8-9 Dec 07 - La Fête des Lumières @ Lyon

3rd time in Lyon and I simply could not get bored of this city. The irresistibility factors of this place were the vibrancy and of course, the hospitality of my host and my French prof. This time round, I decided to stay with my prof, partly because I didn’t want to put extra burden on my 84-year old host. I am grateful for the fact that my prof warmly welcomed me into her apartment despite all the works that she had at her hands to settle. I was even more thankful because she practically did not do her work in the end because she had to cook, prepare my bed as well as entertain me over the meals.

Lunch with Marie-France was never an awkward experience for me. As usual, she had a lot of things to say and so did I. We chatted about almost everything under the sky…and continued as Sinhui arrived at around 4 pm to visit her… till we lost track of time. And before we knew it, it was near 6 pm and it was time to descend to the city centre for the highlight of the day: La Fête des Lumières, or The Festival of Lights.

Saturday afternoon with Marie-France. 1st row (R): Lyonnais specialty called Papilotes. 2nd row: MF posing with the photo collages that we made for her.

This festival is a “typiquement Lyonnais” tradition which we could not find anywhere else in France. It had a long history, of course. Once upon a time, there was a plague that was spreading in Europe and the people of Lyon prayed to Virgin Mary to spare the town from the plague. And if this came true, the Lyonnais would honour Mary every year. Indeed, Lyon was not affected by the plague and they decided to erect a statue of Mary at the foot of Fourvière hill. Unfortunately, on the inauguration day, the river Sâone was flooded and the erection of the statue had to be postponed to another date. Amazingly (and apparently), the new date was also an inauspicious one as there was a bad storm on that day. The Lyonnais prayed to Mother Mary for the storm to stop soon…and when it finally stopped on the 8th Dec 1852, the people of Lyon spontaneously lit up candles in the windows of their houses; some went out with candles to celebrate on the roads. Since then, this practice has continued every year and nowadays, the religious practice has been commercialized. Light designers were asked to come up with special designs of different themes every year. I am not sure if they actually get any rewards, but it is a good publicity for them anyway.

The festival itself was a real madness. There was basically a human traffic jam everywhere. It seemed to me that everyone was out that evening. It was hard to stay together in a group especially when there were 8 of us. Honestly, I have never seen a festival of this scale in my life. The rain, the drizzle, the coldness, the crowd did not seem to dampen anybody’s mood. Believe it or not, we wanted to eat at Subway, but they ran out of bread at 8:30 pm!! We managed to get some kebab in the end, but even as we ordered, we could hear the vendor making a call and shouting for the suppliers to send more bread immediately. This was the extent of the evening madness.

Anyway, they sold “vin chaud” everywhere on the streets so I tried one cup. It tasted a little weird because there was cinnamon inside, but it was a good sampling session.

The spectacle of the evening was colourful, splendid, magnificent. Even though I was expecting much more at first, I realized in the end that it was very difficult to get better than this. I did not manage to cover all the illumination sites because there were close to 70 of them.

1st row: view of Fourvière from afar; Place St Nizier; 2nd row: Place des Terreaux

L-R: little squares by Rhône; Place de l'Opéra (can you see the stars on the wall?)

1st row: Place Bellecour; 2nd row: random

I had a fantastic evening with fantastic company. I took the chance to get to know Guillaume and Leticia a little better. Guillaume is a French student from Valence who is in the same chemistry class with Sinhui in Grenoble. He is a super-sympa (very friendly) guy; perhaps, the friendliest young French I have known so far. In fact, I totally had no problem striking conversations with him. Unlike many others, he is open to learning other cultures and he is patient enough to tolerate our often-badly-constructed French. That evening, a thought ran through mind. To what extent does luck play a role in your SEP experience in terms of the people you meet? To a large extent I guess. And I guess I did not really have much of such luck. But I am glad to get to know this dude finally and I think it is never too late to be better friends, especially since he will be coming to Singapore to visit us next June (he even bought the air tickets already!).

the contingent from Grenoble

When I reached Marie-France’s apartment at 00:30, she was still awake. And I could not believe what she was doing. She was preparing a makeshift bed in the living room!! Earlier in the afternoon, she told me that if one or two of the “rest” (referring to the other Singaporeans who were making a day trip) wanted to stay the night in her place, I could bring them back. I thought it was just a casual statement on her part, but my eyes would not lie. She meant what she said. Needless to say, I was very touched by her kind gesture.

After breakfast the next morning, I rushed off to my host’s house which is not very far away. Marie-France wanted to drive me down but I insisted that she stay as I knew she had some papers to mark. After 25 mins walk, I reached my host’s house and we exchanged over orange juice and chocolate for about an hour before she had to leave for lunch in the community centre. I gave her a small framed photo collage and it was evident from her wide smile that she was very happy to receive it. I told her, “Lyon m’a donné beaucoup de bons souvenirs”. (Lyon has given me many good memories) And she replied, « Tu nous as donné aussi de bons souvenirs. On risque de t’oublier, mais avec cette photo et d’autres que tu nous as donnés, ce sera très difficile de t’oublier. » (You have also given us great memories. There is a risque that we forget you, but with this photo and others that you have given us, it will be very difficult to forget you). After exchanging our last bisous (kiss) on the cheeks, I waved her “Au Revoir” and I immediately dreaded the possibility that I might never see her again.

the people who made a difference. L-R: my host, her son and MF.

I spent the next 3 hours with Marie-France…lunch was no doubt excellent!! I cherished my last few hours in Lyon as time was getting really precious then.

Sunday's lunch: main course, coffee, fruit salad, wine, hard liqueur, cake...

As 15h30 approached, I went down with reluctance to the bus stop accompanied by Marie-France (of course, she had offered to drive me to Perrache but I furiously refused). I left with many souvenirs in my bag: home-made honey from my host’s son, home-made chocolates from my host and 2 bottles of home-made marmalade from Marie-France. I left with memories of Lyon sweeter than the honey. I left bitterly – more bitter than the dark chocolate – for the fact that I would not be back in Lyon for at least another 5-10 years. Merci Lyon, où tout a commencé.

cadéaux et souvenirs de Lyon