Quimper

It’s Brittany…

…! And one can observe the difference in climate already. The name Quimper looks funny, like “whimper,” but is pronounced “Kam-PEAR.” 

The color of the older buildings in Bretagne (Brittany) is usually that grey stone, and the houses are less tall and narrow than in Allier. I enjoy so, so much watching the native human “biome” change, along with the plants and trees and sky. France is an encyclopedia of different biomes. I do hope I’m using that word correctly. I’m in my room feeling a little punch drunk from yesterday. Thank a god my hostess left me with a pot of very strong coffee before she went off to work.

Yesterday. It seemed, and this is thankfully very rare when I travel, that everything I touched turned to merde. I scraped the rental car bumper almost immediately, on a parking garage wall, Google’s machine told me I broke my hostesses wifi trying to connect to this computer, and I almost missed my connecting train from Paris. And everything turned out fine. Or will. SNCF sent me new tickets, on my phone, into Quimper when their machine saw I might be too late due to their leaving us stranded on the tracks for half an hour for no apparent reason.  But I calmly forged ahead from Gare de Bercy, across the 13th and 14th arrondissements of Paris via the Metro to the Gare Montparnasse, and heaven behold my original train was sitting there running two minutes late, while numerous station attendants murmured “Vite, vite!” as I ran past. 

Here in my room, I was able to use my phone as a hotspot to get online, got information and downloaded a letter of coverage from my credit card’s company through a call the the States. That should be completely fine, especially if lovely Kaelig is working. Aside: the real Bretons seem to be much taller and heftier than the classic French look, with blondish or reddish hair. He said his name is Breton, and judging from the signs printed here in both French and Breton, it is one crazy language. He said it “Kah-EL-eeeghhhhkkkk.” And laughed. And when I got back from dinner, my hostess, who is also very, very tall, had fixed the wifi no problem. I think accepting my chosen lifestyle as complicated, and not overthinking, is the ticket. The sound of my brain berating me when I heard the soft crunch of that bumper against the concrete wall was worse than the scrape itself. “Easy Does It” is not just a trite slogan. But I see how my life is being shoved onto a portable phone and I do not like it. I know I could have done all this in 1989, but how, exactly?

I wandered around the old town, and bought some butter cookies in a sweets shop. Bretagne is known for butter, and these are buttery. The young lady recommended a couple of restaurants away from the cathedral square (remember, never eat in cathedral square restaurants, stick to drinks) and after learning they didn’t start serving dinner until 7:00, I puttered a bit until then.

The Breton heritage is Celtic, from a migration across the English Channel from Cornwall. They seem to remember it like it was yesterday, and there were posters on display from a festival of music (with bagpipes) that is over a hundred years old. I think this one from 1976 is alluding to the legends of King Arthur and Merlin, that are connected somehow with this area. I hope to find out more. Cornouaille is “Cornwall” in French.

My dinner featured the most delicious pot of steamed mussels and clams in a thin cream sauce with wine. The proprietor apologized that this year, due to the heat and drought, the mussels and clams were very tiny. I thought it was great! It was like the splat bags I used to buy at the Inwood farmer’s market in northern Manhattan, that mixed mussels and clams from Long Island Sound, except in miniature. Some of the clams were the size of a nickel. The other revelation was Breton whipped cream. It was draped like a heavy comforter on a strawberry Pavlova (a cake of meringue) with a flavor indescribably good. That’s enough, not a food blog.

This shot from my bedroom window seems typical of Quimper. Notice that the roof is made of slate. Each shingle is split from solid rock and is remarkably thin. I think they are very expensive now, but last hundreds of years. I can’t tell how old these are.

It is raining steadily this morning, and I’m lounging around this very comfortable apartment by myself, imagining what it would be like to live in one like this. I kind of love it. It’s not fancy, but thoughtfully appointed and decorated in a nice eclectic style. It takes more than comfort to make me happy though. Why cannot we afford to live decently in the United States, again? Can you explain it to me?