#wheninfrance

I have just gotten back from a 6 days 5 nights, 2812.77 km road trip to the southern of France with two of my friends and his mother. It was a random, last-minute, minimum-preparation trip where he asked me to join just less than a week before departure, with rough routes of cities we’re gonna drive by or stay for the night, and we only finished booking the accommodations a few days before we left. Usually I plan everything to the teensiest bit but this was, definitely, not one of those trips. 

We picked up the car in Rotterdam, then we started driving towards Lille, which is a small city in northern Paris. En route to Lille, we stopped by Brugge to buy boxed pasta at Bocca then eat it in the city centre. We only stayed for a night in Lille, so we didn’t really see the city, and we stopped on our way to see Amiens. It is also a small city with a notre dame cathedral (I have just found out that Notre Dame means Our Lady - that’s why it’s everywhere and all with the same names!), and we had cups of coffee at Columbus & Co. Because we only have a short time allowance per place with such ambitious route, the trip did feel rushed, and it felt as if we just breezed by the cities. But I was just a passenger and did no driving at all so I am in no place to complain. 

The trip was so good.

I only knew that Radit’s mother wanted to go to Lourdes, and that we are going to visit the national park at Gavarnie, which is a UNESCO heritage site with the 14th highest waterfall in the world. But for what reasons and what particular things to do during the trip, I had no idea. It turned out that Tante Eri wanted to go on a pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Our Lady St. Maria Bernadette in Lourdes. The complex was huge, and it was beautiful. The group split into two - Radit and his mother attended the mass while me and Andrew went around the complex. He is (was?) also a roman catholic so he kinda gave me a lecture and walkthrough of what everything is. And also a share of his rather negative views of the church and the concept of religion. 

It was an interesting setting to have such varying discussions with mostly opposing views on the construction of religions, values, and such different outlooks on life. The complex was full with people that came to pray, we went inside and outside the basilicas, watched a mass of people in front of the St. Maria Bernadette grotto, a crowd of pastors in their green robes and different flags, heard the people singing songs, watched hundreds of burning candles, and people putting holy water from the taps into small bottles. Faith is heartwarming, no matter what it is.

I would not see the place they way I did if I did not go there with these particular people. 

Sanctuary of Our Lady, Lourdes - don’t you think it looks a bit like Disney castle?

It is funny how people could have such different outlook on life. I saw faith and religion as a way for people to cope with all the uncertainty in life, a way to keep us sane, and to always be able to have hope and be comforted, knowing that there is somebody who constantly looks after us, hearing all of our prayers with a promise that they will be granted somehow. The routines we have in religions, whichever it might be, are the ones that help to build structure in within the chaos that is life. That no matter how shitty your week might be, whether it’s about the resits you will be having in the middle of summer, or how heartbroken you might be feeling, or the fact that nothing goes according to plan, you will still have the Sundays you will be spending in church, meeting your friends. Or the fact that you can always take a break five times a day to communicate with Allah. You know for sure that there are certain things you can look forward to.

We walked along the Stations of the Cross, and there were also people who stopped in each of the stations to pray. I told Andrew that we also have the similar story but how it has a slightly different storyline. In Islam, Jesus was not the one who was crucified. But instead, Allah switched his place with Judas. I told him that we basically have the same timeline but people chose to stop at a certain point in time and be content with it. He also talked about how he attended a Buddhism class during his bachelor’s years and how the lecturer told the class that Buddha was basically a title. For all we know, it could also be another name for the prophets (nabi and rasuls). After all, in Islam itself, there are hundreds of thousands of prophets but only 25 were mentioned clearly. 

Us after a hike in Cirq de Gavarnie - Radit teaching us to pose

And this is us after a walk in Cirq de Gavarnie, a day before Lourdes. It was a sunny day, and the landscape was breathtakingly beautiful. We didn’t go all the way to the end of the route because we were exhausted, and decided to came back and took some pictures. I bet in the winter this place would be much prettier. We also had some conversations on the things that are important, and we brought up the story of a friend who is currently going through a pretty significant turn in her life. I said that it is sad how our lives are not really ours, and the fact that we have to take so many people into our considerations really put the burden on us. It forces us to balance our personal happiness with the happiness of our parents, friends, and the general public. Our lives are pretty much intertwined with others’. 

We talked about how in Asia (or Indonesia in particular) we have this predetermined path of continuing from school, straight to college, graduate asap, start working, get married and start having kids. Gap years are perceived as a sin, contrast to how things are happening here in the other side of the world. There is no standard way of living life, no right or wrong, and everything is acceptable. I remembered how panicky and afraid I was, just imagining if I did not pass SNMPTN to get into ITB. Failing and having to wait for another year in agony, studying for another shot in the test, was a thing that I feared the most. 

Lourdes old town, pretty!

We bought a €4 kakigori at a stall in the sidewalk in front of the Sanctuary of Our Lady, and the guy asked us where we’re from, and he said that he spent a good portion of his time to travel in South East Asia and saw the shredded ice (ehm, es serut) booth everywhere. Then he decided to open up two stalls - one in Montmartre and one in Lourdes - and he told us how he ordered the machine straight from Japan, talked to his uncle who was a Japanese, and decided to put up the menu as kakigori. Again, I can’t really imagine saying to my family that I’m going to travel around the world then go back home after a few months and tell them that I am going to start selling ice cream on a sidewalk of a small town. 

From Lourdes, we continued our journey to La Roque Gageac, a tiny village along the Dordogne Valley in the middle of France. So apparently, the 22 most beautiful French villages can be found along the Dordogne River. The hotel was perfect - thanks to Booking.com and a random googling session that led us to chose this place as a stopover (it was either this or Sarlat). It was located just across the river, and we spend the next day to canoe along the river. There was a small chateau in the corner of the cliff, and we climbed up to the point of view, a few hundred meters from the hotel. The river, the moon, the sky. They were all beautiful. And serene.

Tante Eri in front of our hotel in La Roque Gageac

In the last day, we had to drive back to Charles de Gaulle airport because Tante Eri’s flight will depart later at 8pm. We left La Roque Gageac around 11am, and continued the drive for another 6 hours. Radit went inside the airport to see her mother off so Andrew took over and, uh, we had a little accident. The wheel crashed to the pavement, and the rim was a little bent. Then we heard some weird noises from the wheel and when we stop the car to check the condition... it was completely flatten out. A police car stopped by and asked Radit about our condition, then it left us alone without helping at all. Ugh.

Since our last hotel was located in Stains, and it was already very late, we arrived just around 11pm in Cantinella in the center of France. We met with Carole, Radit’s friend who went on an exchange in UI a few years back. She also told us how she’s gonna resign in March to travel for a year. She planned to cycle, go to Portugal, all around Asia, then maybe stop by Indonesia. During our Uber ride, back to the hotel, we also talked about how uncommon in Indonesia to just take a pause of your life then take a whole year for yourself. I can only imagine what people will say. We care too much about what others think of us, don’t we?

We listened to a lot of podcasts from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk that talked about the big bang theory, a plant-based diet, the colonization of Mars, and a wide-ranging topics on technology and how it might change the future. We talked about what will happen to our body if we’re floating in space without a spacesuit (we will only have 15 seconds before we die of asphyxiation, and we will either freeze or get sunburned badly, depending on our distance from the sun). They were surprised to know that I did not watch the Big Bang Theory (yup, sorry, I did not really click with the humor - I prefer other types of sitcoms). We tried listening to an Asumsi podcast that talked about NCICD but it was too full of abbreviations and a little hard to follow. 

It also felt really nice to be having Tante Eri as a part of the trip (and to be allowed to be a part of the trip - I presume it was supposed to be a mother-son trip to Lourdes before Andrew and me were included). We cooked and ate dinner around the dining table, listening to her telling her very interesting stories on community building in Indonesia, how she’s trying to build a business with her family, the story of St. Maria Bernadette and how Mother Theresa is not yet a saint, the NGO she’s taking care of, the summit she attended in Paris, and a fun story on how a random antique hunter wanted to buy the teeth from a preserved tiger that was owned by her late father.

It was perfect.

Plus we get to see the beautiful, beautiful wheat fields along the road

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