Visiting the Dame de Brassempouy Museum with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Dame de Brassempouy Museum with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Driving southwest from Bordeaux, my husband and I went through the flat Landes region full of pine forests until we met the road towards Pau, leading to the foothills of the Pyrenées Mountains.

Our tourist destination was the village of Brassempouy, which houses a small yet very informative archaeological museum.  We arrived after the formal tours were given, but were still given a mini tour in French to orient us to the museum.

I asked our guide if we were still in Gascony after our long drive through the Landes.  The guide pointed to a detailed map on the wall and indicated that Gascony comprised a good deal of the Eastern Pyrénees Mountains and the area south of Bordeaux, which included the French and Spanish Basque regions.  I wondered if “Gascon” was the French word for “Basque.”  Many of homes we passed in the Pyrénees foothills did resemble Basque houses with their asymmetrical, sloping roofs.

We admired the collection of prehistoric rock tools, which are distinguishable from rocks by the smooth grooves cut into them that come to a point.  The tools fit in the hand and the weight of the rock would make it a powerful tool for breaking things like the skull or bones of an animal I thought.  The cave where these tools had been found was recreated in the museum with scattered bones on the cave floor.

One of the most important finds in this cave was the Dame de Brassempouy (Lady of Brassempouy).  The original sculpture is housed in the Musée des Antiquités Nationales in Saint-Germain-en-Laye outside Paris for security reasons. A replica of the sculpture of the Dame de Brassempouy is in the village museum.  The original sculpture is 25,000 years old and is unique in that it portrays the hair, face, and neck of a woman.  It is one of the oldest representations of a human face.

Bangs and shoulder-length hair that looks like it is crimped surround the face that sits on a very long neck. The sculpture’s usage is unclear and would probably be conjecture in any case as this item comes from a pre-literate and pre-historical society.  However, I did remark to my husband, “She looks just like the young woman we saw at breakfast.”

In the museum store, I bought a copy of Connaître la Préhistoire de Pyrénees (1996, Editions Sud Ouest), because Brassempouy was in it and to plan any future outings if we were in the area.  I love good reference books.

On the way back to Bordeaux, we drove through the end of the “Running of the Cows” in Mont de Marsan.  Everyone is town was wearing white shirts and trousers with red bandanas around their necks.  Several people wore berets.  Barricades were removed as we drove through town; I hoped the cows had all been corralled.

Dinner that night was a typical Gascon dish – magret de canard, or duck breast of a duck raised for the foie gras industry.  According to Connaître la Cuisine Gasconne (1990, Editions Sud Ouest), the French traditionally only eat foie gras on Christmas and New Year’s Eve.  I have always thought foie gras was a symbolic food to condemn gluttony.

If you eat too much foie gras, especially goose foie gras whose fat is extremely rich, you can become so ill that you will never eat it again.  For those who eat reasonable amounts of foie gras, it is a reminder that we were put here to have dominion, or responsibility, for the earth and should avoid gluttony not only of rich foods, but also gluttony of dairy products, fish, vegetables, grains, fruits, and wine as well.

The best wine that goes with the magret de canard that I ordered, especially when it is grilled, is a Gascon wine called Madiran.  It is made from cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, and tannant grapes. It resembles a red Bordeaux, but has more tannins, which makes it slightly bitter. Tannins are anti-oxidants and seem to help digest magret de canard with its thick lining of fat that helps protect and baste it during grilling.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Art Nouveau Museum in Nancy, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Art Nouveau Museum in Nancy, France with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 



Nancy, France’s Art Nouveau museum, named Le Musée de L’École de Nancy, houses a highly selective collection of masterpieces from this art movement that began in the 1880s and lasted until the First World War started in 1914.

The masterpiece among masterpieces of this collection is Émile Gallé’s Aube et Crépuscule (Dawn and Twilight) bed from 1904.  The bed’s headboard is gently curved to enhance the symmetrical wing span of a nighttime butterfly.  Precious wood inlays define the butterfly’s wings with mother of pearl defining the diaphanous lower wings.

The foot of the ebony bed features two butterflies in profile sharing a common glass body that protrudes from the bed and shimmers even in low lighting.  Mother of pearl dominates in defining the wings of these daytime butterflies.

Gallé’s  Aube et Crépuscule bed reflects two of the main sources of Art Nouveau: nature as subject matter and the wood craftsmanship that was promoted by the Arts and Crafts movement.  Both of these influences were reactions against the rise of industry across Europe, particularly in Lorraine where Nancy is located.

Louis Majorelle (1859 – 1926) is the other great furniture designer of Nancy’s Art Nouveau school.  One of the period rooms in the Museum is dedicated to Majorelle’s Ensemble aux Nénuphars (Water Lily Furniture) (1900 – 1902).  Majorelle uses the structure of a water lily plant to create legs and back supports for his furniture. By making these elements slightly flair outward as they rise, Majorelle made the furniture appear to sway as if in water and created the effect of floating on top of water, especially for the table in the shape of a water lily.

Plants provided subject matter for decorative artist of the Art Nouveau movement.  Before there was the world renowned Daum Crystal of Nancy, there were the Daum brothers Antonin (1864 – 1930) and Auguste (1853 – 1909), who were superb workers in glass.  Their Prunelles (Small Prunes) vase has branches and leaves blown into the irregularly shaped white glass body with violet glass beans applied as plums.  The irregularly shaped vase gives the impression that the branches are climbing as they twirl around the vase’s body.

A love for all of nature’s plants makes the Aubergine (Eggplant) vase comprehensible.  An Asian, not Italian, eggplant sits upright with a gold leaf vase at its base.  This seemingly simple, ceramic vase took three artists to create it:  Victor Prouvé (1858 – 1943), Joseph Mougin (1876 – 1961), and Pierre Mougin (1880 – 1995).  The slender eggplant gracefully swells in the center and thins as it tapers towards the top.  The shape of this vase recalls that of East Asia’s celadon vases and reminds viewers that Europe has had a long fascination with East Asian art.

Another source of Art Nouveau was japonisme, or love of Japanese art and subject matter.  The decorative composition of Japanese art was highly prized for its two-dimensional perspective, known as flat perspective, as compared to the three-dimensional perspective that then reigned in Western art.

This decorative scheme was applied to objects that had no parallel in Japan even when the subject matter was Japanese such as Camille Martin (1861 – 1898) and René Wiener’s (1855 – 1939) leather book binding for L’Art Japonais, Tome 11 (Japanese art, Volume 11) written by Louis Gonse.  A kimono-clad woman encounters a swirling dragon and is surrounded by swirling lines meeting at angles.  The scene is cut off as in Japanese art to draw viewers into the scene and danger. 

This new approach to art along with Japanese art’s sensitivity to nature made Japanese art just as important as the Arts and Crafts movement as a source of Art Nouveau.

Seventy Art Nouveau objects such as these are on permanent exhibit at the Musée de L’École de Nancy.  The Museum is located outside of downtown Nancy and parking is hard to find, but it merits a visit to see this exquisite collection.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Black Forest Town of Freiburg, Germany with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Black Forest Town of Freiburg, Germany with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The one-thousand-year-old town of Freiburg Im Breisgau is a shopper’s venue for hand carved, wooden cuckoo clocks as you would expect for a site so close to the Schwarzwald, or Black Forest.  Master woodcarving shows up all throughout town on the façades of wood buildings and on corner turrets of many houses.

The old coexists amiably with the modern in Freiburg.  Trams whisk multitudes of people around town.  Germany wants to be an energy-independent nation, and trams are one means of reducing dependence on oil.  Solar panels on rooftops are another means of becoming energy-independent as are solar panel fields on hillsides that are oriented towards the sun.

On the side of trams, I saw advertising for Freiburg’s sister city relationship with Madison, Wisconsin.  Madison is one of the many places I have called home.  The five-hundred-year-old university in Freiburg gives the town a cosmopolitan flair as the University of Wisconsin does for Madison.  Pairing Madison up with Freiburg is a great match, especially as Madison and Wisconsin in general have a large population of descendants of German immigrants.

University towns everywhere seem to have an abundance of pizza parlors.  German-style pizza parlors are actually doner-pizza parlors run by Turks.  Turks are the largest minority grouop in Germany, and every town seems to have a doner-pizza parlor.

Pizza is well known, but doner kebab needs an introduction.  Doner resembles Greek gyros and Arab shwarma.  All three are meat cooked on a vertical spit.  Doner is made with lamb and seasoned with ground red pepper, cumin, and thyme to give it its particular flavor.  It is sliced to order and served in a flat bread with salad.  The aroma is delectable as is the finished product.

Many people eat doner and other treats outside when the weather permits.  

The proximity of Freiburg to the Black Forest gives visitors an ideal base for tours and hikes as well as visits to nearby Switzerland.  The Black Forest is Germany's lung and makes the air in Freiburg pure to breathe.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Germany's Alpine Lake Constance Resort with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Germany's Alpine Lake Constance Resort with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

All the Stuttgart, Germany license plates that my husband Laurent and I saw on the way to Konstanz let us know that this quiet resort town is a favorite destination of city dwellers.

Konstanz lies on the border with Switzerland and shares Lake Constance with the Swiss as well.  Lakeside walks allow you to see mist rising off the lake at dusk.  Pedestrians, bicycles, and trams share sidewalks.  Bike lanes in both directions are indicated to prevent mishaps.  High-end antique shops offer one-of-a-kind finds from England.  Queen Elizabeth II has even visited the antique shop in the pedestrian-only down town.

We came to enjoy some nice strolling and a nice dinner out, but had forgotten that you have to reserve a table in advance to dine out in Germany on a Friday night. Since we had neglected to do that, we went scouting for a restaurant about two hours before dinner time.

We found a restaurant named Ruppaner that was founded in 1795, which let us eat early.  We expected to find a very German restaurant inside with beer steins and cuckoo clocks, but found Western décor with modern paintings on the walls.  Ruppaner had changed its name to Bonanza and offered steaks in addition to German fare.

The steaks came in four sizes – small, medium, large, and extra large.  Laurent ordered a small rumpsteak, which turned out to be pretty large while I ordered maultaschen, which resembles ravioli in heartier proportions.

Maultaschen are a specialty of the Swabian region of southeastern Germany.  These pockets of pasta are filled with a combination of spinach, onion, white bread, egg, and cooked chicken, beer, or pork according to former restaurant critic and author Mimi Sheraton in The German Cookbook: A Complete Guide to Mastering Authentic German Cooking.  Sheraton likens maultaschen to Italian ravioli as well, but also mentions that they resemble Jewish kreplach and Chinese won-tons.

The maultaschen I ate appeared to be stuffed with pork and the ingredients mentioned above.  The thick dough was tender and was covered with small fried onions and their pan juices.  Fried potatoes accompanied the dish.  It was all very good and made me feel like we had eaten in a restaurant with culinary traditions dating back to 1795.

The strolls around town and meal in Konstanz made for a nice getaway from our busy life in Stuttgart.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Cathedral at Cologne, Germany with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Cathedral at Cologne, Germany with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

When Emperor Frederic Barbarossa had relics of the three magi who visited the infant Jesus transferred from Milan, Italy to Cologne, Germany in 1164, he created the need for a pilgrimage cathedral on an earlier religious site dating from the fourth century according to Cologne Cathedral written by Arnold Wolff.

The Cathedral at Cologne soars above your head as you enter to the height of 142 feet (43.35 meters) in the nave; the cathedral dwarfs the visitor.  Wide lateral aisles allow for great numbers of pilgrims to circulate around the main altar holding the golden shrine of the three magi, which resembles a basilica with a towering central nave with lower sides.  However, the shrine is three separate shrines set together in this fashion.  The resemblance to a basilica is incidental.

The presence of the relics of the three magi caused this immense cathedral to be built, but the homilies delivered by its great scholar priests have made it a center of scholarship and piety as well.  The Dominican priest Albert Magnus (1206 – 1280) taught at Cologne as did Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328) and the Scottish Franciscan Duns Scotus (1266 -1308).

Albert Magnus was famous for his defense of the mendicant orders and a famous professor of theology, philosophy, and natural science.  His most famous student was Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274).

Meister Eckhart is most famous as a mystic, who had a head for business.  His homilies are written in simple and elegant German according to The New Advent Encyclopedia.

John Duns Scotus was an early supporter of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

Lofty theological debate and philosophical discussion still take place in Cologne as you witness groups of prelates bustling around the cathedral deep in discussion.  However, there is great charm at the cathedral in Cologne as well.  The day my husband Laurent and I visited a group of schoolchildren were touring with their teachers.  They stopped by the shrine of the three magi.  When their teachers explained what it was, they lifted their eyes upward with their mouths open.

Cologne Cathedral inspires awe among the faithful of many generations.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Laurent Paget Photography

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Visiting Aachen, Germany (Aixe-la-Chapelle, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Aachen, Germany (Aixe-la-Chapelle, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


I first saw Aachen Cathedral as a college student at the University of Chicago in my year-long “Art of the West” art history course.  The black-and-white photograph of the octagonal Carolingian Chapel was the only image of the cathedral in H.W. Janson’s History of Art, yet I wanted to see Aachen Cathedral the minute I saw it.

Now almost thirty years later, my husband Laurent and I have made an art pilgrimage to Aachen, Germany known as Aix-la-Chapelle in French.  Aachen lies close to the Belgian border and houses the remains of Charlemagne (742 – 814), who ruled over modern-day France and Germany as a united kingdom.  Division of these two lands came after his death as his various sons inherited different parts of his kingdom.

Charlemagne had Aachen Cathedral built to resemble the octagonal, sixth-century church of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy.  Ravenna was part of the Byzantine Empire.  By modeling his cathedral on San Vitale, Charlemagne assumed the stature of a Byzantine monarch, who was just as much a temporal ruler as a theocrat.

Another element of Aachen Cathedral that is modeled after San Vitale is the use of mosaics in the cupola and decoration of the church.  The actual mosaics do not date from the time of Charlemagne.  However, they reflect the high esteem and care that the parishioners of Aachen Cathedral feel for their place of worship. Green marble covers the walls and patterned marble covers the floor.  The cathedral is luxurious yet inviting at the same time.

Charlemagne’s throne is visible on the second floor of the cathedral from the altar.  Monarchs often sat on the second floor of churches to worship unobserved.  Thirty German kings and twelve German queens have been anointed and crowned on Charlemagne's throne according to the Concise Guide to Aachen Cathedral, which is available for purchase in the cathedral entryway.

As we left Aachen Cathedral, I thought of my art history classes and how they have guided and informed my travel itineraries for the last thirty years; they were worth the entire tuition at the 
University of Chicago.

By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Laurent Paget Photography

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Visiting Bamberg, Germany's Cathedral in Bavaria with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Bamberg, Germany's Cathedral in Bavaria with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

The tomb of Pope Clement II (1005 – 1047) in Bamberg’s Saint Pierre and Saint George Cathedral has made it a pilgrimage site for Germans and tourists of many countries including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Russia as one can see from tourist guides available in these languages in the cathedral.

Unlike most popes, who are buried in Rome, Clement II made it his express desire to be buried in Bamberg, which he described as “…my friend, my sister, my bride, my dove” according to Bamberg for old and new friends: A guide through the town by Karin Dengler-Schreiber (ISBN: 978-3-89889-182-0).  Today it is possible to view Clement II’s effigy as you enter the cathedral while his tomb is in the west choir of the cathedral.  (It is not possible to visit the area around the tomb.)

To the left of the altar, you can walk down to the crypt to view tombs under the floor.  A towering black Madonna sculpture sits in the corner.  Her eyes are slits.  Her angular face offers no comfort as you would normally expect from a Madonna, who usually intercedes on man's behalf before Heaven.

The black Madonna's responsibility is judgment on earth.  Her color is black not from aging, but from selection to reflect soil.  The black Madonna deals with death, and Christian burial is in soil. The black Madonna's role is one of judgment upon death. 

Despite the prevalence of black Madonnas in Catholic Churches in Europe, the only other ones I have seen in Europe are at Chartres Cathedral in France.  The black Madonna in the crypt there functions like the one in Bamberg.

Upstairs the black Madonna glass window and the black Madonna sculpture both have infant Jesus on the knees.  Their black color presages Christ's death. Women pray around the black Madonna sculpture, but this probably comes more from the fact that the shawl of Mary is with her more from worship of a graven image.

Both Mary as the intercessor of man before heaven and the black Madonna as judge of life lived on earth are accepted by the Catholic Church for believers.  

However, Bamberg cathedral’s most famous artwork, the Bamberg Rider (after 1225), is on view overhead by the cathedral entryway.  The light streaming in through the window to the left of the equestrian statue makes the sculpture appear to emerge from the pillar it rests on.  No one knows the identity of the Bamberg Rider, but all agree he is the epitome of a feudal knight. The Bamberg Rider is a famous symbol of the city, but Bamberg is important to German culture for more than its art alone.

According to Dengler-Schreiber, Bamberg became the school of the Empire, which focused on classical and Christian literature.  This approach to education was not business-oriented, yet Bamberg’s most popular saint, Otto 1 (1102- 1139), was masterful at organization and finance.  Six black plaques on the entry wall to the Alte Hofhaltung (Old Residence) next to the cathedral recount Otto’s life.

Directly across from the Alte Hofhaltung is the majestic Neue Residenz (New Palace) whose rose garden allows one to look out over red rooftops in the town and take pictures of Saint Michael’s Church on a neighboring hill with vineyards running up to its chapel.

At the bottom of Cathedral Hill, the bourgeois town developed steadily in the 13^th and 14^th centuries.  The new town citizens wanted to be part of the intellectual and cultural life of the town along with the bishops.  According to Dengler – Schreiber, Hugo von Trimberg wrote The Runner in 1300 and told his readers that only a reader who can “compose poetry in Latin and German, as well as read and write both, is a real man.”

Trimberg’s opinion of 1300 predates Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) who is usually credited with holding up German as equal to Latin by translating the Bible into German.  Bamberg invites speculations such as this one.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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