Old friend in an old town

Boulogne-sur-Mer, along the northern coast of France, has a population of as much as 100,000. A friend I haven't seen in over two years teaches high school philosophy here, and within minutes of meeting at the train station yesterday, we were discussing educational systems and climbing the hilly roads to his flat as if the two years had been two days.

"If you look out this window," he said once we reached his place, "you'll see the town's only two attractions." To the left, a cathedral I hear every hour, to the right, a belfry indicating the castle and walls that surround the old part of town where he lives.

If my writing professor allowed me to use the word, I would call the day perfect. In a rare move, the sun showed its face, so we picnicked around the corner, on a grassy hill inside the walls. I am but shouldn't be surprised at how old the town looks, with typical cobblestones and uneven streets and low houses. I didn't stop for the museum inside the castle, but saw my first moat, which I guess is one of the reasons tourists actually come here, to my surprise. There's even a tourism office, er, booth, but Iohan says even a town of 100 has that. He adds, the tourists are often British because of the historical relationship and because England is supposed to be so close one can see it like Alaskans see Russia. And then there are those who swim the English channel.

We lay on the grass and under the bright sun, which would have been unbearable if not for the wind that passed over at just the right times. We ate and talked physics, politics, and inescapably, philosophy - Kant, Hegel, Pascal, wrapped around our own meandering thoughts. This is the turn our conversations always take, clearly because of his profession, but has it anything to do with the culture, too? It is not as if, in the United States, high school students are required to take philosophy courses.

Then he graded essays while I sat on the ledge of the wall in a familiar scene: reading (in this case, finishing Kafka) as the sun sank over the water.

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Reading: Borges, A Universal History of Infamy
Listening to: Carole King