Nancy has a unique situation, lying on a circle in the waterways that is made up of the Nancy Branch Canal, part of the Moselle and a section of the Marne-Rhine Canal. Like St-Jean-de-Losne, it gives access to numerous possible itineraries on the waterways - to Strasbourg, to Luxembourg, to Germany, to the north of France and to the east, as well as south from whence we had come. The shortest - and most obvious - way for us to go to Nancy was to take the Nancy Branch Canal - a 14km trip from near the top of the Canal des Vosges. We’d had countless conversations about our intentions with boaties, port personnel, lockkeepers and other staff of the VNF (who look after the waterways) but it wasn’t until we got to Epinal, just 50km from the turn-off, that we were told that the Branch Canal was closed due to some form of blockage. You would have thought someone might have mentioned it sooner! Perhaps there might have been a notice or two posted at a lock along the way, or perhaps some information on the VNF website - but no, nothing. It would be understandable if the closure was recent - these things can happen quite suddenly - but it had been closed since May 2008!
We would have enjoyed a longer, leisurely stay in Epinal, where mooring costs just 4 euros a night and includes water, electricity and showers, and where the city is compact enough to be easily manageable and big enough to offer a full range of shops and services. What’s more, the people who ran the port there were amongst the loveliest we have met. But with people to meet, we now had a deadline for getting to Nancy and 54km had just been added to our journey!
In fact, we made it comfortably as a large proportion of the extra distance was on the Moselle and you can go faster on rivers than canals - firstly because there is no speed limit (other than that of the boat, which is still quite limited!) and there are many fewer locks. That said, these are huge commercial locks and the lockkeepers have the right to make pleasure craft wait for up to two hours if there are water shortages or (seemingly), if they happen to be having a bad day.
We arrived in Nancy around mid-morning on the 11th of July, the perfect time to find a mooring, even in a busy port even in the height of the holiday period. That gave us a couple of days to rest a little, clean up, do the laundry, get in supplies and familiarise ourselves with the city before Uli and Detlef arrived.
It was the first time in Nancy for both of us; in fact, for all of us and I think we were all pretty impressed. The capital of the region of Lorraine is a beautiful city, relatively flat and very cycle-friendly, well set out with lots of well-developed public spaces and gardens. Its most striking feature, is the Place Stanislas - an enormous, formally laid-out open square featuring a beautiful ensemble of municipal buildings, statues, fountains and, of course, many cafes. The square and the surrounding old part of the city are recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
I think it’s fair to say that our stay in Nancy was marked by two things: “sound and light”, and languages. On our guests’ first night with us, we decided to go and see the Sound and Light show, which takes place at the Place Stanislas every evening in summer at 10:45pm. We got the extended version! The sheet lightning started well before the show did, lighting up the sky in all directions, and we will swear that the first raindrop fell at exactly the moment the real show started. We watched the wondrously imaginative projections on the front of the town hall building under umbrellas accompanied by booming thunder, more lightning and pounding rain, which eased off to nothing just as the show came to an end. Talk about impeccable timing!
We were “treated” to more rain and thunderstorms the following day and abandoned the idea of going to see the planned 14th of July fireworks display. We were almost certain that it would be cancelled because of the weather and none of us really fancied the idea of another late-night drenching. The fireworks did take place, however, and one of us managed to ignore the sound effects as we tried to go off to sleep…
Languages were a feature of the stay because C and Uli have always used French to communicate - both being French teachers and having met during a course for French teachers. J manages in survival French and has no German; Detlef has no French and very limited English but does pretty well in international sign and body language. C has very rusty German which got pushed into action through necessity during the visit. Needless to say, conversations were a confusing mish-mash of all three languages - sometimes with bits of all three featuring in the one sentence. Fortunately the desire to understand and be understood was equally strong all round and it is amazing what an asset that can be to such multi-lingual and multi-cultural conversations! To add to the experience, we had navigated the last leg through to Nancy with a lovely German couple, Claus and Irene. Both spoke excellent English as well as German, of course, and Irene could add French, Dutch and Indonesian to the mix. We had drinks together on two evenings; the first hosted on our boat, the second on theirs. The conversation flowed as fast as the drinks in all directions and switching across the three languages - it was both manic and magic! We left Nancy after six enjoyable days and made the decision to head for Strasbourg.
C with Uli and Detlef
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