Once I get settled into a city, it can be hard to get me to leave it. I attribute it to Torontonian syndrome. This means always paying lip service when friends suggest you visit them in Ottawa or Kitchener, but secretly loathing the idea of taking a Greyhound out there. Those who live downtown are even worse and balk at the idea of getting out to the 905. Somehow this complex has dogged me during my stints living in the Netherlands and Taiwan. But this weekend, for the first time since arriving in France, I traveled outside of the Alsace region. I took two high-speed trains across France all the way to Rennes. Of course it would take a music festival to get me out west. And the Transmusicales Festival, or Les Trans as the French call it, was a good enough reason for me.

When I decided to do this program, I was convinced I was going to go to Nantes for the longest time. I had met a few Nantais during my travels and was charmed by their friendliness and impossibly cute French accents while speaking English. I thought if they spoke like that in English, if I learned French in Nantes, maybe I would sound like them. In the end, I chose to rank the Strasbourg academy as my number one choice, instead of Nantes. Since then there has always been a little pang of longing for what could have been if I had chosen to live in the Brittany region instead of the Alsace. (And yes I know Nantes is no longer a part of Brittany but I’m talking historically/culturally.)

Even though the festival was in Rennes and not Nantes, I figured this was my chance to see Celtic-influenced French culture (as opposed to the brand of German influenced French culture over here.) I never cease to be amused by the pride the French have for their home region (or their disdain for Paris.) In the Alsace, people tell me it’s not French at all and the Bretons were only too eager to tell me the same thing. One of my students told me how in “Little Brittany,” the Bretons eat crepes and wash it down with cider. Oh cider, I thought, how very English. Here, you will never hear the words choucroute or brezel without the words “regional specialty” following them. I know these things as saukerkraut and pretzel (or at least bretzen, since I learned the German word first.) I love how these regional specialties are just things that, for me, come from other countries.

I was surprised to see quite a few half-timbered style houses in Rennes since I thought they were characteristically Alsatian. However the ones in Rennes looked more rickety and purposely historic while Alsace ones are painted pleasant pastel colours and look like they come out of  fairy-tales. While I thought living in one of these houses in 2009 is quaint (Sélestat has its share), it’s nothing compared to the typical Breton digs. With the celtic culture, comes stone houses and medieval villages that people continue to live in.I took a little excursion to Dinan on my last day in Brittany and it blew my mind that medieval castle is only minutes away from the downtown. I know it’s all perfectly normal to the French but the North American suburbanite in me is still amazed at the idea of growing up with among this kind of scenery.

The vibe from Rennes itself was the opposite of old age. I knew it had a reputation as a student city but was surprised by the extent of it. I had inklings that Strasbourg felt a bit like an old person’s city but going to Rennes confirmed it. Rennes is an anomaly (like the university towns Kingston or London in Ontario) in France because of the disporportionate number of students it has compared to residents. It immediately felt much younger to me as soon as I looked around. There were university students everywhere and the clothing stores were noticeably more interesting to me than the ones in Strasboug. Another thing Rennes has a surplus of is police presence. Around downtown, especially at night, I saw on average seven carloads of police wearing special protective gear while patrolling. I was told this is normal in Rennes in order to control drunken students when they spill out onto the street after last call. Since it was Trans (which brings in its share of drunken tourists) it was only natural that they beef up the force.

The festival itself was a fantastic atmosphere. It was held at Parc Expo, a collection of airport hangars just outside the city. Each hangar had its own line-up and one hangar was a dedciated bar, lounge and water bar. There was a consistent crowd of people who spilled on the tarmac to get fresh air after dancing or to smoke (but those might be the same thing for the French.) The reason that I came to Trans was to see Fever Ray. This tour was the first and only tour for the group and Rennes was the second-to-last show. While I’ve never seen The Knife (and probably never will since they refuse to tour again) seeing Fever Ray was the next best thing. I was so close to the stage I could smell the incense, but not close enough to get a good look at Karin Dreijer, the singer of both bands. The Knife are famous for their stage fright and standoffish ways and seeing Fever Ray confirmed this. Dreijer was positioned half way back on the stage, clad in full on black-and-white face makeup and a witch-like robe. The antique lamps surrounding her and her equally spookily-dressed bandmates flashed while smoke swirled around stage. It was dark, slightly unnerving and great.

I only planned on going to the festival for one day but I unexpectedly came into a ticket the night after, the techno night. Commanding most, if not all the of the hype, was Mr Oizo–best known in North American as that fuzzy yellow bear puppet, a.k.a Flat Eric. I was most excited to see the French reception for their homeboy. By the end, my companion and I had come to the same conclusion. The first half-hour was great but it really petered out by the end. Significant numbers of the crowd were leaving and those who stayed was just because it was, well, Oizo. I was pleased that he played “Blood on our Hands” by Death From Above 1979. (It was the Justice remix, for the record. It’s a fine remix but is it mandatory that everything is Frenched up?) At times it felt like he was falling back on the popularity of other bands to keep the crowd interested. How else do you explain playing two Daft Punk songs in one set? The highlight of the set, hands down,  was the sample he made with a robot voice. It gleefully (as much as a robot can be) declared to the crowd that: “Nous avons le grippe A” (We have the H1N1 flu) and “Nous allons tous mourir à Rennes” (We are all going to die in Rennes.) A cheap trick for sure, but it worked. But hey, to paraphrase Morrisey, if ten-tonne truck crashes into us, to die in Rennes, well..it might be a better way to go than in Strasbourg.

posted by vicky at 11:08 pm under Europe, France, Music
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