L'odeur me Manque (I Miss the Stink).

 I miss the stinky streets of Montpellier, France. During my study abroad last semester, the streets I wondered down everyday left a powerful impression on me. Not a particularly positive one either. At the time I was there, I had visceral reactions when I walked down certain streets in the small city and saw trash crumpled on the sidewalk from people stepping over it all day long. I don't know if it was just a quintessential city smell or if it was specific to Montpellier, but there was a potent odor that no new foreign student could deny. Especially one from a small coastal town in Maine, with the only strong detectable odor being the salty Atlantic Ocean. The city was beautiful and quaint, but I came to learn that certain parts were best avoided or at the very least, I needed to cover my nose to walk down a street or two in my neighborhood, Plan Cabanes. My friends and I joked pretty much everyday about how there was an unpleasant smell wafting down the narrow roads that lay between gorgeous limestone-built shops and boutiques. The French university I attended, L'Université de Paul Valéry, had specific rooms that smelled like soap is a non-existent product in France. It didn't matter the time of day or the weather. There was always certain pungent odors in corridors, rues, and corners in Montpellier. I grew to not notice it as much, but it still hit me as shocking months into my semester there. France was not known to be a "bad smelling" place, so why did this small city in the South of France reek? I will never know. 

I would do anything to smell those funky streets or sweaty rooms in the overheated university again. My nose would gladly pay the cost if my heart could be uplifted by being there once more for even just 24 hours. Green identifies this yearning, the desire to remember a smell (good or bad) with strong emotions. "As a result, each time we smell something familiar, emotions, memories associated with the names of things emitting the odor are usually simple nouns or adjectives expressing either the unpleasantness or pleasantness of the smell, most of which merely mean good or bad smell,,, Olfactory and gustatory reduce us to saying little more than yum or yuck" (Green, pg. 8). Although I can't process the smell through my nose and brain anymore, I can still conjure up a reaction to the idea of the smell in Montpellier, which has evolved into me reacting positively with nostalgia and desire. It's weird to say I miss the stink, but I don't have to say that. I can just say "L'odeur me manque."