Signing off

I’m writing this wrap-up blog post on the plane home.  Somehow the plane movie (a poorly acted drama about that one-armed surfer girl) just isn’t doing it for me.  I was supposed to have my own screen and therefore my choice of movies, but yesterday US Airways switched our aircraft so instead of being on the giant, nice overseas plane we’re on an old, crappy plane that you’d be bummed if you only had to take it across the United States. Plus they messed up everyone’s seats and infuriated a whole plane of people – who pretty much all banded together against the nasty flight attendant who was yelling at everyone and rearranged seats so they could sit with the people they had originally booked seats with. Plus there’s a 50-50 chance we’re going to miss our connection because we were an hour late taking off. You’ll get an [angry] update if that happens…

Update: we didn’t miss the flight but we were this close to doing so. We had an extremely stressful day.

First things first: Copenhagen.  We had atrocious weather the whole time we were there. We didn’t even glimpse the sun – though judging by the color of the Danes’ skin, they don’t see the sun much either.  I was also a bit underwhelmed by Copenhagen.   The city didn’t have the character that the other cities had.  Amsterdam was by far my favorite, and Mark’s favorite was Brussels – but Copenhagen was a bit blah compared to the rest.  However, we still did some pretty sweet stuff, and I had a good time.

The first day we were there we walked down the main pedestrian shopping street (Lego store! I even wore my earrings!) and explored a bit.  In the town hall there’s an old, elaborate clock that measures everything from the time to the hours of daylight to the rotation of the solar system – pretty amazing.  The highlight of the day though was a giant tower (there are lots of giant towers to climb in Copenhagen) in the center of the city.  Apparently however many centuries back there was a king who was too lazy to climb stairs to go up to his observatory.  So he had a tower constructed that was a giant spiraling ramp so he could ride his horse to the top; unfortunately, the tower is no longer historically accurate, as we had to walk up the ramp rather than ride horses.  Afterward we found a couple really nice parks and then went to see the famous statue of the Little Mermaid, which is in Copenhagen because Hans Christian Andersen lived there – also, Copenhagen won’t let you forget this, as there are statues of him all over the place. Every time we saw a statue of a man in the distance I guessed that it was Andersen. I was right most of the time.

If you’ve ever seen a picture of Copenhagen, it’s probably a canal with bright-colored building and docked sailboats. That’s what one street in Copenhagen looks like. The rest does not look like that at all; it’s mostly plain buildings and few canals.  But we ate on that street for dinner (where Mark was served a whole fish, lungs and eyeballs included).  It’s so chilly and icky in this city that almost all restaurants (outdoor and indoor) come equipped with blankets for the customers. No joke.  There are usually two blankets per table.

The next day the weather was worse, but we went and saw the changing of the guard at the royal palace, tried Copenhagen’s specialty for lunch (an open-faced sandwich of all different varieties that is called a smo-something but is not called a smorgasbord – but that’s what I kept calling it, despite being reminded by Mark that that’s Swedish), climbed up another tower which had a spiral staircase on the outside of the tower (one of the only times I’ve gotten shaky knees climbing a tower), and went to Christiana.  Christiana is the area in the city that was set up in the 60s by some hippies who didn’t want to follow the law.  Basically weed is legal in the area and it’s separate from the rest of the city – but open to tourists, as long as they don’t take pictures.  Despite the fact that there were tons of tourists and we were there in the middle of the day, I was not a fan of this area. We didn’t stay long.

Overall, Copenhagen had some cool and pretty attractions – it simply wasn’t my favorite, and probably wouldn’t be somewhere I’d recommend that people visit.  Plus, despite how beautiful and blond all the Danes are, they aren’t nearly as friendly as the Dutch.

Sunday we went back to Paris for one last day.  It was also the last day of the Tour de France, aka my favorite sporting event besides NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl, so we went down to the Champs-Elysees to watch the last leg of the Tour. We – and several thousand Frenchman and tourists standing around us – saw the bikers go by. We were at the end of the Champs-Elysees, by the Arc du Triomphe and had a great view of them as they made the U-turn in from of the Arc.  I’m really glad I got to see that.  That evening I went with Mark and his family (who he was meeting up with in Paris since he is going to travel with them for another week) to meet some relatives in Paris that he didn’t know he had, and then he and I went to dinner with Emily and her brother to catch up.  I headed to the airport with Emily and her brother this morning – and that’s a wrap on Europe!

Do blogs need conclusions? I’ve got to sign off in some way.  There are a million more things I could say about Lyon and my weekend trips and this last excursion, but you probably wouldn’t want to hear all million of them.  I’m so glad I got to study in France, despite the fact that I now need a break from the French for awhile, and I loved all the people I made friends with.  And my trip at the end was awesome – I can’t even complain about the hostels too much. J

So thanks for reading!

"If you hear the bell, run like hell."

This was sound advice from our tour guide in Amsterdam. Like I said before, there are a lot of bikes in Amsterdam, and they do not like to stop for anyone, particularly anyone with a map. We took a free tour (well, we tipped her a lot at the end) of the city - which was actually a really awesome tour. There's a company that runs free tours in a lot of major cities in Europe, and our guide was really great. We learned a ton about Amsterdam that we wouldn't have known otherwise, and saw a lot - particularly because the tour was three hours long.

After our tour we ate pancakes (yum- though it made me reminiscent of the Tavern and this supposed "close" of it which is going to happen in December) and went through the Anne Frank house. The house/museum is extremely well done and very sad, of course. Since bad weather has been our thing on this trip, it was raining when we left the museum, so we went and saw Bridesmaids. I was thwarted from seeing Harry Potter again. Apparently Amsterdam sells movie tickets like you would sell concert tickets, as in selling assigned seats. So they didn't have any seats together for the showing of un-3D Harry Potter. What the heck, Holland? But Bridesmaids was a good replacement!

We finally went out that evening; we had to go out if we were in Amsterdam! We went to our hostel bar and then decided to follow a pub crawl that was leaving the bar. We followed them through the Red Light District (which is an alien place, let me tell you - more on that later), discovered we'd need wristbands to get into their next bar, and went and sat in a different bar instead. Then we found another pub crawl, followed them, got into a bar and managed to swing two rounds of free drinks from them. This was entertaining, since we went to the bar to buy drinks and the bartender asked if we were with the pub crawl. I shook my head but Mark said, "What if I said we were?" and she shrugged and handed us the drinks (test tubes of Jaegermeister) they were handing out to the pub crawlers. Then as we were walking out of the bar with the group, they were filling everyone's test tubes with a drink, so we just held our test tubes out and got another round. Success!

The Red Light District really is bizarre. During the day it's fairly quiet, and all you see are sex shops and coffee shops (where you can smoke pot) and shops selling cannabis lollipops and energy drinks (ironic much?). And day and night there are lots of people smoking pot and there are literally prostitutes in windows everywhere - plus there are no open-container laws. But at night the streets are packed with people, and nobody is angry or out-of-control, they're just milling about and hanging out with friends, so it doesn't feel unsafe. Very strange. It was an experience, to say the least. And one night going out was probably enough, but we definitely had a good time.

Though here's another piece of advice from the tour guide: don't take pictures of the prostitutes. They will push open their windows, chase you down, grab your camera, and break it. Or they will throw a cup of piss at you, which they conveniently keep in the window for just such a purpose. No joke.

Anyway, the next day we had some time in Amsterdam, so we milled around, bought some souvenirs, and did a canal tour on a big touristy boat. Then we had to take a plane to Copenhagen (NOT FUN because it had propellers and it was sooo bumpy landing in Copenhagen - No, Mom, I am not exaggerating) which got majorly delayed, blah blah blah, and we didn't get into our hostel until after midnight. Ick. I am also thoroughly sick of hostels. But at least I can say I did it, since I guess anyone who travels in college is supposed to stay in hostels! Though I'm really looking forward to a normal hotel in Paris...

A last thought on Amsterdam: the parts that aren't the Red Light District are really nice - and not a prostitute for be found! The architecture is gorgeous and strange (all the houses lean in funny directions because, hello, they built their city on a swamp) and the canals are pretty. There are really cool house boats on a lot of the canals and everyone is amazingly friendly - and knows English! Amsterdam has definitely been my favorite city so far.

I'll do the Copenhagen updates tomorrow. This is bordering on the "too-long-of-a-post" zone. Bye!

Here we (Van) Go(gh)

It's updatin' time! I hope I can remember everything I've done in the last few days. We're in Amsterdam now - pretty much smack on the edge of the Red Light District, meaning there are lots of weed and sex shops specializing in designer condoms and dildos close by. Mark wondered aloud today if the Dutch of the colonial era would be pissed if they could see what happened to Amsterdam, which was once an important and moderately successful colonial power. Past Amsterdam: sophisticated trading center. Current Amsterdam: Mardi Gras on steroids year-round. Yeah, they'd probably be pretty angry. At least they're nice and green here, because aside from loving pot (which is also green), the Amsterdamians (?) really love bikes. They're everywhere!

I'm getting sidetracked though. I need to start with Brussels, Day 2: We started at a flea market and Mark bought a one euro Belgian beer glass. Later we walked around the "European quarter" of Brussels, the area where all the EU buildings are. It was maaaybe a wee bit long, but I had to be nice because I broke Mark's beer glass during it (note: I subsequently replaced said beer glass in Bruges). And the building that houses the EU Parliament is enormous and really cool - and closed on Saturdays. Overall, Brussels was cool and very unique; all the areas of the city are different.

We took a train to Bruges, a medieval city north of Brussels, that afternoon. I announced our presence to all of Bruges with my rolling suitcase and cobble stone streets combination. The weather in Bruges was pretty bad too - chilly and damp and rainy, which our waiter at dinner assured us was highly unusual. We wandered, bought some different types of Belgian beer, and decided that the Belgians are decisively nicer than the French. Bruges is a really gorgeous little town. We wandered again the next morning, checked out the French fry museum and the chocolate museum, and then bought both fries and chocolate. We didn't necessarily do a ton in Bruges, but, like I said, it's a really neat town, and I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Belgium. The city is so old that they can turn buildings from 1500 into fry museums and not worry about a thing.

From Bruges to Amsterdam. We were overwhelmed getting into the city at 9:30 (it takes all of two minutes before the smell of pot reaches your nostrils and all of five before you see the "Sex Museum") and stayed in for the evening. But today we got up and saw a lot of the city as we walked to the Heineken brewery - which was super fun and included lots of beer with the ticket price, plus Mark and I got to print a cheesy Heineken bottle label with our names on it - and then to the Van Gogh museum. Here's the thing about the Van Gogh museum: it has more than 200 Van Gogh paintings, including the Sunflowers one and the most famous self-portrait. Here's another thing about the Van Gogh museum: it does not have Starry Night. That's at the MoMA in New York. We're fairly certain Amsterdam is...bitter about this, to put it lightly. There is not a single reference to Starry Night in the museum or in the museum shop (which sells plenty of Van Gogh posters) - and it's arguably Van Gogh's most well-known work. Sorry, Netherlands. Or sorry, the Netherlands. The US beat you on that one.

Interestingly enough, there was also no reference of that whole chopping-off-his-ear thing. Hmmm...

And as a final note, one of our roommates in this hostel has a snore that is indescribable. But I'll try anyway. It starts with coughs, then has a burp, then a disgusting phlegm-sucking noise. If that sounds gross, too bad, cause you know what sounds even more gross? - the snore itself. I may not have slept too well last night.

I'm really not in Paris now.

I have (really good) free WiFi access at this first hostel, so why not capitalize on it and write a blog post?

Yesterday was the last day in France - tres triste! It was sad saying goodbye to everyone, particularly when Abena whipped out her ukelele and sang beautiful music to us during our farewell dinner. A bunch of us went out to one of our favorite bars, Flannigan's - an Irish pub, one last time and consequently got roughly three hours of sleep since a whole pack of us left the hotel at 7am this morning to get to the train station. Farewell, Lyon, you treated us well! Except for that whole hill thing.

Luckily I got to adventure on - and am currently in Brussels, Belgium! Upside of Brussels: waffles and french fries (they were invented here). Downside of Brussels: its weather hates us. Today was extremely dreary and rainy and chilly. I apparently did not have my brain on hand when I packed before I came to Europe; we are currently the farthest south we will be on our eight day trip - and I only have two pairs of pants. In my defense, I really could not have fit too much more in my suitcase, so I'm either going to be chilly in my skirts, or my pants are going to be real grimy by the time I get home.

Today we wandered around Brussels and saw their 15th century town hall, Manneken Pis (the fountain of the little boy who's peeing) who you would have guessed is three feet tall or so but is actually all of one foot, and other old stuff. Then we took the metro a ways to go to see a giant statue of an atom that was built for the World Fair in 1958. NERDS. Mark chose it, not me. It's an enormous structure that you can go inside of and can probably see much of Belgium from; we just saw a lot of Belgian fog and clouds. But there are also exhibits inside and a sweet gift shop where people's geeky boyfriends can buy shirts with pictures of the atom that say "Atomium" on them. Tonight we considered Harry Potter cause of the crappy weather, but the only showing was at 10, which is well past your bedtime when you've been up since 6.

Tomorrow is more Brussels, then off to Bruges. I hope I see some canals.

Oh no!

I am leaving Lyon tomorrow (bright and early at 7am!!) and right now am trying to finish up packing before I go out and see everyone one last time. I have internet at my first hostel, so I will try to write a wrap-up blog before I go gallavanting.

But thanks everyone for reading!! See you soon!

I could see Harry Potter before you...

        ...but I probably won't. The movie comes out here tonight at midnight but it's eleven euro for a ticket - to see the movie in 3-D. Um, no thank you. I hate 3-D movies, they make my brain hurt. Any of the showings not in 3-D are in French. That's another no-no. Alas, I will just have to wait until I get back to the States. But at least I get to drag out the Harry Potter era (aka the past 13 years of my life) a few weeks longer.
        I am so close to being done with my work, which is such a relief. I just have to do a presentation on a paper I wrote tomorrow in my culture class and crack out one last short paper for my history class. We had our last history class this morning. This is an extremely sad thing. Professor Douzou was easily one of the best teachers I have ever had. We bought delicious French pastries and had a little party during class and then took pictures with him at the end of the day. I told him I'm going to e-mail him over the course of next year as I write my thesis. He said, "Brilliant!" which is one of his favorite English phrases. I wish I could shrink him and stick him in my pocket and then take him out whenever I'm feeling down. Really. That's how great he is: I'm getting all stereotypically girly and talking about carrying him around. For those of you who have had Gallagher at UVA, Douzou is like a French version of him, only less sarcastic.
        It may be my last week in Lyon, but I don't really feel like I'm doing much of anything. It's hard when they pile the work on and we get stuck in our rooms with our abysmally slow internet trying to doing work. I'm going to try and get out some in the next few days, and Thursday is Bastille Day, so we'll be out and about then. We're all reminiscing about how we missed Fourth of July, so maybe Bastille Day will help a little - or it will just make us grumpier since it's French and not American.
        I'll end with a few random thoughts and observations about France since I don't have any interesting stories to recount:
1. I really miss CVS. The all-purpose drugstore/pharmacy does not exist here. And if you go to the pharmacy you have to describe your symptoms to the pharmacist and hope for the best. Luckily I've avoided that this trip...
2. People actually fight with police when they get pulled over here. And get away with it.
3. You can get sick of cheese. I'm not quite to that point yet, but I'm almost there. I am not, however, sick of quiche.
4. There is probably an underground source of Orangina that graces this country. There's just no way you could make that much of that drink otherwise.

An un-creative title: Annecy!

        It's time for another weekend update (nope - not like SNL).
        The entire trip went to Annecy, a town in the Alps, this weekend. Annecy might be the single most beautiful place I've ever been, and if not, it's certainly up there. It's situated on a giant crystal blue lake - Lake Annecy to be precise - and is surrounded by the Alps. My pictures don't nearly do it justice; all of us kept saying that we couldn't get sick of taking pictures of the lake and mountains. The city itself was very nice as well. It was also very small - the group spent most of today running into each other as we wandered around doing the typical "We are Americans and we don't know what to do when everything in France is closed on Sunday" thing that we've been doing this whole trip. But here's the day-by-day low down:
        We got there Friday and immediately headed over to the lake and rented paddle boats. Everyone jumped off the paddle boats into the (very cold Alpine) water, but since I'm not smart enough to remember to bring my bathing suit from Lyon, I stayed on the boat until it was too much to resist and I jumped in wearing my shorts and bra. (As Emily said, "You're so French." And as someone else said, "Nope, if she was French, she would have jumped in naked.") Afterward we touristed around taking pictures and checking out the town. The rest of the day was uneventful, though we learned that Annecy does really well with pizza; the restaurant where we ate dinner was like being in Italy.
        Saturday some of us went out on the lake again, but we rented a motor boat this time - and I borrowed a bathing suit from one of the girls. Figured I'd be classy this time, plus I was getting tired of the fact that some of my clothing was still soaking wet. Afterward we rented bikes and biked a ways around the lake, which can honestly only be described as "idyllic." I had a great conversation with the friendly owner of a sandwich shop where I bought lunch which I definitely needed. I go between feeling like I'm not very good at French and feeling like I'm a-okay, but this guy was impressed and we talked for awhile. I met up with Mark, who had jumped off a cliff while I was doing all this - safely, via paragliding, not suicidally - and we did the dinner thing.
        Today was kind of icky and rainy, but we found a cool outdoor market, though "found" is used loosely here, since the market had basically taken over most of the town, as markets do on Sundays in France. We went up to the castle that overlooks the town which has been turned into a museum...about fishing. It's a local museum about Annecy and the lake, and therefore has lots of information about fish and fisherman. I can't say it was too exciting, but students got in for 2.50, so it wasn't so bad. Then we spent the rest of the day wandering around and running into everyone else in the group while we killed time until our bus left at five. A highlight was a street performer doing cool stunts and juggling; after his show everyone was giving him money and a tiny French boy announced to the crowd of a couple hundred "Je donne les pièces!" which basically means "I'm giving money!"
        I cannot believe that this is my last week here. It feels like I've been here three days, not three weeks. Time flies when you're in France. Eek!

Think you're brave? Not compared to this guy.

Blogging is more fun than writing mini-research papers.

Today was an incredibly cool day. We went to the museum about the French Resistance this morning - which was cool in itself, as it used to be the headquarters of the Gestapo during the war. But after we went through the museum, we had an "interview" (it was more like a speech with follow-up questions) with a man who had been part of the Resistance movement during World War II. At age 16, in 1939, he joined the worker groups that were starting to move to resist the Nazis and the Vichy regime - the wartime French government that collaborated with the Nazis. He got deeper and deeper into the Resistance as the years went on - he even became close friends with Charles de Gaulle's nephew - until he was helping to blow up electrical lines and railroads that the Nazis were using. In 1944 he was arrested and tortured after being taken to the headquarters of the Gestapo (where we were today - literally the building in which he was giving the speech was the same in which he had been tortured more than 60 years before). He was tortured by Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo, and he refused to speak, despite the fact that they used a technique similar to waterboarding and the tendons in his wrists were severed by the handcuffs he was hanging from as they beat him.  He was eventually deported to Buchenwald because he wouldn't talk and give the names of fellow Resistance members. The only reason he survived the trip in the cattle car to Buchenwald - during which many died of asphyxiation because it was so crowded and many others went mad - was because he pressed his face to crack in the car wall and managed to breathe enough air through it. He was later liberated from Buchenwald by American troops, and when he made it home to his family, his mother did not recognize him because he was so thin.

And through all this, when we asked him where his courage came from, he simply said, "I had to fight for my homeland. There wasn't a choice. Everyone was in danger and the Nazis and Vichy were wrong, so I had to resist." None of this was said in a boasting way. He was humble. It was simply a question of protecting everyone he could, because there was no other option.

Unbelievable.

Tomorrow we leave for Annecy, in the Alps. Should be a good trip - the whole program is going, so basically we're invading. There's nothing more conspicuous in France than a group of 40 American college students flooding off a bus.

Could my life get any more French right now?

Ever heard an accordion being played in reference to something French? Well somewhere outside my open window there is an accordion being played in the most stereotypical French style you could possibly imagine. Toss someone a beret and a baguette and they couldn't be more French than this moment.

Cheers, Jean-Luc, or whatever your name is out there. I'm glad you took up the accordion.

"Merci" en anglais

With all the homework I have to do for one class (dammit, Pierre!) and the cooking class I have to go to in about an hour (Lyon is the food capital of France), I don't have a whole lot of time to write a blog post...or put up pictures...or e-mail. But I'm going to try to crank this out at least because 1) I'm sure you're all just dying for an update (ha) and 2) if I don't write this soon, I'm not going to remember everything I did this past weekend!

The first supremely exciting thing that I did when we went to Paris on Friday was forget my rail pass. D'oh. I needed to have my rail pass in addition to my seat reservation ticket in order to get on the train to Paris. So Mark had to wait in line to change our tickets for a later train, and I had to take two metro trains back to the hotel and walk up the-worst-hill-in-the-history-of-hills so I could grab my pass, run down the hill, get back on the metro and get back to the train station. So that was fun.

But it worked out. We got a later train, made it to Paris, and somehow navigated the Parisian metro system. The metro stations in Paris are enormous. Makes you feel a bit like you're running around in giant hamster tubes or mouse mazes because there are so many halls; the Parisians have somewhere to hide (and live comfortably) if there's ever an apocalypse (2012 anyone?) and they're forced underground. We went to Centre Pompidou, the main modern art museum - which has a lot of creepy stuff but also a ton of Picassos and cool modern art, and then walked around the Notre Dame area. We headed over toward the Louvre but didn't go in (since we'd both been there before), rode an extremely over-priced ferris wheel ("One of the best views in Paris!" it was not), ate a fairly over-priced dinner (beware the tourist traps, my friends), and then walked up the Champs Elysees at night and checked out the Arc du Triomphe.

Saturday was Les Invalides, which was a hospital under Louis XIV and has since been turned into the museum of the French army and of warfare (cue French army/war jokes). It was really cool because it starts with armor and weapons from the 13th century or so, but after the 1000th suit of armor, I was starting to drag. Of course "dragging" in a museum means you're walking rapidly through each room toward the exit. Mark was still reading about all the guns and canons and helmets and uniforms until he realized I was sitting on every bench I found, so we finally headed to Napoleon's tomb, which is also in Les Invalides. Remember Napoleon? And how he had that complex about seeming a lot bigger and greater than he actually was (even if he did do some cool things)? Yeah, well, his tomb is exactly what he would have wanted. Huge sarcophagus under an elaborate dome surrounded by twelve giant statues of Lady Victory and stone frescoes of Napoleon doing various things - and looking very muscle-y as he did them. Stay tuned for pictures.

After Les Invalides was the sewer museum. Yes. Actually, it's pretty cool, because the Parisians have an extremely extensive network under the city and the history of it is really interesting. Of course the museum is also in the sewers, so it doesn't exactly smell like sunshine and flowers. And the unidentified muck in the water underneath the grates under your feet is probably exactly what you don't want it to be. But interesting nonetheless.

Bear with me, I know this is a long post: after a stop in a cafe with a fairly-Parisian (read: slightly grumpy until he realized we were only going to speak French with him) waiter, we went to the Eiffel Tower. In line at 7:30, up to the second floor by 9, in line again, up to the top floor in time for the sunset and then to watch the city light up. When the Eiffel Tower itself lit up and then did its little flashing light show, everyone on the ground cheered, which was really fun to hear from 1000 feet up. After waiting in several lines to get back down, we bought a bottle of champagne off a "vendor" (aka Dude Selling Champagne to Hapless Tourists), and sat on the Champs de Mars (Paris's version of the Mall) with hundreds of other people and watched the Tower light up again at midnight. Super cool.

Finally, Sunday we checked out he neighborhood our hotel was in. We were close to the Basilique du Sacre Coeur, so we walked up to the basilica (which was unbearably crowded) and around the neighborhood. It was a totally different area of Paris - a lot less touristy. I would definitely go back to wander around some more. We wanted to go to Les Galleries Lafayette, but they were closed - because everything in France is closed on Sundays, and I'm only exaggerating slightly. We sat in a cafe instead, and this time had very nice waiters. Take that, stereotypes.

The title of my post comes from an experience in the train station on the way home when I told a French family (in French) that the vending machine they wanted to use was broken. They thanked me and then the little seven year-old boy looked at his dad and said, "Papa, comment dit-on 'merci' en anglais?" (translation: "How do you say 'thank you' in English?") and then thanked me in English after he learned from his dad. Lesson learned: even little kids know you're American when you've said all but ten words. Second lesson learned: they can be adorably polite about it.

And that wraps up Paris!