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past the Cruas Nuclear Power Station
Tuesday, October 25 2016
Off the west bank of the Rhone, Viviers, France
This morning we were parked on the left (west) side of the Rhone for the first time on the voyage. There was a little village for us to explore called Viviers, and by now I was over my aversion to leaving the boat, so I joined Gretchen for a stroll. After a little walk down a plane-tree-lined street (those are European sycamores), we came to a little open air market at the base of a steep hill that appeared to be crowned with ancient crumbling stone walls and terraces. At first there was no obvious way up that hill, but as we rounded it on a road that separated its east flank from an agricultural field, we found a series of roads leading upward. The hill was gloriously encrusted with a warren of medieval streets and closely-packed stone buildings. Occasionally the street would pass beneath an entire building or a mysterious stone arch that no longer appeared to serve any purpose. There was, of course, a cathedral up there, and we poked our head in because that is what one always does. At this point, though, all the cathedrals kind of looked the same. While we were up there in that maze, a rain began to fall. It was slow at first but then these unexpectedly-large raindrops started pelting us. We made our way down the hill via a different street from the one that had gotten us up there. By the time we'd returned to the open-air market, it was raining so hard that we sought shelter beneath an awning in front of a store. We might've stayed there longer, but that annoying fat woman from The Hague was sheltering there too, so the moment the rain let up somewhat, we made a dash for the boat.
[REDACTED]
A little before lunch, we sat in the lounge chatting with our new friends Nathan and Christina as the boat shoved off and headed upriver towards a nuclear power station (the Cruas Nuclear Power Plant). It was a futuristically-Orwellian sight to behold: huge clouds of steam billowing from two of its cooling towers while a pair of wind turbines sat idle in the rain, apparently added to the facility as some sort of greenwash. One of the cooling towers featured a mural of a child playing with what appeared to be an abstraction of a pile of dirt. Behind it all, the mountain appeared to have been cut away by extensive quarrying.
After lunch, Gretchen arranged to introduce the two youngish couples to each other (that is, the bike-loving Nathan and Christina and Andrew the Google engineer and Michelle the maker of vegan foods). Though we all get along great and share veganism as core morality, there are diffences. Gretchen and I are about 10 years older than the others, and we're the only people in this six-person group who drink alcohol. My main contribution to this conversation regarded the mental illness in my family, which ranges from the debilitating (my brother) to the troubling (my mother's hoarding and how that poisons her relationship with her only self-sufficient descendant). I like all these people, but I feel a little trapped when socializing with them; I never can figure out when it's appropriate to leave.
Our boat continued up the river for hours, providing gorgeous views of the riverside communities and farms. I don't know how the French (or, really, most non-American humans) have succeeded in living so long in a place while somehow avoiding cluttering it with ugliness. While that nuclear plant hadn't been pretty, at least it was contained within its site. In America, once ugliness appears, more ugly starts piling up around it until you have Paneras and Dollar Generals stretching down the motor mile as far as the eye can see. Eventually we docked off the village of Tournon, though I didn't leave the boat to see what it was like. Instead I went to the bar and got a glass of single malt scoth (there were two on board, and the one I've been liking has been the Glenfiddich). I sat in the lounge and fought through the terrible internet to do some work for my distant non-profit employer.
We had dinner tonight with Michelle, Andrew, and that quiet younger German couple whose male half slightly resembles Nathan V., my friend from childhood. At some point Gretchen was telling Michelle and Andrew the story of the German guy on the Galapagos boat (back in 2005) who complained about the Jews in Berlin and then went on to say two lesbians shouldn't be allowed to raise a child. At this, the female half of the quiet German couple started listening. But when she made her contribution to the conversation, she made the claim that she personally had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and so why should she have to hear about it every year in school? This was precisely the kind of attitude that gives Gretchen a dim view of the present German population and the extent to which they've learned from the mistakes of their ancestors. And, as I then pointed out, we live in a society that was built in part by the crimes of our ancestors. An example I cited was that my father benefitting greatly from the G.I. Bill when he returned home from Europe after World War II, something that lifted him and all his descendants (me included) out of rural poverty. But those benefits went almost entirely to white people, which means, though I had no direct role in slavery or Jim Crow, my situation is what it is in part due to the unequal distribution of largesse from the government to my ancestors only because they happened to be white. To the extent I have benefitted, I am personally in debt. I didn't pursue this line of argument with the youngish German girl, but the fact remains that she now has a home in a Germany where a lot of people were killed or deported not all that long ago. To the extent she benefitted from the Holocaust, she has a debt to the descendants of those who didn't. And having to learn about it every year in school is a small price to pay.
The main course for dinner was a thick slab of seitan presented as a steak. But it was too big and undifferentiated and the surface was too dry. It was as if someone had tried to adapt an American steak & potatoes meal from the 1950s to modern veganism. I didn't have much of an appetite for it at the time, but it seemed like the kind of thing I might want to snack on between meals (sort of like a dog with his chew toy). Others weren't eating theirs either, and soon I had three of those seitan steaks on my plate, and now all I needed was some way to get them back to my room. I asked the super-nice, super-flamboyant Pee-Wee-Herman-style waiter who serves the soup at lunch time if I could, and he said he'd have to talk to his manager. But then, a couple minutes later, one of the female servers came up and, when I asked her how I could take it back to my room, she said it was forbidden and snatched it from me like a dirty diaper from a dog. Oh well, what could I do?
I've been mostly avoiding the evening activities, chosing to hang out in the room instead with my laptop (which Gretchen has taken to referring to as my "girlfriend"). Yesterday I avoided karaoke night this way, and tonight I avoided trivia night (though a team that included me and Gretchen would've been formidable; the Venn diagram of our respective knowledge areas does not overlap much).
At the bottom of the hill at the center of Viviers. Click to enlarge.
Looking out over Viviers from the building-encrusted hill at its center. Click to enlarge.
The Cruas Nuclear Power Station. Click to enlarge.
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