Giving Thanks in Dunkerque

Our weekend day-trip to Dunkerque started off with a pretty tough decision. Take the 8am train that arrives in under an hour, or sleep in and take a later train that weaves through the countryside stopping in Arras, and arriving in Dunkerque almost three hours later? When we bought our tickets the early train was the obvious choice. Come 6am Saturday morning; we were starting to second-guess. After finally dragging ourselves out of bed we were dressed and out the door to Gare Lille-Flandres with enough time to grab a café and a petit-déjeuner for the ride.

The one hour ride passed relatively quickly and gave us a great view of some interesting little villages along the way. Unfortunately due to the hour I was not in a totally coherent state of mind so I can’t remember the names of these towns, but one had a very cool, medieval-looking city wall around it. Hopefully we can find out the name and spend a day there exploring.

The train made only three or four stops and before we knew it we were descending onto the platform and meeting our “tour guide” Joel. He is actually one of the English Language Assistants placed in Dunkerque. Thanks to the wonders of social-networking and Facebook we “met” Joel over the summer, as I assume most other Lille assistants did (he’s quite a celebrity amongst us), and when we told him we would be in his neck of the woods he offered to show us around.

First up on our agenda (as we had previously discussed due to the hour of our arrival) was to find somewhere to grab a grand-café and energize for the day. Unfortunately the place Joel had in mind was closed so we settled for an untested café around the corner. The coffee tasted of “le jus des chaussettes” (the French expression for coffee lacking in strength). However, it was strong enough to get the job done, and we were soon heading towards one of the few things this town has that Lille does not…the Beach!

Dunkerque is a very nice village with old churches and weekly town markets, but we have all those things in Lille too. Our goal was to have plenty of face time with the sand and surf. Joel did not disappoint. He told us that Dunkerque is quite famous for its ruins of old Nazi war bunkers set up along the coast to prevent the Allies from invading (lot of good that did). They were a good distance down the “boardwalk” of the town so we started off in their general direction while enjoying the scenery, shops, brasseries and dunes that lined the coast. One thing particularly surprising/unusual about Dunkerque was that while walking along the coast there was no salty, ocean-air smell like I remember from the Pacific coast in Oregon or the Atlantic coast in Kiawah. Maybe it has something to do with its proximity to England?

Joel had mentioned that we were in for a bit of a walk to view these bunkers, but we weren’t exactly prepared for the hike ahead of us. Luckily, other than about 5-10min of dark overcast clouds, the weather was sunny and warm, and the coastline was quite beautiful so the hour-plus journey passed without much notice. As with many other unprotected structures in France, the bunkers were covered in graffiti and in a rather run-down state. This of course is to be expected after 60 or so years of dune erosion and little to no maintenance.

We hiked all around the bunkers; peering inside now and then trying to imagine what it was like back in WWI and WWII when they would have been crawling with Krauts on high alert from what they thought was an imminent threat of attack from Britain (Joel told us that in actuality the Allies quite were aware the Germans expected a Dunkerque invasion. They stationed mock-battalions and inflatable tanks across the channel to trick them, and attacked at the beaches in Normandy). It was a great adventure climbing all around the headquarters of the German military, but was a little uncomfortable seeing as I was wearing dress shoes in anticipation of our social gathering that evening.

The beach walk and bunker exploration took up a good chunk of our day. On the walk back we stopped at a beachside restaurant for refreshments and crêpe aux sucre. By the time we made it back around Joel’s apartment we had just enough time to pick-up some drinks for the dinner, meet the other assistants living at his school, and head out the door to a Lille-Assistant Pre-Thanksgiving dinner prepared by a couple girls also stationed in the city.

The apartment we met at was being renovated so it was a little messy, and we were confined to the kitchen/dining room area. Even with the crowd of assistants everyone was able to find adequate space to eat. The food was ready when we arrived, and we chowed down on rustic salad with strawberries and walnuts, two kinds of potatoes (roasted and mashed), baked turkey breasts, stuffing, and covered it all with what looked like country-style gravy minus the sausage. I’m guessing everyone was as hungry as Kathryn and I because once the food was served there was about ten minutes of silence in the room of close to 20 people before the wine started flowing, and conversations picked back up.

Kathryn and I had been asked to bring some bottles of wine for the dinner so we decided to go with some of Carrefour’s recommendations. We brought two bottles of red, a bottle of rose and a bottle of a specialty hard apple cider from the Northern regions of France. Now I know it’s not very exciting to read about what we brought to drink, but I mention this for a very important reason. The highlight of my night came at the expense of the hard cider. Apparently in the hustle and bustle of transporting these beverages from Lille to Dunkerque they sustained periods of turbulence. This went un-noticed, and halfway through the dinner when Kathryn asked me to get the cider out of the fridge and pour a couple glasses, I didn’t think twice.

The cider is bottled in the same fashion as champagne, and as I slowly twisted off the metal casing, I failed to realize how much stress the cork was putting on it. As the metal tie was removed the cork exploded out of the bottle with a loud pop, missed cracking me in the head by mere centimeters (I could feel it nick the hair on my forehead), slammed off the 15ft. ceiling and bounced back off the top of my head. All I can say is it scared the bejesus out of me. The force of the cork coming out of the bottle easily could have knocked out an eye, or possibly broken my nose if I had the bottle positioned differently. My heart was pounding for a good five minutes or so after that one. The rest of the evening was spent drinking wine and getting to know some of the other assistants. Come 8pm Joel took us back to the train station so we could catch our ride home. It was a great day mostly thanks to our gracious guide and hosts (thanks again Joel). Also, since we spent the majority of the day walking to and from the bunkers we missed out on a couple of sights in the city center itself so we may have to make another trip out there sometime in the future.

Sunday was half spent recovering, and half spent wandering around the beginnings of the Christmas Marche going up in the Centre-Ville of Lille. They are turning on the Christmas lights that decorate the main streets. Garlands are being strung up between the buildings, and in the Grand-Place and Place de Thêatre they have erected a giant Ferris wheel, and a Merry-Go-Round. We have also been told that there is an ice rink in one of the squares, but we haven’t been able to locate it just yet. As we get closer to La Fête de Noël the streets will become lined with all types of vendors, and we are looking forward to going up in the wheel. It’s higher than the tallest church spire by a good 4 stories, and supposedly offers an unparalleled view of the city we call home. Let’s just hope they don’t charge 20euros a person for a ride!

A bientôt,

-Jordan and Kathryn

P.S. - Paris next weekend!