Albi

created: 2020.06.02. 15:00 · modified: 2021.12.18. 18:20 ·  · license

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Last fall, after my exchange placement was confirmed, my friends and I made plans for our time abroad. We said we would visit a nearby town every weekend. But one week it rained, another week we couldn't be bothered, and we kept putting it off. Nearly two months later, the only place we'd been was Albi, about 70 km from Toulouse.

Depending on the visitor, Albi might not seem like much of a travel destination. Its sights are a riverside view with an old bridge, a huge cathedral, and some strangely pruned, cube-shaped trees. I'm not religious, so even the cathedral didn't leave much of an impression on me.

But I found Albi's appeal somewhere unexpected. Like many towns, Albi has a river, and it makes its sharpest bend around a lake. The park by that lake was the place for me. Calling it a park might be a stretch: the only signs of people were a path worn down by foot traffic and a few picnic tables. But that was exactly the point. It was hard to tell whether someone had made it into a park or simply left it as it was.

Anyone who has seen the stories I post from time to time will know that I really like wandering around on my own. There are plenty of places to explore in a city—among the buildings, through markets, along the river—but parks are easily my favorite. Whenever I stay somewhere new, I tend to go from one park to the next, checking them off one by one. Along the way, I've developed my own ideas about what a park should be.

Looking at parks in Korea, I sometimes get the feeling that the people in charge of city planning can't resist tearing out the grass and trees. They cover every flat surface with paving blocks or rubber flooring, add a few pieces of outdoor exercise equipment, and call it a park. Those facilities really can help older people, but we need parks full of greenery too. After spending my days at home or school, it's a joy to travel a little farther now and then and encounter all sorts of plants and insects in the woods. It makes me think, ‘These things exist in the world, and somehow I've been living as if I'd forgotten all about them.’ Growing up, I had a garden at home and a large lakeside park, so I had chances to learn about nature. When I think of people who haven't had those chances, living in a city where the only parks have rubber floors and perhaps not even knowing what they're missing, the feeling becomes more overwhelming.

With all that on my mind, Albi's park felt like rain after a long drought. Thankfully, the friends who came with me felt much the same way, so we spread out a picnic mat by the lake and stayed for about an hour. We sat and watched the quiet things happening around us: a half-submerged log, dense shrubs with ducks gliding between them, and a dog that spent ages deciding whether to get in the water before finally plunging in, while its owner looked on. It was every bit as enjoyable as rushing from one tourist attraction to the next.

The weather was still chilly then, so we talked about coming back near the end of the semester, when summer would be closer and everything would be greener. I'm a little sad we never did.

Exchange Semester in France, Ep. 4

Originally posted on Instagram, June 3, 2020