Day 24 -- Travel from Paris to Reykjavík

Saturday and one more day of travel!

This time it was up bright and early for the flight from Charles de Gaulle to Reykjavík’s Keflavík International Airport. And so began one of the most surprising episodes in this European trip.

I knew just a little bit about Reykjavík and the island nation of Iceland from a friend who had spent his honeymoon there and from what little I could glean from the likes of Björk and Sigur Rós. I had been to one of the latter’s concerts at Roy Wilkins Auditorium and it was one of the few events in my life up to this point that I would describe as genuinely ethereal.

I also knew that Iceland had almost zero violent crime and even petty theft was rare -- to the point that parents leave their children unattended, bicycles are not locked up and hitchhiking is a perfectly acceptable form of transportation.

I also knew that the Icelandic language was Tolkien’s model for elvish.

But nothing really prepared me for the strange reality of the place.

Even the drive from the airport to downtown Reykjavík bespoke an alienness. Outside the window of the bus was a landscape treeless and volcanic yet somehow still lush. Small, bright houses with corrugated metal roofing popped out from amongst the black and green. The sky was overcast, but not gloomy.

When we arrived in Reykjavík there was not a lot of time left in the day. We got dinner at Piccolo Italia, a small Italian restaurant run by a man from, I believe it was Sicily (maybe Crete). And we did get to wander around Laugavegur street, the main retail shopping stretch in Reykjavík.

The highlight of this particular walk was the discovery of a used clothing store in the basement off the street.

There was no storefront, but just a small rack out front and a sandwich board pointing to an entrance to the downstairs. Inside things were sort of a jumble. Shoes here and there, coats in various places -- the sort of place you could tell was not manicured for chic customers (though a couple of the “vintage” clothing stores in Reykjavik very clearly were).

It was just Dietrich and I and once we got in we met the magical proprietor of the place. He looked and behaved just as I imagine Mr. Ollivander in the Harry Potter books.

The man was fussy, had a fine sense of taste, and keenly wanted to match a piece of clothing with Dietrich. He knew where everything was, and would go find it for you if you asked. He helped Dietrich try things on, gave him advice on fit, turned some pieces down.

It was marvelous!

My only regret was that we really couldn’t find anything that both worked and was affordable. We really did try.

Before turning in for the night after such an early morning, we stopped by a neighborhood concert. The band set up on a small stage, people gathered around socializing, and the band played their music. Some wandered in and out, others were more set on staying. Kids played around at the front of the stage.

This sort of thing seems that these are a staple of Reykjavik society and characteristic of the culture that we saw in the time were there.

Day 24 Reflection

All proprietors should be as that nameless man operating the nameless store that we walked into to shop for clothes.

He was a connoisseur without snobbery, an eccentric gentleman perhaps fallen on harder times, but still so obviously dedicated both to the things and to the people in his immediate care.

There is, of course, much to object to in Karl Marx’s thought and especially in the development of the only communist regimes we have ever known.

However, the rarity of something like this gentleman’s demeanor does point to something Marx got right in the broken relationship we have to our labor -- perhaps even more so in the 21st century consumerist culture.

“In what consists this ‘alienation,’” Marx asks. “First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it.”

I do believe Marx’s critique of our relationship to our work is accurate. It accounts for everything from TGIF to the mess our educational system is in, where what should be an intrinsically satisfying activity (learning about the world in which we live) has become a means to getting a job.

I do not agree with Marx’s solution.

Rather, I think we have to make an effort to be like this man in the small basement shop in Reykjavik.

Click Here for Slideshow

Day 23 -- Travel from Normandie to Roissy-en-France, Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen

Friday was a travel day from Normandie to Roissy-en-France, a northern suburb or Paris right near the airport from which we would be leaving the next day.

On the way back towards paris we stopped off to each lunch in Rouen and to visit the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen. Rouen was only slightly off our route, and given an early attraction to it in art history class and Monet’s series of atmospheric paintings, I really wanted to see it.

Both the stonework and the brickwork on this Gothic cathedral were among the most impressive we saw while in Europe.

In order to get ready to leave the next day, Jen, Erick and Mary dropped the rest of the family off at the motel at Roissy-en-France and then drove into Paris to drop off the car (which was apparently an adventure involving long waits, steep ramps, drug users in a stairwell and smell of urine and defecation).

After everyone was back at Roissy-en-France, there was not a lot of time to explore, but I did go out in the evening for some photography opportunities. Roissy is essentially a modern, upper-middle class French suburb with a lot of hotels due to its location near the airport.

After having spent so much time in old cities and villages, it was somewhat odd to be in a place where little seemed old at all.

Day 23 Reflection

Thinking about the difference between the well-polished Roissy-en-France and the quiddities of Parisian Cafés, crumbling Norman churches, and even London canal boats, I was reminded of this quote from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451:

“Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often.”

There is obviously nothing wrong with new things. Every old thing was once new.

But perhaps the attractiveness of old things is that, just like a man or woman who has grown wise, older things and older places are more experienced at being in the world. They have acquired quality, texture and pores in Bradbury’s sense.

Day 22 -- Port-en-Bessin, Arromanches-les-Bains, Jardin Public de Bayeux

Thursday I went out again early in the morning to photograph some more of the Norman churches in the area. One sad discovery (which should have not been much of a surprise) was how little used these churches now are. I came across a rotation schedule for the area that put a pastor in each little church in that area about once a month.

This was also Jen’s birthday, though, so of course I had to stop for her annual birthday pastry -- though this one far exceeded the usual custard bismarck fare in the states.

After dropping off the pastry, I went out again and this time stumbled across the fish market in Port-en-Bessin. What a blessed cacophony of sea creatures for sale, all fresh off the boat!

Before lunch the whole family headed out to our last D-Day beach excursion, right down the road to Arromanches-les-Bains, the site of Mulberry Harbor, the man-made harbor that protected ships that came to support the post D-Day invasion. Many of the phoenixes (concrete structures used to create the harbor) are still off the shore of Arromanches. It would have been quite a nice spot to play on the beach, but, alas, we had not come prepared.

There is also an excellent 360 degree theatre and museum at the site, though. I am not usually much of a fan of such presentations. In the past I have found them light on content and heavy on the fact that you are in a round room. But this was certainly worth the stop and, once again, powerfully moving in terms of what was sacrificed to recover the humanity of Europe by the men on the beaches of Normandy.

After having lunch at a small place in Arromanches, we returned to Bayeux to relax in the Jardin botanique de Bayeux -- a wonderful walled garden right in the middle of the city. It is a very nice garden all around with a number of trees I don’t think I had seen before, but by far the highlight of the garden is a weeping beech that is approximately 150 years old and was named a “remarkable tree of France” in 2001.

(more pictures in the slideshow below)

That afternoon Jen and I worked on cooking dinner, including fresh bulots (whelks / sea snails) and Marseille Style Shrimp from the morning’s fish market and Potatoes Lyonnaise with Lemon and Chile, both in celebration of Jen’s birthday and in mourning for our last night at the marvelous Château de Vaulaville.

Day 22 Reflection

Travel is a marvelous stimulator of the imagination -- and vice versa.

I had never understood before how travel itself could be considered an essential element of education, per se. But having now experienced travel on this order of magnitude, I understand.

The imaginative powers that are unlocked by travel are at least as significant to the genuinely wondering traveler as those unlocked by books. And the imagination, in turn, is one of the essential habits of mind necessary to become a skillful thinker.

However genuine travel is also fueled by imagination. Only the one whose imagination is active is truly travelling -- moving from one place to another place not merely from one set of coordinates to another, full of hope but without expectations, aware not only of what is but of what might be.

There is a difference, in other words, between a traveler and a tourist.

A tourist’s metaphysical journey while travelling is something like that of a roller coaster car. The tourist pays for admission, he steps into the car, secures his seat belt, and is whisked through a fixed set of exhilarating but largely anticipated experiences, which end on the same platform with the tourist largely unchanged.

A traveler's journey is quite different. It is more like an Arthurian quest or Medieval pilgrimage. Yes, the traveler has set out with some destination in mind and a path before him, but the destinations are sometimes elusive in their essence, the apparent sidetracks many and important, and the journey itself a spiritual test which the traveler must be prepared for and from which he will emerge changed.

Day 21 -- Bayeux Redux

Wednesday was a much lighter day after the long trip to Mont Saint-Michele.

We hung around the Château for quite a while, including a return to the strange toy room in the main house. Later we went into Bayeux again.

This was my day to see the Bayeux Tapestry. The tapestry is pretty impressive not only ih sheer size but also in artistic execution. The most interesting things I learned about the tapestry involved its history. So famous to us now, it was once used during the troubles of the French Revolution to cover military wagons. Only someone stepping in to save it kept it from being lost forever.

Also interesting was the vulgarity of a few of the images on the tapestry. I won’t post the image here because, hey, what is this, the Middle Ages? But considering that this tapestry’s chief display was in a church, the nudity and vulgar suggestiveness of the scenes 14 and 15 are surprising to our modern sensibilities. But as I had already discovered at the Musée de Cluny, the art of the Middle Ages does not shy away from the ‘vulgar’ in the sense of ‘ordinary’ at all.

Also impressive were the jumping horses (as in scene 40). Without a camera to understand how horses look when the jump, this is a pretty impressive accomplishment -- especially given some much later attempts before the camera.

Out in the streets I noted the mixture of what we have come to understand as ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ in the architectural designs of the older buildings. On one support is a picture of Cain and Abel, on another a mermaid, on another St. Michael, on another a common agricultural scene.

The Medieval World did have one thing on us -- unity of vision.

Back at the château, I wandered around taking pictures of particulars of the place -- an old pump, a neglected kitten, ironware.

Day 21 Reflection One

I had read C.S. Lewis’s The Discarded Image with the faculty of Trinity School at River Ridge, and it flashed through my mind in Paris (especially at the Musée de Cluny), but on this day in Bayeux the whole Medieval model really began to sink in more fully.

There was an elegance and completeness to the Medieval model. This was gained, sometimes, yes, at the expense of the facts and particulars, but it was elegant and complete nonetheless. And I think we have been trying to find our way back to such elegance and completeness ever since -- to that old unity of physics and metaphysics.

Science provides us some significant answers as to “how things work,” but while our theology and spiritually continues to up in dialogue with science and other fields of inquiry, we have not yet managed anything resembling the old harmony of the Medieval model and we may never again.

Part of the problem we face is a culture that is geared towards knowing rather than being. Google is our intellectual paradigm -- knowledge of things, stored for access, ready to be retrieved when necessary to serve a utilitarian purpose.

Romano Guardini is again helpful and inspiring here.

“True education is rooted in being, not in knowledge ... The educated person is the one who has been shaped by the inward law of form, whose being and action and thinking and deeds and person and environment conform to an inner image. Such persons thus have unity in great diversity.”

Day 21 Reflection Two

Despite what I wrote above, the trip through Europe has inspired both a true sense of the value of what has been lost as well as a general optimism for the future.

I do find myself concerned not only for what has been lost, but for a possible loss of value itself. The consumerist culture and mindset does not encourage us to value the world of things, ideas or even persons and ways of life. Like everything else, these seem to have become disposable to us. We seem to have lost a capacity to value.

But I am also not a proponent of declinism. A good understanding of history assures me that are not simply getting “worse” -- at least not in any uncomplicated sense.

If you can't navigate the slideshow below, click here to go to the album.

Day 20 - Mont Saint Michel

On Tuesday we took our one and only Norman day trip.

The trip was about an hour and half in our nine passenger Volkswagen van. It’s a gem of a vehicle that I wish was available in the United States. It would be a nice middle ground option between a minivan and fifteen passenger behemoth.

We do have one child who is subject to carsickness, so ... there was one extended stop to ‘tour’ a local field. The crop was nothing I had ever seen before, though -- more golden even than wheat, with a small, bowl like heads. Despite trying to research it later, I couldn’t come up with any clear leads on the crop.

The trip took us through some great countryside and actually across some of the route for the Tour de France, which had been held recently. There were vestiges of the tour in the form of signs, road makers and little French towns done all up for the occasion.

Then we arrived at our destination -- Mont Saint Michel. We arrived on the first day the site had been open to the public after an extended strike by the local merchants, who were upset about a new arrangement for parking and shuttling visitors to the town. It was clearly a setback for their business, so, of course in France you strike! But I was really glad the strike had ended because this is not a place to miss.

Words do not do Mont Saint Michel justice, not even photos. It is a perfect feudal town contained within defensive walls and surrounded by a tidal flat. A high fog was still lingering when we arrived so at first view, the abbey in the center of the town was shrouded in mist. From a distance it seemed like Avalon, a place on the very borderlands of high faery.

As we approached and the vision became clearer, it was not hard (though a bit anachronistic) to imagine knights riding out on quest from the gates.

Inside, the crowded lower streets wind their way around the base of the cliffs. There are shops, alleys, restaurants, hotels, graveyards, parks and stairways -- stairways everywhere.

But as we ascended, the crowds thinned out somewhat. We stopped for a while in a park to listen to  concert. We ate our lunch in another small sitting area overlooking the tidal flats. Eventually we made it to the Abbey itself and into the beautiful cloister, featured in Terrence Mallick’s To the Wonder.

There were many places of surprising solitude and calm throughout the town, but especially in the abbey. Great pillars underground. A water wheel pulley system. Small but verdant gardens. Simple works of religious art. And the still mist shrouded cloister.

We caught no glimpse of any members of the religious order that has occupied the Abbey since 2001 -- the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem. The abbey itself actually has an interesting religious history. It was shut down as a monastery following the French Revolution and only saw the return of any religious orders in 1966. At present, though the monks are allowed to carry on their religious life, the abbey is still owned by the state.

After descending, we decided to venture out onto the tidal flats and walk around the mount barefooted -- another exquisite experience that is barely relatable. An expanse of mud, glittering now as the sun finally broke through. Small stone chapels and hermitages. Hewn staircases leading down to the water. Coming around the other side. Washing feet. Heading home.

That evening, Jen and I wandered into Bayeux for dessert.

A magical day indeed.

Day 20 Reflection One

Visiting Mont Saint Michel was an instance of something I had experienced several times before -- the awakening to the reality of a landmark or historic site that can come only through its geographic context. The most striking of these have been my first visit to South Bend, IN, (seeing the golden dome of Notre Dame emerge as if magic out of the midst of cornfields), visiting the Alamo for the first time (turning the corner of an ordinary San Antonio street and running into … the Alamo?), and this visit to Mont St. Michel.

Each of these was different. My notion of Notre Dame had led me to expect something a little grander of South Bend. The Alamo was an utter shock, as I had always imagined the site in a Texas desert setting.

But with Mont Saint Michel, what was surprising was the sheer amount of full human life going on. The town, the shops, the hotels, the post office and police station. Though almost exclusively tourist oriented, the town swarmed with people doing all manner of things. I had previously thought of it only as an abbey -- an exclusively religious site.

It would have been easy to be put off by the ‘secular’ bustle. (Rick Steves even calls it “grotesquely touristic”). However, I think this is a misunderstanding. As Steves even points out, “It’s some consolation to remember that, even in the Middle Ages, this was a commercial gauntlet, with stalls selling souvenir medallions, candles, and fast food.”

What I had expected was a religious site in the modern sense -- something apart from the secular. What I found was a location that pre-dated the distinction. A microcosm of old Christendom. As such it was a revelation.

As I write this, I am put hopefully in mind of Peter Leithart’s recent article in First Things, “Micro-Christendoms.”

Day 20 Reflection Two

Unlike the rest of the churches in Europe that we visited (with the possible exception of Hallgrímskirkja), the location of the church on a great central height really did make the approach seem like a pilgrimage. In Paris, wandering in and out of churches at street level created a completely different feel.

There is something about an ascent.

I suspect Mallick was keenly aware of this in using Mont Saint Michel for the setting of To the Wonder.

Day 19 -- Pointe Du Hoc and Utah Beach

On Monday we visited my personal favorite of the D-Day sites -- Pointe du Hoc.

Pointe du Hoc was the German gun site between Utah and Omaha Beach that was believed to be heavily fortified and essential to Operation Overlord. The 2nd Ranger Battalion assaulted the location scaling the cliffs with ropes. They found that most of the heaviest guns had been moved, but they held the point for two days without reinforcements against several counterattacks.

This was the site of Ronald Reagan's speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day. (Click the link to watch the video of the speech.)

The pillboxes and gun installments remain, as well as the deep pits from Allied bombing ahead of the invasion.

One is pretty much free to roam over the point. Kids play hide and seek and look for snails. Middle aged adults wander and consult their guidebooks. Old men stand pensively looking out across the channel.

Looking down the cliffs and imagining scaling them under fire was pretty amazing, even if the resistance was not quite what they had expected. It took great courage, especially with the element of surprise having been largely taken away by a navigation error and unexpected weather.

We stayed for quite a while. One interesting side bonus was the discovery of a "camera obscura" effect down in the underground tunnels. I was taking pictures down below and noticed that on one wall opposite a small opening, there was a ghostly image of an upside down human form wearing pink. I turns out it was Nora, who was standing just outside the opening!

After leaving we spent some time on Utah Beach. The girls made a seaweed fortress while Dietrich and I walked up the beach and the rest of the adults looked on. Found some interesting shells I had never seen on the Pacific coast.

Ice cream treats afterwards. Thanks, Gramps!

Day 19 Reflection One

Watching Reagan's speech (written by Peggy Noonan, by the way), I was struck by how relevant his remarks are to our current world situation.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

Agree or disagree, we are still having the same conversation about American isolationism that we have been having since gaining essential independence from the entire Eurasian situation. We are the only major world power occupying land that is at a geographical remove from all of Western History. This definitely offers an opportunity for isolation that other countries do not have in their relations with each other. But how should we understand ourselves in relation to them? Not an easy question and one that so-called liberals and conservatives disagree upon among themselves.

Day 19 Reflection Two

There was a well dread older man at the Pointe speaking German with a younger man who was with him. I wondered at how different it must be to tour a great historical site as a place of defeat rather than victory, and ignominious defeat at that.

Were there heroes on the German side? Undoubtedly. Do most Germans now thoroughly renounce the Nazi ambitions and radical German nationalism? Absolutely. But there are still grandfathers who fought in those engagements and probably believed to some extent that what they were doing at least approximated the 'right thing' -- even if that was the simple duty of fighting for one's country.

Modern Germany, as a prosperous, peaceful leader in Europe is something of a political and sociological miracle.It is astonishing that so many men could adopt and pass on to their children an entirely different narrative and world view.

Day 19 Reflection Three

The incongruity of my children (and the rest of the world's children for that matter) playing games on the wreckage of World War II France struck me as significant.

Poetically the scene was full of potential. Maybe someday.

Sociologically, it underscored for me the reality of something G.F.W. Hegel says in his lectures On Reason in History:

When we contemplate this display of passions and the consequences of their violence, the unreason which is associated not only with them, but even – rather we might say especially – with good designs and righteous aims; when we see arising therefrom the evil, the vice, the ruin that has befallen the most flourishing kingdoms which the mind of man ever created, we can hardly avoid being filled with sorrow this universal taint of corruption. And since this decay is not the work of mere nature, but of human will, our reflections may well lead us to a moral sadness, a revolt of the good will (spirit) – if indeed it has a place within us. Without rhetorical exaggeration, a simple, truthful account of the miseries that have overwhelmed the noblest of nations and polities and the finest exemplars of private virtue forms a most fearful picture and excites emotions of the profoundest and most hopeless sadness, counter-balanced by no consoling result. We can endure it and strengthen ourselves against it only by thinking that this is the way it had to be – it is fate; nothing can be done. And at last, out of the boredom with which this sorrowful reflection threatens us, we draw back into the vitality of the present, into our aims and interests of the moment; we retreat, in short, into the selfishness that stands on the quiet shore and thence enjoys in safety the distant spectacle of wreckage and confusion.