My link to Brest started when I was 11 years old. We had been studying the “war poets” in our English class and I was interested that the poems were all about the First World War and where were the poems about the Second? “Maybe you could find some” said my English teacher at the time, probably just to shut me up, but I saw it as a challenge and went to the local reference library to see what I could find out. I remember not making much sense of Ezra Pound or not really knowing what “fascist collaboration” meant. But I was taken by this poem by Jacques Prévert which although in translation (and only half grasped), I read again and again, trying to understand why, in the pouring rain, there would be such tragedy. Here is the poem in English translation.
Remember Barbara
It rained relentlessly on Brest that day,
And you walked smiling,
Beaming, ravishing, drenched
Under the rain
Remember Barbara
It rained relentlessly on Brest that day
And I ran into you in Siam Street,
You were smiling,
And I smiled too.
Remember Barbara
You whom I didn’t know,
You who didn’t know me,
Remember,
Remember that day still,
Don’t forget,
A man was taking cover on a porch
And he cried your name
Barbara,
And you ran to him under the rain
Beaming, ravishing, drenched,
And you threw yourself in his arms.
Remember that Barbara
And don’t be mad if I speak familiarly,
I speak familiarly to everyone I love
Even if I’ve seen them only once,
I speak familiarly to all who are in love
Even if I don’t know them,
Remember Barbara
Don’t forget
That good and happy rain
On your happy face
On that happy town,
That rain upon the sea,
Upon the arsenal,
Upon the Ushant boat.
Oh! Barbara
What stupidity is war,
What has become of you
Under this iron rain
Of fire and steel and blood,
And he who held you in his arms amorously
Is he dead and gone or still so much alive?
Oh! Barbara,
It has rained all day on Brest today
As it was raining before,
But it isn’t the same anymore,
And everything is wrecked,
It’s a rain of mourning, terrible and desolate,
Nor is it still a storm
Of iron and steel and blood,
But simply clouds
That die like dogs,
Dogs that disappear
In the downpour drowning Brest,
And float away to rot
A long way off
A long, long way from Brest
Of which there’s nothing left.
I am not sure how much I understood of the poem at age 11, but I remember understanding that the steel and blood were raining on the town and wondering what had happened to Barbara and the man in the doorway, and the shock of the last line. I remember going to check with an atlas and the relief that it was still there.
That was over 50 years ago. The poem has always stayed with me and although I have not moved on to find out more about Jacques Prévert, nor to read more of his poetry, it has always been on my bucket list to go to Brest and see the town that he wrote about.
So it was on my “must do” list for France when I started my journey around the world.
One of the things I did when I was in Rouen, my previous stop, was to go to the local library and look up Brest, as well as Vannes, my next destination. There were a few paragraphs on Vannes, outlining the beauty of some of the buildings and the classical gardens there. There was no entry for Brest.
I remember double-checking that I’d not made a mistake. I knew that Brest was one of the biggest towns in Brittany (it is third behind Nantes and Rennes) and I thought it was the capital of the region Finistère, (it isn’t – it is the smaller Quimper!) so I couldn’t understand why there was no entry. In another guide book I did find something: it said “a useful town to base yourself in whilst you visit the more picturesque places of the area!” Now one thing I did recall was that if I was to look in a guide to tourism in England, I would be hard pushed to find an entry for Sheffield; and if I did it would probably say “a useful city to base yourself in whilst you visit the more picturesque Peak District.” Sheffield is sometimes known as ‘the dirty picture in the golden frame.’ This goes back to the days when the steel mills were chucking out air pollution but you could still escape to the beautiful countryside situated on three sides of the city.
Sheffield with a population of around 730K so is far bigger than Brest (140K,) but the latter feels as self-contained and confident as a city. It feels as if it has a pride in itself and its links to the sea (as does Sheffield with its links to steel and cutlery) and is not worried too much about what others may think about it. I also think that, like Sheffield, it does not want to proclaim itself too much, happy to be a best kept secret.
And so I arrived. Sometimes you just drop into a place and you know you are going to like it. I am not sure I can put into words what made Brest so different. It is a port, a naval base which is still very much in use. It has a tram system (a single line with a fork at one end) and a cable car. There is a great shopping street, a big arts and entertainment centre, some good pubs and restaurants, and a Sunday market. It is near other little seaside villages and has a direct train link with Paris. What more could I ask for?
It seems that I should be asking to meet the people. I had posted something on social media about having low self-esteem (this was on the back of a break-up with a friend) and a few people pointed out that I didn’t mix much with the locals in the places I stayed. So in order to put that right, I decided to do something I had been thinking of for a while: I went to a language exchange.
My French is pretty basic, despite having studied it for 5 years at school, but I thought I could get some useful tips and help people out if they needed it in English. So I checked with Couchsurfers.com who seem to know about these things and found an exchange meeting at the Tudor Pub in town. I very soon was made very welcome and although I didn’t get to speak much French I was pretty merry and had made some friends by the time I left and got the last tram home.
I also came away with some suggestions for places to visit on the coast and these contacts really helped me feel part of things. All in all, very useful and enjoyable and something I would recommend to strangers in town.
And there is the problem. Brest is not my home. I was only there for three short weeks and the chances are that I may never visit the town again, because every time I stop somewhere I am not seeing somewhere else. And that matters. Perhaps for a 20 or 30 year old, they can think they have all the time in the world to come back to a place, but I am very mindful that my round-the-world trip is already predicted to take 10-12 years and that was without the enforced stop in the UK because of the coronavirus. I will be 75 years old at the other end… perhaps then I will go back and see if I can find Barbara. And the rain? It rained at some point every day for the three weeks I was there … and I still fell in love with Brest!
I have various other quirky places that I want to see on my travels for a variety of reasons: Figueres in Spain (because of the links to Dalí) to several towns in Sardinia because of their railways, and Coimbra in Portugal… just because! I think most people have that “I wonder what that place is like” when they hear of somewhere just that bit different. I am still looking for a town called Steev to explore! Where is your quirky place?
