Grenoble: First Impressions
Novelty is a special experience, a perk of being human. Moving to a new country is like drinking from a novelty firehose. Just looking at your GPS dot hovering in the middle of France on Google maps is a thrill, the surreal beginning of constructing this new wing of your identity. And arriving in the city where you’re going to live is like hatching slowly, cracking open a new door or window and populating new vistas with each foray. Everything has a sheen of potential meaning.
The mountains help—the Alps rising at the end of the street, the Alps still winter-white and so mantled with iconic personality that I can get anyone’s attention with that one addendum to where I live. But I also get to have that sparkle in a city that, although it is the largest city in the French Alps, isn’t famous for its architecture or pristine streets. I hadn’t heard of it before I applied for the postdoc that brought me here. Until I came, it was only a vague collection of promised amenities (chief among them access to the Alps) and offhand opinions from friends who did know it and thought it was…quaint.
I arrived in Grenoble in the dark, at the end of a long day lugging two heavy bags and a cello across France (and England) by train, to a studio AirBnB in the “hypercentre,” in a complex with an old lift with comically malfunctioning doors. In the morning, just stepping out into the alleyway and around the corner to a French chain grocery store, where I would avoid speaking as much as possible and puzzle over all the chèvre and shelf-stable milk options, was thrilling. Looking up to the ridge behind it, where the city simply stopped and the stone fortifications of the local fort took over, was another level of thrill. I couldn’t see more than a faint outline of the real mountains that day thanks to trapped mountain valley smog—but since then, rain has rinsed the sky, and looking down the street to the horizon as I unlock the door to my new apartment is enough to make me shiver as I think, I live here.
(I will say, this isn’t my first go-round with mountains, so the air pollution that greeted me when I arrived is unfortunately not new to me; Utah Valley, where I lived during college, can be just as bad. But this was compensated for by the elegantly imposing Wasatch mountains on my skyline, and not far away, the Uintas. And I’ve also lived within spotting distance of the Grand Tetons. Being in the Alps has in fact renewed my appreciation for the world-class beauty of the North American Rockies. More on this another time, perhaps.)
On my first afternoon, I hiked to the Fort de la Bastille I had seen from below in the morning. I’ll write a whole post on this later, but it was one dramatic door to open. It took me out of my little corner of concrete and expanded my understanding of Grenoble to include the river, the Isère (much bigger than the River Cam), and its riverbank detritus and traffic and colorful riverfront buildings; and then the beginning of the Chartreuse Massif, the foothills of the Alps, built up with stairs and abbeys and stacked houses and crisscrossed with switchbacks for the locals to trail-run and dog-walk their way (or skip all this and take the Téléphérique, i.e. cable cars) to the 19th-centry fort that was has never fired a shot because the Duchy of Savoy proceeded to be merged into France. And then I got the view, albeit smog-hazed, of the high rises and cemetery and winding river and geometric tile-roofed hypercentre, and mountains ringing it all. Three arms of a convergent valley: Grenoble.
Grenoble isn’t a huge city, but it is the most urban place I’ve lived (except for a short stint in Boston, MA), so the graffiti, the traffic, the excellent little network of trams, the trash on the river banks, the jumbled varieties of disrepair or facelessness or stateliness lining the streets, the brutalist municipal buildings, the vibrant murals—all of this is new to me, at least in the sense of a resident’s-eye-view, not just passing impressions but a reality to gather into my sense of home. Criss-crossing the city center to look for an apartment took me down avenues with grand European facades, walking streets with glitzy shops, graveled public squares and parks, and narrow urban residential streets with dive bars and garbage bins and balconies with plants and people parallel parking. On the tram, I gaze out the windows and note passing street art or museums to come back to. One puzzle piece at a time.
My first impression of the campus of Université Grenoble Alpes, which is a vital organ of Grenoble (1 in 5 Grenoble residents are researchers, according to a PR video by the university) and the site of my research office, was muted by gray weather. I got lost walking from the tram stop and saw various gray buildings and construction sites, and eventually the Biology department buildings on the edge of campus that felt rather dingy and remote (and also under construction). But the lab members were welcoming and my desk window had a view of treetops and the closest mountain range, foothills of snowy, craggy Belledonne, which peeks over the wooded ridges. On the other side is of the building is the folded stone and plateau of the Chartreuse Massif.
And by the next week, the sun had come out, and I reassessed. Now, my daily walk is a delight of blossoms and birds. There’s a stand of towering London plane trees hosting a rookery that is currently bustling with noisy nest builders. Behind our edge-of-campus building is a small arboretum that harbors all kinds of birdsong and lovely trees for walking under when you have to call the bank. Beyond that is the Isère and its winding footpath—my future bike commute, once I get one. And everywhere are magnolias and cheerful banks of primroses and speedwell and violets. Spring: the eternal renewer of novelty.
Routine has already started to set, however, dampening the novelty of arrival. My research is all computer—I’m running a computer model that predicts how plants will grow in the European mountains in response to climate change and land use change—so my daily work routine is particularly unglamorous. I’ve started to look at my phone on the tram instead of out the windows, and to cross the street to my apartment by habit. Routine is inevitable and necessary. But the goal of my writing is to counteract this: to keep my senses fresh to the novelty of both the spectacular and the everyday—to never stop discovering the place where I live. And there are still many streets to walk and mountains to hike. Are you ready?
Interesting to read a bit about your research. I listened to a French podcast recently that talked about the impact of less winter snow on survival of alpine plants. If I remember correctly, as a non -scientist (my PhD was in French literature), the problem was that the absence of a protective layer of snow meant the plants could be killed by spring frosts. I think it was from the series La Terre au Carré on France Inter.
This place looks like a dream! You are so fortunate to be able to experience all of this. You will love Grenoble, and Grenoble will love you!