Besançon 11 January 2009

It was foggy and cold driving into Besançon (city of my birth) just on sunset. I didn’t think it was a very attractive city initially - lots of tall apartment blocks and heavy industrial area on the Dijon side as we drove in. The city itself is very old, dating back to about 2 AD from the roman days. It’s obviously grown a lot since Mum and Dad were there in the early 60’s.

On Sunday night when we arrived we struggled to find anywhere to eat dinner and ended up settling for pizza from a corner shop guy who said he came from Tunisia. We couldn’t understand a word he said. We just kept smiling and nodding. After we’d collected our pizza and drove off we discovered about 3 other pizza shops close by so obviously pizza is a popular choice for dining in Besançon. The Lonely Planet lists Besançon as one of France’s most liveable cities maybe because of the large numbers of foreign students studying there.

It was a little bit sad being here wondering about what Mum and Dad’s life must have been like when my brother and I were born. Mum and Dad always say how cold and wet and miserable it was. Their main memory is of how hard it was – no money, always working long hours and little time for any fun stuff. I’ve never heard them say anything good about the time they spent here. No wonder they left.

The next morning we were greeted with a beautiful sunny day, blue sky and a frosty -9°C. So we did the normal scraping ice off the car windows before we left. We spent the morning at the Citadel which was a steep climb up a hillside. When we reached the citadel we realised that we could have driven to the top and parked for free. The Citadel was built for Louis XIV in the 16th Century. The admission price included a range of interesting and unusual options - 3 different museums, a zoo, an insectarium, aquarium and noctarium. Not the normal run of the mill things one would expect to come across.

In the zoo, they even had two kangaroos. We felt sorry for them in the freezing temperatures and I wondered how the kangaroos would handle that sort of weather. Ella thought one of the roos looked like it was dead.

The one thing I really wanted to see in Besançon was the clock “The Horloge Astronomique”. It’s an astronomical clock with 30,000 moving parts, 57 faces, 62 dials and tells the time in 16 different places, the tides in eight different ports and the time of sunrise and sunset. The Cathedral area where the clock was located was closed for January.

We also tried to find the house of Madame Degardane who is the lady Mum worked for when they lived in Besançon. We found the correct address but when I knocked on the door no-one answered.