Corbie and bread

Corbie was the second town we visited  and is close to Villers-Bretonneux. Corbie has a market on Friday mornings. We went there regularly.

We have been rewarded with Toulouse sausages (saucisses), dried meats, fish, pate,  fruit, lentils and beans of various forms, mushrooms and other vegetables. We have yet to get more gastronomically adventurous (horse and blood sausage, pickled tongue etc). As it turns out, 80% of the market is cheap clothes and other haberdashery.

However, the highlight of Corbe for us was the tourist office. This had serious material concerning  the week of ANZAC day celebrations, a large display showing their dedication to the War and Bread and a model of the Sir John Monash Education center.

The pictures give a pretty good idea. This is serious craftsmanship; these are not play-dough kindergarten creations. If you can do this with flour and a few ingredients, then you can also create other foodstuffs that are exactly what they are meant to be, with no tolerance for error. Its not surprising that boulangeries also have perfect rows of many different cakes in some perfection; I will put a picture at the end.  From the land of food.

 

There were posters about different logistics of baking under fire, German bread, bread for prisoners, and many avocations of bread as essential to the well-being of the soldier, including a poignant one of a meal of bread before going over the top -‘bread before death’ (sort of a last supper or last rites theme). Who else but the French!

 

Apparently (my translation is highly suspect)  French bread is pure and white, while German bread is brown and heavy. I suspect I am missing some deeper symbolic content here, about refinement versus coarseness. 

Indeed as anyone knows, a fresh baguette (baguettes are always fresh, the boulangerie-pâtisserie shop is even open on public holidays) does have some sort of perfection; a soft paper-textured golden skin with a fine soft inner core and the fermented aroma of fresh bread that is lost within a few hours. One can also buy brown or ‘rustic’ baguettes  but these are still pretty lightweight and advertised as nouveau!

I miss the heavy-duty grainy bread we had in Amsterdam – a thick slice of that kept you going all morning.

Pâtisseries – sorry in the shade, does not do it justice – but you get the picture, yum!

John Monash Centre

The tourist office also has a model  of the $100 million Sir John Monash Centre which is under construction nearby. (sorry about the reflections off the glass protecting it). The imposing front section (model above right) was built in the 1930s (and has many bullet pock marks from WW2). The new Center (currently a hole in the ground) (picture left) will be a very large multimedia education facility directly at the rear of this, to highlight Australia’s role in the conflict.

I have some mixed feelings about all this ‘education’. Most other countries have relatively modest memorials (if you exclude the UK monolith at Thiepval – more about this in ‘Cemeteries and Memorials’). Essentially these are commemorating and respectfully remembering the dead, (and not their deeds) whereas Australia seems to be heavily investing at multiple sites to encourage and nurture something mythic from so long ago. You are left with the questions of ‘why’ and who controls a nations identity?

On the day of writing this i also came across a couple of articles in the Guardian partly reflecting similar concerns, see here, and here – the history wars, part II.

However, I also note elsewhere that the Museum at Peronne  does not seem to recognize the leading role of Australia in its (and Mont St Quentin’s) liberation, while (as I understand) over-emphasizing that of the US. Thus some attention to our history may be required. My views on memorials evolve, see the post on Belgium too.

 

Australia in the war, 1918; 101

It is now said (by Australian Government publicists), that Australia’s most significant contribution to victory in the First World War was made on the Western Front in France and Belgium between 1916 and 1918. This was when “Australian forces engaged the main enemy on the main battlefront and made an appreciable difference to the outcome”.

We celebrate the Dardanelles campaign and the ‘ANZAC legend’ for other reasons. As far as I can see New Zealand and Australian troops did not act in unison on the Western Front.

This is not saying ‘Australia won the war’ but rather that it advanced its section of a very large line, using our own skills, tactics and leadership, often with great courage and sacrifice of lives.

The major battles (read ‘loss of life’) for Australia, were at Passchendale, Pozieres, Bullecourt and Fromelles. Victory is a relative term, most had appalling losses to both sides and moved the line a matter of miles.These all occurred before 1918 and therefore were outside the primary scope of our visit, although we may go to some of these sites in time.

Our focus is on the battles of 1918 which occurred as part of the wider ‘Somme Offensive’ and are notable as  they contributed towards a final Armistice which ended the war in November 1918.

In particular General (Sir) John Monash’s decisive 4 July 1918 victory at Le Hamel, while relatively small in comparison to some other battles, became regarded as a text-book example of innovative tactics and meticulous planning, combining tanks, aircraft, artillery and mobile ground troops that became the template for the much larger operations that followed.

The towns that saw the ‘heaviest fighting’ for Australians in pushing back the German advance in 1918 include Villers Bretoneaux, Mont St Quentin-Peronne and Hamel. Smaller ones include Albert and Corbie. However skirmishes occurred over a wide area, for example, our tiny hamlet of Lavieville has 6 Australian dead in its cemetery.

The position of the front-line  between Germany and the Allies moved frequently throughout 1918. In simple terms in early 1918, the Germans, using troops relieved from the Russian Front and fearing the impact of newly arrived American troops, had a major push towards Amiens and Paris and advanced through about half of the region shown in the map below. They were then driven back by British, French, Australian, New Zealand and American troops in the period from April to October.

Below is the best map I can find of the extent of the early German advance. It covers the period 21 March to the 4th May shown as purple, blue and green lines, moving left towards Amiens. Unfortunately it does not show the full extent of the Germans’ advance later that month which includes the capture of Villers Bretonneux using gas attacks (which alone caused 1000 Australian casualties) and tanks. The Germans hardly used tanks in comparison to the Allies; this this encounter in Mid-May was the first tank on tank battle of WW1. On their second attempt, Australian troops recaptured Villers Bretonneaux in April 25th (ANZAC day) following extremely vicious and heroic fighting, including the wining of 2 VCs.

The below image (taken from the display at the Australian War memorial on the hill outside Villers Bretonneux) shows the Allied advance from August to September in the other direction. With the breaching of the major defensive Hindenburg line the Germans were steadily falling back. Suffering war weariness and civil unrest the Kaiser abdicated. The Armistice took effect on 11 November 1918.

This overall movement for all Allies along the entire Western Front in 1918 can be seem below, with the initial German advance deeper into France on the left, with the subsequent Allied advance towards Germany on the right. Paris, lower left, is a useful reference point. On these maps Australia, Canada and New Zealand appear in the fine print.

Finding ‘Le Poulialler’

Amiens is a historic city, famous for its World Heritage 13th Century Cathedral, see. We did not have have a lot of time to admire its amazing carvings of saints or its engineeringly- troublesome flying buttresses, but here is an obligatory picture.

Hopefully travel blunders don’t always come in threes; but we did miss our train connection between Paris and Amiens, when we arrived in Amiens the Avis car hire office was closed (in contradiction of its ‘opening hours’), and when we got the car, the AirBnB directions in Googlemaps took us to a different village about 6 kms from our residence (each contained a ‘Grande Rue’, but Google maps does not list the ‘Grande Rue’ in our destination’s address). I suspect ‘Grande Rue’ must refer to a 17th Century real-estate agent’s promise; our is simply a 100 M strip between two other named roads with a few farm houses on it; including ours.

I want to proclaim that through the kindness of strangers we made it. The locals could not have been more helpful. Thank you to the rail clerk  in Paris who reissued tickets, the French/Punjabi student and the desk clerk  at the Mercure Hotel who sorted out Avis on their phones, the man who mimed us to follow his car when were completely lost (street names in villages are incomplete – only required by people who don’t live there) and the sweet lady who mimed we should try a different village. The Gwynne gene more than Lib’s language mastery helped a lot too, but she did well.

Several hours later we made it to Le Poulialler (the chicken coup).

And yes there are chickens in the back yard (and very free range) .. everytime we approach with food scraps about 40 of them come flying down the yard, wings frantically flapping before going head first into the pile of food. Strangely the three roosters who act the part, seem to have little capacity to score food in the rush and usually retire with ruffled feathers and a haughty attitude while the smart hens make a dash somewhere private with a choice bread crust.

Please don’t get me wrong, i love our little ‘chicken coup’, and our AirBnB hosts are nothing but delightful, warm and generous. But initially, i was a little overwhelmed about the extensive ‘chicken’ theme of the place, at first count i noted 14 items but this was a serious underestimate and i keep finding them, it’s at least double or perhaps triple this … calendars, bowls, trays, table cloth, coal scuttle,  framed pictures, bowls, cups etc, i am starting to seriously love them, its sort of an art installation and has a sense of fun, indeed it requires extra effort and is the antithesis of Ikea …which most AirBnBs are decorated from, so here are just a few….

 

 

Amsterdam to Amiens

At Paris there was a one hour wait to get the connecting train to Amiens. Suddenly from the corner of the voluminous hall echoed the chant of a mob followed by a crowd of around 100 youths, some masked, shouting, running, waving banners and excitedly running down the hall. I can only presume this was something to do with the current Nuit debout (loosely ‘rise up at night’) protest movement. You can read more here.

‘..everyone here is dead, I see no signs of life in anyone’: Arielle (married French heroine) to her prospective lover Brian (a US writer) on their first date at the Guggenheim, in the film 5 to 7.

Suddenly there was a visceral thrill in being present; a passion, a daring at odds with the structured conformity of our ever more technically-programmed lives. Such revelry was broken by the incessant wailing of multiple sirens as the heavily equipped riot police (looking somewhat bored, as if they did this all day) also invaded the hall. Most people regarded the spectacle with weary nonchalance. Slow hounds after a fast fox. 

Our train, moving through a countryside transected by highways, easily outpaces the cars and omnipresent convoys of trucks. Despite a weak sun, the light lacks intensity and is scattered with a slight brown haze after closing visibility to a couple of kilometers. Perhaps this hangs over much of Europe; there are no boundaries and pollution spreads from industrial and population centers. Wind turbines dot the landscape and in Antwerp were even sited within the residential areas.

3 days in Amsterdam

I will try and keep this to few words and many pictures.

The afternoon after our arrival was spent wandering close to the apartment of the friends we were staying with. First impressions are often strong and accurate, before familiarity and acclimatization set in. There are many cliches about Amsterdam but the most wonderful is the bicycles.

The way that humans glide  without effort, as in dreams of flight, making only slight adjustments to interweave their paths. 

And bicycles can be stored so compactly

The next cliche is the canals (with bicycles)

We had been out eating and were caught in a heavy shower coming home, but were rewarded with this spectacular rainbow over the city from the apartment

Another view from this apartment just before dawn (damn you, jet lag). While the trees and mist create a rural feeling and depth, this is from the middle of the city looking towards the Rijksmuseum.  Amsterdam, you are so damn beautiful to wake up to.

The Rjijksmuseum is arguably the number one tourist attraction (? maybe Van Gogh).

To see images that adorn familiar walls in Dubbo and chocolate boxes in their originals form is often astonishing. The originals are much more vibrant in color (and also smaller) than the prints.

Another striking thing about Amsterdam is that pretty much every one is slim, even more so than in New York. Overweight people are rarer than bicycles helmets. No idea whether this applies outside the city. There were more plump people in this 1643 painting of a local militia, than in a suburb of Amsterdam. 

I did not know that in 1623 people like van Honthorst painted such play-full tender pictures

Nor had I seen anything quite as visceral as this 2013 work by Anis Kapoor, (exhibited among the Dutch Masters); its three dimensional silicone and is like endless mutilated bodies, well perhaps not mutilated as we are all a bit like this inside, but it was prescient given we are off to the Somme.

And now a word about windmills. I have it on reliable authority (Alain de Botton) that in the 1800s windmills were seen as ugly and not depicted in the paintings denoting the rural idyll. This concentrated on cows, sheep, farm buildings, fields etc (and not the first phases on industrialization) – as shown left. At some point, the Hague School changed this and windmills were romanticized and became common elements.

So who will be the radical Australian painter (Geoffrey Smart is dead) who will paint wind turbines around Canberra in a way to make them beautiful?

This is perhaps the last windmill within the city of Amsterdam. It was used to saw wood, but now the surrounding 4-5 storey buildings prevent it getting enough breeze to even function for our amusement. Some want it restored to a windswept coastal heritage park, at present those wanting to preserve some local heritage are wining.

I could blog-on about other excellent things we did or saw; the Eye theater complex, the fantastic Public Library, cycling in Vondelpark, the tulips everywhere in the streets, (OK because you like pictures i will put some in) why the old houses were designed to lean forward into the street, the public transport, rustic bread –

The EYE,  a quick free ride by boat from Central Station, great place for coffee as the lunch area looks out over Amsterdam

In the great public library near the Central Station, one floor kids, 5 for adults and a great place for coffee on top

Vondelpark in the middle of the city is such a great place to sit in the sun and relax

but ……time to move on to our next place.