Weekend in Toulouse

I spent recently an extended weekend in Toulouse. I really enjoyed it, there was a lot to enjoy - great sightseeing, excellent monuments and museums, the always fine French food. It's a 2 hour flight away from Lisbon, so it seemed like a nice place to go for a short getaway, and so it was.

Toulouse is a beautiful city, with an ancient history that goes all the way to the Romans. I stayed between the railway station - Gare de Matabiau, a name reminiscent of the Toulouse saint bishop Saturnin, killed by a bull - and the Place du Capitole where is the City Hall. It's a pleasant city to walk, being flat and well paved.

And so I walked, through beautiful squares like Place du Capitole, Place Saint-Georges, Place Wilson, Place de l'Esquirol, prosperous 19th century boulevards and narrow medieval streets. Toulouse is called la Ville Rose on account of the numerous buildings of local brick. There is a beautiful Romanesque cathedral, the Basilique de Saint-Sernin, and impressive Gothic churches, especially the church of the Couvent des Jacobins - also built with bricks, it's a peculiar kind of Gothic, more austere than usually, and with beautifully faded frescoes on the walls. I guess it's what they call the Languedocian Gothic.

I visited two excellent small museums: the Musée Saint-Raymond and the Musée des Augustins. The first has a fine collection of Roman artifacts, especially remarkable are the numerous busts, I love the perfection of the portraits, really individualistic and expressive. The second, in the ancient convent of the Augustins, has a wonderful collection of Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, I was particularly struck by the beauty of the Romanesque capitals and some Gothic faces. There are also some good paintings - Delacroix, Reni, Lautrec - and sculptures by Rodin.

From Toulouse, I took a day trip to Carcassonne, a small town with a fortified medieval city which was important at the time of ta Cathars and then extensively restored in the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc. The place is outrageously touristic now, with cafés alternating with souvenir shops, but it manages to retain a magic fairy tale atmosphere, especially the castle. And of course I tasted the famous local cassoulet.

And so it was another very nice trip, not the less for the company - I took my mother with me, and she was a fine travel companion, valiantly walking a lot and always cheerful! Looking forward to do it again.

The Emigrants, by Vilhelm Moberg

Another suggestion from a Swedish friend, he told me Vilhelm Moberg's saga about emigration was good to understand Sweden. Anyway, it's an excellent book; I'd like to be able to read it in Swedish, somehow there is a tone that sounds very characteristic, the same kind of singsong one hears in Swedish films and that I also felt when I read a book by Knut Hamsun. And if these peasants are representative of the Swedish character, what stands out it's its seriousness, honesty and resilience, and also a certain gloom.

I already ordered the other three books of the saga.

The Chosen, by Chaim Potok

A very book, that a new friend recently suggested me. It's mostly about friendship, fathers and sons and coming of age, universal themes in this case set in the Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn and in the time from the D-day until shortly after the independence of Israel. The friendship between the boys is beautifully depicted, as is the relationships with the fathers and the conflict between parents' expectations and sons' willingness to please them and the youngsters' desires and hopes. And the Jewish conflicts between the religious conservatives and the less religious and more realistic ones is interesting, depicted at the crucial moment of the Holocaust discovery and the foundation of the State of Israel. Once more, I find it hard to understand how some people can spend their lives and waste their intelligence fussing over lines of the Talmud - it seems really Byzantine. All in all, a very good book.