Emily in France 🇫🇷 Forever on Foot

Every walker is not a flaneur

Lists of untranslatable words have long made the rounds online, leaving folks to contend (often quite unhappily) with the fact that their native tongue has no word for hygge or toska or tsundoku. I always find theses lists interesting, particularly given the French words or phrases that usually find their way onto them. L’appel du vide is a frequent flier, as is esprit d’escalier, neither of which I have found much use for in my day-to-day. (Dépaysement, my favorite untranslateable, with a meaning linked to a sense of unrootedness wholly distinct from homesickness, is usually nowhere to be found.)

But perhaps the most commonly cited French term on such a list is flâneur, a word that, in my opinion, most Americans – and, to be frank, most modern French people – have a harder time grasping than even they know.

To flâne, as I reported for the BBC and explored on my podcast, Navigating the French, means so much more than “to walk” or “to wander,” as it is so frequently translated. Yes, there is walking involved; yes, there is no shortage of wandering. But two essential elements of what it is to flâne are left out of that definition: For one, it must happen in an urban setting; for another, you cannot have a destination.

Walking is my primary mode of locomotion around Paris (Thank you, Amanda Bestor-Siegal, friend and author of the Paris-set beautiful novel The Caretakers for turning me onto this excellent habit.) But I would not say I flâne. If anything, I cannot walk without a destination; most of my longer walks begin with even the vaguest of missions – say heading to a market I like or grabbing a coffee at a favored coffee shop – only to happily fall victim to all manner of distractions. But to depart, I need that impetus so badly that, during the pandemic, I began tricking myself into heading outside for the sole purposes of buying an orange I didn't really need, or toting a lime from my own fridge in my handbag so that, if stopped by the police, I could say I was buying essential groceries.

But these citrus-fueled meanderings did not make me a flâneur. To be quite honest, I’m not sure I’m capable of true flanerie. Part of me craves the directionlessness that so seized people like Charles Baudelaire; part of me thinks that, even after fifteen years in France (and a French passport), I may be too American to go for a walk without a goal in mind.

Destinations, after all, remind me a bit of to-do lists: They give you a goal to shoot for. That flânerie should be a French term makes sense to me, seeing as this was the country that forced me to abandon the to-do list in favor of a to-attempt list, to avoid having my head pop off when, after queuing at the post office for 20 minutes, I was told to come back that afternoon, as the poste was now shuttering for lunch.

But the reality is that I love the tiny yet palpable satisfaction of crossing an item off my to-do list (or, let’s be honest, deleting it from a digital list). And for as much as I love to walk, I do like to have a destination, even if I change my mind, even if I veer off-course, even if, at the end of the walk, I've never reached it at all.

Cheese of the Week

Also known as Brin d’Amour, Fleur du Maquis is a fresh sheep's milk cheese from Corsica that stands out thanks to its thick herb-and-mold crust. The rind may include rosemary, fennel, savory, thyme, juniper, or even chile, depending on the producer. The cheese itself is fairly mild and very creamy thanks to the use of the fat-rich milk of Lacaune sheep, with most of its assertiveness coming from that rustic-looking rind.

To discover more of my favorite cheeses, be sure to follow me on Instagram @emily_in_france, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and tune into the Terroir Podcast, where Caroline Conner and I delve into France's cheese, wine, and more one region at a time.

What I'm Eating

The menu at Papi is so seasonally-driven as to occasionally evolve during service. Luckily, that didn’t happen on my recent visit: I might have cried had I not been able to sample the wholly distinct – and equally delicious – fresh pasta dishes that were in store. More on the blog.

Discover more of my foodie finds via Instagram @emily_in_france and on the blog.

What I’m Doing

June 26 to 30, my friend and fellow writer Anna Polonyi and I will be launching the very first iteration of the Nantes Writers’ Workshop.

During the five-day workshop, you'll take full advantage of morning generative writing sessions with me and afternoon craft and feedback workshops with Anna, an Iowa Writers’ Workshop grad and teacher based in Nantes. In the evenings, convene with us for craft talks over an apéritif.

Check out our website and Instagram for more information, and snag your spot before it’s too late!

Where I’m Going

To la Ciotat to host our next TERRE/MER retreat!

(If you’ve missed this one, never fear! We’ll be hosting our next retreat this fall. Follow us on Instagram to be the first to hear about new dates.)

What I'm Writing

1. Chef Chris Morgan left the fine dining world to open his own pizzeria – and he's sharing his faves in DC for a slice or two. For InsideHook.

2. An exploration of NYC’s oldest delis. For Mashed.

3. From the archives: It would be easy, in spotting a downy, barrel-shaped Chaource, to confuse it for double-cream Brillat-Savarin. I’ll admit I’ve done it several times before, and Lionel Dosne of the Ferme des Tourelles quickly reassures me I’m not the only one. For My French Life.

What I'm Reading

1. It took me a while to settle into the modernist voice of the Fruit Thief, which I thought, at first, was because it was translated from German into English. But in reality, the whimsical, breezy perspective is one that just takes a while to sink into. Once I did, however, this book wholly occupied me for the weeks I was reading it, even – and perhaps especially – in the moments when I set it down. The narrative follows a young woman – the titular fruit thief – on a three-day excursion into France’s Vexin to reunite with her dispersed family. There’s not much to the story otherwise, but the voice is so phenomenal that it distracts you from the fact that it’s nearly devoid of plot. (In case it’s not clear, I would *highly* recommend this book.)

2. This essay on the place of the orange in rituals (religious and not), the circuitous ways in which “local” foods become localized, and why oranges and feminism are happy bedfellows, in the Feminist Food Journal.

3. I often treat coriander/cilantro like a salad green, and as we come into basil season, I loved reading this ode to using herbs less judiciously from Olia Hercules. In the New Yorker.

A bientôt !