THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD

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I have walked this street countless times. The walk from the city center to my apartment has become mindless and familiar. I know the sights, the smells, and even some of the people that I see working in the various buildings I pass by heart. It’s a straight shot home, really - I only need take one road. I think this adds to the “mindless” factor. I cross the city’s Grand’Place and head down the boulevard toward home, walking on the left of the street so that I don’t have to cross the street.

There are three landmarks that more or less divide my walk home. The first is passing Boulevard de la Liberté, which is a main road in Lille lined with sycamores that leads to the city’s Fine Arts Museum (le Palais des Beaux Arts). The second is the Saint-Michel Church that intersects with rue Solférino (nicknamed “la rue de la soif,” or “the road of thirst,” as most of the city’s bars are located here). It is a big, beautiful cathedral that has been recently cleaned. It glows a brilliant off-white. The third is some sort of a monument. Embarrassingly, all I know is that it is some sort of a war memorial to those fallen, but I couldn’t tell you in which war. (It’s odd, isn’t it? I see it nearly every day, often more than once, and yet I have never really LOOKED at it.)

One day, I was wandering home from the Old Town (Vieux Lille), so when I came upon the street I take home, I found myself walking along the right-hand side. Suddenly, I found myself in a completely new, fascinating place. It was as though I had never walked this street before in my life. I saw buildings from new and different angles, noticed details in the architecture on my right and was able to take a step back (or across if you prefer me to be literal) and really take in the buildings I usually passed when I walked on the left-hand side of the street in their entirety. I saw different people working in different buildings, smelled different smells, stepped over different cracks in the sidewalk. I crossed a different three roads in a roundabout.

It’s fascinating, really. Sometimes all it takes to see something in a new and different way is crossing the street.

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