Beaune

There are two excursions booked in for today, a mustard factory and the Hotel Dieu - a hospice for the poor and needy, so we piled onto the bus and headed for Beaune.

 The Mustard Factory

 I quite like mustard, but I'm not that fussed on it being too hot.  In fact, I can't understand how anyone can eat such hot food that that all you can taste is the "hotness", then your tastebuds hurt and you sweat and sometimes you cry.  I just don't understand it.

Anyway..... So, the region that we're in - The Burgundy Region

 is well known for it's, surprisingly enough....mustard.  

We were taken to a mustard factory in the town of Beaune which still had the old fashioned machinery there in a museum section.  A lady talked about the process and we even made our own mustard.  The recipe is so basic, just mustard seeds - crushed, vinegar and salt.  Then apparently the trick is to leave it for a long while before eating it.  We tasted it as soon as we'd made it and it was disgusting.  I mean, truly disgusting, but something happens to it in the waiting time that makes it edible.  Then once it's all ready, you can add in flavours.  So simple, but still not as simple as buying it in a ready made jar.

 (None of these women are Jenny nor myself)

Then they have a gift shop, as all good tours do and and array of flavoured mustards to choose from.

All packaged beautifully

And even a familiar one...

The walk between the mustard factory and the excursion number 2 - the Hospice was very pretty.  We walked through a gorgeous little courtyard where some of the beams on the buildings had been hand painted.

We also passed a butcher with crumbed pigs trotters - just because they'e crumbed, doesn't make them right!  And one of my French favourites - escargot!

A lovely bit of music whilst we waiting to go into the Hotel Dieu.

The Hotel Dieu

A "hospice" in English, we know as a place sick people go when they're not going to get any better, whereas in olden day French, it meant a place where anybody can go to get well.  Rich, poor, travellers, the 'just a bit sick' and the 'nearly at the end'.  The Hotel Dieu was founded by Nicholas Rolin as a hospice for the poor and needy in 1443.  He was a Bugundian chancellor of Philip the Good and was generally a man of 'tender feeling'.

Nicholas' motives in creating such a splendid accommodation for the sick and poor were probably based on the belief that charitable works might shorten the time he would have to spend in Purgatory to atone for his sins.  He even arranged for profits of his other business ventures to go toward the upkeep and ongoing expenses of the hospice after he passed away hoping that the staff and patients would pray for him in the afterlife.  Apparently the hotel was used up until the last century and parts of it today are still used as a retirement home.

The main patient room

The beds were only small, but then again, so were the people!

The ceiling of the main patient room.  It was beautiful, but very hard to heat.  If you were a patient, you would share a bed with 3 or 4 other people, because of lack of space and to help keep each other warm.  There was one room with a fire place, but you had to be dying to be in there.  They may have been your last days, but at least you were warm!

There is also a chapel at the end of the main patient room so that mass could be held for the patients who couldn't get out of bed and they could still be a part of it.

Patient "equipment" was obviously well designed way back then, as we have the same designs still today!

The hospice was run by nuns who weren't necessarily nurses, but they nursed and dispensed medicines etc...

This grate was situated over the river that ran under the building.  It was a fandagled new way to get rid of all the medical waste.  Honestly, they were always thinking back then, weren't they?

Even back then, they used to make their own medicines from the herbs and vegetables etc that they grew in the hospice garden.

This was the kitchen with a massive big wood stove with four ovens and goose neck taps!  Who doesn't want a goose neck tap in their kitchen?

I mean, check them out!

There was also a room with paintings and tapestries depicting life around that time.  This painting, 'The Last Judgement' by Rogier van der Weyden is a 15 panelled fold away piece. 

This is what it looked like when it was opened up.

Obviously Nicholas was very religious and obsessed with going to Heaven, and these paintings show what happens when you go to Hell..... Apparently there's a lot of nude hair pulling going on down there.

There was this very cool magnifying glass on a remote controlled slide system so you could up close and personal.  There is some writing on the yellow hem of the green robe behind it.  

The other side of the painting showed people, still nude, going to Heaven.  They were like, "Yeah, thanks for that.  We're totes grateful and that."

 

The people were originally painted in the nude in this painting, but our guide told us that somebody (I can't remember who or when) wasn't happy with them being in the nude so had clothes painted on them all, then when the painting was cleaned years later, the paint they used for the clothes came off and they were nude once more.

I wonder which way Nicholas eventually went.... up or down?