A
Sense of Home
Montpellier,
France
‘The
nature of ‘home’ [...] from which we are constantly displaced, but which we
constantly try to re-place.’
Travellers’ Tales: Narratives of
Home and Displacement 1998
When
travelling alone, I often find myself viewing the experience as a lesser form
of displacement. Even though I have willingly
chosen to exile myself, and even though I know I’ll return to my true home
eventually - this self-banishment requires the constant search not only for a
bed for the night, but for those incredible places which make such a journey
worthwhile. Places that can make you feel
at home when thousands of miles away, a place like Montpellier. One may ask why I might have such an outlook,
when I specifically leave home to seek satisfaction elsewhere. I believe that internally, a part of every
traveller wants not to find somewhere like
home, but to find places where they feel
at home. The excitement of
somewhere new makes our yearning for discovery, learning and understanding of
that place all the greater. We have a need to get to know our surroundings, a
want to feel welcomed. A release in
escaping to somewhere new can yield warmth in managing to feel a refreshingly
new sense of place and belonging in such a short period of time. We mentally interpret each new place onto a
scale of a sense of home by physically going there, so let me take you...
Having
booked flights at opposite ends of Europe in the summer of 2008 with three
weeks in-between, I had thoroughly planned my route. So when the only available reservation on a
train from Paris to Marseille was a mere three days later than my schedule allowed,
panic began to set in. Feeling naive and
damning myself for not booking a seat earlier, I was on the verge of tears and
after contemplating every possible destination and route, a stroke of luck
settled my nerves - there was one last space on the train to Montpellier that same
day. Thankful that I could escape the
hectic fumes of Paris, and head to a more relaxed town in the South of France, I
took it.
I
had originally planned to go from Marseille, to Nimes, to Barcelona. So after I had unsuccessfully queried about a
reservation to go to Nimes instead of Marseille, I was puzzled when discovering
that the Montpellier train stopped there anyway. Timidly, I teetered onto the impressively
imposing double-decker train, recollecting that forgotten feeling of being an
anxious young school girl, getting a bus alone for the first time. I had ‘The
Fear’ – a phenomenon common amongst travellers, which can only be described as
sheer nervous terror when not having booked a place to spend the night. I caved in and frantically called my
mother. Once she had found out that the only
hostel in Nimes looked ‘a bit dodgy’, and once a couple of men sitting opposite
had advised that there was not much to do there, it felt like a safe decision to
remain on the train until Montpellier. We
cruised smoothly past the distant snow-capped Alps and the green fields of
France, and the journey was actually a gorgeous and comfortable one despite
‘The Fear’. When the train shuffled past
Nimes it looked barren and dull. The men
chatted enthusiastically and delighted in informing me of Montpellier, describing
it as vibrant, with great bars and nightlife and full of young people (‘like me’)
due to the town’s 70,000 University students.
Vibrant Montpellier at night
I
arrived in Montpellier three and a half hours after I left Paris, a sudden wave
of balmy late-afternoon heat embraced me and delivered that Mediterranean air
of France I was lusting for after the smoggy hustle and bustle of the capital. It began to get dark and I was struggling to
locate a hostel, worrying that by this time there must be no vacancies left. Appearing
misplaced and fruitless, a kind French boy named Eric offered to show me the
way. My desperation dramatically
subsided and ‘The Fear’ was left to another day, as another stroke of luck meant
that I boasted a bed in Hostel Montpellier for the next two nights. Relieved and overjoyed, I accepted Eric’s
offer of showing me around. I felt excitement fizzing and smugness brewing
in my stomach when I saw that Montpellier is in fact beautiful. The early evening so vivacious, so alive and
luminous with countless courtyards plumped with outdoor seating for limitless
bars and restaurants. Dreamy live music
played in the cobbled thoroughfares, complementing the incandescent lighting of
the cafes, selling home-made ice cream and maple-syrup waffles long into the
night. Eric and I shared deliciously
fruity cocktails, and through a massive language barrier, our opinions of his
applications for University both here and in Paris. Paris is of course abundant in charming
qualities, such as the cosy Montmartre area, and the dancing electric blue
lights of the Eiffel Tower at night, but it also has the chock-a-block,
impersonal vigour of a big city. When sat here, in a warmer climate and surrounded
by such friendly energy and sparkle, I saw no competition.
Montpellier's Opera House
By
night and day the fine 19th
century Opera House and the trickling fountain are the Place de la Comédie (the
main square)’s focal points. With map in hand I had to drag myself away from
the fashionably quirky boutiques and craft shops that linked and decorated
every street. Outside the centre, Montpellier
expands beyond expectation. Beyond the
Arc de Triomphe and heading for the Roman ruins at the north-western end of
town, I found myself meandering on a gravelly path through a quiet and leafy
arcade, at the other side of which lives the famous Les Arceaux Aqueduct,
astonishing in size and degree of preservation. Exploring further still I happened
upon Montpellier’s Botanical Garden, free of entry yet completely empty and unlimited
in winding paths, it felt like I had stumbled upon Montpellier’s very own
secret garden. A quick flash of rain
sprang the scent of every exquisite flower, shrubbery and grass blade haphazardly
into the air, and I was drawn towards an elegant lily pond where I sat to
procrastinate with the terrapins that clipped the pond weeds, and the carp that
bubbled at the water’s surface. I mused
over the amount of water in Montpellier.
Every square has a fountain perfect for toe-dipping on a hot day; every
small park has a pond at its centre. Perhaps this is to compensate or distract
from the fact that the coast is roughly another half an hour’s train journey away. In my opinion, it works. The splashing water seems to cool the hot
mid-summer air, and when sat underneath a willow tree in one of those parks,
watching four ducklings testing the water and then flop in after their mother,
I felt completely content. Music can
stimulate a certain memory or feeling; it can take you back to a time or
place. I am reminded of this moment when
listening to ‘Crooked Teeth’ by Death Cab For Cutie;
‘It was one hundred degrees as we sat beneath the
willow tree.’
Of
course, in this situation, there was no ‘we’.
The loneliness of travelling alone gives you time to yourself. It gives you time to get to know a place, at
your own pace, and at this point in time: I felt truly at one with Montpellier.
Les Arceaux Aqueduct
The
fact that I was spending a chunky part of my travels in France when unable to
speak a word of French meant that there would always be some form of isolation.
Yet being a lone traveller I encouraged myself to talk to others, whether they could
understand me or not. So when on my
second evening I met three other lone English student travellers back at the
hostel, I was delighted and in the thrill of full communication we agreed to go
out together and instantly bonded. There
was Hazel – the intelligent writer, Fran – the bubbly curly-haired good-time
girl, Matt – your typical masculine man, and me – the excitable blonde. We went into a bar which showcased France’s
number one beat-boxer, in our glee at this hilarious turn of events we drank
the cheap punch that was on offer, and nicknamed ourselves ‘The Pelly Crew’. On returning to an outdoor courtyard we drank
lager from an enormous tubular decanter, uncontrollably slipping into ‘Brits on
tour’ mode, yet as far as we noticed no one seemed to mind as the place was
full of young, bouncy people like ourselves.
A fair few drinks later and back at the hostel we decided that the night
was still young. On the roof terrace we smoked,
talked rubbish and laughed until the rain meant that we had to go inside to cause
some mischief instead. We sneaked around,
knocked on doors and ran away, got told off and huddled under duvets in the
corridors, all because we didn’t want to go to sleep or want the day to end. The next morning we met for breakfast,
exchanged details then went our separate ways.
It felt like we had known each other for so much longer.
Once
I personally felt settled, these people were the icing on my Montpellier cake. I felt so satisfied at how everything had
turned out, at how what initially seemed like horrendous bad-luck had developed
into good, securing a reservation, avoiding Nimes, availability at the hostel,
the coincidence that I fell in love with Montpellier, and the friends I
made. It wasn’t only the English
speakers and the familiarity with home-culture that completed the feeling of
being at home, it was the people themselves; it was friendship, which is
essential wherever you are in the world.
When you feel at home, you feel like yourself. So perhaps, finding a sense of home somewhere
has just as much to do with the people you meet as well as the place
itself. Get them both right, and you’re
onto a winner.
A
person might seek to experience somewhere new, a place they feel at home. This is often teamed with their need to
escape from the very place they come from.
To feel comfortable elsewhere but to get away from the mundane things you
see and do everyday is surely the perfect escape, whether it is in another
country, or your own...
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