Space
Strasbourg has been chilly this spring. Lows last week were near freezing, the heat in our building has been turned off, the sun has been hard to find. Brr! But finally this week a few days have warmed up enough that people came out to the squares and parks.
We have a square. It's only been here a year - it used to be a road cutting over from our home to a main street, busy with cars. The city, in their French wonderful love of space and beauty, closed the road and turned the space in front of St Maurice church into a square. It's not very green, but it has squares of beautifully-landscaped bushes and flowers, and it is a perfect place for the young families, the older residents, for anyone to bring a book, a ball, scooters, and sit or play in the sun on a weekend afternoon.
(Since stores close at noon-ish on Saturdays through Monday morning, the weekend afternoons really are relaxed.)
I go out as often as I can, usually with a book, to warm up from our chilly apartment.
It feels different from American public spaces. The parks do as well. I've been trying to figure out why...I think it's the quiet. There are no basketball hoops or other places to play loud, active sports. The parks have ping-pong tables and playgrounds for younger children, plenty of places to stroll, even an occasional fitness circuit. But nothing that would suggest noisy activities.
When people here want to be active, they join a club. For two hours on a Tuesday night, for example, they can go play basketball with a team of other club joiners, and then they are finished with their activity and go home to their quiet apartment buildings in their quiet neighborhoods with their quiet squares.
An American friend (with 7 children!) lived here for two years recently. Her children (5 of them boys) played American-volume basketball games in the back courtyard of their apartment building. We have a courtyard as well. In our three years here, I've only seen two other residents using it for anything besides storing bicycles. One young man fixes and cleans his bike in it; one grandson of a resident sometimes plays ball by himself there. Our American friend said that probably their neighbors were happy to see them leave, because of the (comparatively) incredible noise they made! Between American-style basketball in the courtyard and middle-of-the-night screaming cheering for their American football teams, I'm sure she's right.
We just use space differently.
One of my favorite classes way back when in Chicago, was Cultural Anthropology. And the best project was the ethnography - a "participant observation" research project. Each of us students chose a particular place that we would inhabit once each week, at the same time each week, and each time we sat and observed, we would ask and try to answer specific questions.
Place Arnold, the square in front of St Maurice, is my ethnographic spot.
I like that in the end we participate. We don't just sit and record; we buy a drink in the restaurant, or chat with the young mothers in the square, we ask the book seller questions to see if we're getting it right. We are part of it, while trying to understand it.
We have a square. It's only been here a year - it used to be a road cutting over from our home to a main street, busy with cars. The city, in their French wonderful love of space and beauty, closed the road and turned the space in front of St Maurice church into a square. It's not very green, but it has squares of beautifully-landscaped bushes and flowers, and it is a perfect place for the young families, the older residents, for anyone to bring a book, a ball, scooters, and sit or play in the sun on a weekend afternoon.(Since stores close at noon-ish on Saturdays through Monday morning, the weekend afternoons really are relaxed.)
I go out as often as I can, usually with a book, to warm up from our chilly apartment.
It feels different from American public spaces. The parks do as well. I've been trying to figure out why...I think it's the quiet. There are no basketball hoops or other places to play loud, active sports. The parks have ping-pong tables and playgrounds for younger children, plenty of places to stroll, even an occasional fitness circuit. But nothing that would suggest noisy activities.
When people here want to be active, they join a club. For two hours on a Tuesday night, for example, they can go play basketball with a team of other club joiners, and then they are finished with their activity and go home to their quiet apartment buildings in their quiet neighborhoods with their quiet squares.An American friend (with 7 children!) lived here for two years recently. Her children (5 of them boys) played American-volume basketball games in the back courtyard of their apartment building. We have a courtyard as well. In our three years here, I've only seen two other residents using it for anything besides storing bicycles. One young man fixes and cleans his bike in it; one grandson of a resident sometimes plays ball by himself there. Our American friend said that probably their neighbors were happy to see them leave, because of the (comparatively) incredible noise they made! Between American-style basketball in the courtyard and middle-of-the-night screaming cheering for their American football teams, I'm sure she's right.
One of my favorite classes way back when in Chicago, was Cultural Anthropology. And the best project was the ethnography - a "participant observation" research project. Each of us students chose a particular place that we would inhabit once each week, at the same time each week, and each time we sat and observed, we would ask and try to answer specific questions.
Place Arnold, the square in front of St Maurice, is my ethnographic spot.
I like that in the end we participate. We don't just sit and record; we buy a drink in the restaurant, or chat with the young mothers in the square, we ask the book seller questions to see if we're getting it right. We are part of it, while trying to understand it.
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