Finally, Brittany
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2003
1
9
12
Trip End
Sep 01, 2003
Saint-Malo,
Brittany,
France
Saturday, August 23, 2003
We have had a great view from the train in the last days, travelling through Normandie and Bretagne. Fields, meadows, woods, cows, old farmhouses, the ocean... it was really another atmosphere.
We stopped for some days in St. Malò. It is a town burn to the ground during World War II, but it was completely rebuilded as it was before. It is a nice town, on the ocean, with some castles (one of them, like the more famous Moint-Saint-Michelle, is accessibile only when the tide is low) and lots of memorials of World War II.
We found this great campsite that was on the top of a promontory on the ocean, with World War II fortification inside. I'm not a fanatic of World War II (Federico is, that's why he went in a bunker 6 floors under road level, and he caught a cold because of the difference of temperature) but sitting on the iron bunker, looking at the ocean and the big blast the enemy artillery carved into the solid iron, make you think of what had appened there and why.
All the place was surrounded with this meditative mood. The ocean is something fascinating for us Italian. We live on a peninsula in the Mediterrean Sea, so we all go to the sea at summer, but our sea is warm, calm, and tides are only 1 meter high. The ocean is so deep, dark, cold and the tides are something abnormal for us, that you are a little intimidated by it.
We spent in St. Malò more time than any other places during this travel. It was a combination on this relaxing and meditative atmosphere we were searching after visiting crowded capitals: great lanscapes on the ocean, a nice town and most of all great company. We meet many people here, and apart from some girls two of us met (while the other one was sick in the tent :P), the most intresting person we met was an african man (from Zanzibar) now married with a Spanish woman and living togheter in France with their small child. We spent one entire day speaking with him as we felt that in his troubled life across two continents he had archived a wisdom we were fascinated by. Oh, and he also offered us some marjiuana :P
Unfortunately one night, while staying on the beach with younger french boys and girls, two criminals tryed to beat us and stole our belongings. We managed to have them leave us italian alone without a fight (sometimes it's not so bad if they consider all italians to be affiliated with mafia) but they moved to beat the younger french boys before we could do anything, and they only fleed when we became more aggressive (they where later caught by the police, who I hope gave them the same treatment).
