13 nov

I started to write something about Julie’s walking habits, that Julie didn’t approve of and deleted. So my blog for this day starts, with Julie’s approval, here:
Today we visited the monastery St-Martin-de-Canigou. High up in the mountains. So far high up that it isn’t even accessible for cars, let alone campervans. The last few kilometres have to be done by foot.
Julie wasn’t looking forward to it. Not so much for the part that we had to walk, but the trauma of the D17 has not disappeared yet. She thought going to visit St Martin was similar. Which it did not turn out to be. Driving there was ok, walking up was a serious challenge though. Only when we walked back after our visit I realised what a serious climb it had been.
The monastery itself was a complete pleasure. The nun – in her seventies I would guess – was a delight. She was smart, educated and had a way with words that more french have. Every word is not only expressed by the mouth, but also with the eyes, with the expression of the face, with her arms and hands and fingers. Everything to emphasize what was being said. Of which I could not grab anything completely but from everything a little bit.
Her tour of the monastery was a combination of cultural history, theological insight, explanation of the rule of Benedict, and random sidetracks like her surprise how there ever could have been nudes on the painted ceilings of churches, but the lights in her eyes still showed an enormous interest in the subject, and so on.
She has a sister in West Sussex, she told me just before the tour in perfect english, having lived in England for one and a half years, ‘a long time ago’. She also told me about the 200 Canadians that died in the invasion at Dieppe, of which I had never heard and knew Holland from the movie A Bridge too Far, which was ‘marvellous’ according to her.
Wonderful capitals again, a little bit later than those at St Michel from the day before, I would guess. There was a little bit of biblical history in them, but not overly obvious. The nun’s explanation certainly helped in understanding who was St. Jean Baptist and which were exactly the main sins. The pink marble capitals made very fine carving possible, just as at St. Michel in fact.

Back at the campground we invited our opposite neighbour Frederic over for supper. He declined that invitation but wanted to come over for a cup of coffee or tea. We saw him sitting for a few days in front of his tent at a little table with a computer and pages full of handwritten mathematical formulas. Julie had a few chats with him through the days. He charmed us with seeming to have two black cats in his tenthold and a tendency to feed the birds of the neighbourhood.
What a guy, this Frederic. It turns out he has a phd in computer engineering. He has lived on this campground in his tiny tent for the past years since returning from the army and now creates a fabulous blog on which he expresses his thoughts on ethics, arts and science. He showed us some of the thought experiments he was dealing with. We just listened with open mouths. This week he had made a breakthrough on developing a reliable way of changing the perspective of the way magnetism is influenced by changing spectrums in a magnetic field – or something.
I am sure Julie couldn’t grasp the magnitude of his thoughts, I certainly couldn’t – mathematicians have a tendency that these formulas that they write ar as easy as ABC, which they aren’t, but at one point she asked the brilliant question: what about time travelling? Frederic seemed delighted with the question, just opened another page on his site and, voila, there was another mind boggling formula within reach.
This is Nobel prize winning material I uttered! Something I have more often thought when information provided was way above my level of comprehension. If only I could test my hypothesizes, Frederic said. This is the website, look yourself. http://frederictraore.wix.com/dauphinsdecassiopee
The passionate way in which Frederic claimed the impossible is possible is going to be persistent in my dreams for the coming weeks. They are going to be dreams, not nightmares, because Frederic made sure that only people with good intentions were going to be able to benefit from his boundaries breaking research.
And that is all happening in a little tent opposite our camper. The cats are not his, but they have a little place in the front of his tent were they sleep. Normally this campground is open all year, but pretty soon they will be closing in order to redevelop and create a swimming pool, if I understood it well. Frederic wasn’t worried about himself, he would manage. But he didn’t know what would happen with the cats. And the birds I might add. They get used to being fed very easily. And now this will stop. In the middle of winter when they need the feeding most. It is a sad foresight.
Frederic will manage I am sure. Hopefully the University of Perpignan will hire him, he wrote them a letter. He deserves it I am sure.
The nun and the mathematician. Both of them enthusiastic about their own fields of interest. The one to find after an excruciating walk, the other one just at the other side of the camping street. What to say except for expressing a feeling of being blessed that it is possible to meet two such unique people on one day.