C’EST POSSIBLE A RETOURNER CHEZ NOUS ENCORE

Loni and I were last in France in (ouch) 1966, as students for six months at Stanford’s overseas campus in the city of Tours, down in the Loire Valley about 90 miles southwest of Paris.  One of the “must-do’s” for this trip was to go there and engage in some heavy nostalgia.  Thomas Wolfe’s cautions notwithstanding, it was a real time-warp experience. 

We got up at 0-dark thirty to get to the Gare Montparnasse Bienvenue to catch our bullet train (TGV) to Tours.  Friend Rick, who actually learned French during his one year abroad as a student, correctly pointed out that my previous translation of “Tres Grande Vitesse” was wrong, that it stands for Train a Grande Vitesse.  Desole.  We hadn’t purchased tickets in advance, so we had more than a few anxious moments in line waiting to get them.  All they had left for the trip down were unreserved flip-down seats in the space between the coaches.  Fooey.  My first TGV trip and I’m in purgatory.  The “real” seating area was pretty posh.  Loni’s on another flip-down opposite me.

About an hour into the trip, a bunch of people got off at an intermediate stop, so we got to move back to the good seats for the last 15 minutes or so.  I think our strongest impression of the TGV is not a sense of speed (although things were certainly flying by) but rather of smoothness.  Seamless rails, and a sense of floating along.  But, when we went into the several tunnels along the route, the air pressure buildup was immediate and you had to keep “popping” your ears to relieve them.  Just like descending in a plane.  Loni was having a bit of trouble keeping hers clear, which is usually my problem.  We arrived at Tours, and upon exiting we turned around and immediately recognized the façade of the station, unchanged in all these years.

The tourist bureau was in a building just a block or so away, so we stopped there and got a foldout map and a tourism brochure which had suggested walks and sights.  Wow, nothing like that back in the day.  I think an organized approach to tourism as an industry got started well after we left but is now in full swing in every town that has anything to show off.  Tours is actually historically significant, and is considered the birthplace of the French language.  Back when we were here, it was said that Stanford located the campus in Tours because the inhabitants spoke the “purest” French.  Whatever that might have been was certainly lost on me.

We started out with the major local cathedral, St. Gatien’s.  The present structure succeeds three former churches, and sits on the remains of an old Gallo-Roman settlement called Caesarodunum (“Caesar’s Hill) which was founded in the first century AD.  In the 5th century, a basilica was built on the site of the tomb of St. Martin.  Two of its towers still exist.  The present cathedral was started in 1170 or so, and crawled through 300+ years of construction.  I never could get a shot of the façade, as a truck was always parked in front of it, absolutely ruining the view.  But the interior was pretty nice.

It has some very nice stained glass, but we found most interesting a wall painting that had been covered up for many centuries by another wall.  When they were removing the latter for some renovation, they discovered the painting beneath.  Neither of us remembers being in here back in 1966.  Our loss, which we were glad to make up.

Another few blocks and we were at St. Etienne.  I’m amused that France today is so secular, but has churches and cathedrals everywhere you look.

The neatest thing here was the way the light through the stained glass windows made pastel hues on the columns.

We started wandering over towards where we remembered the “campus” to be.  Stanford abandoned it sometime in the 70’s or early 80’s, in favor of a dispersed living arrangement in Paris.  But then, in loco parentis was in full bloom, and the university kept everyone under its wing in one place.  It was essentially a dormitory for 90 students that had been converted from a hotel.  Must have been a very cheap hotel, as the rooms we got were rather spartan.  Bunk beds, a sink, and a bidet was about the size of it.  You can guess what the men used the bidet for.  The building was four floors high, with men in one wing, women the other, but ne’er the twain shall meet was seldom the order of the day.  Communal shower was down the hall, but a few choice rooms had them en suite.  Those fortunates had to share them with the less lucky.  Offices, mail room (where we also got our graded work returned), some classrooms, and staff, led by the redoubtable Mme de Renusson, were on the first floor.  The dining room and larger lecture rooms were in the basement.  I remember it being near the start of the main drag, facing the river, with a big bridge just to the right, and a library bearing a U.S. president’s name down the street.  Well, for once my memory held up, which it seldom does these days.  We found it, and with remarkably little change.  Today it’s a dormitory/office building for the new (to us) University Francois Rabelais.

The main thing missing that sticks out in our memories are the broad outside stairs (they led to some public terrace, also gone) that used to sit just to the left of where we are standing in the picture above. That’s where we had our group photo taken. I’ll have to scan that when we get home and add it to this entry.  The river Loire still chugs along across the street, the flag-lined bridge is the Pont Wilson, and I now remember the library was named after old Woodrow as well.  At least back then.  Now it’s just called the Bibliotheque Municipale.  Hmpf.

 

Here’s a shot of the entire building from across the street, with my back to the river; our end (to the left) was only a small part of the overall complex.  The area where we are standing is all new, as far as the walks, plantings, etc.  It was mostly scrub grass and dirt back then.

Both of our rooms were on the low-rent side, around back;  no river view.  Actually, no view of anything except other buildings.  We racked our memories trying to remember which rooms we each occupied, and we think the near one is mine, and Loni’s was a floor higher way down the end.

Stanford still operated on a curfew system back then, and its foreign campuses were no exception.  Lockdown was strictly enforced by a hirsute character we called “The Crusher,” his name befitting what we expected would be our fate if he caught us.  When guys (and occasionally the gals) got back late, they would try to stand on things and get into the lower rooms, assisted by the hopefully friendly occupants.  Frankly, neither Loni or I had enough money to be spending it on nights out, so we never risked the Crusher’s grasp.  This was an absolute kick to return here after 4 1/2 decades and breathe a few wisps of our youth.

We decided to walk around and see what we could locate that was familiar.  Not much!  Everything has been so spruced up that, other than the churches and major buildings, we didn’t recognize a whole lot.  There’s an entire “medieval section” of Tours that has houses dating from the 1300’s!  Made of wood!  Neither of us has any memory of this area at all, probably because it was then a rundown slum.  But back in the 70’s, according to the city guide, instead of tearing it all down the city rehabbed it all, and now it’s a thriving, beautiful area loaded with shops and restaurants, tiny streets, and lively squares.  Sure wish all that had been here in 1966.  The town was pretty dead then.

The area ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.  Old town even had my favorite car, the Citroen 2CV!

I’d love to have one of those babies to tow behind our RV.  Other than a small fleet of them in service as guided tour vehicles in Paris, I’ve only seen three or four of them in private use here.

Loni remembers attending services at a smaller church just around the corner from our building.  I only remember its darn bells.  It’s called St. Julien, but it seems to have fallen on hard times.  It’s smaller than St. Gatien, but about the same age.  It doesn’t look like it holds regular services anymore, although we could peer inside through the bars.  In the back there are areas where evidence of an older structure can be seen. 

St. Julien faces the main drag, the Rue Nationale, which runs from our Pont Wilson down to the Hotel de Ville, which is not a hotel, but the city hall.  This was about the only street we frequented, but it has completely changed.  We didn’t recognize a thing.  Even Credit Lyonnais, the big bank we had our precious few francs in, has disappeared.  The street looks like this today, with high-end shops predominating.

All this walking around made us hungry, so we headed back to the old section of town where I had seen, what else, but a patisserie tea room.  It was starting to sprinkle, so it was a good time to get inside and relax a while.  Jeez, I gotta ditch that old-man sweater vest.

Fortified, we pushed on, found and made use of the locale public pissoire (more on those in another installment), and went over to view the Charlemagne Tower, built over the tomb of Luitgarde, Charlemagne’s wife, who died in 800 AD!  Hey, we’re talking ancient history here.

Getting late, so time to start meandering back towards the station, down the Rue Nationale to the very pretty Hotel de Ville, facing the town’s central square with its fountains. 

Well, Wolfey, sometimes you can go home again, if home’s address is Memory Lane.