Motif : Water

written 22 January

Strasbourg, in my mind, is made up of canals, bridges, and churches. The water is dark and moves in a slow stream with occasional rushes of wavelets in scallop-edged patterns. On the water are swans! Last night, walking across the Pont St-Guillaume, Tara and I turned to the northern side and saw (it seemed to us) all of the swans in the city, who’d just decided to gather on this one spot in the yellow lamplight and cavort in the gentle current. Tara leaned over and said, “I hear they’re flesh-eating swans. Strasbourg’s piranhas.” We have yet to risk this rumor by walking on the low path alongside the canals [cf scene in Charade], but we did see a woman feeding them bread.

While this peaceful water-lined tableau sets the outdoor scene, Tara and I have had some very interesting tribulations with the water inside of our dorm, Cité Universitaire Gallia. Our room is very clean, with high ceilings and a big window, and 2 each of beds, desks, dressers and sinks; it’s in a very large building with (as Alex says) “an imposing neo-Gothic façade”, about 6 floors but twice as many flights of stairs, and each floor is a maze of wide tiled hallways lined with the tall blue double doors which open into the single dorm rooms. Unfortunately, it seems that only one shower in the entire building works! On each floor there are (supposedly) three stalls contained in one large room--on our floor, the entire group is locked for “renovation” (though no work is being done); on the floor below us, the room has a ginormous hole in the ground covered with a pink towel and a sign is posted which says essentially “Watch Out! There is a dangerous hole here!”; on the lowest floor they are all nailed shut; and on the floor above us, one of the stalls is missing a showerhead, one is nailed shut, and one (thanks be to God!) is functioning, complete with hot water IF you turn the handle all the way to the cold side. The first night we were there, the hot water didn’t come on at all so we, the jet-lagged and cobble-stone weary, washed our hair in the blessedly wide sinks.

One of the first unexpected differences I discovered here is the relationship to drinking water—that is, the French do not drink very much water at all! Although here you don’t risk elevation sickness, it is still a little startling to me to ask for a glass of water and receive a cup approximate 3 ½ inches high, half-full of water. I feel like a whale (or a shark, or a mermaid) when I drink it in one gulp and ask for more. Considering how much coffee and wine and beer is drunk in an average day, I’m surprised more people are not sick with dehydration! It remains a mystery. Maybe in a few weeks I will discover some secret “they” are hiding from us; perhaps they have gills which drink the humidity out of the air. In the meantime I’ll continue gulping my carafes d’eau and sipping from the sink.