the avenue carnot

Most people hardly give a second thought to the street that they live on. I reside at one end of an avenue in a tiny studio situated above a real estate agency. Everyday I walk down the entire stretch of my street - a total of about 650 meters - to take the bus to school at the other end. Having spent so much time promenading up and down its sidewalks, I believe that the street deserves to have a little bit of recognition. So, dear reader, I present to you the avenue Carnot.

a brief history

The avenue is named after Sadi Carnot, who was the fifth president of the 3rd Republic from 1887-1894. (Unfortunately, he was brutally stabbed by an Italian anarchist after giving a public speech.) This street has historically always been busy, serving as a link between the centre ville of Besançon and the main railway station situated only several hundred meters from my current apartment.

In the past, the street had a rather bourgeois feel. The former tramway line ran through it (and the future one someday will too), while storefronts on its wide avenue served the many passersby. The fact that old postcards of the avenue exist suggests that it was a well-recognized and rather popular location.

At the end of the avenue, closest to the river Doubs, you could find the beautiful and ornate thermal bathhouse and casino that attracted many visitors from all over the region. Today the buildings still remain intact but have been converted to a senior residence home and a modern theatre (as well as the site where I catch my bus to school).

To its misfortune, the avenue Carnot was hit pretty hard during the Second World War. The train station was completely destroyed. (Those who are familiar with Besançon will note that this is the reason why the modern gare is somewhat of an eyesore.) Buildings and residences in the surrounding neighborhood also took a severe beating. Below is a photo from 1943 of a bombardment that occurred a block away, on the Rue de Belfort.

the avenue today

Today, the avenue still is a rather functional and busy area of the city. However it has lost its bourgeois charm and is undergoing an identity crisis. There is now a strange mélange of beautiful 19th-century buildings with ugly postwar ones dispersed between them. In fact, the clash between the two architectural styles is so paramount that the styles are melted and lost into each other. If you actually take the time to notice these differences, what you see can be somewhat surprising. Just a few weeks ago, I noticed for the first time an ancient advertisement for a men's clothing shop peeking out on the side of a modern boulangerie.

Like its architecture, the businesses and institutions housed on the avenue Carnot are also camouflaged. One day I took the initiative one day to jot down everything I passed by. To my discovery, I also was taken aback over how many different things actually resided there:

7 temp agencies

6 empty storefronts

6 real estate offices

5 bureaucratic agencies

5 hair stylists

4 banks

4 crosswalks

4 home décor stores

4 restaurants

3 auto service and/or sales centers

3 bus stops

2 bakeries

1 antiques store

1 church

1 construction company

1 dog groomer

1 florist

1 pharmacy

1 prestigious retirement home

1 sewing machine store

1 small grocery store

1 small park with park bench

1 newsstand

1 video rental outlet

So at first glance, there's nothing too special about the avenue Carnot: cars stop and go at traffic lights, pedestrians cross the street, pigeons loiter by the gutters, and businesses go about their business. Hardly anything catches your eye when you stroll those seven minutes along the sidewalk. Yet having walked up and down this street several times a day for the past several months, I have found myself to have fallen in love with it. I have become so accustomed to its sights and sounds, as banal as they really may be, that I am pleased to call it home.

bouchons

It's been a while since I've been on this blog. Apologies to you, my dear reader. The good news is that I am still alive, healthy, and happy. And that I've been keeping myself occupied with bottle caps.

Bottle caps, you ask? Well, the children at my school have been collecting plastic bottle caps since the beginning of the school year as one of the activities associated through the comenius program. The comenius program is a collective project among schools in England, Belgium, Spain, Slovakia, and France to encourage the children to be "active citizens of Europe" (ACE). In January, we had the kids count all the bottle caps in the school and sort them by color.

After hours of counting and sorting, the kids began the creative process of putting them together to create images. As part of this program is to create cultural awareness, each school is responsible for representing another country with the bottle caps. By luck of the draw, our school chose England. Putting on their thinking caps, each class had to come up with one image to capture the essence of their neighbors across the channel.

The first class was the CE1/CE2, or better known as the 2nd and 3rd grade class. As leaders of this activity, they chose to depict the British flag, the Union Jack. With a ruler and a piece of chalk, one diligent student took the initiative to draw the outline of the flag on the floor.

Moments later, the kids began their travail.

And their betises.

Eventually after a couple hours of placing down hundreds of milk, water, and coca-cola tops, their vision came to a completion...

...and they decided to show off to their fellow peers.

Following their example, the other classes in the school set off on their designs. The CLIS (special needs) class chose a London phone booth.

Debating over a London double-decker bus and the Tower Bridge, the CM1 (4th grade) class decided to create the latter.

The CM1/CM2 (4th/5th grades) class was innovative in their representation of Big Ben.

The CE1 (2nd grade) minded the gap with the London Underground symbol.

With help, the CP (1st grade) made an impressive representation of the English Rugby mascot, a red rose.

Now the project is over and it is time to clean up the messes of bottle caps. The next and final stage of this project is to donate the bottle caps to a charity organization that will use them to purchase a wheelchair for a child in need. Although this may sound like a cliché, recycling can be educational, fun, and rewarding. (Enter groan here.) I'm quite proud of my kids. They did a good job and gave me an excuse to show off their work.