Day 8 - 20th October - Montparnasse Cemetery (Part 1)
I left Rambouillet this day. I'd intended to visit the Chateau (since during the week I'd have had to cut classes to visit) but it was closed for a private event, so it was not meant to be.
"Domain of the Dukes"
Silly name for housing development
Rambouillet market
"Delivery and momentary stops"
How do they enforce this? Ah, the honour system!
Around we go
"Air Astana is quietly revolutionizing air travel to and within the vast and mysterious lands that make up Central Asia."
Self-orientalisation!
More of the anti-nostalgia "no, not everything was better in the past" ads, featuring the Berlin Wall and Cod Liver Oil
A documentary on Natalie Dessay preparing for La Traviata
The Lion of Belfort
This being Paris, people ran red lights. Grr.
I'd intended to visit the Catacombs, one of the major things left in Paris I hadn't yet done, but it was closed.
This despite my having visited the website (or what looked like the website) the night before and having seen no indication of its closure.
"A piece of trash every 100m in Paris"
I'm not sure if this was a description or an aspiration, menace of fines notwithstanding
Luckily, the Cemetery of Montparnasse (another major sight I hadn't yet seen) was just beside the Catacombs. I'd intended to do both, but now had more time for just the former.
Just past the entrance
It was cold and rainy - the perfect conditions to visit a cemetery. Happily, my heart was warmed by a free toilet being just by the gate and the guy in the booth giving me a free map automatically (at Père-Lachaise I'd had to buy one from a vendor outside)
For reference:
Balderdash: France/Spain 2011 - Day 5, Part 1 - Paris: Père Lachaise
Balderdash: France/Spain 2011 - Day 5, Part 2 - Paris: Père Lachaise
On the cemetery. It's an important green area. Ok.
The cemetery was a lot more pratique than Père-Lachaise. The paths were straight, paved and in good condition. There were roads. There was not a lot of grass on where you'd walk. There was stone not soil between graves so navigating them was less messy (especially given the rain).
Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (mathematician)
Dang-Ly family. I think they were Vietnamese
Ferdinand-Frédéric-Henry de MYLIUS, General
Police monument
Baudelaire cenotaph
"To you Laurence, to God"
Modernity and Peace
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
"Aug Dornes. Representative of the People, who died for Republic"
aka "Aug Dornes. Traitor to the Monarchy, who died opposing his Rightful King"
C'est quoi ce bordel ?!
"To my friend Jean-Jacques a bird which took off too soon"
Collard Bige Family
Memento Mori
Movie star remembrance photo (he died at 17.5)
A poem in - English! Sacrebleu !
Poem For A Kid
I didn't really know you.
You were a fresh face
Unmarked by life
At a dinner table in silence
And fourteen years before
I know you only
From the way your father inhaled deep and
swelled
As he stood over you in a stroller
Before the terrace of the Select.
Now you have vanished
leaving only ripples of anguish
after you fell
in a Paris night.
And I know only
The empty space
*unreadable*
27/7/92
Overflowing with flowers
Way
Lipstick marks, stones and métro tickets (seriously?!) on Sartre and Beauvoir's grave
Jewish tomb. Now I know what JHWH is in French: D...
Armand Silz family. It was impossible to read the plaque - the building was too small.
Abandoned and dug up tomb
Emile Durkheim
I was feeling very alienated at being unable to find his grave, but luckily I had my phone.
Stained glass in one building
Uhh. For Ricardo, a 37 year old
Tombs along way
Baudelaire. Again with Métro tickets
"A tribute to Leonardo da Vinci, my Tuscan compatriot"
Nice try.
André Del Debbio. He sculpted the Mona Lisa above his grave. Hah.
Lions
Monument to Navigation, Geography etc
Garden of Remembrance
I also want a curvy naked woman over me for all eternity. Would his sister/wife (whoever is interred with him) approve?
Literally: Like A Boss
"Aryan,
It is better to cry for you
Than never to have known you"
Weary figure for Baltasar Lobo
Example of the straight clean passages between graves at Montparnasse
Sepulture of the Blind Sisters of St Paul
Tower Mill
Grave with Icon (which apparently can be removed)
Jean Hachette was not important enough to have his grave turn up on the first page of search results, so I gave up.
Priests of St Sulpice
Tree-lined way
The grave on the left holds two sisters who both got married. Yet their husbands are not interred with them (usually men die before women).
Astroturf
Alexandre Duval
I don't know how to translate "Defense Passive" - it's a concept of protecting the civilian population during wartime
Another guy with an awesome grave representation
Spirit of Eternal Sleep
