Lourdes became a destination of pilgrimages in the mid 19th century after a 14 year old girl, Bernadette Soubirous, had a series of visions of the Virgin Mary in a cave just out side of town (and I mean just outside, it can't be more than a few hundred meters from where the town actually ended back then; it's well in the town now). And after a, no doubt, exhaustive study into the validity of her visions, the Catholic Church declared them truly miraculous and the poor girl was promptly made the patron saint of all sick people. Bernadette spent the rest of her life hiding in a convent about 100 miles away and died at the age of 34.
Because of this, Lourdes is a very odd town indeed. When I was there, I stayed in a little room at a hotel a few blocks from the train station, just off Avenue Gen. Baron Maransin. Up by the hotel the town looks quite normal, in a 1950s-ugly-architecture-pizzerias-and-cheap-brasseries sort of way. The main square of town looks quite a bit like any normal French town, in my limited experience, with a fountain, a market, and the skyline dominated by a medieval castle on the hill in the center of town. Nothing much to write home about, except perhaps the unusual number of hospitals (understandable due to the patronage of St. Bernadette). But once one drops down onto the Boulevard Remi Sempe, which runs at the lowest level through the town, Lourdes becomes something else entirely. The little street is completely crowded with souvenir shops of a religious bent, hotels, hotels with souvenir shops in the lobby, restaurants, and restaurants that do a side business as souvenir shops. "Tacky" might not be a word that can fully describe what one finds in the lower depths of Lourdes.
But I am sure you can just imagine all the odd and awful things being sold. Of course there was the normal range of crap: lighters, key chains, coffee cups, wallets, soccer jerseys, watches, medallions and crosses. But some of the stuff tended more toward the obscure; clearly quite a bit of Catholicism remains a mystery to me and I stood and tried to understand the religious significance of: cuckoo clocks, little sno-globes with St. Bernadette standing in a blizzard, egg cups, shot glasses (get drunk with St. Bernadette?), ash trays and bottle openers (ruin your body with St. Bernadette and then she will heal you?), breath mints (I kid you not: "The Holy Water Lozenge." Of course I bought some of those!), hookah pipes (what the? and was that a little bong I saw in the corner?), a Menorah (granted the Menorah was in the shop called "Jerusalem in Lourdes" that also sold little rocks from Jerusalem and water from the river Jordan), pre-blessed wedding wine, chocolates (I guess chocolates really are for every occasion), and pill boxes (there certainly were a lot of ill people stumbling about so pill boxes just makes good sense). And every shop was selling Swiss Army knives for some reason (granted they do have little crosses on them). Oh, one interesting item to note: the man in the shop where I bought the holy mints only had one arm. (It seems I have fallen into a Fellini film)
Walking into one anonymously awful shop, a little stuffed beaver (why?) announced my arrival with an off key wolf whistle, which I must say was more than a bit creepy, especially since I was ogling the pleasant looking sales clerk at the time (God is watching!). There were also lots and lots of rosary beads on sale, in every shop. Rosary beads of every shape, size and composition, from the awful miniature plastic 4-bead strings, with beads the size of stunted peas, to the awful plastic jumbo-sized-2-meter long strings with beads the size of my thumb (if perhaps my thumb was wildly swollen from being whacked with a large hammer) -- I guess there are different sizes of sins that call for different sizes of rosary beads.
At the "Palais du Rosaire" I browsed the wonderful collection of bottles that one could fill with holy water from the "La Grotte" (is this from where the word "grotty" is derived?). The bottles came in all sizes, from thimble sized, through shot-glass sized and the half liter "hiking canteen" sized (they even had little straps so one could carry them comfortably on a long hike), up to the large two liter sized "gallon jug." There was a cute little bottle shaped like a saintly looking Bernadette (of course) with her head doubling as the cap of the bottle (the bottle was all white, her head blue, I guess to keep one from trying to unscrew the wrong part of her anatomy). There was a soccer ball shaped bottle for the football enthusiasts. I noticed as I walked down the street closer and closer to the Grotto, the prices of the souvenirs in the shops went up dramatically with every step I took (I guess the shop keepers were counting on the pilgrims being in a religious delirium and not able to walk back up the street 10 feet to buy the same thing at a 30% discount).
The main street, only about 300 meters long, was crowded with pilgrims, people from all over the world, if the over-heard languages is any guide. I heard: French, Italian, Spanish, German, English, Korean, Russian, and several unidentified languages (one might have been Swahili perhaps?). There were also women in sarongs with that little third eye in the middle of their forehead (now I am no theologian, but isn't that third eye thingy a completely different religion, altogether?). Of course there is also an impressive number of invalids in wheel chairs and little rickshaw like contraptions, and more nuns than one could shake a papal miter at. The crowd seems to be mostly pilgrims (90% or so) with a few tourists thrown in, What is with the religious boy scouts? They were everywhere, dressed in shorts and red scouting shirts, replete with merit badges and scarves.
It's a pretty odd and surreal place, but once you get to the gates of Porte de St. Michel, the entrance of the Esplanade of the Processions, the Basilica and the Grotto itself, it becomes something else entirely. Inside those gates, it is hard to make fun of the people. It's sort of depressing. Not depressing because the people believe so strongly in St. Bernadette and the miracles she offers. That's ok. Everyone has to believe in something. Even those who believe in nothing, believe strongly in that nothing (and thus nothing becomes something (I guess the only ones who don't really believe in anything are those perpetual wafflers, the agnostics)). But what is so depressing is the sheer and overwhelming concentration of desperation found around the Grotto. It is hard to imagine that there are so many people in the world who are so utterly hopeless that there will spend all their money and travel half way around the globe to seek some consolation (well I guess not that hard to imagine that they exist, but hard to imagine them all in the same place).
A Basilica has been built on the hill above the grotto, where regular masses are held. There are of course several hospitals on the grounds and a industrial sized confessional complex. But the main attraction is the fabled Grotto.
Just before one gets to the grotto, there is a long arc of water fountains supplied with holy water coming directly from the Grotto. People line up to drink, wash, and fill up bottles with the water. I found the water quite refreshing, cool and crisp, a hint of a mineral aftertaste, like water from a mountain stream. All in all quite nice. Good water.
Then: The Grotto. There was a fast moving queue, but it was interesting to note that people in wheel chairs and rickshaws get to cut to the front of the line. The Grotto is not really a cave, more like a deep overhang on the cliff face. The rock walls inside are smooth from people's hands rubbing against it (like mine). And it is indeed is a nice little hide-away, a stream running through it; I can understand why shy Bernadette spent some of her teenaged angst time here -- but I wonder what really happened here on those lonely spring nights: what did she see? Outside the Grotto people sit in rows, quietly contemplating the statue of the Virgin Mary, strategically placed in the cliff face where Bernadette first saw her hovering.
After the Grotto is the candleria, ciegeria? Candle place? Where one can light a candle and say a prayer. There is a booth where candles can be obtained: a slim 2 foot candle for the bargain price of 2.50; a bigger 2 foot candle for 5.50, a beefy 3 footer for 10; and of course there is a 2 kg monster for 20, and the gargantuan 20 kg, 6 footer for 150. But what is wonderful about the Catholic Church is that all these prices are just "suggested donations." There is no one there to take the money, just a little slot to drop the cash in (Scientologists take note!)
Above where people light the candles a little sign reads: "The flame continues your prayer." But what happens if the candle goes out, does the prayer also die? With this thought I try to relight as many of the candles that have gone out as I can while standing there, feeling a bit like an alter boy (although I wouldn't really know, never having been an alter boy, but as I imagine an alter boy must feel). Lighting my candle, I try to think good thoughts about friends, family and hope my candle does not blow out soon.
Between the candleria and the baths (yes one can bathe in the water from the Grotto) is a large bathroom. Inside I found a distraught retarded boy/man who kept walking from stall to stall trying to find one that actually held a toilet, and not just one of those awful holes in the ground (that the French xenophobically call "Turkish toilets" -- as if the Turks have anything to do with them), but every stall was the same, toilet-less. He pointed inside for me to look at the abomination that was wrought within. At the opening of each new door, he looked more and more disturbed. As I peed, he waited by the one last closed stall door, waiting for it to become vacant, hoping beyond hope for a small miracle. I finished quickly and I hoped his guardian or family member would come in to help him.
I next turned toward the bath: thinking maybe I would rinse off my sins and the grit and grim of the road, but alas, I could not stay to purge as the holy water I had drunk was starting to take effect: and I like the retarded boy in the bathrooms I like to have a real toilet to perch upon. So I hurried back to the hotel. The Holy Water has an effect after all.
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