Somme battlefields: war in a peaceful land

Sombre at the Somme

I don't really like it when Americans and English comedians joke about how the French always surrender in a war. And until the USA or the UK have suffered as much by war and invasion as France has, I think those jokes have no basis. It's very easy to defend yourself when you live on an island, or across the ocean.

Traveling through the battlefields of Verdun, the Marne and the Somme is really a moving experience. How can this peaceful green land, with its cornfields and farms and cows have been a scene of such devastation and carnage, just a century ago?

The battlefields of the Somme are incredibly moving, with their serene military graveyards, austere monuments and acres of white crosses dotting the landscape around Péronne. Some of the memorials are incredibly beautiful, like the Canadian memorial at Vimy. A stunning man-made cliff of marble that rises up from the edge of a hill, crowned with impressive sculptures. Not just a place of memory and contemplation, but also a great work of art.

One of the first memorials I visited was the Anzac memorial near Villers-Bretonneux. And I am not ashamed to say that I had tears in my eyes, to realize just how far these young men had traveled, to die for a war that was never theirs, to protect values that were not worth protecting. What a colossal, devastating waste of human life.


And every cross, every name on the marble walls represents so much more grief. The parents, the siblings, the friends of the 'glorious dead'... each cross I counted meant maybe a dozen broken hearts. The scale of suffering completely overwhelmed me, even though the sun was shining, birds were chirping and the flowers were everywhere.

The messages on the crosses were harrowing. Mourning parents trying to make sense of the senseless killing, holding on to hollow phrases and empty prayers to a God they could no longer believe in. Meaningless words about duty, honor and glory that barely hid the immense sadness behind them.And then I saw it: a cross with a personal message from despairing parents who weren't able to come up with a brave lie or some empty platitude. 'Another life lost. Hearts broken, and for what?'

There, under the Picardie sun, I let my tears flow freely, mourning for a soldier whose name meant nothing to me, feeling the loss of parents I did not know.

I challenge everyone to travel through the battlefields of France, and come away still holding the childish notion that wars can be won, and that there is such a thing as good versus evil.

There isn't. There's just death and despair... hearts broken.
And for what...

Lens: the miracle of the North

Northern Lights: miraculous museums

Louvre Lens is an absolute masterpiece

Northern France often gets overlooked by tourists. Coming from the North -like I do- they barrel on along the Autoroute A1 until they are deep in Picardy, where the famous gothic cathedrals and impressive fortresses beckon. Or further still, in Paris. But hardly anyone pays any attention to the two northernmost departements: Nord and Pas-de-Calais.

I can't really blame anyone, because it's not exactly a pretty part of France. Large factories dominate the landscape around Calais and Dunkerque, and the urban sprawl around Lille hardly induces anyone to get out of the car. But, as so often is the case: there is a lot more to see and do in the North than you might think.

Lille, for instance, is a vibrant metropolis with a lovely old center with big Flemish squares and quirky shops. And nearby Arras boasts two of the most beautiful squares in all of Europe, elegant and harmonious.But there is also a certain drabness about the area, Belgian almost, with derelict mines and slagheaps everywhere. This is a region that has seen better days.

However: things are changing fast, and mostly for the better. Lille has, thanks to Eurostar, grown into a hi tech metropolis, the silicon valley of France. And recently, the North started putting itself on the map even more. Maybe it all started with the hugely succesful movie 'Bienvenue chez les Ch'ti', but that movie really only was seen by a French audience. The real boost came from two fantastic museums that opened in the region.

Roubaix boasts a fabulous museum in a former swimming pool, imaginatively named La Piscine. It's a pure delight to see beautiful 18th and 19th century sculptures reflected in the former pool, that still has water in it. A stroke of genius! I was reminded of emperor Hadrian's villa in Tivoli, Italy actually, with the white marble reflected in the pool. Very surprising and very worthwhile!

However, this spring saw the opening of the Louvre Lens and that's really something else. In a sleek glass and titanium building, in a beautiful garden, the Louvre created a time-machine. In one magnificent hall, you can see the whole development of European art from 4000 b.C up until the 1900's. Instead of the palace-like rooms of the Parisian Louvre, here everything is open, wide, white and spacious. In one glance, you can see the Greek and Roman sculptures, and the ones from the Renaissance they inspired. It is so exciting to see these marvellous works of art interacting, almost debating with one another. And don't think the Louvre Lens only shows stuff from the attic of the Louvre Paris. Non monsieur! It actually has some of the most important works from the collection, like the famous Delacroix revolution painting.

I conclude with a tip for all my Dutch friends: until 31 december 2013 entry to the Louvre Lens is free!

Loches: the Dame de Beauté

The Dame de Beauté

Agnes Sorel, the first royal mistress

Oooh la la, those French rascal presidents and kings! The history of France is absolutely teeming with secret love affairs and royal mistresses. And even president Mitterand had a very public second life with a mistress and illegitimate daughter. Did the French public bat an eyelid? Certainly not. For rich and powerful Frenchmen, a mistress is the ultimate accessory, and proof of their status. As for the cuckolded wives, well, they seem to bear their burden with grace and dignity but I am sure that being rich and living in a mansion with lots of domestic staff eases the pain of being cheated on. Perhaps even madame has a 'liaison dangereuse' with her gardner or personal trainer. Discreetly, of course, because the ego of her husband cannot survive the eternal embarrasment of having an unfaithful wife. Ah yes, those lovely double standards. But at least the French are more up front about them than -say- the Brits are.

But I am digressing. The history of the French kings is just as much the history of famous mistresses. Who are not seen as tarts and whores, like their tragic English 'colleagues', but as influential and highly cultured women. Names like Diane de Poitiers, Gabrielle d'Estrées, and of course the madames De Maintenon, De Montespan, De Pompadour and Du Barry are still well known, and the legacy of these remarkable women is tangible all over France, in works of art and in their chateaux and palaces.

Maybe the first famous French mistress was Agnes Sorel, the 'Dame de Beauté'. She was king Charles VII's lover, and she was apparently the first officially acknowledged royal mistress. She was also something of a Lady GaGa in her time, launching several new fashions, like showing bare shoulders and a cleavage! Although the famous portrait of her with one boob hanging out was perhaps a tad too far ahead of its time... Agnes was a great influence on Charles, practically curing him from manic depressions, and giving him the resolve to keep fighting the English. Sadly, Charles' son Louis XI sided with his sad and ridiculed mother, and hated Agnes deeply. So much so, that apparently he had her poisoned.

In the walled mediaeval town of Loches, where there's a royal castle that king Charles gave to Agnes, she rests in a beautiful tomb in the church. The monks of the church were not too pleased to have the body and very realistic marble effigy of this very sexy woman in their church, so they asked Louis XI if Agnes could be buried in the castle chapel. 'Sure', king Louis said -not wanting the body of the woman whose death he had caused anywhere near him!- 'but if the body of Agnes comes to the castle, so shall all the money she has donated to your church'. The monks did not press on and to this day, Agnes Sorel sleeps her eternal sleep under the twin pyramid domes of the St. Ours church in Loches.

I have visited her tomb three times, and I think it's one of the most lovely in the world. Agnes lies there, serene in white marble, with two beautiful mourning angels by her side. Not bad, for someone who was never a queen, but merely 'the other woman'...

Versailles: A peasant girl in a palace

Let them eat cake!

Melancholy and megalomania in Versailles

Anyone who visits Paris and has more than three days to spend really must go and visit Versailles. It's an easy commute with RER-train C, which drops you off around 15 minutes walking from the palace.

What can be said about Versailles, that doesn't drown in superlatives and adjectives? Especially the letter M turns out to be very useuful. It's truly magnificent, magnanimous, megalomaniac, monumental, majestic... but also monstruously large, mercilessly exhausting and massively overrun.


In peak season, the queues to get into the palace are enormous and even though the rooms, hallways and stairwells are colossal, it does get crowded inside. It is a much, much better idea to stick to the enormous gardens, where there is ample room for everyone. Visit during the weekend, and chances are that the fountains are running. A truly incredible spectacle, well worth the admission fee.

Worth shelling out for even more are the golf buggies you can rent. The gardens are absolutely vast, and even reaching the start of the 'Tapis Vert' will take you half an hour. A brisk stroll to the Trianons will take almost an hour. And it's really there that you should go. Not only because the main palace is overcrowded with groups who rarely have enough time to make it to the back of the gardens, but also because the Trianons are built to a more human scale, and therefore are much more enchanting.

The golf buggies themselves are quite marvellous and chic, as you would expect. During the drive, beautiful baroque music sounds from the in-built speaker, and when you approach some interesting sight, the appopriate commentary sounds. Best of all is that you cannot get lost: turn off the allowed paths and the engine shuts down. Brilliant.

Behind the Grand and Petit Trianon is the quirkiest place in all of Versailles: the Hameau de la Reine. The Queen's Village, a postcard-pretty farm village with cute cottages and farms dotted around a scenic lake. Here, Marie-Antoinette escaped to with her ladies in waiting, to indulge herself in the ultimate fantasy for a super-rich queen living in a colossal palace. To be a farm girl!

Unrestrained by the stifling court protocol (and the even more stifling corsets!), queen Marie-Antoinette dressed up in a simple peasant dress (made of silk, undoubtedly) and milked carefully selected cows using a special bucket from the porcelain manufacture of Sèvres. How many farm girls dream of being a princess living in a palace? Marie-Antoinette did the exact opposite and that's probably why I think she's as silly as she is endearing.

So, when on a fateful day in july 1789, a messenger warned her that the mobs outside the palace were angry and hungry, she giggled and said 'Let them eat cake!'. I really think she meant well, she was probably just baking a cake herself in the bakery of her village. Sadly, she was grossly misunderstood, and she ended up losing everything.


Sometimes I wonder what her last thoughts were in october 1793, as she was driven through the jeering crowds in revolutionary Paris, on her way to the guillotine that had already claimed her husband's life two years earlier. I'm certain it wasn't the Hall of Mirrors or the grandeur of Versailles she thought of, as she laid down her young, sad head onto the block. But the simple, carefree life of a peasant girl, happily filling her Sèvres milk bucket and baking cakes in an eternal summer.

Le Mont Saint-Michel: Eggstacy and agony

Egg-stacy and agony

Mixed blessings on mystical Mont Saint-Michel

The first time anyone sees the Mont Saint-Michel is a heart-stopping moment. No matter from where you approach this miracle of the mediaeval world, it's an unforgettable sight. Whether you see its spiked triangular shape in the haze across the bay from Avranches, or whether you see this gothic pyramid looming large in front of you after driving through the dreary ugliness of endless cheap motels and souvenir shops that make up the town of Pontorson, everyone falls silent.

And they dare to call the Middle Ages 'dark' ?!? How dark is a culture, that can build such a beautiful abbey in such an inaccessible place?

Le Mont Saint-Michel is truly a mystical junction of sea, land and sky. It floats on the horizon, caught between the tides and the clouds. And even the massive parking lot in front of it does not diminish your sense of wonder when you walk towards the sacred mount. Thick walls and squat round towers surround its base, and old houses with slate roofs cling to the rocky slopes of the half-island. and your gaze is drawn upward, past sheer cliffs and majestic buildings and battlements, upwards, ever upwards where the seagulls cry and circle around stone pinnacles, gargoyles and towers. Crowned by the gilded statue of the archangel Michael, glittering in the sun.

In peak season, it's wise to leave it at that, turn around, get in the car and drive to Dinan or Fougères or Cancale. Because the sad fact of the matter is that Jean Paul Sartre's saying absolutely holds true for Le Mont Saint-Michel. "L'enfer, c'est les autres". Hell is other people.

It is quite impossible to enjoy the narrow winding street that leads up to the Abbey. Not only because its venerable old houses and buildings are filled with tacky tourist shops and debatable restaurants, but because you have to share the cobbled slopes with thousands and thousands of tourists, huffing and puffing their way up and down its snail-like length. Even the serene abbey provides no solace. Despite the strenuous climb towards it and the hefty entrance fee, still way too many people squeeze their way in to make the visit enjoyable in any way. It's just too damn busy. It deserves to be, oh yes, but it's also a real shame.

As famous as the entire Mount is the restaurant of Mère Poulard, best known for its addictive butter biscuits that you can buy anywhere throughout France. The speciality here are omelets, and they truly are memorable. Whisked by hand for what seems like hours in large copper kettles, and then baked in cast-iron skillets with impossibly long handles over a blazing wood fire, these omelets must be the fluffiest in the world. They're like buttered clouds on a plate. I ate an 'omelette nature' there, and it didn't even contain any salt or pepper. And it cost about 30 euro's, which is really absurd for a few eggs. So really that was the memory that stuck: Mère Poulard must have been a savvy businesswoman to charge that much money for just 50 cents worth of eggs. But I felt cheated, and worse: still hungry after this overpriced egg-feast.

But do come back in october, or in march, or in midwinter and it's a totally different story. The Rue Saint-Michel takes on its true mediaeval splendor, the Abbey is vast and silent and echoes voices from the past. 'La Merveille' is what they call the cloisters, where impossibly thin pillars support the roof, and where you look out over vast floodplains, forever changing in the light, caleidoscopic and haunting. You feel connected to all the elements that surround you: the golden land, the shimmering sea and the aquamarine skies. There is no place more heavenly, more beautiful.

Just do not eat on the Mont Saint-Michel. Drive to Cancale instead.

Amboise: my first and Leonardo's last

Amboise, the first castle

The first time I went to France, I was nine years old, sitting on top of a pile of blankets and sleeping bags in my father's old green Volvo Amazone in an itchy blue cardigan my grandma had just knitted and which I was therefore obliged to wear even though she wasn't even there. My father had decided to take us to the Loire Valley, an area I had never heard of before. "You like castles don't you?" he asked me. "Well in that case you will LOVE the Loire Valley".

And I did, I still do and I will die loving the Loire Valley.

It is one of those rare spots in the world where everything comes together in a perfect way. The gentle landscape with its silvery blue lazy rivers, the green hills and majestic forests... the creamy white villages on the riverbanks, huddled around ancient churches or crumbling fortresses. The wonderful food and the delightful fragrant wines (these delights were obviously lost on a nine-year old). And most of all, the castles. In every shapen and size, dating from 1200 up until the 1800's, the hundreds of castles make it very clear that the Loire Valley has always been a favourite among the rich and powerful of France.

Abandoning the squalor and filth that was Paris, the Loire Valley was truly 'le Jardin de France'. And so, one king after another started to build royal residences in the area between Orleans and Angers, and many noblemen followed.

I remember that even though we camped out near Blois, the first castle we visited was Amboise. And even though it is not the most spectacular or beautiful Loire castle, it has always been a favourite of mine, merely because it was the first one I saw. Its squat tower dominates the town and the river, and it is hard to imagine that basically only a quarter of the castle has made it through history. I remember my father telling me about horrible massacres taking place at Amboise, with dozens of people hanged from the castle walls, while many others were drowned in the river.

That's so French, I now realize. To come to a lovely, peaceful, sleepy place, only to hear about some massacre or bloody battle having taken place there. It's true for the Somme battlefields and it's true for the D-Day beaches. And it's true for sleepy Amboise, reflecting itself in the Loire and dreaming back of its glory days when Leonardo da Vinci looked over its rooftops from the castle where he still lies buried.

I have been to Amboise many, many times now, and I always greet Leonardo when I see the chapel rising high above the old town. The Valley of Kings is a fitting final resting place for a genius like him.

Senanque: Lavendermania

Lavendermania

Ahhh... the Provence! The word alone conjures up images of vivid pinks, reds and oranges under a blue sky, of cream-coloured houses with red rooftiles, grey olive trees, and more than anything: lavender fields. Purple stripes in the landscape, with their intoxicating fragrance, and the constant hum of bees around them.

And yes, if you do happen to visit the Provence, you will find it is all there. The quaint villages with their lovely fountains and little cafés, the vineyards with plump grapes ripening under a scorching sun. The swallows that screech as they chase insects, the chirping crickets... and the lavender fields that never seem to be far away.

Of course, on closer inspection, things are not what they seem. The Provence has slowly but surely been bleeding dry, many youngsters abandoning the villages for life in the cities. There just isn't enough employment. So gradually, the villages die. More and more homes close their shutters permanently, many shops follow. And when the local café closes down, that basically means curtains for the village. All that can happen now is the arrival of rich Parisians or foreigners, who buy up the crumbling old homes, and restore the buildings.

Good news? It depends on how you look at it. It is very nice to visit a village, where all the homes look lovely, where there are lively shops, and where wildflowers grow in pots and baskets. But then it turns out that there is no bakery, no butcher, no greengrocer. Yet you can buy ceramics, tablecloths and lavender soap in almost every shop. The picturesque village café turns out to be a gastro-pub, owned by Brits, who serve Australian beer and mojito's. But no Dubonnet or Pineau des Charentes, and no crunchy sandwich with rosette de Lyon or rillettes cornichons.

I have been to villages like this, and as cute as they are, they make me sad. They're a Disney version of real Provence, one step away from opening a Starbucks. And the worst thing about these zombie villages (they have died but came to life again in a creepy manner!) are the artists that live there and inflict their 'art' onto the public in countless galleries and shop windows.

Nine out of ten paintings feature lavender, sunflowers or both of them. To me, it seems as if the Provence air not only awakens a deep desire to create art in some people, but also to go slightly insane. Just like that archetypical Provencal painting hero: Vincent van Gogh.

When I first visited the stunning abbey of Sénanque, that adorable squat building at the bottom of a lavender-filled valley, I was completely bemused. The air was heavy with the fragrance of the flowering herb, and the buzzing of a million bees greeted me as I walked from the parking towards the Cistercian abbey.

Evenly spaced at 20 meter intervals, were people painting the stunning scenery. Invariably, they wore blue billowing smocks and a choice of odd headgear. Barets and enormous straw hats seemed to be the fashion. Of course they were English, what else could these amateur Van Goghs be? All of them were frantically trying to fill their canvas with symmetric purple bands. I am sure it must be nice to sit there in that valley, and paint, but just as not everyone who sings should perform on a stage, not everyone who enjoys painting should show his work to anyone but himself. There really wasn't a single painting that was not hideous.

Perhaps it was time for those talentless amateur painters to take their Provence experience to the next level. Which was to cut off their left ear, and have themselves committed into an asylum.