The Voyage of Alouette: July in Dijon

July and August were bittersweet months for us. We moved up the Burgundy Canal to the city of Dijon, yes, like the mustard. There we discovered a small leak in a water hose in our generator, and since we were heading up into very rural, off-the-grid parts of the canal, we decided to order a new hose, but that took all total 3 weeks to track down, order, and wait to receive it. But Dijon is a lovely city, great parks, a beautiful large lake (Lac Kir) with water sports and a swim beach. We visited a beautiful outdoor art exhibit in a park - paper mache birds made by both professional artists, and children. They were protected by decorative umbrellas.

The body is an old vacuum cleaner canister, the tongue is an umbrella handle!

One of the days we visited, some of the child artists were visiting the exhibit, proudly posing in front of their work. That brought back fond memories of posing with my tapestries on exhibit at Denver International Airport and Tohono Chul in Tucson.

The port in Dijon is home to many waterbirds, but we were really excited to see a pair of bar headed geese with two goslings. Mom and Dad were very protective of the babies, and had the most curious behavior, I described it as "Happy Feet" - reminded me of Steve Martin on SNL when he would break into a dance routine. The adults would do the happy feet routine both on the ground, and in the water when they swam over to the boat for our leftover baguettes. We had never seen bar headed geese before, so of course we had to google them, and it turns out that they are from Central Asia and actually fly over the Himalayas. They are considered the world's highest flying bird. We don't know what this pair was doing in Dijon, but they were beautiful and much loved by the people around the port. The port is in the center of the city and is linked to lots of paths for cyclists, rollerbladers, and walkers and everyone seems to bring their leftover bread to feed the birds.

July 14th brought the usual round of festivities surrounding Bastille Day. But we were in for a special treat in the port. Taraf Goulamas, a band from the south of France, were in the port park for a free concert sponsored by the town as part of the fete. Their routine was wonderful - the first set of lively music, sounding more like Klezmer to me, was a lead up to their act - cooking esccargot for the crowd, and serving it during the break. While we waited for them to start, I thought the large kettle looking thing on the stage was a steel drum, but it was actually their wok/grill! They took turns playing and chopping the onions and garlic, brought an audience member up on stage to help cook. The "presentation" of the escargot, was followed by a New Orleans style funeral procession through the crowd with the live escargot getting the "last rights" and the first set finished with sauteing the critters in the big pan. They were amazing musicians, and during the break, we talked with one of them. They are accomplished jazz musicians who have this group as well. By the second set, the stage was mobbed with everyone - including Randy - dancing. You can check them out on the link posted to the right.