Grenoble is my personal turning point into adulthood. And by adulthood I don’t mean that I suddenly started being mature, reasonable or responsible, but I certainly became more future-oriented. Isn’t that what being an adult is supposed to be?
Grenoble got me seriously suspicious that outside motherland Patra, there was actually a world. And to say the entire truth even a better one. I even felt constraint to find that the famous Greek saying “At the time we were constructing the Parthenon people in Europe used to climb up the trees to feed themselves with rotten fruits” had something of a slight exaggeration.
Grenoble is not a place to live if you take sea for granted. It is a place that made me feel claustrophobic. Being the capital of French Alpes, it is surrounded by mountains which in their turn are surrounded by other mountains and you go on and on and on …. It makes you want to search for an emergency exit. Although you are sure not to need any type of exit in a place like that.
The mind of the 18 year old scared, lame puppy that myself was at the time, formed the impression that Grenoble, was actually the city of the crippled. So embarrassing to admit such a thing now. But seeing so many wheelchairs on the streets, in the university halls, literally everywhere was not a sight to which I was used, having grown up on the holy grounds of Greece. We back at home are healthy. We all walk standing. What are they doing to you people??? It took me a while, but I finally got it…
And I was yet to discover the pleasure of having a pick-nick with a friend in the near-by park, the killer wind blowing on the bridges over the Isère River, the thrill of meeting people from around the world (my Japanese fellow students had a really hard time to come to believe that we have mountains, and winter with proper rain and snow! My American fellow students were pretty convinced that no such place like Greece existed anywhere in the world and that I was a fraud having invented a country as well as a language), the excitement of living with nuns (what kind of young girl is excited living eight entire months with nuns??), the art of stealing apples in the super markets, the art of stealing whatever in the bookstores, the art of stealing spoons in the cafés, the romance of eyes playing in the launderette while pretending to be reading a book, the ingenuity of living without a fridge, the bitter-sweet feeling of being lonely, and alone.
Grenoble is the place where any parent would like their children to grow.
Though, and here I am asking for your attention :
Grenoble, as happens with the entire country of France, is inhabited by French people. Rude French people. Who throw you to the lions for not pronouncing Merci well. If only I could ever find the courage to scream at one of them “I have read Proust in the original you bastard!”. French people who speak French all the time. What can one expect from a nation that has invented “four times twenty and sixteen” for 96? Snobs, who in their justification, however, have plenty to be snob of.
