Today has been all over the map. I’ll do my best to give you a recap.

We began the day with a Russian Orthodox church service held in a Catholic church. The Russian orthodox community here is too small to have their own church in Bordeaux, so they have come to an agreement with the St. Peter (Saint Pierre) catholic church in the city to use a small chapel off the side of the main cathedral. What makes that interesting, the two faiths split hundreds of years ago, but obviously they local communities have opted to work together.

Even more interesting, the orthodox priest is French and doesn’t speak Russian, but he still conducts each mass in Russian. The group of parishioners is small but dedicated. After the ceremony, they invited us to have tea and coffee with them.

From there, we joined the participants in the film festival for lunch at a local restaurant. We ended up having a table full of Americans, a table of French people and a table full of Russians. We toasted to Mother’s Day.

Then we all got together for a trip to a local winery. After a beautiful tour, we got to sample a couple of their wines, as introduced by the owner herself. She was a lovely lady and very friendly, but you could also tell she was an aristocrat in her world. We checked into bottles of the wine she gave us on the tour but they were 45 and 52 Euros per bottle. I passed.

May 9 is also the end of hostilities for World War II in Russia. This is a major event in Russia as approximately 20 million people died during the war. It was a terrible time and deeply ingrained in the Russian psyche. We joined a group of Russians and French out for dinner and Russian style drinking (vodka and toasting) to remember the evening. It started out a little rough as tensions were high for some reason, but things quickly relaxed as people got a drink or two in them. I gave a couple toasts over the course of the evening.

All in all, a pretty amazing day.

But, now we are looking at our flights leaving here and things are getting a little tense. It looks like everything will be fine, but I’m not 100 percent sure. The latest eruption of the volcano is jostling flights again. We’ll see how it goes..

…on the way to Bordeaux

This morning we set off for the coast. It isn’t like any of us were strangers to the beach, but we wanted to see the French side of the Atlantic. We never actually got to the true Atlantic, but we got close enough.

We visited the city of Arcachon. Beautiful little sea-side resort town with some fantastic architecture and a great, flat wide-open beach. I’m sure in season, it would be packed with people, but today it was still pretty empty. I did see one woman sunbathing topless on the beach, even though it was windy and in the 70s today. But, have you ever noticed how its never the people sunbathing topless that you want to see topless?

To get all of us down to the beach, half of our group had ridden with a friend of our translator’s family. This woman was headed to the beach anyway for a few hours and we could tag along. After we all got there, we went out separate ways. We were going to meet up to go home. But, she was ready to leave before we were so, we decided part of the group would take the train back to Bordeaux. Unfortunately, when we got to the train station, the last train for the evening left 10 minutes earlier.

No choices at this point, but Lorissa’s husband drove half the group home and was going to return for me, Lorissa and their son. Lorissa called some friends in the town who immediately came and got us to take us to their home for dinner. Walter, who described himself as an Italian/Frenchman cooked dinner while the family and the rest of their guests chatted. As I understood it, there was an Orthodox priest, his wife and a couple neighbors there. While dinner was cooking Walter took me into his wine cellar (he said wine was his passion) and showed me a bottle of wine from one of the best wineries in the area that was bottled in 1913. He told me it would still be drinkable, but was more of a collector’s item than anything else. Walter’s wife is Russian as well, so the orthodox priest led the assembled group in a blessing of the meal. I stayed respectfully quiet.

As we finished up dinner, Lorissa’s husband returned to pick us up. But, the evening wasn’t over yet. About halfway home, the engine in their car died. Fortunately, they had roadside assistance insurance (which reminds me, I need to call AAA when I get home) and a tow truck came, followed by a cab to get us all, about two hours later than expected, back safely to Bordeaux. Just one more little adventure in the game of life..

Day 2 ended up being tour-the-town day. We ended up taking a tourist train with recorded tour information in several languages. It makes it much easier to get the lay of the land that way.

I’m always amazed when tours mention dates, referring to still standing structures, from 500 to 1000 years ago and include names like Charlemagne. I’m also blown away when I hear names or places mentioned in history like Aquitaine and Richelieu (extra points for the first person to give me the literary reference to Richelieu.)

Probably more interesting about Bordeaux is what happened here in 1995, though. The city had been known as a jewel in France. It was said to be a glorious beauty in its day rivaling all but Paris. But, that beauty had fallen into disrepair. So, in 1995, the mayor launched a revitalization plan. He built a very nice, very efficient tram system to move the people around and began cleaning the facades on all the buildings. With that work and those efforts, the city was also named a UNESCO World Heritage site giving it protection and recognition. It’s a really beautiful city with fantastic architecture, all made from stone.

On an unrelated note, my concern about language has been mitigated because we’ve had a translator hanging around with us the last couple days. She is a young Russian girl living here with her French husband and 4 year old son. She’s been great helping us out. I’m not sure if she was assigned to us, or just attached herself to us, but she’s been there. But, the cool thing is we helped her get a job. All right, not really, but she just interviewed for a job with a company that would rely on her language abilities. During the interview, she said she stumbled a bit with her English. So, she’s been practicing with us the last few days, and when they called her yesterday about the job, she made sure to tell them she had been with us and practicing her English. We all got a good laugh out of it.

Last night we went to the opening of the film festival, complete with local sparkling wine, snacks (the French don’t really call them hors d’ oeuvres), talks, more food and vodka) Nice evening and my friends and I all got to set down front in the VIP section since I am an official participant in the festival. Very cool and a lot of fun.

Last few days, the weather has been pleasant and mild, but they keep saying we are supposed to get rain..

Yesterday was a full-on success. And I had a blast.

The opening for my photo exhibit here in Bordeaux was held at a wine shop/gallery that uses their space to exhibit art. The space itself is only about 6 meters wide, but 60 meters deep. The back two-thirds are used for gatherings, tasting and art. Very, very cool place.

When I arrived in Bordeaux after the typical overnight flight, I was pretty shell-shocked. (Have I mentioned my general inability to sleep on planes?) A very tight connection in Paris had gotten my blood pressure up, but it all went well and I made it here without a hitch. I was fortunate enough to get picked up at the airport by some associates of the group putting on the film festival. It’s mildly amusing that I will just get in a car with anyone standing in an airport with my name on a sign…

From the airport, we went straight to the exhibit because I was bringing my photographs with me. We quickly got things sorted out and hung on the walls. The first three or four sets were in an around the wine racks, but then the rest of the images took over the rest of the facility. When I first looked at the walls, I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. They had had local artists paint murals on the walls and I was a little concerned it would distract from the images. But it really seemed to work and the murals just became background. The name of the gallery is L’oenolimit—emphasis on the No Limit. Great place and two new friends (the owners) as well.

After we got the done, it was to the hotel for a couple hours to rest and change clothes and then back to the opening. There were about 40 people there for the opening, which was a little smaller than in Russia, but there were a great crowd, very interested and asked a lot of questions. We were even able to take a walking tour of the photos with me explaining the groups and the situation. It was a lot of fun. And, of course, the owners of L’oenolimit had set out wines for tasting and one of the sponsors of the film festival had set out a selection of snack. All in all, a great day.

Today will be some sightseeing for the afternoon and then to the opening of the film festival itself. We had dinner with an Academy Award winning director last night who created some new animation technique. Should be an interesting evening.

I posted some first day images on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=223280&id=839029017&l=1bef4ccd31.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Bordeaux, France. I’ve never been there. Never been to France at all, and for some reason I am a little more nervous about this trip than any international trip I’ve taken in a while.

I’m going for the third solo exhibit of my Russian photodocumentary, “Russia, Coming of Age.” A couple dear friends are going with me, so I am sure it will be a blast. And it’s not like I’ve never traveled out of the country—this is my third international trip this year alone, and the second new country for the year as well.

I think I’m mildly intimidated by the language. I actually took French in high school and college. So, I should know some, or at least more than I do. But, unfortunately, I remember very little. Every story I’ve ever heard about the French is they tend to be critical of foreigners, and especially Americans, who can’t do much with their language. I am sure it’s not true, or at least no more true than an American’s impatience with visitors here who can’t speak English, but it has me a bit off-kilter.

On the other hand, two events lately have reminded me how very short life can be. In one case a friend of a friend and in another case a family member, but two people have recently have been diagnosed with cancer and within a few weeks been gone or are expected to pass away any day. In just a few weeks they’ve gone from healthy and vital, to gone leaving family and friends struggling to understand what just happened.

Which leads me to my point. I haven’t written much in the last couple weeks as I’ve been home and have just been preparing for upcoming travel and simply taking care of life. Whether travel is your thing, volunteering, painting or whatever, take the time to do it and do it well. Experience life and don’t be afraid to try it. I’ve known too many people over the years who’ve told me they “wanted to try…” but they never got around to it. While I know that is the natural tendency of all of us, I just hate to hear it. I know it represents opportunity lost.

So, assuming I have internet access this next week, I will post my experiences discovering a new place and I’ll let you know if my fears are founded in reality or legend. I hope you take the time to follow along. But, not too much time. Get out and have some of your own experiences while you’re at it.

If you want to practice your French, here is the website for the exhibit: http://cinemarusse.blogspot.com/2010/03/les-evenements-en-cadre-du-festival.html.