Épinal , France

The German train company, DB considers a few minutes to be plenty of time to change trains which can be a bit stressful, especially when the trains are located on opposite sides of a large station. To travel from Frankfurt, Germany to Épinal, France I had to change trains three times. In the German city of Offenburg, my ICE train from Frankfurt arrived at one end of the station and I only had three minutes to get to my connection which of course was on a track at the opposite end of the large, outdoor station. I scurried downstairs to cross under the tracks and then ran with my bags to reach the train in time. My knees are not as forgiving as they used to be and so I would not like to have to do that too often with heavy bags, but at least I made it.

I got onto a very small and very crowded train that would take me from Offenburg to Strasbourg, a city on the other side of the French-German border. The train only had a few cars and was more of a tram than an intercity train. There were middle school students with bicycles and lots of mothers with big trams and lots of children in tow going to spend the day in France. I found a spot to sit near the door so that my bags could sit out of the way at my feet which worked well. Once I arrived in Strasbourg, I had to wait for an hour until my next train to Nancy was ready for boarding. During that time, I got to see several of the high speed, TVG trains. The TVG holds the record for the fastest wheeled train, having reached 574.8 km/h (357 mph) on 3 April 2007 and also holds the world's highest average speed for a regular passenger service.

I was going to Épinal to visit my friends Renee, Mark and their children. I know Renee from when I

was a student at Washington University in St. Louis and both she and Mark have been mentioned in my travel emails in the past. I stopped to visit them in Los Angeles during my first trip to New Zealand in 2004. Renee has had a huge influence on my life over the years and in keeping with that tradition, she introduced me to her friend, Ruth who showed to me that it was possible for someone to successfully sell their photographs. Mark works for a large company and he was offered the chance for an overseas assignment in France. Renee and Mark have been living in Épinal for about 20 months when I visited them. Their daughter Helena was born in France and has dual citizenship.

Renee met me in the train station in Nancy and we then drove the 45 minutes to Épinal which is a is a small city nestled in the French Vosges. Épinal has a population of only 36,000 (according to the 1999 census) but there is a lot going on in the city. It is the main city in the department of the Vosges, so many of the neighboring towns go to Épinal for shopping or for fun. The city also sports four Olympic-sized pools, an ice-skating rink, a public gymnasium (basketball, handball, fencing, archery, judo, and ping-pong dedicated rooms), and the town sponsors walking, rollerblading, biking and running events during the year. The Moselle river is channeled through canals in the city center and the city created a series of gates and obstacles for kayakers. One can stand on the sidewalk over the canal and watch the plethora of kayakers practicing going through the gates.

Épinal is the terminus of the Canal des Vosges and the town has a harbor where barges can be docked. There are well maintained walking trains along the canal which are a nice place to spend a few hours. Across the street from Renee and Mark’s flat is a large park with flower beds that are constantly being rotated during the year. Renee told me that French cities are given ratings for their gardens and Épinal makes a concerted effort to be highly rated each year.

Through conversations with Renee, Mark and their friends, I learned a bit about what it is like to adjust to living in France. Renee mentioned a book called Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong by Jean-Benoit Nadeau which describes the French from the perspective of someone who is originally from Canada. The author notes that although the French look like people from North America, it would be a mistake to assume that our cultures are identical.

A French trait which takes some getting used to is the constant kissing of cheeks. Renee told me that when Mark goes to work each day, he must meet each woman who he sees at work with kisses on each cheek and he must shake hands with each man. It is very important to remember whose cheek you have kisses and whose hand you have shaken. If you see someone at the end of the day who you have not yet kissed, it is expected that you will do so. However, to kiss someone’s cheek or to shake someone’s hand after you have already done so that day is frowned upon. It must take some effort to follow this custom when working in a large company as Mark was doing.

Renee’s friend, Kris told me that the custom of kisses even extend to the gym. While people are working out, if someone they know enters the gym, they are expected stop whatever they are doing to bestow kisses because it would be rude not to do so. As you can imagine, at larger gyms the kisses could be a big distraction from a workout because you would have to constantly stop what you are doing. Kris told me that when she goes, she puts in her earbuds and just gets in her workout because everyone knows that she is a foreigner and she plays that card so that she can get her workout completed in a reasonable amount of time and without interruption.

An activity which was an option during my stay was to go to one of the swimming pools in town. However, Mark pointed out that I did not have a state sanctioned swimsuit to wear and that I would not be allowed to wear my swimming trunks. Men are only allowed to wear small Speedos in the pool because they are seen as being more hygienic than shorts. If shorts were allowed, someone might wear a pair of short in which they had been working out and therefore they might be sweaty. People have pointed out that the concern for the cleanliness of the shorts is rather funny considering that the cleanliness of the person wearing them might be a bigger issue. However, others who have gone to pools in France and who have had to rent a pair of Speedos reported that they had to enter a series of showers before getting to the pool area.

A visit to a local market introduced me to another custom which is to prepare meat with the head still on the animal. In one butcher’s display case were rabbits which had been skinned but which still had their heads and most importantly, they still had their eyes. It was explained to me that people feel that they can gauge the health of the animal (the health prior to the visit to the butcher) by looking into the eye. Therefore, the head is kept on the animal when it is served.

Mark and Renee have a really nice, spacious flat in the downtown area with a large park just across the street. One day while Renee and I were sitting on a bench in the park, talking and watching Luke ride his bicycle, I was startled to hear the sound of running water behind us. I turned to see a little boy standing with his pants down, peeing on a tree while pedestrians walked by as if nothing was going on. Renee explained that it is common for little boys to open use trees in the park as bathrooms and therefore no one gives it much mind.

A related point that gets a lot of press from time to time are the dog droppings which can litter the walkways. I had read a story in the New York Times a few years ago that the dog droppings are a problem in the big cities like Paris where there can be a lot of dogs out for a walk.

On Tuesday, Renee planned an outing in the countryside while her son was in school and we were joined by her friend Kris who is from the US, but has lived in France for a number of years. The plan was to drive out into the mountains and maybe do a bit of walking if the weather cooperated. We visited some stores along the way and Renee told me that it is expected that the store keeper and customers will exchange “bonjour” when the customer enters the store. This custom goes back to when shopkeepers often lived above the shops and therefore, when someone entered the shop they were entering an extension of the shopkeeper’s house and so it was expected that the visitor be greeted.

While driving along a road that was originally built during World War I, we saw signs for fondue and so decided to give it a go for lunch. We turned at the sign and drove down a dirt road to a wooden building perched on the side of a hill that was a restaurant. After some half-hearted joking about Hansel and Gretel, we wandered inside. We met at the door by German hikers who were also coming in for lunch as the restaurant was located along the hiking trails. The restaurant was nice, but they just had a set menu and no fondue. After extracting ourselves, we found the actual fondue restaurant which was a farm building and we walked past stables for the cows on the way in. We ordered cheese fondue with meat and cheese as well as salad. We got a basket with cubes of bread and a platter with a few strips of meat. The fondue came in a pot which was set down on a sterno heater. The cheese in the fondue was muster cheese which is a specialty of the region and quite rich and decadent.

That evening, Renee, Mark and I continued a tradition that we unknowingly have been following every time we have been together for the past decade, we ate pie, homemade apple in this case. We knew that we had a pie obsession extending back to when I had visited them in California, but upon discussing it further, we discovered every time that the three of us have gotten together, pie has been eaten even though we didn’t realize that we were following tradition at first.

On Wednesday, Renee and I walked down to a museum in the city center called cite de l'image. The museum is dedicated to the popular prints created by a local company, the Imagerie d'Épinal, formerly known as the Imagerie Pellerin. The stencil-colored woodcuts of military subjects, Napoleonic history, storybook characters and other folk themes were widely distributed throughout the 19th century. The images include Le Chat Botté, or Puss in Boots who recently appeared in the Shrek movies. Part of the museum is the musee de l'image where you can have guided tours of the old machines used to make the prints. There was also the imagerie d'Épinal where there was a permanent display of prints as well as a temporary display of prints from the 50’s era. Amongst the displays in the temporary exhibit were Martine books. Martine is the title character in a series of books for children written in French by the belgians Marcel Marlier and Gilbert Delahaye. and edited by Casterman. The first one, Martine à la ferme (Martine at the farm), was published in 1954, followed by over 50 other books, which have been translated into many different languages. There was a store as well and one of the prints that was offered was a sketch of what Épinal looked like many years ago when the chateau was intact and the city walls enclosed much of the city.

That afternoon, I met up with Isabelle who I knew from DTU where we both were studying for our masters degrees. She has been mentioned in many of my emails from Denmark because we travelled together in Denmark and we often we at dinner parties together. Isabelle (who is French) now lives in Paris where she is working for the French government. Her job is to monitor the pollution of the environment caused by explosives or explosive chemicals. She visits factories that use the explosives to ensure that they are containing the pollution properly. In my opinion, that she is an explosives expert is pretty neat, but what is even neater is that her work will be taking her to French Guiana in a few months. French Guiana (which is located in South America), is is an overseas region of France and therefore falls under Isabelle’s jurisdiction. As an integral part of France, French Guiana is part of the European Union's territory, and its currency is the euro. French Guiana is home to the Guiana Space Centre (in French: Centre Spatial Guyanais or CSG) which is a French spaceport for launching satellites. Of course, the spaceport uses explosive materials to launch the space vehicles which is why Isabelle must visit. She will be going at the same time that a launch is scheduled and so will be able to see it.

Isabelle and I had lunch at a crêperie. Isabelle was a bit put off with crêpes because Épinal is not the crepe region (Brittany is the correct region), but I thought that they were good. We each started with a savory crepe that we chose from the extensive menu of crêpes fillings. We also drank cider which is a popular drink to accompany crêpes. For dessert, we had crêpes smothered in chocolate sauce. It was really decadent and almost too much chocolate, if you can believe that possible. Unfortunately, right after lunch we went to a bakery to pick up dessert for dinner that night. I say unfortunately, because after the chocolate crepe, I didn’t want to think about more sugar. While in the bakery, the baker explained about a few of the loaves of bread that he had set to one side. He told us that he used wet yeast for the special loaves instead of dry yeast. Many artisan bakers produce their own yeast by preparing a 'growth culture' which they then use in the making of bread. In any case, the bread was delicious.

We also needed to stop in a grocery store and it was the first time that Isabelle had been into a grocery store in years. In Paris, she is part of a group of people who pay an organic farmer months in advance for his produce. Each week, he brings a shipment of fruits and vegetables into the city for the group members and periodically, the group will go out to his farm to work.

Afterwards, we went for a walk along the Canal des Vosges and I was surprised to see that the canal did not necessarily follow the river. In fact, at one point, the canal actually went over the river and was carried by a large, stone viaduct. I was surprised at this because although the boats which we saw in Épinal were not gigantic, they were large enough that I did not expect them to be able to go over the bridge.

That night, Renee outdid herself by preparing a multi-course dinner which was really good. We had a lovely, organic wine that Isabelle had purchased. After dinner, Isabelle left to continue her holiday and I set about the task of packing which is a task that I hate. However, it had to be done since I would be leaving early the next morning from Épinal by train to go to visit my friend, Gerke in Hamburg.














For more information about Épinal
http://www.ville-Épinal .fr/

A website about Imagerie d'Épinal
www.imagerie-Épinal.com