Jour: 10 août 2021

A specific word in French indicates rivers that end in oceans : fleuve. Getting my hair cut the other day in Boulogne Billancourt not far from the Seine I asked my coiffeuse, an immigrant like myself, if she knew anything about the Seine. « I know it’s a floose » she replied. Everyone in the salon erupted in laughter. This fleuve is no floose. Traversing Paris under 37 bridges on it’s 776 kilometer run from a plateau north of Dijon to the English Channel at Le Havre, the Seine, steeped in history with a capital H, is one of five principal ocean-flowing rivers in France. The Loire is the longest at 1010 kilometers. La Garonne, Le Rhône and Le Rhin are the others. Until joined by the tributary Aube, the river carries the first of its noms-de-fleuve, the Petite-Seine. Farther on, augmented again by the Yonne at Montereau, it is the Haute-Seine until Paris. Then it is the Basse-Seine to Rouen and, finally, the Seine-Maritime to the sweep of the sea. The Seine everybody sees is in …