Also today was the afternoon off (I was not sure, so I went to the school and asked from the reception), I had the idea to go and have a look of Avignon or, as the Plan B, Marseille. There is a bus connection to Avignon and a regional train connection with Marseille.
Internet suggests that the fastest way of getting from Aix to Avignon with public transport is to take the bus to the TGV station, take the TGV to Avignon, then take the bus from Avignon TGV station to the city centre. But this, however, requires a TGV ticket which has to be booked in advance (and can be rather expensive). So I went to the bus station and looked up.
Bad luck, there indeed are buses that go from Aix to Avignon, but they are meant more for student commuting and not for tourists. I was at the station at about 14:30 hours; one had left at 13:00 and the next (and last) one would leave at 17:00; the latter would arrive at 18:45 in near darkness (the ticket booth of the papal palace is open only until 18:00) and, worst of all, the last bus back would leave at 19:00.
Deciding that a quarter of hours was not enough to see Avignon, I soon found out that the best connection to Marseille is by the local train. I walked to the train station, almost stood its long line, ...but then saw from the information panels that railway is on strike and the trains do not go until 16:11 (it was then about 14:54). So it would be again a walk in the dark, so I decided not to go at all.
Instead I went to the Cité des Livres and saw an exhibition about the history of the journalistic photo.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Presentation
We had to make an oral presentation for the class, for which I had done mental preparations since the day this task was given. The problem was that most of interesting material resides at external hard disks, but here I had only the few things I had on the laptop's hard disk.
So I planned to speak about a little science project I have done since last spring, basically about observing bats near where I live.
My mouth dropped open when, by blind chance, on Tuesday a classmate made a presentation also on bats. So I was upset for a while, as I could not just create a new presentation from scratch in two days, if not it was the one I made at an earlier language course, about Alex the parrot, in a neat PowerPoint presentation, but it would have required a major rewriting of its text and well, it would have been reusing an old presentation, too. So I had to shift the emphasis a little from the biology and physiology (where the classmate was definitely a better specialist) to the behaviour, my observation methods and findings.
And, while the Tuesday presentation only mentioned a bat detector, I could show mine!
The teacher told that over the years in the school she had heard about 1500 presentations, but not once about bats, not speaking of two at the same course.
So I planned to speak about a little science project I have done since last spring, basically about observing bats near where I live.
My mouth dropped open when, by blind chance, on Tuesday a classmate made a presentation also on bats. So I was upset for a while, as I could not just create a new presentation from scratch in two days, if not it was the one I made at an earlier language course, about Alex the parrot, in a neat PowerPoint presentation, but it would have required a major rewriting of its text and well, it would have been reusing an old presentation, too. So I had to shift the emphasis a little from the biology and physiology (where the classmate was definitely a better specialist) to the behaviour, my observation methods and findings.
And, while the Tuesday presentation only mentioned a bat detector, I could show mine!
The teacher told that over the years in the school she had heard about 1500 presentations, but not once about bats, not speaking of two at the same course.
Museum tour
As the teachers were on a training on Wednesday afternoon, we had no classes and suddenly I found that I had free time at the time when the museums were open. So I started the museum tour from the studio of Cezanne which consisted more or less from one large room—his studio! Though I did know who Cezanne was before arriving to Aix (and even about his connection with Aix that I read form the travel guide in the train), I do not know much else and so it was a little difficult to me cherish his few surviving personal belongings (a guide told that Cezanne's sister had after her brother's death burnt most of his old furniture, so that some of the furniture is in fact Cezanne's mother's). His paintings were represented as prints, including, of course, the bathing ladies which was painted there. The exhibits included his rucksack, walking stick and four umbrellas.
The next museum on the tour was the nature history museum which are generally oriented at schoolchildren. Apart from the systematic overview of animals and plants which is used to educate visiting schoolchildren, they usually present very interesting local items, so any nature history museum is worth visiting. In Aix this local stuff were dinosaur skeletons and fossilised eggs from the local Mount St-Victoire. Interesting, as were the models of local geological development.
The third museum was the Granet art museum, with metal detector gates at entrance, and much of it housed a temporary exhibition of Kandinsky. A domestic saying We have read about it fits my impressions perfectly.
A series of three halls housed a collection of French 19th-century monumental painting. Curious, and I had not seen such art in such numbers before. 19th century was obviously before photography and photographic wallpaper were invented; and it also was the time when certain areas of the human body were strictly taboo, resulting in depicting a wide range of what later centuries would call medical abnormalities.
The hall below housed an interesting collection of sculptures, many of which were of painted plaster (also 19th c.), this material being rather rare in museum collections by now.
Also on the ground floor there was the 20th century part of the permanent collection, including eight small paintings of Cezanne, a room of Giacometti of which all pieces except one were temporarily on loan elsewhere, and a room of the Cubist art. For a very long time I have not been at an art museum which most rewarding style was Cubism.
The cellar housed an interesting collection of pre-Roman archaeological finds, and thematic selections of paintings in the museum collection (such as Portraits of Children, Portraits of Old People, Ecstasy, or Clothing on Portraits).
Including the three kilometres I walked between the museums, the tour took about two and half hours.
The next museum on the tour was the nature history museum which are generally oriented at schoolchildren. Apart from the systematic overview of animals and plants which is used to educate visiting schoolchildren, they usually present very interesting local items, so any nature history museum is worth visiting. In Aix this local stuff were dinosaur skeletons and fossilised eggs from the local Mount St-Victoire. Interesting, as were the models of local geological development.
The third museum was the Granet art museum, with metal detector gates at entrance, and much of it housed a temporary exhibition of Kandinsky. A domestic saying We have read about it fits my impressions perfectly.
A series of three halls housed a collection of French 19th-century monumental painting. Curious, and I had not seen such art in such numbers before. 19th century was obviously before photography and photographic wallpaper were invented; and it also was the time when certain areas of the human body were strictly taboo, resulting in depicting a wide range of what later centuries would call medical abnormalities.
The hall below housed an interesting collection of sculptures, many of which were of painted plaster (also 19th c.), this material being rather rare in museum collections by now.
Also on the ground floor there was the 20th century part of the permanent collection, including eight small paintings of Cezanne, a room of Giacometti of which all pieces except one were temporarily on loan elsewhere, and a room of the Cubist art. For a very long time I have not been at an art museum which most rewarding style was Cubism.
The cellar housed an interesting collection of pre-Roman archaeological finds, and thematic selections of paintings in the museum collection (such as Portraits of Children, Portraits of Old People, Ecstasy, or Clothing on Portraits).
Including the three kilometres I walked between the museums, the tour took about two and half hours.
French wines
On Tuesday night, after another eight hours of classes, we had a special event where a wine specialist told us about all the wine-growing regions of France, and then we degustated five different wines, taking notes about their appearance, bouquet and taste.
After that, I found it to be the suitable hour of being in the city at the time when the restaurants are already opened for dinner. So I had a lunch of a chef's seafood special, and judging by the waiting time (and that it took about fifteen minutes more after the waitress had told me that it would be ready in just two more minutes) it was excellent. By the taste as well, of course.
Knowing that I still had piles of homework to do, I drank only mineral water, and as I arrived to the restaurant with two small degustating glasses and three more sips of wine in my body, I could have been the first person in the restaurant's history who left it in a less inebriated state than he came.
After that, I found it to be the suitable hour of being in the city at the time when the restaurants are already opened for dinner. So I had a lunch of a chef's seafood special, and judging by the waiting time (and that it took about fifteen minutes more after the waitress had told me that it would be ready in just two more minutes) it was excellent. By the taste as well, of course.
Knowing that I still had piles of homework to do, I drank only mineral water, and as I arrived to the restaurant with two small degustating glasses and three more sips of wine in my body, I could have been the first person in the restaurant's history who left it in a less inebriated state than he came.
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