from Paris to Nice proved on Monday.
The train was due to stop at Les Arcs in the Var department, but the driver completely forgot and the high speed express sailed right through, to the bemusement of many passengers who were getting ready to disembark from the train. The train stopped OK at the next
scheduled stop,St Raphael,and they all had to be bussed back to Les Arcs, the slow way!
I was amused by another recent mistake in France. In Strasbourg recently, they put up street signs for the new esplanade Francois Mitterand, an outstanding former president, who lived from 1916 until 1966. The
only problem was that on the street signs, his second name was spelled with just one ‘r’ when of course it should have had two. But what was even more amazing was that as soon as the spelling mistake went viral on the Internet, the authorities put up correct street signs within hours!
While we’re on the subject of amusing stories, a parody of French president Hollande has been making waves on the Internet. He’s singing about taxes to a Charles Trenet tune and it’s all causing a lot of amusement.
But the opposition to the president is unprecedented. I was very surprised that at a Remembrance service for all those who fell in World War I, a group of people there actually started jeering the president. I certainly can’t remember anything like that happening before at a Remembrance service in France. At
least, tomorrow, Hollande is off to Monaco to meet up with Prince Albert II, so the two lads should have a bit of fun!
However, the French government has at least done something very positive within the past few days
by announcing a €3 billion investment in the troubled city of Marseille. It may be enjoying its current European cultural status, but behind all the glitzy new museums, art galleries and showcase events, there’s a deeply troubled city, with 40 per cent youth unemployment in some areas and more than 20 per cent of the population living in poverty. The government plans to use this money to improve public housing, create jobs and help the poor, all very worthy aims, so let's hope that it all works out.
Marseille is indeed a stunning city, especially around the port area, while the climb up to the hill to
Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde cathedral will take your breath away. But the poor and the dispossessed can’t be ignored any longer. At least they should be thankful they haven’t got a British style government with David Cameron in charge - then, the only solution to the problems of Marseille would be to impose a bedroom tax.
Another big scheme that’s underway in France, this time in Bordeaux, should be even more interesting. A cultural centre for the Bordeaux wine industry is being created at a cost of €60 million. The design is
said to resemble swirling wine in a glass! When it’s completed in 2015, it should be a fantastic place for people to visit if they want to find out more about the wines of the region and indeed, do a little tasting.
While we’re still in positive mode, I see that the latest tourist figures show that the south of France and indeed the rest of the country is holding its own. Last year saw upwards of 11 million people taking a holiday on the Cote d’Azur - this is about 10 per cent of the total number of holiday visitors to France in
2012. The Cote d’Azur now accounts for one per cent of global tourism.
In terms of the Cote d’Azur, 19 per cent of those visiting were Italian, while British and Irish visitors came to 18 per cent and Russians six per cent. A total of 27 per cent of visitors to the Cote d’Azur arrived by air, at Nice airport, which is now the second travel hub in France, after Roissy, and Europe’s third business aviation hub.
Still, behind the positive headlines, there’s always a dark side. In Nice early last Saturday morning, a gang of about 20 very drunken teenagers broke into a bakery on the boulevard Carlone and created mayhem, smashing up the shop. Around 20 people were injured, including the woman who is the manager of the bakery, and five policemen, one of whom had serious hand injuries. Then last weekend as well, a 24 year old woman fell out of the window of a fourth floor apartment in Nice north and was killed. Talking about
this tragic incident on the avenue Montega, the police couldn’t say whether the poor woman had lost her balance or had been pushed.
Apart from life on the dark side, sometimes, coverage of France can get so boring! I listened to a programme on Radio 4 the other night about the economic life of France, in which it was stated that the public sector in France accounts for 57 per cent of GDP. It’s the highest level in Europe, but most people would have guessed that anyway. Don’t expect the French to suddenly reform and have an American approach to free enterprise!
Then just to make matters worse, this programme used the soundtrack of Je ne regrette rien by Edith Piaf. To my mind - and I love the music of Piaf and her near contemporary Jacques Brel - this is the ultimate musical cliché and I’m utterly sick of hearing it. This particular piece of music is one of the all-time favourites on Desert Island Discs - just shows how many boring people they have on that particular
programme!
You could well say that the BBC often doesn’t know its arse from its elbow! For Remembrance Sunday, they played a set of muffled cathedral bells, which were very impressive. When the announcer introduced
them, he said they were recorded at Bristol Cathedral, then when the segment was completed, he said that they were the bells of Worcester Cathedral!
There was another tragic event in recent days, this time in Paris, where a performance of a spectacle on 1789 was being prepared, Les Amants de la Bastille. It was being staged in the Palais des Sports in Paris. But some fireworks went off prematurely and 15 people were injured in the explosions, seven of them seriously. Then Marcus Toledano ,the 41 year old technical director of the show, rushed to the scene to see what was happening. He then collapsed and died from a heart attack.
One Parisian anniversary caught my eye the other day. November 8, 1793 was the date on which the Louvre opened as an art gallery; previously, it had been a royal palace. It was a stunning transition and ever since, the Louvre has been a prime destination for millions upon millions of visitors to Paris.
Something else caught my ear in recent days, a superb documentary on Radio 4 about Telefon Hírmondó, launched in Budapest in 1893. It was billed as the world’s first radio station, since it had the same kind
of items that a good radio channel would have, news, current affairs, relays from the opera and theatre, in other words, a whole mix of features that wouldn’t go amiss on Radios 3 and 4. But it operated by means of the telephone, rather than radio. People could listen in to the “station” at home or they could hear it in
public places, where it was relayed through loudspeakers. All very avant garde and it worked well, until World War II. The man who devised the whole system and got it up and running was Theodore Puskás. He died young, just before he was 50,but the service carried on after his death, a telling illustration of the
inventive genius of Hungarians. After all, the humble biro was a Hungarian invention, in 1946!
I was also reading something about the world’s first newspaper, which was launched in Strasbourg in 1605. The printer and publisher was German, Johann Carolus (1575-1634) and he started the paper with a really snappy title, Relation aller Furnemmen und gedenckwurdigen Historian. Try saying that in a hurry to your local newsagent! Naturally, the paper is normally just called “Relation”. Carolus handset it, printed it and
published between 100 and 200 copies once a week. Then at the end of each year, he bound all 52 copies of that year’s paper into a book.
Talking about German style reminds me of a region of Austria we once visited that was an absolute delight. The jog to memory came from a Haydn concert performed at Esterházy in south-east Austria, near the
Hungarian border. The great castle or schloss here at Eisenstadt was where Haydn was the composer in residence for many years. He worked for the Esterházy family for the best part of 40 years and today, the concert hall in the grounds of the estate is one of the most acoustically perfect in the world. After we had
inspected the castle and listened to a performance of just a little of Haydn’s music, we went to the nearby village of Rust, a most delightful place, with storks perched on the chimneys, as you find in Alsace. Beside the village is the Neusiedlersee, a great inland lake that seems to stretch for miles. This is also great wine country, so doubly interesting.
We completed this particular trip by going to the nearby border with Hungary, to look over the barbed wire into communist Hungary - this was a few years before the collapse of communism in central and eastern Europe.
Back home in Ireland, the news about yet more taxes and price hikes is as depressing and continuous as ever. A respected news commentator in Dublin, Declan Kiberd, who used to edit a Sunday business newspaper, said that Ireland is being battered by a whole new range of taxes, overt and covert. He pointed out what is happening in France, where Standard and Poors has just downgraded the country’s credit
rating. Kiberd said this shows what can happen to a once prosperous country when it succumbs to the thoughtless orthodoxies of the eurozone. He said that this former imperial power has been crucified by its ruinous acceptance of the common European currency and the austerity needed to sustain the foreign
exchange regime.
Something else that’s happening in present day Ireland and all under the radar, so no-one realises what’s happening until it’s too late-tax deadlines are being brought forward all the time, making life ever more difficult for householders and for small businesses. These small businesses are being crucified, according to Kiberd, to improve the government’s cash flow, but at the same time, the large banks in Ireland, which are largely state owned, still aren’t giving business enough credit!
People in Ireland seem to take it all lying down, in complete contrast to France. In Brittany, where companies have been badly hit by the new taxes on heavy lorries, protests are ongoing and since the beginning of November, over 30 roadside radar stations in Brittany that were being used to ‘police’ this new tax on lorries have been destroyed.
The government here may be a past master at imposing new taxes and new charges - hardly a day goes past
without some new imposition. But it is singularly inept at deciphering social trends and reacting ccordingly. Homelessness here in Ireland is at an all time high - it’s a problem that doesn’t even need a lot of money to solve,but plenty
of organisation.
Yet the government’s attitude to the problem is simply just to ignore it. It’s the same with rental levels in the private sector, which are shooting up, so much so that lots of people can’t now afford to pay current rent levels and are adding to the homeless totals. Yet the government is in blissful denial of the whole problem - it obviously hasn’t the foggiest notion about what’s happening, let alone do anything about
it.
But at least one recent survey portrayed the people of Ireland in a good light. It seems that around 75 per cent of the population has no objection to the proposed approval of gay marriage. A spirit of live and let
live is very evident. In the old days, the Catholic church and its followers would have fulminated from on high at the very idea, but not now. It makes it all the harder to understand why there is such a venomous opposition to the same idea in France.
Just to conclude this week, I was reading the other day about the tourist delights of Avignon, including the former Papal palace. It has the largest collection of medieval Italian art outside Italy. Lots of 20th century art can be seen at the Angladon gallery and of course you can walk along the famous half bridge across the River Rhone. According to the famous French song, you should see people dancing on the 12th century bridge. It’s very impressive to walk along, but there only four arches left and it comes to an abrupt end in the middle of the river.
Avignon, with all its medieval buildings and vast square in front of the old Papal palace, is a tourist mecca - the place is absolutely jam packed. For that reason, I’d never recommend anyone to stay in Avignon, but to go to Villeneuve-les-Avignon, five kms distant on the other side of the river. It’s a lovely small town with about 10,000 people and an absolutely splendid ultra luxurious hotel, the Prieuré and lots of restaurants, as well as the old fort and abbey of St André and other ancient buildings. It all makes for a most delightful mix and you can wander round without bumping into a whole lot of other tourists.
Having said all that, there has been much to recommend the weather in recent days here in Dublin, with daytime temperatures up to around 15 degrees Centigrade and some magnificent sunshine. Yesterday, I walked beside the Grand Canal in the city and the colours on the foliage were as striking as anything you’d see during the fall in the north-eastern US.