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Life’s a Quiche

— A visit to Metz and Nancy, the two major cities of Lorraine.”

For the benefit of the folks at home, our parents in the United Kingdom, we drew a slice of quiche on the back of the postcard. This was our way of making a familiar reference to the region of Lorraine.

We were sketching the quiche early on a hot, drowsy late summer afternoon in Nancy. Residents who weren’t yet near-horizontal on the terrasse of a café were shuffling past with their clutch of fresh, Sunday baguettes. A small proportion of these bread buyers couldn’t wait until they got home: they had already torn off and were chewing the exposed end. This is something I have always, despite myself, found totally sacrilegious.

The sketch turned out to be a near-masterpiece, rendered with understated hatching in black biro. Lightly browned on top with a just-right coverage of lardons and a tangy, roasted cross-section of tomato on top, this inky quiche looked good enough to eat.

A week or so later, during a ‘phone call after the postcard had arrived at its intended destination, my mother declared that she thought the picture was of “some kind of map”.

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Lorraine

A weekend in the fine French cities of Nancy and Metz, each with its own history and identity and each a local rival to the other.

Metz

Even though barely more than 50km from the border, Metz doesn’t betray any German influence, though the city has changed hands a few times in the last century and a half.

Despite thus being an historical symbol of intra-hegemonic dispute, Metz bucked the trend by being the city over which the first international handshake in space occurred, between American and Russian astronauts in 1975.

The lofty cathedral of St Étienne almost seems to reach into space too.

Narrow and incredibly high (the nave is tenth tallest in the world), it has occupied an elevated position overlooking the Moselle river since 1220, though construction was not completed until three centuries later.

Harmonising with the gothic architecture are the bright, richly-coloured stained glass windows, some of which are the work of the artist Marc Chagall.

Nancy

While Metz is a solid, medieval sort of place, neighbouring Nancy is cut from very different cloth.

The rather elegant appearance of the city was marked thus indelibly by one of history’s more curious figures, Stanisław Leszczyński. King of Poland twice, Leszczyński eventually abdicated in a payoff deal that gave him the Duchy of Lorraine.

In the centre of the wide square that bears his name, Stanisław’s statue points North, presumably in the direction from whence he came. Whatever his unusual origins, this remarkable feat of urban planning joins two distinct parts of Nancy in a delightful way, providing a focal point for the city at any time of day.

The square was allowed nevertheless to fall into disrepair or even disuse at times during its history. It’s hard to believe when looking at the results of the recent 9.5m euro restoration that for forty-odd ignominious years, Place Stan’ served as a car park. Today it forms part of a UNESCO World Heritage site that was our fifth visit to such a site this year.