Appropriately, my last full day in Colmar was a rainy one. I could have done with less appropriateness, considering I had to walk all the way from my hotel to the archives in the rain this morning, lugging a 25-pound briefcase. It was pretty well damp all the way through by the time I got there, and so was the right sleeve of my jacket, despite my best efforts to make my little portable umbrella stretch to cover both sides.
I say "appropriate" because I'm sad to be leaving this lovely little corner of Alsace. As I was walking down the stairs to breakfast this morning, I was reminded of Verlaine's lines:
Il pleut sur la ville
Comme il pleure dans mon coeur."It rains on the city
As it weeps in my heart."
This is such a nice little town, with such a quaint center. The staff at the hotel, and even more so the staff at the archives, have been entirely friendly, accommodating, and helpful. I'm not looking forward to the day the occupation archives move back to Paris, let me tell you.
Anyway, I'm off on an early-morning train to Paris tomorrow. Not sure what kind of internet access I'll have at the hotel, so this may be the last blog post for awhile, or at least the end of the pictures. Last time I stayed in this particular hotel, they had a machine in the lobby that you could buy time on, but which didn't have a USB port. I'm hoping they'll have upgraded to a wireless network in the two years since I was last there. Given that they cater mainly to businesspeople, I'm hoping that's happened. But I won't know for sure until I get there.
Once I'm there, I've got a day in Vincennes to clean up some stuff at the army archives, and the rest of my time will be prowling through the archives at the Foreign Ministry. I don't know exactly what they have, or how much of it is accessible, so my main objective is to get an idea of what they've got locked away that I might want to have a look at and, hopefully, to make a good impression on the staff so they let me bend a few rules or at least bring me my materials on time. One never knows with librarians and archivists--as I was told in library school a decade and more ago, there are librarians in the world who see their job as protecting the materials in their care from the people who want to use them. Those are the ones that give the rest of us a bad name, and I'm hoping I don't encounter any of them.
I do plan on trying to see a little tennis when I've some free time. I hear there's some tournament or other being played someplace called Roland Garros and since I'll be in the neighborhood, I think I'll drop in. I doubt I'd be able to find (or afford) any of the good seats, so don't bother looking for me on NBC's or USA's coverage. But I'm looking forward to being able to say that I've at least been to Roland Garros while the French Open was going on.
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