Breakfast with Nadine and George
Con with butter press
Butter press without Con. Looks like growing grass.
The nice Roman style Chapelle de Sunarthe
Cemetery of little church of Andrein. Here we meet cineasts Rudy and Bas
Preparing for the future: lunch on top of a tomb stone instead of underneath
I left the horse outside the cemetery not to give him a psychological burden at his young age
Once more Roman style Chapelle Sunarthe
The weather is beautiful. In the background the snowy tops of the Pyrenee mountains
Nice landscape and colours
A stop in a telephone house, nice in the sun
Old fruit races, planted for the pilgrims
Our landlady Nadine was getting nicer when she got to know us. Better thus, than reversed. We took a picture of her butter press. And next one of her. We left at 8.45 am. in the fog. Nadine gave us bread for Leon, but as we didn’t find a boulangerie we ate it ourselves in the afternoon. The grass was white frozen. It was a cloudless day, deep blue sky. An evidently more prosperous region than on the other side of the border. Many beautiful old castles, manor houses, farms, churches and villages, mostly well maintained, the opposite of in Spain. In the distance, the snow-covered Pyrenee mountains. A beautiful hike.
We met Rudy and Bas at the church of Andrein: a beautiful, historic building. On a tombstone, like angels, we drank coffee, garnished with a slice of cake from our Nadine. I had to laugh at the name of a buried Cecile Davant (Cecile’s front). The filmmakers pursued us by car, filmed and had coffee with us. During the lunch break in the sun on a bench in an old telephone house – with a still functioning public phone – I explained the filmmakers in detail how Constance and I got along, and also the limits of our walking relation. To prevent questions about our walking together.
The last few days on the road we see fruit trees, basically planted for the convenience of pilgrims passing: all old varieties of fruit. However very kind, I don’t believe it’ll work out. Of course half of the yield will be picked before it is ripe and then discarded, the other half falls off and rots etc. But who knows, maybe I’m wrong. Happens sometimes!
One of the filmmakers asked me about our bed for tonight: the Franciscan – nunnery of Orthez. And the youngest nun was specially dedicated to me, the filmmakers confined me: 83 years old! After at least 3 km. of circling rounds we finally arrived at dark at the monastery. While the nuns allocated Constance and me the bedrooms, Rudy and Bas walked, while recording, inside. Yes, they are filming here and will soon go away again to their own lodge, we explained to the nun. The nun did not understand. Besides 12 senior nuns, there was one Angolan lady staying in the monastery. When she heard about filmmakers and saw the beautiful blue eyes of Holland, she immediately offered to cook Angolan cuisine for the four of us.
Due to time constraints this yesterday’s story is completed later. That is now, Tuesday 23 Dec. Hilde, our Angolan companion, had been living for 23? years in France, had a daughter who was 1st year medical student at Montpellier. Hilde said she herself studied law. She wanted to maybe settle in Angola as a lawyer, she wanted to enter into this monastery and otherwise she hoped to be Secretary General of the United Nations. She talked about the relationship between men and women in Africa and Europe, where men in general and men in Africa in particular, had a bad reputation. Much of what she said was hard to understand, but her story was no less passionate. The typical Angolan dish consisted of chicken, rice and peanut sauce. The typical Angolean peanut sauce is also common in the rest of Africa. So my conclusion is that out peanut sauce food is typical of Africa, rather than specifically for Angola. It was tasty, but I was pleased that the two filmmakers ultimately not participated because everything got completely finished. Until the bones, for Tosca.
Too late to bed. We slept between ironed sheets and ironed pillowcases, for the first time in years. Tüchtig they were well, the Poor Claris Sisters. Tosca was allowed to sleep outside in the courtyard on a mat. Leon in the monastery garden on the grass.
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