"Patrimoine" is a french word that doesn't always translate to english with the same weight - its 1:1 translation is "heritage," but in reality, includes anything and everything that defines a places, from the food that is special to that area, to the architecture that defines it, to the plants, animals, rivers, religions and everything in between - truly a hard thing to understand in just one word.
This weekend is therefore the celebration of all this, taking place in all of the various Patrimoines throughout France.
In France, the political divisons are a bit different than those of the United States.
The country is first divided into "Régions" - Toulouse and the Vicdessos Study area that I am working in are both in the Département "Midi-Pyrénées)
Régions in France
The next level of granularity in the political divisions are "Départements." There can be many Départements in one Région.
Départements in France
The Département that contains my Study Site is called "Ariège"
Département of Ariège, Région of Midi-Pyrénées
The Patrimoine celebration of today took place in a village called "Auzat," which is essentially the next town over from "Vicdessos," the titulaire village of the Study Area.
Dr. Houet briefly explained to me that there would be a 4 hour lecture on the history of the valley, in celebration of the Patrimoine. He said that he had an acquaintance, who knew a guy, who was the one that was putting the whole thing together. He told me that he could arrange for that person to pick me up at the train station in Tarascon, and give me a ride to Auzat (30 minutes by car from Tarascon).
I had been planning to visit the village of Tarascon today, in order to photograph some sweet abandoned factories that I had seen after the field work of last week. At first, I politely declined Thomas' offer, mainly because I wanted to be able to photograph the abandonment at will, not having to worry about meeting anybody at a given time. However, Thomas pulled some skilled one-sided negotiations, and agreed for the two of us that he would just call the woman, who would call the man, who owed her a favor, who in turn owed Thomas a favor. Of course that is maybe a little exaggerated, but you understand. And there it was, I would meet the man (whose name I still don't know, even after having spent 6 hours with him today) at the Train Station of Tarascon-sur-Ariège at 12h30.
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