lazaza83

Lazaza on summer vacation

Posted on août 6th, 2008 by claudie.
Categories: Littérature, culturel, lecture, finland.

… is a little tired! In the canicule, 35 ° C.

even the night is so hot!

I have no more courage! The only thing I can do is reading  

Arto Paasilinna, a super finnish author and swimming in my sister’s  swimmingpool!

Actually I am reading Le lièvre de Vatanen or The Year of the Hare and enjoy progressing in my reading!

I wish you all a beautiful end of week and sorry to be so lazy but I hope to be more reactiv in a few days!

Just a picture of Carbone 14, a sympathical rockband, with the son of a girlfriend: Aurélien on the left side with the glasses and the guitar! We had a nice evening hearing his band at the Indiana Coffee! And more this band plays songs of the seventies and eighties! only pleasure for our ears!

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The If’s Castle/Le chateau d’If

Posted on juillet 20th, 2007 by claudie.
Categories: Non classé, Littérature, culturel, histoire.

The day I met Mar, we cruised after the meeting, my daughters and me to le chateau d’If.The start was on Le Vieux Port of Marseille.

There was a fresh wind this day and waves enjoyed us but I was a little affraid in the same time ! We were sitting on the front of the boat to admire the best as we could the landscape around us.

Arrived on the roc, we began our visit with enthousiasm!

There was a room where we found many explanations about this place and we learned that Le Chateau d’If was built between 1524 and 1531 under the King François Ier who wanted to protect Marseille against possible invaders.

In fact there was an other reason: population of Marseille was since ever very cosmopolitan and very independante. Marseille had joined the kingdom of France only during the XVeth century and since ever was resisting and  never according with the power. It was a way to control this very subversive town!

In 1516 a rhinoceros arrived one day on the isle. It was a present from the Portugal’s king for the vatican but during a storm, the animal was deposed here and after a time he continued its travel to Rome. And in 1516, François Ier went on Le Chateau d’If, just to discover this strange animal nobody had never seen at this time. Dürer painted it using descriptions, a few years later but he certainly never seen it.

After a quiet time, politic power decided to open a prison in the castle The first prisoners arrived in 1840. There was a common cellular were 300 prisonners were together in the same time in 1871 during the Commune. They were politic prisoners. When you see this room,you ask yourself, how could 300 poor men live at this place! With the badest hygien conditions it can exist!

in fact, they could survive between 6 to 9 months and no more! There is a big citern in the middle of the castel but for so many persones and the weather in south of France where it fast never rains, water was very precious and bacteries often present!

At the etage, there were the individuel cellulars for the prisoners of rich families.

They had a cheminey just for them and fine meals were prepared for them.

There is the cellular of Mirabeau, a famous man of the revolution. He was on the Isle ’s prison 6 months when he was 20 years old, because his father was angry against him about his dissolute life. He was thinking his son would come back in the right way! 

There was the cellular of the captain Chataud whose boat brought the peste in Marseille and after in all provence (50 000 persones ded)

Here his boat, Le grand Saint Antoine wich didn’t respect the principe of the quarantine.

The presumate cellular of Le Masque de fer. He would be the brother of Louis XIV and was walking from prison to other prison during 40 years.

The cellular of the fiction’s hero Edmond Dantes and this of the other hero l’abbé Faria! in the famous book, le Comte de Montecristo of Alexandre Dumas
I red the book 3 times and since several years I wanted to go on this Isle to see the place the roman takes place.
Edmond is on the Chateau d’If in a cellular and under is this of the abbé Faria. They arrive to communicate and decide to save themselves out of this prison. The abbé reveals to Dantes the secret of the tresor of the isle Montecristo.

But the Abbé deads and Dantes takes his place in the textil where the soldats folded in the abbé. As all deads at this time the soldats put the hero in the sea thinking it was l’abbé!

And Edmond Dantes swimms in direction of the coast. Now he will find the tresor!

And over all, it’s a marvelous love story between Edmond and Mercedes!

After visiting all the cellulars and the tours and walking around the castle, dreaming and thinking to all these soldats, prisoners, to Alexandre Dumas who had so often visited the fortress during his childhood, and without forget this rhinoceros who would run in the same way that us at the 16 th century… Sometimes I’d like to have the power not for schmoozing but to see the ghosts!!!

But the most touching in this fortress are the graffitis the soldats and after the prisoners engraved in the roc allever in the cellulars and in the yard, with everything they could find even with their nails! That was the only way for them to exprime their suffering and all this sculptors are the soul of the castle.

Bad Mélissa who delated the pics of the graffitis before I register!!! Aïe! Aïe! Aïe! Poor mama!

In the Lifecybercruise tour, you should taste a lamb BBQ and participate at a nice birthday

and you could have a walk in a lovely town called Mariestad and as the occasion offers taste the famous beer Mariestad of Sweden!

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