Aller/Retour: Reflections on France 8 Years Later

I spent just over two weeks in France with a diverse group from my university. By diverse I mean an art history professor, her husband, six art history students, a retired music professor who went for fun, a 60+ year old French student, the biological mother of an art history student who also joined just for fun, and a non-traditional student originally from Guatemala who recently graduated and wanted to add more international travel to her resume. We spent the bulk of our time in Paris, bien sûr, and a few days in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille.

View from the Marseille train station. 

It had been eight years since my last trip to France. The last time I was there I was still a student working on my PhD. I was the co-chaperone to a group of high school students. We used a private bus and French guide to lead us from Paris through Normandie and Bretagne. The students stayed with French families in Rennes and I stayed with my own near Nantes.

There were many similarities between the two trips. My favorite foods haven't changed (chèvre, coconut anything, hazelnut anything, croissants aux amandes, rillettes, galettes, Muscadet, etc) and my favorite sites/activities are about the same ("owning" a table at a café for an hour or so of reading and writing, any kind of castle, the Musée d'Orsay, rue Mouffetard, boulevard St. Michel).

A lot of things were different, though. There were places I re-visited and re-appreciated.

There were things I did, tried or saw for the first time. Like this sculpture in Place Sarte/Beauvoir near St. Germain des Près in Paris.

Like this example of street art off of rue Mouffetard in Paris

Or Canal St. Martin in eastern Paris, a neighborhood gaining in popularity thanks to its reputation as a hipster enclave

And this Algerian pastry shop in the same neighborhood

I'd been to Marseille before and loved its bright, urban vibe, but I hadn't ventured to the islands just off its coast including Château d'If. My first visit there cultivated my love of Maghrébin pastries but this trip I shared them with the students and made it part of a lesson on France's diversity.

I'd long wanted to visit the Institut du monde arabe and finally made it on my last day. This is a close up of the windows along its facade. The building's architecture and position perfectly reflect its purpose and contents.

I noticed several social changes as well. For example:

• many, many people were exercising in Paris, notably by running laps in the Luxembourg garden. No one looked strangely at them as they did me when I went running in France last time
• very few people smoked
• portion sizes in restaurants were huge and several restaurants offered (unsolicited!) to give out doggie bags
• most of the students did not speak French and yet they had no trouble with shopkeepers, waiters, or customer service agents who were more than willing, and in some case eager, to speak English
• throughout Paris there were many more locals with Asian roots than I'd ever noticed before
• Maghrébins were more mainstream than ever before as evidenced in the popularity of pâtisseries, restaurants, and boutiques managed by them and located in heavily touristed areas. My favorite off of boulevard St. Michel in Paris had been renovated since my last pilgrimage. In the past I was usually the only one there. This time there were six people (French, judging from their accents) ahead of me and three more behind. The daughter of one of my students lives just down the street and attests to its popularity with the locals
• despite of, or perhaps because of, the Front National swept the elections while I was there, undoubtedly changing the makeup of the Assemblée nationale and France's representation in the EU