At Trump’s inauguration, French visitors become friends

For better or worse, I had made it to Washington, D.C., and I was going to that inauguration.

I flew out of Chicago on Sunday, where I first stopped by to visit a friend. We mulled over eating lunch at Gino’s North in the Edgewater neighborhood, where we had been dining on (really good) pizza the last time I had visited — the evening someone came into the restaurant to tell everyone at the bar that then-former President Donald Trump had just been shot.

Obviously a lot has changed since then.

I was traveling solo and hadn’t bothered to request tickets to be seated on the Capitol grounds or make an effort to link up with other Iowans once I got there. Frankly, I didn’t go to D.C. to hang around Iowans — we have enough of them here.

Instead, I had decided, I would rather take in the scene on the National Mall and tell Iowans in my next column about the interesting people who were there.

I ended up pretty pleased with my decision. On Jan. 17, the inaugural committee announced the ceremony would be moved indoors due to the impending cold weather.

Of course, I was a little bit less thrilled when I landed in D.C. on Sunday evening and learned that the public viewing on the National Mall had also been canceled.

I was going to have to settle for finding a watch party somewhere and hope that wherever I landed would still have enough of the Interesting People I’d been hoping to chat with for the next great American newspaper column.

Look, I knew it was going to be cold out — the forecast high was 25°. But I’m a proud Midwesterner. In addition to my trusty hat and two pairs of gloves, I had brought my snowpants along in case I needed to put them on over my regular pants, which I was wearing over — get this — more pants.

Midwesterners know that it’s all about the layers. (And that it really wouldn’t be so bad without the wind.)

So, off I went to the Metro station in Capitol Heights, MD on the morning of Jan. 20, a short walk from my Airbnb. As I made my way through the admission gate, I encountered a family of four — two couples; one of whom looked to be around my age and the other who looked to be one of their parents.

We got to chatting, because that’s what excited out-of-towners do, and I learned that the older couple lives in Paris and had flown in to join their son and daughter-in-law for the inauguration.

I had hit the Interesting People jackpot before I’d even boarded the train. Better yet, this friendly family was willing to talk with this goofy writer at a very important newspaper in a state they’d probably never heard of called Iowa.

It turns out they had heard at least something about Iowa apparently — our capital, at least.

“You know what Des Moines means in French?” asked Gerard, the patriarch of the family, with a grin. “It means, ‘the monks.’”

(Did you know that? I did not. And I’ve lived here my entire life.)

“We also laugh at the name ‘Grand Tetons,’” Gerard added.

“It means, ‘Big Nipples!’” said his wife, Helene.

I looked that one up later. Not that I didn’t trust my new French-speaking friends to understand their own language, but I’m a journalist, so I have a duty to verify claims. And you’d better believe that as soon as Helene said “big nipples,” my first thought was, “Oh, that’s going right into my Sunday column.”

We boarded the bus and continued to chat. I learned that the day’s event was not Helene’s first American presidential inauguration — she had attended the inauguration of President Richard Nixon with her host family while she was an exchange student in Silver Spring, MD.

Gerard had also been an exchange student in the United States. He and Helene met after they had both returned home to France, where they served as stewards for their foreign exchange organization.

Their son, Gaspard, is a somewhat recently naturalized American citizen, having married his wife Racquel, an American of Filipino ethnicity. Gaspard and Racquel live in New York City, where he works for a global consulting firm and she is a holistic healing practitioner and musician.

No, they didn’t seem to fit the version of what some on the left perceive a Trump supporter to be. Then again, a lot of Trump voters don’t. That’s a big part of how he won.

“Will you join us?” asked Gerard as the train arrived at L’Enfant Plaza south of the National Mall.

Heck, yes. This family had me at “Grand Tetons.”

So the family of four became a group of five. Our quest for that day was simple: navigate the crowded streets to find a bar or restaurant with a watch party or even just enough seats near a TV so we could watch the inauguration in place of the fun we’d planned to have on the National Mall.

Finding one — and getting to it — was easier said than done, however.

As luck would have it, I soon received an invite to a nearby party for Iowans at a place called Yard House, organized by Congresswoman Ashley Hinson for Iowans who found themselves needing a place to watch the festivities.

I decided I was willing to drop my objection to spending my D.C. experience with a bunch of my own people — provided, of course, I could bring along my four new friends. By then we’d spent over an hour together navigating the crowded scene near the barricaded National Mall, and we were going to finish whatever we’d started together.

As absurd as it seems as I write this column, that’s how we spent much of our day: walking countless blocks around barricades and waiting in lines to cross restricted streets on our Odyssean journey to Yard House.

What made it so enjoyable was getting to know my new French friends as we chatted and chuckled along the way about the experiences that affected our outlook on life and politics.

Helene talked about the impact of Europe’s own migration crisis. Many asylum-seeking refugees in Europe have come from countries with harsh moral and social rules and are unabashedly critical of the comparatively permissive lifestyle of women in gender-equal Europe.

“Many of [the asylum-seekers] are not nice to French women,” she told me with a glimmer of sorrow in her eyes.

Having traveled all over the world with Gaspard to some pretty bizarre places, Racquel talked of how they observed ugly realities complicating the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys in war.

“We talked to a lot of locals when we went to Afghanistan,” she said. Many had suggested that life was more peaceful under the Taliban, who — notwithstanding the brutality of their regime — were more disciplined and organized than the NATO-backed Afghan government mired in corruption and chaos.

A resident of deep blue New York, Racquel asked about the politics of deep red Iowa, and despite my intent to tell Iowans about Interesting People from elsewhere, I found myself telling my interesting new friend a bit about Iowa.

It became inevitable that we wouldn’t reach Yard House before the big noon hour, so our group of five ducked into a coffee shop for a quick respite.

I had gone to Washington to watch the inauguration in person. I ended up watching Trump take his oath on the laptop of a member of the media nearby. I spent most of his inaugural speech camped outside at a café table across from Gaspard and Racquel where we strained to watch it on Gaspard’s iPhone.

I can only chuckle at the memory of it — a memory which I already hold dear.

After at least 90 minutes of clomping through big barricades and bigger crowds, we made it to Yard House for the final hour of the watch party, where we watched … well, something inauguration-related. I don’t even remember what was playing on those big Yard House TVs.

I just remember that the five of us kicked back with a drink and a couple plates of lukewarm party food while enjoying the warmth, the company and the atmosphere of celebration with a big room full of people as enthusiastic as we were.

After the party was over, we hopped back onto the Metro and rode back to the station in Maryland, our wild day at its end.

This French family of four had driven from Gaspard and Racquel’s place in New York City the night before and stayed overnight in Annapolis. They had just happened to decide to park at the same Metro station that was next to my Airbnb.

It was a hell of a coincidence. But sometimes those make for the best experiences.

I thought of a line from the end of the 1999 Revolutionary War movie “The Patriot,” when Mel Gibson’s character, a colonel in the Continental Army, stands at Yorktown with a French volunteer, where they watch French ships close in on the retreating British fleet.

“Vive le France,” says the American colonel to the Frenchman.

“Vive la liberté,” the Frenchman replies.

After that memorable Inauguration Day, I find myself saying, “vive les gens intéressants”: Long live interesting people.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com