A trip down memory lane: La Belle France

In my life to date, the most memorable and formative snippets of time have been spent in France. For some reason France and its many cities, towns and villages has captured me and inspired from a young age. Well, young being 15 or 16 years old and formative being all the things that teenage boys do for the first time away from the watchful eye of their parents. Such liberation lead to many things: the conquering of girls, beer and Pastis amongst others.

The Bridge and the Mairie, in Brassac, France.

It all started in Brassac, a small village in the midi-Pyrenees, where I'd visit my sister over three summers during my last years in high school. This place will forever hold a place in my heart and mind that will never be replaced. I guess the trapping of nostalgia will always render this time and place a fond memory where my misguided youth and wholly well spent summer days were passed splashing in the river, to splashing through my first beers in the local cafes for the village summer fete. I revisited this place with Google Street View. It was a weird sensation. It gave me all I needed to feel like I was back there except for being there. The sights were the same, exactly the same. Things in my life have changed so massively; yet when I look at the familiar streets that I only knew for a few weeks at a time, over ten years ago, it is like I was there all my life and never left. This kind of technology halts nostalgia somewhat. It stops us day dreaming and allows us tap back in to a place and time that is stuck in our minds. A place that we know still exists, but when we're not there, it's impossible to imagine it existing. But, low and behold, it's still there, as quaint and glorious as ever.

One day I'll go back. This time camera in hand and I will take an abundance of pictures and idealize a romantic vision of rural France to frame on a wall in some room of my house that will undoubtedly be far away from Brassac.

How wonderful it is to have these memories and how wonderful it is to be able to see these places again. Nostalgia has been put in to context...Brassac is still there. It still exists. I can go back, and that makes me happy.

This song seemed fitting with my mood this morning as I took a trip down memory lane.