Once Upon A Time In France: French In Space, French Underground, And French In The Streets
Dreaming Of Chamonix
During these tough times, the French have a reason to look to the skies for some inspiration and pride. Astronaut Thomas Pesquet blasted off last week in SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule for a 6-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Pesquet will be the first French person to command a space station.
Pesquet was already a national hero of sorts. An engineer and scientist, he speaks five languages. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the man dubbed a “heart-throb” by The Times of London is a stud.
The French have a proud history in aeronautics and space flight. The French National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) has a major outpost near Toulouse where Pesquet attended university.
The days before the launch saw a huge buildup in the French media.
So Pesquet doesn’t get too homesick, a French startup Fit Immersion based in Hérault developed a special version of its virtual reality exercise equipment. Pesquet will be able to ride his exercise bike while visually following a tourist circuit in Paris, from the Eiffel Tower to the Louvre. There is second route on the coastal road between Marseille and Cassis.
In addition to the hundreds of experiments that will be conducted on the ISS, the French media explored some of the most essential elements of Pesquet’s adventures. Such as: “Why can't Thomas Pesquet take bread into space?” Answer: Too many crumbs that could gum up the components and cause astronauts to choke. Pesquet will have to settle for tortillas.
He acknowledged in an interview with NASA before the launch that the culinary questions have been fundamental:
“I think some of the French cheese is actually not legal on the ISS… There is some national pressure to bring some good stuff and also from my crewmates. They were like, ‘Okay we're flying with a Frenchman, it better be good.’ So now we've had some special dishes developed just for the mission specifically. There's six of them. I don't want to spoil the surprise too much.”
Bon appétit.
The French Underground
From the stars, to a cave. Our attention turns to the Pyrénées where an usually intense scientific experiment ended:
This group became folk heroes of their own sort for their willingness to leave behind the world of Covid lockdown for an even more unthinkable form of confiment. According to the Associated Press:
For 40 days and 40 nights, the group lived in and explored the cave as part of the Deep Time project. There was no sunlight inside, the temperature was 10 degrees Celsius (50 F) and the relative humidity stood at 100%. The cave dwellers had no contact with the outside world, no updates on the pandemic nor any communications with friends or family.
Scientists at the Human Adaption Institute leading the 1.2 million-euro $1.5 million) “Deep Time” project say the experiment will help them better understand how people adapt to drastic changes in living conditions and environments.
The group naturally lost track of time. But that doesn’t mean they were miserable.
One even regretted that the time was up:
“It was like pressing pause,” said 33-year-old Marina Lançon, one of the seven female members in the experiment, adding she didn’t feel there was a rush to do anything.
Although she wished she could have stayed in the cave a few days longer, she said she was happy to feel the wind blowing on her face again and hear the birds sing in the trees of the French Pyrénées. And she doesn’t plan to open her smartphone for a few more days, hoping to avoid a “too brutal” return to real life.
In The Streets
Over the weekend, more than 26,000 demonstrators in France marched to protest a controversial court ruling over the 2017 death of an elderly Jewish woman named Sarah Halimi.
In recent years, concerns have mounted over growing incidents of anti-Semitism in France, but her death stands out as one of the more shocking episodes.
In this case, a man named Kobili Traoré was arrested for beating her and then throwing her off the balcony of her apartment. At the time, French officials caused a backlash because they hesitated to label it an anti-semitic crime.
Subsequently, a French court found that the 32-year-old Traoré was high on marijuana at the time. According to The Local, the court ruled that he was in the grips of “cannabis psychosis.” As such, the court said that under French law he could not be tried for his crime. The nation’s highest court upheld the ruling earlier this month.
That decision triggered the latest protests. The victim’s family is appealing to Israel to take up the case. Meanwhile, Traoré remains in a psychiatric hospital almost 4 years later.
Dreaming Of France
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc is one of France’s most renowned resort towns, tucked into a corner near the borders of Switzerland and Italy. We visited in August 2018 and the region offered both the joy of a summer hike at lower altitudes as well as the frozen peaks of the Aiguille du Midi. Gondolas will take you to visiting stations and the start of hikes along both sets of mountains that rise on either side of the town. Meanwhile, in the valley, you can explore the city’s delights, which include a wide range of local mountain food, spas, and night clubs.
Great Reads
As I continue my temporary stay in the United States, I wanted to highlight this story by Anne Swardson, another France-based American journalist who apparently also has returned to the motherland and felt the strangeness:
We left a France under COVID-induced restrictions that include restaurant closures, a 6 p.m. curfew and a prohibition against travel beyond 10 kilometers from home. We found a U.S. where so many people are vaccinated, at least in our parts, that we could attend an actual dinner party, at a house. We ate at a Charlottesville restaurant where people weren’t required to wear masks at the table. (Masks were worn by customers when they walked in and by staff at all times).
I’ve been struck by many of the same things. I’ve eaten at 4 restaurants. The local government just lifted most mask restrictions for dining. Friends invite me to bars. And vaccines are so plentiful that the main problem is convincing the other half the population to get them.
I’ll keep wishing the same will be true in France soon enough.
Chris O’Brien
Overland Park, Kansas