Utopian socialists (part 1 of 2)

Pictures ahoy!

Bus:

We had a long but pretty bus ride to get to Guise.  It was about two and a half hours away, mostly north.  Going that direction from Paris you get to the country side pretty quickly - there aren't real non-Paris suburbs that way.  So we got views like this

There is a lot of farmland, rolling hills, and little towns in the distance.  A classmate said it's like the Midwest, but I think it's prettier (I stopped taking pictures about halfway through but farther north there are prettier hills).  Of course I'm a bit biased, though!  Also, sorry about the cars in there; it's hard to take good pictures from a bus.  Or if you're me, it's hard to take good pictures in general.

Guise:

The town of Guise is small, sort of cute, and quite boring.  We didn't get to explore it at all but here is what I got from the bus:

It turns out Guise wasn't made into a duchy until the 1500's so I was a bit off on my dates earlier.  Fun fact I bet none of you know about Guise: when referring to the Duke(s) of Guise, the area, or the familistere (where we visited) you abide by the rules of French pronunciation and say GEEZ ("g" as in "good"); when referring to the actual town of Guise you say GWEEZ.  Weird.

So the Familistere de Guise is a factory community set up by a guy in the mid 1800's who wanted to create a socialist utopia.  He was unhappy not so much with the working conditions of the factories but the living conditions of the workers - many people in one small house, few or no windows, poor hygiene, etc.  So he built this community, complete with a pool, showers, laundry rooms, gardens, a school, a library, food merchants, and other things, where workers could live with their families sort of dormitory-style.  The tour neglected to mention this, but in return the workers were essentially never allowed to leave the compound and had to follow a lot of very strict rules.  But all in all, it was much healthier for the workers to live in these conditions than in a poor urban setting.

The dorms themselves actually look like a yellow prison.

So we saw two rooms set up the way they would have been, one from the 19th century and one from the early 20th century.  The man who set this all up was also an inventor, but it seems he almost exclusively made heating devices.

 Just some examples - I probably have four more shots of stoves and heating things, and could have taken many, many more.

The grounds were rather pretty.

We had lunch in the cafeteria thingie inside the familistere - purportedly regional dishes.  We had a sort of cider kir to drink - hard cider mixed with a bit of cassis.  First course was a bit of salad with what claimed to be a flamiche (leek pie type of thing) but was in fact some other dish that starts with an M; I can't remember what it is.  It's a very airy pie that's mostly a sweetish dough and some cheese.  Yummy.  Second course, coq au vin with frites (fries).  Third was a cheese course with some mysterious slightly stinky, but good, cheese, and camembert, and fourth was an apple tart.  The coq au vin was good but the tart was pretty bland.

So after rushing through the museum part of the familistere we set off for Noyons which will be in the next entry later...