Fondremand: A Memory Sealed in Stone

I didn’t expect to remember Fondremand.

It was only meant to be the first stop, a small village on the way to somewhere bigger and more important. I was a student on my very first study abroad trip, groggy from the flight and too jet-lagged to hold much expectation. But the moment we arrived, something shifted.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was just… old. The kind of old I had never touched before. The kind that sinks into the ground and doesn’t need to announce itself.

I had never seen a castle in person. Never stood near Roman ruins. Never walked through a place made entirely of stone, where centuries whispered from every wall. The houses, the lavoir, the way the water slipped quietly through the village—it felt like I was standing in a place that had been lived in for hundreds of years, maybe longer. I remember wondering who had passed through before me. What their lives were like. If they were tired too, and if the calmness of this place had wrapped around them the way it suddenly wrapped around me.

What surprised me most was how intact it all was. In the U.S., things rarely last. We build for function, not for memory. But in Fondremand, the buildings stood not only as relics, but as living parts of daily life. Doors still opened, chairs were still being set out for lunch, and the stone walls still held warmth from the sun. It was quiet, yes—but not abandoned. 

The village itself barely made a sound. Just the trickle of water moving through the creek, soft birdsong, the occasional thud of wooden shutters, and the scrape of a chair dragged onto a terrace as someone prepared the only café that seemed to exist. My feet brushed against loose stones as I walked, the sound grounding me even more than the view. No one rushed. No one filled the silence.

The colors were muted, almost shy, until you reached the grassy areas by the creek where green burst through the gray. Near the water, moss clung thick and slick along the base of the stone ramparts. I remember the sensation of age—not as decay, but as texture. As presence.

There isn’t a castle in Fondremand, not really. Not the kind with battlements and flags and fairy tale endings. But somehow, walking through the narrow lanes and overgrown stones, it felt like I had stepped inside ancient castle grounds. The kind of place where hooves once echoed in the courtyard and gossip slipped between the stones.

And maybe it was the jet lag, or just my overly caffeinated imagination, but I had this vivid moment where my mind wandered to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I pictured the British on one side of the ramparts, the French on the other, shouting nonsense and launching cows over the wall. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. It was absurd. And somehow perfect.

Because that’s what Fondremand did to me. It cracked me open. Gave me silence, yes, but also space to be fully there. To wonder. To daydream. To fall into history and absurdity all at once.

I hadn’t expected anything from Fondremand. I never knew it existed. In fact, I hadn’t even known we were going there. I was just along for the ride, following the flow of whatever came next. And maybe that’s why it hit me so deeply. I didn’t have time to brace for wonder. It just arrived, and I happened to be paying attention.

If Fondremand challenged me in any way, it was in what it did after. I went back home and looked at life differently. The rows of identical houses, the monotony of beige suburbs, the way everything in the States felt temporary or disposable—I noticed it all. And I mourned something I hadn’t even realized I’d found.

Because Fondremand had shown me something lasting. Something that had endured, not because of its fame or function, but because it had never stopped being real. It wasn’t preserved for tourists. It was simply lived in—weathered, mossy, crumbling, alive.

I never lived there. I never stayed the night. I didn’t even know the name of the woman who opened her shutters while I passed by. But something happened in that village. And for all its silence, it’s never stopped echoing in me.

Fondremand wasn’t a destination. It was a beginning.

A quiet corner of the world that cracked open my curiosity and offered me my first glimpse of time layered into place. I didn’t capture it in perfect photos. I didn’t even know to look for it. But it found me anyway, through stone and water and birdsong.

More than a decade later, I still carry Fondremand with me. It didn’t try to impress. There were no grand gestures, no curated charm. It simply offered what it had always been—still, weathered, and quietly alive. And maybe that’s why I’d bring people there now. Not to check something off a list, but to offer them that same deep breath of history, quiet, and wonder. A reminder that the moments that shape us don’t always ask permission. They arrive gently, almost unnoticed, and stay long after.

Besançon: The Quiet Flame That Almost Called Me Home

A love letter to a city that shaped my path, even though I didn’t stay.

In 2014, when I stepped into France for the first time. I didn’t know then that the country would one day become my second skin, but something stirred even then. And one of the first places to hold me in that early wonder was Besançon.

Tucked between green hills and quiet rivers, circled by a citadel that felt more like a guardian than a monument, Besançon wasn’t flashy. It didn’t need to be. It had history in its bones, thoughtfulness in its air, and a pulse that felt steady, like it had nothing to prove.

I remember the streets, soft and worn with time, curving through the city like whispered invitations. There were festivals alive with color, cafés filled with students and locals, and layers of importance buried beneath the surface—Roman roots, watchmakers, revolutionaries. This wasn’t a town dressed up for tourists. It was a city living its own truth.

There was something deeply grounding about it. Maybe it was the presence of the mountains, watching from a distance. Or the embrace of the river Doubs, looping calmly around the heart of the town. I’ve always been drawn to places where water and land meet with quiet reverence, where nature and history wrap around each other like old friends. Besançon had that.

And yet… it didn’t become my home.

Later that same trip, I visited Alsace. Not Strasbourg yet, but the villages. And something flickered again. A different kind of magic. A different kind of story waiting.

When it came time to choose a home in France, I thought long and hard about Besançon. I nearly said yes. But Strasbourg offered something I couldn’t ignore, connection. To other countries, to the world. A rhythm that matched my work and my wanderlust. A place that still had rivers and mountains, but also an open door to everywhere else.

Still, I think of Besançon often. The way you think of a first love, not with regret, but with tenderness. It was the first place that showed me I could belong somewhere in France. That there was space for me here. And I carry that gift with me still.

Some cities give you a future.

Others give you the courage to imagine one.

Besançon was that kind of city.