Making the Most of Their Time Here

Place Andre Chenier, where the luge is

I am so enjoying watching Jerry and Diane discover  Carcassonne, and making their own adventures, quite apart from the ones I have shared with them.  They have adopted their own neighborhood bars, and on Monday they took a trip to the Mediterranean.  Carcassonne is a very liveable place and there is always something to do, I think.  Everyone is enjoying the amusements the city has put up for the holidays.  

Skaters at Place Carnot

Today we three walked the perimeter of the Bastide together for one last time.  The temperatures were mild; it was a nice day for a walk. We all resisted the temptations of carnival food and opted for a snack and hot wine at Place Carnot.  We watched the skaters and the vendors and I wondered about the character on the ice rink--was it Puss in Boots or a big mouse?

An overgrown mouse in a big red hat? The kids loved him.

Roasted chestnuts, anyone?

 Bal at the Chapeau Rouge

Students from the Bodega school

I was reading the paper yesterday and came across an article about the bagpipers I had seen at the Cite on Saturday.  The instrument is called  a bodega.  They are made of the skin of an entire sheep, with drones and a chanter (that's the thing with the holes in it where you play the melody) attached.  Unlike the fancy Scottish bagpipes, these make no attempt to disguise their origins--it's obvious that it used to be alive.  There is a school over in the Black Mountains, not far from Carcassonne, actually, where people can learn to play these bodegas.

This guy was a really good dancer

So, this school came to town and put on a dance last night at the Chapeau Rouge. They brought with them some southern Italian friends, who happened to have a little bagpipe band of their own. They also had an accordion, drums, tambourine, a Jew's harp (can you still say that or have I made a politically incorrect gaffe?), some kind of metal pipe, a weird kind of horn that sounded like a duck howling, a guitar, a ukelele, a bottle, and some instrument that looked like a round oatmeal box with a dowel sticking out of one end. 

The Italian "amis"

The bands began to play and the people began to dance...without artifice, without any sense of self-consciousness, across gender and generational lines.  I saw traditional men/women couples dancing, women dancing with women, at one point I saw two men dancing with one another, and even some children got pulled into the circle and were dancing with the adults. One girl with the build of a ballerina was obviously the belle of the bal ; she never stopped dancing all night.  There was a guy there who was also very good. Oh yes, there were some dancers who probably will never learn a sense of rhythm, but that didn't deter them in the least.  There were people there who were clearly in their 70's; there were children, and a baby in a stroller.  I think we were the only non-Carcassonnaises there. 

One, two, three, four, five, hop

This dance wasn't about "pairing" like dancing can often be..it was about moving to the music.  (Jerry might argue that they were trying to get away from it.)  It was about tradition.  The lady in charge talked about her grandfather playing this music, as did his grandfather before him.  These people are NOT going to let this die a weak and pitiful death, nor are they going to put it in a glass case of a museum for generations to look at.  They are making this music, these dances a part of their twenty-first century lives, and we all are the richer for it.

Country dancing in a circle.