2007 Périgueux - Saint-Jean- PdP Walking

... met an old french gentleman. A painter like Picassso. For more than an hour he showed us around and pointed out dozends of fantastic details on the outside of the cathedral. He was very enthusiastic, but he spoke French so fast, that we did not understand a lot....

During the French Revolution many churches got secularized. Some never made it "back" to a spiritual use like this one, that was converted into a garage later. There are nice corbels under the roof..

...having met the strange gnome with the hairy ears in Captieux the night before, we now found his bathtube in our room in Retjons. It must have been his tube, as it was so tiny. I could not even sit in it....

..must have been a very modern building. Back in the 1920s/1930s. Influenced by German Bauhaus or early Russian Modernism. Now it does need a lot of care.

...the small houses seemed to be glued onto the church...

.....some of the old stone-cutters seem to have had a very strange kind of very long lasting humour. Here on the left is an old baldy guy with beard, carrying a large and heavy backpack next to a donkey playing the harp, making fun of him....

.... a real survivor! I had not seen such a collection box since ages. I remember them very well from the 50s. As a little kid, I would put in a coin - and the friendly smiling boy nodded a "Thank You". I was sure, that "Vatican II" - the ecclesiastical council in the 1960 - had banned them..

...in Saint Girons, there are some extraordenary stone-carvings.The person in the center, wearing a kind of bath robe, holding up two others by their hair, who are being eaten by two fierce lions on the corners of the capital. All without showing any emotions. This cannot be "Daniel in the Den of Lions", but it may wll be a "Master of the Beasts"..

...next morning I crossed the Adour via the old bridge...