Study Abroad and Domestic Study Away

In this moment, days to years before these words will be read, I am 19 and a half years old. I am writing this from my room, in the city of Chambéry, the region of Auvergene-Rhône Alps, the department of Savoie, and the country of France. I do not intend to write a summary of my experience thus far, unfinished as it is. In any case, summaries can only capture the surface of a good idea anyway, and I would hope to spare the dullness. Where would I even start? The moment the plane landed? The hour spent dragging my  suitcases up a mountain? Somewhere in my constant enthusiastic stumbling in a language I know, but do not know at all?

I visited the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon about two week ago, and I have been thinking about one of the pieces quite often in the time since. The painting is titled, “Ruines antiques. Jeune fille devant une statue d’abondance.” by Hubert Robert, 1779. It depicts a group of children playing at the foot of history. This is not an uncommon theme for Hubert Robert’s work, as many of his other pieces depict quotidian life with an ancient backdrop. It is a familiar sentiment, as a representation of the intertwined past and future. So, I will start in the past. Fitting, right?

Savoie Mont Blanc, the region I am currently an inhabitant of, is a region in both a historical and a cultural sense. It encapsulates the formal French departments of Savoie and Haute-Savoie, encompassing an area that has had many faces. Savoie Mont Blanc was once part of a province in the Roman Empire, Gallia Narbonensis, until the Treaty of Verdun in 843, when it became part of Lotharingia. Then, in 1032, Savoie Mont Blanc was reattached to the neighboring eastern polity, Saint-Empire romain germanique, otherwise known as the Holy Roman Empire. In 1232, the city in which I live was founded by the then-Count of Savoie, and later, in 1348, Chambéry was made capital of the region, which it remains to this day. A long series of other things happen in the ten ensuing centuries: a duke of Savoie becomes king of Sicily; a treaty or three are signed; the region is occupied by the troops of Louis XIV, and then later by the Spanish; the region is split in two; the region is reunited. It’s all very complicated. It makes one feel rather small.

Before living here, I had never seen a mountain. I was born in the city of Chicago and have lived there since. To get anywhere here, I march up and down minor mountains, with major ones always in view. I clambered around on one myself, clinging to stone and climbing harness, mountains under my hands and the wind on my back.  When walking to the ville ancienne in Chambéry, the path I frequent cuts directly down the lesser mountain that campus sits atop, spitting me out on a side street. Few other students take this path, perhaps due to the wooden beam stairs, and their slippery nature, as I experienced on my first rather fast and not entirely painless trip down them. My path, I feel, just as Hubert Robert’s 1779 painting, is a large-scale rendition of what the rest of my time in Chambéry and France as a whole will be. I am a very small thing, living my life in a very old place. Isn’t it wonderful?

L’histoire de Savoie Mont Blanc : https://savoie-gouv.org/histoire-de-la-savoie/.
« Ruines antiques. Jeune fille devant une statue d’abondance » par Hubert Robert, 1779 : https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010056474

Gallo-Roman Theater Lyon: