Complex Numbers

Owl Miss This Place

For my final full day in Dijon, I didn't have anything planned out—no wine tours, no mustard discoveries, not even a "let's meet for lunch" (because unlike Paris and, by lucky chance, Tours, I don't know anyone here). So, as the day was fine and sunny and neither hot nor cold, I took a walk.

Dijon, like most European cities, is really quite incredibly old (from a US perspective). And, as with other cities, there's only so much one can do in a day. Turns out that Dijon has a self-guided walking tour embedded into it. Literally; there are brass plaques with engraved owls   on the sidewalks, pointing the way.

Why an owl? Well, on the side of the cathedral here (also named Notre Dame, because Catholics weren't very original) perches a small stone owl, barely recognizable as such from the accumulated wear of people touching it. Supposedly, touching it (but only with one's left hand) will grant a wish. Apparently, no one has yet wished for "restore the Notre Dame owl to its original carved glory." Or maybe they have, and it's just another silly superstition.

Following the trail eventually gets you to the owl, and then it moseys on along through other historic sites. It's like following the quest markers in a video game, which made me want to play a video game, but that can wait until I get home again.

I didn't touch the owl. For one thing, it's a silly (if mostly harmless to everything but the owl itself) superstition. For another, even if there were something to it, making a wish is tantamount to acknowledging that there's something missing in my life, and there isn't. For yet another, over half a century of reading and writing stories, and playing fantasy role-playing games, has instilled in me a deep, abiding distrust of wishes. And, for a final thing, some beggars were approaching with their cups out, so I hoofed it out of there, continuing to follow the brass owl arrows.

These led me next to a mustard shop, on the same street (Rue de la Chouette, naturally), where I finally got to see the thing Dijon is most famous for and holy condiments, Batman, there's a lot of mustard there.

At some point, though, around the Ducal Palace, I lost the trail and never did pick it up again, despite looking and even trying the internet. All I could discover was that it was not, in fact, the end of the trail. Oh, well.

Much later, in the evening, I returned to the palace area (Palais des Ducs) and its accompanying semicircular courtyard, Place de la Libération, which is surrounded by cafés, bistrots, restaurants, bars, and brasseries, the differences between which are subtle and very French. (Brasserie also means "brewery," but not all brasseries are actually breweries, much to my disappointment.)

Point is, I went back there for dinner because it's pretty, and I sat outside with a beer and a burger as the sun set and the Palais des Ducs lit up, and the shifting, multicolored lights in the Place's fountains illuminated their waters.

This sort of thing is one of the reasons I wanted to go to France.