August 2017
You've heard of Le Mans because there's a rally there. Nothing in the city actually says anything about the rally.
The city greeted me with cloudy weather and ochre color
The second thing a tourist sees - no "French charm"
Literally a minute later it gets better
Ochre color is clearly Le Mans's theme, haven't seen this in other cities
One of the city's features - narrow streets diagonally from the main one
Where it's quiet and houses with chimneys
Shutters on windows
(shutters on windows too, like almost everywhere in France)
Old signs, identical throughout France
Classically, puddles don't have time to form, everything dries quickly and storm drains work perfectly
My first 20 minutes in Le Mans were like this
I still don't know what the city's name means, but it's often just written "city of Mans." While writing this article, I'm thinking, are Normans northern Mans?
Perfect lighting solution on a narrow street. Writing from Prague in 2022, where in the city center they shoved a pole onto a millimeter-wide sidewalk, and you have to go around it on the wide road where only assholes drive and won't yield on principle
When a twenty-year-old grows a beard and wants to look adult
A purely French thing - sticking the region logo on license plates
And here I get to the main point. You can't see it with the naked eye, but the city has simply wonders of road markings that would make even a Prague person human
The meaning is simple: both Russian Ivan and French Jean will park their jalopy on the sidewalk if given such an opportunity. Two proofs in the photo
Both Gonzo and Hans will shove in ugly advertising if given such an opportunity
Here I got a bit lost
Continuing about good things: the city has interesting relief, trams and women carrying 4 baguettes. A person with a baguette is a stereotype. Only young chicks have one baguette in hand, in the other hand usually a bottle of wine. This means she's a student. Other people buy like 5.
Trams are top
Button to call the traffic light. The company Sagem used to sell phones too, which we jerked off to in "Svyaznoy" magazines
City center, beautiful
Ticket machine is golden, like toilets in Moscow
Again purely a French thing. In August almost nobody works. It's completely normal to write on a store "I'm on my classic vacation once a year"
Or closed until August 16 or 17 (and for educational purposes you can laugh at how the French write phone numbers)
The city has a river where the oldest buildings are located
Sometimes it's unclear what ancient Mans were thinking
Have to draw on all this disgrace
Old town - no comment
*Old town of Mans, to be precise
For those interested, the old courtyard of new Mans looks like this
And the city continues to drown in greenery
The most beautiful place in the city
The whole staircase in flowers
On one side a view of the city
On the other - the beauty of the road and tunnel
France is this, not baguettes.
No point navigating restaurants by their design in France - I'm sure it'll be tastier here than in any hipster place. Even with Comic Sans.
The old town is old in everything. By the way, there are extremely few young people in the city
And that's a shame, you can live
Cheaply and beautifully solved the problem of assholes racing in the center. Can't race through flowers
Greenery, of course, is a separate topic - don't understand how they can do it so beautifully
Notice how traffic is calmed, the longer you look, the more you admire
The main French stereotype that nobody knows about
Bus
In France everywhere except Paris you feel very confident on the roads. It's done simply - no straight roads for acceleration
It's not about bright signs
Instructions on the electrical box for resuscitating a person who climbed into an electrical box
Even in the ass of the world everything's done so an asshole doesn't fly into a turn at huge speed
Didn't want to leave Le Mans, but on the train for the first time in my life I found a normal indication of where I need to sit
Conclusion about Le Mans: you'll never get there, and that's a shame, for me it's one of the most pleasant cities I've been to