Reconciliation between oysters and absinthe

Actually, I just wanted to run the extension cord to our camper, – past the neighbor’s car. It was a hot August afternoon and the intense sun was only bearable because of the light breeze coming from the Atlantic. Walking up the small embankment by the pitches, one could enjoy the wonderful blue at the Plage du Fogeo and outside the bay one could see the white sails of the boats from the nearby Port du Crouesty dancing on the water. We had already been on the road for a week and the trip became an inner journey into the Franco-German past.

We passed the border near Saarbrücken and marveled at the Gothic cathedrals in Nancy and Metz. Far from the highways, the route led to the graves at Verdun, via the memorial at Douaumont and along the Chemin des Dames in the direction of Reims. And along the way, the path was lined with countless war memorials – white crosses formed rows of hundreds, thousands of individual graves. How would it influence our attitude to life, I wondered, if we – living in the Hunsrück (Rhineland-Palatinate) or the Oberpfalz (Bavaria) – passed such mass graves every day, reminding us permanently of the First World War, which here in France is simply called la grande guerre. And the closer we got to Normandy, we were reminded of its continuation in World War II, and thus the “30-year war of the 20th century.”

Here, too, near the campers, a German fortification had been driven into a Stone Age grave, destroying thousands of years of history. We avoided talking in German so as not to be associated with that people who had twice passed through the country here like a roller, leaving death and destruction in their wake. And so I asked our neighbor in English if I could pull the extension cord behind his car. “Of course, you are welcome” he answered and invited me to an absinthe. What wouldn´t anyone do for the German-French friendship, I thought to myself: “Salute!” While we men drank, mother and daughter prepared the meal. I had never eaten oysters before and asked with interest how they were prepared. The 60-something pulled up a chair and so I sat among the French family for dinner. Pierre, I learned, had grown up in a small village in Lorraine, the bone of contention between the European neighbors Alsace-Lorraine, and love had brought him to Vannes in Brittany. He knew a lot about German history. “A hundred years after the war, we should be reconciled” he said with a grin, opening another bottle of the vermouth known as green fairy. “We need to do more for Europe – we can’t let it go to pieces!” Between oysters and baguettes, we told our stories.

That evening in Arzon, Pierre had explained Europe to me through hospitality and absinthe, and taken away my own discomfort as a German in France.