Primavera Europae

Dijon - Lausanne - Montreux

2h 54min. TGV 9273 + regional 12177.

What a change of scenery! It doesn’t take more than an hour from Dijon for the landscape and houses to change into definite Alpine look. Even couple of patches of snow in the shadows, a shocking sight after leaving all that ice&cold behind two weeks ago and having enjoyed mediterranean warmth & sunshine since! 

The landscape opens up again once we pass the mountains between France and Switzerland, offering a beautiful sunset over the hills and fields. And after a change of train in Lausanne the stunning landscape by the lake Geneva gives a memorable welcome to Switzerland: arriving at the later part of the blue hour, everything is absolutely blue - the lake, the sky, the shadows of the buildings, and the Alps looming there in the background, already almost disappearing to the darkening sky. Magical.

Dijon

I may have gotten immune to the charm of old French towns due to overdose of their beauty - or it could be that Dijon just doesn’t just rise to the level of the previous ones. Surely a nice place to walk around for an afternoon, to enjoy a long lunch on a sunny terrace and sip a cold rosé while watching people pass by. But I’m glad I didn’t book another night here, not sure I would have found it interesting enough for a another day. So today it’s time to bid adieu to France and head to the Alps on an evening train. First stop: to check if there’s still smoke on the water in Montreux.

Post scriptum: as I was typing the chapter above on a terrace enjoying my wine, I got defecated over by a pigeon, a grande finale and final thank you from Dijon. So it seems that pigeons have a sense of poetic justice…

City Loft, Dijon. 56€

What a godawful, overwhelming stuffy smell in this place. With somewhat dirty sheets and towels. And a new winner for the “worst view from the hotel window” prize, by a mile. Overall very depressing place. So happy I was here for just the 8h sleep and nothing more.

Lyon

So I finally did find an English speaking dentist in Lyon with lots of googling - apparently American embassies keep publicly available lists of English speaking doctors in various countries (or at least in France they do). That list had 3 dentists for Lyon - first 2 on the list did not speak any English at all, at least the receptionists on the phone didn’t. The 3rd one finally did, and so I had an appointment with a dentist who speaks “a little bit of English” in the suburbs of Lyon. I hate going to dentist even in normal circumstances, so needless to say I was pretty freaked out about this situation: an acute toothache combined with possible language problems. Luckily the pains had subsided a bit already by themselves already.

The location turned out to be just a quick metro trip away from the center, neighbor to the Musee Lumiere even! I took that as a good omen and walked in with slightly less stress. ;) The doctor was a cute mademoiselle who talked English well enough. She played Hercule Poirot of dental care for an hour trying to locate the cause for the pains, but didn’t find anything mentionable. After couple of quick fixes to issues that probably had nothing to do with the pain, I was let go. Even if the pains hadn’t completely disappeared I was overwhelmingly relieved that there was no need to pull anything out out of my mouth or something else drastic that would’ve compromised my travel plans and/or caused more blood, sweat and tears. And to top it of, the hour at the dentist cost no more than 21€ - and that’s a privately operated dentist, not public healthcare. Would have cost at least 5 times more in Finland.

Given the A-OK on dental health I decided to switch my continuous dosage from Paracetamols to Pastis, beer and red wine with a hope that those would cure any remaining pains just as efficiently and at least much more pleasurably!

OK, enough about the teeth. Lyon is large city, 2nd in France right after Paris so it feels like a real metropolis - with a heart of a cute little town. Geographically resembling New York very much: the center situated in an island between two rivers, and spreading large areas of dense population to mainland. I think the photo set over-represents the cute side of the city, there was also a more urban and modern side to the city but that didn’t make  it to the pictures. All and all it feels that I just scratched the surface of Lyon in two afternoons and one night, there would’ve been easily more to explore for couple of days at least. But I have a bad case of wanderlust going on, restless to stay in one place much longer than a night. So many places still to get to during the remaining two or so weeks of the trip!

Vive le cinéma!

This is where it all began, in Lyon. Cinema, that is. Here the Lumiere brothers had home, offices and a factory - the very same factory whose workers were captured in the first ever film recorded. There’s a really fascinating Musée Lumière housed in the former home of the Lumiere family (right next to where the factory used to be also, but that has been since demolished) - lots of old original equipment from the turn of the century (from various techniques ranging from 360 degree panoramas to 3D) together with family photos and memorabilia. I hadn’t realized that the Lumiere company also basically started photojournalism by sending out groups of people all over the world to record the events and everyday life of people in countries from Switzerland to Egypt to Morocco to India etc. What an amazing life it must have been in those days to be able travel the world photographing and cinematographing foreign cultures! And the Lumiere company also were the very first ones to capture color photos. To see turn-of-the-century era in colors seems to bring the time and people to life in almost magical way compared to the b&w we’ve used to be seeing.

Lyon has not forgotten its long heritage with cinema: there’s also a surprisingly good collection of movie props, sets, models, miniatures, animatronics etc from various European and American well-known movies. So Musée des Miniatures et Décors du Cinéma is definitely an imagination-inspiring place to visit for cinephiles such as myself. Again one can only wonder what a wonderful job it must be to design spaceships, bring to life ancient Roman warrior costumes and to explode miniature buses on a daily basis. Somehow seeing those artifacts and thinking about all the people who worked hard for those to make the dreams come alive on screen made me love and appreciate film as a creative form even more….

There was also a large collection of non-cinematic miniature scenes in the same museum, with lots of cutesy and somewhat boring dollhouse-kind-of stuff but also some really striking, artistic miniatures especially from a guy called Dan Ohlman. Stylewise Ohlman’s work was very cinematic even though they had no direct connection to any movies, and many also resembled great still photographs - but were all hand-crafted with painstaking amount of details on top of clearly great artistic vision. I had never before thought of miniatures as an art form, but after seeing Ohlman’s pieces I must update my perspective.

Hôtel du Dauphin, Lyon. 99€

Phew, it was really hard to find a hotel in Lyon in one day’s notice! Almost everything was fully booked for at least couple of upcoming days and the remaining rooms had prices raised to ridiculous levels - even the crappiest dumps nobody seemed to recommend on Tripadvisor had single rooms in triple digits for the night. But the toothache didn’t want me to wait any longer, so had to almost double my hotel budget for Lyon. Luckily the hotel choice at least was a good one with that price - great location right in the center, walking distance from train station, nice & clean room.

Avignon

Damn it felt good to be on the move again after spending a few too many days in Aix-en-Provence in rather depressing hotel room due to the flu! And the flu really had subsided for real after a week, so wonderful feeling to have to energy to walk around in a new city without getting fatigued after first half hour.

Avignon had been a sort of political refuge for a series of eight popes of the Vatican during the middle ages, and that surely left its mark in the city. Well, it’s definitely not as bombastic in style as the Vatican but still the scale of the medieval buildings from papal regime are quite impressive. The post-mediaval parts of the city also looked really nice with loads of zig-zagging narrow streets filled with inviting restaurants and cafes (although many were closed on Monday evening, couldn’t get into any of the three tips I checked from Tripadvisor). Also a quite a bit more lively and larger city than I had presumed, clearly there was contemporary life as well and not just the ghosts of the 8 popes…. ;)

Just as I got rid of the flu I had a new travel companion: a harrowing toothache that had been troubling me the day before somewhat but which really kicked in on Monday. I had to keep a steady dosage of paracetamols every three hours or so, otherwise the pains were overwhelming. It felt bad enough that I decided to bite the bullet and make a visit to a dentist in Lyon. And the situation seeming acute, I decided to skip Arles altogether and head straight to Lyon on Tuesday morning.

Au Saint Roch - Hôtel et Jardin, Avignon. 50€.

The main characteristic of this room is missing in the photos, lucky for you - an overwhelming stench of cheap perfume. I’d take anyday the damp smell of old hotel room preferably than that artificial sweetness… Also bonus points for the worst view from the window so far.

Fondation Victor Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence

No, this is not a movie set from an 60s/70s scifi-flick, but an art museum in the suburbs of Aix-en-Provence. The building from 1970s houses a collection of works from the Hungarian/French op-artist Victor Vasarely. The broad scale & mathematical precision of the works and cold concrete of the building could not be in stronger contrasts with the belle époque prettiness of the rest of the city. Fascinating place.

Aix-en Provence

A lovely, sunny & warm Saturday afternoon - the city is filled with locals enjoying the sun and shopping from markets & boutiques. And my flu is finally starting to recede, almost fell like a normal person (as much as that is possible ;) …