International Holocaust Memorial Day 2010

* When we went to Vad Yashem, the holocaust museum near Jerusalem, there were requests not to take photographs inside the museum. It was therefore a totally immersing experience, looking through one's own eyes not thru a camera lens, and with nothing to mediate between the actuality and the fantasy. Apart from the notorious "Arbeit" gate arch, everything, everything, was original... the cobbles from the Polish streets, the cups and saucers, the ration books, the furniture, clothes, letters and postcards, posters telling of the hounding of the roma, the homosexuals, and the jews,  the shoes and mangled spectacles piled into a sunken chamber, covered with thick glass that you walked upon, as you entered the room...

The building is A shaped, and on several levels - your journey through the darkness of the years takes you up through the storeys, dark, until you exit, as if miraculously, into a bright landscape, into the sunlight, onto a glass balcony overlooking the "Promised Land".

Even for those who survived, life was hell. I recalled reading in Agnes Humbert's book Résistance her account of being a "slave worker", making Rayon in the German prison camp factories, and the grimness, the sheer daily misery and the toll on health and sanity.   Yet also glimmers of happiness and hopefulness peaked through in this amazing museum, music was played, families reunited, babies born...

Afterwards I was mute. I couldn't comprehend much of it. I couldn't understand the attitude of the British government refusing to take more than a handful of refugees, and then even more I failed to see why, afterwards, the British Mandate in Palestine closed their eyes to the people in the boats who wanted more than anything else to settle where they believed their heritage lay. It took me some time to respond to it; this drawing was my memory...

Are they candles lit in the corner, or people herded together? Is that barbed wire? and on the right, are trees sprouting new life? Make of it what you like. I still don't know...

Yad Vashem website

*on the Merkavah Journey of Light dance trip in November 2009 - see our Merkavah blog

“Oui, ché sur le train jaune…”

Is what a woman said when her mobile rang, a bit like “oh, yeh, well the fact I’m on one of the most famous little narrow-gauge trains in the world means nothing to me, I’m just getting from A to B” Which, of course, she was!

Original, genuine, poetic, impressive, outstanding, audacious… not quite the 07h37 to Victoria is it, but that’s how the regional council describes our two little yellow & red wooden wagons rattling along, winding through the gorges and mountain villages of the Conflent and Cerdagne… “you can amuse yourself by shouting out with joy when the train whistles and enters a tunnel”… to the top of the world. Well, the border at the twin towns of Bourg Madame & Puigcerda, which is where we walked across the river, into Spain and had a satisfying lunch in a Basque café. The skies were dramatic, the fields blanched still and snowdrifts on roads, black mountains rearing up, deep valleys hiding icy streams and abandoned houses. Err, Nahuja, Estavar, Via, Olette, Saillagouse, all flashed by (nobody wanted to get off ), blue enamel plaques on the little station houses, white snow cushioning their platform seats.

We met a man from Beziers who plays a hurdy-gurdy in a folkdance group – which shows you can travel through the deepest valley and still end up talking about the wonder of the Auvergne bourrée.

Images: which way is it to..?; Cambra d’Ase in the Pyrénées looking like an ECM CD cover; Mont Louis sunset.

So, with the pharmacy thermometer showing 19°C…

we had a good sunny walk over the hill to Catllar, the first picnic of the year by the river and a lovely cup of tea on getting home. We’ll get the 09h05 train tomorrow!

The only main ‘resolution’ I have made this year is to Regret Nothing Not Done, and not to say “If only I’d…”  (been on a different train, gone to two dances rather than one, not tried to pack too much into a day: last year thinking like that got me stressed. I missed out on walking in the fresh air (cos of sitting at my desk too much), sleeping well (cos of staying on the computer til 1am), meeting friends (both of those reasons!). This year, there will be t-i-m-e… and if there isn’t, then I am not meant to do it! 

A ride on the Train Jaune… or not

A beautiful day was forecast, total soleilléeee!!! Time for a trip up the Conflent valley on the little “Canary”, the yellow tourist train which turns itself into a ski-train for the winter, at a bargain price of 10€ return to anywhere up as far as the Spanish border at Latour de Carol. Well, it’s not 31^st May yet so although we got there for the 10h05, we would’ve had to wait til summer... Instead we walked through a deserted Villefranche de Conflent, usually a tourist-trap but every shopkeeper is on their “congés d’hiver”… incidentally the only context in which I see this word used now - when I learned French at school, that was the word for a holiday.

The Turret and Boulangerie Sign images are from the town, the “Carlines” from a house opposite the station, seemingly empty as well. The two wheels are thistle flowers (carlina cynara, same family as artichokes) used in the Pyrénées as good luck symbols on houses. And acne treatment. Full of thorns, to pick, however!

Canigo from Perpignan

.... but from the other side, there's no snow!