Ecstasy and wine

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Last entry left off in the sunny environs of Dijon. While Dijon is lovely, it wasn’t quite lovely enough to prevent Liz and I choosing to hop down the road 30 km or so to the wonderful town of Beaune – unofficial capital of the Côte-d'Or and wine capital of Burgundy. Beaune is great. Well – it’s great if you like wine, as the town seems 98.44% occupied with matters wine and has sod all to say about anything else. So as I said – Beaune is great! We had just five or so hours in town, so after a fortifying late-morning rosé, it was down into the cellars of the Hospices de Beaune to do a little wine sampling. And of course when I say “do a little wine sampling” I actually mean consume great swathes of wine. The sommeliers of Beaune are accommodating folk. While they do roam the cellars in search of Australians and Canadians quaffing too much happy juice, they generally do leave you alone if you pander to their ego by asking the odd inane question here and there. The wine was great. The cellar is set out to allow a self-guided tour, with a stop every few metres to fill you tasting glass (more like a tasting saucer, actually) with some very tasty drops indeed. So, three whites (all Chardonnay) and fifteen (yes that is 15!) reds (all Pinots) later I was a rather happy chap. There were some pretty ordinary wines in the mix of course, but I’d say about 5 of the reds were really top notch, and another 7 very good indeed.

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After all that wine there was little left to do but roll back to Dijon to collect our belongings and then head up to Paris! Ah, lovely Paris. We were staying with my sister Ngaire, in Paris attending a conference for the week, who had rather cleverly booked an apartment for the week on the rather cool Rue Mouffetard. Mouffetard is on the bottom edge of the Latin quarter in the 5th arrondissement. It’s only a little, cobbled thing, but after spending 5 days there it’s definitely my favourite part of the city. It has charm, it has that elusive trait “character”, it has good restaurants, it has crepes, it has decent metro connections. It also has noisy garbage collectors, but nowhere is perfect I suppose! Rue Mouffetard is just around the corner from the Pantheon and within 15 minutes of casual strolling you can find yourself in the Luxembourg gardens, the Île de la Cité or at the Gare Austerlitz, which conveniently was where we arrived. Over the course of the day various combination of me, Liz and Ngaire took in all the classics (well, only the outsides of some of the classics): the Lourve, Notre Damn, Montmatre, Marais, Arc de Triumph, Tour Eiffel, and many others. The 5 (nearly 6) days I spent in Paris this time was by far the longest I’ve spent in that city and I really loved it this time around. The hordes of people do bring me down a little bit, but given that (a) I am clearly part of the problem, and (b) I had my Mouffetard retreat to escape back to whenever the noise got too great, I can’t really complain. I even got to catch up (briefly) with my old mate Amelia! I got some pretty nifty photos of the Tour Eiffel one night too which made me happy. I’m easily pleased…

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And having mentioned food in the previous post it would be remiss not to touch on the topic once more. The big surprise was price! Liz and I both found that in general, Paris was far cheaper to eat in than our previous destinations in Burgundy, Alsace and Lorraine. Odd. The food was possibly a bit more gimmicky in Paris too – escargot was served in snails, rather than the little pots that are use elsewhere. More tourist menus were to be found (not always such a bad thing) and the wine wasn’t as good. But in general the gastronomic feast of the first week of France continued while in Paris, with more pastries seafood, desserts and cheeses.

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We did also take one daytrip out of Paris, to the city of Dieppe. Dieppe is a nice enough little town on the channel, and was the site of a big battle in World War II in which a very large number of Canadians were killed. A few hours there was enough to see the sites – the church and castle on two different hills, the white cliffs, the long pebble beach. And to have lunch of course too. Given that mussels were literally lapping around the town’s bridges it seem churlish not to partake, and once again the non-Parisian cuisine shone through as the very nicest.

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The final highlight of my trip suitably came on my last night in Paris: the My Bloody Valentine gig. I prattled on about MBV before when I bought the ticket back in February, so I won’t do that again, but I must write about it a little. The band was amazing! It wasn’t as noisy as promised (more about that later), but the performance of the band and the set-list that they chose to perform was flawless. They played equal numbers of songs from their two famous albums, plus a smattering of b-sides. The vocals were mixed extremely low, but even that worked out OK as the waves of guitar flooded over the venue.

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The sound problems emerged in the last song of the gig. MBV apparently require venues to sign a contract guaranteeing that they can perform at 120 dB, but French law prevents artists from playing louder than 105 dB. Singer/guitarist/genius Kevin Shields doesn’t speak during the gig (no “hello”, no “goodbye”) but did break his silence mid-set to apologise for the fact that the PA system had been turned down lower than they wanted. In the final song of the night, the immense You made me realise, the band launch into what has been dubbed “the holocaust” in which the middle section comprises of a 20 minute extended feedback assault. This is supposed to be very, very loud, and is the climax to the whole thrilling evening. It didn’t work out so well. Three times during “the holocaust” the sound from the PA system dropped to about 20% of what it had been. The band’s own amps were still working, so they played on oblivious. Each drop in sound lasted 1-2 minutes, until about 10 minutes into the feedback the entire sound cut completely with a clean break. I’ve read since the gig that the band was in fact playing throughout the gig at a volume of around 110 dB. The suggestions is that to stop the noise limits being exceeded that French venues have sensors that cut in at a prescribed volume to limit excessive noise, and after multiple infractions cut the power to the speakers completely. This sounds about right to me, as the other theories (blown amplifiers, engineers using their discretion to reduce the sound) don’t really add up. Needless to say the band weren’t happy. After some pretty dejected looking wandering around and arguing with sound technicians and miscellaneous others the band were eventually persuaded to finished the song, albeit plagued by yet more sound problems. So the grand climax was ruined, but if that final 15 minutes is ignored, the gig was absolutely blistering.

Oh - I believe the set list was pretty much as follows:

Only shallow
When you sleep
(When you wake) You’re still in a dream
You never should
Lose my breath
I only said
Come in alone
Thorn
Nothing much to lose
To here knows when
Slow
Blown a wish
Soon
Feed me with your kiss
Sueisfine
You made me realise

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So, in summary – France was great. Liz was a great travel companion, the French were lovely, the food was great, the wine even better, and it was fantastic to see Ngaire. All in all a fantastic two weeks away. Now I’m back in Oslo for 12 days to pack my life up, say goodbye to my friends, say goodbye to the city and head for home. And eat vegetables – God knows I need some vegies!!

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