Summer in France

I will admit it: I am a Francophile. I took my first trip to France during my junior year in high school. I traveled throughout northern France and spent a week with a family in the coastal city of Nantes. I wasn’t planning on going again my senior year, but my French teacher talked me into it! Since then, I have been back to France about 10 times.

On those high school trips, I didn’t have much money, so I had to watch every penny. I ate in a lot of sidewalk cafes or bought food from street vendors. We stayed in budget hotels and traveled as a group on a tour bus. On later trips, my wife and I stayed in nicer hotels and would usually set aside the money to splurge on at least one nice meal. We even had dinner in a couple of amazing two-star Michelin restaurants. Last summer, using the status and points I had earned as a frequent business traveler, we stayed in nicer hotels, including a suite in a modern hotel in the heart of Paris, a block from the Louvre.

But this trip is different. First, it is the most time we will have spent in France; we are about halfway through a five-week stay. Second, we are not spending all our time in hotels. During the week, I am working remotely as we housesit for an in-law who works with refugees in northern France. We will still travel and stay in hotels on the weekends, and we plan on biking in Belgium, the Netherlands, and along the Loire Valley in France.

So, unlike our previous trips together, my wife and I are living here — at least sort of! We are in Calais, a town of about 75,000 people on the English Channel. This trip has really helped my French because we are not just staying in places that cater to tourists. We are in a French row house in a residential neighborhood. We must take the garbage, recycling, and compostables to the curb on a schedule. We have to shop for food and cook. We have to care for the cat.

Back in Cedar Rapids, we live in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood. Our house, where we raised eight kids, has a yard, air conditioning, and a two-car garage. The house in Calais, though spacious by French standards, is different. It has three levels and a basement, with a single bathroom on the main floor and a sink and shower in the master bedroom. The kitchen is roomy, but the stove is small, and the refrigerator is about half the size of ours at home. There’s a dishwasher and a washing machine, and, unusually for a French home, a clothes dryer.

Like most French homes (and the 2024 Olympic Village in Paris), there is no air conditioning. However, temperatures are mild in this part of France. It reached 95 degrees a few days ago, which is very unusual, even for August! By evening, the temperature had dropped to about 70 degrees, so we opened the windows and turned on the fans, and the house stayed pretty cool.

Adapting to this lifestyle has been a learning experience. One of the benefits of this trip is that we’re forced to interact more with the local community. My French is good enough that I can speak it without having to use a translation app. Once in a while, I will have to look up a word, in a recent trip to Carrefour (like a Target with a grocery store) I had to look up the words for ‘needle’ and ‘sunburn.’

I talk to people in the post office, at the bakery down the street, in the store, at the train station, in restaurants, and at the gas station. I have also had the opportunity to have long conversations with Uber and taxi drivers, and my French is getting better.

Because gas is expensive and parking is difficult, people use a lot of alternative transportation here in Calais. I have been riding my bicycle a lot the city has excellent bike infrastructure with segregated paths and marked bike lanes. Drivers are very bike-friendly even on busy city streets. You also will see every possible form of individual wheeled transportation, from e-bikes to scooters to e-unicycles.

The other thing you will notice here is that people walk. Now, I know this is true in larger American cities as well, but I really don’t walk in Cedar Rapids. I live on the edge of town and any services I might need like a grocery store is at least a mile away. But here, I walk to the post office, I walk to the bakery, and I walk to a nearby restaurant. Last week after taking the train to London, we chose to walk just over a mile back to the house with luggage instead of taking a taxi.

It’s hard to quantify how much I’m learning on this trip. Besides improving my French, I’m gaining a deeper appreciation for the luxuries I enjoy in Cedar Rapids — and learning not to take them for granted.

David Chung is a Gazette editorial fellow. david.chung@thegazette.com