The Five Senses (CL)

Last weekend, I took a walk alone along the length of the river. Yesterday, I returned to this walk at sunset to capture a view of the city from the outside. This is an image of my walk to school from a distance. Starting from the left, I take the bridge over the river, walk past the château, and keep going. But walking alongside the river, behind my apartment, you leave the city behind you, plodding through mud and gradually losing sight of the cathedral towers behind you. It is a somewhat hidden spot, separated by the river from the touristy signs in the centre ville, where people who live here go to jog and ride their bikes.

I've spent my first week here trying to familiarize myself with the city. Having no sense of direction, I tried to orient myself by walking to and from school. From there, I've been trying to familiarize myself with the centre ville and my neighborhood. I'm beginning to feel less lost. 

It's always a surprise to me when I begin to feel that I know where things are. I never trust my memory for directions. Thankfully, brains adapt, and as Crane wrote in his article for The Atlantic, traveling, through forcing the brain to adapt, may increase creativity: "New sounds, smells, language, tastes, sensations, and sights spark different synapses in the brain and may have the potential to revitalize the mind." I've only been here a week, so no guarantees for increased creativity yet, but these are some of the sights, sounds, and such that I've experienced thus far. 

"Lift your nose" - the upper left is the Maison bleue

SIGHT

"If you really want to discover Angers, you've got to lift your nose," my host mother said to me in French, while giving me a tour of her favorite parts of the city. At eye level, there are lots of modern-day shops, but when you look up, you can see beautiful old architecture from all points in time, from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, or in the case of the Maison bleue, pictured in the top left of the photograph above, the year 1929. She pointed out buildings to tell me when they were from, who the architect was, a little bit about the history of the area, and why the buildings are white - they were made from local stone in the Renaissance. From her bookshelf, she pulled out a small stack of books and magazines for me on the history of Anjou and specifically Angers. "You've got some reading to do this weekend, huh?" she joked.

A medieval building around the corner from my house

SOUND


On the first day that I was supposed to learn about what I would be doing at school, I was nervous. I waited in the Amphitheatre Dies at the university before the class started. There were a few other students there, just sitting and talking. Then a man walked in, set down his briefcase, and began to play the piano. The other students didn't react like anything unusual was happening. Some of them went out to the courtyard to smoke. I thought, "If it is normal for spontaneous music to happen here, I'll be okay," and relaxed a bit. 

Friday in my language class, we talked about slam poetry, and listened to Grand Corps Malade. "For next Friday," our teacher told us, "you will write your own slam poem, and you will perform it for the class. The maximum is three minutes. I will let you decide an acceptable minimum. It can be on any topic." That kind of creative freedom is both exciting and scary - I'm supposed to write and perform a poem in French in a week, and I have no idea what about.

Grand Corps Malade - Roméo kiffe Juliette

On Saturday I sat in my room and tried to brainstorm topics to write about. I started in English, thinking about where I come from, as travel often makes people reflect on where they come from, and ended up writing five poems about my childhood. None of them were things I wanted to use for the class, but I felt like the act of reflection was important.

TOUCH

Within a few days of arriving, I made my first French friend (it's a cat). Nina jumped onto the table next to my plate while I was eating, so I scooped her up and put her in my lap to keep her away from my food. She settled down and began purring. My host mom kept exclaiming how rare it was for her to do that with anyone except her, and took a picture.

My first French friend is this cat

There's also just the experience of walking, which I mentioned earlier, but it's a tactile experience of walking over cobblestones, across streets, on sidewalks, or through the mud out in the country by the river.

The ground of the château, because it makes for a better picture than mud or sidewalks.

The last experience in this category is that of bises - which are typically fake cheek kisses, where you sort of touch cheeks and act like you're kissing the air beside your face. I have not experienced this very much here. The host family's son brought a friend over, and when this friend walked in, he said hi to me and kissed my cheek. I froze. I have a very large American space bubble, and I didn't know what to do.

SMELL

Toward the end of the week, I walked into the house and smelled something wonderful cooking. My host mom explained it wouldn't be ready for several days, but said it would be delicious when it was done. This weekend, I got to try it. It was beef bourguignon and it was delicious.

Dinner at my house is always served with wine, water, salad, and warm bread.

TASTE

I found that my historical vocabulary is pretty good from my French history and literature classes - tell me about tapestries and cathedrals in French and I will understand pretty much everything. On the other hand, my kitchen vocabulary has some gaps. I ate some kind of meat on a salad when I was out at a restaurant, and I have no idea what it was. It wasn't bad. Today I tried oysters, which I'm sure were delicious for those who like oysters. My host mom also made a galette for me, which was marvelous and I hope to have again in the future. And I love the apple tart she made.

I've been eating a lot of bread. A lot of the time I buy lunch from the university cafe between classes. Sandwiches are an entire baguette with a thin layer of sandwich fillings on the inside (and often a lot of butter and/or cheese). It's not uncommon for breakfast to be toast and jam. At least where I live, dinner is often served with a piece of warm bread on the side. I'm not complaining, since bread and butter are possibly my favorite foods. When I first read the article about how the French are upset that they now consume only half a baguette per day and have started a campaign reminding people to buy bread, I found it funny. After all, three baguettes a day in 1900 seemed ridiculous. Now that I am here I am beginning to understand just how important bread is.

Mystery meat on a very pretty salad.

I haven't been here long enough to be much more than a tourist, but I've seen some residential areas and parks that I think tourists just passing through would miss. I'm still in the honeymoon phase, but am beginning to adjust and settle into a routine. The other day someone stopped me on the street and asked for directions, so I must not have stood out too much.