We left Beaune today and headed to Lyon. On leaving town we passed through the huge vineyards on the edge of town. It is the harvest season and this is still done the traditional way … by hand. The fields are filled with people with baskets on their backs gathering the grapes, and there are more of them arriving as we drive through, by the bus load. It does make you wonder whether the work force is local or whether it is heavily subsidized by migrant workers and back packers. If so, what a great way to pay your way.
We drove on through the villages, within the villages the roads were lined on either side by tall trees, like an avenue. We saw the evidence of ‘the quick red squirrel crossing the road and up a tree’ (with a mouthful of nuts), and ‘the slow brown fox became road kill’.
Lyon has a reputation for being a commercial, industrial and banking powerhouse for the last 500 years. What we found was a city of medieval and renaissance houses with cobblestone streets.
However our room for the night wasn’t … fantastic. However we have decided that our expectations have lowered considerably, providing we have a bed we can sleep in, hot water in the shower , and a toilet that flushes, then we are happy. On first impression a third floor room over looking the market square sounds and looks great. What we didn’t think about was that when the market packs up and closes at 8:00pm, the street cleaners move in. They went around and around that square until the early hours of the morning and then started again at 5:00am, crashing and banging their way around the square. But then the stallholders left a huge mess, we didn’t envy the job of the cleaners. The shoe sellers left huge piles of empty shoe boxes, the clothes sellers left hundreds of coat hangers, there were thousands of plastic bags of every shape and description left blowing around the square. And the stall holders just drove off and left it looking like a rubbish dump. The cleaners deserve their pay, because the next morning you wouldn’t have known.
But I digress, what we wanted to see today was the ‘Centre d’Histoire de la Resistance et de la Deportation’ (the museum of the French Resistance). We had our route sorted out on the map (about a 6km walk), but we were a bit disoriented and weren’t sure which direction to go. So we headed over to a wonderful looking gendarme to ask. When we told him where we wanted to go he “No! You cannot walk. You must take the tube to Hotel de Ville, and then the tube to Perrache, and then the T2 tram for two stops.” We thanked him very much and thought perhaps there was some reason, perhaps there wasn’t a way of walking across the river, so we followed his directions. After all you don’t want to argue with the Gendarme. As it transpired, the “You cannot walk” was because he thought it was too far. We walked home, and it didn’t take much longer than waiting for the tubes and trams. On the plus side the tram did drop us right outside the door of the museum, and we were treated to a little bit of light relief while we were waiting for the tram.
The tram station was situated underground within a tunnel, as we heard the tram coming, we turned and looked to see a guy on an ‘old school’ bike doing a wheel stand. He was going alongside the front of the approaching tram at the same speed, on the track next to it. When our tram stopped he proceeded on at the same speed, still on his back wheel, and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel following the tracks. We couldn’t believe our eyes, but no one else seemed to be concerned at all. It was like that sort of thing happens every day.
The Resistance Museum is housed in the WWII headquarters of the Gestapo commander Klaus Barbie. When you look at the front of the building there is no mistaking what it once was. It is very square and very stern looking with a high wrought iron fence and gate across its front. It is rather appropriate that it now houses the museum for the resistance movement which he would have fought so hard against.
The museum was very interesting and they provide an English audio guide. There is a lot of information there to absorb and the 90 minutes that we allowed ourselves wasn’t long enough. Although it wasn’t quite what we were expecting. We were expecting more information regarding the resistance fighters, their personal stories and accounts, more museum like displays, perhaps showing how they lived, what they did, the situations they were in. This was more of a memorial rather than a museum. A lot of information, a lot of data, and a lot of reading. There was a lot of focus on the political circumstances and how the resistance movements developed. There was a lot of information about the deportees (Jews, concentration camps, etc) that we have seen at other memorial sites. However we learnt quite a bit, like the fact that the Vichy government made laws and restrictions regarding the Jews on its own initiative, preempting what Germany was wanting them to do. Like the fact that Germany was holding French POWs throughout the war and was trading them for French man power and recruiting the French straight into the German army. Often these draftees ran away and joined the Resistance movement. We learnt that by the end of the war there were 150,000 agents in the Resistance, there were over 300 Resistance networks, and that over 27,000 Resisters were shot in France during the war. So like we said, very informative, just not what we expected.
We finished the day by walking home (don’t tell the Gendarme), by following the Rhone for most of the way. A beautiful evening, in a wonderful city, watching the sun go down on the river and the buildings beyond. As we walked up the final leg, we came across the Roman Amphitheatre (the Romans have been everywhere and left a trail of amphitheatres behind them). This little baby was built in 15BC and was enlarged in 120AD to house 20,000 people. This was the site that the first French Christians were sacrificed. Hmmmm … not really the note that we wanted to finish on, but then I guess that is France.
No comments:
Post a Comment