I've always known I'd go to Rouen. Being a scholar of French literature, it has always been inevitable to me that I'd one day visit the birth and resting place of one of the greatest writers of all time, Gustave Flaubert. Yet I never thought that when I finally did visit this place, I wouldn't actually visit those places. Although, the irony of it all is quite
flaubertienne.
Last week, around Wednesday, Jenette came to my room for our evening ritual of tea and chocolate, and asked me if I'd be "keen" to visit Rouen. Now, although Americans never use this word "keen", I've come to understand that it's usually followed by a proposal to do something, more or less pleasant, but in any case wrapped in a pretty, poetic package, as in:
"Would you be
keen to walk to E. Leclerc on this sunny day?"
(translation: "
Want to make the long, treacherous journey with me to a smelly superstore of epic proportion while simultaneously having the opportunity to freeze your ass off on this fine, 20 degree Fahrenheit day?")
Now, tell me, doesn't "keen" sound so much better than all
that?
Regardless, I was much more
keen to go to Rouen than to stay in my pretty little
petite ville de merde for the weekend, so we both made carpool plans with a friend from the Foyer, and departed on Friday evening, with high expectations of literary inspiration (ok, maybe that was just me).
Now, one of the advantages of traveling with a South African is that whatever dangerous traveling situation you can imagine yourself in, be it arriving in a youth hostel and bunking down with a band of hooligans, or wandering into the wrong part of town only to find yourself, several hours later, with much less money than you had before (by that I mean none), you can rest assured that your South African traveling companion has been in far more perilous situations each day in her own country, simply by setting foot outside her walled compound of a home. Thus wherever you may find yourself roaming with such a person, you can do so with the confidence that, at the very least, your friend has already seen it all when it comes to issues on trips. Which is why I agreed to overcome my anxieties and
CouchSurf for the first time, in Jenette's company.
We arrived
chez Guillaume, right outside the city center of Rouen, just in time for dinner. Now, have you ever knocked on someone's door, introduced yourself, and proceeded to dump all your belongings for a weekend in the corner of their den? Let me tell you, it's an awkward experience. Yet I couldn't have imagined a more pleasant and warm welcome. It didn't take long before Guillaume, a grand traveler
himself, had made us feel at home in his comfy apartment. And then, our Rouen weekend kicked off, with a dinner (
rougaille) from
Réunion. As in, the
island.
The rest of the weekend would take paragraph upon paragraph to recount. The piles of snow that arrived late Saturday night and covered the town of Rouen in white Sunday morning made for a special, unique experience. Here are some of the highlights of the weekend:
-Drive up into the hills to view Rouen by night
-Walk through the center of town
-Lunch at CHOColate bar (complete with fondue and a long menu of hot chocolates; I had the caradamom/nutmeg hot chocolate, with
chamallows - I'm sure you can guess what that is. I'll write a separate post reviewing this cafe; it is a must on any visit to Rouen)
-Visits to the cathedral, churches, and abbey around town (see collage, above)
-Seeing the
gros horloge (sadly, because of the snow, guided tours of the tower were canceled, so we didn't get to visit the museum inside, or see the view from the top, both of which I'd heard were truly a must)
-Seeing the Tour Jeanne d'Arc, where the famous French heroine was likely imprisoned before being burned at the stake
-Seeing the place where Jeanne d'Arc was burned (now a large cross sticking out of a bush), and the strange-looking church built in memorial to the Saint
-Discovering the Aître St. Maclou, where plague victims were
buried in a mass grave in the 1300s, with its strange skulls carved into
the woodwork, and statues depicting the dance of the dead
-Viewing the beautiful architecture of the town of Rouen, which has changed very little over the centuries (I loved the houses and buildings
à colombages)
-Walking on a frozen fountain, and seeing swans standing on a frozen pond, almost blending into the white ice
-Tasting
le caramel de pommes dieppois, which is basically a cross between caramel and apple butter (=mmm)
-Experiencing Rouen under piles of snow (thanks to waterproof boots!)
-Cooking with Jenette and Guillaume (delicious leek and mushroom pasta, and then pancakes the next morning)
-Cheesy online video and music clips (let's just leave it at that, hmm?)
-Leaning homes and statues with no arms
-The fantastic Palais de Justice, especially under the snow, with its recently-restored architecture, and its many marks from bullet and bomb impacts during the war (see collage)
-Discovering the beauty and yumminess that is a
charlotte, thanks to Guillaume's mad cooking skills.
-More delicious hot chocolate at Ici et Ailleurs, a small, cozy café (frequent warm-ups were essential this weekend, as the temperatures hovered between 15 and 20 degrees Fahrenheit during the day; I returned with a pitifully wind-burned face, wrinkles under my eyes, and puffy, red splotches on my cheeks)
-And finally, to end it all, the best damn falafel I've ever tasted, for but
sous, at Chez Wam.
Bref, as the French say, it was
fantastique. It really helps to have great traveling companions, and Guillaume fit right in. Jenette and I are particularly fond of shenanigans, so the weekend was filled with laughter and mischief.
And now a little word about Flaubert. As you will have noticed, I didn't mention Flaubert at all in the above post. That's because, as I alluded to in my "Rouen preview"
post, in spite of the fact that seeing Flaubert's childhood home (now a medical museum) and grave was my singular mission in visiting Rouen, I did not end up getting to do either. This was because the museum closed too early on Saturday for us to see it, and the grave is quite outside of town. On Sunday, with the snow, many of the trams and buses were canceled, and the treacherous, icy streets made driving virtually impossible. Thus the "
merde".
So I guess I'll have to go back to Rouen, to visit Monsieur Flaubert. It will be a pleasure.
*I owe mille mercis
to Guillaume for his warm welcome and fantastic tour guide/photography/social skills. Jenette and I also shared our pictures with one another, and I wish to thank her for hers. Many of them appear here in the post, in addition to my own, and although the first collage contains only my own photos, the second collage at the bottom of the post is entirely made up of hers. The edited ones, to which she applied special effects, are particularly beautiful. J's version of our weekend can be found here, and her review of CHOColate here.
