On Capital Cities viewed by Countryside People

So, we recently moved to Paris. It’s really pleasant to discover this part of the universe.

This city has been one of Europe’s centres of attention for many centuries, with it’s lot of history, art, culture, architecture, joys, sorrows. There’s a lot of action going on all the time. The cafés are busy, there’s people playing music, dancing in the streets, fighting sometimes. People dressed very well, walking very fast. People barely dressed at all, walking very slow. It can be a little bit overwhelming, sometimes.

But maybe it’s because we’re not from there.

When you start meeting international people, you always hear the same. « Paris is not France », « ah, the people from Seoul are very different from where I’m from », « There’s more to Sweden than just Stockholm », etc etc. 

Capital cities and their people always seem to be put at a distance from, well, frankly, most people. It seems to be like this everywhere. Why is that ?

There’s the obvious, inequalities of salary, centrality of the media that overstates how important affairs in Capital actually are, there’s the fact that this is where the tourist visits and misses out on a lot of what actually means to local people. But I’ve often wondered if there was not something else.

So, there’s this book I read about a couple of years ago while visiting Fanø, by Lena Krogh Bertram « Min Mormors Billedbog », 

As I’m sure it’s clear for Scandinavian speakers, it is a picture book from her grandmother’s time - a woman from Fanø that lived there from 1879 to 1954.

If you go to Fanø, you’ll feel it : it’s villages are tiny. Small houses, their roofs are low, their streets are narrow, and why wouldn’t they be ? It’s a small fishing island ! If most of their income now comes from tourism - the island is located in a very special place of the World, in the Northern part of the Wadden Sea, one of the largest intertidal zones in the World, that makes it a biodiversity and touristic Wonderland, especially considering that it is only a small 100km from the German border -, most of it’s history has been somewhat linked to fishing.

This is what you see in this book. Old pictures from a small fisher town on the West coast of Denmark. 

And then, there is this section of the book where these old women go to Copenhagen. 

This stuck with me for a while. You see them in the big city (actually, Copenhagen is not the biggest city either but that’s beside the point).

To do so, and this is me guessing so I might be wrong, but I think they must have taken a boat to the mainland first. Then, they must have cross the continental part and taken another ship to an island called Fyn, then cross to the Eastern side of that island, and taken yet another ship to Sjaelland, and theeen gone through this island to finally reach Copenhagen. That’s not a thing they must have done easily nor everyday. Maybe only a few times in their lifetime. If more than once, even.

You feel it in yourself, in your own body. The speed, the impression of grandeur, the inability to grasp all the history that happened there. You look at the City Hall and it’s HUGE. You can’t even decipher the letters, you can’t count the ornaments, you don’t know the people represented even though you feel like you should. Yet people around you seem to be used to this, they walk fast, they don’t look up in awe at the amazing art nouveau building, they speak a language you understand yet ever so slightly different. What’s this word ? Is he making fun of me or looking down on me or am I crazy ? Is it just the dialect ? The accent ? Everything seems foreign.

It’s not bad, there’s a lot of wonderful things all around, but it’s overwhelming. 

I wish I had the picture to show here, but you can really see it in their body language. They look small. Stiff. Uneasy. And I understand them, I’ve seen it so many times. I’ve lived it so many times.

It feels like I’m reinventing gunpowder here, writing a lot of words to say « city rat is not country mouse ». Yet it feels like there’s more. It feels like when grandma comes back to Fanø and explains about her trip to Copenhagen, she will always say « yes, but »… « Yes, but » for a good reason ! She’s not inventing anything, she saw it through her eyes, she lived it in her bones, in her heart, in her soul. So she says « yes, but ».

And that’s how we get socialized, after all. When you’re a kid and you listen to that again and every time one speaks about the Capital, you get a feeling, an idea about it you won’t be able to shake once you get to visit. Then you’ll feel it yourself, and you’ll give your honest impression - but is it really your own ?

Something based in the past gets to influence the present. A ghost, a remnant from another time, not only based in our current reality but inherited from a distant one.

I’m often wondering, how much of our current thoughts and opinions are ghosts of the past. Just exactly how much of it is anchored in reality, and in which one. Not that there’s no difference between capital cities and countryside towns, saying otherwise would be nonsense. But is what we think about them reflecting current situations, or a reality where people had to take 3 boats and take 3 trains to reach their once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Capital ?

I guess what I’m saying if very basic - very Bourdieusien. You are shaped by where you’re coming from. The place you’re from is anchored in you, deep within your body itself. We know that, we feel it everyday. It just resonated with me a bit, seeing this picture, for some reason.

The ghosts of the past are influencing the present. And we know that. We just forget about them too often. Here was a reminder.

Etienne, January 12025