A Francophile’s Love Letter to Rouen
There’s no doubting I’m in a love affair with France.
It started 14 years ago and each time I return, it reminds me why I fell in love in the first place with it’s bread, cheese, and beautiful language. Many of my friends find the relationship challenging and endearing — my insistence of having three types of cheese and bread at the table for meals, my inevitable mention of “The French do such and such,” and of course, my not-so-secret dream of living in France someday.
When my husband Ian and I set out to plan our six month trip, front and center was how much time we’d be able to spend in France. Benefiting from his distant French cousins, my husband has enjoyed France’s company many times and found no reason to revisit old haunts for any longer than necessary. I, of course, had to bring up the option of just moving to France for six months — a girl has to try! We settled on a compromise: two weeks in France enjoying a new-to-both-of-us city and a side visit to my host family culminating in a très cool 18th-century costume party in the Versailles Palace with one of our closest friends.
My husband drives a hard bargain.
We left Scotland’s unusual sunshine behind and the moment we hit turf in France, my heart sang. I love my adopted second language and Ian finds my constant chatter in French adorable, which is good since I insist upon having discussions with everyone from the shopkeeper to the waiter, practicing and building upon the foundation I started on high school foreign exchange in 2004.
Following a delightful visit with his family in Versailles, we hit the rails out to Rouen, a city which has seemingly always existed. Beginning with Neolithic villages, followed by Gauls and Romans, then as a regional capital, and now as a port city. She has survived Viking invasions (Rollo is buried here if you’ve seen the show), the Hundred Years War, modern bombings and occupations. She has also stood witness to the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, captured and convicted of heresy against the Church in 1431 before being canonized in 1909, a full 478 years after the English used her in their effort to assert ownership of France for their child king Henry VI.
Even knowing this history abstractly going into our twelve day stay in Rouen, I must confess she still surprised me.
The medieval town center of exposed wood framed houses lean out into the road, heavy under the weight of their history. Inside are modern sleek shops, cafes, and bistros with warm hearts and incredible food.
Julia Child started her own love affair of food in Rouen and as a lover of cheese, ciders, and bread, I understand why. Normandy is truly a comfort foodie paradise although in true French style, nothing is over the top so you can be sure to finish all three courses without feeling you’ve eaten Thanksgiving for the third time that week.
Our home stay location was a chic refurbished 18th century apartment, steps from the Old Market Square where Joan was burned and each morning, I made my pilgrimage to the boulangerie to fetch the daily baguette we devoured with all our meals.
We had two goals in Rouen:
- Recover from our rambling Scottish tour by sleeping, writing, and planning Eastern Europe
- Explore the city slowly and enjoy the quieter side of slow travel in preparation for our next month long sprint through Switzerland and Czech Republic
Moving every couple days takes a toll on your mental and physical state if you’re a homebody like me. I start longing for a kitchen, quiet evenings, and curling up with a book without worrying I’m wasting our limited time in a particular location. I’ve also come to enjoy repeating habits in a particular city, finding a new cafe and comparing their tea or cakes to their neighbor’s, finding the rhythm of the city and matching your beat to it for a while. During our time in Rouen, the populace celebrated Pride, a Viking festival, daily World Cup matches, and the start of the National Music Festival. Markets appeared and disappeared, students celebrated their BAC results with open container parties in plain view of passing police, and men in smart suits parked their scooters outside cafes each morning to share a noisette coffee with their plain-clothed friends.
My brief solo journey to Dunkerque to reconnect with my host family made the comparisons between the cities stark. Where Rouen is old, sunkissed and warm with the color of Normandy sand, Dunkerque holds the northern front with a cooler stubborn attitude. Decimated in the World Wars, the city has limited old buildings, instead sporting stark modern blocks from the 50s and 80s. A beautiful church in the city center still shows a line of bullet holes on its side in a perfect row chest-high, scars from continental tug-of-war. The weather sweeps in and out across the coastal plains from the Atlantic, nipping deep if you’ve neglected to bring a scarf and jacket. It also hasn’t recovered economically so the tourism brought forth by Christopher Nolan’s film Dunkirk has been welcomed as an opportunity to revitalize the area with free bus service on weekends and investment in the beach front.
In comparison to its blue tinted landscape, Dunkerque inhabitants are friendly, boisterous, and fun loving, if a little rough around the edges. Each year in March and April, they transform themselves and their city into a colorful loud party called Carnival, requiring each participant to don the most outrageous and colorful costumes they can contrive. Each weekend finds mobs of people parading together locked arm-and-arm to local village centers where they form marching circles, heaving this way and that, singing at the tops of their lungs into the piercing cold wind. If you lose balance, the mob pulls you up and hands you another beer to cheer you on.
It’s out of this world and they do it for two months straight. I’ve heard different origin stories including fishermen celebrating before departing for dangerous long trips and the preparation before Catholic Lent. Arguably, if you’ve survived a Dunkerque winter, you’d want to go out and be a little crazy for a while too, regardless of reasons.
I left Dunkerque and rendezvoused with Ian in Rouen dreaming in French, my head buzzing with French phrases and mannerisms. Like puffing out your cheeks and rolling the eyes back while exhaling to indicate I really couldn’t care less and it’s hopeless, why try? all at once. It takes me a couple days to change my internal language back to English.
Two cities, each with a complex and rich history with proud citizens attempting to navigate the evolving Europe situation. While Paris may feel its world responsibilities, cities like Dunkerque resent the two mile wide squatter village of immigrants between they and their Calais neighbor. Rouen as the capital of the Normandy region looks to find a way to keep themselves and their products of cheese and seafood relevant in the face of changing rules on tariffs and trade. Every day we took trains in France was made complex by train strikes protesting the proposal to offer private companies the right to operate — something categorically against France’s social core.
However, as we sat sipping coffee in a square framed by old medieval buildings, the modern art fountain cheerfully gurgling as bordering cafes displayed large TVs for crowds of soccer-cheering French, I trust they’ll figure it out. The French have the right to protest, but they have also survived far worse than Macron’s modernization attempts and Trump’s protectionism. They’ll keep smoking e-cigarettes and make their daily walk to get bread, singing in pride Allez les Bleu!
And I’ll still be madly in love with them.
I’m currently traveling on a self-imposed sabbatical, exploring taking a break from the hustle and side hustle grinds. Joined by my husband, we started in May 2018 and will be following our wanderlust until November and beyond if all goes well. We appreciate you reading and if you’d like to see more of our trip, be sure to follow our Instagrams at petracat09 and iancookwestgate!
