Dreams of French Cake

I wrote this text around the time I created the previous one - it was an entry into a competition run by Auchan, a supermarket chain. The topic was "My Ideal Trip to France", and the prize was, not surprisingly, a trip to France - to Lille, to be precise. Lille is a beautiful place, and maybe in the near future I'll try to write an account of my mom's and my enjoyment of the prize; for the moment, the difficulty of translating this text to English puts me off writing.

One doesn’t eat a cake in a minute. You savor it slowly, treating your loved ones to it. This is the way I picture France, that tastiest of desserts. First I would eat half a teaspoon of Alpine whipped cream, lick some Provencal icing, taste the flavor of historic cathedrals, charming medieval towns, majestic castles. With a touch of gluttony I would feast my eyes on the delicacies of the Louvre. And then, as the crowning event of this feast, I would devour the tranquillity of Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny.

Color, light, beauty. Those would probably be my first impressions of this place. Flowers on all sides, with an overwhelming multitude of hues, and yet softened, ordered, with slightly blurred edges. In the splash of white roses I find again the stateliness of the Alps, crowned with glistening snow. For a fraction of a second I feel a pain in my legs that reminds me of day-long mountain hikes; a pleasurable pain, necessary for the appreciation of beauty.

And finally... I see, after all these years of dreaming, a small Japanese bridge over a pond studded with water lilies. I have before my eyes the picture that hangs over my bed in my room. An enchanted place.

When after a few hours I shall leave this place, I will – I am sure of it – see a small haystack in the distance. Miniature, hardly visible, and yet similar to those Monet painted so many times, every time gilding them differently with rays of sunlight. Sunlight that each day alters the flavor of the French cake. Ever more deliciously.