France, Revisited
September 14, 2008 by kwalker10
On our first field trip, IES took us on a day trip to Strasbourg. This charming little city is RIGHT on the border between France and Germany, its nationality determined by the winner of the most recent war. (Evidently, the city is now French.) Strasbourg has come to symbolize what France and Germany can achieve when they work together, so it is now the seat of the European Parliament.
Our trip was supposed to commence with a tour of said Parliament, but this did not work out since the ceiling had recently collapsed in one section of the building. My EU professor likes to point out that you can’t go and look up how much this building costs. Even just looking at the Parliament from the outside was striking, however. I’m used to government buildings being beautiful, evoking all the grandeur and nobility that a politician should want. Not this building. This building was modern (which, to me, is code for “somewhat ugly and unimpressive). However, there was a bit of symbolism for the building, and I don’t think the national governments wanted this building to be too flashy. (PS- the link to my Strasbourg photos, including photos of the Parliament, is at the end of the post.)
We then walked around the city. The tour guide pointed out ways in which it was French, ways in which it was German, and areas where the soldiers had to stay because they’d been infected with syphilis.
Then we went inside Notre Dame de Strasbourg, the city’s cathedral. It took about 300 years to build, and it’s awe-inspiring. When in a cathedral, it’s interesting to try to take yourself back to 1400. You’re poor, you can’t read, you probably perform back-breaking labor, but then you go into this massive church. There, you find light, color, beauty, hope. It was the one time a week that gave them something to live for. I think that in those circumstances, it could have kept me going too. Even in all my modernity, I am overwhelmed each time I walk into one of Europe’s cathedrals. On a side note, I’m writing this post on a Sunday morning, and I love listening to the church bells.
Lastly, we had a dinner of Flamenkuchen, an Alsatian delicacy. It’s like a thin-crust pizza with creme fraiche for sauce. A room full of 60ish starving Americans is really, really loud. I forget how loud we are until I go to Europe, at which point I’m always fascinated that people can live their lives making so little noise.
I was surprised that going back to France for the first time since my semester there came as such a relief. No, surprised doesn’t capture it. Completely taken aback. I was miserable about 40% of the time, tolerating it about 40%, and genuinely happy the remaining 20%. So why was I so happy to be back?
I suppose one of the simple answers was that I could read. Being able to communicate in the language is so important to your ability to understand a culture, and it’s also really nice to feel like you’re actually 20 years old, not some child who needs the menu read to him.
I don’t think I’m already creating a revisionist history of my time in France. The trials I went through while there are still very real to me. I still feel just as angry when I’m reminded of the times when I would be told I was being “simplistic” and not thinking very intelligently, when it was really more of an issue of my not knowing how to even begin explaining my thoughts in French rather than of my not having thoughts to begin with. I’m still a little sad thinking about how lonely French culture made me feel. I still feel like my existence was acknowledged only by the men who would stop me on a near-daily basis in the street. That was especially disheartening. I would get so offended that people would see me as just some thing to be picked up and had based on nothing more than my appearance, but then I’d realize that I couldn’t hold a particularly intelligent conversation in French, I couldn’t joke, I couldn’t be charming. In French, I am a shell of myself. In the end, isn’t that all that appearance is?
I’m not revising France, but maybe I have been attaching new significance to all these experiences now that they’re older. I’m not having the troubles in Germany that I was in France; is it that I’m more mature or that Germany is just too different?