Beaune & Cluny (Borgogne) – I can’t feel my feet!!

Hospice of Beaune

Grande Salle de Povres (pauvres)

Beautiful courtyard in the hospice

Wine tasting - in the cave
with the wood barrels

This past weekend I went to Burgundy with my exchange program. It was nice to have it all planned out for us since I am currently in the middle of planning a ton of different trips that I will be taking in the next few months (don’t get me wrong, I love planning trips, but its nice sometimes just to not have to worry about the details).

Saturday:

In front of the Hospice of Beaune

We had to wake up super early in the morning so that we could meet up at 7:45am. So, I was exhausted and slept during the entire 2 hour bus ride up to Beaune. Once we got to Beaune, we met up with our guide to take a tour of the Hospice of Beaune. This is a very well known hospital that was founded in 1443. It has survived until today because it was in use continuously from 1452-1971. It was founded in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin (the chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy). This hospital became very important in the region and was staffed by nuns (who unlike in most other places, were free to stay or leave as they wished). The building itself was plain and simple on the perimeter but beautiful inside. The roof was made of glazed tiles in red, green, brown and yellow that were arranged in really pretty patterns. The hospital is arranged in a way that is foreign to me who is used to the set up of modern day hospitals. The main room, Grande Salle des Pôvres (=pauvres) has a row of beds on either side all facing towards the chapel at the end of the room. The nurses could walk behind each bed to care for the patients and the curtains to the beds facing the rest of the room could be closed for privacy and warmth (I DON’T KNOW HOW THEY SURVIVED WITHOUT HEAT! Haha). The room itself was really pretty. The coolest thing was around the ceiling were sculpted heads of noblemen next to a sculpted head of an animal that they were said to resemble in terms of their personality. I guess there were some comedians in the middle ages…Around the room was the world Seule/Seulle (it was really interesting that spelling was not yet standardized in this time). There was mass in the chapel at the end of the room every three hours. Also, running under the hospice was a river that was used to easily remove waste, corpses, etc…

Church in Beaune

Tasting room

After we finished touring the hospice, we split up and some of us (brave souls) went on a tour of the rest of Beaune and some went to sit in a café because it was unbearably cold. We saw an outdoor market where they were selling cheese and truffles (wish I could have tried some of those truffles!). We saw a Roman-style church and learned a bunch more about the history of Beaune. Honestly it was pretty and really interesting, but by that point I had literally lost all feeling in my feet (I was wearing boots and two pairs of socks but since my boots don’t have big soles and the stones on the ground were so cold, it was awful) I really don’t remember the exact details. After the tour we went to have lunch at this place called Petit Paradis. It was! It was so delicious. I have lentils wrapped in smoked salmon with horseradish cream, a steak in this really strong cheese sauce with potatoes and an incredible apple tiramisu with this delicious caramel sauce for dessert. I tried everyone else’s food there too and it was just sooo good! After lunch we went to a wine tasting at Clos Bellefond winery. We arrived there after a beautiful drive through the French countryside. Because its winter, of course there wasn’t much to see in terms of the vineyards, but we went down into their wine cellar and Monsieur Chapelle showed us around. He was such a funny looking guy and I thoroughly enjoyed our time with him. We got to taste 3 white wines and 3 red wines. Being the connoisseur of wine after my trip to Napa with Seth (HAHA) I knew that I had to swirl the wine and smell it before tasting it. M. Chapelle asked us if the wines had the taste of animal, fruit or mineral. I really couldn’t make that type of distinction. I really only liked one of the whites and I really didn’t like the reds at this place (even though I am actually growing to like reds more, like the one we had had at lunch), so I didn’t buy anything.

Domaine de Nesvres 

Lunch at Petit Paradis

After the tasting we drove to the bed and breakfast (hotel d’hote) that we were staying at. We had to go to a different one than Barbara usually uses because the pipes froze in the other one because of the cold. This one was called Domaine de Nesvres. It was an old farmhouse that was beautifully redone. After settling into our rooms, we had dinner served by the man and women who owned the place. We had pumpkin soup, chicken with Dijon mustard and white wine sauce, and a potato gratin. After that, we had a cheese course with about 10 different cheeses, including my favorite which was a white cheese covered in truffles. After that, for dessert, we had a pear and almond tart. Overall, it was a DELICIOUS dinner. However, during dinner, the power in the house went out about three times. At first I thought it was kind of funny and maybe we’d have an interesting night because of it and maybe just keep using the pretty candelabras, but then I realized we wouldn’t have heat and we all started arguing who would get to sleep with the dog for warmth. Fortunately, the power came back on – yay for not having to deal with hypothermia. After that, we had plans to try to watch a movie together, but were all pretty tired and just went to bed.

Sunday:

In the gardens of the Abbey of Cluny

On Sunday morning we all overslept our alarms and had to scramble to make it to our 8:15am breakfast. For breakfast we had this shortbread cake with a chocolate an almond layer (burgundy specialty) that was delicious. We also had other normal breakfast foods, but nothing could compare to that. After breakfast, we drove about an hour to Cluny to visit the famous Cluny Abbey. We had a great tour guide who met us there and gave us an incredibly detailed history of the abbey. It was fascinating as I really knew absolutely nothing about. I will try to piece together what I remember of it (and what Dana has reminded me of) from the tour. The Cluny Abbey is a Benedictine monastery that was founded in 910 by William I of Aquitaine, who donated the necessary money and his Merovingian-era villa for the abbey to be built. At the time purgatory didn’t exist and William wanted to ensure that he would go to heaven, not hell, so he built this abbey. The town of Cluny grew as a result of this abbey, although most of the people there were monks for a long time. The Abbey (of which not that much still remains) had two towers which were used to house the town court system, a special building for excommunicating people, and then another area where people could enter when they were accepted by the Church. There were also living quarters for monks and novices. Before the construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Cluny Abbey was the biggest building in Europe. St. Peter's was constructed specifically to be 33 feet longer than Cluny Abbey, a number that was clearly chosen for its religious significance. Cluny was a very important place and The abbot of Cluny (always chosen from the monks in Cluny) became a position that was equally as important as the Pope. One of the most important Abbots of Cluny was Hugh of Cluny, who was abbot for 60 years (between 1049 and 1109) and who greatly expanded the size and influence of the Cluny monasteries. He was also related to William the Conqueror, Ferdinand I and Alphonso VI of Spain, Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, and he was a close friend of Pope Urban II. His connections helped him run the Abbey and make it successful and well-known. (Other famous Abbots of Cluny were Richelieu and Mazarin, both of whom used the Abbey's funds to finance their lives in Paris.) 

Gardens of the Abbey of Cluny

Right before the French Revolution began, the Abbot decided to consolidate all of the Cluny monasteries and move all of the monks into the Cluny Abbey. He decided to renovate the building and knocked down most of it, but before he could rebuild, the French Revolution started and religion was declared illegal. They never were able to rebuilt it, so now it is in ruins and only certain parts remain. During Napoleon's reign, he used the Abbey as a place to temporarily house his army and their horses, because Cluny is centrally located between Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Italy. He built a building to house more horses, but he never rebuilt what had originally been torn down. Now, the Abbey is one of the three best engineering schools in France, and students live in the Abbey, despite the sub-par living conditions and minimal heating. It's an honor to go to the school, so the students are expected to deal with the conditions, and they sleep in lofted beds to conserve heat. In room in the Abbey, there are 15 different sculptures arranged around the oval-shaped space. Each sculpture depicts an Old Testament prophet that carries a banner and supports a New Testament figure (the apostles, the Virgin Mary, and a few others that I forget) on his shoulders. When the banners are read in the correct order, they spell out a basic Catholic prayer that begins "Je crois en Dieu." To figure out the correct order, you start with the prophet Simeon, who holds the first portion, and then you look to see where Simeon's eyes lead you. In this way, you figure out the order of the prayer. The last prophet's eyes look directly at the door, so when you enter the room, it is as if you are the last portion of the prayer. This is meant to suggest that the Old Testament supports to New Testament, but that you are needed to continue the prayer and therefore the future of Catholicism rests on your shoulders as well. A copy of this code is found in Rosslyn Chapel in Paris and it was referenced in The Da Vinci Code. 

After our tour of the Abbey, we had lunch at a restaurant called La Nation. I had vegetable soup topped with gruyère, salmon with citrus-cream sauce and pumpkin and zucchini, and a fruit cake that was much better than American fruit cake. Our bus driver Dominique spent most of the tour with us and was really nice and we had some interesting conversations about American stereotypes during lunch. After lunch, we drove back to Lyon and I slept the entire way. I got back to my house, had dinner with my host family, tried to put away my stuff for the weekend and went to bed pretty early in preparation for my presentation in SLM on Monday morning.