A local survey lists important urban projects in some districts of Angers

According to a survey published by the Angers area urban agency about Angers city and its 12 different districts, some of these should experiment some urban changes in the years to come. In spite of the growth of the population which reached about 1 000 inhabitants all over the city, the districts faced different demographical evolutions between 1999 and 2006. Only some of them should get urban projects.

In Ney-Chalouère, where an increase of households is registered, a small urban project will give a more central part to the Ney square while the Terrien-Cocherel site will be renewed later. In the Saint-Jacques-Nazareth district the main scheme will take place on the area between the Le Quai Theatre and the buildings of the Maine side front : a new center for congresses should be built there.

Les-Hauts-de-Saint-Aubin will host 300 homes per year up to 2025 along the new street car line. And "numerous real estate programs" will be implemented in Angers downtown, almost in the Blancheraie district as well as in the surroundings of the Saint-Laud station which will be transformed with a "major project" called "Gare+" round the former Sernam site.
 

In Deux-Croix-Banchais and Monplaisir, the survey notices that "there is room for urban development along Pasteur avenue" and notes "projects for this town entrance". Regarding Madeleine-Saint-Léonard, the city plans implementation of offices for services companies along the Courbertin boulevard. At the Justices area, a scheme is under way in the Eclateries field. Roseraie and Belle-Beille have already been transformed thanks to recent urban renovation projects.

From the illness of the works to the beardless normality

Jean-Claude Antonini, mayor of Angers, came back to a meeting of the town council on march 28 after two months of illness. But, he came back without his beard. Since he entered in local policy, almost 25 years ago, Jean-Claude Antonini was beardless. His choice to have a bearded face appeared with the beginning of an important period for himself and the city : the work of the first tramway line.


May be that choice to wear beard is not conscious. May be he choose to keep his beard on the advice of a communication agency. During months, the city and its mayor went through an unusual esthetic situation. And may both of them resented badly that period. Voluntarily or not, Mr. Antonini and the town "faced" the same difficulty : to live in spite of unusual conditions. Did the mayor want to compensate the burden of Angers by suffering himself?

But the result is the same : Jean-Claude Antonini and the city are ressuscitating after a difficult work on their own "bodies". Within a few weeks, Angers will have recovered its face and normality. Let us hope it's the same for the mayor.

Troubling coincidences in Angers medias

There are only coincidences but some coincidences are sometimes meaningful of changes. A few days ago, a new tabloïd arrived in Angers while another withdrawed discreetly from its central editorial office, at Ralliement square. 20 minutes, a free daily newspaper, edited in more than 12 cities all over France, arrived last week in Angers, heralded with sellers dressed in blue, while Le Courrier de l'Ouest closed the doors of its urban newsroom located at the very center of town. 


Two large banners were hung during months at the windows of that local newspaper offices at Ralliement square to protest against their shutdown (They have been transfered in the building of the newspaper in the Maulévries district). So the Angers theater, which was formerly circled by two companies editing facts about the real "human comedy" is now alone. Ouest-France on its left and Le Courrier de l'Ouest on its right (as in politics) let room to a restaurant and a health club, as examples of the new centers of interest people have today.


On the liveless front side of the building where Le Courrier had its offices (travel agency, editorial offices and advertising agency), pedestrians can now hardly see the shadow of the letters newspaper title, pale reflection of its former visibility from the core of Angers city.

Angers VéloCité+ : bikes without bikers

If a week is a too short period to estimate the success or the failure of the new VéloCité+, the presence of all the new 48 bikes Angers city has set up in front of the Angers Saint-Laud railway station is not precisely the indication of a success. Of course, that march 27 was rainy and so was not a very convenient day for riding bicycle. But, on the opposite, that days was not a working day.


If tourists or inhabitants do not use bike, how people arriving in Angers and dressed for professionnal purposes would do so? The problem is double. First, it is not very convenieent to rent the bike in a place and to have to get it back at the same location. Secondly, the tariffes of renting for non residents look - for the period during which renting is possible : a day or a week - quite expensive face to those enforceable to Angers residents (from 2 to 10 euros per day plus a fee to access from one to 30 euros). Those are free for longer periods (up to a year)!


That of course may change in days or weeks to come (and it is desirable that things go that way), but in cities where the same rental service of bikes is available, there are numerous locations to get the cycles back. Moreover, it is not sure that other cities have two rental tariffes. These points could have to be seen closely.

ESSCA gratuated yesterday in Angers Congress center its 2005-2010 students

Students of the Ecole des sciences économiques et commercidales d'Angers (Essca) gathered on march 26 at the Congress center for the annual ceremony of graduation which ends, for most of them, a five year cursus, and some of them a cycle of adult continuing education. Several young businessmen, or businesswomen, received a financial grant in order to ease the project they had already started to realize.


In a period full of changes, of different natures, heads of Essca, Pascal Leleu, chairman and Catherine Leblanc, dean, as well as their guests, among them Didier Alix, chief adviser of the Société générale, pointed out the neccessity for future managers "to stick to values to overcome the challenges they will face". The ceremony, punctuated by delicate classical piano pieces, let every students colleges of the 2005-2010 promotion list to relate their experience in Essca, on its intellectual and human aspects.


Those thanked their teachers and relatives for the education they received which looks, they said, very estimated by companies. After the ceremony, streets of Angers down town welcomed the new former students who, according to one of them, will keep for long a vivid memory of their staying in Essca as "the good old days".

All the Angers bus-stops will be replaced in the months to come

The removal of the old bus stops

All the bus-stops of Angers city will be replaced within the months to come by the JCDecaux company. The work has begun this week and should end in september. Three technical teams, two from Paris and one from Nantes will do the job in the period including saturdays. The change concerns all the urban furnitures of the bus- stops : the shelters and the billboards located nearby. 

Installed more than ten years ago, the urban furnitures paled into insignificance beside the stations along the line Avrillé-La Roseraie of the new Angers streetcar. Their design and their location just a little bit higher and safer than those of the bus may have inspired the look of the new bus-stops which will take place now all over Angers. The same company was entrusted to implement the new "VéloCité+" in front of the Saint-Laud railway station.

This change is linked to the allocation of the contract of  supply of  urban furnitures signed by JCDecaux  and Angers city in 2010 for a 15 years period. This deal represents more than 300 bus-stops, 150 urban furnitures for information and more than 900 ads locations. The furnitures have been designed by two famous architects, the British lord Norman Forster and the Australian Philip Cox. 

JCDecaux Group , a French multinational corporation, is the largest outdoor advertising corporation in the world.The company was founded in 1964 in Lyon by Jean-Claude Decaux. Over the years it has expanded aggressively, partly through acquisitions of smaller advertising companies in several countries. It currently operates in more than 54 countries, 165 airports and has approximately 8 900 employees; its advertising reaches 175 millions people every day.

"Celebration day" with the ONPL at Angers Congress Center

"Celebration day". The title of the musical evening planned on march 24 by the Pays de la Loire National Orchestra was in harmony with the first true sunny and mild day of the new season. A numerous assistance was in the congress center to listen to pieces illustrating that period of the year which see the arrival of spring.
 
The interpretation of the fifth symphony "Reformation" of Felix Mendelssohn (a key document of Lutheranism and a momentous event of the protestant reformation) conducted by Pascal Rophé, got a long applause and has had its third movement be re-played.  Just before, the solist David Grimal played the violin Schumann concerto (instead of the Max Bruch concerto cancelled at the last moment of an unknown reason). 

The Schuman work is his only violin concerto and one of his last significant compositions. It remained unknown to all but a very small circle for more than 80 years after it was written. And Grimal interpreted it to the great pleasure of the public which told him to play encore two works of Bach. And the concert had started with a opening symphony, by Beethoven,  "For a celebration day", the musical theme was first designed to fit with the "Ode to joy".

The Université catholique de l'Ouest pays tribute to the Japanese victims of tsunami

More than one hundred persons gathered on march 23rd at the Université catholique de l'Ouest to pay tribute to the victims of the recent Japan tsunami. Because the Uco welcomes, since sixty years in partnership with 20 Japanese universities, Japanese students, the 2010-2011 promotion list was there to share a moment of emotion and meditation. The ceremony, lead by the president of the Uco, the reverend Guy Bedouelle, associated dozens of Japanese students as well as others of many nationalities and host families from Angers.


In order to point out the common sorrow for the disaster, the university planned a ceremony with flags, songs and rituals both Japanese and French. Prayers and invocations on behalf the Uco and the students were distinguished by seriousness and the feeling of precariousness of man in front of natural forces. "If the euphoria of prosperity has been destroyed by the catastrophy, there is now room for hope", said the officials of Uco to the Japanese students who each held a lighted candle.


After a common salute between celebrants and assistance according to Japanese tradition, full of respect and dignity, the assembly went away in silence and peace.

The Angers "Participation Day" and the cantonal election first round : new ways of citizenship could be necessary

News analysis. - The results of the first ballot of cantonal elections last march 20 in Angers city appear to be very different of the "citizen involvment" noticed at the "Participation Day" which took place just a month before in town. The rate of participation in the cantons of Angers Trélazé, South-Angers and West-Angers are low 42, 37 and 37%. Many explanations have been put forward to explain that situation. 


Desillusion, absence of meaning of the canton in a urban place could be explanations but the practical details of vote  - completely archaic (people must go to a polling station because they can't vote by internet or through cash dispensers available all over the country) - could generate that massive abstention. But there is also the fact the citizen becomes more and more a consumer.


The Angers "Participation Day" could reflect, in that perspective, the wish of the people to be consulted on practical and local reasons (for example, the place of the bike in town, the project of banks reconquest and so...) and not only on national ballots which the stakes are distants from their daily life. In that way, Angers city could seize the opportunity to organize local elections regarding local issues at the same moment of institutional elections. That could raise the participation on these days!

New quakes still disrupt daily life of former Japanese students of Angers

The Japan crisis starts to find an echo in Angers. Japanese students at the Western Catholic University as well as  Angevins linving in Japan (or Japanese citizen living in Angers) express themselves about the consequences of the quake in Japan. The students decided to show they are worried with what is going on in their country. They realized origamis (traditional artistic foldings of paper) in order to collect funds for the victims of the catastrophy there. 

In mails, former Japanese students at the "Catho" tell they resume their daily life little by little. The post office is working but the public transportation network is still very disrupted. People want to go back to work because it's necessary for the economy and, apparently, because a busy agenda helps them to overcome the shock they endure for weeks. "We go back to work on tomorrow and I hope there is a lot of things to do", write one of them.



Another students told his former host family in Angers he was to restaurants with relatives because " we needed to take our minds off things". But, during the dinner on saturday, they felt a big quake...

Musical channel bridge between past and present time

In some circumstances, a distant past can collide with the present modernity. On march 20, in the evening, it was the case under the Basse-Chaîne bridge where three youngs played hunting horn in the immediate vicinity of the roaring concert of the motorway traffic. At first glance, no place could be more inappropriate, but "Here we don't disturb anybody", said one of the musicians, enthusiast with hunting horn as well as venery. "Would you stand our training if we were in a flat?", he asked.


Moreover, "The sight here is nice", added another pointing at the Savatte bank and the outline of the Doutre district which stood out of the pale blue of the evening sky. They were right, surely for the tune. The vault of the bridge amplifying the power of the instruments, their rehearsal was audible from the hill located in the middle of the Balzac park, on the right bank of the Maine, but no from the bridge itself, nor the pavement of the motorway just higher!


At that period of the year, that part of the bank is not flooded anymore by the river and small stairs give a narrow access to that disinherited place of the town. But what is a desinherited location for someone (a homeless built his shelter under green tarp a few meters from the trio) can be at the same time privilegied places for others. It was odd instantaneously leaving a past and countryside atmosphere and returning to the present and urban civilization.

Risks of accidents are blooming in Angers down town with spring

With the end of a three years work in Angers for the first streetcar line, down town looks to reborn. But the "long urban winter", the city experimented is now ending and that feeling of renewal is reinforced with the longer days, the mild temperatures and  the blooming of trees which predict the very soon arrival of spring in Angers. 

But some urban inconveniences may come with the new season. For example, along the Foch boulevard, magniolias are covered of white flowers which, one by one, "In their last journey downward from the bough" are falling on the ground "With all the wayward grace of careless flight!"(1). But those delicate petals are dangerous. Their decomposition are covering the Chinese granite pavement of the Foch boulevard with a soapy thin layer on which many persons could fall. On friday morning, a municipal sprinkler lorry was cleaning the place to prevent injuries. On the following days, all had to be done again. 

If that risk will be eliminated after the end of the blooming, the security of pedestrians (and especially the safety of senior pedestrians who are numerous in down town Angers) could deserve more attention from the city.

(1) excerpt Cyrano de Bergerac Scene 5.V.

An born American curator at Angers castle faces a monumental task

The Angers castle will now be directed by a curator native of... USA. Patricia Corbett, who acquired French nationality, will manage the King René castle for the years to come. Arriving from Carcassonne where she increased the number of visitors as well as the revenues of the monument, will have a lot of work to do.




Badly damaged by a accidental fire in 2009, the Royal Home at the center of the castle could be the symbol of what to do : to restore the attraction of the place. Everything has to be reconsidered. For example, the entrance of the Apocalypse tapestries museum is dedicated to sales of souvenirs. It means that a tourist who want to buy a souvenir of the castle and its contents has to pay a ticket. The visitor has to pay for buying... A show room located outside the castle could attract people to visit the monument. Moreover, the scale down model of the castle in its ugly room : a monumental disaster.

And, just before the Apocalypse museum, there is a huge hall, open air, with  windows opening in the vacuum, and ground devastated by archeological research the French state starts 20 years ago and never finished...  Mrs Corbett should to shake its administration to finish the job. The true "apocalypse" is not where it is indicated. Good luck!  

The Saint-Patrick Day gathered hundreds of people last evening in Angers

A national irish celebration is winning over Angers. The James Joyce pub attracted on march 17, hundreds of young men and women who gathered to celebrate the Saint-Patrick Day. The pub was crowded as well as the tables outside the café and the pavement a little bit higher and lower. On the way dedicated for public transports, there was no room for buses and taxis.

A lively atmosphere prevailed under the dodgers in the front side of the James Joyce where beer flowed among people talking cheerfully and taking pictures of the event. Some of them had made up their faces to the appropriate color : the green of Ireland; others wore green and black opera hats. Only the music wasn't tipically Irish. All the drivers stopped to watch that happy party, discreetly monitored by police and civil defense ready to grant assistance. Apparently, the others English or Irish pubs in Angers didn't gathered so much people.

The Saint-Patrick Day is observed on 493 March 17, date of Saint-Patrick death, now celebrated both inside and outside Ireland.

The nuclear crisis worries former Japanese students in Angers who see friends departures

The nuclear crisis in Japan seems to worry the students who came in Angers a few years ago to improve their fluency in French. In several e-mails they sent on march 16th to their former hostess in that city, they report their concerns regarding the gravity of the situation at Fukushima nuclear facility.

"Now, we are very worried about the nuclear power station at Fukushima although tv says it has no influence on individuals", write Yayoï, a young woman who, at the moment of the first quate was at her office at the 19th floor of a tower in Tokyo down town. "We pray the skies to calm down", she ads. Tokyo inhabitants can't forget Fuskushima because "there are several electricity cuts every day in order to insure power the the nuclear station".

In some other sectors, the working is resuming with difficulty. It's the case in the transportation sector : some trains are operating, others not. Some moments are difficult : "Many foreign people go back to their country. A French friend has already gone". And in spite, or because of, "phone cuts, transports problems or regular quakes every 30 mn, we think of you", says Sayaka who adds ' "all day long".

"VéloCité+" may mean...more expensive

Credit : Angers city

The new municipal bike service "VéloCité+" will open on march 22nd in front of the Angers railway station. The travellers arriving in Angers Saint-Laud will so get at their disposal that rental service completely different, and even opposed, from the service Angers inhabitants already got since 2004 : "VéloCité".

But, in fact, the sign "+" here means... less! If, thanks to "VéloCité", every Angers resident can rent a bike, up for a year and for free. Most of the beneficiaries of that facility in Angers are students. It means to pay local taxes to the city has no  influence on the access to the service. An inhabitant, who annually finance the service through his tax, may use VéloCité only once in his lifetime.

In "VéloCité+", a travellers arriving in Angers will have to pay from 2 to 10 euros "+" a membership fee ranging from 1 to 5 euros. That point is incomprehensible : why the use of a bike for a year is free of membership cost (no deposit is compulsory) and the use for a single day, or a few days, is not? Why somme people who don'pay taxes in Angers have a free access to bikes and visitors comin in town for business or tleisure have not? In those conditions, it is no surprising "VéloCité" be a success! "VeloCité +" will be more or less successful?

Former Japanese students of Angers describe cuts of electricity ans shortages in stores

While the crises seems to worsen in Japan, the native students of this country who came in Angers during the last years, and even the last days, sent today new messages about their situation to their former hostess, Emma, who lives in Angers. It seems some people don't realize what is going on in their country.


For exemple, Rei, who now works in a hospital in Yokohama, describes "people coming for their medical periodical tests" while the health authority should be busy with emergency cases! But in that city, "electricity will be cut on monday and the superstores are closing sooner than usually".


Another student, herself in Angers a few days ago, wrote "the confusion is going away". But one of her friends, Mali, just arrived in Japan, realized immediately, something was going badly almost in the Norht of Japan, "there, it's very serious". Nevertheless, most of them say "Don't worry".


During that historical period for Japan, some Angers website dedicated articles to the danger of nuclear facilities for French people. It looks like if the disaster occured in France...

Former Japanese students in Angers face difficulties in their daily life

Credit Wikipedia

In the middle of the worst crisis their country is facing since the end of the second world war, Japanese students formerly at the Western Catholic University still give by mails and phone to the family who hosted them in Angers informations about their daily life. After the quake which destroyed part of Japan, the inhabitants seem to organize their new rythm of existence.


A student, Yayoiï, says she didn't have to work today : "The company ordered to members of its staff who had no train to stay home". If to go to work is possible, the way back is not sure, so people don't move. That is the same for pupils. "School of my district (in Tokyo) is close this morning", she says. But the shortages of energy are about to come. The young woman had to go to stores to buy some batteries because electricity is cut several times a day : "We shall have dinner without light".

Another student, Ryutaro, wrote it couldn't watch tv, no because energy is lacking, but because the news are too sad : "The landscapes are destroyed and people homeless". Some of the superstores "are empty. Fortunately, we have food at home and are able to communicate with you".


       

Japanese students of Angers describes rising human losses and mental exhaustion after quake

Worrying news came yesterday from Japanese students who returned to their native country after a stay of several months in Angers families. As the human and material losses in Japan worsened as consequences of the violent quake the country lived on march 11th and, apparently, could continue at lower magnitude in other parts of the country.

Credit picture wikipedia

The students living in Tokyo describe the visible consequences of the quake : "no electricity, gaz or water in the middle of Japan, the epicentre of the quake". Moreover, in the capital of Japan where they live "secondary quakes are felt". Regarding the material damages of the quake, most of the students in Tokyo didn't noticed damages on buildings but in the North of the country, one of their relatives saw his home disappear.

But some of the students insisted (at 16 h 40 local time) yesterday about the moral consequences of that "terriblement de terre" on people as "The number of victims is just about to rise" and "the radioactivity is going to disseminate". One of them wrote : "it's terrifying. We are not exhausted physically but rather mentally". People looks sensitive to the solidarity Western countries expressed to Japan. We have hope".

During the quake, Japanese and US students gave news to Angers friends

Safeguard measures at school

If Japan is far from Angers, nevertheless, links exist and become stronger even if years go on. Since 2005, an Angers family, among others, hosted, for a few weeks or a few months, Japanese students who came in that city in order to improve their skills in French and to discover another culture. So, when Emma, the host mother, learnt by radio and web an earthquake was underway in Japan, she immediately sent e-mails to the girls she welcomed in Angers.

Kobe Earthquake in 1995

"I am thinking of you. I would like to receive news from you as soon as things will be better. I am worried about you", she wrote. At once, she received answers from Akane, Aï, Eri, Lei, Rina (who just came back to Japan after a stay in Angers), Sayaka, Tomomi or Yayoi who are still in touch with their guest family. "I'm afraid of the secondary earthquake. I pray for the safeguard of everybody", says one. "I'm afraid. But don't worry", told another. An American student, native from Hawaï said she felt "the first signs of seismic activity. The tide and the waves rose a little bit. The districts near the shore have been evacuated and the school has been cancelled tomorow", added Rebecca.


And another one works at the 19th stage of a building called she had just the time to take an helmet and run to a more safe zone. One of the former students of the Western Catholic University, now stewardess, was due to take off today with destination to the city of Sendaï located at the core of the disaster. Her flight was just cancelled for other purpose! Even unvoluntary, the most revealing words of that horrible event were written after the quake had just occured : "terriblement de terre"...

The Angers Maine banks reconquest on stream

The three teams of architects still pre-selected by town hall to imagine the reconquest of Maine banks were invited on march 3 for a boat-ride along Angers. After a first discovery by walking, the architects were able to discover the city from the water and "with a point of view very different", as pointed out Christophe Lesort, head of the project "Maine banks" at town hall.
  
The movie recorded during that sunny day lets appear another huge difference between urban and natural places. From the Maine, the city is only a deafening and permanent roar while a hundred meters, in upstream or downstream, "the birds can be heard as the wind in the trees or the lappings of the boat slipping on the water", remarks Fin Geipel.The task of the architects, to promote the appropriation of the Maine banks by the inhabitants, will not be easy. "The boat-ride let see the continuity of the banks some are accessible, others aren't", says François Grether.

Credit Wikipedia

One of the main challenges of the teams will be to overcome the present uses the Maine suffers, foresees Claire Shorter : "There are big strains". What will the next step? Angers from the sky?


Edgar Girondin

Les Arthurs : "march" on Feydeau

Les Arthurs co. (credit : Avrillé city)

Les Arthurs, a theater company famous in Angers, will perform, from march to april, the Georges Feydau's play "Feu la mère de Madame".  Three places will host the shom : the Georges Brassens center (Avrillé), on march 18 and 19 (at 9 pm), the Théâtre de l'avant-scène (Trélazé), on march 25th and 26th (8.45 pm) and the Angers' Théâtre de Chanzy, on april 2nd (8.30 pm). The bookings are already opened.

G. Feydeau (credit wiki)

"Feu la mère de Madame" tells the story of a mistake. Lucien and his wife are in bed and a manservant rings at the door in the middle of the night. The messenger says the lady's mother is dead. While the family has to wake up in order to visit the deceased, Lucien and his wife are told the messenger knocked at the wrong door : it's the neighbour's mother who is died...


Les Arthurs company was set up in 1990 and performs at the La Comédie, a little theater located ner the Ralliement square, many comedies from French authors and among them Feydeau, Francis Veber, Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui as well as foreign like Woody Allen.

The Angers Arboretum gardens cultivate charm and distinction

A walk through the Arboretum gardens on a sunny sunday morning is at the same time a travel in nature, silence and past. As soon as the street at the entrance of the park has been left behind, the first surprise of the visitor is the silence. An impression of dignity drops from the old oaks which line the road leading at the center of the Arboretum. Benches welcome visitors wishing to see the top of the branches to lost in the blue sky.


A hundred meters after the entrance gate is a charming house surrounded by a refined garden full of the blue and yellow colours of the pansies. Dispersed statues give to the place a touch of solemnity. Turning around the house leads the visitor from shadow to light. On the Southern side a more formal garden takes place. Little vegetables walls divides the gardens in rooms each of them having its own spirit. Even geometrically planted trees highlight a simple lawn on the center and boxwood hedges diffuse their subtle smell of the past.


But it along a few paths that the moste beautiful part of the garden are located. Gardeners of Angers city digged thousands of bulbs (narcissus, tulips, hyancinth) which will bloom in the days to come. A symphonie of fragances and colors will make that garden more charming.

Cancelled in 2009, the Angers new urban local project will have to pay attention in consulting inhabitants

Within a couple of weeks, the process due to lead to a new urban local project will be re-opened by Angers Loire Metropole. On march 24th, the local authority will first define how the forms of a dialogue between the local authority and the inhabitants. Conferences on housing and environment will take place on spring and will be an opportunity for the Angevins to say how they see their city in the future.


In order to facilitate the understanding of all the process and what is at stake, Angers plans to set up walks designed to illustrate on a realistic mood how the city is organized. That would be useful because numerous documents intervene in different aspects of the process. Moreover, the meetings between town councillors and inhabitants illustrate how it's difficult to conciliate the public wishes and the public rules.


If everything goes right, the new urban local project is due to be completed in june next year. The elected representatives of Angers and the cities around wil have to pay attention to the respect of urban rules. In april 2009, a first urban local project had been cancelled by the administrative court and all the process had to start all over again. The court had pointed out insufficiencies in consulting inhabitants.


Edgar Girondin

Street fishing and geocaching are leisures in "progressive form" at Angers

Two new leisures have been promoted in an Angers local internet news website during the last months. Both clearly are based on English catchwords which make them more "trendy" and attractive to people. The last one is called "geocaching" and is a more technological form of the old treasure hunt. Like in that one, a treasure has been hidden but, this time, its geographical position have been indicated on a website. The geoseeker takes note of that and, thanks to an application programm (one which can be loaded on an iphone), attemps to find it. Several treasures have been yet hidden in the surroundings of Angers.

The second is the "street fishing" which has held its first edition in Angers last october, not in the streets, but in the Maine river. If the accessories are the same as in usual fishing, and if, in addition, the goal is to catch the more fishes possible thanks to lures, the fate of the catched fishes are more enviable because they come back to water after they have been taken in photography! The masterword is "no kill". By that way, the promotors of street fishing tries to sensibilize the public to the protection of halieutic environment.


Would these two activities be as attractive under a French title? Are they the only ones which "sounds" English? Certainly not. In very recent times, professional leisures englicized appeared in Angers like "Afterworks". And the local authorities choose to develop tourism in Angers under a new "Anjou Loire Valley".

Edgar Girondin

10 000 bulbs planted for spring in the Angers Arboretum gardens

If Angers inhabitants are lucky to take advantage of numerous gardens (more than twelve), one of them has kept its soul, its atmosphere, its feeling of yesteryear. It is the Arboretum gardens which, from march 5 till the end of november, will be opened to public all day long during the weekends.

And that year, no less than 10 000 bulbs have been planted for spring by the city gardeners in the three horticultural sections of the place : the Tests garden, the Umbrages garden and the Five senses garden. Created in 2000, those three gardens of the Arboretum park were the start of a huge renovation which lasted almost ten years.


The charm of the place comes certainly from the home of Gaston Allard (1838-1918), an Angevin botanist, who created the gardens surroundings his beautiful manor, built during the 19th century, with harmonious proportions and subtle colors. The pedestrians will surely appreciate in that haven of peae a wandering through nature and history.

The daily misconduct of Angers drivers

 The limited access of cars to Angers down town could have an advantage : to prevent bad educated drivers of throwing out of theirs beloved cars cigarette buts, papers, chewing gum and so. And all do the same, whatever they are, young, adult, or senior, man or woman and what may be the standing of the vehicle. What is the most surprising in such behaviour is the fact those persons would not probably do the same at home (and, in additon, all cars are equipped with ashtrays).

Credit : fotosearch

A few days ago, municipal gardeners were setting in order the clumps, pruning the trees, digging the ground for the arrival of spring. That is nervertheless a difficult task in spite of the equipment they use and the number they are. A few days after the their job is finished, all the beds are lotted, not with flowers but with buts! It is surprising the city doesn't protest about that.

But sometimes there is worse. People smoke in their cars with their kids sat behind which breath the same polluted air. How can drivers claim they think much of the environmental issues and, at the same time, think nothing of the consequences of their daily misconduct?