I’ve been quiet on here recently, mostly because I have been blundering through a fog of essays and deadlines. Parisian student life is not as glam as it sounds when you have to spend your weekend preparing for a presentation on that ever-cheerful topic, immigration.
But luckily the fog has thinned out and I celebrated by taking to a quick weekend trip to Strasbourg, aka my Maman’s hometown. It had been five years since I’d last been – and five years since I’d seen my aunt and uncle. How things have changed since then. (For one thing, I could now hold a conversation with them.)
As well as seeing my long-lost family (and my not-so-long-lost older sister) my trip to Strasbourg had an ulterior motive: to see the Christmas markets. As the city is so close to Germany, and shares so much of its culture and history, I knew they were bound to be good. But first, a stop to a gingerbread factory in a picturesque Alsatian village that smelled like the Christmas I know and love thanks to the Alsatian biscuits Maman makes every yuletide.
Strasbourg city centre looked beautiful, of course.
Then we went to a restaurant where I foolishly challenged an enormous serving of poulet au Riesling to a duel and lost.
Of course, the food and the vin chaud and the pretty shiny things seemed inconsequential compared to the importance of being there with family. I was welcomed with big smiles and open arms. And then I realised I was tracing my own steps backward in my quest for fluency: back past the years of studying spelling and grammar, back past the vocab tests, back to Bonjour and Ca va? Back to where it all began. Sitting there talking to my mother’s sister, I thought – this is the point of language. Not to be able to write long boring exposés about immigration, or about King Chilperic, but to be able to talk and joke and tell stories with your loved ones. It’s as simple as that.