It is always good to receive feedback about the Blog. (Although I wouldn't have been too thrilled to have had a call from the authorities about last week's Posting in which I published a 'secret' photo of Viscount Montgomery and my Uncle Archie. So far so good---I'm still in Virgil, not the Tower of London.)
Recently there was a contact from an ex-labourer teacher who had worked for Frontier College at the same time I did. There was also an email from someone whose mother had grown up in Arthur about the Posting on Rixon Rafter, Arthur's blind editor (Posting #132
And then in the past week there was an email from a man in Berlin who had worked in Russia (1991-93) just before I was there (1995-97). He had done a Google search for an artist whose paintings he had bought during visits to Moscow's flea market, Izmailovsky Park. Google directed him to Posting 131 in which I described buying paintings by the same artist, Piganov.
The Berliner, Jules, shared photos of his three paintings with me and has agreed to let me add two of the them to Posting 131. The paintings were done in 1991 and reflect the emotions---fear, anger, love and more---the artist felt as the changes brought about by Glasnost, Perestroika and the demise of the USSR swept across Russia.
Jules, who now owns a small cafe in Berlin, and I have agreed that the third painting is just too horrific for a family blog. It is a powerful painting reminiscent of Picasso's brutal Guernica, which portrayed the death and destruction caused in the 1930s by the bombing of Spain by the axis forces.
You can see the two paintings by clicking here.
I told Jules that perhaps this will be the start of a fan club for Mr. Piganov, with other purchasers of his pictures stumbling (Googling?) onto my blog.
He liked that idea!
000
The Underside of Paris
In the 1980s Pat and our daughter accompanied me to Lisbon where I had been asked to speak at a conference arranged by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), on the subject of employment programs After the speech and some sightseeing in Portugal, we travelled by train to Paris so I could meet with several OECD officials.
During my meetings, Pat and our daughter toured Paris on their own, visiting the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and other 'must' sights. I had planned a free day after the meetings so that the three of us could do something together, before returning to Canada.
It turned out that our daughter had had enough of sightseeing. She really wanted to visit some fashion shops. Pat was keen on that as well.
But my feeling was---'not so much'.
We agreed that they would go shopping in the morning and then we would meet for lunch and do something together in the afternoon.
They were concerned that I might be bored wandering around Paris without them, but paraphrasing Samuel Johnson's famous comment about London I told them that 'when a person is tired of Paris he is tired of life' (or something like that).
I didn't tell them that I would probably be visiting the sewers of Paris.
I can hear people asking, "The sewers of Paris? Why?"
Victor Hugo is probably to blame for my interest in the sewers of Paris. As you will recall one of his character, Jean Valjean from Les Misérables, scurried from place to place in Paris via the underground 'roads'. Or perhaps my interest was piqued by the Phantom of the Opera, who also frequented the sewers.
Anyway, clutching my Fodor Guide to Paris, I took the Metro to the Alma Morceau station and once on the surface tried to find the entrance to the sewers. Today, there is a very prominent sign, "VISITE DES EGOUTS DE PARIS" (doesn't 'EGOUTS', sound ever so much nicer than 'SEWERS'?) but back in the 1980s the sewers were treated as a backwater attraction (sorry about that!).
As I tried to find the entrance, a Japanese fellow came up and thrusting his Japanese-language tour book at me, said something in his language. He pointed at a map in the book that clearly showed the Alma Morceau Metro stop and a lot of Japanese characters that meant nothing to me. Then he spread his arms, and raised his shoulders in that universal language that means' Where is it?'.
Just at that moment I saw a tiny sign at the top of a flight of steps and the word 'EGOUTS'. I pointed to the sign. He thanked me (I think), bowed slightly and then waited for me to go first.
The stairs led to a museum that described the history of Paris's sewers. The first sewer was constructed in 1370 under the Rue Montmartre, and bits were added to it sporadically over the centuries. However, it wasn't until 1850 when a typhoid epidemic swept Paris---Louis Pasteur lost three of his children to typhoid---that the city was prepared to spend the money needed to create proper sewage and water supply networks.
The story of the construction and operation of the sewers is a fascinating one that I won't go into here, but you can follow on these links: Wikipedia's "Paris Sewers", and a blog by the 'MuseumChick', Danee Gilmartin, entitled "The Perfect Date Place in Paris... For a Rat---The Sewer Museum"
After the museum, we were led to a wide walkway that ran alongside an operating sewer, a large tunnel lined with bricks and stone, with a channel, perhaps 10 feet wide, full of brown rushing water.
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| The image is complements of Wikimedia Commons. |
And, everyone wants to know, what about the smell and the rats?
There was a dank smell that one would expect from a damp, subterranean location but, at least when I visited, not the smells I had been expecting---unpleasant bathroom odours or the rotten-egg smell typical of sewer gas. It is clear that the sewers are well ventilated.
And I didn't see any rats or other vermin.
Leaving the sewers, I felt happy I had gone. The sewers can't compete with the Louvre or Notre Dame Cathedral in terms of artistic creativity, but they represent an engineering genius that is worth studying and paying homage to.
At lunch, Pat and our daughter talked about the shops they had seen and the things they had bought. When they asked me what I had done, they were outraged.
Why hadn't I told them what I was planning to do?
When I asked whether they would have gone into the sewers the response was, 'No way!'.
I told them what it was like and they shivered with disgust.
But I should have told them, and given them the chance to say 'no'.
Thirty years later, they still look at me accusingly as they tell about the time I went off by myself to see the sewers of Paris.
000
An interesting sidelight on the sewers.
Before we left Paris, we had lunch with two OECD officials and Pat or our daughter (I can't remember which) told about my visit to the sewers.
One of the officials, a British fellow who had lived in Paris for many years, said that there was a tradition among Parisian high schools of holding their graduation parties in the sewers. His daughter and her classmates pried loose a grill, and with lanterns, boom boxes, and lots of food and wine had partied away the night---alongside the rushing brown water!
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See you on March 25, 2012 for Posting #141 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@gmail.com.
Note:
In Posting # 7 of The Icewine Guru, the Guru offer his views on the birth control furor in the US and whether it was 'an epic blunder' by Obama, or a clever trap set by him for the Republicans. Click on http://theicewineguru.blogspot.com/
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