I leave Annecy with a certain sense that I've crossed a threshold in life and discovered a little bit better what it means to live as someone independent of all that is familiar from the comfort zone of growing up. I came here alone, knowing no one and being unsure of how well my French would hold up at first and, indeed, it was surprising to find that I can somehow still manage to take advantage of this brilliant opportunity thrust at me in every way imaginable. I hold no particular nostalgia for the town itself, it being very small and certainly provincial, but the situation of the town in the Alps and the unique culture that comes from that is something that I appreciate at a basic level, having had the opportunity to try and experience as many things "Savoyard" as one could in the short amount of time given.
Ciao, joli little town.
When one day L, N, and I decided to go to a cafe and sit and have a drink together, because at some point we have to realize that we are technically in a group studying abroad together, but also that we're genuinely curious to make further acquaintance with each other, we talked about something that stuck with me, a thought that I've come back to repeatedly in the space of us being in Annecy.
There is a concept that we as people tend to romanticize places, objects, and other things of varying levels of permanence in our lives, because these places and things become attached in our memory to the emotions and feelings that we have experienced in or with them. Conversely, we also romanticize places and things that are seemingly nice, but that we don't know, precisely for the reason that we are unfamiliar with them. Many people go to Europe because they have a romantic notion of European life, cities, and people, overlooking the differences between countries and not necessarily realizing that people live similarly there to how we do elsewhere. When you travel for short periods of time in these places, the romantic notion of them gets reinforced, because you don't spend enough time to see the banal, everyday things that people have to do to pass the time and to function in society. We hold onto our mythical idea of Europe as a magical wonderland because we are ultimately too ignorant to say or feel otherwise about it.
We are sheltered in the United States by the umbrella of national unity, of a culture that does not differ so profoundly from state to state and region to region as most areas of the rest of the world in a similar geographic footprint do. We go back and forth between our cities with no barriers, with an ease that is a uniquely North American concept. In this way, there is a certain idea that to cross a national boundary is a special thing, that to go between historic cities implies a drastic change in how life functions, as though culture produces fundamental differences in how we perform basic things such as cooking or sleeping. The idea that we carry in the US that cities are cities and to move between them is "normal" or not particularly eventful is something altogether lost in Europe; that is to say, the idea that cities are just cities and it is necessary to engage with people, things, and concepts other than the built form of somewhere to truly discover what makes that place special doesn't really exist. We consider Europe special for the sake of being special.
This isn't to say that Europe isn't nice or that life in European countries is bad, in fact, it has no bearing on that whatsoever. It is to say, however, that the complexities of life make everything more difficult than they appear on the surface, and that within the walls of the beautiful aged buildings real life happens that we can not possibly as outsiders comprehend without thrusting ourselves into it. Everything is more gritty than it first appears, whether that is for better or worse.
The more I travel, the more time I spend in such remarkably different corners of the world (Russia, Miami, now France), the more the concept of romanticism for a place is a little bit unfounded, although a draw to particular places is certainly founded. My lack of nostalgia for the town of Annecy itself perhaps stems from the fact that I carry an understanding with me of the idea that we are all actually remarkably similar as human beings, working, eating, sleeping, wishing, dreaming, and playing all in similar ways and certainly to an end that would appear to be the same. This seems to be true even of places that are drastically different in their socioeconomic character, although it is certainly easier to observe the similarities between Western nations. It is for that reason that Annecy is not a place that has become romanticized in my mind, somewhere I will truly yearn to experience again the way I have these five weeks. I have a fondness for the Alps, the Savoy region, and indeed the way that life functions here, but I also have a strong sense that I will return and it will be "normal" all the same. If I end up in Geneva or Lausanne as I would like to, life will continue normally, and I will engage in things that will make me appreciate those cities, but in parting from the region I don't objectify it as something marvelous for the sake of being marvelous. The connections and contacts I have made in Annecy will remain and I will revisit them with pleasure, and that is what I feel a connection to.
It is also necessary to say that the atmosphere of being one in a group of international students, people who have come to do the same thing in the same place from every different corner of the world, is something that I appreciated profoundly in Annecy. Making contacts with people from places I do not know and becoming friends with them, learning about how our cultures effect minute differences in our day to day quirks and patterns of habit is something that I will never stop appreciating. The unique set of circumstances that allows this to happen, for all of us students to communicate in a patois of all of our different languages, going out on the town all together and enjoying ourselves...it is moving. I can't appreciate the homogeneity of my home city, and indeed many American cities. Diversity exists, and there are people from everywhere, but it is a patchwork and not the utter diffusion of people that inspires all of my sensibilities.
I may not miss the built form, but I will miss the people and the experiences that I had with them.
No comments
Post a Comment