Although this is probably bad form, I am itching to start this post out by mentioning what I forgot to note in my last post.
First off, I should have said, at some point, that Angers was medieval France with a few donair shops thrown in. Alas, the punchline came far after it was still relevant, as usually happens, though I thought of it while in Angers.
Secondly, I saw one of the most interesting interactions from my whole trip in Angers. A group of four, two of whom were the boys who were using their cell phones before dinner, immediately greeted the waitress when they entered the (fantastic) restaurant at which I ate -- they must have been regulars. What was interesting was the waitress' shaking hands with them, even with the boy's mother, shattering my sense of the French's intimacy with each other. I thought that the handshake was associated with English stiffness, and, while I have seen plenty of people kissing since I got here, it was interesting to see the handshake make an entrance in people's interactions.
That is enough generalizations for the start of one post. I started my day yesterday, on Thursday, with the realization that my train's departure time had nothing to do with the time at which I had given to expect its departure a week ago. "They have lied to you," a railroad official told me. "There has been a [something]." I stood in line, angry at the French for having two lines for two ticket windows instead of one line for both of them, wondering what a "something" was -- it sounded menacing.
"A strike," the next railroad official told me when I told her that I spoke English. She gave me my new schedule. My trip was going to take six hours, including wait times, rather than the two that it should originally taken.
"Are there lots of strikes in France?" I asked the women behind me as I waited for my train.
"We do not know," one of them said. "We are also tourists."
"Yes!" the woman next to them cried out, bursting out laughing. "Nothing but strikes." She told me that they usually only lasted a day or so but that the city that she was from - I forget which one - had once had no postal service, no public transport, and no school for an entire month in 1995. "It was a real pain in the neck," she said, and I assumed that "pains in the neck" were another kind of worker, perhaps electricians, until I looked the expression up after our conversation. I told her about our garbagemen's strike of 2008 or 2009 but admitted that it had nothing on what she had experienced.
Eventually, my train came and took me to Saint Pierre des Corps, a backwater near Tours that is, for some reason, a transport hub. I stepped outside to get lunch, walking in the direction that seemed most likely to take me to the center of "town." Saint Pierre des Corps is the only city in France in which the drivers do not burn rubber on hairpin turns -- there is no one to run over. The first few cafes that I found were closed. The sidewalks were almost empty. Nothing moved in the air. Eventually, I found a bakery -- the only establishment in town that appeared to be open besides the tobacco shop and the overpriced cafe across from the railway station -- and ordered two pastries that, I hoped, would not give me heart disease. (They cost only 2.80 Euros, half of what they would have cost in Paris.) I sat down on a bench outside to eat them but moved when I saw a truck driving down the sidewalk towards me. Trucks in France are pretty small.
Blois itself, when I got there, was unremarkable, but I did see roughly a dozen castles, including ruins, on the way there, just as I had wished. It took me almost an hour to find my hotel, which was tiny and incredibly dusty, and I could not find any French restaurants that would not have robbed me blind, so I went to a donair shop across the street for the first time on this trip.
First off, the shawarma was fantastic. More importantly, though, I got into conversation with one of the shop's employees and a friend of his, and I learned something about race in France. Having seen a great many blacks in France, almost all of them from Africa, one would assume, I had come to wonder, when I got to Blois, to what degree the French were proud of having such a racially-diversified country. While it had not entered my head to ask the Arab shop owners about race, the topic came up on its own when I mentioned that I was from Canada.
"Origins," the shop employee's friend said when I asked if he, a native of Algers, like France. "All they care about is origins." No matter how much you worked, no matter if you were even born in France, like the shop employee, everyone in France looked at you as a foreigner.
"In Canada, everyone's accepted," I said, more or less honestly. "Blacks, Asians, Muslims, homosexuals--"
"That's what I'm talking about!" he said. "It is easy to find work in Canada, no?" I told him that it was; I did not want to try to explain, in French and to someone who was looking to move to Canada, that experience in Quebec and in the rest of Canada did not transfer well and that it Quebec itself, where the man wanted to live, was not the richest province. I told him that he would probably find work pretty easily, since he had a university degree, and wished him well in his nine-month wait for a Visa.
(This would be a good place for a footnote. Prior to discussing Canada, I did ask, assuming that the two men in the restaurant were foreigners, where they were from, which was racially motivated, without my even knowing it, on its own. A few of the men's friends, all Arabs, entered the restaurant after I did. It seems that Arabs and whites are, to some degree, socially segregated in France, though one would hope that that would pass within a generation or two.)
Blois itself was mundane compared to Angers, though its narrow houses with identical brick chimneys looked pretty in the city's twilight still. I spent my evening reading, finishing Midnight's Children, and airing out my room. From my window, I could see a nearby church and the head of the cathedral swimming in evening lilac. I drifted off for a bit, brushed my teeth, and went back to bed, too tired to notice the ringing of the cathedral's bells.
First off, I should have said, at some point, that Angers was medieval France with a few donair shops thrown in. Alas, the punchline came far after it was still relevant, as usually happens, though I thought of it while in Angers.
Secondly, I saw one of the most interesting interactions from my whole trip in Angers. A group of four, two of whom were the boys who were using their cell phones before dinner, immediately greeted the waitress when they entered the (fantastic) restaurant at which I ate -- they must have been regulars. What was interesting was the waitress' shaking hands with them, even with the boy's mother, shattering my sense of the French's intimacy with each other. I thought that the handshake was associated with English stiffness, and, while I have seen plenty of people kissing since I got here, it was interesting to see the handshake make an entrance in people's interactions.
That is enough generalizations for the start of one post. I started my day yesterday, on Thursday, with the realization that my train's departure time had nothing to do with the time at which I had given to expect its departure a week ago. "They have lied to you," a railroad official told me. "There has been a [something]." I stood in line, angry at the French for having two lines for two ticket windows instead of one line for both of them, wondering what a "something" was -- it sounded menacing.
"A strike," the next railroad official told me when I told her that I spoke English. She gave me my new schedule. My trip was going to take six hours, including wait times, rather than the two that it should originally taken.
"Are there lots of strikes in France?" I asked the women behind me as I waited for my train.
"We do not know," one of them said. "We are also tourists."
"Yes!" the woman next to them cried out, bursting out laughing. "Nothing but strikes." She told me that they usually only lasted a day or so but that the city that she was from - I forget which one - had once had no postal service, no public transport, and no school for an entire month in 1995. "It was a real pain in the neck," she said, and I assumed that "pains in the neck" were another kind of worker, perhaps electricians, until I looked the expression up after our conversation. I told her about our garbagemen's strike of 2008 or 2009 but admitted that it had nothing on what she had experienced.
Eventually, my train came and took me to Saint Pierre des Corps, a backwater near Tours that is, for some reason, a transport hub. I stepped outside to get lunch, walking in the direction that seemed most likely to take me to the center of "town." Saint Pierre des Corps is the only city in France in which the drivers do not burn rubber on hairpin turns -- there is no one to run over. The first few cafes that I found were closed. The sidewalks were almost empty. Nothing moved in the air. Eventually, I found a bakery -- the only establishment in town that appeared to be open besides the tobacco shop and the overpriced cafe across from the railway station -- and ordered two pastries that, I hoped, would not give me heart disease. (They cost only 2.80 Euros, half of what they would have cost in Paris.) I sat down on a bench outside to eat them but moved when I saw a truck driving down the sidewalk towards me. Trucks in France are pretty small.
Blois itself, when I got there, was unremarkable, but I did see roughly a dozen castles, including ruins, on the way there, just as I had wished. It took me almost an hour to find my hotel, which was tiny and incredibly dusty, and I could not find any French restaurants that would not have robbed me blind, so I went to a donair shop across the street for the first time on this trip.
First off, the shawarma was fantastic. More importantly, though, I got into conversation with one of the shop's employees and a friend of his, and I learned something about race in France. Having seen a great many blacks in France, almost all of them from Africa, one would assume, I had come to wonder, when I got to Blois, to what degree the French were proud of having such a racially-diversified country. While it had not entered my head to ask the Arab shop owners about race, the topic came up on its own when I mentioned that I was from Canada.
"Origins," the shop employee's friend said when I asked if he, a native of Algers, like France. "All they care about is origins." No matter how much you worked, no matter if you were even born in France, like the shop employee, everyone in France looked at you as a foreigner.
"In Canada, everyone's accepted," I said, more or less honestly. "Blacks, Asians, Muslims, homosexuals--"
"That's what I'm talking about!" he said. "It is easy to find work in Canada, no?" I told him that it was; I did not want to try to explain, in French and to someone who was looking to move to Canada, that experience in Quebec and in the rest of Canada did not transfer well and that it Quebec itself, where the man wanted to live, was not the richest province. I told him that he would probably find work pretty easily, since he had a university degree, and wished him well in his nine-month wait for a Visa.
(This would be a good place for a footnote. Prior to discussing Canada, I did ask, assuming that the two men in the restaurant were foreigners, where they were from, which was racially motivated, without my even knowing it, on its own. A few of the men's friends, all Arabs, entered the restaurant after I did. It seems that Arabs and whites are, to some degree, socially segregated in France, though one would hope that that would pass within a generation or two.)
Blois itself was mundane compared to Angers, though its narrow houses with identical brick chimneys looked pretty in the city's twilight still. I spent my evening reading, finishing Midnight's Children, and airing out my room. From my window, I could see a nearby church and the head of the cathedral swimming in evening lilac. I drifted off for a bit, brushed my teeth, and went back to bed, too tired to notice the ringing of the cathedral's bells.
 |
| This was the view from my hotel room. |
No comments:
Post a Comment