(no subject)
And another day in France! I don't know, for the record, if my internet access is going to be this good when I move into the residence I'll be staying in for the rest of my time here (until I go off geeking my way through Brittany the last week of October). I'm enjoying it while it lasts, though!
Anyway, today runs something along the lines of France, 2: Regan, 2.5.
On the France side, I got hideously lost in the back alleys/biking paths of north Suburban Angers early this afternoon, as I was looking for a bus route into downtown that might have run into downtown more often on Sundays than the one closest to my hostel, which was running every hour and a half at that point, and which I had missed by about five minutes. I eventually turned back when my path turned into someone's driveway after following an old-looking farmyard's admittedly awesome old stone walls halfway around. I retraced my fairly extensive footsteps back to my hostel to regroup, by which point it was more or less time for the next bus on the nearby route to come. I caught that into downtown.
But because of that, France got its other point, which was that, in my haste to get to the archives, which were open to the public today, and not to miss their free public tours, I decided to deal with food, or rather, my lack thereof, afterwards. And then I got caught out (worse than I would have been in the early afternoon, which was bad enough) by everything being closed on Sunday evenings. There were restaurants and cafés open, but I haven't worked up to that yet this trip. So my food intake today has consisted of two instant vegetable soup packages that I got at Monoprix yesterday, and three instant oatmeal packages that I brought with me from Trader Joe's in Boston. They've done their job well, but I'm not exactly feeling satisfied. I am determined to make tomorrow the day I actually make it up in time for breakfast.
On the Regan side, on the other hand, I went running this morning, and it was excellent! It was nice and cool, and I did most of the just-over 5k loop of trail around the Lac du Maine. About half of it is on a dike between the lake and the river, and it's very pretty! I'll go again on Tuesday morning, I hope. It will be harder to get to once I move, but I might have to try and make it back some weekend anyway.
And finally, I went to the archives! When I finally found the bus and then found them, I was almost too daunted to go in, especially when I saw that the front doors were open and as I got closer, that a veritable flock of archivists were lurking in the doorway. But I went in anyway, and one of the archivists let me know what was going on, and then I went to look at one of their exhibits (on the flood of 1910 in Angers) as I waited for their pre-tour archives presentation to start. Pleasingly, I didn't have any problem understanding the presentation, and did pretty well with the very fast-talking archivist who led the tour. I seem to make a pretty good show of knowing French, as long as I don't open my mouth.
But the thing that was really awesome, which gave the archives trip an extra half-point, was that during the presentation beforehand, the archivist showed us some of the archive's oldest and most shiny medieval stuff - a charter of Pepin I of Aquitaine (the grandson of Charlemagne) recording a donation to Saint-Florent de Saumur, and the cartulaire-rouleau (a cartulary in roll form, one of a pair) of Saint-Florent. It is staggeringly well-preserved, but the archivist just brought it out, and unrolled it a little to show us... and here I thought I'd never see it in any form but microfilm! SUPER-exciting.
I'm still a little nervous, but now mostly excited, about starting work in the archives tomorrow. I still have to figure out what I'm going to try and look at, but I'm thinking single-sheet charters. I think there's a fairly high risk that I'm going to tear up a little if they actually let me have one (of course I'll be careful not to cry on it), so I should probably try and make it an awesome one. As if they aren't all awesome, I mean...
I've also got a minuscule cold (via roommate J's rafting trip in the other Maine last weekend), so I'll have to be careful not to sneeze on the documents either.
I'm quite nervous, and hatching elaborate bus-route plans, about getting my stuff over to my new residence on Tuesday, but I probably don't need to go into the details about that. I think I should go and look at my spreadsheets of archival material and send some more emails to archivists!
Anyway, today runs something along the lines of France, 2: Regan, 2.5.
On the France side, I got hideously lost in the back alleys/biking paths of north Suburban Angers early this afternoon, as I was looking for a bus route into downtown that might have run into downtown more often on Sundays than the one closest to my hostel, which was running every hour and a half at that point, and which I had missed by about five minutes. I eventually turned back when my path turned into someone's driveway after following an old-looking farmyard's admittedly awesome old stone walls halfway around. I retraced my fairly extensive footsteps back to my hostel to regroup, by which point it was more or less time for the next bus on the nearby route to come. I caught that into downtown.
But because of that, France got its other point, which was that, in my haste to get to the archives, which were open to the public today, and not to miss their free public tours, I decided to deal with food, or rather, my lack thereof, afterwards. And then I got caught out (worse than I would have been in the early afternoon, which was bad enough) by everything being closed on Sunday evenings. There were restaurants and cafés open, but I haven't worked up to that yet this trip. So my food intake today has consisted of two instant vegetable soup packages that I got at Monoprix yesterday, and three instant oatmeal packages that I brought with me from Trader Joe's in Boston. They've done their job well, but I'm not exactly feeling satisfied. I am determined to make tomorrow the day I actually make it up in time for breakfast.
On the Regan side, on the other hand, I went running this morning, and it was excellent! It was nice and cool, and I did most of the just-over 5k loop of trail around the Lac du Maine. About half of it is on a dike between the lake and the river, and it's very pretty! I'll go again on Tuesday morning, I hope. It will be harder to get to once I move, but I might have to try and make it back some weekend anyway.
And finally, I went to the archives! When I finally found the bus and then found them, I was almost too daunted to go in, especially when I saw that the front doors were open and as I got closer, that a veritable flock of archivists were lurking in the doorway. But I went in anyway, and one of the archivists let me know what was going on, and then I went to look at one of their exhibits (on the flood of 1910 in Angers) as I waited for their pre-tour archives presentation to start. Pleasingly, I didn't have any problem understanding the presentation, and did pretty well with the very fast-talking archivist who led the tour. I seem to make a pretty good show of knowing French, as long as I don't open my mouth.
But the thing that was really awesome, which gave the archives trip an extra half-point, was that during the presentation beforehand, the archivist showed us some of the archive's oldest and most shiny medieval stuff - a charter of Pepin I of Aquitaine (the grandson of Charlemagne) recording a donation to Saint-Florent de Saumur, and the cartulaire-rouleau (a cartulary in roll form, one of a pair) of Saint-Florent. It is staggeringly well-preserved, but the archivist just brought it out, and unrolled it a little to show us... and here I thought I'd never see it in any form but microfilm! SUPER-exciting.
I'm still a little nervous, but now mostly excited, about starting work in the archives tomorrow. I still have to figure out what I'm going to try and look at, but I'm thinking single-sheet charters. I think there's a fairly high risk that I'm going to tear up a little if they actually let me have one (of course I'll be careful not to cry on it), so I should probably try and make it an awesome one. As if they aren't all awesome, I mean...
I've also got a minuscule cold (via roommate J's rafting trip in the other Maine last weekend), so I'll have to be careful not to sneeze on the documents either.
I'm quite nervous, and hatching elaborate bus-route plans, about getting my stuff over to my new residence on Tuesday, but I probably don't need to go into the details about that. I think I should go and look at my spreadsheets of archival material and send some more emails to archivists!