Rennes Daze

Precipitous behavior beneath the rainy skies of Brittany

Another gray, rainy day in Rennes

When locals ask me why I moved to Brittany, I usually joke and say, la météo - the weather.

Inevitably, the sky is gray and they scoff at me like Renault did when Rick told him he’d moved to desert-dry Casablanca for the waters. I was misinformed.

But that’s not true. I kinda knew what I was in for when Theresa and I made the local climate a major criterion in the selection of our new home. We both hate the heat, and the way things are going with global warming… Well, any idyllic dreams of lazing on the sunny Mediterranean were out of the question.

Instead, we opted for cooler climes of northwest France, where we turn on a small air conditioner maybe four or five days a year. Wintertime is moderate, with only a few days dropping to 0 degrees celsius. We’ve seen snow here exactly once in three years, and it was gone by noon.

The tradeoff is rain. Lots of it.

On average, we have 175 rain days a year in Rennes. That’s nearly a month of rain more than Seattle. In 2024, it rained 199 days. A hundred and ninety-nine freaking days!

Sometimes - like, right now - it seems endless. As I write this on Monday, it has rained 48 of the past 54 days. With weather like that, things just never dry out. The parks are no-go mud zones. Plopping down on a café chair is out of the question. Our terrace is covered with a slippery coating of algae and mildew that is now home to a colony of angry salamanders.

It’s different from the weather I was accustomed to back in Philly. In December, you’d get a pelting spray of freezing rain and ice euphemistically known as a wintry mix. We’d huddle around the fireplace and stave off pneumonia with bottles of Nyquil. In the summertime, we’d suffocate for days in the haze of 100 percent humidity, a suffering that would be broken only by torrential afternoon downpours that we’d pray would stop in time to light the barbeque for dinner.

But did we let lousy weather get in our way? Hell no! Do you know how many home rainouts the Phillies had in 2024? Two!

Here, the rain hits us in waves. In one 10-hour span, I once counted eight separate downpours that came and went as quickly as a new Taylor Swift song. (And, yes, I counted them because what the hell else am I going to do when it gets like this?) Here’s a daily weather report from the first 10 days of this month:

The only thing missing in there is “cats and dogs.”

Theresa and I are constantly asking each other: Do you think I should bring an umbrella? The answer is yes. Always yes.

Truth is, I rarely bother with umbrellas. That fun weather report included sporadic 35 mph winds, so what’s the use? You just pull on a parka and grind it out.

Which brings to mind the local aphorism: En Bretagne, il ne pleut que sur les cons - in Brittany, it only rains on idiots.

I’ve parsed that saying many times since moving here. To be precise, the way it’s translated to English, it means idiots only experience rain; they never see the sunshine. But that seems overly harsh, and not entirely accurate, considering the number of dumbasses I’ve seen around this place on perfectly nice days.

I think the adage means that idiots are the only ones who get wet. Which can be taken a number of ways:

• If you’re not wet, it’s because you’re smart enough to find some warm, dry place.

• If you are wet, it’s your own damn fault that you didn’t bundle up properly. You’re an idiot.

But truth is, I think the saying means we’re all idiots for deciding to live on a windswept peninsula on the Atlantic. Which means we’re in this together, so zip it and get along with life.

Come to think of it, that’s the way we did in Philly, too.