Pere Lachaise: On not kissing Oscar Wilde

I’d heard a lot about Pere Lachaise cemetery whilst on my Cultural Heritage Course: talk of memory, forgetting, commemoration and how even famous people get forgotten.

Pere Lachaise is Paris’ largest cemetery within the city of Paris; it stands at a massive 110 acres with more than a million internments. Accompanied by my oldest friend walking round Pere Lachaise provided many interesting conversations.

View from within.

The first person to be buried at Pere Lachaise in 1804 was a five-year old called Adélaïde Paillard de Villeneuve. Her grave isn’t there anymore; it was a temporary concession. There are a wide range of famous people commemorated in the cemetery all labelled with a number on a neat little billboard; philosophers, artists, singers, politicians. But finding them is less easy amongst the city of the dead, interspersed by people from all the nations of the world some famous and some not. 

Finding Edith Piaf was particularly difficult because her inscription was a little note on the side of a family tomb, not a massive monument. I still found myself wanting to sing ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’. Do you think that was appropriate? 

'Non, de rien de rien'

Oscar Wilde’s tomb is covered in a massive Egyptian motive created by Epstein. And the world and his wife have kissed the sphinx. With lips bright red, and the block next to the face is also covered in kisses of every hue. A big plastic box has been put in place to try to prevent any more amorous advances from visitors as the bill for cleaning goes to the family. So again, kissing and leaving your mark, acceptable?  We talked about the Diana memorial and the recent Judd-gate scandal. What constitutes appropriate memorialisation, especially when you can climb inside the memorial?

Oscar Wilde's sphinx

City of the dead

The style of memorial at Pere Lachaise might be a little unfamiliar to British audiences. Whilst some tombs were small and enclosed the majority looked like little houses varying in size from port-a-loo to full on chapel complete with pews and crypt. You can enter these memorials, and spend time there. Some memorials seemed to be glorified sheds and others were well maintained. The famous graves have been numbered, all have an address with many different street names. Although these are navigation systems the rows of doors with street signs and neighbouring properties really felt like streets.

The living and the dead

Streets of Pere Lachaise

Freezing a passing moment in time

We visited a strange quasi temple come crypt under this golden dome. I was attracted to one little corner by a flickering light that I assumed was one of those plastic tea lights. I was wrong. It was a real candle; and watching it flicker and then extinguish was a poetic moment full of metaphor. The candle was at the heart of a wider ephemeral memorial surrounding a well varnished plaque and we talked about how even the hardest rock is still temporary and memorials are for the living. 

Guttering flame

Merry Christmas! Fröhliche Weihnachten!¡Feliz Navidad!

 Its been a while hasn’t it?! I’ve been learning Bengali and knitting, watching Tolstoy performed live above pubs and meeting many friends for festive meals. I thought given the season I might share a little festive anthropology with you on Christmas Traditions.

The nights are closing in and its so cold you’re losing touch with your toes! It must be nearly time for a winter celebration; for a Merry Christmas! Ever since I first travelled to Europe as a teenager I have been fascinated by our shared European heritage and the way it is expressed in such different ways. Never was this truer than with our divergent celebrations of Christmas. So I decided to explore three different expressions of Christmas; from English, German and Spanish perspectives.

Disclaimer: Every family is different and doesn’t necessarily do the things listed below. In no way is this supposed to be an exhaustive description.

England

Christmas is quite a contracted celebration in England. Although children mark advent with Advent Calendars most of the focus in on 24^th-26^th December. The Christmas Trees are put up in family homes from the start of December. On Christmas Eve traditional families might go to Midnight Mass but most families start preparations for Christmas Day. Christmas Eve (24th December) is the time when Father Christmas visits overnight leaving presents for good children in stockings (large socks). He and his reindeer are often made welcome through the provision of food items laid out for them such as mince pies and a carrot for the reindeer. Both Christmas Day and the day that follows (Boxing Day) are national holidays in England. The 25^th December is the central event and the day on which presents are given and received. Christmas Day is also the day when the large Christmas meal is eaten, typically including; Turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce, ‘pigs in blankets’ (chipolatas wrapped in bacon) and Brussels Sprouts. These are followed by mince pies, a Christmas pudding (a fruit dessert) which is often set alight with warm brandy as part of the ceremony, and sometimes Christmas cake. Modern English Christmas Days are also accompanied by lots of seasonal television such as The Snowman.

Germany

The way other countries celebrate has always interested me and having a few friends with connections across Germany I asked them what made Christmas. One of the most popular activities was going to the Christmas Fair and drinking warm spiced drinks with friends. This activity has not been missed by the opportunistic tourism boards in England who advertise flights to German markets; where you can apparently buy authentic wooden toys and eat mountains of wurst, Stollen and gingerbread.  The Christmas Tree is an important tradition introduced by the Germans to European Christmas accompanied by its companion, mulled wine. Christmas extends out as far as St Nicholas Day, a day unrecognised in England. In some areas, the gifts from St Nicholas arrive on St Nicholas Eve. If presents have not been given on St Nicholas Eve, then it is on Christmas Eve, the focus of the Christmas time, when gifts are shared. Christmas also stretches out to Epiphany in January; when people, particularly children, join parades and other activities around the town dressed as the Three Kings. German Christmases seem much longer than English ones.

Spain

Spanish Christmases begin with the celebration of their patron saint, Mary on December 8^th, the day of the immaculate birth. As a thoroughly Catholic country the celebration of Christmas follows the church calendar quite tightly. On Christmas Eve (Nochebuena) the main Christmas meal is eaten often featuring lamb or seafood; quite separate from the American influenced Turkey. On the subject of Christmas food, Spain is famous for its turron or nougat. Most homes will feature a beléne or nativity scene and in some areas the scene also features the El Caganer, or defecating shepherd. The origins of this unusual onlooker to the nativity are cloaked in the mists of time. The Spanish never miss out on a chance to dance and so unsurprisingly have a Christmas dance, called the Jota. The modern world has had its impact on the Spanish too with the El Gordo Christmas Lottery. The 28^th December is also a celebratory day on Santos Inocentes which acts a bit like ‘April Fools’; often a child is made mayor for the day and his/her wishes are honoured as if they were the real mayor. This is just as well as children have to wait until the feast of Epiphany for their gifts in Spain. The night before there are processions of children dressed as the kings. The reindeer and St Nic are replaced by tired camels and kings who are the present givers. The camels are placated with straw left in shoes; a little reminiscent of the German tradition of food left in shoes. The 6^th of January is also a national holiday celebrated with hams and seafood.

The contrasting traditions of the three nations are neatly summed up in one little tradition; the Christmas Cracker. In Spain they appear not to exist. The first Christmas Crackers probably contained sweets and the ‘cracking’ feature was decidedly secondary. In England they are contextualised by their season, ‘Christmas’ and have lost all reference to sweets. An archetypal cracker would include; a Christmas hat, a tacky toy and a cheesy joke – the joke is meant to be bad, that’s the point! German Christmas Crackers are called ‘Knallbonbon’ a name which reflects both the ‘cracker’ and sweet components of the tradition. Although I have to admit I’ve never seen a German Christmas Cracker!

So, that’s my little walk around Christmas traditions in Europe; there are some interesting similarities and peculiarities I think you’ll agree! What do you do in your home that’s unique to your family, or country? Do you know where those traditions come from? Why not ask a family member or a friend about their traditions?

Have a very Merry Christmas and see you in 2012!

Aachen (Kultur + Kaffee) Part 2

If you are looking for tourist info my 'top 5 places to visit in Aachen' is at the bottom of the page.

And this blog is unusually lengthy today, sorry.

As I’ve previously mentioned, in May this year I worked for a Cathedral in Germany. It was my first prolonged stay in the country (previous visits amounting to 2 hours in total!) and as such the people I met were very interested in my first reactions to what ‘Germans were really like’. Its strange how we often feel outsiders can categorise our own nation groups isn’t it?! Of course I came to Germany with all the standard stereotypes, that Germans would be intensely scientific and down-right Prussian in attitudes of the heart or displaying emotions; actually I found quite the opposite, warm-hearted, caring people who weren’t all engineers – although I did meet several scientists.

Aachen is in North-Rhine-Westphalia, the last town in Germany before Belgium. It calls itself ‘the heart of Europe’ and one can see why; its a true fusion of Franco-Germanic culture with a good dose of Flemish (from the Dutch and Belgian) thrown in for good measure! It is a place where many worlds meet.

What follows are some musings I had whilst thinking about ‘Aachen Culture’ which wouldn’t fit into my 3,000 words on ‘German Cathedral Culture’.

Kaffee
Being a student in a foreign city there was plenty of time for coffee, most of which, mercifully, I drank with German friends who guided me through the process. In the cafes and bars of Aachen paying for coffee is quite different to England; there is none of the theatrics around leaving the bill on your table and paying whilst the waitress pretends to look away. Instead, the fact that one is paying for a service is made quite explicit; the waiter comes to the table, presents you with the bill and then you pay him directly, even negotiating the tip, ‘that will be 12 euro 50 cents’, ‘oh call it 13 euro’, ‘thank you’. This sort of procedure is fairly unheard of in England.

It amused me watching the process the other way round when a friend from Aachen visited England and we went for coffee. She was most baffled by our ‘complicated’ system for paying and leaving tips. This whole charade reminded me of Kate Fox’s hypothesis in her book ‘Watching the English’ (which I highly recommend) where she suggests the English will go to great lengths to avoid the discussion of money. Maybe our receive bill, walk away, now I pay system is just an elaborate ruse to do the same thing? Avoiding the uncomfortable reality that we are paying for a service. And that’s not even to start on the fact that bars serving coffee and hot chocolate are open til 2 am, even on a school night, what a brilliant idea!

(Maibaum in Aachen)

Maibaum
Now to move on to something totally different. The photo above is of a slightly dilapidated Maibaum. A Maibaum is a birch tree felled close to the 1st of May; they are erected across the city on the eve of the month of May by men seeking to impress their current or future loves. They decorate their birch tress with colourful crepe paper and as you might expect the imagery is all decidedly phallic, how big’s your tree? Not all men fell trees, creating a small hand-crafted gift is also acceptable; and with the growing eco-agenda there is increasingly upset with the felling of all these trees for such a silly tradition.

As some of you may have already guessed this maibaum tradition is not so far from the pan-European tradition of the Maypole. In fact when I searched ‘maibaum’ on Wikipedia, Google translated the page as ‘Maypole’. But there are also differences. In England the Maypole is the sole preserve of young children and old Morris Dancers, who are encouraged to dance round the poles. It is also an almost exclusively rural pursuit, there are few Maypoles erected in the centre of towns. In Aachen it is a very different process; owned by the young as a courting game of the 20-something. It is a highly devolved process every man for himself; there is little to no state involvement and there are as many Maibaum in cities as the countryside. In Aachen, Maibaum is not a quaint tradition maintained to lengthen the tourist season in sleepy villages; it is a living tradition that has evolved over the centuries to suit its new market. Caviat: You will notice I don’t refer to ‘German’ tradition here as my experience was only in reference to Aachen. But for the record, I like the tradition.

Dreilanderpunkt
Within an hour’s walk of the city centre is the ‘Dreilanderpunkt’ the place where Belgium, Germany and Holland all meet. Over the past century these borders have at times felt very solid; with passport check points throughout the Cold War period and the use of three separate currencies until the arrival of the Euro in 2002. The three nations still speak separate languages but physically crossing the boundaries is easy. On a cycle ride to the north of the city we passed down one road where the row of houses to the left were Dutch and the houses on the right were German; although their architecture was different it seemed almost ridiculous that you would have needed two currencies to shop on one road less than ten years ago! The Dreilanderpunkt is a physical place where you can go and have your photo taken, but in some ways I also think its a metaphor for Aachen as a whole! Bringing the efficiency of German transport, Dutch artistic flair and the joys of Belgian food (yes I mean chocolate and beer).

Unmissable Aachen – top 5 must-sees.

1. Aachen Cathedral – Everything about this part of Europe boils down to one key man, Charlemagne, Emperor of Europe in the eighth century. And you can’t get more Carolingian than Charlemagne’s own royal chapel (and coronation church for more than 30 German kings!) If you like shiny, golden Cathedrals with impressive treasuries and tall Gothic architecture (without buttresses), you’ll like Aachen Cathedral. If you have been to San Vitale or Sainte-Chapelle you might get a strange sense of déjà-vu.

2. Ok, so you’ve got to eat somewhere! Here are two great, contrasting eateries, to ensure you don’t go hungry. The people of Aachen are great fans of icecream but arguably the best place to eat icecream is Del Negro. Huge portions, low prices, and quality ice cream; there are always queues outside this kiosk and after you’ve tried one of their ice creams you’ll understand why. They also let you go half and half with flavours, see nice too!

The other place is a funky bar which sells both the warming bedtime drinks, and beers and wine into the early hours; the Egmont. I was taken to the cafe several times by different people and its proved popular across generations and interests. Particularly good if you are looking for European philosophers and artists, or somewhere quiet to read a paper in the afternoon.

3. The Elisenbrunnen on a Sunday night – In the summer, Sunday night is salsa night at the Elisenbrunnen. For the smallest of fees you can dance the night away, outdoors yet undercover at the picturesque Elisenbrunnen park. With thermal springs in the background and a pina colada in your hand – you could be forgiven for thinking you weren’t in Germany.

4. The Dreilanderpunkt. I already mentioned this place in the blog but its the border-land of three European nations. Set in large quantities of woodland its also great for a day’s walking with pretty panoramas that stretch for miles. They also hold events at the Dreilanderpunkt itself; I saw a medieval joust on an epic scale, complete with re-enactment village and honey beer stall.

5. My friend Simone’s House – OK so this one’s cheeky and you’d have to ask me for her details but I’ve got a great German pal called Simone. When I was complaining at work that I hadn’t tasted German food because it looked decidedly dodgy she invited me to her house and cooked all the German classics from Sauerkraut to Schnitzel; and all in the beauty of the very nearly, almost Dutch, countryside.

Aachen (Dom + Kultur) part 1

As some of you may know last month I went to Aachen, Germany on a work placement in the Cathedral as a compulsory part of my Masters Degree. I really enjoyed myself and I learnt lots of things; not all of them directly related to Cultural Heritage. Now that I've been home for two weeks it’s about time I wrote my experiences up in the form of an essay which critically reviews the placement and what I learned. 

The trouble is, it is tedious! 

Like really boring!

Like I've started writing a blog to avoid writing about it. I've also been working on a detailed paper model of the Cathedral (see below). 

When I've been running in the opposite direction from the essay writing I've been trying to work out what the blocks are to writing up the experience. I kept a diary the whole time, so I already have 3,000 odd words to say on the experience. And it wasn't as if everything from the people, to the weather and the workplace weren't beautiful.
It’s not even as if there’s nothing to say about Cultural Heritage, it was everywhere.
The problem is finding interesting things to say, about the things they want to hear, and (the problem for this essay in particular) in a structured format.

As time has passed I've managed to get some ideas down on paper but its taken an entire bar of emergency chocolate, a bacon sandwich, three cups of coffee and several trips to London to get me this far! I wonder how many more trips to my favourite independent coffee shop (Utopia) I’ll need before I eventually hand the work in? Just as well the deadlines totally flexible!

 

The Five Ages of Man, and cars. (1st blog)

Hello World!

Well after about a year of people suggesting I ought to blog I've finally caved in. Props to Jonty Roland and Elle McAllister for suggesting it; and Marika, Gabriel, Will and Jo for being considerable inspiration.

Just in case you didn't know who I am my name's Bec I'm 22 and I'm currently living in Essex.
I'm polishing off my MA in Cultural Heritage Studies at UCL. All sorts of things about the world seem really interesting to me, but I'm particularly interested in people, how they think and behave. I also like to travel and have adventures.

But most of all I like telling stories and analysing social situations. So that's probably what you will find on this blog as time goes by. I'm currently supposed to be writing up my recent work placement in Germany, but this is proving worthy procrastination (maybe I'll write about it on here sometime, only the interesting bits obviously).

Today I wanted to tell you about a revelation I had in the car.

I am currently learning to drive and for several months have referred to 4th gear as 'Aunty Fourth'. Why? Because 4th gear has always struck me as an economic, sensible gear that keeps things turning over and running smoothly but it doesn't actively do much or have much power. Today I realised most of the gears could be anthropomorphised into members of a gear family:

First gear - first gear is like the baby in the family. When a baby screams grown-ups react pretty quickly. Similarly first gear has quick effects in actually getting the car up and moving. But it only does that first bit, once you've moved a few seconds down the road it becomes useless. On the journey of life we require new gears that enable us to move faster, more efficiently and with less rumbling in our engines. But interestingly in life, as with gears, when we come to have to do something difficult we often revert back to childlike behaviours; just as in cars you do manoeuvres in First.

Second gear - Second gear has got the energy of a small child. Its quite active, you use it when you want to weave in and out of residential areas and at times when something is to be negotiated. Its quite a powerful gear but you'd soon run out of puff if you did the whole journey in second. (I have to say I don't really understand why we need second, other than for turning corners, thoughts?)

Third gear - This is my favourite gear. (I often get told off for not moving into fourth on time, but I just love third!) Third gear is the teenager or twenty-something. Third is the gear for accelerating onto the carriageway, for physically getting somewhere.
Its a gear that does something.
Sometimes its not the most efficient gear to be in, and maybe we ought to be coasting a bit more, but with third you get stuff done.

I've already described 'Aunty' fourth but where does that leave Fifth or Reverse Gear?
I've had very little experience with fifth but when I've used it it just seems like an even more chilled out gear than fourth. What do you reckon?
Where does fifth fit in this family tree? I was half tempted to make 'Reverse' old-age. It would fit with a plethora of witty literary references and yet the voice of my conscience (my Mum!) leaves me feeling that actually old people do make positive contributions to the world in often quite active ways. And they do not always go against the current of younger generations either.
So where does 'reverse' fit in this system; does it stand for those little life crises we have, where it feels like we're going the wrong way but somehow we still manage to reverse somewhere useful?

And what about my love for third, will it wane with age such that by my mid-30's I prefer to drive in fourth?

Will I ever pass my driving test?...

Stay tuned for answers to these questions and more (reviews of cafes, interesting foreign escapades, social action projects)...