All Nice photos were taken during my visit in 2007
I’ve read the reports. I even watched the clip. I forced myself to watch it. I’ve given it all the objective contemplation that I could muster. And despite all the political analysis and the demographic assessments of the region, I cannot accept what has happened in Nice.
La Promenade des Anglais
The Nice I know, the Nice I lived in, is where people go when the crazy, busy life of Paris is too exhausting and they need a break. It’s where you go to snowboard in the morning and sunbathe by the beach in the afternoon. It’s the place where the old guy selling flowers in the market can unexpectedly take you for a spin to La Vie en Rose and it’s sweet; not creepy. That is Nice – my Nice.
I thought I would launch into an intense analysis of data and facts, but I honestly can’t. Nice est mon coeur. It’s the first place I visited overseas. It taught me that there is a huge world out there; the world isn’t just a collection of Canadas that speak something other than English & French...the world is so much more than that – good and bad. It taught me the difference between countries in practical terms, as opposed to that obscure concept you learn in geography and history class: i.e. You know countries are different, but you don’t really know what that means until you’ve lived in another country.
Out of my time in Nice, my love for travel was born. My love for learning about how people live in other parts of the world – their customs and traditions; their philosophies and religions – grew from my life in this wonderful place. While I was a foodie before the term even existed, it was in Nice that I truly learned to embrace unfamiliar cuisine. I had coffee for the first time -- real coffee...not that shit they serve at Tim Hortons. I drank wine for the first time -- yes, at the age of 15. I ate raw beef for the first time -- Chinese people don't eat raw food. The entire experience planted all the seeds that grew to shape me into the person I am today.
Beef carpaccio in Old Town
The day I arrived in Nice, Claude, my exchange partner's mother, did everything she could to make me feel welcome. I was 15-years old. I had never gone anywhere without one of my parents. I had never left the country. She didn't know anything about Canada. She didn't know anything about Chinese people. But she was determined to allay any fears that I might have had. When we got home from the airport, it was close to dinner time. Do you know what she served me for dinner? She made her best attempt to give me a little piece of home. And bear in mind, this was pre-Internet. No Google. Dinner was chicken fried (brown) rice and dessert was vanilla ice cream with maple syrup. The fried rice was probably the worst fried rice I'd ever had in my whole life...BUT...it was also the most meaningful one. The one thing she said that night that has stayed with me throughout all the years was this: "I don't know anything about you, your background or your culture, but I would love for you to teach me. In exchange, before you go home, I will make you French."
Don't get excited. I'm not going to claim to be French. But she did teach me some very important things about being French. And in these areas, I am very French.
One day, I came home from school and I was very upset. I had experienced an epic tragedy. It obviously wasn't like yesterday's tragedy. It was one of those typical, earth-shattering, life-altering tragedies that 15-year old girls have regularly. I was sulking. I said I didn't want dinner. I said I just wanted to eat pastries in my room and be left alone. And that's when she said it:
If you want to take 5 minutes and do whatever it is that Canadian girls do when they're upset, that's fine. But after 5 minutes, you will come out here and help me cook dinner. Then you will set the table and we will sit down to our meal and our wine, like civilized people. It doesn't matter what is going on in the world. We never lose our culture. We never lose our pride. We are French.
After that, I never again in my life, let myself be dragged into the muck of wallowing sorrow for more than a few minutes (ok, there was that one time in University, but that's it.).
In the weeks that followed, I learned the importance of always sitting down to food, the value of fresh bread, and that the pain au chocolat from the vending machine at the lycée (high school) were better than any chocolate croissant you can get in Canada. Being a natural night owl, I don't do mornings. But every morning, Claude would go down to the boulangerie and can come back with a fresh baugette. The second the flat filled up with scent of yeasty goodness, I was out of bed and ready to start the day. I swear to you, when I came back to Canada, I refused to eat that Dempsters crap that my parents buy. Actually...to this day, I don't buy factory baked sliced bread.
des baugettes
I learned that gelato for breakfast is acceptable; spending the entire day on la terrasse with your favourite Balzac novel and ordering only a single Coca-Cola is a perfectly fine way to pass the time; there's nothing as satisfying as a hot piece of socca; one of the best pizzas in the world is sold out of the side of a truck near my exchange partner's best friend's flat; buying fresh flowers for your room is a totally acceptable expense - it's not frivolous at all; and when you greet people, you say, "Cuckoo" and do the double-cheek kiss. Even after I had been home for months, whenever I met up with or ran into any of the other Canadians from the exchange program, we would greet each other this way. To this day, whenever anyone tells me they're going to Paris, I say to them, "Paris is great, but Nice is better. You must go to Nice."
When the time came for me to come home, I had seen most of Provence. I had been to Monaco. We had gone grocery shopping in the San Remo markets (yes, Italy). In Grasse, I had learned to ride horses. In Eze, I bought a ridiculous amount of perfume because I wanted to bring home the smell of Provence to share with my friends and family. I had seen Nissa kick Monaco's ass in football. I had seen Monaco kick Nissa's ass in football. I almost fell asleep standing up, during my visit to the Marc Chagall museum (gawd that was boring). And everyone remembers the time I got motion sickness and threw up in the back of the bus as we were going up the Alps. In case you're wondering, yes, this is why I never sit at the back of a coach bus.
On my last day in Nice, the week before Easter, Claude said we had to make a special stop before going to the airport. We stopped in at her favourite chocolaterie. She bought me a massive, dark chocolate Easter bunny (because no self-respecting Frenchie eats milk chocolate), filled with the daintiest, most delicious chocolate bonbons ever. I wouldn't be able to check it in with my luggage (obviously). I had to carry it with me on the plane all the way to Amsterdam, spend our 45-minute stopover running clear across the entire, freaking terminal without breaking or dropping it, and then sit with it on the plane all the way to Toronto. As inconvenient as that was, I don't regret it. Because when Claude gave me this bunny, she said to me,
This was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. I had no idea that Canadians were so kind and friendly. I hope I have been able to show you what it means to be French. And I hope you will never forget us.
I lost touch with Claude, mostly because my exchange partner and I had a massive falling out. But I never forgot the lessons Claude taught me. When I say that Nice is my heart, I mean it. My time in Nice shaped the very person I have become.
There are no words to sufficiently describe how much this tragedy affected me. And I'm not writing this post to make this all about me. I wrote this because I truly love Nice, and I wanted there to be something out there about Nice that was uplifting. When I finally watched the clip of the crash, it brought me to tears -- angry tears because some asshole committed such a heinous act in a place where I had so many wonderful memories. I spent a few minutes swearing and crying. After 5 minutes of doing whatever it is that Canadian girls do, I went into the kitchen and cooked myself a proper dinner, poured myself a glass of French wine, and ate it like a civilized person. Because it doesn't matter what is going on in the world. We never lose our culture. We never lose our pride. We are French. Viva la France.
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