seoulless in france

This is the end... (of the innocence?)

2009-05-21T15:38:00.002+02:00

After a mere four and a half months, I found myself back in Minnesota, with not even a day to recover before driving my sister to Florida, 24 hours of driving time of which I drove at least 19. Coming back I felt like I had never left - everything was the same, my semester in France only a dream. Yet I know I've changed - my plans for the future more solidified, and every time I open my mouth something strange comes out, I'm using French words like they're English, and random British expressions. I don't even understand me half the time.

So this was a good experience? Of course. I learnt a lot. Was it as fulfilling as Korea? Probably not; between the strike and my constant travel I didn't really integrate myself as I had there. On top of that my French was significantly better upon arrival than my Korean had been.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. This was the best four and a half months of my life. If nothing else, my wanderlust has been satiated for a little while anyway.

Suomi

2009-05-14T21:15:00.004+02:00

As originally planned, Finland was not to be my final destination in Europe, but things have changed and tomorrow morning I'll be flying to Minneapolis from Helsinki via Reykjavik instead of spending a week in Scotland as I'd hoped.

As final destinations go, Finland is hardly the worst. Although the weather is the coolest I have encountered in quite some time, the especially late sunsets and my hostel's location on a small penninsula surrounded by cruise docks have made this quite a remarkable stay. Admittedly I've not been doing as much exploring as I usually do, I chalk that up to anxiety and timing. However I spent a good chunk of Wednesday and Thursday wandering around the capital, seeing what Helsinki has to offer, apparently quite inconspicuously; I had quite a few people coming up to me and asking things in Finnish. A few I could guess what they wanted, but some I just had no clue and had to try to get it across that I had no idea what they were saying- which they usually seemed to interpret as a negative response to their request! Weird. Even better were the English tourists asking me for directions, especially because I actually was able to give them!

Overall a lovely outing... I'm going to miss this random travelling but I'm afraid it's back to routine for me! At least until I get a well paid job with lots of holiday time, that is...

This city is trying to kill me...

2009-05-13T12:18:00.002+02:00

Sunday afternoon I flew to London for the last time, after which I took a train up to Birmingham to spend just over a day with Sam. I left my two larger bags in storage at the airport, seeing as I would be back early Tuesday morning.Sam met me at the station, and we ended up going to the cinema to see Star Trek; it was much better in English than it had been in French... I guess I had missed a lot of the nuances.

Sam still had classes on Monday so I went into the city centre for my last time doing anything English - sometimes I'm convinced I actually studied in the UK and not France, as much time as I visited during the semester. Ah well. After hanging out for the day I had a 10pm train that was supposed to have arrived at the airport at 1am, with a few connections of course. Needless to say, this did not happen.

My train was half an hour late in arriving to Watford Junction, where I was supposed to have changed for Clapham Junction. However, I missed the connection which was unfortunately the last of the day, and the next wasn't until almost 6am; my flight for Helsinki was at 8 am. Since waiting wasn't really an option, it's a good thing I got to know the London area so well this semseter. I took the next train, bound for London Euston, figuring I'd try to get at least as far as Victoria, taking the first train to Gatwick in the morning. However, I arrived just after the last underground toward Victoria had left. I was a bit stumped, but finally I found a bus schedule and discovered the N73 headed for Victoria. I had to take out money and buy a coffee to get change for a bus ticket, but I made it into Victoria just before two. I remembered that the station closes between 1 and 5 from when I was waiting to see Wicked, but I saw a worker standing near the entrance and decided to ask him when the first train to the airport was. "Platform 19", he says, "leaves in 10 minutes." Turns out I had just made the last train of the night! I had no idea they ran this late... Probably would have changed things when I was rerouted to Toulouse. So I still managed to get to the airport by three, get my bags, argue about their weight, and get on my flight, and now I find myself in Finland!

When I got in yesterday afternoon I was beyond exhausted. I checked into my hostel and went for a walk around the area, eventually buying groceries and coming back. From what I've seen so far this is a gorgeous country, and I'm excited to spend the next two days exploring before finally heading home on Friday! I can't believe my time in Europe is almost over.

la côte

2009-05-09T10:26:00.004+02:00

My last excursion in France meant I travelled four hours by train to Antibes, where I met my dad's cousin Terry. I had stayed with her in Biot for three weeks back in 2001, my only previous experience in France, so I felt it was only right I should see her again since I was so close.

I arrived Thursday afternoon, and after having a quick lunch at her home, she took me to Tourrettes-sur-Loup, a perched village overlooking the river known for its abundance of violets.
The town was very medieval, and quite gorgeous. We tried the local specialty of violet flavoured ice cream, which was surprisingly good - I've never really thought about flowers as flavours before, but I suppose it makes as much sense as fruits or things like vanilla!

Later that evening we went with her son Derek (who is about my age) to an Indian restaurant in Antibes. I'd never really had Indian food before, excepting anglicized and Japanese curries. I was pleasantly surprised by my tandoori lamb seasoned with creme and saffron - quite delicious.
This is quickly turning into an ode to food!

8 Mai is a holiday in France marking the end of World War II - known as V-E day back home. It's obviously much more important here, since even after it ended in Europe the US was still fighting in Japan, while France could finally celebrated its true liberation and the end of several years of struggle. I guess the closest equivalent in America is Memorial Day - the stores here closed early, and most people had the day off which they used to barbecue or go to the beach. We had to go to Valbonne to get groceries in the morning, since they would be closed by the time we got back in the evening. It also meant veteran's ceremonies as well, which we passed by whilst driving along the coast.

We had decided to spend the afternoon in Saint Tropez, which is generally considered the western end of the French Riviera (Menton being the eastern), so we took the coastal route to get there. This meant passing through Cannes, where they had begun setting up for the film festival which begins next week. The setup was impressive, the red carpet was already out, and many of the movies being shown had posters around the town and on the fancy hotels where celebrities would be staying throughout the festival. I can't even begin to imagine how crowded it must get - even just for the beach holiday it was full of people.

As we got further west, we noticed a large number of police vehicles - turns out they were escorting coach buses of diplomats and veterans returning from a 8 Mai ceremony in Sainte Maxime. This caused a slight diversion in our route, where we noticed yet another anomaly - motorcycles. Dozens. Hundreds. Eventually we passed the reason: a Harley Davidson euro festival, some sort of rally I could only assume. The licence plates came from all over Europe, so I guess this was perhaps one of the big meetups, Europe's equivalent of Sturgis or Daytona bike week. Apparently there was to be some sort of Parade in the city centre on Saturday as well... Very interesting. This mass of cycles continued all the way to Saint Tropez, where many of the restaurants had Harley-themed banners and were full of bikers. We ended up stopping at a pizzeria for lunch and wandering around the city, climbing up to the citadel and getting a spectacular view of the city.

Friday evening was dinner and a movie, staying up too late but there wasn't a whole lot to do in the morning. My train was just before two, so we spent the morning in the village of Biot, touring the old city and the glass blower for which Biot is famous - they make a special kind of glass here that is infused with soda, so that the glass has small bubbles in it. Apparently many famous people have gotten their glass here; they even had a special colour that was commissioned by Jackie Kennedy.

We had lunch afterwards, and then Terry took me back to the station in Antibes. I have only one evening left in Montpellier, which of course will be consumed by packing and cleaning. I can't believe it's almost over!

I think I have sand in my camera...

2009-05-03T12:19:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I finally made it to the beach, and do I ever have the sunburn to show for it! I went with my friend Bridgette, with the intention of studying a little for our German test while sitting on the sand. I ended up playing in the water (which was absolutely freezing) while she was sunbathing, then sat to dry whilst looking over my textbook for a little while. We didn't end up staying very long, mostly out of boredom but also because the wind kept blowing sand everywhere - it was starting to get annoying.

On the bus back to Montpellier from Pérols (where the beach we went to is located), we stopped off at a mall in Lattes, which was dominated by a Carrefour, a gigantic French store which is sort of like a super wal-mart or some such, except about three times as big, and actually worth going into. There aren't any in Montpellier itself so I wanted to check it out. We ended up getting granitas to cool off and wandering around in the lovely air conditioning for a while before heading back to do some real studying. It's too bad I only went to the beach once, but honestly I don't think my pasty white skin could take any more than that!

May Day

2009-05-01T14:17:00.002+02:00

Today's a national holiday in France (fête du travail - labour day) which means absolutely nothing is open, the buses and trams aren't running, and of course there's a protest at the Comédie. Now, I'm hiding in my room trying to finish my last paper, but I know of this because people have come around knocking on all the doors in the dormitory handing out fliers and encouraging everyone to "venez nombreux" in support of whatever cause they were fighting for this time. I'm down with "fighting for your rights" and all, but it seems to me the more often you do so the less effective it probably becomes. What do I know, though. I'm just another frustrated foreign student who's simply hoping she can take her German test next week since she's leaving a few days later for good.

Can hardly believe that - 10 days until I depart France, 5 more and then I'm home. Time has flown by, but it hasn't seemed to accomplish much. Speaking of which...

back in the saddle

2009-04-27T22:20:00.000+02:00

Since Sam's spending her summer in Florida, I went up to Birmingham for one last weekend of mayhem in order to spend a little more time with her. Saw a few movies, ate some good food, went back to Cadbury World... We planned on hitting up a scifi convention but it was just too far from the city centre, such is life. Thus was my sixth trip into the UK this semester, my last real one, and probably a good thing the way the immigration people have started to get suspicious of me... Hehe. Spent Thursday night in Stansted airport before heading by train to Brum, staying in the coffee shop which was thankfully open 24 hours. Coming home was a Sunday night flight from Birmingham to Marseille, where I decided to splurge on a hotel near the airport since my train for Montpellier wasn't until eight this morning and I got in by 10... A good night's sleep is never unappreciated before class.

Except there was no class. Sometime over the weekend the strikers had come back and reblocked the campus; I waited for 20 minutes outside a barricaded classroom for a Prof who never showed up. I just got word my lit test for Wednesday was cancelled, so I'm writing another four page paper after all. And I have no idea what's going to happen with German, and if I should even bother getting up tomorrow... At least this is almost over. Being here with no class at least means I can see everything I missed in Montpellier whilst I was busy travelling everywhere else in Europe. So worth it, though.

The Beginning of the End

2009-04-23T16:31:00.003+02:00

My last day of spring break, last day in Belfast, was spent staring at the river, wandering about the city and pretty much just relaxing. My flight was scheduled for six thirty, but delayed two hours so it was almost midnight by the time I got to the airport in Paris, and almost 1am when I got to the Gare de Lyon, where I would have a 6 am train back to Montpellier. What I unfortunately didn't know is that the station closes between 1:30 and 4:30, so I was left sitting on the benches outside, wandering the streets of Paris in the middle of the night, going to the police prefecture to use the toilet... Interesting night.

I got back to Montpellier a few hours before my one Monday class, so I dropped off my bags, changed into some cleaner clothes, and went to class more tired than I could imagine - luckily we were just going over our last test.

This week was finals and classes, from here out all I have left is a lit test and several more German classes. It's nearing the end!

Eireann

2009-04-18T22:53:00.002+02:00

Friday morning in Glasgow was cold, so after taking several pictures near the river Clyde we sought refuge in a mall until it was time to catch the bus for the airport. Our flight for Belfast was just before three, and lasted only about 25 minutes - shortest flight I've ever been on! We were to our hostel before five, and went to explore the city.

We went first by the Queen's University where the botanical gardens are located. The blooming flowers were absolutely gorgeous. We explored the city streets headed for the city centre spending the rest of the evening wandering about.

This morning we took the train to Dublin to meet my sister and so Stevie could have a chance to visit the Republic of Ireland. We only spent a few hours, but I felt like it was my turn to be tour guide since I remembered the layout of the streets from when I was there in February.

We got back into Belfast around 7, and since Stevie is flying to Nice early tomorrow morning we spent just a little longer looking around the city before returning to the hostel. I'm not flying back to Paris until tomorrow evening, so I still have one more day in Belfast before my break is effectively over - getting into Paris late and taking a train back to Montpellier Monday morning!

Oh ye'll take the high road...

2009-04-16T19:04:00.003+02:00

We got up early this morning, headed out for a day of adventure. We took the train from Glasgow Queen Street, getting off at Balloch on the edge of Loch Lomond. We walked around the shore, just enjoying the beautiful scenery, the mist rolling in... The loch is huge so we only walked as far as Balloch castle and the gardens nearby. It was quite a relaxing walk around.

We stopped for lunch, where I tried some Scottish fish 'n' chips, fresh from the loch, I assume. It was absolutely delicious. Stevie had wanted to go up to Inverary as well, but due to the limited bus schedule and our not being able to find the stop we weren't able to make it, so we got back on the train to Glasgow. It was late afternoon so we wandered about the city for a while, just enjoying Scotland whilst we're here!

April in Paris

2009-04-15T23:37:00.004+02:00

So despite sort of staying there back in January after Disney, this is really my first time seeing Paris; odd that I'd see so much of the rest of Europe before finally seeing the capital of the country I live in! We got in from Luxembourg in the early afternoon, our hostel being a short walk from the Gare de l'Est where our train arrived. I guess we didn't realize when we booked it, but this wasn't really the nicest part of Paris... This is definitely the worst hostel I've ever been in... It was dirty and creepy, but it was livable for the one night we were there.

After dropping off our bags we bought a metro pass and headed out to see the main sights: Notre Dame, L'Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower... The Louvre is sadly closed on Tuesdays but knowing us we probably wouldn't have paid to go in anyway. We saw the outside at least, which is quite impressive in itself.

In the evening we met up with Stevie's friend who was now living in Paris, she and her boyfriend showed us around near the Bastille and we ended up getting dinner and then sitting for a while in a café in true Parisien fashion. I got a few more nice pictures and we took the metro home, going to sleep later than usual.

We got up and headed for Charles de Gaulle airport, and arrived quite early for out flight to Glasgow. It was nice to relax though, and now that we're in Scotland we're trying to figure out what the rest of our trip holds... Hard to believe we have only a few days left!

Take it easy

2009-04-13T22:48:00.006+02:00

The train ride from Copenhagen to Hamburg was a little odd- the water between Denmark and Germany is so far across there is no bridge to connect it, rather a ferry that the train actually went inside. The passengers had to leave the train during the crossing, which lasted about 45 minutes, and go up into the boat itself. It kind of seemed like a truck stop on water, especially since the ferry also hauled semi trucks and cars.

When we got to Hamburg, our hostel was rather easy to find, and actually quite amazing - it was much like a hotel. We ended up buying some food at a nearby supermarket, then walking toward the harbour for a short while. We didn't really see much of the city, deciding to take it easy after all of the the hard core travelling we had done until that point. It was mostly just a halfway point between Copenhagen and Amsterdam for us anyway, so we didn't mind not seeing as much as in other places.

We got up early to catch a train first for Münster, where we caught a second to Oberhausen, then finally getting on the train for Amsterdam - probably the longest overall journey we've had to this point. When we got to Amsterdam, we didn't plan on staying very long since we were to spend the night in Brussels, and this ended up bring the right choice. I don't think Amsterdam was really my kind of city - the "coffee shops" left what seemed like a permanent cloud of smoke around the canals, and much of the signage and memorabilia was for the red light district and of course Amesterdam's drug trade. After only a few hours we were bored of it anyway, so getting on the train for Brussels was a bit of a relief.

We got into Brussels in the early evening, going straight to drop off our bags and check out the sights. Stevie had gone to Brussels once before, so she was able to sort of guide me about the city. There were a lot of neat sights outdoors, but being Easter and all, a lot was closed. We decided to splurge on an Easter dinner, and ended up eating at a Mexican restaurant. It was good, especially since it's been a while since I've had any. It was very expensive, though, way more than I'd ever normally pay for that kind of food. It was nice to have a real meal though, and I had a good time overall in Brussels.

In the morning we decided to take a quick trip to Brugge, being only about an hour from Brussels. It was quite a lovely little town, old and quaint, and quite a beautiful excursion. We walked through the streets, admiring and taking it all in. We had a sort of picnic on a park bench overlooking the water, and it turned out to be quite the wonderful morning. We went back to Brussels for an hour before heading on to Luxembourg for the night.

It was about a three hour ride to Luxembourg city, so it was evening by the time we arrived. We met the people we were staying with at the station, and they drove us to the centre of town, showing us around for a while. We had ice cream and walked for a while, but the town being rather small it didn't take us long to see everything. We went back to their flat where we had a delicious dinner and watched a movie. Overall a good time.

So the past few days may have been at a slower pace than before, but I still feel like I enjoyed myself in places I never imagined I would be! In the morning we head for Paris, one last train ride before we fly for the last of our journey...

Leaving on a jet plane

2009-04-11T09:39:00.000+02:00

A change from our normal routine meant getting up early and finding our way to the Prague airport for our short flight to Copenhagen. It wasn't at all difficult, just the metro to the end of the line and then a short bus ride. We got there too early for check in, so we sat and waited, finally checking in, waiting some more, taking off, and landing just before noon at Kastrup Lufthavn.

Our hostel was within walking distance of the airport, convenient for dropping off bags but far from the city proper. We checked in and set down our stuff, then setting out in search of a bus that would take us to central Copenhagen. We got off on the far end and headed first to the one sight I remembered being interested in, the Tycho Brahe planetarium. The admission was a little out of our price range (everything in Denmark is...) but we looked in the little shop and the information centre and whatnot, so I was mostly satisfied. We headed from there out in a line of sights, walking by an amusement park (we didn't know that's what it was at first; on the map it just looked like a park), seeing many old buildings and fancy streets.

We ended up sitting for a little while in the King's Gardens, before walking to the Citadel. This was a military fortress built into an impressive trench, complete with barracks and high walls. We wandered around there for some time, admiring the scenery and climbing the hills. After this we wanted to find the Little Mermaid monument, so we tried going straight there... Only to find a sort of moat in our way! We had to walk the long way around but eventually found it. This is based on Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale, he being a Danish fairytale writer there were many monuments to him around the city. It was by far the most crowded area we'd been to in Copenhagen, perhaps it's top tourist attraction?

After walking back through the streets and absorbing a little more Danish culture, we got on a bus back for the hostel. We realized after it was too late that the bus we had gotten on didn't go as far as the stop we needed, so we ended up having a long walk back... It's okay, though, I know I needed the exercise!

After spending the night we're heading to the airport train station, and making our way to our next stop: Hamburg!

Moving on and on...

2009-04-09T18:29:00.005+02:00

I was able to buy a new battery for my camera in Vienna and a new charger (complete with car adapter!)in Prague so suddenly I feel a lot better. I missed out on a lot of pictures that I otherwise would have loved but at least I can keep going now.

Our train from Vienna to Prague was to leave just before one, so we spent the morning looking for some of the sights we hadn't caught the night before. Stevie was hoping to make it to the zoo, her being a big animal lover and Vienna's zoo being the oldest in the world. We got to the zoological gardens and looked around for a while, but the entry for the zoo itself was a little out of our price range so we settled for staring at the Japanese garden just outside and relaxing for a while. A few more shopping streets and another park later we were off for Prague.

It was about a four and a half hour ride, so I napped most of the way. We got in at 5:30 and headed for the underground and then a tram for our hostel. It's a nice little place, well kept and not in the centre of town but still easy access to everything. We explored a little bit after dropping off our bags, first popping into an electronics store to look for a charger; they didn't have the right kind, but the way the guy was poking around and testing different cords kind of reminded me of someone... We walked toward Namesti Miru, a beautiful church near our hostel, on toward the museum street, and eventually found a Chinese restaurant where we had a real dinner for the first time in what felt like ages - buying food at markets is nice on the wallet but occasionally the stomach just cries out for more.

We slept in a bit in the morning before heading out for the day. We had a small tourist map of the centre of Prague, and we were determined to hit everything on it. We started out walking down the main road from the museum, which at the end was home to yet another Easter market - that time of year, I guess. Prague is full of medieval churches, plenty of photogenic buildings, castles, monuments... Suffice it to say without my camera I probably would have died a little inside. We walked up and around both sides of the river, sitting for a while near the senate building, seeing palaces, monuments... You get the idea. After a while it's hard to remember and describe everything because we're seeing so much! But I suppose that's what pictures are for.

One thing I did remember my grandma mentioning from when she'd been to Prague is the Infant Jesus of Prague, a memorial statue in one of the churches, a very religious monument. Today being Holy Thursday and all, I knelt down in front of it and prayed for a little while, hoping everything goes better for me and everyone I know. The whole world, even.

Detour

2009-04-07T22:14:00.003+02:00

Since Stevie was able to get a rail pass of her own, we decided to take advantage and spend a few hours in Slovakia on our way to Vienna for the evening. We walked from our hostel in Budapest to the central station, about a 45 minute walk, when I realized I had left my camera's battery charger, complete with the battery, at the hostel. As you may imagine from how my posts are arranged, I usually take a ton of pictures, and since we didn't have time to go back before our train I was absolutely devastated. Luckily we got in touch with the hostel and they found my charger, willing to mail it back to France for me. But of course this means I can't take nearly the amount of pictures I had hoped for! Stevie was kind enough to let me use her camera to take some pictures today (we luckily use the same kind of memory card, and I have a lot of those still) so all was not lost. Still, I'm a bit upset.

In any case, we got on the train for Bratislava, a journey of about two and a half hours, arriving around noon. Not too much to see, sadly, so we just wandered around the city for a few hours. At least now we can add another country to our list!

We got on the short train ride for Vienna in the afternoon, arriving at the south train station and making our reservations for Prague the next afternoon. We then got on a tram and met up with Heather, a girl from Colorado, with whom we would be spending the night. She's lived in Vienna for a little while now, so after we dropped off our bags she took us out for a tour of many of Vienna's famous sights.

We of course had to see the Easter market, but then we found many of Vienna's famous buildings, most of which were churches or music halls. This made perfect sense to me, since the place I remember hearing about Vienna most often was orchestra in junior high and high school - many famous composers lived or spent time here so the stars on the street all bear their names.

Apparently the big Viennese intellectual tradition is to sit in a café sipping coffee and discussing revolution, so we went to the Central Café, a renowned gathering spot for centuries, and sat chitchatting and sipping espresso. It was nice to sit and relax, trying to take my mind off things that had gone wrong and focus on what good things are yet to come on what is sure to be an amazing adventure for the rest of break!

And who knows, I was thinking of getting a second battery for my camera anyway, so I may not be totally deprived of my photographic addiction for the rest of the trip - I'll see what I can find!

Blue Danube

2009-04-06T19:42:00.004+02:00

Hungary wasn't always high on my list of places I wanted to go, but now I cannot imagine why that would be. Since first catching a glimpse of the Danube river on Sunday night I fell in love with the scenery and architecture. There are so many old sights, and mostly all within walking distance from our hostel, which was quite fortunate for us.

Budapest is divided in two parts; Buda west of the river and Pest to the east. Our hostel was on the Buda side, so we decided to cross the bridge over to Pest first. The first big sight was Fashion street, an area filled with shops and kitschy souvenirs... An interesting way to learn about Hungarian culture. We walked from there and ended up in what resembled the Easter market from Innsbruck, except selling things that were more of a Hungarian style. We wandered about there for a while, finding a lot of old buildings along the way including churches, a basilica, the opera house, and finally ending up by the parliament building right next to the river again.

So much elegance! We crossed back to Buda at this point, walking up to the top of a hill where Buda Castle is located. There were amazing views of the city from the top, and of course the elegance of the castle itself. Around this time my camera's battery died, and since we weren't far from the hostel we went back for a rest and recharge.

We ended up meeting another traveller at the hostel who was from Turkey, and about to embark on a tour with a Hungarian guide. they invited us along, and conveniently they were headed to some of the places we hadn't made it to yet, so we decided to go. We went up another hill on the Buda side first, with old monuments and Budapest's Statue of Liberty. This area had even better views of all sides of the city, so we took it all in before going back down and crossing the river farther south than we had before, seeing immediately a famous marketplace, and then walking back up the river past various statues and monuments, eventually near parliament again where there was a memorial to Jewish Hungarians killed during the Holocaust. The sun was setting by this time so I got some beautiful pictures... We walked back to the other side and split up again, headed back for the hostel to make dinner and rest our tired feet for our next day of adventure!

Österreich

2009-04-05T22:57:00.007+02:00

We got into Innsbruck just after one o'clock Saturday afternoon, and after lunch across from the station we headed into town to wander. There were plenty of old monuments along the way, notably the arc de triomphe and several statues, and of course, mountains! The scenery in Innsbruck is absolutely breathtaking. We walked as far as the University before turning toward the river. There was a plaza that had been set up as a finish line for some sort of race, with a concert in the background. I was quite shocked to hear them playing country music! We listened for a while then headed into the tourist area.

There are plenty of year round shops filed with decorated eggs and ornaments, but being so close to Easter there was a special market set up in the street, selling mostly handmade bunnies and eggs painted with chicks and ducks. This same area was also home to some of Innsbruck's well known sights, including the golden roof and the birthplace of Leopold Mozart, father of Wolfgang Amadeus and a talented musician in his own right. In the area I also saw a traditional looking band, completed with tuba and playing something resembling polkas... We sat and listened for a little while before moving on. Plenty more statues and nice sights and we moved in to settle for the night.

Night time in Innsbruck let me accomplish one of my life goals: lying in a field there and staring up at the stars. I was hoping maybe it would inspire me like it did this guy...

Sunday morning we got on a train headed for Salzburg, hoping to spend a few hours there before heading to Budapest for the night. Salzburg is well known for being the birthplace of the younger Mozart, as well as the location where the movie The Sound of Music was filmed. We got there around 9:30 and tried to see as many of the sights as we could before leaving at one. We went through the Mirabell palace and gardens first, absolutely gorgeous and apparently used in the movie. Throughout the town we saw fountains, churches, gardens, squares, so many places that were not only beautiful and old but well known.

We went into the catacombs behind St. Peter's cemetary after wandering about near the fortress, a very solemn and moving experience. They were built into the cliff face, so it gave a clear view of many of the surrounding churches and monuments. Unfortunately, there was a lot of construction and maintenance work in the city, including on the Residenz fountain which was one of the main sights I'd wanted to see, after seeing photos my mom had taken when she went to Salzburg in 2000. I was a bit disappointed, but still managed to see a lot and have a good time.

We got on the train to Budapest later in the afternoon, first changing trains in Vienna. We got in a little late in the evening and had a hard time finding our hostel... But everything we've seen of Budapest so far has been amazing! The Danube river is just beautiful, and I can't wait to get up tomorrow and do some exploring!

Chez les Hevèltes

2009-04-04T19:46:00.005+02:00

After waking up at about five am, Stevie and I grabbed our bags and headed toward the train station, catching the 6:52 for Lyon. A short layover there and then a train to Geneva, the first real stop on our trip.

We left the train station headed toward Lac Léman, also known as Lake Geneva (think "smoke on the water"). Crossing the bridge we saw the flower clock outside of the Jardin Anglais - a working clock made out of flowers, how very Swiss. From the garden we could also see the large water jet on the lake shooting water straight up into the air, probably a few hundred feet. Quite impressive. After resting there a bit we crossed back to the other side of the way and walked all the way to the Place des Nations, home of the UN, admiring monuments and the scenery along the way.

There wasn't really a public entrance that we could see, so we just took a few pictures of the flags and buildings, as well as the broken chair sculpture in the square before the complex. There was group of Vietnamese Buddhist monks there chanting and burning incense. I couldn't really figure out why they were there since I don't read Vietnamese, but it was interesting nonetheless to see them.

After a few hours in Geneva we ran out of things we knew to look at that were free (this trip is costing us enough as it is, and Europe has lots of free tourist sites.) We went back to the station to catch a train for Lucerne, where we had a hostel booked for the night.

It was late afternoon when we got into Lucerne, so we decided to check into our hostel right away and drop off our bags before exploring a bit. The directions I had from the hostel involved a bus, and since we're cheap I looked up walking directions on google maps before we left. The route they gave us was fairly direct, but involved a lot of small turns and walking up steep hills and stairs! Needless to say we were exhausted when we finally got there. Looking at a map of the city we found a slightly longer but more direct route back into town, which actually took us less time.

On the way back into town we stopped by a monument known as the dying lion of Lucerne, a monument to Swiss troops that had been carved into the side of a cliff face. It was quite impressive but also kind of sad to look at. A few pictures and we kept moving, back toward the water where we crossed on the chapel bridge, built in the middle ages and beautifully decorated...

A few more pictures and dinner later (Switzerland is definitely the most expensive country I've ever been in - worse than Japan!) and we took a last look around, since we had an early train to Innsbruck the next morning. The hostel had free breakfast so we filled up and walked back to the station in the morning, headed first for Zürich then getting on the train for Innsbruck!

Spring Break, woooo

2009-04-01T23:24:00.002+02:00

Now that the blockage has finally ended (although not the national professor's strike...) of course it's time to head out for a two week vacation. While I originally had planned to go alone, I found someone in my class almost as crazy as I am. Thus we'll be heading out early Friday morning for a long and busy trip. I'll be bringing my computer this time, so I'll probably have posts from the road as it were... It'll make it easier to break this up anyway. So for those who may be interested, here's our plan, subject to change slightly as we haven't reserved any trains but the first and last.

April 3rd
Montpellier-> Lyon-> Geneva (Switzerland)
Geneva-> Lucerne
April 4th
Lucerne-> Innsbruck (Austria)
April 5th
Innsbruck-> Salzburg
Salzburg-> Vienna-> Budapest (Hungary)
April 7th
Budapest-> Vienna
April 8th
Vienna-> Prague (Czech Republic)
April 10th
Prague-> Copenhagen (Denmark - this is a flight, so this one is for sure)
April 11th
Copenhagen-> Hamburg (Germany)
April 12th
Hamburg->Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Amsterdam-> Brussels(Belgium)
April 13th
Brussels-> Bruges
Bruges-> Luxembourg
April 14th
Luxembourg-> Paris
April 15th
Paris-> Glasgow (Scotland, obviously another flight so this isn't changing either)
April 17th
Glasgow-> Belfast (Northern Ireland, also a flight)
April 19th
Belfast-> Paris
April 20th
Paris-> Montpellier

Wow! I'm nuts! I hope Stevie and I don't drive each other insane, but I'm sure it'll be great. I'll have plenty of time to write on train rides, so I'll keep you posted when I find wifi...

Research

2009-03-31T14:30:00.003+02:00

I actually got to campus early for once, so I sat down on the lawn outside my building. All of the sudden a lady comes up to me and asks if I'd like to participate in a research project. Well, I didn't really have anything else to do, so I agreed and went with her. It was some sort of cognittive research, I had to trace a line I couldn't see over and over with the same finger and then draw the line. Pretty easy.
Then I found out my teacher isn't there and I have no German this week. Awesome.

Boat...cruise...?

2009-03-29T16:51:00.005+02:00

This weekend I didn't have my own excursion planned, good because I have plenty of homework to keep me busy. However, Saturday was a sort of day trip sponsored by the programme, where we were supposed to be going on what they called a boat cruise on the Canal du Midi from Grau d'Agde on the Mediterranean to Marseillan further east along the coast. We were a little hesitant to set out at eight in the morning on the first cold and rainy day in weeks, but still we piled on the bus. I think our instincts may have been right on this one.

We got to Grau d'Agde a little before the boat did, so we walked toward the sea. I was the only one insane enough to be wearing shorts and sandals, so I walked on the beach a bit, collecting a few seashells. Most everyone else went to the end of the pier to look at the lighthouse, and before long it was time to embark on our journey.

This was a small boat, and there were easily 70 people on it. I think calling it a cruise may have affected some people's expectations of what the boat would be - this was clearly a fishing boat with some seats put on it. I sat near the back, which was fine at first. We went first into the sea and past an old fort, and then up the river Hérault to Agde, where we stopped for a three hour lunch.

As we were disembarking at Agde the rain really started. I went with a few others on a search for a relatively inexpensive place to sit and eat for the whole time - harder than we'd thought as being Saturday in March most everything in this small town was closed. We finally found a pizzeria where I had an onion soup and we sat for the entire lunch break, save stopping for dessert in a bakery on the way back to the port.

It was still raining rather hard so everyone tried to move into the covered part of the boat, which was quite crowded and made seeing the sights narrated to us a bit difficult. We started to navigate the canals from here - what I remember is a lock unique in the world in that it is round and has three levels of water; one to the Atlantic, one to the Mediterranean, and one to the Hérault. We were supposed to have passed through a bird sanctuary as well, but it was hard to tell. By the time we disembarked in Marseillan we were all cold and tired and maybe a little seasick. Not the best day I've had, but still, another experience.

Alba

2009-03-22T19:04:00.005+01:00

I've never been one to let a little thing like a head cold get in the way of me having a good time, so despite my stuffed nose and sore throat I headed off Friday afternoon for my weekend in Scotland. It wasn't as if I could reschedule or refund it anyway, and even though my sister decided not to join me as originally planned, I was determined to have a good time.

And I can honestly say that I did. I flew from Montpellier to Gatwick (fourth time in eight weeks! If only easyjet had a frequent flyer programme...), waited two hours, then caught a flight to Edinburgh, arriving just after 8. I took the bus into city centre and walked to my hostel, only a few blocks from the bus stop, and just off Prince's Street, one of the main thoroughfares of Edinburgh. Since it was late and as I mentioned I wasn't feeling well, I just took a short walk to get some dinner and then called it an early night.

I got up around 7 Saturday morning, with the intention of using every last second of daylight to see the city. I first walked down Prince's street to grab some breakfast, then I headed towards my farthest destination: the Royal Botanical Gardens of Edinburgh. The first and only time prior to this I was in Scotland in May of 2002, my mom and I spent quite a while there, but the only things I remembered about it was that it was a really long walk to get there and that their café had excellent carrot soup. The walk wasn't nearly as long as I remembered, probably because I'm more accustomed to walking places now. I got there before it opened, so I walked back the way I'd come to have a cup of coffee before going back when it opened. I spent well over an hour there, admiring the scenery and taking plenty of pictures of flowers. I did make it back to the café, and while they didn't have any carrot soup, I tried their minestrone, which was quite good as well. The bread they served it with was what sold it for me.

I walked back into city centre afterwards, stopping to buy some fruit and dropping it off at the hostel. From there I decided to head toward Edinburgh Castle, passing many monuments along the way, and taking pictures of the fascinating buildings. The castle being on the top of a hill, there were breathtaking views of the city around me. I could see the mountains, the firth, and all of the buildings of the city. Nearby there was a tartan mill and museum, so I took a quick look around there, finally finding what the Fettes (Fiddes in old Scottish) family tartan looked like - this is my mom's mom's family name, the only Scottish I can definitely link myself to. Unfortunately since it's a family and not a clan, there really aren't any scarves or whatnot with the tartan available - I would've had to order them. Well, at least now I know a little more of the family story.

I kept walking from the castle down the royal mile, getting as far as the parliament building and taking pictures all along the way. I turned back and stopped at a pub for dinner; steak and mince pie. It was quite good, and I stayed a little while watching the six nations rugby matches: the end of England v. Scotland (England won) and the beginning of Ireland v. Wales. I find rugby a bit confusing, but still interesting.

I headed back toward the Princes street gardens, and got a few good shots of the castle from below. I pretty much just walked around the city centre until the sun set, then ended up calling it an early night, getting all my things together since I had to wake up early Sunday morning to get back to the airport.

As per the usual, today was just travel, travel, switching planes in London and getting back in the late afternoon. I was useful in my own way; helping some British travellers from my flight find their way into Montpellier (they were all getting off a few stops before me on the same tram line), always nice to feel useful.

...I miss Scotland already.

Luttons! Pour nos droits!

2009-03-17T19:43:00.005+01:00

After several weeks of classes cancelled due to strike, a few weeks ago students blocked the campus. This basically meant the doors to all of the building except the library, cafeteria, and institute for foreign students were blocked by chairs, tables, and angry students. Every general assembly since then has voted to keep the blockage going. I can't claim to completely understand the situation, but it does seem like they're looking at things a bit out of proportion. However, I'm not French, these reforms aren't affecting my schooling beyond this semester.

This strike has, however, deeply affected my current semester. We haven't had classes except the ones run by our programme, so obviously there's not much to be graded on. To make up for this, they've gone through a couple of steps, first having us write 8-10 page papers for each integrated class we have (I have three) and then making us attend additional lectures arranged for American students so we have "something to do". Uh, what? Most of these have nothing to do with what we're not studying, and honestly the two I've been to so far have not been informative at all - one was basic stuff I learnt in linguistics and another similar to an intro journalism class I took. Neither are related to any classes I have here. And the papers? Well, my literature professor still expects us to do a dissertation, and luckily if I stretch it to eight pages it will count for that one. The fact that we still mostly have our translations class (the professors weren't ever on strike, only missed for the blockage) and that it's nearly impossible to write eight pages about beginning German means that it will be the only one I have to write, which is a relief. Even though I have fewer classes, I still feel overwhelmed with what I have to do. I know travelling so much probably doesn't help, but I made these arrangements before I knew there would be a strike of this magnitude and honestly I thought the classes as they were at the start would be pretty manageable. So I won't change any of my plans, but I just have to be more serious about using my time during the week for studying. I think I can handle it. In any case, we have to turn in the papers before spring break, so it won't be hanging over my head the whole time. Good.

There apparently will be another general strike on Thursday, which for me only means that bus and tram services will be severely disrupted, but seeing as I have a grammar class and the second half of the linguistics lecture to go to, I'm not really bothered. Just hope I don't get caught up in any protesting. As much as I like France, I'm starting to think I'll never really adjust to the French way of life. Oh well, just another experience to add to the backlog that defines this crazy, crazy person I call me.

Ticket to ride

2009-03-16T17:32:00.003+01:00

Well, I bought a Eurail pass intending to use it for spring break, but since I had extra days I set out Thursday night for a long weekend in Italy.
A weekend isn't enough time to make it as far east as Venice or as far south as Naples or Rome, so I decided to spend one night each in Milan and Florence, as well as a few hours in whatever cities I hit by train along the way, due to a lack of direct routes that didn't require an extra charge.

It took a bit of effort just for me to get to Italy; I had to change trains in Marseille and Nice before arriving in Ventimiglia, known in French as Vintimille, just on the other side of the border. It was after midnight by the time I got there, and the train I would be taking to Genoa didn't leave until 5am, so I pulled out my blanket prepared to sleep in the station. It worked for a little while, but around 2:30 or so I just couldn't stand sitting on the hard ground, so I decided to get up and go for a walk outside. The station was less than half a mile from the Mediterranean, so I walked to the rocky shore and sat for a while, just staring at the ocean. I walked around a bit longer getting back to the station around 4:30 and finally got on the regional train for Genova Piazza Principe.

I got into Genoa around 8:30 am and had about three hours until my next train, so I went for a walk around the city. Something about the ancientness of Italy made me want to take lots of pictures in black and white. This isn't to say other places I've been were un-ancienty, just maybe not in the same way. (And yes, un-ancienty. That's exactly the word I was going for. Bonus points if you know why.) This took care of my time there and soon I was on the train for Arquata Scrivia, where I had 40 minutes before the train to Milan.

I had a hostel booked for Friday night in the northern half of Milan, so after arriving at Centrale station I navigated the metro system to Affori to find it and drop off my bags. It was a little hard to find because it was on the grounds of on old psychiatric hospital. Still, it was pretty nice and relatively cheap so nothing to complain about... I then took the train back into town and went to the Duomo station, right in the centre of the city. There I found Milan's magnificent cathedral - absolutely gorgeous both inside and out. There was also a sort of antique car show going on in the plaza just outside of the Cathedral, so I watched that for a while, my one semester of Italian enough to barely grasp the commentary. After that wandering the streets of Milan, the centre of Italian fashion, eventually finding dinner and then some gelato before heading back to the hostel to get some sleep, recovering from the night before and getting ready for Saturday.

I got up Saturday, packed my things, and headed back into Milan, wandering for a bit before making my way back to the Centrale Station. With no real plan except my hostel reservation that night in Florence, I was free to take my time riding the rails without going directly there, which is also cheaper since I didn't need a reservation for regional trains. I went through Piacenza, Bologna and Prato, spending a little time in each before finally getting to Florence in the late afternoon.

I dropped my bags off at the hostel, which was luckily quite close to the Santa Maria Novella station where I had come in. I starting walking hoping to hit the monuments highlighted on the map the reception had given me. I passed many gorgeous churches - Florence is in fact a city known for its artists and architecture, so this isn't surprising. I went through a street market and ended up buying a cashmere scarf, which upon wearing was apparently enough for people to stop assuming I was a foreigner - I had a few people coming up to me and asking for directions in Italian! I tried to help if I could, but it was mostly Mi scusi, non parlo italiano. Many more plazas later I found the Ponte Vecchio, a famous old bridge that from the side looks like another row of houses, not something suspended over water. Quite remarkable. I had a florentine pizza for dinner and went back to the hostel when everything started to close. One of the girls in my room was from Paris, so I talked with her in French for a while, we even went for a late snack in a nearby café. I went to bed before too late because I knew Sunday was going to be rough...

No matter how early I left Florence, there was no way I would be able to get to Montpellier the same night. So I took my time to some extent, going to a 10:30 am mass at the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, the main duomo in the centre of Florence. This was actually really interesting, because it was mostly in Latin with gregorian chants, excepting the scriptures and homily in Italian. I was glad I went because otherwise the cathedral wasn't open to tourists on Sundays, and moreover I didn't really want to pay €8 to get in anyway.

From there I went to a café in the Piazza Indipendenza for lunch, and then headed to the station, where I caught the first train to Pisa. I was hoping to be there long enough to see the tower, but I only had an hour before the train to Genoa that I needed to take, and it just wasn't close enough to the station to make it on foot. Instead I walked as far as the river and took some pictures before getting back to the station and the train back.

Through Genova and again to Ventimiglia, where I caught a regional back to Nice. On the train I met some Japanese girls who were students in Nice, so I got my monthly Japanese conversation thing on (hahaha) and chatted with them until they got off in Eze-sur-mer, then finally getting to Nice around 9:30. There would be no more trains to Marseille until the morning, and having no real desire to sleep in a train station for that long, I walked a bit until I found a hostel with open rooms to sleep in until I could get a train. The hostel was run by some old ladies who were also running a restaurant, but being a Sunday night they really had no clientele for either; just two customers for the restaurant and me. I chatted with one for a time whilst she filled out my forms, she seemed really impressed with my French abilities, but really, I've been studying the language for over 10 years, so I hope I can hold a conversation by now.

I had an eight bed room to myself, but I went to bed as soon as I got there so I could leave around 5:30, get to the station and take the 6:02 to Marseille. I had an hour layover there so I took some pictures of the cityscape, finally getting on the train for Montpellier and getting back around 11, thinking I'd have about 15 minutes to get ready for class once I got back to my dorm. I hurried to get ready - but contrary to the email my programme had sent the campus was still mostly blocked and my professor never showed up. Oh well. At least I had a great time in Italy!

A (partially) sunny day in Cardiff

2009-03-08T19:09:00.006+01:00

Friday afternoon I got on a plane bound for London (this is getting to the point of familiar) and then a train for Victoria, where I caught a coach bus headed toward Cardiff. It was nearly 9pm by the time I arrived, so really I would only have one day in which to enjoy the Welsh capital with my sister. She had already checked in to our hostel so we walked across the river Taff and called it an early night in order to wake up early on Saturday...

We ate breakfast at the hostel and left before ten, heading straight for Cardiff bay whilst the weather was still nice enough for us to enjoy it. It was warm, I even took off my coat for a while and enjoyed the breezes. We saw the Millenium Centre and Mermaid Quay, all along the bay noticing places where Torchwood and Doctor Who have been filmed... Okay, I'm a nerd. I'll admit that. Next was the visitors centre - an interesting building shaped like a tube, and filled with fun facts about Cardiff and the surrounding areas of Wales. There were also many monuments and statues outside, as well as the Norweigian church that had been converted into some sort of gallery.

I would be lying if I said I had come to Cardiff for any reason except the Doctor Who exhibit at the Red Dragon centre... Sam and I spent quite a while nerding out there, all the shiny stuff.... Okay, I'm getting a bit carried away here, suffice it to say it was everything I'd hoped for and more. We took our time there and then walked back along the river towards Cardiff Castle. By this time it had started clouding over...

It was raining by the time we got to the castle, so we decided against paying to go in unless the rain were to let up - it never did, so I kind of wish we had just sucked it up and gone in, but at least I got some nice pictures of the outside and a reason to go back to Cardiff! We walked back by Milennium Stadium, where the Welsh rugby team plays (not this weekend, though), and looked at all their spiffy logos and merchandise. We didn't really want to wait an hour for the next tour, so we went back to the hostel after a quick lunch and took a little break, hoping the rain would pass. It let up for a short while, long enough for us to walk the streets of Cardiff for a bit just taking it all in, and starting up right as we decided to pop into a cinema to see Watchmen. I realise it's a bit silly to see a film when you're on a short holiday like this, but this was one I wanted to see in English, and in Montpellier I've only been able to find it shown in French. It was worth it, I think.

After the movie we stopped at Hard Rock Café for a bit, and then back to the hostel so I could sleep before catching my coach back to London at 6:30 am... Another day full of travel and back home to Montpellier. Yet another great excursion!

Iberia

2009-03-02T10:18:00.010+01:00

Well, this may be the first time wandering off without a plan has backfired on me; but only half. Apart from the times of tickets for trains and/or planes, I usually don't have any concrete ideas of what I want to do when I travel. That managed to make this weekend both much happier than I expected, and slightly less entertaining than I hoped. How's that? Let me explain.

After encountering some of her classmates in Ireland, I got back in touch with my friend Theresa, my roommate from my summer programme in Korea. She had been spending her time since Africa travelling all over Europe with her boyfriend. I hadn't seen her in over a year, and since she wasn't so far away, I thought there had to be a way to meet up... And there was! I had planned back in January this weekend trip to Lisbon, but due to train schedules I was going to have a six hour layover in Madrid, which is where she was going to be for the weekend! Perfect.

Early Friday morning I hopped on the train for Barcelona. I got there with about an hour layover, so I used that time to go to the hipermercat (think supermarket, but waaay bigger) across the street from the station to get some food for the rest of my trip, since it's quite expensive on the train. Apart from my staples like fruit and granola bars, I also picked up a half litre of the most delicious orange juice I've had since living in Florida - it was squeezed and bottled right in the store! Not to mention the oranges they used were the mandarin/clemintine variety, which made quite the tasty juice. My time used up, I head back to Sants Estació and boarded my train for Madrid.

It's odd to think that the most comfortable train I was on was the shortest and only domestic trip, but then the line between Barcelona and Madrid had been newly remodeled and was a high speed train - hitting 300 kph (about 186mph)! The ride was just under three hours, and they were playing a movie... I thought, hey an american movie! Surely it'll be in English? No. Spanish with Catalán subtitles. Little weird. So I took a nap instead.

When I got to Madrid, the plan was to meet Theresa at her hostel near the Plaza Santo Domingo, so that meant taking the metro. Luckily I have an uncanny talent for figuring out subway maps (I think I mentioned that about London) so after glancing at the lines and buying a ticket (only €1 - pretty cheap for public transport!), I hopped on the next train and was there in no time at all.

After catching up for a bit we went out to explore the city. We seemed to be in the central area, as we saw so many different street performers - a mariachi band, some guys rocking out on dulcimers, magicians, "mannequins" (you'd put money in their box and they'd do some sort of performance - othereise they stood completely still), balloon makers dressed as furry characters, and so on. We walked around the streets for a while, eventually seeing the palace and plaza mayor and many monuments and impressive buildings. We ate dinner and kept wandering about until 9:30, when I headed for the next train station, so I could catch my overnight train to Lisbon.

I'll admit I really had no idea what I was getting myself into when I reserved these tickets. My plan basically involved travelling all day Friday, spending Saturday in Lisbon, and travelling all day Sunday back to Montpellier. So when I got to Lisbon at 8am following a restless night trying to sleep in the seated accommodation of the hotel train, I had hoped that I would arrive in the city centre as was the case with most train stations, or at least somewhere with tourist things to do. The tourist office in the train station apparently wasn't open on weekends (what's up with that?) so I went outside to survey my surroundings. The train station was right next to the port, and being so early in the morning it seemed like nothing was open. So I decided to just start walking and see what I could find; after all, I had 14 hours to kill. The first thing I noticed was how the entire city seemed to be uphill. Steep hills at that... It didn't take long before I was exhausted and stopped for some breakfast at a small pastry shop. I really don't speak any Portuguese, and the little electronic phrase book on my ipod isn't all that comprehensive, so I pretty much just went for what looked tasty and pointed at it. Obrigada. I spent the next hour or so just wandering the streets of Lisbon, admiring the architecture and the old feel of it all. I felt like it wasn't even part of Europe, because (naturally) it had that distinctive latin flavour reminicent of South and Central America. Eventually I ended up in what appeared to be Lisobon's chinatown, realising finally that this actually was a big city, for I found a public transportation map, and there was a metro system. Not a big one, but it was there. So I looked at the map for signs of things which might be of interest to someone who is just a casual traveller and speaks no Portuguese, and then got on the Metro headed for Campo Pequeno. The map showed that there should be a museum nearby; I ended up in a shopping mall. Now as I have mentioned before, these kinds of places are just as interesting to me because I can more easily see the differences in culture. So I wandered around for a bit, seeing what the commercial scene was like in Portugal. As it turned out, this was not mere shopping mall. Since I had come in from the metro, I didn't see it from the outside before hand, but it turned out that the mall was built around a sort of giant hall, home to various shows and concerts (I saw a sign for Jason Mraz appearing next month) as well as a cinema. After an hour or so, I decided to move on and see if I couldn't find that museum... I couldn't. I ended up walking to the Campo Grande, Lisbon's large central park.

When they say grande, they mean it. This park is huge. I walked for quite a while, snapping photos of the statues and flowers. When I made it to the other side I did find an art museum, but of course just as it was closing for lunch or some such. What I saw of the outside was pretty, though. So I walked back on the other side of the Campo, which took me past the University of Lisbon and even more statues and monuments.

Since every museum I passed was closed and I was at a complete loss as far as what to do in this city, I decided to take advantage of the fact that my eurail pass had been stamped for the day and take a train somewhere outside of Lisbon for a few hours. I got on the next train my pass was valid on, destination Tomar. I ended up getting off at Santarém, after admiring the lovely Portuguese countryside all along the way. It was a beautiful old town, but by the time I walked outside of the station and started looking around, it started pouring and I didn't have an umbrella. So I ended up going back to the station and taking the next train back to Lisbon.

It was getting dark and late by the time I got back, so I spent a little more time admiring the sea and the area around Santa Apolónia station, then bought some more food for the ride back. Another overnight to Madrid, changing stations back to Atocha via the metro, a short layover in Barcelona and back in Montpellier just after 9pm. It was overall quite the adventure, and even if I didn't have the greatest time there at least I can check off Portugal on the list of places I've been!

My Old School

2009-02-25T10:52:00.004+01:00

I think I've been here long enough now that I can tell you about the Université Montpellier III Paul Valéry, where I am supposedly studying this semester.

Now, I say "supposedly" for a few reasons. First, two of the five classes I'm taking this semester are through my exchange programme, so the University here has nothing to do with them. Then of the three remaining classes I have, one is designed specifically for foreign students whose native language is English, another is a beginning German class taught by a professor from Germany, and the last one has been cancelled so often due to the professor's illness or one of several strikes that I haven't had it more than I have. Still, now that I'm travelling every weekend I'm on the campus every day that I'm in Montpellier, and I'm starting to get used to the way things work here.

The campus itself isn't that big, although when it's closed and I have to go around it instead of through it to get back to my dorm it seems huge. And whilst the University system here dates back to the early 13th century, the Fac de Lettres that is the Paul Valéry campus was only established in the late 1970s, and that is definitely reflected in the architecture. It also seems as though nothing has been replaced since then... Desks and restrooms are defaced, and there is enough graffiti around that it could be the set of an early nineties sitcom. Then there's always posters and notices pasted over one another on every wall of every building... Most seem to advertise yet another general assembly or occupation of one of the amphitheatres, prefacing more unrest in the system and another strike or protest. It's a good thing that the class I'm missing is only graded on a final test... Otherwise I might feel bad that I'm not getting any work done! I guess this is simply a cultural lesson for me, so even without actual class I get to learn about French politics.

There are a few places to eat on campus, relatively cheap but as long as I live so close I prefer cooking for myself, which is even cheaper. There are lots of vending machines, including the amazing coffee ones that are 1/3 of the price and taste just as good as what you get in cafés here.

Everytime I walk to class I have to pass through one of the two main gates, and without fail there is some student group hassling people to take their pamphlets. I try not to because it's wasteful; I'd never read them and they probably wouldn't affect me anyway. The ones I have ended up inevitably are about organising together and marching for student's rights, which are clearly being violated. I don't want to get too deep into my opinions here, suffice it to say that it seems to me they overreact to every little move the government makes. But then I'm not usually one to stir up trouble.

Overall I'm enjoying the classes I have, and I do think this is a lovely campus. If only I had been here during a semester where there wasn't so much unrest!

Winter Break

2009-02-22T19:23:00.007+01:00

The French sure do love their time off, and I can't complain, since that meant this past week was filled with travel and adventure instead of classes.

I left Montpellier on Friday the 13th (scary?) on a short flight to London. After taking the train to Victoria station I met up with my friend Jamie with whom I would spend the next two days. We dropped my bags off at her flat and headed out in search of food. Walking past Trafalgar Square we saw a huge gathering of people; it almost looked like a protest. We asked a police officer and he said it had something to do with facebook... Never did quite figure that one out. We ended up walking through Leicester and Chinatown before finally deciding on pizza, and then getting ice cream later on. Those are two things I really can't find in Montpellier, and when I do they're quite different, so it was a nice treat.

Saturday we were constantly reminded that it was Valentine's day, a very awkward day for people like me. She made me a little card like we were in elementary school, and generally walking around there were some assumptions, but I am so not even bovvered. We wandered around London for a while, deciding to check out St. Pancras and King's Cross stations, both of which are reputed to have lovely architechture. King's Cross is also home to a secret platform that Jamie wanted to be photographed with... We took lots of pictures there and outside the stations then went to a sushi bar in St. Pancras station for lunch, followed by cupcakes (called "fairy cakes" here) in a nearby bakery. A few more pictures inside then we headed back to her flat.

I stayed in a hostel Saturday night because I had to wake up very early for my flight and didn't want to bother Jamie. Improvement works on the London underground meant about half the tube lines were down, including the Jubliee line on which the nearest station to my hostel was located, so I had figure out my way by bus. London buses seem confusing, but I think they're more straightforward than a lot of places I've been... Plus they're big, red, and have two levels. Awesome. The hostel I was staying at was cheap, but an odd format... The reception was inside a pub and therefore didn't open until 7pm on Saturdays, and I had gotten there aroung 4:30 - giving me a few hours to kill before I could get in. I took a bus back into town and decided to see Hyde Park since I missed it last time, and then wandered about near Covent Garden and Leicester square before finding a bus back to the hostel. I thought I would go to bed early since I would have to leave around 5am, but the rooms weren't too soundproof and there were a few people hanging out in the common area right outside my door playing guitars and singing. I thought I'd just try to sleep through it, but then they started playing "Hotel California", and couldn't seem to get through the second verse. I thought "hey, I know the words to that song!" and decided heck with it, and went out there to help them out. I ended up staying up with them until almost midnight, me with my knack for remembering lyrics and them with their guitars. It was a fun time, although I was quite tired when morning rolled around...

Because I couldn't take the tube, I had to catch a bus just after 5 to get to Gloucester, where I caught a coach bus to Stansted airport. I got to the airport with plenty of time to check in, and then I was off for Dublin!

Since I know it's the one thing I have from both my parents' families, I'm probably more Irish than anything. So I thought going to Ireland would probably be a really good idea, and really, it was. I got into Dublin around 11 am, took a bus into the city centre, then walked along the river Liffey until I got to the Temple Bar area, where my hostel was located. I dumped off my bags and wandered off in search of whatever first piqued my interest. In this case it was leek and potato soup. I went into a small café and had a bowl, every bit as good as I remembered from the Irish pub I used to frequent in Orlando... Better, of course, because I was actually in Ireland! I wandered around the streets of Dublin a bit more, taking in the sights. I decided to go back to the hostel for a shower and a nap, since I was still a bit exhausted... This turned out to be the best decision I could have made! When I woke up, a few other girls staying in the same room had arrived, and we got to chatting. One of the girls, Katy, was from Ohio and invited me to go to dinner with her and her friend Adam. I didn't have any plans, so I did. We went to a pub where I had a delicious Irish stew (lamb slaughtered that very morning, the menu claimed) and we listened to jazz music while just talking about our travels, they were on their way back from two months in Africa with a group from Ohio State. Seemed like a fun time. I told them about France, Korea, Japan... I'm not sure how it came up but I said something about the Critical Language programme I had done in Korea. Katy was intrigued, wasn't that what Theresa had done? ... It turned out that one of the people they had just been in Africa with was my roommate from my summer programme! We were all just so shocked at the sheer coincidence of it that we couldn't even talk. The number of factors that went into this happening... Well, it was enough to make my head spin. Thus I ended up with travelling companions for the next three days.

We went to another pub afterwards and listened to the slightly more modern musical stylings of two guys on guitar and bass. It was still a nice cultural experience I suppose... Pubs in Ireland are different from anywhere else in the world, but that's true anywhere. The next morning we set out intending to see Dublin's museums, only to find out that most are closed on Mondays! We ended up walking to the other side of town to see the Bodies exhibit, which was a little pricey, but very informative. I don't think I would go again, since it made me twitch a little. It was still interesting, though. Then it was more walking around Dublin, seeing the buildings and statues, and the shops. After lunch we split up and I went back towards the hostel, after stopping to post a few cards. A few more people had moved into our room, including two English girls, Bryony and Christine, and another from Australia, Bel. Bel and I ended up going to the grocery store together for our dinner and the next day's meals - trying to save money and whatnot. Ham, bread, cream cheese... Perfect for cheap + filling. After getting back and eating it was getting late so we just sat in the lobby reading and chatting, making plans for the next day.

Tuesday we were sure to make it to the museums, since they were now open. Bel joined Katy, Adam, and me for first the archaeology museum and then the art gallery. The national museum was unfortunately closed for renovation. The archaeology museum was home to exhibits on the history of Ireland as well as ancient Egypt. There were also several human remains that were found mostly preserved in bogs in Ireland... A little creepy but still pretty cool! The art gallery was massive, and took quite a while to get through, so we finished there and went back for lunch, after which we headed toward St. James' Gate. This is where 250 years ago a 9000-year lease was signed for the property which is the home of the Guinness storehouse and brewery, which is a sort of museum in its own right. We toured it, learning about the history of beer, complete with samples of roasted barley and of course the brew itself. The coolest part was near the end - your ticket entitled you to a free beer in the upstairs bar which boasted a 360° view of Dublin from one of its highest points, OR, and this is what we did, you could use it for a free lesson in how to pour the perfect pint. We got behind the tap, where they show you how to hold the glass, when to tip it up and let it settle, and then how full to top it up. Then you wait until it's black and enjoy... (For those of you wondering, I did drink the whole pint I poured. It was only right, I wasn't going to pour one and make someone else drink it. For those of you wondering why this matters: as a general rule I don't drink. So it was a little odd for me, yes.)

Tuesday night was visiting a few more of the historic pubs in Temple Bar... More live music, and Bryony and Christine joined us for our pseudo-pub crawl. I left around midnight since I had to fly back the next day, but overall it was a good time.

Wednesday was pretty much just a day of travel - I started out taking a bus to the Dublin airport around 10, flew back to Stansted, took a coach to Victoria, then another up to Birmingham where I arrived around 9:30 pm and spent the night in my sister's flat.

Thursday I went with my sister to her one class (the professor was also her programme director who I had already met, so he didn't mind me sitting in) and then we went to the train station in city centre to catch a train for Liverpool. We got there about one and started walking from Lime street station trying to find our hostel... Took us a little longer than it should have since I missed the fact that Hunter and South Hunter are not the same street... But we made it and were lucky enough to be upgraded to a private room for the night, which made it easier for us to spread ourselves out a bit and rest for a little while.

We then headed toward the river Mersey and the Albert docks. We passed by Liverpool's Chinatown, which has quite the large impressive gate... Near the docks is an exhibition called the Beatles Story, so of course I had to check it out. We spent a good hour inside, just admiring all the history of my favourite band, which Sam has been known to tolerate on occasion... From there we headed towards Liverpool city centre, filled with shops and statues... Of course I had to find the Cavern Club, and get lots of pictures of anything Beatle-related... After exploring a bit more and having dinner, we headed back to the hostel and called it a night.

Thursday we went around Liverpool's museums mostly, and a full English breakfast at a pub, and pretty much took it easy until we caught the 20:48 train for London Euston...

When we arrived in London it was almost midnight, too late to get a room, but Sam had a plan.We took the tube to Victoria and spent the night outside the Apollo Victoria theatre, camping for the £25 front row tickets for Wicked. I do enjoy a good musical, but I can't say this was one that particularly called out to me. However, the price was much less than you would expect to pay for even a bad seat, and this was London's West End: only Broadway is better for seeing musicals. Besides, it wasn't as if I had anything better to do for the next nine hours... We got tickets as soon as the box office opened (we were first in line, but others did start showing up around 5am). We decided on the 2:30 matinee, and so we didn't stray far from the station. Jamie ended up meeting us for lunch as long as were weren't too far away, and then it was time for the show. It was absolutely amazing... I never imagined I'd be so close to the stage for a professional show. After the show I walked Sam to the coach station so she could get back to Birmingham, and I headed toward my hostel for the night. I ran into a group of girls from my programme there who had also been wandering around throughout break... We decided to meet up in the morning since we were all on the same flight this afternoon. Because again the tubes were under major engineering works (and one was suspended due to "a person under a train" - hmmm) we had quite a roundabout way to go to get to Gatwick airport. I've managed to figure out the underground system pretty well by this point, so I got us there on the shortest route possible... Nice to feel useful. We got back around 4 and shared a taxi back to the Comédie... Then it was a tram and walk home. It was a great week, but it's nice to be back to relax!

Le Théâtre

2009-02-12T22:26:00.005+01:00

Tonight was a little theatre outing, to see a two woman comedy show.
I was amazed that I understood about 90% of it.
Sadly, I did not understand what made it funny.
I think the lesson here is simply this: if you're going to see a play in another language, see a drama. Humour just doesn't translate well.

Next week we have off for winter break, so I'm headed back to the UK! Here's hoping I don't get snowed in again....

I can no longer say I've never been to Spain...

2009-02-08T22:10:00.011+01:00

On account of one of my ancestors on my dad's side came from there, I knew one place in Europe I would have to go was Barcelona. Luckily for me it's only about 4 hours by train from Montpellier, so I decided to spend my weekend there.

My train arrived in Barcelona about noon on Saturday, after which I bought a subway pass and headed for the hostel I was staying at. The staff there was very friendly, and gave me a tourist map of the city, pointing out some of the places I should try to visit and giving me directions via subway. The first place was within walking distance; the Sagrada Familia, an elegant church designed by the architect Gaudi. Unfortunately it was covered in scaffolding, so it wasn't as nice of a view as it could have been. Still, it was quite impressive.

From there I took the metro towards the Passeig de Gracia, and walked to the Museu de la Xocolata: the chocolate museum. This was quite an interesting (and delicious) exhibition, telling the history of chocolate as well as displaying elegant sculptures carved from chocolate. Some of them were quite complex; I was impressed!

I then headed to the nearby Parc de La Ciutadella, home of the Barcelona Zoo and the Catalonian Parlament building. It was full of gorgeous statues and monuments, and the archtecture was also quite stunning. From there I made my way to the Catalonian history museum, hoping they'd have some sort of record or document room where I could try to trace my roots... They did, but unfortunately it was closed on weekends so I didn't get the chance to check it out. I don't really know any Catalàn anyway, so I'm not sure it would've done any good even if it was! The museum itself was open and luckily free for students, so I did take some time to explore it. As I left the museum the sun was starting to set, so I headed towards the sea to sit on the beach and watch it go down over the water...

On the way back to the hostel I stopped to take a picture of Barcelona's Arc de Triompf...

After a good night's rest I headed out Sunday morning for the Castell de Montjuïc. Since it's located on the top of the mountain, there is a cable car service you can take to get there. It was closed for maintenance, so there was a bus replacing it. This was noted by a sign in Catalàn, Spanish, and English, but while waiting for the bus I noticed a pair of very confused Japanese tourists trying to figure out how to get to the top. I used a little of the Japanese I hadn't yet forgotten (haha) to explain to them what was going on and how to get where they were headed. This is how I ended up with my travel companions for the day...

Yumi and Masako came from Kanazawa, which is close to where I stayed in high school. They were so grateful for my help that we spent the rest of the day seeing the sights. From the castle on top of the mountain we walked down through some of the botanical gardens, past the sites of the 1992 Olympics. We then went to the Catalonian National Art Museum, and saw exhibits from the 10th century up through modern times, including quite a few pieces by Picasso. We went also to the port and the monument of Christopher Columbus, after which they treated me to lunch as a way of thanking me for help translating - written Catalàn is somewhere in between French and Spanish, and I was able to parse enough to figure out most signs and whatnot, whereas they spoke nothing but a small amount of English; not really that helpful. They walked me back as far as the metro station so I could get back to Sants Estacio in time for the train back to Montpellier. We exchanged email addresses so they'll send me some of the pictures they took. It's always nice to make new friends! It's funny to think that this is one of the benefits of travelling alone.

Time to see the sea

2009-02-06T22:45:00.002+01:00

Today I went out for another day trip, this time east to the coastal city of Toulon. It was once the site of a famous prison (where even Jean Valjean was supposed to have been incarcerated) and is still the home of a large naval base and a bustling port on the Mediterranean.

After changing trains in Marseille I arrived in Toulon around noon, hoping to see as much of the city as I could in the short time I had before going back to Montpellier. I decided to start out by finding the office of tourism, hoping as was the case in Carcassonne that they would give me a map of the city, complete with places to go. The office was right on the harbour and they did have maps for tourists. So I started walking from there toward the naval base, where I found the Maritime Museum. Student admission was four euros, which isn't too bad, so I decided to check it out. The museum had lots of models of old ships and displays of the history of ocean travel, particularily in and around Toulon. It was apparently the site of an important naval battle during world war two, with many ships sinking and burning in the harbour. I found all the exhibits quite fascinating, but as the museum wasn't too big it didn't take me long to see it all and start moving along.

I walked past a few monuments and plazas, including the Place de la Libérté, a monument to fallen soldiers of the second world war, as well as the Place Victor Hugo, home of Toulon's theatre and named in honour of the famous author. By this time it was starting to rain, so I took shelter in a café and had lunch.

After the rain had let up a bit, I went toward the Porte d'Italie, an old gate of the city. I couldn't see much of the gate itself, however there was an art gallery nearby so I decided to look around there. Following the maritime nature of the city most of the paintings depicted the sea or boats, but were still quite lovely. After that the rain had started again, so I decided to look around the mall near the Palais de Neptune. Even though Toulon is smaller than Montpellier, it seems they have more exotic stores... But I'm not really one for shopping so I used the time just to enjoy the similarity within the differences. Okay, maybe that doesn't make much sense, but I find that when I see something that's so close to American culture (like a shopping mall?) it's much easier for me to notice the little differences that make it French. With something radically different, I know it's different, so details always seem to escape me.

The rain seemed to finally disappear, so I spent the rest of my time wandering along the harbour absorbing the sea breezes of the mediterranean - it was about 60° F with a light wind, so it felt wonderful. While walking back to the station, I took the time to admire the architecture and landscaping. Overall, it was quite the lovely outing!

University Strike

2009-02-05T16:48:00.005+01:00

I mentioned the strike yesterday, but today I find it in full force. The professors are upset over changes being made by the French President to the public university system, so they've voted to strike. The campus was filled with signs declaring it "en grève", on strike. There were gatherings and demonstrations, including a large one I sort of ran into whilst heading toward the Comédie...

This large group managed to disrupt bus and tram service for a little while. Since I'm still exhausted from my ordeal in London, it was nice to have an extra day off - though for me it meant no classes this week at all!

Three day weekend... And then some.

2009-02-04T17:49:00.009+01:00

The weekend started out so lovely, and spiralled downhill rather quickly. I flew to London Friday afternoon to meet my sister, with whom I took a coach bus to Birmingham where she is currently studying. I was supposed to be back in Montpellier by Monday morning but here it is late Wednesday and I've only just gotten back, by a couple of hours. To blame is the worst snow storm to hit London in 18 years. This paralysed the city, stopping all trains, planes, and coaches, and frightening other drivers out of going anywhere. This left me stranded at Victoria Station, with no way of getting to the airport to even check the status of my flight.

I'll start off with the good parts of my trip. We got into Birmingham late Friday night, and took a bus back to her flat. Saturday she showed me around Birmingham during most of the day. We saw mostly the famous shopping areas and parts of the city halls and medieval churches. Part of this included Bullring, a large shopping mall which attracts many visitors. We saw a film and had dinner at a Japanese restaurant before going to the Birmingham Hippodrome for the main reason I came: the Pantomime. Panto is quite a popular form of theatre in the UK, and Brum is supposed to have one of the best, if not the best. Adding to that was the fact that the star of this year's show (Robin Hood) was John Barrowman, an excellent singer and actor, whom the nerd in me absolutely adores for his roles in Doctor Who and Torchwood, two of my absolute favourite scifi shows. This was the closing weekend, and therefore my last and only chance to see it - my sister had already been four times! The show was absolutely amazing, and we ended up buying tickets for the closing performance on Sunday evening as well! Since it's Panto, the show is slightly different every time so it's worth it to see it twice.

Sunday we started out by going to Selly Sausage, a restaurant near the University of Birmingham campus that serves American style pancakes - "pancakes" in Britain are actually crêpes. It was a nice treat, and thus I was quite full as we headed towards our next destination: Cadbury World. Birmingham is home to the main factory of Cadbury chocolate, and they offer factory tours with plenty of exhibits on the history of chocolate and the company itself, as well as free samples. This is honestly the only kind of milk chocolate I will eat - I'm usually a dark chocolate snob. I'm not sure what they do here, but they have such unbelievably tasty chocolate! And of course, there's a little shop at the end so I bought some crème eggs and jelly babies. After that we had a little time to kill before going to the theatre, so Sam took me to the local comic stores so I could totally nerd out: they have so many Doctor Who toys here (which makes sense, since it's British) which are nearly impossible to find in the states! It was a great time killer, just staring at them all... Panto was great again, and after the show we went back to her campus, where we joined with other people from her programme to watch the Super Bowl. I was a bit disappointed in the outcome but overall it was a good game and I was glad to have the chance to watch it, even if it meant no sleep Sunday night.

So I took a coach back to London Victoria in the wee hours of the morning, expecting to get there just in time to hop on a train for Gatwick airport. The bus was running just on schedule, but I was a little surprised looking out the window as we were getting into the city to see it snow - I had heard it didn't snow much in England; but it was still kind of pretty, especially since I won't be seeing it again in Montpellier. We got to the station with plenty of time to spare so I ran towards the platform. Imagine my surprise to find what was pretty much a ghost town, save a large mob of people around a few screens. All services were suspended, the screen said. I was shocked. Back in Minnesota, this tiny amount of snow wouldn't even faze us, and here they were cancelling trains, schools, flights? Amazing. The people working at the station were just as lost as the rest of us, and any alternative transport was unavailable as well, but finally around noon a single train left for the airport, and I was on it. The problem of course, is that my flight was supposed to have left before that, and I had no idea whether it had been cancelled or if I had just missed it. I did know that I had already missed my Monday class, no hope for that one. Getting to the airport, I found queues miles long, and employees telling me my flight was one of the few that had not been delayed or cancelled, and had indeed left (I later found that this wasn't the case - after shelling out €100 on a new route.) The next flight for Montpellier wouldn't leave until Friday morning, being a flight that was only offered 4 times a week. I ended up booking the first flight to the south of France, 7am today to Toulouse, and reserving a train ticket to get back to Montpellier. There was absolutely nothing I could do about any of it, so I decided to stop worrying about the classes I was going to miss and instead enjoy this extra day in London I had been given.

I took a train back to Victoria, getting there around six. Since I hadn't slept in almost 36 hours, I decided just to find a cheaper hotel or B&B in the area and crash for the night. There are a lot of hotels nearby, but they are all quite small and it took some doing to find one with vacancies that wasn't too expensive. I finally found one and settled in, watching the BBC for a few hours before falling asleep. Tuesday morning I had breakfast at the hotel, then returned to Victoria to make sure I was able to get back to Gatwick (luckily I was able to use the same ticket on account of the weather delays) and leave my bag at the left luggage counter. This left me free to explore the city. I walked first to Buckingham Palace, then Wesminster Abbey and Parliament where Big Ben is, which is also near the London Eye. I had no real aim after that so I ended up walking all the way along the Thames to the Tower of London. It was quite a long ways, and I was exhausted! By this time, the underground was again running normally so I took the tube to Canary Wharf, where I basically just hung around a while, then again to Piccadilly circus. I had been there once before, but that was over ten years ago and I didn't really remember it. It's probably changed too, I'm sure.

I decided to walk back to Victoria from there, which took me near Hyde Park and past St. James Park. Unfortunately, by this time it was dark and the park was closed, but I was amazed at the statues and such I did see at Hyde Park Corner. I took the train from Victoria around 10, getting to Gatwick just before 11. Since I could check in around 4am for my flight it was easier just to wait at the airport trying to sleep a little there than to get a room anywhere. After that my trip was uneventful... Early morning flight to Toulouse, from where I took a bus to the train station and a train to Montpellier. I had only about half an hour in Toulouse, which is too bad because I probably won't get back there. I tried to enjoy what little of it I saw - it is a nice looking city, but so are most of the cities I've seen in the south of France. I got back into Montpellier only to find out that from today there is some sort of strike; the classes I thought I would miss were actually cancelled! That of course doesn't help with the ones Monday and Tuesday I did actually miss, but luckily I know other people in my programme who are able to help me catch up. So I guess now I've had quite the travel experience... Even if it disrupted what I was supposed to be doing and horribly deprived me of sleep, I still managed to have fun in London!

En grève

2009-01-29T15:20:00.005+01:00

If there's one thing the French like, it's strikes. Instead of merely complaining when things go bad, they go out and demonstrate their impatience with the government by skipping school and work to gather and show their solidarity with one another and demand change. Today there's a sort of nationwide general strike, at it's worst in Paris, but it's affecting us in Montpellier too. The entrances to the University were filled with people handing out pamphlets urging us to go to the demonstrations. I had someone knock on my dorm room door last night asking me to participate (I can't, as I'm pretty sure it's against a lot of rules.) My class this morning had only 6 of about 20 people show up, since the tram system is also affected by the strike and most of the people living off campus had too many difficulties in getting here. While this strike is only for today protesting the state of the economy, there are rumours that starting next week there could be a professor's strike. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, since I did come here for school... I'd hate to lose out on that experience, but then, as my lit professor said "for all of you foreign students: welcome to France!"

La vie quotidienne

2009-01-26T18:14:00.004+01:00

It has occurred to me that the things that have become trivial to me may still be interesting to people back home, so it's high time I started writing about them. I did a similar post in Korea only toward the end, so maybe if I start early I can really be more thorough and informative.
First thing that I'll talk about is food. Now, obviously French food is supposedly very delicious and healthy etc., but I find the kinds of foods that match that stereotype are only found in expensive restaurants. I've come with a mission of living as cheaply as possible, in order to save money for travel and hopefully even have some left when I go home. This means rather than eating out, I try to make most of my meals myself, but that in itself can be an interesting experience.

That of course isn't to say that I never eat out, just not very often. Most of the times that I do buy food, it's a snack. Which of course brings me to crêpes. The crepes here are not quite what you get at the state fair or such back home. There are two kinds: sucré, or sweet, and salé, savoury. I've only tried the sweet, but I've had a few different very tasty varieties. My favourites so far are lemon sugar and maple syrup, both way tastier than you'd think.

Then of course there's the grocery shopping I have to do in order to eat, which is an adventure in and of itself. The large grocery store that I usually go to is called Monoprix, and there are a few locations a couple tram stops from my dorm. This is where I go when I need a lot or need things besides food, as it's also a sort of department store. It is absolutely insane. It's not open on sundays, closes by 8:30 at night, and no matter when I go I always seem to wait at least 20 minutes in line to check out. I like the nice selection, and I usually get things like eggs, milk, cheese, and juice. I try to get a variety so I'm not eating the same thing every day, but it's not always easy. I usually stop at various bakeries to get a baguette, which are very cheap but really don't last more than a day. This usually means I eat some in the afternoon with cheese or nutella, have a few slices with dinner, and turn any leftovers into french toast or eat it with jam for breakfast. Besides that I'll stop at some of the smaller markets if I just need a few things or for the fresher fruit and veggies.

I'll be posting more entries like this, so keep an eye out for ma "vie quotidienne"!

Provence

2009-01-25T13:42:00.005+01:00

Yesterday our programme organized a day trip to see some of the historical sights of Provence, namely the ones it would be hard for us to get to on our own. We all piled into the two buses they had arranged for us and headed out on an hour long trip toward Nîmes for our first stop.

The Pont du Gard is part of the remains of the Roman aqueduct system, which was built in the first century AD. It's huge, and the view both of it and from it is absolutely breathtaking. Unfortunately because our schedule was so tight we didn't have much time to climb and look around.

Next up was Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, a small village named for the magnificent waterfall which is the source of the Sorgue river. The water had a fascinating bluish green colour, and the fountains which gave access to the water for drinking tasted so clean and refreshing, I was glad I had brought my water bottle with me and filled it up.

After that we headed towards Avignon and Les Baux de Provence. This is an area that has evidence of life dating back to 6000 BC, as well as the remains of a 10th century castle destroyed in 1632, but the medieval city around has been restored enough to house shops and cafés. This was another example of medieval city/way of life, although not nearly as large or nice as Carcassonne.

For our last stop we headed toward Arles and the Moulin Saint Pierre, the most famous of the windmills of Fontvielle. Also known as "Ribet" or "Alphonse Daudet's windmill" it was built in 1815 and was functional until the first world war. It was then restored in 1935 and has since become a symbol of the writer Daudet. We didn't have very long to stay here, but we at least got to see this piece of history!

Afterwards we got back on the bus for Montpellier. It had started raining again, and we saw an amazing rainbow out the window... Biggest I've ever seen. However, the wind had also started picking up, and for literally miles there were semi trucks on the side of the highway, told to stop because closer to the Spanish border the winds and rain were so strong that trucks had tipped over. I heard later on the news that at least 15 people had died in Spain and France because of this storm, which didn't hit Montpellier with full force but I could definitely feel on my walk home... I saw a dumpster blown out into the road!

Day Tripper, yeah

2009-01-23T23:10:00.007+01:00

Those of you who don't know me personally, and some that do, may be surprised to learn that generally I travel by myself. Many people ask me isn't it boring/lonely/dangerous etc., but the truth is I actually prefer it. I'm the kind of traveller who takes lots of pictures and just tries to soak in the scenery, see absolutely everything I can in the time I have. When I travel with someone else, I always feel like I have to follow their schedule, which can sometimes be a downer. That isn't to say that I never travel with other people or don't enjoy it when I do; it's just worth noting that most of the pictures I'll post will be scenery because most of the trips I take will be toute seule.

So yesterday I went into town to buy my 12-25 card, which is a rail discount card that lets one travel to many destinations throughout France at usually half price. Since it was valid from today and I had nothing else to do (no Friday classes) I decided to take at day trip to Carcassonne. Carcassonne is about an hour and a half west of Montpellier by train, and is famous for its walled medieval old city. The new city, which is where the station is located, is also very old, but not when you consider that parts of the old city were built by the Romans! The walled fortress here is so magnificent that it even inspired a board game.

I walked all around the fortress as well as the castle within, braving the rain in order to see all that I could. The city itself really isn't all that big, so I was able to cover both sides easily in the 10 hours I was there. Over all it was a fascinating trip, not a bad outing for the last minute on a Friday!

Le Zoo

2009-01-17T17:34:00.004+01:00

Today, we thought, was a good day to go stare at some animals. So I went with a couple other people to Le Parc Zoologique, which turned out not to be very far from the campus. It was a pretty nice day, so walking around the zoo was actually rather lovely, but a zoo is a zoo. Monkeys playing around, antelopes staring at you, and so on.

Anyone who wants can see more animal pictures here.

Laser Tag

2009-01-16T23:50:00.003+01:00

One of the programme assistants, that is, French students who are liaisons to our American programme, organized a trip to the Odysseum to play laser tag tonight. Not many people showed up, since it's Friday night, but I decided it sounded like a lot of fun and so I went.
We met up at the Comédie around nine and took the tram to the Laser Game (as it's called here for some reason). We all chose ridiculous nicknames and put on the heavy vests, headed in for half an hour of trippy lights, techno music, and smoke machine fog. It was great. Out of the 11 people there, I placed 4th. Not bad at all considering I haven't played in years...

L'Epiphanie

2009-01-13T18:31:00.003+01:00

Well, it was only a week late, but today we had a small party at the programme office for Epiphany. In France it is celebrated with a special cake, la galette, which contains a small figurine in each cake, placed randomly. Whoever is lucky enough to find it in their piece gets a crown and is the king or queen for the day! Of course, we had a lot of people and so there were several cakes and therefore several royalty... Not me though.
The cake, on the other hand, is delicious.

Week one!

2009-01-10T17:07:00.003+01:00

Well dear friends, still no internet in my room, I'm told that should appear in a few days. Luckily, though, I have finally received my wifi password for the dorm lobby, so I can at least sit here for a while and update on the busy week I've had in Montpellier!

I left off my last real post Friday the second, shortly after arriving in Montpellier. That evening I went with a few others from my group on a short walk around the downtown area, from the Place de la Comédie where our hotel was located to Montpellier's Arc de Triomphe, about 1km each way. The weather was beautiful already, and somehow I felt like I'd been here for months. We stopped at a café for sandwiches and tea and then headed back to the comédie.

Saturday we were given a brief tour of the centre-ville, and then we had our orientation at the Corum, which is Montpellier's convention centre. After taking a placement test for our grammar and phonetics classes we split up into groups; half picking their classes and the rest going in small groups around the city to get mobile phones and tram cards. I was part of the group running errands first, which turned out to be lucky for me as I got a nicer phone for the same price everyone else paid for theirs, because they had run out of the kind I had by the time most people had gotten there. Getting the tram card turned out to be more of an ordeal than we thought, since we had to bring our own photos for them to put on the card. My group ended up going to automatic photo machines in the mall and not getting our passes until later in the evening. I'm glad I at least got it that day though - it has been extremely useful as it works on both tram lines and the buses, and I can get just about anywhere I could want to go. After all our little errands we spent a few hours trying to choose classes - something that turned out to be much more complicated than back home, but still pretty flexible since nothing was set in stone.

Sunday was the day everyone moved into their permanent housing. I was one of three people who will be living in the Cité Universitaire Vert Bois, also known as the dormitories. I was quite impressed and surprised when I got there; the room is much larger than I expected, and I have both my own toilet/shower and kitchenette. That should making living/eating on the cheap much easier for me. I've already been experimenting... After shelling out the money for a frying pan and a few basic ingredients like eggs and butter, I've made quite a variety of tasty meals for myself. Good to know, I can cook somewhat! (Those who are interested can go here to see what my room looks like.)

Sundays will likely be problematic when I'm not travelling, since here in "provincial" France everything, and I really do mean everything, is closed on Sundays. No groceries, no pharmacies, nothing. Only a few restaurants are open, and unless I'm meeting someone I probably won't be frequenting those on Sundays - last Sunday I took the tram to the Comédie just to take a walk, and spent .75€ on a baguette since I didn't yet have a chance to buy groceries. I felt so French carrying my bread in it's little tissue paper all the way back to my dorm. Hilarious.

Monday was the first day of classes, and I only had one. Our programme group had a little room on campus for us to meet up and make sure we had a full and non-conflicting schedule, and also so we could hopefully find where our classes were. I went around in circles with one of the programme directors trying to find out where the schedules for Czech language were posted, only to find out it conflicted with one of those courses I had to take, so I'll be taking beginning German instead. Monday I had the first half of my translations class, this part being translating English to French. It's a class specifically for foreign students who are native english speakers, so it was all British and American students. It seems like it shouldn't be too difficult. After classes monday evening is when I took care of my grocery shopping, which was a bit of an adventure in itself. I bought far too much for my own good since I wanted it to last a while, and the walk back to my dorm from the tram stop (which is a good kilometre or more) was a bit trying, but I'm sure it was good exercise. Add to that that I live on the fourth floor and there's no elevator, and well... I'll probably be losing weight here.

Tuesdays I'll normally have two classes, but the German one doesn't start until next week, so I had just the French to English portion of my translations class. Again, I think this will be a good class for me. Wednesday I was supposed to have my lecture for 18th century lit, but the professor was sick and so that was cancelled. While waiting for my Phonetics class later that afternoon with some classmates, it began to snow. Now, that may not seem that interesting, but the next morning I heard tell that that hadn't happened here in over twenty years. So that was a little impressive, and quite interesting to see in a mediterranean city! Phonetics looks like it will be too easy since I already took pretty much the same class back home, but it's one of two required courses for the program, and I'll get elective credit for it anyway, so hopefully it'll just be an easy A.

Thursday is going to be my busiest day, I have three classes with only an hour between each. First is Grammar and Methodology, which again is very similar to a course I've already taken, but should still be somewhat helpful and is required. After that is my discussion section for 18th century lit, which have specific subjects related to the broad lecture module - mine is on Marivaux and Travesty; we'll be reading two of his plays and doing critiques and anylysing etc. This seems like it'll be my hard class, especially since I'm not especially a fan of literature, and it's an integrated class so the professor speaks really fast in French. Luckily the grading scale is really lenient for transferring these courses back. My last class of the day and the week was the second semester of Italian, which I'm taking to compensate for the fact that German is only 1.5 credits, as is this. I figured since I was taking Italian last semester I might as well continue it.

Fridays I have free, which will be excellent once I've settled in and start travelling. I used my free time yesterday to explore the city a bit more, and then went with one of the girls from my programme to the bookstore to pick up a few textbooks and dictionaries. I went back with her to see her homestay, and her host mother invited me to stay for dinner, which was quite lovely. I decided against a homestay for various reasons but French home cooking almost made me wish I had one!

Today our group was given a guided tour of some of the medieval areas of the city. Some of the buildings here are more than a millenium old, with "updated" façades from the 17th or 18th centuries. The tour ended with us being let on top of the Arc de Triomphe, which gave us a spectacular view of the city. I was thouroughly amazed.

All in all, I'm very glad to have come to Montpellier. I think I'll be adjusted to life here in no time at all. Lots of challenges ahead but I'm ready for whatever comes my way!

Brief Update

2009-01-08T18:07:00.003+01:00

I've been without internet since Saturday, and although I have so much I want to write about, it's going to have to wait until I have internet in my dorm room, which should be from tomorrow. Suffice it to say I've been having a wonderful time so far, Montpellier is such a lovely city and I think this programme suits me quite well. Expect a long update with lots of pictures; hope you can sit through it all!

Ta for now!

Bonne Année 2009!

2009-01-02T14:42:00.008+01:00

I arrived in France Tuesday afternoon after an uneventful flight from Minneapolis, a short and rushed connection in Amsterdam, and a quick flight to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. I met up with my sister outside of the baggage claim, and we boarded a shuttle for our resort at Disneyland Paris. We spent two nights at the Hotel Santa Fe, the cheapest resort but still rather pricey. It was all worth it though, as we had a wonderful time running around the two theme parks and counting down to the new year in French with lots of fireworks.

New Year's day we took the metro into our hotel, at the Porte de Montreuil in Paris' 20th arondissment. Since Sam had to leave for the airport at about 4am, we just went to eat and then went to bed early. After sending her along in a taxi to the airport, I got my affairs together, had breakfast at the hotel and took the metro back to De Gaulle. There I was able to meet up with most of the group from my programme, where we had a short flight here to Montpellier.

I'm now in the hotel in Montepellier where I'll be staying for the next few days before moving into my dorm. We're free for the rest of the evening, so I'll probably start wandering around the town, find some food and what not. I'm already very impressed by what I've seen, and I'm quite excited for everything that's yet to come!

Faisons un bon voyage!

2008-12-27T17:01:00.007+01:00

Two more days, so this is going to be my last post from the states. I spent a lovely week in Colorado and now I have just a few days to recover before flying out Monday night. My flight leaves at 7:50 pm, I fly first to Amsterdam, then I'm changing planes and flying to Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, where I'll be arriving in the early afternoon and meeting my sister who flies in from London earlier that morning. I'm lucky to have flown so much last year going back and forth to Korea that I have "elite status" on Northwest, so I have a really nice seat from Minneapolis to Amsterdam - The first row of coach. Actually, I'm not sure how it works on international flights, but when I flew back from Colorado I was given a free upgrade to first class since it wasn't full.... That was amazing!

Packing is harder than I'd imagined. I'm bringing a lot less than I did to Korea, but since my bag is smaller I'm having difficulties getting it all together. I have an empty duffel bag to put stuff in on the way back, but I don't want too much with me on the way there since the first few days will be rather hectic as it is.
I guess this is it... Nervous jitters as always but it'll be worth it! Next post will be in France - Paris or Montpellier, depending on when I get internet next.

In any case, à bientôt!

French Visa - Acquired

2008-12-06T16:03:00.003+01:00

I made the journey down to Chicago in order to visit the French consulate and obtain my student visa for my time in France, valid through the 29th of June 2009. The process was rather painless, but it involved a lot of sitting around in Chicago - which could be fun if the weather weren't so darned cold. The windy city lived up to its name, though, and I tried to spend as little time as possible outside despite the about a mile walk to the consulate from the metra station. I guess getting there five hours early didn't help either, but the trains from Kenosha don't run very often.

Now it's time to finalize packing, make sure I have everything ready. First things first: I still have 2 papers, 2 days of class and four finals to go! Not to mention Christmas in Colorado... It's going to be a busy few weeks leading up to December 29th, but that's nothing new to me!

First order of business in France: Disneyland Paris. My sister and I will be spending New Year's there, before I fly to Montpellier on January 2nd for the start of my programme. Should be a good time. I hope.

22 days!

Into the black...

2008-10-09T02:15:00.002+02:00

Countdown to France: 82 days

I've moved my blogging for this trip to blogger because I like the format better, and it's easier for those without livejournal to follow. So to those of you who followed my Korea trip on Soul in Seoul, welcome back. For anyone who found this by chance, welcome. At first I started keeping these sort of travel "diaries" as reminders to myself, but I realized it might be nice to share my experiences with others - not only so my friends and family could keep track of me, but also so they could figure out exactly what it was I was doing.

Expect to see minimal updates regarding my travel plans before I head abroad, then semi-regular posts whenever something of note happens. I'll be taking lots of pictures, and I'm a particular fan of scenery photos; expect to see lots of those.

Once again I am studying in a university abroad, this time the Université Montpellier III in Montpellier. I'll be in the south of France, which will hopefully be a more unique experience than studying in Paris. I hope to travel around Europe while I'm there, my trip ending with about two weeks in the UK before I return home.

That's about all the introduction I have for now. I'll update again when I have a few more details.