Realizations and a Chateau

Today I took a major step: I came to terms with two very important things.  First, I have realized and accepted that sleep will not exist in my life for the month of September.  I have decided that I will function on coffee which will actually be fine since the French people drink coffee and serve coffee like it is juice.  My only concern is that I may develop an intense dependency that may turn out to be problematic once I return to the States.  Second, I have realized and accepted that watching my waistline is not an option.  This conclusion was much harder to come by, but it hit me in between a sip of wine and a bite of chevre.  The food here is absolutely too amazing to pass by and my host mother insists that I take three servings of every course!  This will inevitably result in a more curvaceous figure than I would like and clothes potentially fitting a bit more snug.  In light of this fact I take comfort that it will be fall and winter when I return and there will be no more bikini opportunities.

While I am on the subject of food...not trying to make anyone super jealous or anything, but you have not lived life until you have eaten food in Europe.  It is simply fabulous.  You will all most likely be tired of hearing about me writing about food in a few weeks, but it is such a huge part of the experience that I would be silly not to mention it all the time.  Food and meals in general are viewed in such a different light than in the states.  If you sit down in a restaurant, say Mcmenamins, and a waitress or server doesn't take your order within the first ten minutes you think it is horrible service.  furthermore, if you don't receive your food within fifteen minutes of that time then the restaurant is really slow.  Once you get your food you stop conversation and gulp down your meal.  You then resume conversation while you impatiently wait for the check.  This whole process could easily take less than an hour.  How sad is that?  Our cafeteria lunch in itself took at least an hour because there was three courses and there was plenty of time in between each course to talk to each other.  Dinner is one of my favorite parts of France.  We sit down and begin our meal with wine and some type of light appetizer.  After talking for about ten or fifteen minutes Therese will bring the first course.  This usually takes a really long time because they want to know all about our day and my housemate and I struggle with our French vocab to adequately communicate what we are trying to say. Therese expects you to take more than one serving, so you have to take just a little bit at first so that you can have another spoonful in about ten minutes.  The third course takes equally as long then finally comes the cheese.  Someone once said "it ain't over til its over" which has over time turned into a phrase that many people use and reference.  Well the French version of this is "It is not over until the cheese is served."  I personally love this rule.  

Ok, enough about food.  On to Le Chateau d'Angers.  We visited a castle in the very heart of Angers.  It was spectacular.  I will do a whole post of pictures on the buildings and architecture so I will not explain in detail what it looked like.  However, I do want to tell you about the Tenture de l'Apocalypse.  So this castle (Chateau) was built in the 1300s as a defensive fort for the province of Angers.  It has gone through many stages and additions, including repair work that had to be done after the Allies bombed the bridges close by during WWII.  At some point in its history one of the bishops wanted to create tapestries for the walls (that was a common thing to do in the old days since the castles were so cold).  So over the course of ten years the tapestries of the apocalypse were made. Originally they were all one large tapestry, but somehow they got cut up and distributed all over France.  Time passed until a different bishop, or some other type of catholic figure,  hunted all the pieces down and re-assembled them at the Chateau.  The result is amazing.  Since they don't want the colors to fade the tapestries are displayed in a very dark exhibit with tiny lights that only illuminate the tapestries.  Side note: when I think of a tapestry I used to think of some pretty wall covering that rich people tend to have.  I really never had a clear idea of what one was.  Well this experience blew any previous notion of what a tapestry is right out the window!   They are flipping huge!!!  Taller than me and about fifteen feet wide!!!  holy cow, real people wove that by hand in the 1300s!  So incredible.

The whole Chateau experience was very though provoking.  I was indeed standing on a stone that was placed there possibly 800 years ago.  I tried to imagine what life was like back then and what hardship it must have taken to build such a magnificent castle without any modern technology.  They literally just used their own strength and intelligence to create such a masterpiece.  To me this is more beautiful and impressive than any modern architecture.  Sure maybe with a computer and a bunch of heavy machinery one could build the tallest building ever on earth ... I would like to challenge someone to build a castle like they did in the old days and see what happens.