Have you ever walked through a ghost town? You know, like in the movies, where the doors to the empty tavern are still swinging in the wind, where you can almost hear the music coming out of the playhouse while the showgirls dance on stage, and you see a general store with prices of flour and sugar in the broken window, but there's not a soul to be seen?
This morning I went for a run which took me through a deserted, once-popular hippodrome (horse race course) on the outskirts of Lyon. It was apparently one of the first built in France around the turn of the century -- the last century. The stands were made entirely from concrete, the kind of concrete that LOOKS ancient, large enough to hold five or six hundred people, as were the many stables spaced around the perimeter, even a small, concrete building still proudly claiming to be the weigh station for the race horses. Very eerie! I could almost hear the cheering from the empty stands as I ran one lap on the racetrack, imagining myself to be a jockey on the back of one of the speeding thoroughbreds.
I arrived in Lyon after midnight two nights ago. I drove in from Geneva with Christophe to stay a while in his childhood home, where his parents still live. His mother dotes over me and makes me wonder if maybe I should stay a little longer than planned. If you don't see me at the gym for a few weeks,... I never left Lyon!
Of course you remember Christophe, my ski instructor friend that I meet each year in Switzerland for a week of skiing. He helps me with my skiing and I help him with his English. I wrote you a postcard last year from Lyon, too, if I remember well, but what I did not tell you about then was the uniquely impressing panoramic views Lyon has to offer. If you look in the right direction, you can see the snow-covered summit of Mont Blanc, 120km away, with much of the rest of the French alps in front. Pick any other direction and you will see another mountain range, usually 40km in the distance, each with its own small, family ski hill where Lyonais can ski afternoons after working the morning in town. Sounds like a progressive work environment to me!
Except for the area called Part-Dieu, where much construction is taking place, Lyon has not changed at all in the last year. Still a LOT of students filling the cafes, fast-food joints and shopping streets downtown, feverishly texting messages to their friends or adjusting the volume on their iPods. Still many tourists snapping pictures of the beautiful, stately and very old city hall, with its gold-fringed, black fence on all sides, keeping us all at a distance. It seems to me that cities that are 500 years old don't feel the need to change as fast as newer cities. With all the monuments, churches and very ornately decorated older buildings, I think they believe they already have it all and so have nothing to prove.
Did I forget to mention that Lyon has not one, but two rivers running through its heart, the Rhone and the Soane? They meet up a little beyond the city limits, and then continue to flow south to Marseille. I was wondering if I could kayak its length, downstream of course, arriving on the Cote d'Azure fit and hungry for some well-deserved, local seafood. I like cities with smaller rivers, like Paris or Metz and Lyon, too. Lots of bridges to cross over or under, and to frame in the foreground of otherwise dull pictures. Wouldn't Montreal be so much more attractive with an additional canal running along Sherbrooke Street or Saint-Denis? I must mention this to the mayor next time we meet up!
Here's hoping there is nothing dull in your life!
Barry de Lyon
I awoke suddenly. It was light outside but it felt as though I had slept
only a couple of hours. After flying eleven hours crossing through eight time
zones, I had decided to go to bed early last night, around 10pm. I checked the
time: it was 1am. This was my personal welcome to the famous white nights. For
three weeks in June each year it does not get dark in Saint-Petersburg. The sun
dips below the horizon by midnight and rises again by 3am, but dusk simply
mutates into dawn during the interim. Hence the white nights and my need to get
back to sleep. Mercifully I did so quickly and only woke up next at 10am. Would
you like a cure for jet lag? Sleep 12 hours straight!
There is a myth at home that everybody in Russia is trying to get out.
Let me assure you that in this city of five million, people are content. City
life is vibrant and like at home there are more corner coffee shops than there
are corners. In fact, others are trying to get into Russia. Truckloads of
immigrants from Azerbhaijan, Uzbekhistan, Moldavia and the other former Soviet
republics arrive weekly. Russia is their haven as they already speak the
language, the ruble has some value internationally and they are happy just for
the chance to stay here and do the dirty work that many Russians won't do.
Another myth busted and I've only just arrived!
Do you
remember the joke about the woman who gets into a queue at a Soviet-era store,
asks the lady in front what they are in line for, and receives the response, "I
don't know, but the line was so long that I thought it must be for something
good!" Old traditions don't die easily... all over town people line up for two
things: MacDonald's and public toilets. I wonder half-jokingly if the line-ups
at MacDonald's are for their restrooms. If you were thinking of coming over here
to start up a business, I can recommend two sure-fire options.
I was surprised how many people, both men and women, are drinking
beer in public while walking in the streets, standing on a corner, or sitting on
a bench. You can even buy beer in the same 1.5-liter plastic bottles that is
normally reserved for water, except that the water is more expensive. It
occurred to me that with all this beer being consumed openly, the need for
public toilets becomes obvious.
Do you remember reading
about Peter the Great in high school? Most people here are fiercely proud of
him. In case you've forgotten he built this city from scratch! I'll give you
some background. He had a couple of hot girlfriends in Holland and spent a lot
of time chilling there. The canals of Amsterdam really impressed him, so he
launched a decades-long construction project using the mighty Neva river as a
source of water to fill the planned canals of his new city. He decided to name
his city Peter the Greatburg, but somehow it never stuck. His new city however
became Russia's first port and remains its most beautiful, with wide, clean
streets, an underground metro and European-style architecture clearly evident
throughout the burg.
The current global economic crisis
has not left Russia unscathed. While reading the popular, free daily newspaper,
Metro, I learned that there are 400 one-factory towns in this country. Many of
these factories have closed down, effectively rendering entire communities
unemployed. What's worse is that in some cases the workers had been unpaid for
several months beforehand. Now some towns are demonstrating or striking. A local
boy who made it good, Vladimir Putin, has jumped into the fray, arriving in one
such town by helicopter and forcing the factory owner to sign cheques for all
back wages and re-open the plant. Apparently Putin has more clout than the
Russian courts. The factory owner was seen on television holding his head in
shame for the hardship he had caused.
Maybe Putin had it
right... How to end the economic crisis? Force business owners to re-open
shuttered plants, pay its employees fairly and sell its products any way it can!
Here's hoping there's no crisis in your life and I wish
you well from the land of white nights.
Barrychka
