Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien: Spring Time in Lyon, France

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien: Crêpe Night

Marie T eats the "nose" of France from her cut-out crêpe

 The "nose" of France is Brittany (western province in fusia), according to a Frenchwoman I'm acquainted with who comes from there.

The sisters had a big surprise for the evening meal--at least I was surprised. We had crêpes!!

They were not like the ones we made in language school where we put jam or nutella inside and rolled them up. These we ate as a flat "pancake" with a choice of four toppings: apricot jam, lemon jam, honey, or sugar. Delicious!


 



The delicious crêpes we had for dessert today were plate-size.
















Marie T paints her crêpe with apricot jam and sugar.

Marie Phillippe paints her crêpe with lemon jam and honey. 

I painted mine with apricot jam and lemon jam for the first one. My second one was plain--and I was happy.

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien: Place Bellecour

Patty and I went to Place Bellecour earlier this week. She had to go to Decitre, a tremendous bookstore on the southwest side of the square, so I accompanied her. So glad I went because Place Bellecour is unbelievable.

Place Bellecour is a large square in the center of Lyon about 30 minutes on foot from our school.

The square is huge!! It measures 62,000 square meters (15 acres) and is one of the largest open squares in Europe and the third largest in France next to Place de la Concorde in Paris (86,400 square meters) and Place des Quinconces in Bordeaux (126,000 square meters). It has no greenery and is the typical slightly gravelly reddish hard surface you find in French cities.

In the middle of the square is an equestrian statue of king Louis XIV, the "Sun King" by François-Frédéric Lemot (1825). Interesting that Louis is dressed like a Roman emperor.

The square is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Romans used Bellcour for military and commercial activities. In the late 12th century, the archbishop of Lyon put in a vineyard called Bella curtis (Beau jardin in French). In 1604 Henry IV forced the Lyon City Council to transform what was a pasture into a public square, but complications with his hiers didn't allow this to happen. In 1708, Louis XIV became the owner of the square and in 1715 it became known as the Place Royale. Later it was name Place Louis-le-Grand and a bronze statue of the king was erected. Buildings around the square were built. During the French Revolution, a altar was erected on the square on July 14, 1790. The square then became known as the Place de la Fédération. A guillotine was installed in 1792 and the royal statue of Louis destroyed in 1793. The square acquired another new name, Place de l'Égalité. On June 21, 1800, Napoleon I laid the foundation stone for new buildings and the square was again renamed Place Bonaparte and later, Place Napoléon. In 1825 a new statue of Louis XIV was erected. The square was named Place Bellecour during the French Third Republic (1870-1940).     

The architecture surrounding the square is very beautiful. It looks like this one section that I captured in the photo. 

Lyon is an excellent example of urban planning. In the old city, its grid-style streets and  buildings are old, some going back to the Renaissance (like in La Croix Rousse), but there is also a lot of restoration and retrofitting going on for modern things like the Internet as well as new construction.

 




A pedestrian shopping mall abuts the square. It's filled with people and has anything and everything you could want.

In one corner of the square is the Institute of Paul Bocuse, a famous chef's school. Before I left for France I just happened to see a program about Bocuse on Anthony Bourdain's show, "Parts Unknown."

Anthony Bourdain likened Bocuse to Muhammed Ali. Here's a tidbit from the program.



 
Bocuse (1926-) is a famous French chef based in Lyon who is famous for the high quality of his restaurants and his innovative approaches to cuisine. A student of Eugénie Brazier, he is one of the most prominent chefs associated with the nouvelle cuisine, which is less opulent and calorific than the traditional cuisine classique, and stresses the importance of fresh ingredients of the highest quality. Paul Bocuse claimed that Henri Gault first used the term, nouvelle cuisine, to describe food prepared by Bocuse and other top chefs for the maiden flight of the Concorde airliner in 1969. 


Near Place Bellcour is the Saône-et-Loire river where there are many traditional French-style restaurants.

The Saône-et-Loire is a tributary of the River Rhône that joins it at Lyon (called La Confluence) and thus is connected to the Mediterranean.

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien: Down Time

After 2 weeks of language school and an additional week of immersion into France, I hit the wall. This photos was taken by a mischievous nun on a Friday night after the evening meal.

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien: Les Crêpes

We made crêpes in school today as we learned how to talk about the ingredients, utensils, and pronoun referents.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my own camera for photos, so I'm relying on Google images.

I tried my hand at using a ladle to scoop up some batter and then spread it out on the crêperie. Not bad.

The photo at the right has room for four crêpes but ours had room for six crêpes. We had enough crêpes for all 18 of the students and a few professors who were buzzing about to have some, too.
 
Crêpe-making is a specialized art form. The chef can flip the crêpe in the pan. We did it in an easier way: with two flat, wooden tools because we were amateurs. 

We used Nutella and apricot jam for the inside of the crêpe. Delicious!!

This was a great project and I'd like to get a crêpe-making pan and learn how to make crêpe with many different things like cheese, vegetables, eggs, ham, etc. Then, of course, I'll have to learn how to make various sauces.

Being in France makes me want to do everything French, including learning how to cook French food in the French way.  

J'adore la France!!

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien: L’École Inflexyon

Front door of the Inflexyon, the language school of not only French but several other languages

Patty and I are taking classes at L’École Inflexyon, which is near the Hôtel de Ville (a central part of the city) on Leynaud Street and near La Croix Rousse. Every day, Monday through Friday, we climb some solid and ancient steps to our second floor classroom.

our classroom with just a few of the students during a break between classes

There are 18-20 students in my class. Most of them come from Asia—Japan, Korea, Taiwan—and most of them speak English. We also have students from Colombia, Italy and then there’s Patty and me who are the only ones from the USA. This surely is an indicator of what the next generation sees as important:  all things global!

We have grammar and speaking classes in two sessions from 10-11:30 and 11:45-12:30 with an hour off for lunch. In the afternoon we have oral practice from 1:30-3. On Tuesdays and Thursdays there is an option for tutoring from 9:15-10. In this session we can ask for help on anything having to do with grammar or pronunciation. The nice thing about it is that we get another opportunity to learn the details of grammar, including some points that we may have misunderstood or forgotten from the past.

Here's the faculty office. Natalie is on the left with Hèléne and David in the back and Alizée in front and behind her not in clear view, the professor from Mozambique.

Our teachers rotate the classes so we get new ones every day. It is interesting to see that we have teachers from France, of course, but also Mozambique, Poland, Brazil. All instruction is conducted in French, so we are forced to listen and learn. The teachers have us explain words in French or they do it. Of course, there is a lot of flipping through dictionaries/cell phones for exact meanings.

some wicked stairs to climb -- keep to the right to avoid falling

Before we came to the school we took a written test of 35 questions to see where we placed A-1 or 2 (elementary), B-1 or 2 (intermediate) or C-1 or 2 (advanced). On the first day of class, Natalie, the coordinator of the teachers talked with us to see how well we could comprehend and speak French. Then she placed us in a class. I tested out at B-1 but was placed in A-2. If I want an extra push, I can go to the B-1 class, which I plan to do in the second week—at least for the speaking and listening part of class because they talk about more advanced subjects. I don’t have as much trouble writing or even speaking as I do comprehending French, so I am comfortable with A-2 AND it will be a little less stressful. One bad thing about moving to the other class, however, is that during the past week our class has developed a nice rapport.

The school also offers various events. During the first week, we had a two-hour tour of La Croix Rousse conducted by the director of the school and a Mardi Gras party where students were to wear costumes. The faculty really promoted the party. I went on the tour—all conducted in French—but skipped the second because I had something else to do that night. 

To get a look at the La Croix Rousse tour, click on this link.
 

Leynaud Street where Inflexyon resides

Les Aventures de Madame Beaubien: La Croix Rousse

Inflexyon, my French language school, held its first excursion of the month in La Croix Rousse, a famous neighborhood located on a hill (colline) very near the school.

The Croix Rousse neighborhood (voisine) is divided into les pentes (slopes) with le plateau (the top the hill). Climbing steps is part of daily life and it certainly was a part of our tour. There were so many steps that the very nice Korean women students on the tour were constantly checking to see that I hadn’t passed out or suffered a heart attack climbing the steps.

La Croix Rousse means “red cross,” which comes from a reddish-brown stone cross that was erected here in the 16th century. 





 

This old part of the city dates back to the Renaissance. You can recognize the Renaissance buildings by their pastel colors of pink, yellow, blue, and white. 

 






The district started developing in the 18^th century when the silk workshops moved to the La Croix Rousse neighborhood from the older part of the city, Vieux Lyon. The buildings are uncharacteristically tall with large vaulted ceilings and exposed rafters because this is the area where the silk industry thrived and the silk makers needed such spaces to accommodate their looms.

Silk (silk=soie) brought great wealth to the city, however, as can be expected, the silk workers (canuts) endured extremely poor working conditions. As a result, they staged a series of Canut revolts beginning in October 1831, among the first labor revolts in the world. Their issues were salaries, the conditions of their lives and the dignity of their labor.  

Many of the interior stairways (les escaliers) of La Croix Rousse are made from very hard, fossilized stone. There are also many unique shapes and spaces that architects seemed to have fun adding to their buildings.  

Round sewer top is between the man's shoe and the planter.

In our modern cities, we have a vast network of pipes that provide us with all the water we need. Providing water to the residents of the Renaissance was a bit more problematic. Engineers, thus, devised a series of sewers that brought water to the people. With pulleys and buckets, they hoisted up the water to their apartments. You can still see the sewer tops in some areas, although they are now cemented shut. Our guide mentioned that as a young teenager, he and his friends used to play in these sewers. Wow, imagine!

It appears that very few of the old buildings in Lyon have been removed. Instead, the mayor and city folk work hard to restore as much of the past as is possible but also to build the new. Involved in many restorations is the re-purposing of old buildings. For example, this building on the right was once a convent. Today, it is a school. (St. Bonaventure near the Hôtel de Ville, a Dominican monastery originally built 1325-1327, was made into a granary after the French revolution destroyed most churches in France (1789-99). It was re-commissioned in 1806 as an active church, one of the few Middle Ages churches to survive.)

Local, home-grown food is important in the Lyon region and La Croix Rousse is no exception. Here is one neighborhood that promotes local agriculture through composting and distributing literature about the movement. 








With local food are the farmers markets.
Every Sunday, Boulevard de la Croix Rousse has a farmers market.

 Local identity is also important to the people who live here; they like to call themselves as "Croix-roussiens" (Croix-Roussians) to distinguish themselves from the Lyonnaise. Croix Rousse is a lovely part of the city, so I guess I can see why the people take an enduring pride in their "place." 

Once we walked up the last of many, many, many stairs into Croix Rousse, we reached the plateau where we saw a fantastic view of the city. Here is a panoramic view of Lyon from the hill (colline) of Croix Rousse. C'est très jolie, non?!? You can also see how high up it is in comparison to the city below. Way in the distance you can also see the Alps and the stadium (big white space).

La Croix-Rousse is nicknamed la colline qui travaille (the hill that works). This name contrasts the hill to the southwest on our right, Fourvière, which is known as la colline qui prie (the hill that prays). Notice the white church on the top of the hill: Notre Dame. The structure to the right of the church is a radio tower that resembles the Eiffle Tower of Paris.

Fourvière, la colline qui prie (the hill that prays)

On our tour we saw a typical French park that sports hard, yellowish ground surrounded by trees, benches, maybe a statue, a fountain, or some playground equipment. On the streets bordering the park is usually a church, most probably a café, un bureau de tabac (tobacco shop also with magazines, transport tickets and other small things), and maybe an epicerie (grocery store), boulangerie or patissierie (bakery or pastry shop), or bar (bar). This is an example of the French way of life that is truly an outdoor, interactive culture that values public space. I’ve even seen people take their coffee at a little table outside the café not only in sunny weather, but in the colder winter weather! 


Today, La Croix Rousse has a reputation as an art center. You can see art for sale in various shops but also enjoy a lot of free murals. much of which is either very weird or very comical.

Croix Rousse was a center of the French Resistance during World War II. The labyrinth of sewers and traboules helped the Resistance hide--just as the silk makers did during their rebellions. The traboules are covered passageways the silk makers used to transport their silk between buildings to protect it from inclement weather.

At the end of our tour is St. Polycarp, a church completed in 1670 just outside La Croix Rousse. On its facade are the marks of the French Revolution: a big gouge from a cannon ball on one of the pilasters (to the right of the clock) and the decapitation of  some de-bas figures over the front portal. Ouch!

Finally, as another mark of the past, I found a building that used to be the “silk condition building” where the relative humidity of the silk was measured to avoid fraud in the weight of the silk. The Chamber of Commerce commissioned the building that was completed in 1814. Today, the building is a modern library and social and cultural center. On the outside of the building is a memorial plaque of Louis Pasteur (1822-95) who discovered and treated maladies brought on in silk manufacturing. 

By the way, Lyon has long had a reputation as a city dedicated to health since the 6^th century when a bishop requested that a hospital be built. It has one of the highest concentrations of hospital beds in Europe and people go there as they do the Mayo Clinic for the best in research and medical care around. The World Health Organisation [WHO] chose Lyon for the Cancer Research International Center in 1965.