The Hotel Brueghel in Lille is just the sort of place I like to wait out transatlantic jet lag. Before a trip begins in earnest, I let an unfamiliar environment create a cocoon, inside of which I can do all the reading that never seems to happen in my distracted homeworld. In this case I tucked into Patrick Merriman’s Massacre, and thought about how much political violence I was born too late for, thank God.
The dark wood paneling and the very tiny elevator added to the mood – like I’m unstuck in time as well as space. I also enjoy the cultural hybridity implicit in the hotel’s name: a French hotel named for a Flemish master!
France, like California, can resemble its neighbors. Just like the eastern slope of the Sierra feels like Nevada, or the Siskiyou mountains seem Oregonian, France’s extremities display the country’s diversity. Nice is borderline Italian. The Pyrenees are practically Spain. And there is indeed a section of France, its northernmost extremity, with Dutch place names (e.g. Dunkerque, “church of the dunes”). A land where you’re more likely to enjoy a Belgian beer than local tipple. French Flanders was my drizzly destination after landing in Paris.
The train north was about the same cost that a regional train into central Paris would have been. There was a feeling of exiting France and entering “Europe.” The train station is even called “Lille Europe” owing to its connections to London and Brussels. A statue of former President Mitterand faces the huge international rail terminal, and you can imagine Mitterand appreciating the grandeur, besotted as he was with grands projets. At the station I made the first, confused breakfast order of my trip at a fast-service bakery called Paul, and I imagined that people were quaffing similar espresso from Lisbon to Riga.
Lille is a French city but only since Louis XIV’s conquest in 1667. Before that it was known as Rijsel and took its place among northern textile dynamos like Ghent. Lille has canalside bike paths just like points north. I watched the mid-morning rain turn the slate roofs reflective, and took in a handsome old belfry and a town square only recently renamed for General de Gaulle. The square used to be the Grote Markt and it looks similar to the ones in Brussels and Oudenaarde with its stately but uncoordinated façades. I was surprised to see that in November Lille’s town square had a ferris wheel tucked into it. The wheel was arranged diagonally so that the square could accommodate its size. My midwestern boyhood predisposes me to a ferris wheel situated in a midway with wide panoramas, but it also makes sense to fit one snugly into an urban landscape. The scent of chestnuts on a flattop grill at an outdoor stand sent me instantly back to the memory of Christmas markets from decades ago.
I see my own country more clearly when traveling abroad, and since I’m from the USA, I get gauche reminders of our global influence. Other travelers get to reflect on their origins when they see what is lacking about the place they visit, and that happens to me. But the experience of cultural shock also includes encountering the American stuff that is taken up locally – which tends to surprise and add a whole other “meta” layer of cultural difference. The French have a way of repurposing American culture in a way that makes them look even more French than ever, for example the national passion for McDonald’s. Experiencing familiar–yet-different American cultural touchstones is an ironic sort of shock, since the difference is the echo of the similarity. What I’m trying to say is: I saw a poster for an upcoming Bonnie Tyler concert and felt an exquisite cultural confusion (Note: I am fact-checking now and seeing that Ms. Tyler is in fact Welsh. Still, I think her post-Tina “ferocity” belongs to the general category of American pop).
I rented a Dutch “Gazelle” bike across a small bridge from the monument to the pigeon-heroes of World War I. The French Army still keeps a pigeon unit, since communicating in urban warfare in more modern ways might not be secure. Anyway, it’s not just Cher Ami who deserves granite commemoration: thousands of birds served the Allies, to say nothing of those who trained them.
Over the next couple of days I was never far from a World War I monument. Before leaving Lille I did a couple of laps around Vauban’s old Citadelle. What a privilege, what a liberation, to roll on two wheels through a manicured park where sentinels used to march. I followed a gravel path into a shaded area as the sun came back. I even passed a Sequoia, not enough to make me homesick though. A thousand years of militarism couldn’t dim my mood. It may have even made 2023 feel more like a treasure.