On a summery Sunday morning, just on 11am, I have taken my laptop and my book to my favourite self-disovered cafe (thus far), Ma Première Cantine.
It’s lovely here, sitting outdoors, nestled under shady trees and sharing the calm of the morning with a few like-minded Montpellierians. They also offer weekend brunch – a rare find for France. Long lunches are definitely the done thing here. The other thing missing in all Montpellier cafes is soy milk. Except for one special Buddhist kitchen that sells the best soy chai on earth, I’ve resigned myself to knowing it’ll be espresso, and only espresso until December… bar two brief reprieves during upcoming trips to London, (yay!)
So I’ve now been here for three weeks, and I’m into my fifth week in Europe when counting the first week in Paris and time in Prague. It could honestly be ten, twelve, or many more weeks. Everything seems to slow down when you’re in a foreign, unknown place. Single moments stretch longer; each day holds much more depth. There’s just so much to take in.
French culture is a bizarre culture; intriguing, nonchalant, a little arrogant, very contradictory. I still feel very much the stumbling, clumsy foreigner and I look forward to the day I can gracefully walk the streets, handle the unspoken customs with ease and have a proficient command of the language, although I know it is going to take some time.
Small milestones so far: asking for my baguette at the local bakery/coffee at any cafe and being understood. To be recognised as a ‘regular’ shopper at my local supermarket, as I have struck up a semi-friendship with the girl who scans my grocery items. (Although, after almost daily encounters, she still speaks to me as though I am some kind of exotic creature and seems totally fascinated that I’ve come all the way from Australia). The local florist guy knows me too. I’m the blue-eyed Aussie girl who always buys a single flower.
Three weeks in, France still feels like a decadent, multi-course degustation that I’ve started to taste and experience. So far I have been seated at the restaurant, had my aperitif and nibbled on the first course. My palette is not refined or developed enough to take in the full flavour of the dish yet; I can sense a hint of sweetness, that it is rich with history, a bit nutty, has a real kick, and I can tell that one would have to be very careful about which flavours to pair the dish with. Only the elite can effortlessly take in such magnificence. Each day I’m immersing myself deeper into the subtleties, but I’m still working out the order of the cutlery, the textures, the intricacies of aroma and spice. I’ve still got so much more to enjoy, so I’m taking it slow. One flavour, one nuance at a time. That’s enough metaphoring for one day.
In summary, my preliminary language / culture observations:
For the French language, it seems exceptions ARE the rule (thanks Shash x)
Beauty means everything to the French. Food presentation, streets being constantly cleaned, tiny details are considered in depth. Even the language is adapted in many ways for the sole reason because it sounds more beautiful spoken this way than that.
Yet, dog shit is everywhere. I’m serious. Dog owners don’t pick up their dog’s doings – you’ve constantly got to avoid stepping in poo.
That quintessential image of a Frenchman riding a bicycle, satchel slung over his shoulder, with slightly nibbled baguette peeking out the corner exists. I see at least one a day.
Bread is a big thing here. In a restaurant, bread is always sans buerre (you never get butter with your bread).
Pathways and stairwells are all beautiful and shiny, and therefore, slippery.
Beggars are everywhere. And apparently it’s actually quite a lucrative business. I’ve heard that some make up to 100 Euros per day!
Some beggars laugh at you. Well, one on the street corner I walk past every day does anyway. We’ve got a thing going. The day I walked past in a sling, he cackled.
Cheese is always served before dessert.
Everything is a ‘he‘ or a ‘she‘. There’s no such thing as an ‘it‘. If there’s ever a way to romanticise a common object like a shower (it’s feminine, la douche, go figure) the French have done it.
Accents are emphasised in French. In English, we emphasise the consonants. That’s why the language sounds so elegant and beautiful.
French kissing is messy and complicated. In Montpellier, when you greet someone, you always kiss the left cheek, the right cheek, and the left cheek again. In Paris, it’s two kisses, one on each cheek. Every ‘area’ of France has their own kissing custom.
“Many people don’t want to be travelers. They would rather be tourists, flitting over the surface of other people’s lives while never really leaving their own. They try to bring their world with them wherever they go, or try to re-create the world they left. They do not want to risk the security of their own understanding and see how small and limited their experiences really are.” – Kent Nerburn
On Tuesday night I learned that Montpellier sure knows how to party.
La Fête de la Musique, also known as World Music Day, is an annual (and international) festival held on June 21 to celebrate summer solstice.
The Centre-Ville was literally flooded with people; young students, old boppers, parents and their children. Whether amateur or professional, every narrow rue featured some type of creative performer… painter, ethnic pan-fluter in vibrant costume, death metal head-banger, acoustic jazz ensemble or DJ. The main city squares all featured live rock bands or DJs and every music genre must have been represented, on some little street corner, somewhere, like a weird mix between WOMADelaide and Stereosonic… but more!
The whole city was buzzing, except for one old lady I saw peeking from her window. She lived right above where a metal band had set up their gig. Poor thing!
Amid the turbulence of last week, a beautiful family friend sent me the most lovely pick-me-up email, reminding me of why the very reason i’m on this journey, offering reassurance that the foreign language through osmosis method will eventually work and that one day, not too far away, I will experience a magnificent ‘light globe’ moment when everything will suddenly illuminate and piece together. She then said,“So do something good for yourself today. Get some hugs. Go to that lovely cake shop, order two, and sit in the sun and eat half of each. Feed the rest to the birds. Buy a whole bunch of flowers for yourself today, not just one. And on the way home, buy yourself some proper shoes!”
So that is what I did. I bought some shiny sunshine yellow shoes, a bunch of bright sunflowers and a coffee brulee Verrine from the best patisserie in Montpellier.
Except I decided that instead of buying two for myself and wasting such deliciousness on ungrateful pigeons, I would buy two boxes of macarons for two very special friends back home, and pass the magic of the moment forward.
I popped them in the post just this afternoon… check your mailbox soon, they could be en route to you!
Such a gorgeous place. Best part? The Saturday flower markets near Hôtel de Ville. And €1 punnets of fresh raspberries (I ate 4 punnets in 2 days). A-mazing.
The photos below aren’t spectacular, as I couldn’t use my proper camera (two hands required, only had one functional arm) so the Canon IXUS point-and-shoot it was… but I think you’ll get the gist.
Don’t have time to write more right now… Too busy planning the next travel destination: Edinburgh with my gorgeous darling friend B x
When I was delayed for 6 days during London’s snowstorm last December, I sought solace every single snowy morning at Le Pain Quotidien, a beautiful french cafe around the corner from my Kensington hotel. Imagine my delight to find a Le Pain Quotidien café also in Aix-En Provence this weekend.
Not feeling so spritely, I spent most of my days drinking endless cups of tea, reading my book and doing french study. An organic granola breakfast and drinking yummy soy coffee from a ceramic bowl was so comforting that I even bought the coffee bowl to take home. I just wish I could take the whole café back with me!
It makes me smile when imagining the visual image of a petite bowerbird with an wing sling. After posting the previous blog entry, afternoon became night and a ‘sore but okay’ shoulder became an excruciatingly painful and immobile one, so my host mother insisted on taking me to emergency at Montpellier hospital. What an adventure! After x-rays at midnight and a doctor’s confirmation of no broken bones but a nasty sprain, I returned home with some strong medication and a slinged arm. Two days on, i’m starting to feel much better – although my wings can’t wait to fly free again!
For the weekend, i’m taking myself on a little getaway to the nearby town Aix-En Provence. I’m on the train typing this right now – the gorgeous French countryside whizzing beside my window late on Friday afternoon. It’s such a relaxing way to travel! I planned this trip last week and I could not bring myself to cancel. And really, the idea of quietly roaming weekend food and flower markets, reading/writing in cafes and losing myself in an art gallery or two sounds better way to heal and get myself refreshed than feeling miserable at home.
Thank you for all the emails and messages of love from those afar and nearby the past two days… I could never feel alone in this!
When I look back at the blog entries I have posted since departing home, I see only positive words and a plethora of colourful photographs. I have painted a pretty magical patchwork of what the world looks like from this side of the rainbow, and I haven’t lied; it is really, really amazing.
But mixed in before, after and during these seemingly perfect encounters have been moments, hours and even full days of absolute overwhelm, anguish, doubt and chit-chatter in my head along the lines of: what the hell am I doing here / why do I set these crazy challenges for myself / why did I leave behind every single thing safe and familiar and move to the other side of the world? Etcetera.
We each determine our own personal line for the experiences we are comfortable to share in a public domain, whether via Facebook, blogging, or writing a book, and which matters to keep private. I discovered this word Voyeurism (from the French voyeur, ‘one who looks’) and in so many ways, blogs perpetuate, encourage, celebrate exactly that, don’t they? Apart from the few lovely friends who comment on here, I have no idea who’s reading this.
I’m not sure where my line is right now with La Petite Bowerbird. Where is the line between catharsis and narcissism, and where is the tipping point of sorts? I want to share the daily cultural encounters, the travel snaps and funny stories, but today I am also feeling an overwhelming urge to be a little more real about my experiences and perspective on travel.
In seeking the wisdom of others, Cesar Davese reflects,
“Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending toward the eternal or what we imagine of it.”
Alain De Botton’s book, The Art of Travel, of which I have read one (amazing) chapter, quickly debunks the myth of travel being solely a glamorous, exotic, joyful experience. The paradoxical notion, where we may best be able to inhabit a place when we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there, is also explored.
De Botton tells us the story of a man who, in believing the only joy of travel is its anticipation, decorated his home with framed images of foreign cities, sprawled travel brochures and potential itineraries over his tables and surrounded himself with the promise of an amazing experience without ever actually travelling, to save himself from the inconveniences. He says,
“The imagination could provide a more-than-adequate substitute for the vulgar reality of the actual experience; actual experience where what we have come to see is always diluted in what we could see anywhere, where we are drawn away from the present by an anxious future and where our appreciation of aesthetic elements remains at the mercy of perplexing physical and psychological demands.”
These are perhaps the most truthful quotes I have ever read about travel. And today, I say with complete honesty, I have felt the full weight of its brutality.
Whatever was being taught in class went right over my head, and I am still trying to figure out whether it’s just me that cannot seem to grasp French grammar when it’s being taught to me entirely (and only) in French, whether my other classmates have already learnt this stuff and thus find it easy, or perhaps they just aren’t as vulnerable about not knowing something.
Then, leaving school, wearing my temporary, non-grip and blister-causing thongs, went for a tumble, right down a flight of marble stairs. Bar a decent bruise on my back and an bad shoulder, i’m confident the injuries are superficial, despite it bloody well hurting. And it’s moments like that that somehow force you to stop, check in on your OK scale (I do this all the time – read more about it here), allow yourself to be fragile for a moment and to let the emotions flow.
Right now it feel like French is this big, intricate puzzle of a million jagged pieces. I know there’s a way that it fits together, because I can see its whole, beautiful form pieced together around me. I have only collected a few of these pieces, and right now, none of them fit together. It is humiliating to be asked a question about yourself in class, to even understand what is being asked… to have an answer right on the tip of your tongue but an empty wordpool and nil understanding of sentence structure to give voice to it.
Being the kind of person who needs to know things inside out, I struggle do things in halves and this is both a virtue and curse for us all-or-nothing people. But for the sake of sanity and enjoying this trip, maybe I need to stop caring so much. I did not come here to master fluency in French, the language is but one challenge I had set for myself among many. Equally, I wish to learn/understand/truly immerse myself in the culture, travel-travel-travel, be creatively inspired, maintain freelance work from a remote location, and to do this trip completely independently – financially, practically, emotionally. Maybe my real challenge for the language part is to be okay with the not knowing.
What I do know is the ultimate point of my journey is to live it all and feel it all, whatever ‘it’ may be… the love, the amazing, phenomenal, out-of-this-world bits, the frustrating, inconvenient, painful, boring and ugly bits. The bits that ache and hurt. The fragile bits. To live and to completely feel the reality of the experience.
As Kent Nerburn tells me,
“Become a part of the fabric of their everyday lives and you will get a sense of what it means to live in their world. Give yourself over to them – embrace them rather than judge them – and you will find that the beauty in their lives and in their world will become a part of yours.”
Favourite places so far:
1. Place de la Comedie (main city centre square and Opera)
2. Promenade du Peyrou
3. Porte du Peyrou (for picnics/study in the afternoon sunshine)
4. School: Accent Français (pretty sweet building, huh?)
5. Narrow streets and cafe terraces
6. Favourite alleyways (in love with the ribbons/coloured flags everywhere… makes me happy)
7. Local florist (where I treat myself to a flower for my room each week) and boulangerie patisserie (more of a daily treat)
It’s been exactly one week since I arrived in Montpellier, and what a crazy overwhelming exciting emotional seven days it has been.
I sit here at my cute little desk feeling safe and content, relieved i’ve finally found my home away from home, and excited about the weeks and months before me. After a disastrous first host family experience, I moved to Rue Saint Barthélémy, only one street away but another world apart in terms of happiness and things feeling ‘right’. I am now living with an artist Karen, her lighting director partner Jean-Marc and their 16 year old daughter Rose. It’s a dynamic family home, where students will drift in and stay a short while or long term (like me) and I love it. It’s fresh. I have tackled and survived my first week of french lessons… no small feat considering all classes are taught entirely in French. I can now count and pronounce the alphabet (like any 2 year old enfant), I can introduce myself and talk a little about what I like and don’t like…. and that’s about where it ends! Long way to go, but i’m on the way.
Below i’ll give you the tour of home and my room (favourite bits = photo board, CIBO pen pot and my own tiny balcony). Next post I will introduce you to my new city and local haunts… but for now, bon soirée xx
With my apartment all packed up, I went for one last dusk walk along the Charles Bridge. On the way over, brilliant sunset shades of pinks, mauve, orange and blues danced before me. With Charles Bridge being the hotspot it is for romantic hand-holders, date-nighters and overt-kissing-under-the-pretty-statue types and feeling slightly vulnerable in missing my own darling hand-holder back home, I prepared myself for the walk back by wrapping my hand around a Häagen-Dazs raspberry sorbet.
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