Au revoir.

_{Amynah's institute}

Today is my final full day in Strasbourg. Tomorrow morning, Amynah and I will rise early, have an early breakfast at Christian, and then be driven to the airport to catch out flight to Paris, Rekjavik, and points beyond.

This is therefore my final post as Strasmark – well, at least my final post in which the Strasmark name makes any sense. “View of the marching fishes” never made any sense outside of my head. I intend to keep blogging – I’m sure Los Angeles will have plenty to offer in terms of stories, even if it isn’t quite as picturesque. Failing that, I’m sure the 9,000 km drive to get there will yield a tale or two, assuming I’ve not descending into gibbering madness by the end of it.

In the last few weeks I’ve spent a lot of time blogging about Strasbourg’s history and tourism highlights. Sometimes I've written about the people we’ve encountered here, but I think overall I’ve left the impression that our only social contact is with those who we have commercial dealings, and supplemented by friends we temporarily import from Canada.

When we first arrived in Strasbourg three years ago, we had almost no idea what we getting into. It was an adventure, and we romanticized what life would be life here; our expectations were unreasonably high. I didn’t really think I’d spend my days penning op-eds on the proceedings of the European Parliament while sipping a café au lait in a riverside terrace while sporting a beret, but… well, I kind of did.

Of course it didn’t work out that way.

The very first phone call I made in France, while in search of an apartment, ended with the woman on the other end telling me “to call back when I could speak French” and hanging up on me. I quickly realized that I was going to need far, far more language facility that I had on reserve to survive in this country.

Worse, I had expected that I’d be able to return to freelancing easily. Of course, after years of working in an office, I had become accustomed to having colleagues with whom I could take coffee breaks, bounce ideas off of, and occasionally socialize with. All of that was gone, and because we knew no one else in the city, I had no replacement.

The first six months – and beyond – were miserable. Going to the store to perform even the simplest errands required a 15-minute pep talk: what if I had to ask where the green peppers were? What if someone asked me the time? Slowly, I retreated within myself, avoiding the outdoors and dreading social contact. Amynah would come home in the evening, and I would talk her ear off non-stop about… well, who knows what the heck I had to talk about. Complaining about the accordionists, probably. But I had to talk to someone or lose my mind. She was foolish enough to marry me, so she had to put up with my blatherings.

I tried taking French lessons that the University of Strasbourg offered to foreign students and their spouses, but my fellow students were unapproachable, and the teacher not terribly pleasant or flexible: due to an early Hallowe’en-themed article I wrote that I mentioned in class, she was convinced that I was some sort of occultist. No amount of explanation could change her mind.


_{Just because I hang around graveyards taking pictures of haunted towers doesn't make me an occultist}

In my more despairing moments, I felt like I had been sentenced to solitary confinement: the three years stretched out in front of me like a desert. I couldn’t wait until it was over: I hated France, I hated the incomprehensible French, and I loathed their needlessly opaque language that served as an impenetrable barrier between me and happiness.

Of course, things were better than they seemed. Even during those first few months, there were plenty of people that reached out to us. Amynah started in the lab at the same time as another post-doc who came to Strasbourg from Bordeaux via England. With Julie and her boyfriend Sebastien, we made our first forays into the countryside, and were introduced to French customs such as mushroom hunting, viewing duck as dinner, rather than pond decorations, and cheering on Les bleus “football” team at the Stade de Meinau.


_{Julie and Sebastien, on our first visit to Mont St Odile. Natasha was just a glimmer in their eye at this point}

It was Sebastien who introduced me to his coworker Caner, the first of my language-exchange partners. The language exchanges proved to be fairly ineffective: Caner and I got on too well to bother correcting each other's language faults, and thus spent most of our “exchanges” speaking in whatever tongue was most effective for shooting the breeze.

There were others in Amynah’s labs who also made the effort to make us feel welcome – Audrey, one of the technicians, would always make a point of speaking to me, despite my near-total lack of French. Others invited us to dinners, movies, hiking and picnics, afternoons in her boss’s pool, voyages to pottery country, evenings of video-kareoke. But these were always “Amynah’s friends” – I was always welcome, but never quite au courant with the lab gossip and science talk.

It wasn’t until I signed up at the French course actually offered in Amynah’s lab that things truly opened up for me. The teacher, Danielle, was unbelievably welcoming. The day I met her was the day of her last class that semester: she accepted me as a student, and immediately invited Amynah and I to a housewarming party at her new flat across the Rhine.


_{Some of our friends here, from left: Guy who's name I don't remember, Qi, Sami, Chihiro, Hiroyasu, Amynah, Soraya, Mirna}

It was through Danielle and her class that we tapped into another social network here in Strasbourg. Most of her students – some learning French, some learning English - were in the same boat as us, foreigners finding their feet in France. They came from the U.S., Argentina India, China, Japan, Spain, Finland, Syria, Lebanon and Hungary. Danielle, and her husband David adopted us all as their polyglot children: their house was a frequent meeting point for dinners, concerts in the park, and a launch pad for expeditions to the Germany’s Black Forest.

Danielle and David were great friends in their own right, but of course without them we never would have enjoyed Qi’s Chinese New Year’s dinners, or started my language exchanges with Mirna and Lama (both of whom, I am happy to say, are now considering post-docs in Canada).


_{Two of the sweetest people I know: Lama and Qi, queens of the mountain.}

It was also through Danielle and David that had the opportunity to meet Sami the Finn with whom we enjoyed many disastrous outings into the countryside. And, without Sami, we would not have become friends with Belinda the Australian – not that Belinda was ever in need of anyone’s help in terms of making friends and settling in.

Once Danielle and David moved to England, we tried to fill their considerable shoes by welcoming newcomers like Belinda the way they had welcomed us, and so I made some ill-fated efforts to organize outings of internationals from Amynah’s institute into the surrounding countryside.

Finally, also through Danielle and David, Amynah and I have become good friends with Félicie and Yann, who have been so kind to us I can’t help but think there’s something wrong with them – surely we’re not so much fun that anyone would want to invite us on their weekend in Provence? My regular lunches with Félicie were a highlight of my week over this past year, and their relaxed good humour in all things - cleaning our apartment, last minute New Year's Dinners - made them a joy to hang out with.

Throughout it all, our friends and family kept coming for visits from Canada (and England, Germany, Ireland and the Congo). Because of them, I was motivated to get out into the country and explore - and as a side-effect, rarely felt homesick. Their patience with my grueling and didactic tour was appreciated: for a long time, knowing the city’s history was the only way that felt even somewhat at home here, and I appreciated the many opportunities I was given to show off my knowledge.

But as we prepare to leave, we’ve been shown an incredible amount of generosity from our friends here: dinners, gifts, even the occasional heartfelt note expressing sadness that we will be leaving. Almost everyone we know has offered to help with the considerable logistical difficulties involved in our move.

I’ve come a long way from the miserable, depressed hermit I was three years ago. Amynah’s lab, and For Amynah and I, the three years we have spent in Strasbourg have been the best time of our lives. There will always be a corner of our souls that will always be given over to this place, but it isn’t because of the bike trails and history.

The people we have met here are some of the best people we have ever known. I only regret that we did not spend more time with them all. I will miss them terribly.

And now, a word from our sponsors

Amynah and I have only eleven more days here in Strasbourg, which is deeply sad, but also incredibly stressful. As some/most of you already know, we’re coming back to Canada (via Iceland) in August. Over August, I will drive from Halifax to Los Angeles via Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton, Vancouver, Seattle and Portland. That’s about 9,000 kilometers.

Stress number one: We need health insurance for that month. None of the three countries involved will cover us. As far a Canada’s concerned, we might as well be French. As far as the French are concerned, we might as well have lived in Canada – although the nice lady at the local social insurance office told me that I could be reimbursed for our drugs for a month. Considering that my fancy prescription headache pills cost me 28 cents a pack here, that’s probably worth the paperwork.

With some difficulty, I managed to find us coverage that will tide us over in Canada and the U.S. until Amynah’s work insurance kicks in, but it’s limited. I’ll just have to drive 50 km/h the whole way, just to be safe.

Stress number 2: The documents we need for our visas have only just been processed by Amynah's new employer. We were supposed to go to the U.S. embassy in Paris to finish up our application, but now it’s too late, so we will have to somehow arrange an appointment on the fly at one of the American consulates while we’re on the road in Canada. Good times!

Otherwise, we’re going through a similar process to what we had to do when we left: throwing stuff out, deciding what clothes we will be wearing for all of August and shipping the rest, attempting to sell that which we cannot ship. Purging is good for the soul, sure, but I would rather like to have things that I plan to keep at some point in my life.

Finally, we’re disengaging from France itself: bidding adieu and settling our bills with the tax folk, our bank, the local “prefecture” and the utility companies.

That’s not even to start on the people to whom we’re saying goodbye: many of our evenings of late have been occupied by farewell dinners with our friends and colleagues, and there will be many more to come. So far, so much like Montreal – except when we left Montreal, we vaguely expected to move back.

Unlike in Montreal, we’ve been having to say surprisingly moving goodbyes to other people around the city: “our” waitress at “our” café, the merchants at the farmer’s market, and our local baker among them. I’m going to write about some of these people over the next week, if only because I sense that while I’ve been enjoying the past four weeks of unbroken history lecturing, my blog statistics tell me you’re all a little less keen.

We'll meet in Strasbourg

_{Map of medieval Strasbourg, from the Archives De Strasbourg}

I only have forty-five more days left in France. In the three years we have lived here, we have entertained fifty (50!) visitors, with more to come. I have given my full city tour almost thirty times, and another dozen partial ones. Almost none of it has ended up here on the View of the Marching Fishes, because I didn’t want to spoil the sights and stories for my readers who might eventually end up visiting.

The last of that small population of reader/guests has departed (Goodbye Julie ! Adieu, Randal) and now I will start clearing the decks, so to speak, so that you may all experience the Strasbourg tour, if only virtually. The benefits are that your feet will undoubtedly be better rested, but you’ll miss the comic value of my waving arms adding pathos to my garbled French as I try to communicate with the locals.


_{Predictably, the first picture I took in Strasbourg was of the Cathedral, during the annual summer light show. Fortunately, my photography's improved a great deal since then.}

For those of you who have endured the real thing, I apologize for the repetition, but there will certainly be things that I post in the next month or so that will be new to you all. Also, I hope the photos and blathering bring back some fond memories of your stays here. So, feel free to comment as I work through my nostalgia and sadness that I have to leave this wonderful place.

I am pretty sure I have far, far, more than forty-five things to write about, so posting here should increase dramatically in the next month – possibly even multiple times a day, if I can manage it amongst our preparations to leave and my attempts to earn my living through paid writing. So, stop by often, wallow with me.

Time's running out

_{The passerelle de deux rives - a foot bridge in the bi-national park on the banks of the Rhine river between Strasbourg and Kehl, in Germany}

Amynah have been here almost three years. That's thirty-four months, 146 weeks, or more than 1000 days.

Soon after we arrived here, we were invited, along with several others from Amynah’s new lab, to a dinner at Amynah’s boss’s home. Brigitte and her husband Alain laid on a true Alsatian feast for us: an apertif of cremant (Alsatian champagne) heaping mounds of choucroute, Alsatian wines, bretzels, local cheeses and tarts with fruits picked from the fields and orchards near their village, with an digestif of eau de vie (schnapps) distilled in their neighbour’s barn.

The company was worldly and oh-so Euro-sophisticated, the conversation lively, the hospitality impeccable. Almost all the guests spoke at least two languages fluently – many spoke three or more. I felt welcomed, yet overwhelmed, intimidated, provincial, and completely out of my element.

Yesterday, Amynah and I invited Alain and Brigitte over for lunch. We served fresh trout and homemade rhubarb tart, the fundamentals of which were purchased at our local organic farmer’s market, where we are recognized to the point that the vendors notice our absence when we aren’t around.

Prior to this, I had taken Brigitte and Alain to the “super secret location” – the highlight of my Strasbourg tour, a place unmarked on the city maps, unseen by the tour groups, unadvertised in the city’s information offices. Brigitte and Alain, both native Alsatians, who’d lived in Strasbourg for decades, were almost entirely unaware of its existence before I introduced them to it.

We have thus come full circle in Strasbourg, and so, sadly, it is time to leave.

In a little over three months, Amynah and I will be quitting France. Many of you already know what our next destination is, and an more details will be posted here as they are known (hint: probably California). Before that, is our intention to drive coast to coast, visiting all the major centres in Canada where we know people in August. This way, we hope to remind you all what we look like while simultaneously encouraging you to visit us in our future home. So stay put.

In the interim, I will likely start posting even more of the “local history” type posts I’ve been doing here (including, eventually, the super-secret location), as a way of giving those people who’ve not visited us here a taste of what I love about this place. We are still hoping to squeeze in both some last-minute visitors, and some Euro-travels of our own. After that, we will be saying adieu to the many new friends we've made here, packing several kilograms of Alsatian pottery, and starting another new adventure, in another foreign land. I suspect I will find new ways to have my ever-popular biking misadventures there are well (though, given the car-obsessed reputation of the city to which we’re moving, I may be burned as a witch for attempting to bike there). With luck, I will continue to blog there for as long as it is interesting.

That reminds me of a story...

Saturday, Amynah and I were invited by our friend Qi to celebrate the Chinese New Year with an enormous dinner at Qi's apartment. We are, of course, already several weeks into the Year of the Ox, but Qi had been so occupied with various other celebrations organized by the local Chinese associations to which she belongs that she couldn’t organize her own party before now.

The feast was amazing – though operating with only a microwave and three hotplates, Qi somehow managed to prepare a dinner with two different kinds of fish, at least two different kinds of chicken, noodles, lamb, vegetables and shrimp. There were 8 people in total, everyone ate until they were stuffed, and yet there were still mounds of excellent food left over.

Anyway, at some point in the evening, after I had been reminded of and therefore shared at length some anecdote or another from my vast store of such things, Qi paused and looked at me, and said “Ah Mark, you always have a funny story.”

While my natural paranoia is making me question whether I’m one of those conversation-hogging party-boors, I am choosing instead to take it as a compliment. All of which is a long-winded way of bringing myself around to today’s blog post. You all might have noticed that I’ve considerably increased my rate of posting here, at least this month. Part of that is due to my natural procrastinatory ways, part of it is boredom, part is a genuine desire to keep in touch with people, but I’m also trying to keep the writing muscles limber.

However, coming up with topics three times a week is pretty tough – I’m not really interested turning this into a current events blog and I can’t go on poorly-conceived hikes every week. I’m planning on posting more about local attractions in the weeks to come, but am unsure how much people are really interested in local nicknames for obscure landmarks. I’ve already sunk so low as to mail myself a postcard for your edification. How much worse can I get?

Much worse, it turns out, as I resort to what Qi accurately identified as my favourite phrase: “that reminds me of a story.” This morning, I was walking back from dropping Amynah off at her tram stop, when I was cornered by a rather aggressive panhandler, who claimed that he had to make it to a job interview in a distant suburb, and needed money for a bus. I offered him a transit ticket. Stymied, he replied he needed money for a petit pain, for which he wanted a Euro. A small bread costs 55 centimes at my local baker, so I gave him that, resentful for having given into what was obviously a con.

I contrast this to one time when I was accosted for money in Halifax. It was late at night, and I was returning from a movie with my friend Natalie. We passed a shabbily dressed guy on Quinpool Road, who asked if we could “spare some change for a poor Cape Bretoner.” Being a proud Caper herself, Nat gave him a Loonie, and we continued on to Nat’s place, where I dropped her off. As I made my way back to my apartment, I passed the same panhandler again, who once more asked me for money.

I apologized, and said I had none, but then he recognized me: “Oh, you already gave me money!” (I hadn’t – I didn’t have a cent on me).

Then he asked me my name, which I told him: “Oh, that’s a good Biblical name, a good Biblical name. You’re a good man. Here, let me give you some money.”

A panhandler trying to give me money? I looked at my clothes: ripped jeans, a stained government surplus prison-guard coat, ratty sneakers. Maybe it was time to upgrade the wardrobe.

In any case, I refused his cash, but I ended up talking to the man, crouching in the bushes behind the Canadian Tire store while he drank a mixture of Lysol and Coke (he offered to share, but I turned him down: I don’t really enjoy Coke). Turns out he had been married once, and lived in Toronto, before his drinking got away from him. He’d been on the streets for seven years, and still missed his wife fiercely.

All of this was sad enough, but the worst was yet to come: he told me that his grown son, who I would guess couldn’t have been much older than thirty, was apparently living on the streets too, sleeping and begging somewhere near the Halifax Commons. Father and son would cross paths once in a while, but otherwise each was living rough, in the same city, each alone. I never saw him again, but I still think of that man once in a while. I hope things got better for him.

I'm going to miss this so much

A friend of mine who went to the Congo with her husband at roughly the same time that Amynah and I moved to France, summed up the experience with a turn of phrase I've been using ever since: "It's us against the world."

When we first came here, it was very much like that: my language problems meant that I was even more isolated that working alone in a fifth floor apartment would seem to suggest: going to the bakery was terrifying. I couldn't make small talk with the cashiers, people on the tram, my neighbours.

Over time, however, I began to build up a community: the Postal people know me as Monsieur La Canada, the Bakery people know me as Monsieur le pain cereale, tranché, the local café knows me as Monsieur can't quite pronounce kougelhopf after all this time, I have a barber with whom I can make reasonable conversation, my mail delivery woman says hello when she sees me on the street. It's superficial, but I've made myself little connections here that mean a lot when I've no other social contact in the run of a day.

Tomorrow we move. The new apartment is far superior: larger, two t.v.'s, several rooms, two balconies and cleaning lady that visits once a week. However, even though it's only a five minute walk away, I feel like I'm uprooting myself entirely again.

And giving up the best view in town while I'm at it.

Your Wednesday morning bummer

On those days she doesn’t take her bike, I walk Amynah to the tram station in the morning. Our route takes us through a park-like area, where some older homeless guys tend to congregate.

On our way to there this morning, we passed one I’ve noticed before, sitting on a bench, immobile, eyes closed, and his hand over his heart. I wasn’t sure that he was ok, and I know French people have a lousy record of looking out for strangers, so on my way back home I resolved to ask him if he needed help.

Practicing the French phrases for “do you need help?” in my head, I drew nearer to his station on the bench. As I drew near, I saw that his arm had moved, and his eyes seemed to be open. Propped up against bag of worldly possessions was an old picture frame, the glass cracked and the metal dented and worn; it was made for a drawing room table, not the ravages of life on the streets. He was gazing, prayerfully, at an old photograph,of a woman dressed for a party, hosted by friends presumably long forgotten, smiling back at him from happier times.

It broke my heart.

*_{I have much to catch up on, blogging-wise, but I had to get that out of my system.}

Tram attack

Met with my friend Caner last night - we meet weekly for a language exchange. Ususally we just walk around the island for two hours chatting (mainly in French, so lord knows what he gets out of it) before he gets on the tram to go home.

Last night, as we were approaching Homme de fer ("Iron Man" - the main tram station on the island) Caner slowed down, looking ahead with great concetration. A couple of 20-somethings in track suits were shoving each other around on the station platform. Lacking any sense of what they were saying (the slang of wannabe-gangster French youth is utterly beyond my ken) I didn't think anything of it - it looked exactly like the kind of confrontation where Jerk A pushes Jerk B, Jerk B pushes back, and then Jerk A goes in for the kill just slowly enough to allow his friends to hold him back, insults are exchanged and the party breaks up.

Not this time. This time, Jerk A punched Jerk B in the face, hard enough that he went down hard and didn't get back up quickly enough to prevent Jerk A from kicking Jerk B at least twice while he was down, once in the side of his head. Jerk A and his friends then walked away, completely unmolested.

Caner and I were too far away to do anything - it was all over by the time I realized what was going on. No one on the platform intervened, save for a couple of the guys friends who eventually helped him up. Caner and I arrived at the station in time to hear him refuse to deal with the "flics" (police) or even an ambulance (which it really looked like he needed).

Anyway, I was quite upset by the whole thing. There's nothing like seeing a prone man get kicked in the face in full view of 50-odd immobile people to shake your faith in human decency.