Aquitaine

2015-09-09

I’ve been visiting France lately. And as travelling often opens the path to a epiphany, this journey also did: I am living in the wrong country …

Soulac

Two main features here: beaches and bunkers. Actually World-War-II-bunkers at the beaches, being extensively used by graffiti artists:

Some bunkers are already taken by the sea, like this one here. There is a bit of an unreal air to the scenery, if you ask me: the ocean as as symbol of the unconscious swallowing the remains of the worst collective outbreak of the it:

And I don’t really know what this rail track was for, but now it has quite a symbolic weight:

But we also have a lot of beautiful beaches without bunkers or other traces of martial world history, though you do see that the ocean is eating away at the coastline everywhere:

I guess pano style photography is better suited for the landscape:

Bordeaux

A really beautiful city with an incredible variety of little shops and book stores and (most important) at least two comic shops. If you’re coming from a developing country in terms of comics like I do (Germany), France is really a revelation: A whole society with a vivid visual culture!
And the architecture is also stunning:

I’ve actually seen people spontaneously starting to dance to the music of a street musician there.
And when it comes to to a bit of architecture which hasn’t been that well attended to it’s provoking artistic expressions (yes, these are artificial bracket fungi):

And then there is this beautiful park:

And in the train station (in Paris as well as in Bordeaux) you see these pianos standing around. The SNCF invites anybody to play, if he or she wants to. And people actually do this! I’ve heard several people playing while waiting for my train: