Flavigny sur ozerain
Lucky for me, I spent this the weekend of July 4th in the beautiful region of Burgundy, staying with my professor, Maud McInerney, and her daughter in a little town called Flavigny sur Ozerain. The week before was busier than usual- I had a surprising amount of work at my internship and I babysat four days out of five. I also cut my finger open by accident with a knife – feeling faint at the sight of a gushing finger at 8 am makes you wish you didn’t live alone. I may sound like a baby, but it would have been nice to have someone hand me a band-aid, you know? In any case someone helped me trace the karma of this event during the weekend, but we will get to the later…the point is, the weekend was a great break from Parisian life – a much needed breath of country air.
I previously thought that my professor learned French in Canada, but I was mistaken. Silly silly assumptions. Maud’s parents actually bought this house soon after she was born and they lived there long enough for her to go to school there. Later they moved to Canada where she continued school and returned to spend the summers there. Now Maud spends her summers there with her husband, also a professor, and their son James and daughter Lucy (who I had the pleasure of meeting).
Besides the fact that the town is stunningly beautiful (rightfully meriting being recognized as one of the 100 Most Beautiful Towns in France) and that Maud’s house is very charming, what struck me most about the weekend was the pervading sense of community. Maud knows everyone in the town- some from as early as the sandbox. She isn’t just a foreigner who owns a home in the picturesque French countryside- she is truly woven into the fabric of the neighborhood. It was incredibly refreshing to be surrounded by community; even if I myself was distanced a bit from those connections.
View from the room that I stayed in:
From the walk around town:
It was also incredibly nice to have someone waiting for me at the edge of the train platform. As much as I love traveling and being abroad, you lose the sense of coming back home. When I came back from Morocco to Paris, I half-expected to have my mom or grandma waiting for me at the airport. I realized that Paris is not Poland or NYC, and that freedom isn’t always so cushy…
But back to the weekend! After our drive back from the train station, we had lunch and then took a walk around the town itself…petting many neighborhood cats along the way.
Then we drove down to a nearby lake! I didn’t realize how badly I had missed nature and swimming and mingling in it!
Then we passed by a cool Gothic church, that had never been finished, but could have been very stunning had it been.
My professors Fiat Panda:
The next day was truly a dream. We had been invited by Maud’s friend Wendy to come pick cherries. Not only did we pick cherries but also red current and raspberries! My grandparents used to have red, white and black currant growing around their house in Poland and picking those fruits made me feel deeply nostalgic for all the summers I had spent with them. Afterwards, feeling inspired, Maud and Wendy made cherry jam and Lucy and I worked on making a salad for lunch- truly a foodie’s dream. It was during this conversation that Wendy and I started chatting about Opinel knives- a french brand of pocket knives that my host family had given me as a gift earlier in the semester, and the knife with which I had cut myself. Apparently, one is not to accept knifes as gifts, so I should have given my host family a centime or two to secure my future luck. Now I know ;)!
Back to foodie heaven- all the ingredients in the salad came from Wendy’s garden…the eggs from her geese and the bread home baked! We ended off the meal with raspberries and cream and some espresso coffee. Incredibly delicious! We came back home, read a little, and then went next door for a little July 4th get together with other townies. Then it was time for me to catch my train back to Paris… Honestly, I really had no desire to leave. I feel incredibly grateful for how open Maud and Lucy were with me during my stay and how well they received me. It was great to get to know both of them in this light. :)
