Ou est la guerre?

Sometimes, especially when I'm walking through the nearby town of Bussy-le-Grand, I get the feeling that I've been unwittingly transported into a fairy tale book. It might have something to do with the fact that none of the buildings here are built from flimsy materials like wood. Or maybe it's the castle I see when I look out my window.

When my plane left SFO it veered sharply left, flying straight over South San Francisco towards the Pacific. Then it turned north, following the coast and affording a fantastic view of the gridded sunset district. It arced again, this time east, a last caress, then rose slowly, leaving my peeps behind fading farther into miniature with each moment. I stared out with my nose pressed against the window pinpointing the several places I've lived in the city. Golden Gate park was visible in whole. Market street became a paper cut across the finger of the peninsula. From five thousand feet hills become blemishes and traffic comes to a standstill. San Francisco is such a great city.

Oh, and everyone should fly Virgin Airlines. The flight attendants have cute accents, you can watch new release movies on demand, and the toothpaste is super-minty.

So far my French has been holding up, but barely. People are pretty friendly around here, and several times, like when standing in line at the grocer, someone has decided to share a joke or make a mischievous comment. I chuckle politely and wrinkle my eyes and that seems to satisfy them. Inside, however, my mind is racing through all the combinations and perturbations of my known French vocabulary trying to decipher some meaning from their garbled jargon. In Paris, on the way to Gare de Lyon, one of the many train stations in the city, I asked a meandering local for directions. Being near the station, I tried to say "ou est la gare," but it came out as "ou est la guerre," which means where is the war. The poor lady's eyes shifted back and forth as if she was trying to decide if she could outrun me in a worse case scenario. "La guerre?" she asked. "Oui" I replied, confident and wide-eyed with expectation. After an uncomfortable moment she spied my bags and then smiled, "aaah, la GAH! Pas de GAIRE." I nodded bashfully and then she gave me detailed directions which bounced off my forehead and fell into a lovely sewer drain on Rue Diderot.

Marie Gorsline, the woman whose house I'm sitting (photo above), met me at the Montbard train station. I took the TGV, which is to normal trains what ice-skating is to rollerskating. We went to lunch at a local restaurant and had a five course meal. Damn lady - nice intro! I spent the next four days dividing my time between learning her idiosyncrasies and learning her history. She was a self-trained art curator, self-trained psychoanalyst, self-trained chef, novelist, publicist, and general provocateur. It's obvious she was a fox back in the day, and even now at 76 or so, her poise is elegant and she dresses quite fashionably. Just before she left she disappeared into her room, went through her wardrobe, and tried on all her clothes to see which ones she had "outgrown". At some point she walked out in a kickass black a-line overcoat, with a tall stand-up collar, and a high narrow waistline. "Do you think this is too formal to walk about in?" she asked. Slightly taken aback, I said, "I think you can pull it off" whereupon she whipped around with a smirk of agreement and strode back into her room. Style, man.

She's also a nervous wreck who was driving me insane with her numerous neuroses by the time she left.

The house is an old (as in hundreds of years old) farm house that has been slightly modernized. Apparently some of the cribs out here have yet to be upgraded with indoor plumbing. The entire structure, minus the roof is stone. Rough hewn lumber with hand carved wooden pins fastening the joints rather than nails, hold up the clay roof. Windows are deeply set into 2-foot thick walls. Inside, the house isn't so much decorated as it is adorned. Mostly with the detritus of fifty years of an artistic marriage. Books, mixed with papers - bills, notes, accounting slips, drawings and postcards line every surface. The kitchen walls are a collage of misshapen pans and obscure utensils, hanging from screws and nails sunk amateurishly into the cracks between the massive stones. Atop the kitchen counter is a thick cutting board like those you see at tacquerias - blackened and concave from the constant beating of cleavers. Every door is unique, some painted green, some red, others raw - and each with a different number of windows.

Attached to the house are three separate but connected barns. Ghosts inhabit these gaping, musty caverns, caught in a photo finish state of mid-collapse. Underneath are a series of arched-roof caves or cellars. There are two directly below the house. One is where water from a natural spring seeps up and is captured in a pool, then released through a wall to the outside. The other is stocked with wine. That's how they do it here.

Across the narrow road, looking out across a fertile valley, is the museum. It was a small barn that has been nicely converted into a two story art gallery by the labor of local craftsmen. It's a good indicator of how idyllic one of these houses could be if fixed up properly. I met one of Marie's friends, a Dutchman named Laurens who recently bought a house in the nearby town of Alise-Sainte-Reine (if you don't have at least two dashes in your town's name you ain't legit). He paid seventy thousand euros but feels slightly ripped off because his garden is too small and he doesn't have a terrace like his neighbor. I visited his crib today. It needs some work, but damn, it's beautiful. Everything around here is so damn charming.

Take Bussy for example. Bussy is a collection of five small towns. Small means populations below 200. One could easily walk to all five towns in a day. Apparently, long ago, the local duke, who was outcast from Paris for writing a scintillating novel with the King as the too thinly veiled antagonist, built a grand chateau on the Rabutin river. Immediately taxes skyrocketed and a group of peasants decided to break away and form their own independent community. So they moved one hill over from Bussy-le-Rabutin, to Bussy-le-Grand, nearer the protection of the local church. Each household took on the responsibility of a profession from the previous town. The farmer who built Marie's house became the baker and so there is a large iron oven built into an addition on the east side of the house. Each of the big houses in Bussy-le-Grand has a special additional structure dedicated to something like butchering or candle-making or beekeeping. Quaint, no?

It turns out that the house pretty much takes care of itself and my sole purpose here is to satisfy the whims of three cats. Camille and Hibou are the indoor cats that get to come in and out as they please (with my assistance as the doorman) and eat whatever and whenever they please. And these cats are French. I've learned that in the morning, they will not eat fish-based cat food with their milk. It must be lamb, paté or get this - terrine cat food. The rule for feeding the cats is that whenever they want to eat, I should feed them. Camille like's his food on the table. Hibou likes his on the ground. There is another cat, an unofficial cat, dubbed Emil, who takes whatever he gets, but like the others gets to eat whenever he wants. So he scratches the door and I obediently bring a plate of terrine and then he hisses at me till I leave. How'd I get to be the kitty bitch?

But things aren't so bad.

Let's start with lunch. Today it was local goat cheese, some cured sausage, a bit of bread that I got from the boulangerie in Montbard, a sliced up pear from the neighbor's farm, and a glass of Cote d'Or Bourgogne. It's like that around here. I bought some eggs, cheese and fresh herbs at the local farmers market, so I'll probably make a nice omelette in the morning.

There's also an operable bike and a selection of non-operable bikes. I'm still looking around for one of those cool old black-framed single speeds that you see in old French movies (ask Stephen Jaycox for a screen capture) but there doesn't seem to be a bicycle shop in the vicinity. I'll be turning in my rental car - a cool little Peugeot diesel - on Friday. From then on I'll have to pedal to the market. It's about 10km each way. Just entertaining the idea (which doesn't seem too far fetched to me) has earned Laurens' respect - and he's Dutch. He doesn't think I'll last, which of course makes the whole thing that much more appealing. I'm dumb that way.