "no eating in the rooms". It's not a hardship though, as the weather is warm and there are plenty of benches with backs to sit on and take in the view of Saint Tropez Bay.
Sainte Maxime has restaurants and shops along the bay, but they are well-appointed and their displays discreet. The clientèle is older, it seems to me, all in keeping with Sainte Maxime's reputation as the "quiet" alternative to Saint Tropez.
Not that it's impossible to visit ST if you think you want to see the spots where Brigitte Bardot danced on the tables, and celebrities on the rise (and decline) still sojourn. There is a well-trafficked water taxi that runs every twenty minutes throughout the day and saves visitors the headache of driving there.
Market days, Tuesdays and Saturdays, in Saint Tropez, are jam-packed. The traffic jams are legion. Celebrities go to be seen and photographed and adulated. As with Miami Beach, St. Barths, Palm Springs, Saint Moritz, and other resorts popular with famous people with money, Saint Tropez celebrates itself and those film and music stars who have money to burn, knowing that there are other people --not famous, but also free spenders-- who will visit because celebrities visit.
Not that Sainte Maxime is Saint Tropez' poor sister. If my method of instantly sizing-up the economy of a place by appraising the quality of the hair coloring of women is valid, Sainte Maxime's female residents --who mostly tint their hair very subtly-- suggest that the village is far better off financially than most of France. (In contrast, judging by their hair, the women of San Remo look as though they stuck their heads in electric sockets.)
There is a good librairie on the avenue that lines the port, with much the same offerings in books and magazines you would find in Paris. Merci Pour Ce Moment, Valerie Trierweiler's book is on offer. Indeed, it is just the sort of book that would be fun to read here. I am looking forward to tearing through my copy during my stay here.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Necessary Flight
Saturday evening, September 20, 2014
I left San Remo at noon today and said goodbye to Italy.
When I came home last night, walking through the warren of streets that is La Pigna, I saw several groups of young men hunched on streets talking and smoking. They noticed me, but when I said "Buona sera", no one replied. I felt uneasy and started looking at alternative places to spend my week away once I got in the door of my airbnb studio.
When he was eighteen, Bill had spent an idyllic summer in Sainte Maxime, in the Var department, a guest of a well-placed French family. We had never visited, although Bill always spoke of how lovely the village was. I went to "Trip Advisor" and compared hotels. There was one room left at the best hotel, the Hotel Royal Bon Repos, so I grabbed it, a room on the second floor overlooking the bay from the terrace. That "Hotel Royal Bon Repos" translates as "Hotel Royal Good Rest" in French, made me think perhaps I would get what I was looking for there.
The booking made last night, I also informed Anna, my airbnb hostess, that I would be leaving in the morning and that I would like to turn in the keys at noon. She and her partner, "Robbie", helped me get my luggage into the car. It was market day, and San Remo was even more chaotic than on Thursday and Friday.
I was glad to get away. "Yes", I have spent more than I planned on this holiday, but I made the right choice to get away. This morning, Michael and Wendy, the Australians staying in the apartment next to mine, went to get their car and found it gone. It had not been stolen, but removed by the San Remo police: Anna had forgot to tell Michael and Wendy not to park in the parking area by the market because cars there when the market opens are towed away.
Anna sensed my unease: at one point she mentioned the young men hanging around, referring to them as "alternativi". At first I thought she was trying to say they were gay, then she specified they were Moroccans. "But they won't do you any harm, they're nice." It turns out that Anna is from Naples, which influences her perspective: Naples is much more crime-ridden and dangerous than San Remo.
--That doesn't, however, mean San Remo is where I want to spend a vacation I wanted to devote to gentle relaxation.
In the morning, I took one more walk around San Remo, passing Christ the Savior Church and again moving upwards towards the luxury area of San Remo. I saw signs for the hotel that dominates the height, the Royal Hotel San Remo. I walked in and no one stopped me from proceeding to the garden terrace, where I read an International Herald Tribune. It was a lovely experience that cost nothing, but it did not make me want to stay in San Remo.
The drive out of San Remo to Sainte Maxime was one of the most enjoyable I have ever had. I took the toll road, but it is set so high in the mountains that all around the road are peaks. The roads were smooth and fast, and I arrived in Sainte Maxime in about two hours.
Sainte Maxime is located on the Golfe de Sainte Tropez across the bay from the village Brigitte Bardot made famous, but it has neither the night clubs nor the cruise ship traffic, which makes it quiet.
Virginie Liotier, who has owns and manages the Bon Repos, is a soothing presence. And my room has a lovely terrace balcony from which I can see the bay. There is a grocery store down the street to buy things to eat, if I don't want to eat in restaurants all the time. The beach is a short ride away.
In contrast to San Remo, everything is very clean and small in scale. My room is very luminous, unlike my cavern in San Remo.
And I feel very safe and cosseted here, in contrast to the anxious two days in San Remo. You can't put a price on that, because I need a royally good rest after San Remo.
I left San Remo at noon today and said goodbye to Italy.
When I came home last night, walking through the warren of streets that is La Pigna, I saw several groups of young men hunched on streets talking and smoking. They noticed me, but when I said "Buona sera", no one replied. I felt uneasy and started looking at alternative places to spend my week away once I got in the door of my airbnb studio.
When he was eighteen, Bill had spent an idyllic summer in Sainte Maxime, in the Var department, a guest of a well-placed French family. We had never visited, although Bill always spoke of how lovely the village was. I went to "Trip Advisor" and compared hotels. There was one room left at the best hotel, the Hotel Royal Bon Repos, so I grabbed it, a room on the second floor overlooking the bay from the terrace. That "Hotel Royal Bon Repos" translates as "Hotel Royal Good Rest" in French, made me think perhaps I would get what I was looking for there.
The booking made last night, I also informed Anna, my airbnb hostess, that I would be leaving in the morning and that I would like to turn in the keys at noon. She and her partner, "Robbie", helped me get my luggage into the car. It was market day, and San Remo was even more chaotic than on Thursday and Friday.
I was glad to get away. "Yes", I have spent more than I planned on this holiday, but I made the right choice to get away. This morning, Michael and Wendy, the Australians staying in the apartment next to mine, went to get their car and found it gone. It had not been stolen, but removed by the San Remo police: Anna had forgot to tell Michael and Wendy not to park in the parking area by the market because cars there when the market opens are towed away.
Anna sensed my unease: at one point she mentioned the young men hanging around, referring to them as "alternativi". At first I thought she was trying to say they were gay, then she specified they were Moroccans. "But they won't do you any harm, they're nice." It turns out that Anna is from Naples, which influences her perspective: Naples is much more crime-ridden and dangerous than San Remo.
--That doesn't, however, mean San Remo is where I want to spend a vacation I wanted to devote to gentle relaxation.
In the morning, I took one more walk around San Remo, passing Christ the Savior Church and again moving upwards towards the luxury area of San Remo. I saw signs for the hotel that dominates the height, the Royal Hotel San Remo. I walked in and no one stopped me from proceeding to the garden terrace, where I read an International Herald Tribune. It was a lovely experience that cost nothing, but it did not make me want to stay in San Remo.
The drive out of San Remo to Sainte Maxime was one of the most enjoyable I have ever had. I took the toll road, but it is set so high in the mountains that all around the road are peaks. The roads were smooth and fast, and I arrived in Sainte Maxime in about two hours.
Sainte Maxime is located on the Golfe de Sainte Tropez across the bay from the village Brigitte Bardot made famous, but it has neither the night clubs nor the cruise ship traffic, which makes it quiet.
Virginie Liotier, who has owns and manages the Bon Repos, is a soothing presence. And my room has a lovely terrace balcony from which I can see the bay. There is a grocery store down the street to buy things to eat, if I don't want to eat in restaurants all the time. The beach is a short ride away.
In contrast to San Remo, everything is very clean and small in scale. My room is very luminous, unlike my cavern in San Remo.
And I feel very safe and cosseted here, in contrast to the anxious two days in San Remo. You can't put a price on that, because I need a royally good rest after San Remo.
Friday, September 19, 2014
You Get What You Pay For Part II: The Adaptable Traveler
Friday, September 19, 2014
Late afternoon
I discovered this morning that the path to the church of La Madonna della Costa goes past my door. The church is on the top of a peak above La Pigna, up the old steps above where I am housed, a hike. The grade of the hill is very steep, so there is no question of rushing up there. At one point you leave the caverns of the old city and emerge into the light, the city, the port and the Mediterranean stretching out below you, but you have still not arrived, although there is a small church nearby.
You must climb still higher, and then you see the mosaic of paving stones that leads to the "Sanctorum" as the blazon in the façade of the church trumpets. The church --like all of the major Roman Catholic churches in San Remo-- is Baroque in style. The interior is a riot of color and decoration. I arrived just as the church was being opened to visitors, at 10:00 a.m.
After, I walked down to the sailboat harbor, then turned around and walked along the water to Il Corso Imperatrice (the Empress' Promenade), nearer France than Italy. The empress in question was Maria Alexandrovna, Empress of all the Russias, who spent the winter of 1874-1875 in San Remo. After her stay, the Russian aristocracy, including members of the Imperial Family, began to pass the winter seasons in the city. The Russian community was large enough that eventually, funds were raised to build the Church of Christ the Saviour. It was consecrated in 1913 as a church among the "foreign places of health care", a designation of the Diocese of Saint Petersburg that confirmed its status in the Russian community.
However, the Church of Christ the Saviour also has links to the royal family of Montenegro, the Petrovic-Njegos dynasty. On March 1, 1921 Nicholas I, King of Montenegro, died in exile in Antibes, France. In his will he provided for burial in the crypt of Christ the Saviour "until the triumph of truth in the history of Montenegro". His wife, Queen Miena, who died two years later in Antibes, was buried there, too, as were their two daughters, Vera and Xenia. In an example of the close ties the royal families of Europe had to each other at the time, the last king of Italy, Umberto II of Savoy, King Nicholas' nephew, paid for the design and construction of a sarcophagus in black marble.
However, after the death of the dictator of Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito, in 1980 --and before the start of the Balkan Wars in 1991, Montenegrans began calling for the return of the bodies of the royal family. With the unanimous decision of the Russian community in San Remo, of the town Council and of the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs; on September 29, 1989, after a solemn ceremony, the four coffins left the Russian church headed for the Monenegran royal chapel at Cettigne, the ancient capital of Montenegro. Photographs of the royal progress can be seen in the crypt, which still contains the sarcophagus donated by Umberto II.
San Remo is a faded reminder of an age when relatives of Queen Victoria sat on all the thrones of Europe, including that of Russia. And the milder winters continue to attract Russians. There are real estate offices that cater only to Russian clients, all the listings described in Russian. The fancy hotels --the Europa, the Paradiso and others-- do a good business with the Russian community. And today on the beach, swimming in the ocean under grey skies were Russians, for whom the change in temperature is not dissuasive.
There was an English community here, as evidenced by their church, a small structure that most resembles a parsonage. Today, the English have moved to Spain and the South of France, closer to home and an EasyJet or Ryanair fight away. Most tourists are Italian or Russian, although not everyone is just passing through. In the heights behind the luxury hotels, are luxury apartments and villas with high gates and private access roads clearly marked as such.
This San Remo is exclusive; and it is not dirty, noisy or chaotic. The gardens surrounding these redoubts of the well-off are beautiful jungles of greenery and bougainvillea. They give off an indolent lushness, a far cry from the streets below, where motor scooters compete with Fiats and buses for space on the road. Like Nice at sea level, much of which --apart from Le Promenade des Anglais-- is dense and grotty-- San Remo in back of the beach, by the fish and meat markets, with their massive parking garages and open-air parking places cheek by jowl with each other, is squalid. La Pigna, where I am, is a working class district, although not everyone lives in squalor: my airbnb hostess has a lovely apartment with a beautiful balcony view of the Mediterranean.
Squalor and chaos, living next door to conspicuous wealth --or the pretense of it: the contrasts are sharper in San Remo. This is Italy: it's accepted. I'm adapting.
Late afternoon
I discovered this morning that the path to the church of La Madonna della Costa goes past my door. The church is on the top of a peak above La Pigna, up the old steps above where I am housed, a hike. The grade of the hill is very steep, so there is no question of rushing up there. At one point you leave the caverns of the old city and emerge into the light, the city, the port and the Mediterranean stretching out below you, but you have still not arrived, although there is a small church nearby.
You must climb still higher, and then you see the mosaic of paving stones that leads to the "Sanctorum" as the blazon in the façade of the church trumpets. The church --like all of the major Roman Catholic churches in San Remo-- is Baroque in style. The interior is a riot of color and decoration. I arrived just as the church was being opened to visitors, at 10:00 a.m.
After, I walked down to the sailboat harbor, then turned around and walked along the water to Il Corso Imperatrice (the Empress' Promenade), nearer France than Italy. The empress in question was Maria Alexandrovna, Empress of all the Russias, who spent the winter of 1874-1875 in San Remo. After her stay, the Russian aristocracy, including members of the Imperial Family, began to pass the winter seasons in the city. The Russian community was large enough that eventually, funds were raised to build the Church of Christ the Saviour. It was consecrated in 1913 as a church among the "foreign places of health care", a designation of the Diocese of Saint Petersburg that confirmed its status in the Russian community.
However, the Church of Christ the Saviour also has links to the royal family of Montenegro, the Petrovic-Njegos dynasty. On March 1, 1921 Nicholas I, King of Montenegro, died in exile in Antibes, France. In his will he provided for burial in the crypt of Christ the Saviour "until the triumph of truth in the history of Montenegro". His wife, Queen Miena, who died two years later in Antibes, was buried there, too, as were their two daughters, Vera and Xenia. In an example of the close ties the royal families of Europe had to each other at the time, the last king of Italy, Umberto II of Savoy, King Nicholas' nephew, paid for the design and construction of a sarcophagus in black marble.
However, after the death of the dictator of Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito, in 1980 --and before the start of the Balkan Wars in 1991, Montenegrans began calling for the return of the bodies of the royal family. With the unanimous decision of the Russian community in San Remo, of the town Council and of the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs; on September 29, 1989, after a solemn ceremony, the four coffins left the Russian church headed for the Monenegran royal chapel at Cettigne, the ancient capital of Montenegro. Photographs of the royal progress can be seen in the crypt, which still contains the sarcophagus donated by Umberto II.
San Remo is a faded reminder of an age when relatives of Queen Victoria sat on all the thrones of Europe, including that of Russia. And the milder winters continue to attract Russians. There are real estate offices that cater only to Russian clients, all the listings described in Russian. The fancy hotels --the Europa, the Paradiso and others-- do a good business with the Russian community. And today on the beach, swimming in the ocean under grey skies were Russians, for whom the change in temperature is not dissuasive.
There was an English community here, as evidenced by their church, a small structure that most resembles a parsonage. Today, the English have moved to Spain and the South of France, closer to home and an EasyJet or Ryanair fight away. Most tourists are Italian or Russian, although not everyone is just passing through. In the heights behind the luxury hotels, are luxury apartments and villas with high gates and private access roads clearly marked as such.
This San Remo is exclusive; and it is not dirty, noisy or chaotic. The gardens surrounding these redoubts of the well-off are beautiful jungles of greenery and bougainvillea. They give off an indolent lushness, a far cry from the streets below, where motor scooters compete with Fiats and buses for space on the road. Like Nice at sea level, much of which --apart from Le Promenade des Anglais-- is dense and grotty-- San Remo in back of the beach, by the fish and meat markets, with their massive parking garages and open-air parking places cheek by jowl with each other, is squalid. La Pigna, where I am, is a working class district, although not everyone lives in squalor: my airbnb hostess has a lovely apartment with a beautiful balcony view of the Mediterranean.
Squalor and chaos, living next door to conspicuous wealth --or the pretense of it: the contrasts are sharper in San Remo. This is Italy: it's accepted. I'm adapting.
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