Je suis americaine... parlez lentement

The Catacombs

2008-06-19T01:23:00.005+02:00

Remember last time we tried to go to the Catacombs and it was a massive fail? Lena and I tried again today and got in after almost no wait in line. Voici les resultats.

Stop! This is the empire of death.

A brief history of the Catacombs:

Long long ago, sometime in the 1780s, the neighborhood of Les Halles in Paris realized it had a problem. The problem was that people kept dying, but the local Cemetery of the Innocents was staying the same size. It turns out that after approximately six centuries spent trying to stuff innumerable bodies into the same limited graveyard, the laws of physics take over. The burial ground literally exploded, right into the basements of neighboring houses. And permissive though most Parisians are of unseemly aromas, an avalanche of rotting corpses in the cellars were not pleasing to them. For sanitary reasons, it was therefore decided that all the cemeteries in Paris should be dug up and the remains of their human inhabitants transferred outside of the city limits. The natural choice for the new storage locale was an old mine in what is now the 14th arrondissement. Bones upon bones were exhumed, transported, and rearranged at the new location in aesthetically pleasing configurations, and now you can pay five euros to walk through the chilly, wet caverns and peer uneasily into the empty eye sockets of the men and women of yesteryear. Thus, the catacombs were born.

There are signs in the Catacombs that tell you which bones came from which cemetery. The bones that Lena and I are casting our shadows on in this picture are from the now defunct Cemitiere des Innocents, the oldest cemetery in Paris.

Look honey, I made you a heart. Of skulls.

Do I blend in?

When no one was looking I picked up a pelvis.

And then I dared Lena to do the same.

From some areas that had been damaged it was evident that the bones are not merely stacked together, but held in place by some kind of mortar.

On top of some of the piles, though, there are loose bones that (as evidenced) one could conceivably pick up and carry off. For this reason, there are guards posted at the exit door to make sure you don't have any stowaway tibias in your purse. It dawned on us later that the skull and two leg bones that we saw on a folding table on the way out were probably attempted thefts that had been caught by the guards!

My first piece of real art: Priceless

2008-06-09T18:34:00.005+02:00

A few posts ago I made a list. Let us see how I have been doing on that front.

Things I Must See, Eat, Do, and Otherwise Experience Before My Departure

1) Berthillion ice cream on Ile St. Louis, rumored to be the best in Paris = DONE. Lena, Leetal and I went there a few days ago and bought the single-scoop (and they do mean single scoop. One tiny, perfectly rounded scoop in your delicate sugar cone) because at 2 euro 10, that was all we were willing to pay. I tried the caramel, which had pieces of crunchy toffee or similar mixed in, and it was quite good. I must be a true uncultured American at heart though because one of the things I've been craving these past few weeks has been a sprinkle-coated vanilla soft serve cone from good ole Dairy Queen. Classy.

2) the Rodin museum, rumored to have some stuff Rodin made = fail. I've trekked over there twice now, but one time the entry line was around the block and the next time the museum was closed. Don't worry though, third time will be a charm.

3) the Catacombs, stacked to the brim with dead people = epic fail. Me, Erin, Lena, Ornella, Molly, Paul, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth's assorted family members all went down to the 14th yesterday and stood in the impossibly long line for the Catacombs, only to be shat on, both literally and figuratively-- first when a pair of pigeons dropped some bombs on Elizabeth's backpack and her father's white shirt, and then when we were the literal NEXT GROUP IN LINE and the punctual guard announced that it was 4pm and no more visitors were being admitted. "Come back Tuesday!" he cheerfully suggested. We spied a nearby cafe and Paul bought us booze instead.

4) Angelina's, even though I should've sampled the famed hot chocolate when the weather was crappy = fail. Have not yet attempted.

5) the Musee Fragonard, also full of dead people = fail. Apparently not in Paris.

6) the Middle Ages museum, for nerdular enjoyment = DONE. Lena and I checked it out this Saturday, and it turned out to be full of really cool medieval stuff. We saw a bunch of church-related art, including the enormous heads from the statues of Biblical kings that were toppled at Notre Dame during the French Revolution and only recently unearthed in a ditch somewhere. But the best part may have been the series of tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn, a part of which my mother bought in reproduction form several years ago and incorporated into a sewing project. I've seen the real thing now, Mom, and I've gotta say it's a little bit more impressive than your throw pillow in the foyer.

7) a macaroon from Laduree, even though paying five euro for it will make me cry = DONE, reference previous post and picture.

8) escargot at a restaurant with no English menu translations = almost! I've picked out a restaurant and now just need to find a time to go and some friends to accompany me. Anybody? Anybody?

9) buy a piece of street art = DONE! Well ok, it's not street art, but it is a piece of original art. There was an antiques fair in front of St. Sulpice today, and a few of the other girls and I found this booth that was selling tons of great vintage clothes and accessories. Everything was out of our price range, including one thing we each ended up buying: an original fashion plate sketch from a 1940s designer. They were way too cool to pass up though, with the original fabric swatches and little sketches and notes drawn on the sides and back. We each bought one, except for Kristen who decided to be a high roller and purchase another as a gift. I'll put a picture of mine at the end of the post.

10) buy an egg cup to remind me of my fateful soft-boiled oeuf dilemmas = fail. But it's easy to do so I'll get it done soon.

In other news, my 6-yr-old host nephew Romain was here the other night and hilaritized me by instigating a surprisingly philosophical conversation at dinner. I was zoning out a little until I heard him ask my host dad whether the Big Bang "was infinity." My host dad looked confused and tried to explain that a single occurrence cannot "be" infinite, but Romain was not taking no for an answer. Finally my host dad instructed him to "demande a Sara."

"Sara," he asked, wide-eyed, "is the Big Bang (in French, "le Beeg Bong") infinity?"

"No," I said. "It was an event."

That didn't seem to satisfy him, so he switched to a different topic.

"Who made the Beeg Bong?"

"Umm... God."

"But who made God?"

"No one made God," said my host dad. "He was always there."

"But when was he born?" Romain demanded.

This went on for about an hour, until my host dad got so frustrated with the unanswerable questions that he finally threatened Romain to "eat the rest of your salad or Sara is going to give you an English lesson after dinner!"

"NOooOOooOOOo," Romain shrieked. "L'anglais est trop difficile!"

"Nah," I comforted him. "It's not hard."

Reluctantly, Romain speared a lettuce leaf.

Before you get too excited about his genius, though, you should know that he returned to age-appropriate behavior after dinner, when my host dad and I were doing the dishes. "Cookie! Cookie!" he said in English, bouncing around the room. "That is to say what, 'cookie'?"

"Un biscuit," I said.

"That's to say what, a cookie?"

"Un biscuit."

"Un cookie! Un biscuit! Un cookie! Un biscuit!"

Cute as he was, it was a relief to all involved when he bounded off down the hall and fixed his attention on attacking Tilo with a bubble-blowing gun.

In other dinner news, my host mom just returned from a week-long vacation in New York, and has apparently applied her knowledge of our national cuisine to her dinnertime offerings. When I walked into the kitchen tonight I was simultaneously bemused and delighted to find an assortment of fish sticks and baked yukon gold potatoes on my plate. The Americana theme continued with a bottle of ketchup and another of ranch dressing, plunked proudly down to the right of my water goblet. "Regarde!" she said, brandishing the dressing in front of me. "Heeden Valley Ronch! I bought it in New York!"

"Ah yes," I congratulated. "It is very famous."

I might have been laughing in my head, but the look of ill-disguised joy on my face at the sight of those baked potatoes must've revealed my true feelings. How I miss you, my beloved staple starch. We will soon have a wonderful culinary reunion.

Here's the fashion drawing I bought!

Note how the silver sequins have been sewn into the drawing:

Le Moulin Rouge

2008-06-05T19:18:00.003+02:00

I had hoped that today's visit to the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre would give us an occasion to link arms onstage and perform an improvisational rendition of the can-can, with Paul in the middle, but sadly this did not come to pass. Instead we spent our time listening to a nice French man tell us all about the history of the dance hall.

The windmill that sits atop the Moulin Rouge today is old, but not original to the building-- the first one burned down sometime after the turn of the century. Neither of them were ever functional, but windmills had become a symbol of Montmartre back in the area's village days, when several of them dotted the landscape.

We went inside and met up with our guide, who debriefed us on the history of the Moulin Rouge. It was in French so I didn't catch all of what he said, but he told us that the Nicole Kidman film is actually pretty historically accurate. The giant elephant was real, for example. He also pointed out a bunch of the original advertising posters for the dance hall, most of which were created by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

Erin in front of the ballroom.

We weren't allowed to take pictures of the stage, but here are some seats in the audience. Our guide told us that the Moulin Rouge basically invented the concept of a dinner theater, and the hall has something like 860 chairs and a bunch of tables for those who elect the super pricey dinner-and-a-show. Without the frills you can see a show for under a hundred euro, but it's closer to two hundred if you want food and champagne. Some girls were onstage practicing while we were there, which was pretty interesting. The guide told us that the Moulin Rouge employs dancers of many nationalities, including Americans, but that the best-represented group were actually Australians.

We went into the dressing room too, which had a bunch of crazy feathered costumes and headdresses, but I figured I probably wasn't allowed to take pictures.

After the field trip I walked home and on the way I ducked into Laduree for a macaroon. Finally, one goal accomplished! The others have been surprisingly difficult to achieve (the Musee Fragonard, for instance, turned out not even to be in Paris. Liars, the Parisian museum website staff). But it sounds like we're going to the Catacombs this weekend, so that'll be one more item down.

My macaroon matches my scarf! It was unintentional.

After the long line of elegant French dames ahead of me had made their selections, I ordered a lone raspberry macaroon. Let me just say I'm glad it took me this long to finally try one, because if I had discovered them earlier I would be dead broke and weigh nine hundred pounds.

We will end with this picture of a store that had Star Wars mannequins in the window, which I took for Diane's viewing pleasure:

This is almost as great as the Harry Potter store in the 6th, where you can buy $50 reproductions of things like the Marauder's Map and every major character's wand.

Goal: accomplish three more of my goals before updating again.

Montmartre is so cute it hurts

2008-06-01T13:49:00.003+02:00

Recently we went to Montmartre for Paris By Site, in quest of bohemians. Sadly they all moved out about a hundred years ago and the only people who live there now are bobos, aka the bohemian bourgeoise, aka rich folks trying to prove they're still hip. But they've got great landscaping!

Consider these private gardens. The properties on this street belong to famous rich French persons who don't want the public to know where they live, so their intercom buttons on the outside of the gate are coded with the names of historical French artists.

There was a collective gasp when Paul led us around a corner to this, the Cutest Street in Paris. Unfortunately these houses never come up for sale since they pretty much get passed through families, so when we all professed a desire to live there we had to do some brainstorming. Elizabeth proposed that she would marry into one of the homeowning families, and Suzy volunteered that she would then kill Elizabeth and claim her husband.

I <3 winding hillside roads.

The Lapin Agile was a late 19th century bar frequented by bohemians. Now it's just supercute.

We also paid a visit to the Musee de Montmartre, which houses some interesting Montmartre-related stuff including these fin-de-siecle posters advertising everything from dance halls to absinthe to concerts and bars.

Now, for some things I have been up to this weekend.

On Friday Erin and I went to The Orangerie to see some impressionist painting:

After that we went downstairs to see some Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso, Sutine and others, and after wandering too far ahead I lost Erin and got majorly hit on by a curator of the museum. He was at least 50 and he chatted me up in French for about 20 minutes before giving me his card and urging me to call him (for a date? to talk about art? I wasn't clear on the particulars). Hilariously, his name was Branko (pronounced "bronco"). And even more hilariously, he used the nerdiest art-history-related pickup line on me. He had led me into a photo gallery and was pointing out the work of some artist, I forget which, who had done a dozen portraits all of the same woman. "You know," said Branko, with a sly smile, "If you had lived in his time period, I bet he would have done a dozen portraits of you." I held it together long enough to excuse myself and find Erin, but then laughed all the way down the street after we'd left.

Then we went to Parc Butte-Chaumont, a lovely hillside expanse of greenery that you're actually allowed to sit on, for a picnic of the delicious little chickens that we had bought at a market in the 9th. Our enjoyment of the feast, however, was soon halted by the arrival of a cute and evidently hungry dog:

Okay, now for some stuff that happened awhile ago. Good lord I'm behind.

A little while ago Susan pulled some strings with a curator friend of hers at the Louvre who was able to get us VIP access on a day when the museum was closed to the public.

Regarde! The halls are empty!

We even got to see the Mona Lisa without anyone else around it:

Sebastien, our curator guide, told us that the Mona Lisa is basically famous for being famous. No one even thought it was that cool until it got stolen.

I went on a quest to find the Venus de Milo, and I did. This was on a regular museum day though, hence the crowds.

The view is better from the back because no one is interested in seeing the Venus de Milo butt crack.

Other famous Parisian things: L'Arc de Triomphe, built by Napoleon.

A few weeks ago we toured the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where lots of famous French artists trained. In one room there was a collection of copies of famous sculptures, paintings, and examples of architecture, so that the students could practice imitating their styles without having to go all the way to Italy and various other locales that had the real thing:

We had class in the room where the prestigious Prix de Rome was handed out every year to one lucky art student. The prize allowed for a travel and living stipend so the artist could go to Italy and further refine his craft. The painting on the wall is by Delaroche, and portrays centuries of famous artists all talking and intermingling.

It occurs to me that I've never shown you the outside of my apartment. Here it is! I live on the fifth floor.

From now on I'll be more timely with my updates.

Le dernier mois

2008-05-28T17:54:00.002+02:00

Here's something weird: at this time next month, I will have been home for a week. How did this semester go by so fast without the weather ever really getting good??

So yes, three and a half weeks remain of my study abroad adventure, and I'm overwhelmed with mixed emotions. One half of me is despairing at the idea of leaving Paris, because who knows when I'll be back in Europe again? What will I do without my chicken chips? Will I miss my awkward yet hilarious dinner conversations with my host dad? And how will I survive when I get the now periodic craving for a nutella-coconut crepe??

But, I think I'll be really happy to go back to the land of Meijer, home of 50-cent frozen pot pies and a snack aisle bigger than Franprix itself. I'll be happy to pay $7.50 for a movie at Quality 16, as opposed to 9 euro. And I'm so excited to go to my parents' house and pick up my tiny, gentle Belle, a cat that makes Tilo look like the feline spawn of Satan incarnate.

So, with the twenty-odd days left at my disposal, here is my must-do list. If anyone reading this would like to accomplish these goals avec moi, n'hesitez pas to let me know.

Things I Must See, Eat, Do, and Otherwise Experience Before My Depature
1) Berthillion ice cream on Ile St. Louis, rumored to be the best in Paris
2) the Rodin museum, rumored to have some stuff Rodin made
3) the Catacombs, stacked to the brim with dead people
4) Angelina's, even though I should've sampled the famed hot chocolate when the weather was crappy
5) the Musee Fragonard, also full of dead people
6) the Middle Ages museum, for nerdular enjoyment
7) a macaroon from Laduree, even though paying five euro for it will make me cry
8) escargot at a restaurant with no English menu translations
9) buy a piece of street art
10) buy an egg cup to remind me of my fateful soft-boiled oeuf dilemmas

I think that'll keep me busy.

A spring break montage III

2008-05-18T17:20:00.002+02:00

The final installment! After this we can go back to Paris!

Stockholm, SWEDEN

The lobby of my ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm. Titanic-tastic!

View from deck.

The harbor in Stockholm. I like boats.

Those Swedes have a goofy sense of humor.

This is the humungous museum of Nordic History in Stockholm. They had a lot of really interesting exhibits ranging from Swedish traditions to the evolution of Swedish furniture to costumes spanning hundreds of years. I wasn't supposed to take pictures inside, but I totally did.

Please, please, let this wedding dress come back into style.

In Swedish culture, the oldest girl in the family dresses up as St. Lucia around Christmas time and brings a tray of refreshments to her family. I knew this before visiting the museum because my childhood American Girl Doll of choice had been Kirsten, the Swedish-American immigrant! Nerdfiiighters.

There was a scary collection of death masks at the Nordic Museum. Apparently it was really popular in Sweden to make plaster casts of a famous person's face immediately after s/he died, and the museum has over a dozen of them all lined up in a glass case. Creepy.

C'est moi a Stockholm.

Oslo, NORWAY

In Oslo I went to the Munch musuem, but The Scream was not on display because they're cleaning it or something. Here are two other paintings that I liked, though:

I think I like them cuz they're spooky.

It's me with a Viking ship!

This sign was in the street and I had to take a picture of it--

Made stale for everyone else?

This fast food menu sign is actually from the carnival I went to with my couchsurfer in Gothenburg, but it's the only picture from that city that made it into my upload folder, so I'm not giving it its own category. I had expressed slight revulsion at the idea of a hot dog topped with mashed potatoes and drizzled with ketchup, but Danny just gave me a curious look and said it was a popular meal item in Sweden. Sure enough, the people in line ahead of us ordered one. To me it just looks like a bizarre, savory version of a banana split.

That's all for Eastern Europe and Scandinavia! Hope you enjoyed.

A spring break montage II

2008-05-12T13:49:00.006+02:00

I should be writing Paul's paper about churches and kingship and stuff, but as usual I'd rather procrastinate. And I've already exhausted the new Nerdfighters videos, Postcards from Yo Mamma, Overheard in New York, and One Sentence, True Stories, so I guess it's blog time.

What were we up to last time? Lithuania? I guess then it's time for

Riga, LATVIA

According to my couchsurfer, George, who took me on a tour of Old Town, I would be assured a life of immeasurable wealth if I touched this donkey's nose. I hope it's not like that statue at Harvard where they tell the prospective freshman to touch the foot for good luck, but then all the current students secretly pee on it.

Lots of the buildings in Riga's Old Town have these interesting little roof things. They had a practical purpose, many moons ago-- the rope would be used to hoist buckets and packages and stuff up from the ground to the top floor of the buildings.

The tower of St. Peter's in Riga (center) was bombed during WWII. They rebuilt it, and now you can take an elevator to the top for panoramic views of the city.

I saw a building like this in Warsaw, too, and asked George about it. He said it's a typical Soviet skyscraper design from the 50s, and that they were built in every major Soviet city as a landmark of the Union's power and influence.

Check out all this sweet Art Nouveau! ---

Clearly, all building facades need to follow that example.

I love that Riga has a store called "Randoms." They must've thought that was a cool English word. Like the new clothing store that just opened across the street from my apartment in Paris-- it's called "Attractive!"

My couchsurfer hosts George and Lina took me to this place that does "Latvian fast food"-- which apparently means dumplings of all varieties! I couldn't read any of the signs, so I just put some of everything into my bowl. It was delicious and I got sour cream and pickles for free. The drink to the right is some sort of yogurty smoothie. Eastern Europe understands my food preferences so well.

Tallinn, ESTONIA

That might look like a lot of money on my tray, but the exchange rate from Estonian krones to euros is something like 15.6, so it's really something like $30. The food is meat pancakes!

I climbed that tower on the right (refer to vlog entry: Estonia: Prettier than Latvia, but Only By A Little Bit). The tower on the left is called Fat Margaret, and it now houses the maritime museum, which I also went to.

The sign next to this R2D2-looking thing said that it was a diving suit built in the 1920s but never used. I think I can guess why.

A giant honey-banana pancake= lunch.

Helsinki, FINLAND

Stockmann's is a giant famous department store in Finland. I saw one in Riga, too.

This is a church, believe it or not. The green dome is the ceiling.

Entrance to the church.

Inside the church, it was a cave! That's the altar, at center.

Note the little girl trying to climb the church walls next to the votive candles.

I went to the famous Kiasma modern art museum in Helsinki, and this was the only good piece of art in it.

I had heard that Finland is famous for herring, so I ordered some. Things to note in this picture: the herring, deep-fried on the left; that mustard's brand name is Sara; the Helsinki harbor in the background.

That's all, folks. Stay tuned for Sweden and Norway.

A spring break montage

2008-05-10T01:16:00.006+02:00

No, I'm not dead. Just really lazy.

I made it back to Paris on Monday, and have sort of been dragging myself around since then. It turns out that a spring break spent visiting seven countries in two weeks is kind of draining. Who'da thunk?

But due to repeated inquiries (ok, dad asked once) as to the lack of updates on the blog, I have finally uploaded the approximately 37 million photos from spring break and will now share the choicest selection with you, fair readers. I'm going to do it in installments, though, because I have way too many pictures for a single post. We will begin with

Krakow, POLAND

On my first night in Krakow, my couchsurfer host Robert took me to this obscure sidewalk stand in the Jewish quarter that is famous for these pizza-type open-face sandwiches. The one I'm holding has cheese, mushrooms, chives, and ketchup. "Polish people really love ketchup," Robert had said. "I don't know why."

This is the main square in Krakow. The central building is the Cloth Hall, so named because they used to sell cloth there. Now it's full of a bunch of booths selling jewelry and handmade wooden stuff to tourists.

Amber jewelry was available for sale all over the Baltic States. I didn't buy any because it was expensive and I don't like orange.

You will notice that the two towers on this church in Krakow are oddly asymmetrical. The story associated with the construction is that there were two brothers, each of whom was responsible for building one tower. The left-hand tower brother finished first, but then got scared that the right-hand tower brother was going to build his half taller and embarrass him. So, like any normal person, he decides the best course of action is to kill his brother before the second tower can be completed-- hence the difference in the heights. Unfortunately, though, he later goes mad with grief over what he's done and hurls himself off the belfry. C'est la vie.

This cave is found under the Wawel Castle in Krakow. According to legend it is the former home of a ferocious dragon who lived in Krakow many centuries ago and became something of a menace after it devoured most of the villagers and livestock. Finally one surviving villager had the grand idea of feeding the dragon a giant chunk of salt, and when it went running down to the river to drink some water it exploded. Dragon problem solved, and now you can visit the cave for like 50 cents.

That's a pretzel thing I bought from a sidewalk stand. To the right is a famous statue of some Polish poet, and according to Robert it's also some sort of military mecca. When soldiers get released from duty, they come to this statue and do push-ups on the ground in front of the poet. No one knows why.

This is where Pope John Paul II used to live. They've put a poster of him up in the window because whenever he was in town, large crowds of people used to flock to his window in front of his house and he would open it and stand there to pray and talk to them all night.

Warsaw, POLAND

This is the Old Town of Warsaw, which is not very old at all because it's been totally reconstructed following the damages of WWII.

Me in front of the Royal Palace.

In Warsaw I saw some pretty sweet breakdancing.

This was a little bit hilarious.

My Warsaw couchsurfers made me borsch! The pink stuff floating in it is sour cream.

Hey I'm going down to Flugger Farby, do you need anything?

Vilnius, LITHUANIA

This tower is mostly all that remains of the 13th-century hilltop castle that once stood atop Vilnius. You can ride a funicular up there and see some lovely views of the city.

Like this one.

In Vilnius there's this artistic, bohemian, neo-hippie kind of community whose symbol is a hand. My couchsurfer Eva took me through the part of the city that this community lays claim to.

I really liked this tradition. Eva told me that in Lithuania, when a couple wants to declare their love, they attach a pair of locks to the bars of a bridge and throw the key into the river. If no one can find the key to unlock the locks, their love will never be undone. There are tons of these locks all over the bridges that we walked by, some of them very rusty and old-fashioned. Much more poetic than carving your names into a tree!

Last stop in Vilnius was the Genocide Museum, which recalls Lithuania's tragic years of oppression during WWII and under the rule of the Soviet Union. Genocide victims' names are engraved on the blocks that make up the outside of the museum.

In the basement of the museum you can visit the KGB prison that was a part of the building until the 1990s. Many unfortunate people were prisoners here, with many people sharing cells as small as this one.

Me in one of the prison cells. It is no laughing matter.

Eeeee scary straightjacket room! Note the padded walls.

Apart from retaining its Soviet charm, the bathroom also seemed to have kept its original odor.

And on that happy note, we will end. More to come when my energy returns.

Scandinavia, continued

2008-04-30T23:33:00.002+02:00

Greetings from Gothenburg! Or Gøteborg, as they say in Swedish, which is infinitely cooler.

Just got here via train from Norway, after a lovely day and a half in Oslo. My couchsurfer Matthias met me at the tourist center and led me back to his dorm-style apartment, where we enjoyed a dinner of spaghetti. I haven't really noticed until now how much I have been missing pasta (not a quintessentially French food) but boy, was that spaghetti good. He also had tortilla chips and salsa, which is something else I've never seen in my local Monoprix, so I ate half the bag and it tasted like America. Mmm. Matthias provided interesting company since he is not, in fact, Norweigan-- he's a German post-high school student doing social service work as a kindergarten teacher in Oslo before college.

"Do you speak Norweigan at all?" he asked.

"No, not at all."

"German?"

"Uh, well I took it for two years when I was little, but all I can remember is how to count to eleven, the word for father, and 'I am eight years old.'"

He looked at me dubiously.

"That last part is slightly outdated now," I clarified uselessly.

After dinner, some kid named Robert poked his head through the window (literally) and joined me and Matthias for some TV viewing. Actually it was really me who was joining them, since they apparently get together every night for a religious viewing of Friends.

Yes, Friends, which they watch with German subtitles. "Do you speak German?" asked Robert.

"No," I said apologetically.

"She learned it for two years!" Matthias contributed.

"Then we can all speak German!" exclaimed Robert.

It took considerable effort to explain, again, that the two years of instruction had faded into nothingness, but the boys seemed unwilling to believe me. "Typical American!" said Matthias jocularly. "Knows another language but doesn't want to speak anything but English!"

Eventually we stopped making fun of my language failures and watched our show. Matthias and Robert are up to season 3 and never miss a night.

"Sorry," Matthias apologized to me as he loaded the DVD into his laptop. "We cannot cancel the Friends just because there is a guest."

Fair enough. Robert asked me a few polite questions about the States, but conversation more or less ceased when he admitted that he had no idea where Michigan was. "Near Canada?" I ventured. "Surrounded by lakes? Looks like a mitten?"

"I don't really know my U.S. geography," he said with a shrug. Considering I didn't know where Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia were until I traveled there last week, I guess I can't fault him for it.

So that was the first night. The next morning I set out on a condensed tour of Oslo, since my train to Gothenburg left at 6. I walked to the Munch museum, which was really cool but didn't have The Scream on display, which was pretty much the whole reason I wanted to go. Apparently it's being restored and won't be back up until the end of May. I feel like they should at least charge less of an entrance fee to art musuems when the famous ones are out of commission. But the other paintings were worth the visit, too.

Then it was time to take the little ghetto ferry (I thought we were about to sink the whole time, what with the gnashing sounds of the motor and the creaking of the wood floors) across the bay to the part of Oslo with most of the museums. Lucky for you, I took some more home movies! We will begin with the Open Air Museum:

Then it was time for Viking fun!

Nerdular sightseeing makes me a little sad to be alone on this trip, because I just end up thinking about my friends. Justin and my family would have loved the Viking ships, for instance. Diane and I would have had a good time chuckling over the wife skills exhibit at the museum of Nordic culture. Laura would have been horrified by the Museum of Things in Little Bottles (I'm not even joking, it's real-- they claim to have the biggest collection of things in bottles in the world-- but I didn't have time to go) because she's afraid of all things mini. And I bet a lot of people from the Paris program would've enjoyed the Munch museum, and we even could have laughed together at the big group of students with notebooks and pencils in hand, moving from painting to painting as an instructor lectured in Norweigan. At least I didn't follow them and stare intently at whatever painting they were currently grouped around, as tourists often do to us at the Louvre, thinking the studious attention of our group is an indicator that we have discovered something Truly Great.

This trip is a lot of fun, but I think I'll be happy to come back to Paris.

SaraTV, broadcasting not-so-live from Europe

2008-04-29T01:45:00.003+02:00

So I shelled out fifty bucks today for some 17-in-one-function memory card reader that the nice Swedish man at the Sony store assured me was the best product for me to buy to solve my uploading dilemmas, and now I can FINALLY share some visuals with you! Unforunately it was taking like three years to get the pictures up, so I focused on getting my videos uploaded instead.

That's right my friends, I've been making some home movies. They're in chunks because I have no means of editing, and you'll have to excuse the bad lighting and my general scruffy appearance, as well. We travelers become haggard after a week and a half on the road.

This first series of videos is from Tallinn, Estonia. There's a tower in the Old Town there that's part of a church from the Middle Ages, and visitors are still allowed to climb up it the old-fashioned way. Knowing me and my love of spiral staircases, this was obviously a must. Let's take a gander!

Then I undid all that good exercise by meeting up with my couchsurfer Marion and eating giant pancakes in Old Town. Oh well.

Now we move to my adventures onboard the MS Mariella, a charming cruise liner that took me from Helsinki, Finland to Stockholm, Sweden two days ago.

One more thing...

It took like five hours to get all this online... you better have appreciated it. I have to go to bed now because in the morning I'm catching a train to Oslo, Norway, but I'll have details and pictures of Stockholm up soon. Later dudes.

A day in Santa land

2008-04-26T14:51:00.002+02:00

No, I didn't get so far off course that I accidentally wound up at the North Pole-- according to Helsinki natives, Santa's true residence is here in Finland. I bought a Santa Christmas tree ornament this morning to commemorate the fact.

So yes, I have now officially sailed the Baltic Sea and disembarked on the northernmost land that I have ever been to. Which I guess isn't saying much, since this whole trip so far has been the farthest east I've ever been. Having said that, though, it really isn't very cold here. It was sunny today and pretty windy near the harbor, but the mittens I packed in expectation of near-arctic conditions have as yet gone unused.

So now I'll tell you about the James Bond stunt I pulled this morning in Tallinn. My ferry left at 7:30 am, meaning I had to wake up at 5:45 to get dressed, packed, and out the door with enough time for the half-hour walk to the port. With dismay I noticed that Terminal D, my destination, was the farthest of Tallinn's four outgoing ferry docks. I guess that's what you get for booking the cheapest passage available. I passed terminals A, B, and C, and saw the giant D looming ahead of me on the side of a far-off building. I shifted my 9,000,000-pound bag to the other shoulder, quickened my pace, and... walked into a fence.

Damnit! They had closed off the obvious path to my terminal. I looked around and realized that I would have to completely backtrack in order to circumnavigate the fence and access the arrival gate. By the time I lurched through the doorway it was 7:11, and the place was completely empty.

"Where are you going to, and when?" said the girl at the check-in desk. For some reason people all over the world speak to me in English before I've even opened my mouth.

"Helsinki," I said, gasping for breath. "Today at 7:30."

"Oh!" said the girl. "But you are too late! Boarding ended one minute ago."

Oh, hellll no.

"Well it's only one minute," I pleaded as an announcement boomed over the PA, saying that my ship was departing.

The girl eyed me dubiously, doubled over with the weight of my suitcase, then printed a boarding pass and handed it to me with a frown. "You will have to run."

"Where is it?" I said, already moving away from the desk.

"Second floor, follow the signs. Quickly, go!"

So I did. With my overstuffed duffel and purse banging against my legs as I ran, I flew down hallways, up elevators, and through twisting, empty passageways. Every time I thought I had gotten closer, another hallway appeared. Finally a window appeared and outside I could see the ship. I turned the final corner and practically knocked over two guys about to close the boarding doors.

"I made it!" I gasped, thrusting my boarding pass at one of them.

"Uh huh," he said, standing aside to let me pass.

Once that near heart attack had passed, the boat ride was quite plesant. The ferry was one of the big ones that you can drive your cars onto, and it was packed with restaurants, stores, and lounges. It was like being on the Titanic, minus the part where it sinks and everyone dies.

After we struck land, I found my way to the central station in Helsinki and loaded up on maps and bus tickets. I only had a few hours until my 5:30 ferry to Stockholm (it is about 4 right now... I'm leaving soon to avoid another action-adventure scene) so I had to keep my list of sightseeing to a minimum. I checked out a really cool Lutheran church that is dug out of the middle of a giant rock, and all the walls on the interior are rock outcroppings. Hard to picture, but I'll post photos. Then I went to a supposedly famous modern art gallery, but it was the pre-kindergarten kind of art that makes Dad angry whenever we visit museums, so it was a disappointment overall. I spent a little while wandering through Stockmann's, the famous Finnish department store, and then headed over to the harbor, where I found an outdoor restaurant selling fish that had been caught that morning. I ordered the Baltic herring because I remember reading somewhere that it's a famous fish variety in Finland, but I'm no fish connisseur so it pretty much tasted like high-quality fish sticks to me. It was fun to eat by the harbor, though, and when I got down to the bony parts of the fish I shared the remainder of my meal with a nearby duck. Very pleasant indeed.

Now I have to go reclaim my suitcase from the bag storage, and find a tram to take me to the port where my ferry to Stockholm leaves from in a little over an hour. Will update again from there, but not for awhile because the ferry goes overnight. My first night on a boat... this should be interesting.

Estonia: Prettier than Latvia, but only by a little bit

2008-04-25T17:42:00.003+02:00

There was a shimmering moment of hope just now that I might be able to use my Estonian couchsurfer's memory adapter stick to upload the photos I've taken so far, but the USB gods were against me. Alas, you will have to suffer through another of my wordy descriptions.

This update comes to you from Tallinn, the seaside capital of Estonia. I arrived here late last night at an apparently remote coach station, since my couchsurfer Marion had no idea where it was when I texted to ask where I should go. After about forty minutes of confusion and constant nervous glances at the shady characters prowling the empty parking lot, I bit the bullet and hailed a cab. As we wound our way through the darkened city streets, I smiled a little and appreciated the situation I found myself in. A few months ago when I went to Chicago for my French visa I had never independently used a form of public transportation besides the U of M buses, and I remember being afraid to summon a driver in the comfort of my own country, language, and currency. Now here I was, all alone in the back seat of an Estonian taxi, trying to divide 50 krones by 15-point-something euro to decide if I was being totally gouged for the base rate, and I knew something about me had changed. I am halfway across the world with no sense of direction and approximately three vocabulary words at my disposal, and I am proud to say that I have lost touch with the fear that that should engender. Maybe I'll eat my words when the Scandinavian part of the voyage begins and I find myself stranded in Norway somewhere, but right now I feel like I can handle anything this trip throws at me.

So anyway. I don't think I told you much about Riga, so we'll start there. I was met at the bus station by George, who led me back to his and Lina's apartment and gave me a map of Riga ("You should keep this with you," he advised in slightly Russian accent not unlike that of the animated bat in the movie Anastasia. "Otherwise you might go to Old Town and get lost... forever.") I didn't end up getting lost in Old Town, though, because most of the time I spent there was with them. George wandered around with me for the first night while we waited for Lina to be done with class at the University, and on the second day both of them showed me around and told me the amusing stories of the buildings and monuments. After the Old Town tour we walked around an adjoining area of Riga that boasts some really incredible Art Nouveau style buildings. I took a bunch of pictures, so until I get them up you'll just have to believe me when I say that they weren't quite like any building facade I've seen before, and by this point I think I can safely say that I've seen a lot.

At the end of the second day I packed up my stuff and went off in search of the bus to Tallin, Estonia, accompanied by George, who wanted to make sure I correctly navigated the three straight blocks from the apartment to the station. Like all of the other Eastern European men I've encountered so far on this trip, he insisted on carrying my bag. Little did he know that I've been accumulating trinkets from every sidewalk market in the Baltic States, so he may've regretted that show of chivalry. "Don't talk to anyone in the bus station," he warned as we passed a woman screaming unintelligibly in Latvian. "They are crazy and they want to steal your money."

He bade me farewell and I found the Estonia-bound bus without difficulty. It was a four-hour ride to Tallinn, most of which I spent watching the progressively funnier music videos that were playing on the ceiling-mounted TVs. It started with current music, detoured briefly to 80s selections including Can't Touch This, Jessie's Girl, and Sexual Healing, then seamlessly transitioned to Sexy Back. I shook my head grimly as I realized that even in Estonia I could not escape Justin Timberlake.

After the cab adventure I made it to Marion's apartment in Tallinn, where she welcomed me graciously and made me midnight tea and omelets. This morning she walked with me to Tallinn's Old Town, which is probably one of the oldest and best preserved historical sites in Europe. Much of the city's defensive walls, towers, churches, and other buildings have been meticulously preserved, giving the area a distinctly medieval feel. Marion had to work, so she left me to wander the streets. In Riga, George and Lina had told me that one of their favorite things to do in Tallinn was to climb to the top of the highest church tower in Old Town, which was the tallest building in the world in the 16th century and is still accessible only by its original spiral staircase. I bought my dollar-fifty ticket and bounded gaily up the first few stairs. About forty seconds later I was out of breath and clinging to the rope handrail for support. I did make it to the top though, banging my head on a low beam as I exited onto the narrow viewing platform, and spent a few minutes enjoying the panoramic views of Tallinn and the sea before descending the stairs anew. Once on ground again, I headed to a former cannon artillery tower humorously nicknamed Fat Margaret, and toured the maritime history museum now housed within it. Then Marion met up with me for lunch and we ate some traditional Estonian pancakes- she got one with fish inside, while I opted for a honey and banana concoction. Deeelicious. In the afternoon I did more wandering but then I was kind of tired so I made my way back to Marion's apartment, where I am sitting now. Tomorrow I leave bright and early for Helsinki, which is apparently a short jaunt away by ferry. Probably won't update again until Stockholm, though, since I'm not staying overnight in Finland and won't probably have computer access.

Goodbye, Baltics. Next stop, Scandinavia!

Lithuania, my homeland

2008-04-23T23:42:00.004+02:00

Lithuania isn't my homeland, but my couchsurfing host in Warsaw told me that that's how the most famous Polish poem of all time begins. Go figure.

I'm writing to you from Riga, Latvia, having just completed my trip in lovely Vilnius, Lithuania. I arrived at the bus station at the ungodly hour of 5am, and waited around there for awhile while I waited for it to become late enough to call my couchsurfer, Eva. I hopped a tram to her apartment (a charming Soviet-style project that I will show you whenever I manage to get pictures up from this trip) where she fed me eggs and made up my bed. She had to go to class until 1, so I took a much-needed nap and then met up with her in the city center for an afternoon of guided touring-- much more efficient than my usual style, which is to say bumbling around with my map upside down and wondering how to say "which way to Old Town" in various languages. We saw several churches in varying architectural styles, the 14th-century Gedimino Castle, and the quite romantically named Gates of Dawn that mark the original entrance to the medieval walled city. After the tour she took me to a traditional Lithuanian restaurant for dinner, where we ordered nothing but various types of potatoes, which I was fully in support of because potatoes are pretty much the best food ever. Then we went back to the apartment, had some tea, and collapsed.

In the morning Eva had class again, so we said our goodbyes and I set out for a morning at the Genocide Museum! It was more fun than it sounds. Lithuania was occupied by the Nazis during WWII, and afterwards was a part of the Soviet Union until it disbanded, so there is a long and tragic history of its national history being suppressed and its citizens persecuted. The building that the Genocide Museum is housed in is the site of a former KGB prison, which held prisoners all the way up until the 90s, if you can believe it. In the basement of the museum you can see cell blocks and interrogation rooms, showers, solitary confinement rooms, and even the scary padded wall room, all of which were the unfortunate temporary residence of political dissidents and the otherwise unruly. Took lots of pictures there too, none of which you can see yet because I was a dumbass and left my USB cord in Paris. It'll be like a National Geographic slideshow when I get back.

Now I'm in Riga enjoying the hospitality of a Latvian couple named Lina and George, who are taking me on a tour of the city tomorrow. They've been great so far, very friendly as hosts and just plain interesting characters-- Lina has a law degree and is a press secretary in the Latvian judiciary court, and George is a former keyboardist in a heavy-metal rock band and still does something in the music production industry. He showed me his group's CDs as we listened to the music over a midnight snack of cheese and vermouth, and I was surprised to hear that all the lyrics were in English. I asked him why they weren't in Latvian, considering that that was the nationality of all the members in the band, but he looked at me with surprise. "Heavy metal is an English style of music," he said with a shrug. "It would sound stupid in any other language." Hm. Perhaps he's right.

Off now to take a shower, which is ironically located in the kitchen next to the washing machine and across from the basin that doubles as a kitchen and bathroom sink. Now that's efficient!

Warszawa

2008-04-21T01:26:00.004+02:00

I'm baaack.

And I'm in Warsaw! Took the train last night from Krakow, and with the help of a friendly English-speaking woman at Warszawa Centralna, managed also to find the tram that took me to my next couchsurfer's house. This time I'm staying with a 27 yr old Canadian woman named Cora, her de facto Polish husband, and their high-strung but cute tabby cat, who has a long Polish name that they said meant "puker." Cute, I guess?

When we woke up this morning they fed me a Sunday Polish breakfast of a cucumbery/cheesy/yogurty spread on wafer bread, which was yummy and I want the recipe, but it might be hard to duplicate since the cheese is only available in Poland. Following breakfast we went to a giant flea market, where I bought several bars of Polish chocolate at about 50 cents apiece. Then it was time for them to go have brunch with their family, so they dropped me off in Old Town so I could go sightseeing. I had some brief and unsuccessful battles with the local ATMs, so I had to focus on free attractions. I wandered for a few minutes before coming upon the Royal Palace, former home of the Polish royalty, which turned out to have free Sunday admission. I wandered around in there for an hour or two, noted that many of the paintings on the wall were similar to the styles we've been studying at the Louvre, and got yelled at in Polish by an overzealous room guard when the flash accidentally went off on my camera. Que sera sera.

After the palace I wandered through Old Town for awhile, although the name is something of a misnomer since most of it was destroyed by Nazis and the current area is in large part a reconstruction based on historical photos and drawings. On the way to the flea market today in the car, Cora told me that you can tell which buildings are the authentically old ones because they're riddled with bullet holes. Ah yes, the usual old-town charm. There were lots of street vendors selling wooden handicrafts that I coveted, but alas, could not buy due to my ATM problems. I will not leave this town without a nesting doll, I tell you!

Midway through the afternoon it got cold and drizzly, continuing the pattern of European weather personally hating me wherever I go. Since I hadn't had lunch I decided the rain was a good excuse to duck into some sort of eating establishment, but with the mere 9 zlotys in my pocket, I wasn't sure where I'd be able to afford a meal. Then I turned the corner, saw a familiar sign, and broke the cardinal rule of Americans traveling abroad.

I ate at a KFC.

Yeah, I know I should've found pierogies or something since I'm in Poland, and I know my student handbook says not to draw attention to my citizenship by eating in American fast food joints, but I couldn't help it. I miss KFC. We have them in Paris, but only on the outskirts and no one else is ever interested in going with me. And I liked fried chicken, damnit! And the fries! It's been so long since I've had fries! So I ate at KFC and it was salty and greasy and it tasted like America, and I am not ashamed.

Then I wandered away from Old Town into the modern streets of Warsaw, which by the way are populated by drivers who evidently think they're participating in a group audition for The Fast and the Furious. No wonder all the crosswalks for the intersections are underground. I came across a big mall and did some shopping for clothes that are too expensive to buy in Paris, then headed back to Cora's apartment. They fed me homemade borscht for dinner, which I had never had before and was surprisingly delicious despite my doubts that beets could truly constitute a delectable soup. The last event of the day was a trip to the movie theater to see Omaret Yakobean, which I think means The Yakobean Apartments in English, but I could be wrong. It was an Egyptian film that took place in Cairo and dealt with a multitude of current social issues including the plight of the working classes, women's positions, the influence of Islam, the corruption of the government, and terrorism. Pretty fascinating all in all, although for some reason having two sets of subtitles at the bottom (English and Polish) distracted me more than usual. An interesting experience nonetheless, especially when an ad for pay-per-view porn came on a TV in the movie and the girl onscreen said "Call now for hot sex!" in Polish. The whole audience burst out laughing at their sudden comprehension-- except me, of course. I had no idea what had happened until Cora explained it to me. Not that that's anything new.

Cześć, jak się masz?

2008-04-19T15:57:00.008+02:00

Otherwise known as "Hey, how are you?" Just one of the many new Polish phrases I have learned in the less than 24 hours I've spent in Krakow. Others include "One student ticket for the Dragon Cave, please!"

I wish I were joking.

So yes, I arrived in Krakow, Poland after a long and adventure-filled day. I almost didn't make it out of Paris yesterday due to my inability to find the shuttle bus to the Beauvais airport, and then by the time I had found it (and Erin with her boyfriend already in line, on their way to Bremen) I stood in line just long enough to miss the bus for my flight. We took the next bus and arrived at Beauvais approximately two hours later (Erin: "How can they even CALL this Paris Beauvais?") and waited in two more neverending lines at check-in and security, where I witnessed three entire strollers being dismantled and sent through the scanner. You know the bombs are hidden under that spare diaper bag.

Then the real fun began. I shoved my way out of the security crowd and located the boarding "line" (read: mob) for my flight, and noted, with unbridled glee, that it was one of those planes where you go out into the parking lot and climb up the tiny staircase to the cabin! Like a scene out of a 40s war movie! Love it.

What I did not love was Katowice International Airport. Contrary to the claims of the Wizzair website (which by the way is pronounced Weezer in Polish. "Thank you for flying Weezer!") when they said that it was "near" Krakow and "easily accessible by our associated shuttle service," both stipulations proved false. After the first shuttle pulled up, refused to let me on for lack of reservation, and left me sputtering and alone next to a French family who had confirmation emails in their hands but were apparently not on the driver's VIP list, a mild panic set in. I had visions of being trapped in Katowice forever and communicatively limited by the only Polish word I knew-- pąckzi. Which I guess would have helped me survive for awhile, since they were available for purchase in the airport cafe, alongside a tray of kielbasas. But I don't even like pąckzis! I thought with mounting horror. My conversation with Paul a few days prior came back to me suddenly. "Do you consider yourself a person with a general command of common sense?" he had asked. "Yes," I answered after a brief pause. "Then you'll be fine," he had assured. How would a person with general common sense find her way out of a Polish airport? I decided to beg for help.

"Excuse me," I said to the mother in the French family, who had been conversing in Polish with the shuttle driver. "When does the next bus arrive?"
"Une heure et demi," she sighed.

An hour and a half. I went back inside and found an ATM, took out a hundred Polish zlotys, and bought a sandwich. Then with the change I found an internet kiosk and did a Google search for transportation between Katowice and Krakow. I decided that if the next shuttle wouldn't let me on, I would take a bus to the Katowice city center and book a train to Krakow. With this new plan in mind, I went back outside to wait.

An hour and a half later, the second shuttle arrived, and the French family recommenced their arguments with the new driver. They won the battle this time, and as they were boarding the bus I seized my opportunity. "Excuse me for disturbing you, Madame," I said to the mother in surprisingly perfect French, no doubt the product of an panic-induced adrenaline rush, "but would you mind asking the driver if it would be possible for me to purchase a one-way ticket to Krakow on this bus?"

"D'accord," she agreed, and after a minute of rapid conversation with the man I recognized the international sign of approval: he nodded.

Success! I forked over fifty zlotys and hopped onto the shuttle, chuckling to myself at the thought that this had been the one time, two months to the day after I moved to Paris, that my French had proved truly indispensable. In Poland.

We pulled away from the airport and our non-English-speaking driver immediately turned on the radio and selected an American Top 40 station that constituted our background music for the two-hour ride to Krakow. Oh, the supreme irony of it all.

My couchsurfer, a university professor named Robert, met me at the station last night and took me on a whirlwind tour of Krakow nightlife. He gave me maps, a glass of "wodka" (there are no v's in Polish) and coke, and a grammar lesson (I learned "excuse me"-- it's "przepraszam." Go ahead, ask me how to say it! "Thank you" was too hard though, so my politeness has been abruptly terminating after I successfully receive whatever it is I've just asked for.) Apparently my pronunciation wasn't half bad, because Robert told me admiringly that my accent was nearly perfect when I actually got the words right. He attributed it to some sort of intuition from my Polish heritage, but I think it's just that I like to smush all the sounds in words together and you get to do a lot of that in Polish. Today I went for a walk around the Old Town and continually asked for "one ticket" "one pretzel" "one...this" and the vendors replied to me in Polish, which was either a sign that I didn't sound too foreign, or a sign that they didn't speak English. Considering the near misses with the shuttle drivers, I'm betting on the latter. But at least I made it to Krakow, and thanks to Robert's efforts on my behalf at the train station, I now have a ticket to Warsaw. More about that later, along with pictures and descriptions of my travels today. For now though, rest assured that I am alive, oczywiscie. Ja estem cudownie! Pa pa!

What, this old thing?

2008-04-16T19:35:00.006+02:00

Today I bought a wedding ring, so now I can fearlessly traverse all of Eastern Europe! Confused? You should be.

Apparently my fake husband is totally loaded, because this faux diamond is pretty big.

Of the many sage pieces of travel advice offered by Couchsurfing.com, I particularly enjoy this one because it gives me an excuse to buy jewelry. The idea is that you wear the ring when you travel alone and always say that you're on your way to meet someone, if asked. I'm a big fan of double lives, so vagabonding around the Baltic states pretending to be a young wife meeting up with her hubby in Warsaw holds decided appeal for me.

But perhaps I should back up and actually tell you about my vacation. Spring break starts this Friday, and for two weeks I will doing some Major Traveling. It begins with a flight to Krakow, Poland, which turns into a bus to Warsaw, and then a bus to Vilnius, Lithuania, followed by a bus to Riga, Latvia and another to Tallinn, Estonia. From Estonia I'll take a ferry to Helsinki, Finland, then a second ferry to Stockholm, Sweden. From Sweden it's all trains, to Oslo, Norway, Gothenburg, Helsingborg, Copenhagen, and then back to Stockholm to catch my return flight to Paris. For those of you who've been keeping count, that's eight countries in two weeks, and I. Can't. Wait.

Except for the considerable problem that I'm going toute seule, as we say in French. A friend had originally agreed to go with me, but due to passport issues on his part it looks like I will be forced to forge onwards all by my lonesome. I think if I survive the experience, it'll be one of the most life-changing fortnights of my life. Who's not up for that?

Le Jardin du Luxembourg

2008-04-14T20:58:00.002+02:00

The other day Molly, Leetal and I spent some time in the lovely Luxembourg Gardens, which are beginning to get pretty now that spring is (ever so slooowly) creeping up on Paris.

Did you know hyacinths are my favorite flowers?

Leetal by the fountain.

Paris has a monopoly on cool trees.

Lovely :)

The Senate and the gardens.

Beeeeootiful.

C'est Molly.

And then the next day it rained for hours. Such is Paris.

It's pronounced No-trah Domm.

2008-04-12T20:54:00.004+02:00

Today was a lovely day, so I moseyed on down to Notre Dame for some quality lunch-n-literature time.

The other day Molly, Leetal and I discovered this tiny falafel shop off Boulevard St. Michel, so I decided a return trip was necessary. As the following photo proves, it was a good life choice.

I had never had a falafel before coming to Paris and oh boy, have I been missing out.

When we went to Notre Dame for Paul's Paris by Site class, I was sadly without camera. Here's what you missed:

The two towers were supposed to be higher and probably peaked, but they were never completed.

The gargoyles are hilarious and I love them, but sadly they're not medieval at all. They were added when the church was renovated in the 1800s and reflect the Victorians' imagination of medieval architectural motifs.

I brought my copy of Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, thinking it would be interesting/nerdy to read it at Notre Dame itself. I sat on a bench in the garden behind the church and read until the weather became menacing.

The view from my reading bench.

I went inside seeking refuge from the cold, but Notre Dame's interior is so dim and packed with camera-happy tourists that it's not really an ideal reading locale, either.

Then by accident I stayed long enough that a vespers mass started. An usher handed me a sheet of hymns and I spent the next half-hour solemnly singing along (off key, of course) with the cantor. It's interesting that church in a different language is not as thoroughly confusing as you might think, simply because the intonation and rhythm (in Catholic masses at least) seems to be the same the world over.

Altar close-up. This isn't the altar that's actually used during mass-- that one is farther forward and inexplicably modern in style.

As usual I don't know how to wrap this up, so we will end with this totally unrelated picture of me eating a tiny chicken at an open-air market yesterday.

Molly laughed at me for buying the little chicken and then eating it off my lap sans utensils, but it was SO GOOD that I don't care.

An afternoon at Pere-Lachaise

2008-04-11T23:09:00.009+02:00

Somewhat delayed, but here it is: the recap of our day at the famous Parisian cemetery of Père-Lachaise!

The older plots in Père-Lachaise grew up around one another in delightfully eclectic patterns. As mom would say, "They're packed like sardines in there!"

The grave of the famous composer Frederic Chopin, which adoring fans have covered with flowers. Paul told us that on All Saints' Day Parisians turn out in droves to place flowers on the graves of relatives and personal heroes in the cemetery.

No visit to Père-Lachaise would be complete without the pilgrimage to Jim Morrison's grave. The sad part is that people have graffitied the side of the tomb next to his with song lyrics and inspired messages like "Luv U Jim!!!". I hope its ghost haunts them all.

A winding cemetery lane on the top of the hill.

Père-Lachaise opened for business in 1804 during the same week as Napoleon's coronation as Emperor. This is the cemetery's oldest tomb.

The newer area of the cemetery is very rigidly organized on a grid-like pattern that differs greatly from the meandering paths of the older part.

Oscar Wilde's grave. It's covered in lipstick because apparently it is a tradition that gay men come to the site to kiss it. You may also notice that the flying sphinx-angel has no genitals-- they were originally thought to be too obscene for public viewing and were hacked off for use as a paperweight in the cemetery office!

Despite the fact that this man has no connection to fertility whatsoever, legend has it that if women come to his grave and touch his lips, package, and toe, then put a flower in his top hat, they will either get married or become pregnant within the year. I laughingly convinced Elizabeth to perform the ritual with a nearby dandelion, which she did. It was only after she had finished that Paul told us the story of his sister, who after several failed fertility treatments finally became pregnant within two months of her visit to the grave!

Now time for the blast from the past. Consider this picture, circa 1997, taken during a family vacation to Père-Lachaise.

My awful, puffy blue coat? Check. Kevin with hands on hips? Check. Julia looking sullen? Check.

Well, while we were wandering around with Paul, we came across...

The same grave!! That's me, Kristen, and Suzy attempting to recreate the decade-old photo. As you can see we didn't get it quite right, even though I tried to make a dissatisfied face and stand at a weird slant as per the original, but apparently reversed the angle. The funniest thing about this picture may be Suzy, who has actually done a comically good impression of Kevin's pose, what with the jaunty elbows and mischievous grin. But the symmetry of the scene puzzles me. If you look at the creepy shrouded figure and the surrounding graves, you'll notice they're in exactly opposite positions vis-a-vis the original picture. Did our camera take some kind of weird mirror-image photo?

The final thing to note about that picture is the engraving on the tomb, which says "Famille Raspail." In what can only be described as an incredible and eerie coincidence, ten years ago I unknowingly posed next to the tomb of the family that would once again greet me when I finally returned to Paris-- I now live at the corner of Rue de Rennes and Boulevard Raspail. Paul said it must have been fate.

It was a (sadly fleeting) sunny and beautiful day, so after the cemetery we went wandering.

And found GIANT GELATO!

And then we ate it.

The end!

Sewers, and the return of the Worm Man

2008-04-09T18:11:00.007+02:00

Today I saw something terrifying in the Louvre.

And now that I've hooked you with that, I'm going to delay my explanation until after this brief tour of the Paris sewers.

Today was sewer day, the long-awaited field trip that would allow us to imitate our favorite literary escape artist, Les Miserables convict-on-the-run Jean Valjean.

This very nice sewer man gave us a tour of the tunnels in French, which was kind of hard for me to understand since he used a lot of technical terms about water and waste management. Luckily there were signs in English that I could read and pretend I had understood just from listening. Behind him is a dummy of a sewer employee demonstrating some maintenance work, and if you look closer you will realize...

That he is HARRY POTTER.

I love dioramas. These rats live in the sewer, but the tour guide told us that the workers don't kill them because they actually eat enough garbage to be a help rather than a hindrance.

Don't fall in.

It didn't actually smell as bad as I thought it would. Unfortunately you can no longer do boat rides through the tunnels, as was the fashion in the Victorian era.

Elizabeth kept that scarf over her nose for most of the visit.

We're standing on top of the sewer! As Molly pointed out, it pretty much looks like the Seine. I didn't even see any chunks, which was disappointing. Elizabeth said she saw a turd float by but the rest of us were doubtful.

After the sewer visit I went to the Louvre to find a painting to use as the topic of my final presentation next week in Susan's Painting Women in France class. On the way I saw some interesting things.

Like this skull eating a ferret.

And The Last Supper! Which for some reason has had a giant turquoise ball placed right in front of it, which is as distracting as the worm man in the Marie de Medici cycle room.

Speaking of our friend the worm man, I walked through that gallery on my way out, and as I got closer I noticed something new and horrifying about him-- he was ALIVE.

Ok so not really alive, but he was breathing. And panting, and gasping. And then to my horror he actually started TALKING in the most gravelly and menacing voice I've ever heard. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared in amazement and repulsion. And then I realized that the new camera I bought yesterday can take videos, so now you can see for yourself!

I have no idea what he's saying, but I'm pretty sure it's nothing uplifting.

Je voudrais le Sony Cybershot

2008-04-08T22:41:00.012+02:00

It's Tuesday, so it must be time for another Awkward French Encounter.

Today I finally bit the metaphorical bullet and went to Darty, the French Best Buy, to obtain a replacement camera. After a few minutes spent helplessly gazing over the wide selection of appareils photo, a salesperson sauntered over to offer assistance. With a sinking heart I realized he was young and attractive-- an excellent candidate for my ongoing and unintentional bid to embarrass myself thoroughly.

"Vuadserjloui'eauxfedsa'qujole'csieu?" said the Darty guy, presumably asking whether or not he could help me.

"Uhh... I have a question... what's the difference between a stablisateur optique and a stablisateur numerique?"

"Lelecsi'edse'rjlouauxfedsaloui anticipates the motion of the subject, maesisfluisoveusrtr."

"Oh. Okay."

He left me alone to puzzle over the feature summaries propped up behind the cameras, which had enough English words in them ("zoom," "pixel," "détection") that I could at least understand the gist. I narrowed it down to two choices, the first being the same model as the one that I lost, which was a good camera overall minus the fact that it had a substandard zoom function and devoured batteries like bonbons. The other contender was substantially more expensive but it was also prettier and had a much longer summary of features-- which are, let's face it, pretty much my sole criteria in buying electronic equipment. Midway through my ponderings, I called Cute Darty Guy back over to clarify whether or not it was necessary to buy the battery and charger separately-- he looked askance and said "no... not at all... where did you read that?" At that point I realized that accessoires furnis probably meant "furnished with these accessories," figuring it out, as usual, minutes too late to preserve an intelligent facade.

The real confusion began at the register, though, when Darty Guy said something else in yet another rapid strain of French (can't he tell I'm a foreigner?? Have a little pity!) and I stared dumbly for a moment and had to admit I didn't understand. He repeated it again, and this time I discerned words like "not included normally" and "good for a year," and realized he was probably trying to offer me an extended warranty. Hoping that I understood correctly, I murmured that no, I was not in need of it. Further confusion arose after I failed to comprehend his inquiry about my preferred mode of payment-- the blank look on my face and credit card clutched in my hand were apparently enough of an answer. "Par carte?" he prompted, eyebrows raised. "Oui," I sighed, ashamed of my inability to answer yet another straightforward question. "Par carte."

Then he wanted my postal code ("Um, in the United States?" "Oh... no.") which necessitated the involvement of a supervisor to enter my nationality in the Darty computer and led to a humorous note on the printed receipt that claimed that I lived on "America Street." The final obstacle was the fact that my American credit cards are notoriously temperamental in France and refused to scan. I must've looked like a shopaholic bimbo by the time I handed over my third one and said, apologetically, "the last time usually works..."

Back at the apartment I found Diane online and told her the tale of my ineptitude.

"I don't think the cute Darty guy will be asking me out for a glass of wine anytime soon," I lamented.

"Of course not," said Diane. "Because you live on America Street, with the rest of the fools."

The moral of this story is that despite a general fear of electronics boutiques and a language barrier made maddeningly more pronounced by my innate aversion to technical jargon, I did manage to select and procure a camera using only my mediocre French and some well-placed moments of stunned silence. As I wished my poor salesman a "bonne soirée" and carried my overpriced purchase out of the store, I decided that another victory had been won. Go ahead and try to steal this one, camera thieves of Europe. I dare you.

Inaugural picture with the new camera!

Version Originale

2008-04-06T21:15:00.009+02:00

This week has been long.

On Monday and Tuesday I worked tirelessly (ok, procrastinated a lot and then finally completed in one long shot) the take-home exam for Susan's Painting Women in France class. Considering the fact that I submitted it at 2am on the day it was due, it had surprisingly few typos when I reread it post-submission. Results on that front pending.

On Wednesday I presented my Powerpoint on Père-Lachaise cemetery and Les Misérables, which went well and reminded me that I miss not having any English classes this semester. Not to worry though, because in what was almost definitely a Poor Life Choice I somehow saved all my hardest English concentration requirements for my last semester of college. So this fall will be quite the literature overload.

Then on Thursday we took advantage of the uncharacteristically sunny day to visit Père-Lachaise itself, but I won't tell you about that yet because I'm waiting for Lena to upload the pictures I took with her camera. I tried to buy a new one the other day at Darty, the French equivalent of Best Buy, but the exorbitant prices scared me away before I could make a decision. Blast you, Swiss camera thief. Wherever you are.

On Thursday night Erin and I went to an amusing French movie entitled J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster (I've always dreamed of being a gangster). It was one of those movies that follows a handful of individual subplots, all of which involved the humorous hijinks of inept criminals. We were pleased to discover that we understood the plot and most of the scene-to-scene dialog. And sometimes we even laughed at the right times. Also we learned the vocabulary for "Get out of here or I'll break your face," which will undoubtedly prove useful in future.

Then for a change of pace on Friday, I saw The Other Boleyn Girl (called Deux Soeurs Pour Un Roi in French-- Two Sisters for One King) with Erin, Lena, Ornella, Leetal, Molly, and Molly's French host brother Nicolas, who was apparently there to ogle Natalie Portman. We had a brief moment of fear before the movie started that it would be dubbed in French, since we had forgotten to verify that it was "V.O.", or version originale. We lucked out, though, and had a good time pointing out the translation inadequacies in the French subtitles. The movie itself was good, I thought, but Ornella and Molly said it didn't live up to the book. I was also disappointed that they didn't give Natalie Portman an extra finger, for authenticity's sake-- one of the main reasons Anne Boleyn was suspected of witchery was the presence of a sixth finger on her left hand. Why does that detail from my fourth-grade Tudor history class stay with me when nothing else will?

I had kind of a hard night after that. Everyone else decided to find a bar, but I took a Metro back to my apartment. For some reason during the movie I had fallen into one of my (fairly rare) "down" moods where I miss being home. Maybe it was just the result of seeing familiar actors in an American film. Maybe it was the tortured stories of romance on the screen that reminded me that everyone I love is thousands of miles away. And maybe it was the added annoyance of paying literally twice the price of a ticket at good ol' Quality 16 in Ann Arbor, since the Parisian theaters apparently revoke their student fares on Friday nights. When I got home I spent awhile sitting on the balcony outside my room, crying quietly so as not to wake my host family, and wishing for a moment that I wasn't so far from from the familiar.

Speaking of the familiar, though, it is coming to visit me next month! The parents in the family that I babysit for in Ann Arbor are going to be in Paris for work, and they emailed me this week to say that they're bringing the whole crew along. I'm really glad that someone from home will be able to see my new neighborhood, since none of my friends or family are planning to make the trip.

Now that this post has served its function as distraction from my homework on the French sewer system, I should wrap it up. Next time I'll show you the pictures from Père-Lachaise, which include a decidedly creepy blast from the past. More about that later.

We will end with this really attractive picture of me eating a ficelle de fromage, which is essentially a giant breadstick with cheese baked both inside it and on the top.

This picture was taken with my laptop webcam, now the only camera I have since my French cell phone doesn't have one built in. These ficelles de fromage are available at the bakery on my street, and I order them constantly because a) they are full of cheesy goodness (observe the excess that has oozed onto the pan during the baking process) and b) they only cost 1E50! Much to my chagrin, though, it's the same young and relatively attractive guy who works at the bakery every day, so he is beginning to recognize me every time I waltz in and ask for the giant breadstick smothered in melted cheese. Awkward.

Poisson d'Avril!

2008-04-01T20:58:00.003+02:00

Happy April Fools' Day everyone-- or as we say here in France, "poisson d'avril!"

Poisson d'Avril is one of those ridiculous holiday traditions that I think must have been created especially for me. It literally means "April fish," and the classic French prank involves affixing a paper fish to your victim's back, which gives passersby the opportunity to follow them around and giggle for however long it takes the poor sap to figure it out. At that point you gleefully shriek "poisson d'avril!!!!", and may choose to make amends by exchanging chocolate fish (maybe the leftover ones from your Donald-Duck-on-a-moped Easter candy). April Fools' Day in America is downright cruel by comparison, what with people telling each other blatant lies and then laughing at the looks of horror and dismay on their loved ones' faces as they assure them they were "Just kidding! I DIDN'T run over your dog! Haha! April foooools!"

Needless to say I could not let April Fish Day pass uncelebrated. Before leaving for Susan's class at the Musee D'Orsay, I cut out four paper fish from the pages of my notebook and personalized them with googly eyes and scales. I then hid them in the notebook and ever-so-craftily removed them one at a time when our group had assembled at the museum, sticking them in turn on the unsuspecting backs of Lena, Evelyn, Erin, and Ornella. They didn't notice for a good twenty minutes at least, and the sheer glee I experienced when they confusedly peeled the taped fish off their clothes made me immediately understand why this tradition took off. "POISSON D'AVRIL!" I exploded in triumph, as nearby museum patrons looked on in surprise.

Apparently the other girls had not heard of the custom, though, so then I had to explain that it was a legitimate French prank and not some bizarre product of my imagination. Sadly no one had a camera, so I was not able to get pictures of my sneaky work. Later that night when my host dad called me into the kitchen for dinner, I was delighted to see that the main course was salmon. "Is this an April Fish?!" I said, smirking, and my host dad roared with laughter. "Yes, but at least it is real!" he said, plunking a portion of it onto my plate.

The moral of this story is: watch out next April 1st, because when I go back to the States I don't intend to leave the poissons behind me. They will be behind you. On your backs. POISSON D'AVRIIIIIIIL.

We are all worms in the graveyard of life

2008-03-31T21:06:00.003+02:00

Or such is the theme suggested by this new and frightening addition to the Louvre:

He even has little hairs on his head. Terrifying.

Did you know you're allowed to take your art supplies into the Louvre and make copies of famous paintings?

This was taken a few weeks ago at La Duree, a chic "tea salon" near the Louvre. I went there with Lena and as you can see she purchased an $8 macaroon, but I contented myself with the overpriced hot chocolate. It blew my lunch budget for like two days but it was worth it to have my own little jug of what was essentially molten chocolate.

I had another awkward moment with my host family tonight, not that that will come as a surprise to anyone. You may recall, many posts in the past, when I told my host family about my love of Boursin cheese, and how they laughed at me because it is apparently a low-quality product in France. Well today I went to Monoprix with some friends, and I decided to buy some Boursin in a little tub. No one was at the apartment when I got home, so I wrote my name on it, put it in the fridge, and promptly fell asleep for an hour-long nap on my bed.

When I awoke dinner was ready, and upon entering the kitchen I spied my tub of Boursin sitting forlornly on the counter with my host parents in a confused debate as to its ownership.

"Did you buy it?"

"No, it's not mine. Maybe Louise bought it."

"Louise wouldn't buy that."

Then I had to explain, awkwardly, that it was mine ("I wrote my name on it... right there..") and my host mom looked at me with a pitying look reserved only for the most uncultured of Philistines.

"Well I guess we can put it in the drawer here, with the other... cheese."

Then as penance they made me try a bizarre jelly-like meat during dinner ("It's delicious, no? Eat it! It's good for the health!") that looked like a slice of brain tissue but luckily did not taste like it.

Other culinary adventures include last night when we had raw oysters for dinner, which was strange but surprisingly tasty. The shells were bigger than a fist and looked like weirdly deformed rocks, which you pry apart to expose the wiggly oyster innards. All I can say is that it's pretty fortunate that I'm not a picky eater, because we've had at least fifteen different meals that would have been decidedly unappetizing to a more conservative epicurean. But, as my host mom always says, "Il faut gouter!"

Des photos en Suisse

2008-03-30T12:13:00.008+02:00

Happy days are here again! Lena uploaded her Switzerland pictures and now I can appropriate at will for you readers out there in blogland.

This is the underground archeological site I told you about at St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva. I think in this picture I'm standing in a Roman baptistry.

The Allobrogian chieftain! He had no skull because some ancient persons dug it up, thinking it had mystical powers.

Breakfast and dishwashing at our Couchsurfer's apartment in Bern. Notice her little red fridge. Adorable.

Downtown Bern. That statue on the pole in the middle of the street is from the 1500s, and there are hundreds of different ones all over the city. They were put up before the streets had much traffic, so now the cars and trolleys have to weave around them. In the background is the Zytglogge, the medieval clock with the performing puppets.

It's comforting to know that no matter how far you get from home, there will always be a Body Shop nearby. Notice that this is also the last picture of me with my camera. :(

At the market in Bern there were lots of eggs because it was Easter weekend. The traditional egg-coloring method in Switzerland is to wrap onion skins around the eggs and secure them with a section of pantyhose, leaving some areas uncovered to form a design. Then they're boiled in water and the onion pigment transfers onto the egg as a beautiful reddish-brown tint.

I believe these eggs cost about $19 apiece. I did not buy any.

There was a playground in Bern. And we played on it.

On to the cheesemaking!

There were four of these giant vats in the Gruyere cheese factory, and each one holds enough milk to produce 12 rounds of cheese.

The cheesemaker does some quality control. You can see the lineup of round presses that turn the semi-solidified milk into cheese.

So much cheese! It's funny to think that the gruyere I buy in Ann Arbor at the imported cheese counter at Meijer probably came from this very room.

Outside the factory, we also got to watch this guy make gruyere the old-fashioned way-- in a copper kettle over a fire. The stringed instrument resting on the kettle is dragged through the milk to break up the solidifying mass.

Now for the shots you've all been waiting for...

The Swiss Alps!

And the Cutest Village on Earth Award goes to... Gruyere, Switzerland!

Now we shall skip ahead to Geneva, our last leg of the trip.

Here we have the St. Pierre Cathedral, adopted church of John Calvin and birthplace of Calvinism.

On display inside the church is the chair used by Calvin almost five hundred years ago.

And last but not least we have Lena in front of the Jet d'Eau in Lake Geneva. It's a city landmark and apparently the highest water fountain in the world.

So that was Switzerland. It makes me happy to have some pictures of it, even if the ones I took are gone. Good job, Lena. :)

Easter a la Suisse

2008-03-27T17:57:00.007+01:00

Okay everyone: I am finally ready to talk about what happened in Switzerland. I know you're on the edge of your seats.

Today's entry will be especially unique because it includes no pictures whatsoever. There is a good reason (well, a devastatingly sad reason) for this, which I'll come to later. You'll just have to use your powers of imagination to conjure up images of all that I saw during my little vaycay.

Day -1: Thursday

At 10 P.M. on Holy Thursday, Lena and I were sitting outside the Paris Gallieni Euroline and Metro station, waiting for our overnight bus to Geneva. After a mere two-hour delay, it arrived and we were off on a European adventure! Sleeping on the bus proved difficult, but it didn't seem long at all until we were pulling up to the Swiss border, the first blue lights of morning illuminating the sky. It was at the customs point that we met a guy named Matt, a Canadian college student studying in Paris, who had relinquished his seat at the back of the bus in order to get away from some woman who spoke neither French, German, English, or Italian and was thus having trouble communicating with the border guards. Since Switzerland is a neutral country, the customs process is pretty intense. We had to go through two sets of security-- the French exit customs and the Swiss entrance customs, and of the two the French customs were much more serious. Matt told us that this was because the French government has to be concerned about people fleeing France to take refuge in Switzerland, since the Swiss will not necessarily take action against fugitives from other countries.

Day 1: Friday

We arrived in Geneva at around 8 o'clock in the morning, and the first order of business was to find an ATM and take out some money. Switzerland uses Swiss francs, which are currently trading at roughly the same rate as U.S. dollars. Matt led us to the Geneva train station, where we figured we could find the ATM as well as buy a roundtrip ticket to Bern, our other destination of interest. We located the ATM and I inserted my debit card, selected my withdrawal amount, and entered my PIN code. I waited for my money, but none came. A blinking message popped up on the screen.

"Card retained?!" I shrieked, staring at it in horror. "What does that mean?"

I pressed every button in sight, but with no success. As if mocking my distress, the machine blinked a few more times and spat out a receipt. "Your card has been retained. Please present this receipt to your local bank. Thank you!"

"Lena," I said, in a panic. "That machine ate my card! It won't give it back!"

Lena, wide-eyed with fear, slipped her own card back into her wallet.

After some Frenglish communications with the woman at the ticket booth, we were told that the man capable of getting the card back would not be at work until noon. Faced with a morning in Geneva and only slightly sickened by distress, I followed Matt and Lena away from the ATM of Doom. We ate breakfast at a pastry store in the train station ("Bonjour! Which of these pastries is the most typically Swiss?") and then stepped out on the streets of Geneva. The day was cold and rainy, and being that it was also Good Friday, all the stores were closed. After several windy, wet minutes of wandering, we came upon the St. Pierre Cathedral. It's quite an impressive structure, the front facade an imposing row of Roman-revival columns. The grandeur befits its historical import, since it's also the church where John Calvin, founder of Calvinism, delivered his famous sermons.

We saw some people going down a little stairway at the side of the cathedral, and followed them just to get out of the rain. It turned out to be an underground archeological site where you could wander around and look at the foundations from the hundreds of years' worth of earlier churches and temples that existed on the site before St. Pierre was built. Parts of it were surprisingly well-preserved, like a mostly-intact entryway floor that still had the original Roman mosaic tiles. We spent over an hour walking around with our audio guides and making dorky art-history observations about the styles of columns we were encountering. When we got to the ancient tomb area I turned the corner and literally gasped-- there was a skeleton in the grave! The audioguide told me it was probably a Roman-era Allobrogian chieftain buried under the original altar. So that fulfilled my daily dose of creepy.

After the archeological site tour, Matt left us and hopped a train to Leichtenstein. Lena and I ducked into the nearby Museum of the Reformation, but it was ultimately unexciting and we left before long.

We decided to head back to the train station, and after a little while standing in line I finally got to talk with the elusive ATM problem-solver man, who extracted my debit card from its clutches and advised me not to try using it again. Now a few hours delayed from the original plan, we stayed in line and purchased two round-trip tickets to Switzerland's German-speaking capital city, Bern. Buying a ticket enables you to depart for your destination city at any time you want-- the trains leave twice an hour and allow for a lot of traveling flexibility. The first train we tried was cancelled due to "an accident involving a passenger," so we jumped on the next one and after about an hour or two of watching the gorgeous mountain scenery and gently-swirling snowstorms fly by, we were in Bern.

Bern presented something of a problem, since Lena speaks no German and all I can remember from my two years of German instruction in England is "My name is Sara," "I am eight years old" (slightly useless over a decade later), the word for "nothing," and how to count to twenty.

"Which way is... Laupenstrasse?" I said, staring blankly at the map on the station wall.

"I think it's that way... near Schlosesslistr."

"...Okay."

We'd been given directions by our Couchsurfer in Bern, and her house ended up only being a fifteen-minute walk from the station. Unfortunately on the way there the monsoon gods decided it would be the perfect opportunity to toy with some fatigued mortals, and we arrived at our host's door looking like a pair of drowned rats huddling uselessly under flimsy umbrellas. Luckily Sabine, the woman who hosted us, ended up being the kindest woman in Switzerland. She ushered us inside and immediately presented us with hot tea, Easter cake, and pairs of her own slippers. We met her fourteen-year-old son Yannis, who murmured a self-conscious "hello" as Lena and I wished him "Guten Tag!" in what was undoubtedly the least German accent on the planet. After some tea and conversation with Sabine, we stashed our bags upstairs and waited for dinner. Feeding your guests is by no means a requirement for couchsurfing hosts, but most of them do it anyway out of hospitality. Sabine made us a delicious and traditional dinner called raclette, which Lena and I loved because it involved lots of melted cheese. Basically the dish consists of potatoes, mushrooms, asparagas, olives, and whatever other side dishes you want to include, but the main attraction is the thick slices of various kinds of cheese which you load into little trays and then insert them into a tabletop machine called a raclette maker. It looks like a double-decker pancake griddle and it has heated coils that melt the cheese; when it's sufficiently gooey you remove the tray and use a little paddle to scrape the melty goodness onto your potatoes and other fixings. It was a lot of fun and tasted amazing, and Lena and I both declared a desire to purchase raclette makers for use in the States. The other cool part about dinner was the fact that we had three different languages going on at one time. Yannis had a friend from school over, and the friend spoke French and German but very little English. Yannis spoke German and a fair amount of English, but not much French. Sabine is quatrilingual or something so that wasn't a problem for her. In the effort for everyone to understand everyone else, French, German, and English flew around the table in the most amazing and complimentary way I've ever seen, with everyone clarifying for the others in whatever language was most convenient. I looked at the smile on Lena's face and knew she was thinking the same thing I was-- I've never had dinner like this before. After everyone was stuffed with potatoes and melted cheese, Lena and I did the dishes and retired to our room to sleep.

Day 2: Saturday

We woke up on Holy Saturday to find Bern bathed in golden rays of sunshine. Sabine set out a delicious breakfast of custardy yogurt, muesli, bread and cheese, then helped us look over our maps and plan out our day. We read somewhere that there was an outdoor market in the town center on Saturdays, so we gathered up some stuff and headed out. The market turned out to be huge-- dozens and dozens of vendors selling everything from food and flowers to clothes and jewelry. I got some of my Christmas shopping done and we bought some fresh pesto gnocchi from a pasta cart to give to Sabine as a thank-you gift. After our adventures at the market we visited the Old Town of Bern, which we quickly pronounced the best city in Switzerland. Whereas Geneva had been vast and stark, Bern had the atmosphere of a modernized medieval village-- which in fact it was. We saw the Zytglogge, an impressive clock tower in the middle of Old Town that features little puppets that pop out and perform a musical skit every hour. The clock is even more impressive considering that all the mechanisms for the puppet performance were built in the mid 1500s and are still working! We also saw the Munster cathedral, which is no longer a functional church but still featured some amazing Gothic-style architecture. Our last real stop of the day was to the Bern bear pit, which is literally a big hole where a few real live bears live. According to Sabine, the history of Bern involves a town founder who decides that he'll go out hunting and the first animal he shoots will lend its name to the town. He bags a bear, and the town becomes "bern." Before you get sad about the bears being forced to live in a little concrete hole with a bunch of tourists gazing in at them, though, you should know that they're being moved to a new habitat next year where they'll have a lot more space to roam around and live happy bear lives.

After thinking some more about our travel plans, we decided that it would be a worthwhile excursion to stay in Bern another night and leave for Geneva the following morning, stopping on the way to visit the mountain village of Gruyere, where they make Gruyere cheese. Sabine was having guests over that night, though, so she wasn't able to host us. We got on Couchsurfing.com and found another candidate who was willing to take us-- a 24-year-old woman named Kaja, her boyfriend Christian, and their giant white shepherd dog Coona. We gathered up our stuff, presented the farewell gnocchi to Sabine, and trekked along the river to Kaja's apartment. Once again the couchsurfing experience exceeded our expectations-- we presented a bag of fresh caramels to Kaja and Christian, who were incredibly friendly and fed us a delicious meal of beef and mushroom in a cream sauce served over potato pancakes. It was really interesting to talk to them because Kaja is German and Christian is Swiss, and they were eager to learn about Americans' views of Europe. They seemed shocked to discover that most Americans revere Europe as a chic and cultural vacation destination, and seemed downright confused when Lena and I told them that most fairy tales are understood to take place in Europe ("Does it say that? Couldn't they be anywhere, really?" "Well, we don't really have castles and stuff in America").

Kaja also told us a lot of things we didn't know about Germany and its self-image, like the fact that it's only recently become acceptable to be proud of being German. When she was growing up, professing a pride in your nationality was too tied up with memories of Hitler and the war, and people would assume you had some sort of racist agenda if you didn't act ashamed of your nationality. Kaja said that German schools place a lot of emphasis on explaining to their students the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi party, and a newly-emerging attitude of distance from those actions is finally allowing the country to take on a new identity as a German people. It was at this point that I realized how glad I was that Lena and I decided to couchsurf during this trip. Where else can you have these kinds of candid conversations with people whose life experiences are so entirely different from your own? They asked us how we were enjoying Bern, and when we mentioned how much we liked our dinner the night before and how sad we were that we wouldn't be able to buy a raclette maker before the stores reopened in Switzerland, Kaja offered to sell us her own. "We hardly ever use it," she said, taking it off a shelf in the kitchen. "And we can buy a new one anytime." I parted with twenty Swiss francs and am now the proud owner of said appliance, so if anyone wants to sample a sinfully cheesy dinner sometime, let me know.

Day 3: Easter Sunday

Early on Easter Sunday we awoke, said our thank-yous and goodbyes to our hosts, and set off for the train station. A slight glitch in the plans arose when I realized I had lost my round-trip train ticket from Geneva to Bern, which meant that I had to buy a whole new one instead of cashing it in for a refund. After that snafoo we caught a train and series of buses to Gruyere, which is situated in the Alps and may very well be the cutest village on the planet. We bought tickets for the factory and watched the milk swirl around in giant copper vats, destined to become delicious guyere cheese. An informational poster on the wall told us that two-thirds of all gruyere is sold in Switzerland, with the remaining one-third divvied up among Europe and North America. I think they need to make more, because the other continents are being seriously deprived. By a sheer stroke of luck we also happened to be there on the last day of the year that the old artisan cheesemakers were doing an outdoor demonstration of old-fashioned cheesemaking, which involves cooking the milk over a fire in a giant copper kettle. We got to taste the cheese at each stage of completion-- as whey and curds (which were surprisingly rich and delicious), as fresh spongy cheese being pressed into the wooden mold, and as the finished cheese at 6, 8, and 10 months, which get progressively tangier as they age. Stuffed with cheese, we then ascended a winding mountain trail to the village proper of Gruyere, where the restaurants and tourist shops were all open for business. We ate some traditional fondue and did a little shopping, picking up a box of meringues for our next couchsurfer host in Geneva. After the shopping we came back down the mountain and meandered over to the bus station (after I slipped on some ice and faceplanted in the middle of the street right in the path of an oncoming car, that is. It's a comfort to know that in even the most scenic and foreign of locales, I am still as clumsy and pathetic as I am back home). It was then that disaster struck.

"Lena," I said, rooting through my purse in an increasing panic. "Do you have my camera?"

"No... don't you?"

We retraced our steps all through the village, asking every shopkeeper and hotel clerk if someone had returned a lost camera, but to no avail. It was gone. Lena mentioned that she had seen two really suspicious men in one of the stores we had last been in, trailing close behind her at every turn. With dismay I realized that my camera had been in my coat pocket for the last few minutes before I noticed it was gone, and would've been all too easy to take without my noticing. Our bus arrived then, so there was nothing more to be done. As we pulled away from Gruyere I looked out the window at the thick and sudden snowstorm that had hit the town a few hours earlier, the majestic Alps now faint against the darkened sky, and hoped that stealing a camera on Easter Sunday earns you a one-way ticket to hell. I cried to myself on the train to Geneva, thinking of all the pictures I had lost and despairing at the thought of buying a new camera. Lena, sensing my mood, said nothing.

Day 4: Monday

Our last Swiss couchsurfer was a 30-something single woman named Anne, and while she was friendly enough she didn't have the same energy and charisma as our couchsurfers in Bern. She told us we were welcome to anything in the fridge, gave us permission to use her computer, and left us to eat and shower while she went out to visit some friends. We called a few museums to see what was open on Easter Monday, but very little was. We wandered around Geneva for a few hours and saw some key landmarks like Old Town, the inside of the St. Pierre Cathedral, and the Jet d'Eau, a giant water-spewing fountain in Lake Geneva. Then it got really cold and we decided that there wasn't much left to do, so we trudged back to Anne's apartment and spent the afternoon doing homework and watching tv. For dinner Anne made us fondue with potatoes, which was delicious, and then we packed up our stuff and walked back to the bus station to catch an overnight ride back to Paris. At the station we were surprised to see none other than Matt, our friend from the first day.

"Matt! How are you? Last time I saw you you were getting on a train to Leichtenstein!"

It's kind of hilarious that I have opportunities to say things like that.

Matt did apparently wind up in Leichtenstein, which he crossed on foot in just over two hours. We also met his friend Caitlin, another Canadian college student studying in Paris this semester. The bus ride back was uneventful, and Lena and I were relieved when 7 A.M. rolled around and we disembarked in familiar surroundings.

"Paris, je t'aime!" said Lena, throwing her arms out in an attempt to embrace the whole city at once.
"I'm so glad to be back," I agreed, hoisting my bags onto my aching shoulder.

Tired, sluggish, and laden with suitcases, we boarded the Metro and lurched away from the bus station, headed once again toward the streets and people we knew. The ground was damp and the skies gray, but it was warmer than Switzerland. Once in the apartment, I tiptoed down the hall and set my bags in my room. I noticed something on my desk-- a chocolate figurine from my host family accompanied by a little note wishing me "bonnes Paques." True to the constant weirdness of my life here, the chocolate was in the shape of Donald Duck riding a moped, which has arguably no relation to the Easter season, and upon closer inspection he also turned out to be filled with smaller chocolates in the shape of seashells and fish. I ate a seashell and climbed into bed. It felt so good to be home.

Flashbacks to St. Denis

2008-03-25T12:06:00.003+01:00

A few days ago I promised you a tour of St. Denis (pronounced "san denee") but then never got around to it due to the fact that I was about to board a night bus to Switzerland. You know how it goes.

I'm now back in Paris and, due to some worrisome complications with the pictures from that trip (you'll hear all about that mess in the next post...) I now have adequate time to catch you all up. Let us begin.

You may notice that the facade of St. Denis is oddly asymmetrical. The left tower was lost after it was struck by lightning in the 1830s and some moron architect tried to repair it with a stone that was too heavy and collapsed the whole thing.

Here's the view of the altar. St. Denis, like many other Parisian churches, was built on the foundations of much earlier structures. Legend has it that Christ himself consecrated the church, which is a nice idea but pretty logistically impossible considering that the earliest remnants of the structure are from the 400s AD.

Behind us is the altar. Although a building (probably a cult that worshipped St. Denis) existed on this site as early as the 400s, the earliest foundations of the present church date to the 770s AD.

The view of the church entrance and narthex. Most of the observable architecture in St. Denis today is the work of a guy named Suger, who undertook a massive remodeling of the church in the late 1100s and early 1200s, transforming it into a Gothic icon.

St. Denis is the first church to use the popular rose window design. The slightly later Notre Dame and other churches will readily adopt it in following years.

All but three of France's kings since 496 AD are buried in St. Denis. This tomb alongside the altar is Dagobert I's, who reigned in the early 600s.

Usually you can pay an entrance fee to wander around the royal tombs, but, as is typical in France, the workers were on strike. Why is this sign in English?

We had to content ourselves by admiring the tombs from afar. None of them actually contain royal remnants, however, because St. Denis was totally sacked during the French Revolution and all the bodies were removed and thrown into a mass grave, including the body of St. Denis himself, which had been buried under the altar. The theme of revolutionaries destroying historical monuments will crop up again and again in the history of Paris's buildings.

This relief on the exterior of the church shows St. Denis holding his decapitated head. The colorful story of his martyrdom involves him coming over from Italy to convert the Gauls to Christianity, but he ends up getting his head chopped off. Ever the dedicated preacher, he marches along for miles carrying his head in his hands, and the spot where he finally collapses is the site of the St. Denis church.

A view from the side exterior, with the back of the rose window.

Church Week will continue with pictures of Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle on Thursday. Be there or be eternally damned.

Switzerland: snow globe of the world

2008-03-21T21:45:00.003+01:00

Hello all! Can't talk long, partly because I'm using a Swiss keyboard and the letters are in different places on the keys (the z is in the y place, for example... verz annozing) and also because I don't want to hog the living room computer. Just wanted to let you all know that I made it alive, despite a two-hour delayed bus, an ATM that literally ate my debit card and necessitated a stayover in Geneva while I waited for the guy who could open the machine, and a train to Bern that was cancelled due to "an accident involving a passenger" ("suicide attempt, probably" said our Couchsurfing mom in Bern). Must go now- she's serving us schapps and Irish cream. Tomorrow's agenda includes visiting the Old Town of Bern, then catching an Easter day train to Gruyere, where they have an actual Swiss cheese factory! Two words for those of you who took science with Mr. Heslip: Cheesemaker video.

I'm never leaving Switzerland.

Antiquity, Renaissance, and the 3rd grade art fair

2008-03-19T20:24:00.010+01:00

Allow me to recount the first ten minutes of my morning today in the form of a one-act play.

Act One

Scene: a small but comfortable apartment in the heart of urban Paris. Camera pans down the hallway and around the corner into the bedroom of our heroine, who is sleeping soundly beneath a charmingly tattered quilt. The tranquility of the early-morning tableau is broken by the obnoxious ring of an alarm clock, in whose direction the heroine grapples groggily, knocking it onto the floor in the process. Sighing, she swings her feet over the side of the bed and, with prodigious effort, lumbers toward the closet.

A few minutes later, now dressed, the heroine stares bleakly at her morning emails and absentmindedly runs a brush over and over the same section of hair.

Voiceover: I hated Wednesday mornings because they represented all that was wrong with the world. There was first the struggle to wake up, to heed the jarring cry of the clock so diabolically opposed to my night owl preferences. Then, once awake, there was the additional, anticipatory fatigue of the six near-straight hours of class that stretched out before me like miles of unrelenting ocean, and I a faltering swimmer with gazed fixed on the distant shore. And then, just as I was rubbing my eyes for the last time and preparing to make peace with the morning, there was always the inevitable thought, the crushing final blow that lent a definitively oppressive weight to my slow and shuffling steps: we're only halfway through the week.

Heroine rises from chair and makes her way into the kitchen. On the way she mumbles incoherently to herself.

Sara: Toast... don't want no stinking toast, every day with the toast... toaster doesn't even work anymore, doesn't keep the bread down... not even toast then, just bread...

Upon entering the kitchen, the heroine views a miraculous sight that causes her to stop dead in her tracks and emit what can only be described as a squeak of joy.

Sara: OMG CEREAL!

I hope you enjoyed that little vignette. I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a box of Muesli in my life. But, in keeping with the mysteries of food a la my host family, one key ingredient seemed to be missing from the coveted breakfast equation. Where was the milk?

I searched high and low, but there was no milk on the table, in the fridge, or the pantry (milk isn't always refrigerated here). It was then that I noticed the carton of unsweetened yogurt that had been set out near my cereal bowl. Was I supposed to mix it? I decided it was an acceptable course of action, but when my host mom came bustling into the room a few minutes later I tried to shield the contents of the bowl from her view, just in case I was supposed to eat the elements separately. You really just never know.

Today was Susan's class, so we once again made the trek to the Louvre and spent the afternoon viewing famous works of art, most of which have been composed according to the strict Epic Painting checklist utilized by most 17th-19th century artists:

-Exposed breast(s) (min. 1, max. 3) = Check

-Unrealistic theatrical poses = Check

-Political/historical allegory and/or metaphor = Check

-Toga (min. 2) = Check

-Greco-Roman god(dess) (min. 1) = Check

-Putti/cherubim (preferable), OR chubby human babies (min 5) = Check

-Inexplicably bland expressions, esp. in scenes of warfare (all) = Check

It was my day to lead discussion, so if you have any questions about David's The Intervention of the Sabine Women, I am now an expert. Also I got to wear the guest lecturer badge that Susan always wears when she's leading discussion in the Louvre, which was fun because passersby looked at me like I must be a knowledgeable museum tour guide. Little did they know I was merely reading from my hastily-scribbled notes and throwing in colorful comparisons to romance-novel cover art.

Whenever I charge into battle to stop my fellow Romans from killing my Sabine families, I always bring armloads of babies and leave them writhing at my feet.

"Romance-novel cover art?" I hear you wonder aloud. "Where'd you get that from?"

To which I would reply, let us take a closer look at this personage on the left:

What exactly are you suggesting there, Mr. Big Sheath Man? If you don't believe me, also consider the following:

A savage hope indeed. Now maybe a giant rowing staff is just a giant rowing staff, but I think I know what Freud would have to say about these two works of art.

Speaking of art, we saw some more of it today-- specifically of the famous variety. The considerate people at the Louvre put it in places of prominence so that impatient visitors can do a whirlwind tour of the good stuff without having to get sidetracked by too much other culture.

The area around the Mona Lisa is roped off in a giant arc so that no one can get too close to her. In person it's hard to understand why she's so famous-- the painting is small and relatively unimpressive. We don't get it.

Then we've got Winged Victory, everyone's favorite headless Grecian:

And last but not least we followed some intriguing signs for the Children's Art Exhibition, which turned out to be exactly what it said it was-- a gallery of art made by kids ages 4 and up!

Molly's laughing at this kid because his picture description said he wanted to be a bus driver.

In this imaginative scene the world is populated by seagoing giraffes, cats, and panda bears.

The author of this piece expressed a wish to visit the U.S. to see the Native Americans, depicted here in cohabitation with the buffalo and what appear to be members of the Ku Klux Klan (upper right).

This was titled something like "In the Future," which apparently will be the stage for mass Telletubby-alien invasions.

So there you have it: the best of the best at the Louvre. Tomorrow I'll be taking you to a really old church (except for the parts that have been totally redone) that is rumored to have been consecrated by Christ himself (even though he'd been dead for 700 years). You won't want to miss it.

Bibliothèque Forney and Campbell's sauce of soup

2008-03-18T20:51:00.011+01:00

I did my homework in a medieval castle today. How about you? Sorry, couldn't resist.

After class today Molly and Lena and I decided to go on an expedition to the Marais to find the Bibliothèque Forney, which apparently has a large collection of art-history related stuff that may prove useful to us when final project time rolls around. After a brief confusion at a wonky little intersection off Rue de Rivoli we stumbled across this building:

"This structure looks significant," I mused, gazing up at the turrets.

"I'm sure Paul would have something to say about it," Molly agreed. Then we rounded the corner and saw the "Bibliothèque Forney" sign.

"Oh. We're here."

I had to lie on the ground to get all of the tower in this shot, which Molly apparently thought was hilarious because she took an undoubtedly embarrassing picture of me doing so. I have yet to see it but I'll post it for your MDRing pleasure at a later date. When I got home I Googled the building and found out that it was commissioned by a French archbishop and dates back to 1475.

If you thought I was kidding about having a love affair with staircases, I wasn't. This one goes up one of the towers inside the library. There was some sort of intriguing fenced-off area at the top but, alas, it was locked.

This is the room we studied in. As we entered I made a joke about the reptile door handles ("Hey look guys, it's the Slytherin common room") only to discover in my later Googling that the guy who commissioned the building was named Salazar! There be magic in the Marais.

News on the Switzerland front: we have Couchsurfers in Geneva AND Bern! The woman in Bern emailed me back last night and said she and her fourteen-year-old son are happy to have us. They're even going to be home all day Friday when we get in and she said we can come over and drop off our bags before seeing the city. I love the correspondences we've been having because she's delightfully ESL ("I guess, you'd like to put your luggage here, before you discover the city, isn't it? And maybe fresh up a bit from the long trip, I guess. Normally I don't sleep that late in the morning, so I guess, i'll be up, when you arrive. Maybe not very awake yet... ;-) Please don't hurry too much to take the train in Geneva... I am not sad if you arrive after 9. One thing you should know: the shops in the city are closed on Friday, so this day is more for walking around in the nature or so.")

I am glad she is not sad! And I love walking around in the nature!

I totally can't make fun though because I had another really Frenglish conversation with my host dad tonight at dinner. I asked him if there was a traditional Easter dish in France, and he told me that they eat a cut of lamb that was symbolic of something-- I didn't entirely catch that part but I figured it probably had the same connotations of Christ-as-shepherd/Lamb of God/Spring-Babies-New Life that Easter lamb imagery does in the States. He asked if we eat a certain meal in America, and I said that my family usually has ham. Then for some reason I also tried to explain the tradition in some households of eating cold meats and eggs because cooking on the day of Easter is forbidden. It came out something like, "Also, there is a tradition of some, where one eats the cold sausages prepared in advanced because to do the cooking on Easter is banned." Nice. Then, to my delight, he mentioned the "the giant bell that sprinkles the eggs" for French children on Easter day (for a full appreciation of this subject, see Dave Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day).

"In the United States we have a rabbit who brings the chocolate to the children," I said, "and puts it in a..." I realized I didn't know the word for basket, but there was one on the table. "This!"

"A bread basket?" said Christophe.

"No...without the bread."

Apparently the bell thing originated because the church bells don't chime from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, and then they ring out again for the first time at noon while mom and dad hide the eggs. Then as the kids frolic gaily through the yard the parents feign surprise and say, "Oh, it must've been the bell!" It sounded a little ridiculous, but Christophe was probably thinking the same thing about giant rabbits breaking into people's homes and leaving Cadbury cream eggs in the bread basket.

The awkwardness continued after I noticed a container of French-fried onions on the table (the crunchy kind that I eat as chips back home... so bad, but sooo good) and sprinkled some on my green beans. It was the only logical pairing based on the food we were eating, but Christophe gave me a quizzical look and I felt obliged to defend myself by explaining the Thanksgiving tradition of the green-bean casserole.

"It is a traditional dish for the Day of Grace. One makes it with green beans, with the onions on top, and a sauce of soup."

"A sauce of soup?"

"Yes. It has cream and mushrooms. It is named Campbell's."

"Campbell's sauce of soup."

"One buys it in a can. It is not a very good soup."

Now I'm kind of craving green bean casserole. Mmm.

Tilo may look adorable, but he is, as Tennyson would say, "red in tooth and claw." Look it up.

Un examen

2008-03-17T18:20:00.005+01:00

Okay I have a confession to make.

I bought a chocolate chicken in a bag.

I couldn't help it, Franprix is stocked with all this Easter candy and I've been craving chocolate for days, and it was a chicken in a bag! How can you say no to that? And the nest of chocolate eggs = adorable. I have since devoured the chicken but the basket and the eggs are still safe... for now. I also fully intend to purchase a chocolate fish and/or one of those giant rabbits with the serial killer eyes. Mmm.

While we're on the subject of chocolate let me also show you what my host family put out as part of my Sunday breakfast yesterday morning:

OMG tiny delicious pastries! It was almost too cute to eat. Almost. There were three of them but two had already met their ends before I thought to record one for posterity.

That was the good food-related news. The bad news was that last night I experienced a dinner tragicomedy. Since we had our first art history exam today, I decided to skip the hassle of going out for lunch yesterday to give myself more time to study, figuring that I'd be fine if I ate my breakfast toast late and munched on the rice cakes in my room until dinnertime. By the time 7:30 rolled around I was slightly famished, and when my dad announced dinner was ready I was in the kitchen practically before the sentence was finished. Imagine my horror when the lid of a large stewing pot was removed to reveal.... broth. Approximately a gallon of water simmered gently before me, intermingling with spices, bay leaves, and a few whole onions and carrots clearly intended for flavoring rather than consumption. "I had a big lunch," said Christophe, cheerily, "so I'm not really hungry. But feel free to take as much of the bouillon as you like."

I slurped the flavored water in silence, not sure whether to laugh or cry. When Christophe excused himself at 8 o'clock to watch the results of the French elections on TV, I removed a carrot and onion with the hurried fear of a petty thief. Shoving them nearly whole into my mouth, I hoped that Louise would not choose this moment to make one of her ill-timed entrances and explain to me in puzzled French that I was not supposed to eat the stewing vegetables. I noticed some cheese behind the empty bread basket and took that as well, sectioning off as much as I deemed polite ("What happened to that new chunk of Gruyere?" "I think Sara ATE IT in one sitting last night!"). Then I cleared the table and slumped back to my room, feeling like a character from Les Miserables. "Broth!" I chuckled to myself, pulling my fourth rice cake of the day from its package. Hopefully tonight's dinner will prove more substantial.

Today we had an exam and it didn't go very well. Saturday study time was consumed by our field trip to Fontainebleau, and despite the fact that I spent all day Sunday taking notes it was hard for me to remember the titles, dates, and artists (who, as a rule, have no fewer than three names apiece-- Adelaide Labille-Guiard, Jacques-Louis David, Anne Vallayer-Coster, Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Le Brun) for the dozens of paintings and sculptures we've studied so far. Let's hope Susan is a permissive grader.

In much more uplifting news, I'm going to Switzerland for Easter! Lena and I and possibly Evelyn are going to catch a bus out of Paris this Thursday night for four fun-filled days in Geneva and Bern, the capital. The even cooler part is how cheaply we're managing to do it-- the round-trip bus is only 68 euros (approx $100) and the train to Bern will be about the same, but our accommodations will be FREE due to the genius of a travel networking website called Couchsurfing. The basic idea is that you create a profile with information and pictures about yourself and your travel experience or ambitions, and you can search other people's profiles from all over the world. Then if there's somewhere you want to go, you can look up other Couchsurfers in that area and send inquiries asking to "surf their couch" for the dates of your stay. If everyone is in mutual agreement about the details of the visit, you meet up with them at your destination and voila, free lodging in the living room!

The idea is that when you are not traveling you will also offer up your couch to potential travelers, but it's not a requirement in order to join the site. It's also not as unsafe as it sounds, since you can narrow your search results to people in a certain age group, people of a certain gender, people with profile pictures only, etc. And there's a vouching system that lets you see how many other Couchsurfers the person knows in the real world as well as testimonials written by and about them. Plus if you get there and the person turns out to be a sketchball you can just leave and find a hostel. I've been messaging Couchsurfers in Geneva, thinking I'd have pretty limited success since it'll be Easter weekend and all, but one woman actually wrote back and said she'd be happy to have us! She's a middle-aged tri-lingual employee of a bank in Geneva, and her testimonials from previous guests all say that she showed them around town and fed them traditional Swiss fondue for dinner. I want fondue! I told Diane that I expect this to be a whole new breed of small-scale adventuring, and I'm psyched about the money-saving potential as well.

Mountains of homework await me so I suppose I'll end there, but keep reading later this week for some tours of old churches and the recounting of my Switzerland tales after the holiday!

Fontainebleau: Outdoing your decor since 1528

2008-03-15T20:46:00.015+01:00

I hope you're all in a picture mood today, because boy, do I have some pictures to show you.

Today was a surprisingly warm and sunny day, perfect for our second group field trip. This time we went to Fontainebleau, the overlarge, overdecorated, and generally overwhelming former home to centuries of French royals. We met at Gare de Lyon, site of this lovely staircase (those of you who know me know that I have a mild obsession with staircases) and took a train out of Paris.

We're here! This is probably the widest shot you can get of Fontainebleau without a panoramic lens.

A nice man from Mexico City took this picture of us.

The 800-year-old Fontainebleau is, as Susan said today, "soaked in history." The earliest written mention of Fontainebleau dates back to 1137, when the château was used as a country hunting lodge. It wasn't until King Francois I (trivia: the first French king to speak French-- predecessors spoke Gallo-Roman languages) took it over in 1528 and began renovations that it became a true royal residence. Over the centuries the site has witnessed countless important historical events, from the 1598 signing of the Edict of Nantes to the 1814 attempted suicide and eventual abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

Exterior shots of the amazing Gone With the Wind-esque staircase at the main entrance.

Now begins the onslaught of shots from the interior. Fontainebleau's motto is "if you find surface area, decorate it." Italian masters were commissioned to do much of the early work on the palace, like these distinctive ceiling paintings.

When Pope Pius VII visited France for Napoleon's 1804 coronation as Emperor, he slept in this bed.

This chambre is called the Tapestry Room... see if you can guess why. Paul told us that tapestries were the most expensive items of interior decoration, far surpassing the cost of the paintings commissioned as their planning stages. Tapestries were more practical than paintings, though, in that they not only provided aesthetic appeal and the opportunity for allegorical storytelling, but were also useful for insulation and noise reduction in the cold, vast rooms of manor houses and castles.

I'm sad that having faces in your doors has gone out of style.

Every room in Fontainebleau is more opulent than the one before it. The next several pictures are all of the Galerie Francois I, who made the extended corridor his pet project during his time at Fontainebleau. He is even said to have kept the key to the gallery on his person at all times to ensure its safety.

And these next ones are of the ballroom-- the balcony is where the musicians would've performed.

Next we have the Galerie Diane de Poitiers, a domed hallway-style library. Sadly the books are not original; much of Fontainebleau's original furnishings (and those of other historic palaces) were appropriated and sold during the French Revolution. The majority of the furniture at Fontainebleau today dates to Napoleon, who refurbished the château in the early 1800s.

Look, it's the library ladder that Belle used in Beauty and the Beast!

Next up is the bedroom of Empress Josephine, decorated in the Imperial Court style. As you may remember from Malmaison, Josephine's tastes were much more understated. A master of passive-aggressive diplomacy, she therefore left this room as-is but had another room outfitted for her use. All of the French queens from Marie de Medici (1600s) to Empress Eugenie (1800s) occupied this room. The cluster of upholstered stools in the foreground are for the queen's attendants, who would've assisted her in her bedtime and wakeup rituals.

Napoleon's throne room was originally the bedroom of Francois I-- doubtless the Emperor thought this would lend credibility to his reign.

Louis XV outfitted the Council Room in the 1700s, for the purposes of Men's Work (if you haven't been understanding this reference, I suggest a trip to Blockbuster for the claymation video of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer).

Napoleon's bedroom. After his 1809 divorce from Josephine, she was confined to Malmaison and Napoleon remained at Fontainebleau until his 1814 exile to Elba.

Our last stop was the altar of the in-palace chapel, consecrated by Thomas Beckett in the 12th century. This was the only picture that turned out moderately well, since the room was so dark.

And then we all went home and collapsed. The end!

Notes from the underground

2008-03-13T20:09:00.005+01:00

The cleverness of my title for today's post is an attempt to counter the utter impression of stupidity that I gave Louise tonight at dinner. More about that later.

The focus of our attention today, gentle reader, is the Paris Métro. The Métro is a fascinating social system because it is easily the most popular mode of transportation within the city, and because there is a strict but unspoken social contract regarding its utilization. It creates an environment where people from strikingly diverse backgrounds are forced to stand in uncomfortable proximity and reluctantly take hold of the germ-infested handrails as they navigate towards their final destinations. It is understood, collectively, that this time will be spent in relative silence, observing fellow riders out of the corners of one's eyes or in the reflections of the windows. But one must never be caught in this act of observation-- that would be a violation of the contract.

At the same time that it is a mainstay of the modern world, the Métro also serves as a link to bygone eras. Each of its stops are named after famous people, places, and events from France's past, so that becoming familiar with a particular line or area puts riders in continual contact with the historical namesakes of each station. Bastille, Victor Hugo, Voltaire, and Pasteur are a few of the ones that make sense to me, but I'm sure the network is much more meaningful to true Parisians.

Fun facts about the Métro!

-Opened in 1900, it is the 5th oldest subway system in the world (London, at 1890, is the oldest).

-It was originally intended to serve only the areas within the city limits, because the Paris suburbs were thought to be dangerous and unsavory. It wasn't until after WWII that the system expanded into surrounding areas.

-In 1901, one year after opening, the Métro had already transported 55 million people. By 1913, 467 million people were using it annually. Today, 4.5 million people per DAY use the subway.

-The word "metro" as a reference for subways is derived from the name of the company that built the Paris "Métropolitain" system.

-There are over 300 stops in the city of Paris.

Now it's time for some visual aids.

This is the entrance to Porte Dauphine, one of the Métro's oldest stations. The dragonfly shape and stylized natural forms, handiwork of turn-of-the-century architect Hector Guimard, are typical of the art nouveau movement. All of his Métro entrances are now historical monuments.

You can only find these interactive maps at a few stations, but they're sweet. Press a button corresponding to your destination station, and the map lights up to show your various travel options from line to line.

"Well it's aaaaall right, even if the sun don't shine/ Well it's aaaaall right, we're going to the end of the line" (name that song)

We took a jaunt to the Passy station, which is on one of the lines that comes up from underground. This line goes over the River Seine and affords passengers a really spectacular view of...

The Eiffel Tower! I'm still a little shocked every time I turn around and see it.

Print advertising is as old as the Métro itself. Realizing the potential of a captive audience, Métro designers added these mock picture-frames to the Vaneau and other stations in the 1920s to draw attention to the posters.

The exterior of the Vaneau station is art deco in its linear, geometric style. The Egyptian slave fountain to the left is a nod to Napoleon's campaigns there.

The Cité station was built in the 1910s, and aside from having really cool light fixtures, is important and interesting because it is under water! This is the only passage underneath the Seine, and the roof of the tunnel is specially slanted to stand up to the pressure of the river. The tunnel was built above ground as a giant drum which was then lowered into the river and emptied of water. Why not make the subway come above ground at the point where it crosses the river, you might say? Because, foolish skeptic, doing so would've completely obstructed the view of nearby Notre Dame cathedral. They're thinkers, the Parisians.

The line 14 is pretty new, and comes equipped with walled-in platforms whose doors only open when it's time to board. This cuts down on drunken forays onto the tracks and bothersome suicide attempts in front of incoming trains.

The St. Lazare stop has these pretty columns in a church-like ring in its central station.

Our last stop of the day was the Bastille station, built over-- you guessed it!-- the foundations of the Bastille prison. Here they've sectioned off a portion of the remains for people to appreciate as they wait for their train, but the rest is still covered up.

I love the musicians who practice in the Métro because they provide a soundtrack for your Parisian travel adventures. You will see anyone and everyone in the tunnels of the subway, from single guitarists or accordion players to full orchestras practicing classical music.

After the Métro tour it was time for (surprise) another trip to Monoprix. Observe my new snacks!

On the plate we've got an improvised caprese salad, minus the basil, which I ate quickly and with fear because I didn't know when my host parents would be returning home and I didn't want them to see that I'd borrowed a plate and fork from the kitchen. If you've met my host mother this paranoia might be easier to understand. The mozzarella came in this little plastic bag from the cheese section and it was cute as well as cheap, so I expect I'll be making it a staple dietary item. Behind the salad we've got "tartelettes citron" (lemon-jelly cookies) and the Monoprix brand of Cadbury chocolate fingers, which I remember from my years in England and which are semi addictive. I also bought rice cakes because I'm getting really tired of my morning toast, and the stuff in the foremost package is sliced coconut, which I had to buy because it was so random! Coconut chunks? They're currently sitting on my balcony, which I'm using as an outdoor fridge because I'm scared to ask to use the one in the kitchen.

I promised at the beginning of this post to tell you why Louise thinks I'm the village idiot. Tonight was my first ever dinner alone with her, and it was unusually awkward. For some reason it is much harder for me to understand Louise than just about anyone else I meet here, and I have come to the conclusion that it's probably because she uses more slang. We had a stilted, pause-filled conversation wherein she asked how my classes were going ("Good... we visit a lot of museums") what my plans for the weekend were ("We are visiting Fontainbleu") and what I hoped to do after I graduated. That one was harder to answer, since I don't know any of the vocabulary related to "try to get in on the entry-level of a publishing house and work my way up to something less menial within the communications industry," so my explanation came out something like "you know, when a writer... writes... a book, and he sends it to a place where the people read it... i want to be the person... reading." To her credit, she keeps a remarkably straight face whenever I open my mouth. I feel the need to tell her that I'm much more intelligent and articulate in my own language, but instead I say things like "you are student of the art?", or "do you watch of habit the movies american?". It's a start.

Faux pas de fromage

2008-03-12T20:45:00.006+01:00

"No! It is necessary to cut the cheese in the traditional manner!"

These were the panicked words uttered by my host mother tonight as my butter knife hovered tentatively over a wedge of Roquefort. Sensing that I was about to make a grave mistake, she took it upon herself to instruct me in the socially acceptable practices of French cheese-carving. Here is what I have learned.

If you have procured a triangular wedge of cheese from your local fromagerie, you must never commit the cardinal sin of cutting off the point. Rather, in order to maintain the integrity of the original triangle, you must slice elongated pieces from either side. This preserves the aesthetically pleasing aspect of the wedge and simultaneously ensures that a fraction of rind is removed with each subtraction.

If you are dealing with a rectangular cheese chunk, however, you should not assume that you have avoided defacing its shape with a blunt cut. Sectioning off a succession of rectangular pieces may seem harmless, but then one day you will be left with a piece that is almost entirely rind, and then, boy, won't you feel stupid. Best to avoid this whole debacle by cutting pieces at an angle, as well, to gradually do away with the rind in much the same way as the aforementioned triangle wedge method.

I have painstakingly created a comparison-contrast diagram for those of you who are visual learners.

So now you know.

Tonight at dinner I also broached the topic of what everyone in my host family does for a living, which according to Paul is usually very taboo but since I'm uncultured American swine I can get away with it. Dinner tonight was just me and my mom, so I also felt the need to fill awkward silences. Unfortunately none of the answers she gave me were easily comprehensible, and as such I still don't really know where any of them go when they bustle out the front door at 8am. I did manage to understand her explanation that my host dad is no longer employed for money, but is involved in some sort of charity work wherein he mediates on behalf of "the aged." Louise, I have confirmed, is a student of art (which was one of the possible disciplines I assigned her when my host dad told me on the first night that she studied something to do with "plastique"-- plastic surgery? plastics engineering? plastic art? the theory of brain plasticity?). My mom had a hard time describing the nature of the art, but she did say it had something to do with "storyboards and modern technology." ...Okay.

List of First Things of Paris that I did today:

-Consumed first bowl of French onion soup at a cafe. And at a mere $8 per cup, it only ate half my food budget for the week.

-Had my first takeout pizza slice for lunch. Conclusion: much like American pizza except there was much more ham. They really do love the ham.

-Made my first French friend! Kind of. Whilst standing in line for a crepe after Leetal's birthday celebration, a Parisian gal started talking to our group. She was very nice and after some slightly random conversation about winning the lottery and the plot details of the Lindsay Lohan movie Just My Luck, she gave us her phone number and we will (hopefully) be hanging out with her again. Then it was time to part and she gave us all the traditional French cheek-to-cheek air kisses, which was also

-My first "bises" with a French person! Now I truly belong.

We will end with some pictures from Leetal's birthday, wherein everyone else had wine but Evelyn and I had onion soup because we're cool. I was going to delete the second one and spare Evelyn the shame of her facial expression, but she laughed and wanted me to put it up, so I shall.

Montmartre, take two

2008-03-11T22:28:00.006+01:00

I should be doing my homework, but as usual I'd prefer not to.

So remember on Saturday when Molly, Leetal and I went to Montmartre but managed not to see any famous stuff? Erin and I went back there today and remedied the situation.

Here's Erin in front of our first destination of interest, the Sacré-Coeur Basilica (literally, "Sacred Heart"). It was built in 1875 on the hill Montmartre, the highest point in the city, which also gives its name to the surrounding neighborhood.

Viewed from below the church cuts a pretty striking outline against the sky. We went inside, too, but since it's a functional church you're not allowed to take pictures of the interior.

It's me! With Paris in the background. The view from the top of Montmartre is pretty breathtaking-- you can see the city laid out for miles.

Montmartre is also home to the biggest concentration of sex shops you may ever see in your life. Here's me attempting to look seductive (fail) in front of the Sexodrome, which, according to Erin's host parents, houses five stories of erotic toys.

Look, I wasn't kidding! It's the Erotica Supermarket! (See first entry, Je suis arrivee)

C'est le Moulin Rouge! Slightly different from the movie version. There was a long line at the door when we got there, even though the shows apparently run over 100 Euros. Our Paris by Site class will be going there (for a tour, not a show) later in the semester.

Then it was time to go home. Erin left me at Rue de Rivoli, and I cut through the courtyard of the Louvre. I'd not yet been to the Louvre at night, and I didn't realize they lit it up so prettily! Erin said that her host parents told her that Paris is much better at night than during the day, and I think I have to agree.

At night the glass pyramid is electric blue.

That's all for today; stay tuned for Thursday when I will give you a tour of the Metro (for real this time).

Malmaison: Like a field trip minus sack lunches

2008-03-10T19:44:00.011+01:00

What is it about getting on a bus with the rest of my class and riding merrily through town to a location of historical import that makes me remember my third-grade field trips? Perhaps it was the simultaneous presence of an actual third-grade class at Malmaison today, creeping past our group with timid pardon's and then proceeding to poke each other with their pencils as a guide directed them wearily from room to room.

A little background for those not in the know: Malmaison was the country château of Napoleon Bonaparte and wife Josephine in the early 1800s. Our tour will commence as soon as I share this picture of Paul on the bus, which he expressly told me not to post:

I think we can all understand why this was necessary.

Here it is, the lovely Malmaison, which in French literally means "bad house." According to Paul, this name could reference the band of vagabond burglars and/or the leper colony that once inhabited the estate, both of which must have been great icebreakers for parties at the Bonaparte house.

And here we have a lovely group shot of everyone in front of the château. A fairly normal picture until you look at Susan (front row far left) and realize that a dark green tree cone is growing out of her head. I may have laughed for ten minutes before uploading this picture.

The interior begins. Here we have the dining room, featuring, as Mom will notice, the same floor tiles we had in the Souderton house kitchen. Except these are actual tiles and I believe ours had sticky adhesive sheets on the back, but the important thing to remember is that we had the same interior decorating taste as a French empress.

The Council Room, a.k.a the headquarters for Men's Work. Josephine, ever proficient in wife skills, had the room decorated to resemble a military tent (notice the striped fabric swagged over the door frame and the gold eagle, a symbol adopted by Napoleon).

Napoleon's library, full of mantiques (see Mantiques and champagne).

I told Molly to charge into battle with Napoleon and I think this resulting pose explains why she's a women's studies major and not a West Point cadet. Sorry about the glare on the painting, but I had to include it because some of you readers will no doubt remember this image from our AP History textbooks in 10th grade. This is one of the three original copies of the painting, at least 9 billion times larger than the picture in the sidebar of The American Pageant.

Josephine's chambre. And yes, that bed is as small as you think it is. Paul said people were smaller back then, but I've seen dog pillows bigger than this bed. That being said, I believe the elaborate draped canopy would've made me faint with pleasure at age eight. Or, you know, now.

Then we went outside. Observe Malmaison from the back.

Josephine planted this Lebanon Cedar to commemorate Napoleon's 1800 victory over the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo. Although Josephine spent many years and countless sums of money turning the Malmaison grounds into an Eden-like paradise of exotic flora and fauna, the gardens are somewhat unimpressive today, and the black swans, emus, and kangaroos that once roamed the estate are long gone.

And then we got on the bus and went home.

Time for another French snack update. To the left you will observe a delicious fruity concoction called Liegeois de Fruits. I have no idea what it is, but as you can see at the corner of the picture I have already polished off two of them. I think it might be mango-flavored apple sauce? With cream on top? But as usual it tastes like God-given ambrosia. In the background we have a double-pack of fromage-flavored Bugles, which were on sale today at Franprix so I couldn't resist. And yes, that is Tilo is eating a bugle. On tomorrow's Métro homework. Sorry Paul.

P.S. I just got an email from U of M encouraging me to sign up for a program whereby if there is a giant campus emergency, they will send me a text message. An excerpt from the email reads, "Examples of when the system may be activated include if a person actively shooting a weapon is on the loose, a tornado is predicted to strike the campus area, or a major hazardous material spill is impacting a large portion of campus."

a) You're not going to tell me if a hazardous material spill is impacting a fairly smallish portion of campus?

b) Can we add "if a basilisk has escaped from the Chamber of Secrets and is turning students into petrified stone"?

c) A text message? Really? Here's how I see that scenario going down.

Some guy on the Diag: what is that? that... green wave in the distance?

Someone else: OH GOD IT'S RADIOACTIVE OOZE! RUN FOR YOUR LIIIVES!

Everyone on diag: *panic*

My phone: beep. New text message. Read now? "A hazardous waste spill is impacting a large portion of campus. Please run. Thank you for your cooperation. -UMich Department of Public Safety."

U of M, you make me laugh from oceans away.

Rainbows over Paris

2008-03-09T18:30:00.003+01:00

So pretty it almost looks photoshopped, but I promise it's real. This is the view of my street, Rue de Rennes, from the little balcony off my bedroom. It's also the way I walk to get to school, turning right at the base of the rainbow. :)

Montmartre, take one

2008-03-08T20:57:00.005+01:00

You may remember a week or so ago when I called the area around Porte de Clignancourt and the Marché aux Puces the Parisian ghetto. Clearly at that point I had never been to Montmartre.

This morning I woke up to a beautifully sunny Parisian day, despite my host mom's ominous warnings at dinner last night that the weather was sure to be inhospitable. Molly and I had talked about taking a day trip to the well-known region of Montmartre, home to Sacre Coeur and the Moulin Rouge. We did make it there eventually (Leetal joined up as well), but for a variety of reasons we didn't really end up seeing any of what we'd set out to see.

We arrived at Abbesses Métro stop at some point in the midafternoon. Montmartre (literally, "mountain of martyrs") is on a 130-meter hill that overlooks the more central areas of Paris. For this reason it is the only Métro stop that I know of with this giant elevator to ferry people up out of the ground:

This elevator is bigger than the dorm room I lived in freshman year at UM.

We disembarked and found ourselves in a very quaint area with lots of winding paving-stone streets, much quieter and more scenic than my neighborhood near the Institut Catholique. I believe it was at this point that Molly remarked, "This is what people think of when they imagine Paris."

We decided to wander around in search of some food. Although our meal plans provide for two home-cooked meals every day, most of our families only set out toast and juice for breakfast. Molly, who is apparently big on breakfast in the States, was devastated by the realization that she was going to have to experience this same meager meal every day for four months. I, on the other hand, didn't think it would become a problem for me. I rarely eat breakfast back home, and I usually do enjoy Parisian-style toast with butter and jam. I've now been in Paris for a little over two weeks, and I think I can safely say that I may never eat toast again.

The scant breakfasts mean that we are pretty consistently starving by the time lunch rolls around, so we decided our first order of business was to find some crepes and/or sandwiches in Montmartre. We set off jovially through the picturesque lanes, every once in awhile catching glimpses of Sacre Coeur in the distance. What we did not know was that we were walking away from the well-kept, desirable part of town and into an area that Leetal referred to as "the Harlem of Paris." We passed a hole-in-the-wall creperie and Leetal made the mistake of ordering a banana-nutella crepe which she ended up discarding halfway through, repulsed by its greasiness and the memory of the shady man who put his hands all over the creation as it cooked. We passed a number of shops selling bolts of fabric and cheap wedding dresses, but found no desirable lunch fare.

Inexplicable sites abound in this neighborhood. Above we have what appears to be a heap of men's business attire unceremoniously dumped next to a trash can and some uncollected canine feces. It was at this point that we called Paul and asked him to redirect us to a less sketchy locale.

For the third time in as many weeks, I found myself in the midst of a giant political protest. This time it was a crowd of Palestinians chanting anti-Israeli sentiments as they marched down Boulevard Rochechouart. The person in the second picture is holding a sign that says "Israelis: Make love, not war on the poor." The police were everywhere, equipped with riot shields. If firearms weren't illegal in France I would have been considerably frightened.

Eager to escape the tumult of the protest, we ducked into a Champion supermarché and Molly and I bought a random assortment of baguettes, cheeses, fruits and yogurts for lunch. Leetal, just to be different, purchased nothing but a brick of pink marzipan. The grocery bags cost 30c, however, so we put our purchases in my purse and ate them while sitting on a railing in the Boulevard's median.

When I imagined picnics in Paris, this wasn't really what I had been thinking.

Then Paul called to tell us that some homework for his class was ready for pickup, so we trekked back to the unscary part of Montmartre and retrieved it.

Oh dear, we are a little bit lost. That's the Basilica of Sacre Coeur in the background.

The sun was beginning to set, so we asked Paul what our last stop should be before getting back on the Métro and heading home. He suggested a cute and vibrant bar called Sancerre, where we had some drinks while listening to American music and having wine spilled on us by our disgruntled waiter.

So that was pretty much all we had time for. I promise to go back to Montmartre and actually see the things it is famous for without being caught up in any protest parades or getting lost in the ghetto.

At 7PM I had to skeedaddle back home so as not to be late for dinner. My family served me duck paté again (ohhhh I am going to gain so much duck paté weight in the next four months) as well as a new and delicious vegetable that I think may have been leeks. I also discovered that I love pickled onions! They came in a little jar with baby pickles and they were delicious, which is not actually that surprising considering my passion for foods preserved in brine. Halfway through my meal my host dad came in and talked to me about French politics, which seems to be his favorite topic of conversation despite the fact that I have nothing to add and inevitably give him incorrect information about the role of the Electoral College when he asks about U.S. presidential elections. I'd rather go back to miming urchins.

Les Passages Couverts

2008-03-06T21:21:00.002+01:00

I lied about taking you on a tour of the Metro. Today was actually a tour of the passages couverts, or famous Parisian arcades.

We met near the Louvre to being our tour. Unbeknownst to us, though, it was protest day!

The woman in the right of this photo is holding a sign that says "No to unemployment." Personally I'm for unemployment, but our student handbook expressly prohibits participation in rallies and protests, so we stayed on the sidelines.

Nearby: Rohan Street! I looked around but I didn't see Théoden or Éowyn. (What with LOTR allusions and last entry's reference to mantiques, this blog is becoming officially nerdy.)

This might be the best picture of Evelyn (second from left) ever taken.

Welcome to Galerie Vero-Dodat, established in 1837 by butchers Vero and Dodat. Shopping arcades like this one came into popular use in the early 19th century, providing leisurely flaneurs with a clean, covered, aesthetically-pleasing space perfect for aimless strolling between the busy streets.

The arcades were also a practical innovation, affording pedestrians dry, air-conditioned passage from one street to another. The boutiques that lined the shops would have represented a range of products and services aimed at middle-class patrons. Since pane-glass windows came into use around the time of the arcades' construction, window displays (and window shopping) also became possible.

This shop in the Galerie Vero-Dodat is clearly no longer a Papeterie (paper store). According to Paul, the high cost of rent in these historic arcades means that the merchants are usually antiques dealers, or owners of high-end fashion boutiques like this shoe and handbag store.

Some of the arcade stores are more or less original, though. The Cafe De L'Epoque has been in business since the galerie was built.

I tried to take a somewhat artistic shot of this woman at her balcony, but I think it's kind of funny that the "Free Access Toilet" sign ended up being so much more prominent.

The sign for Galerie Vivienne, stop number two on our arcade tour.

The Galerie Vivienne has a more elegant and spacious design than the Vero-Dodat. The mosaic floors, arched windows, and Greek figures framing the central door reflect the early-1800s emphasis on classical art. Notice the iron and glass ceiling common to most Paris arcades.

Unfortunately it was at this point that my camera decided to run out of batteries, so I didn't get any pictures of Passage Choiseul (built 1829 and still a very vibrant commerce space), Passage des Princes (one of the youngest arcades--1860-- but completely torn down and rebuilt to look identical to the original, in 1985), or the most famous (and second oldest, at 1799) Passage des Panoramas, whose initial draw was the presence of two (now absent) panoramic paintings. The oldest (1798) arcade, Passage du Caire, was in a somewhat sketchy part of town where we saw our first Parisian hookers, so perhaps it's for the best that I didn't get any pictures there, either.

So that was today. Then I came home and had another of my famously awkward dinner conversations with my host dad. He dished up some sort of unidentifiable baked dish that took us quite awhile to come to a mutual understanding about. It turned out to be a whitefish from the Riviera region, baked in lobster sauce. Neither of us knew the other's word for lobster, though, so that was a problem. That conversation progressed into a more general discussion of seafood, and he noted that my host mom had a particular fondness for some sort of creature that "is sometimes red, sometimes purple, with lots of needles. It lives in corners?"

"Urchins?" I ventured. Christophe was not familiar with the word urchin, though, so some ridiculous charades of urchin behavior ensued (I'm not even sure how I managed to mime the actions of a creature that has no features and doesn't move, but finally we understood one another). Oh, dinner. What a daily challenge you are.

Mantiques and champagne

2008-03-05T20:29:00.005+01:00

Bonsoir tout le monde. Comparatively long time no post. (That phrase gets a lot less comprehensible when you mess around with it.)

Here's something interesting about language: I've noticed lately that my brain is ceasing to differentiate between French and English. For example, although my host dad speaks to me solely in French, my mom occasionally lapses into English when she's giving me some kind of instruction. The baffling part is that I'll remember the information that she expressed-- like the fact that I can help myself to some yogurt if I want it, or that I should feel free to throw my dirty towels in the family laundry basket-- but I'll forget which language she was using when she said it. Is that some sort of insight into cognitive processing? When we remember something, are we actually remembering words, or is it that the information is essentially codeless, and the language part is merely required for comprehension prior to storage? Clearly I should have paid more attention in Cognitive Psych.

I'm writing this right after dinner and I think I should let you all know that I love duck paté, which we had again tonight. It's spreadable meat, which is a delight in itself, but it also happens to be scrumptious. My host mom continues to crack me up by insisting that everything she serves is "good for the health!" As in, "Finish the salami-- it is good for the health!" "Eat the creamed spinach, it is good for the health!" Or tonight, "Have as much paté as you like, it is... not bad for the health!" I love that I'm living in a country where I can have crepes, paté, and gruyere every day. Speaking of fromage, my host dad told me last night that there are over 300 different types of French cheese, adding that if I try about five or six types a day from now until June, I can sample each and every one. MDR, Christophe.

I've been meaning to explain MDR (pronounced "Em-day-air") for awhile now. It stands for "Mort de rire" (dying of laughter) and is the French equivalent of "lol." (Incidentally, if you Google "mort de rire," one of the first hits is this baby, laughing like a crazy fool). The fact that a French equivalent of AIM slang even exists is funny enough, but for some reason "mort de rire" is infinitely more hilarious than "laughing out loud." For this reason, we have decided to start using it in conversation. It will doubtless lend us some much-needed Parisian street cred.

While I'm on the tangent of explaining things, let me also define for you a vocab word that will figure into the next part of this post. The word is "mantique," devised by me or Diane or possibly both, I don't remember, whilst at the Ann Arbor antiques fair. A mantique refers to any antique that would be singularly appealing to a man-- including but not limited to ships in bottles and other nautical-themed objects, hunting and game paraphernalia (poker supplies, rifles and other weaponry, all manner of taxidermied animals), objects one might find in a 19th-century study (globes/telescopes/hourglasses), Old West memorabilia, anything related to epic warfare or fantasy realms (suits of armor, goblets, patents of nobility, ale tankards, crystal balls) and knickknacks related to smoking and/or drinking (pipes, lighters, snuff boxes, brandy snifters, whiskey flasks). Basically, if you would expect to find it in Gaston's tavern or Saurumon's lair, you're on the right track.

With that in mind, consider the following bronze bas relief currently on display in the Louvre.

I'm aware that this is a legitimate piece of art (Nymph of Fontainbleu, by Cellini) with stylistic sophistication and historical depth, but all I can think when I look at it is "mantique! mantique!" Reclining female nude? Check. Fifteen-point stag? Check. Charging boar (bottom left)? Check! A perfect addition to any self-respecting hunting lodge. I'd hang it over the fortress-replica entryway, facing the trio of elk heads mounted above the fireplace.

On to more serious matters. It was Kristen's birthday today! I lied about the serious part.

And there she is, the only one noticing the camera. It's somewhat anticlimactic to turn 21 in a country whose drinking age is 16, but we took her out for a round at the bar anyway. Except that it's Paris and we have to be cultured now, so that meant champagne and red wine all around. Joyeux anniversaire!

Stay tuned for tomorrow's entry, when I will take you on a tour of the Paris Metro, which promises to be just as exciting as it sounds.

Halloween soup

2008-03-03T20:57:00.005+01:00

Today's entry will be short because not much happened. In the morning I had my three-hour French class, and learned the vocabulary associated with friendship and amour. I can now wield such useful phrases as "Pierre has fallen in love with Isabelle," "I miss your gentle embrace" and "They are honeymooning in Tahiti." I also learned that I've been using the word "ami(e)" (friend) incorrectly. Apparently if you say "my friend," you are implying that someone is a boyfriend/girlfriend, but if you say "a friend" or "some friends" or even "my best friend," it is clear that you're only on platonic terms with the person in question. Perhaps this is why my host parents have been looking so confused when I've talked about "all my friends" in the program here. Whoops, we are not a polygamous lesbian circle. Sorry about that.

Once again, though, none of this newfound vocabulary will help me in daily French encounters. Like today, when a button came off my coat and I had to comb through the dictionary looking for "needle" and "thread," whose French equivalents turned out to be two of the most impossible pronunciations to infer. Aiguille? Fil? To enunciate the l or not to enunciate the l, that is the question. I ended up bringing the lone button to dinner as a prop, which effectively communicated my need when coupled with some mimed sewing actions and heartfelt attempts at verbalization.

Dinner was also somewhat amusing tonight. On the table sat a large sauce pot filled with a creamy orange soup. I was given a ladle and the order to serve myself, which I did, asking in what I hoped was my least judgmental voice, "What kind of soup is this?"
My host mom said the name of a French vegetable, but I didn't understand.

"Halloweens! It is halloween soup!"

"Hallooween soup?" I clarified.

"That is not the word," said my host dad, in French. "They are not called halloweens."

"Pumpkins?" I ventured helpfully.

"Oui! Pumpkeens!"

As Diane affirmed when I told her the story, though, "halloweens" are much more fun to use in sentences. Want to carve some halloweens tonight? I planted halloweens in the garden this year. Oh no, the neighborhood hooligans have been throwing halloweens at the mailboxes again!

So that's pretty much all that happened today. I did successfully borrow the aiguille and fil, and (somewhat ineptly-- I believe one of the aunts would refer to it as "piggy stitching") mended the stockings and coat button that were in need of repair. Tilo, ever watchful, has dragged the coat to the ground and is now sleeping on it. It's only 9:30 (or 21:30, as we say here in the land of military time) but I'm already tired. I fall asleep so readily and sleep so soundly here, probably because of all the walking we do every day. It reminds me of the short-lived burst of athleticism I experienced in tenth grade when I joined cross-country's off-season training for two months. Never slept more soundly in my life. Now if only Tilo would stop attacking me in my bed at night when I roll over, all would be well.

Clothes and how to clean them

2008-03-02T17:33:00.002+01:00

The title of this post refers to the theme of my two activities today: a morning visit to the laundromat, and an afternoon at the Museum of Fashion and Costume.

The laundromat, or laverie automatique, proved to be a more mystifying locale than one would assume. There was first the question of finding one; I had noted the presence of what looked like a combination laundromat/dry-cleaning shop on the street of the Institut Catholique, but when I got there it appeared closed. Following the vague directions of my host mother, I then set off in the opposite direction and ended up on Rue Cherche-Midi ("looking for noon" street?), which did, in fact, have an operational laundrette. I laughed out loud when I noticed that the name of the establishment was the "Lav' Club." Hey guys, I'm going down to the Lav' Club. All the cool kids wash their delicates there.

The smirk was quickly wiped off my face, though, when I couldn't figure out how to get into the building-- it turned out that there was a little black button that you had to press as you pushed open on the door, but some French men on the inside had to let me in before I figured this out for myself. Once inside I stood dumbly aside, clutching my three grocery bags full of clothes as I stared blankly at the directions on the wall. The only public laundry situation I'm familiar with is the washing machine setup in the U of M dorms, which merely require that you deposit three quarters, add detergent, and press "Start." Here, though, there were at least four buttons on the machines, all with indistinguishable pictorial symbols. Eventually I figured out the process: load the clothes, pour detergent into the upper-left of four compartments, then proceed to a central pay station near the door of the laundromat, which signals the machine to start after you select the appropriate number and pay for the load. Speaking of paying, I was not amused that the total cost to do one load of laundry was roughly $8, especially since the dryer left the denser articles mostly damp and they are now spread out on my bed to air out.

So that was my laundry adventure. After that I met up with Lena at the Musée de la Mode et du Costume de la Ville de Paris (Museum of Fashion and Costume of the City of Paris). After some crafty finagling with the man behind the ticket counter, I got us in for free with our Art History student ID cards. The museum has over 90,000 articles of clothing that span centuries of history, but due to the delicacy of the fabrics they only display them for a few months at a time in themed, rotating exhibitions. The collection on display right now is from the 1920s, which Lena (who by the way is a costume design major at UM) really enjoyed, but I tend to think that the flapper decade is second only to the 1980s in terms of bad 20th-century fashions. Nonetheless it was fun to peruse the various styles of day dresses, evening wear, knitted bathing suits, shoes, outerwear and accessories presented for viewing. Photography was not allowed, so the only visuals I can provide from the day are this exterior shot of the museum, which is, like many other Paris sites, a former palace:

Three things of note in this picture: the actual museum, the cute/funny little car, and if you look really hard, the Eiffel Tower behind that tree on the right. Oh and Lena. I guess she's interesting.

And the only other visual for today, the picture of my first French fries in France!

In unrelated news, I had another mini victory today in that no less than THREE French people asked me for directions, and this time I knew what to say. The first woman stopped me on the street in front of my apartment and asked me if she was close to the St. Placide Métro stop (which in fact she was, and I directed her down the street and to the left); the second person was a French dad with his approximately four year old son, who asked me if the Bir-Hakeim station was really closed (yes, it really is, I was just there last week and had to get off at Dupleix); and the last was a man at Trocadéro, who wanted to know if he was going the right way toward Charles de Gaulle airport (indeed Monsieur, you are). So those encounters made me happy. I am beginning to truly connais Paris, as my host dad would say.

Until my next small-scale adventure, au revoir.

Le Marche aux Puces

2008-03-01T21:08:00.011+01:00

Today Molly, Leetal, Ornella and I jovially boarded the number 4 line toward Clignancourt and emerged twenty minutes later in what can only be described as the ghetto of Paris.

Our objective had been to visit the legendary Marché aux Puces (literally, Market of Fleas), which has been operating in this section of Paris since the late 1600s and is considered the first flea market in the world. The term "flea market," incidentally, is a reference to the site's earliest offerings of cast-off clothing and bedding that was more often than not infested with vermin. Appealing! Unfortunately the modern-day version does not perpetuate this colorful legacy, but treasure-hunters can still find (overpriced) antiques and (dirt cheap) modern wares and clothing. As soon as we got off the Métro we encountered a KFC restaurant (inexplicably, there are KFC ads all over Paris) and then proceeded to endure numerous assaults from shady-looking guys who would dart out of nowhere to offer us "genuine" Louis Vuitton and Armani merchandise. Once inside the market we agreed to speak only in French so that the vendors wouldn't be tempted to rip us off, but I think our faltering verb conjugations and frequent mispronunciations may have nonetheless given away the fact that we were foreigners.

The vendors offered everything from glassware and furniture to antique dolls and art. Molly spent awhile picking through a box of postcards from the 19th and 20th centuries, many of which had the original correspondence and stamps on the back (she avoided those, though, because she thought it was too personal to buy something that was once private-- I must be heartless because I liked the used ones best). Ornella found a book entitled something like "Great Men of France" that was in remarkably good condition considering that the print date on the title page was from the 1850s. As for me, I practiced some unusually strong self-restraint and managed to walk away with only one item: a knee-length plaid wool skirt that I paid 6 Euros (approx $9) for. If I gain another ounce I won't be able to wear it though, since it's really old-school and the waist comes up to my ribcage.

At the conclusion of our shopping adventure we agreed that it was time to locate some grub, so we hopped back on the Métro and headed for Le Marais, the historic Paris neighborhood that Paul had taken us to a few days prior. We remembered that the area was the Jewish quarter of Paris, and the boulangeries sold everything from latkes to falafel, but when we got there we realized that it was Saturday and everything was closed. So much for our attempt at being culturally aware. We wandered for awhile and found a non-Semitic bakery; I tried my first Croque Monsieur, a calorie-laden monstrosity of a sandwich made from ham, eggs, and approximately five pounds of cheese. It was worth trying, but the guilt I felt after throwing half of it away will prevent me from ordering one again. After a little more walking we passed a creperie, and although my stomach was bulging with slowly-digesting gruyère, I succumbed to peer pressure and shared a nutella-coconut crepe with Molly while Leetal and Ornella each munched on banana-nutella versions. I have made it my mission to become something of a crepe connoisseur, and I think I can safely recommend the nutella and coconut combination as the best possible order. I am beginning to fear, though, that this newfound obsession means that I'm going to have to buy a crepe maker when I return to the U.S., which will in turn lead me to gain five hundred pounds as my diet devolves into nothing but carbs and hazelnut-chocolate spread, and then I would DEFINITELY no longer fit into the skirt from the Marché aux Puces. You win some, you lose some.

As for the rest of life here in Paree, it's going well. I had my first class of Paris Ciné yesterday, which is a required elective on the history of classic French cinema. It looks like it'll be interesting despite the fact that the audio has that canned effect typical of old movies, which makes the French hard to understand. I feel a little bit bad for the Asian students in my French classes, because so much of French is intuitive if you know that there is a similar English word-- like "générosité," which even the most uninformed simpleton could link to the English word "generosity." But how do you learn new French words when your first language is Japanese? Then again the other foreign students all seem to know English too, so maybe I'm pitying them more than is necessary. My English-speaking classes are also fun; Paris By Site involves Paul taking us on tours of famous landmarks, which I like because it makes me feel less touristy and more knowledgeable about the city I'm living in. Susan's art history classes are cool too, since they have so far involved us traipsing through the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, looking at great works of art. It's like a perpetual vacation where we become cultured in between pit stops for croissants.

We are still having social misadventures with the natives, however. Erin had an interesting encounter with a bowl full of "fromage blanc," which turned out to be plain sour cream that her host mom was dishing up for dessert. Tasty! And Molly's mom served her veal the other night even though Molly had specifically informed her that she doesn't eat red meat. Molly and I had an awkward encounter with my host mom last night, in fact, when I made the apparently grave mistake of asking if she could stay for dinner. My mom's face took on a contorted expression of shock and malcontent, but she agreed to let my friend stay "just this exceptional time." I retreated into my room while she set a place for Molly and tried to puzzle out my offense. We decided that my mom had probably balked at the notion of preparing food for an extra guest when the program only requires her to feed me, but even that didn't seem right since my family elects to give me breakfast and dinner on the weekends even though they are only required to provide it Monday through Friday. And the late notice shouldn't have been a problem either, since the cooking hadn't begun yet and she still ended up preparing the same amount of food.

When the dinner was ready we were ushered into the kitchen and then left alone to ponder our ill-mannered ways over dishes of salad and tortellini. Midway through the meal my mom returned to encourage us to "finish the tortellini, it is good for you! good for the health!" Presumably she was referring to the spinach filling, and not the bath of heavy cream sauce that the pasta was languishing in. Good for the health, indeed. After dinner we did the dishes and I left a little note thanking my mom for her generosity and adding that Molly and I found the meal delicious. This seems to have been the correct course of action since Madame thanked me heartily today for my "petit mot," pronouncing it "very nice." Hopefully that will be adequate amends for the foible of inviting Molly to stay. The success of the thank-you note may also have been responsible for the dinner I was presented with tonight: a heaping plate of fresh salad and some unidentifiable but tasty root vegetable, served alongside duck paté, vinegar pickles, bakery bread and Roquefort, and two little fresh pastries that my mom told me were called gateaux americains, "but better than cakes from America." And there were no avocados or soft-boiled eggs in sight, so for that I suppose I should be grateful.

Rainy days at the Louvre

2008-02-28T22:15:00.005+01:00

We had a class at the Louvre the other day, but I am a genius and brought my digital camera sans memory stick, so I didn't get any pictures until now. Today Paul took us on a tour of the Louvre as a monument, so stay tuned for a brief synopsis of the 800+ years of the building's history.

We convene in the central courtyard of the Louvre. The glass pyramid, designed by the Chinese-born American architect I.M. Pei (much to the chagrin of Parisians), was added in the 1980s and serves as the entrance to the museum. Although starkly modern in its use of glass and steel, the addition reflects a sensitivity to the museum's integrity in that its pyramid shape calls to mind the first Egyptian treasures the Louvre held. Also, since the glass is alternately reflective and transparent depending on the weather, visitors' attention is ultimately drawn back to the surrounding architecture of the historic courtyard.

It was kind of a yucky day today, but the Louvre is still pretty in the rain.

When the construction on the Louvre began, the site was actually in the countryside just outside the city proper of Paris. As the city limits expanded it became more central-- now it's right in the middle of several busy thoroughfares. It's hard to get a picture of a lot of the Louvre at one time because it's ginormous, but here's the part of the facade that bears some of the earliest and most ornate architectural detail.

Like this Medusa head! Paul says the popularity of the Medusa in French architecture is probably due to the revived interest in classical Greco-Roman iconography.

When construction on the Louvre site began in 1190, the intention was to use the structure as a fortress for the protection of Paris during the Crusades. Until the 1980s no one knew that part of the original medieval foundations were still in place underground. This part of the Louvre is built over the site where the original castle stood.

Once inside the Louvre you can tour the remains of the medieval foundations. Here we are in the area that would have been the moat. The glass-protected feature on the left is part of the supports for the original drawbridge.

These heart-shaped engravings, found in multiple places on the fortress walls, were made by the original stonemasons. Ancient graffiti!

Kristen poses in the keep.

The Louvre was transformed into a palace in the 1350s and housed the kings of France until the mid 1500s, when it underwent renovations to make it less fortressy and more hospitable.

The Louvre courtyard was once fully enclosed; a fourth wing connected those on the left and right in this picture. It was burned down in the 1870s, though, so now the courtyard is only bordered on three sides, affording onlookers a view of the Tuileries garden and even L'Arc de Triomphe, in the distance.

Following the Revolutionary sentiments of the late 18th century, the Louvre became a museum open to the public in 1793.

The next series of pictures are from the stunningly overdecorated private apartments of Napoleon III, who lived in the Louvre.

I love the giant circular couch! This would have been the main reception room for visitors to the palace.

Everything in these rooms glitters. It's mesmerizing.

I have a not-so-secret love of opulent chandeliers.

These chairs are so unusual and cool. Paul explained that they were made this way so that three women could sit on it simultaneously and whisper gossip to one another without looking conspicuous. Facing them away from each other also allowed room for the giant skirts to drape over the edges of the chair.

I'm inside the glass pyramid.

Across the street from the Louvre is the Seine River.

We love pictures where we can sneak the Eiffel Tower into the background just to remind people that we're in Paris.

Molly was dying for a picture where she could look cute with her parapluie.

Hey look, my first view of Notre Dame!

The advertising on the side of this restaurant is awesome.

Our day ends with our first visit to Le MacDo. Elizabeth tried some kind of hot chocolate that also possibly had powdered banana and/or wheat in it, it was hard to tell from the packaging. I got a diet coke-- when they ask if you want the "petite" size, they're not kidding!

Then I walked myself several blocks in the wrong direction and it was dark before I found my way home, because I have zero sense of direction. The end!

Encounters with egg cups / Le Marais

2008-02-26T20:55:00.008+01:00

As with yesterday's entry, we will begin by having some laughs at my cultural ineptitude.

I should begin this story by saying that dinners at my host family's house are something of an enigma. I have never had a dinner with all three of them at once, for instance-- on the first night Louise and her dad ate with me, then one night I had dinner with just the dad, and on other nights it's been both parents. Also, the things they serve never seem like cohesive dinners: one night we had cold cuts and a bowl of celery coleslaw, another night we had broccoli cooked with bacon, and another night we had salmon lox on bread. Tonight might have been the strangest night yet, though, in terms of the dining debacle.

Louise popped her head in my room at around 8:15 (we normally eat late) to tell me that dinner was ready. I followed her into the kitchen to find that only one plate was set, and my host mom was apparently on her way out. More puzzling than the lack of dinner partners, though, was the dinner itself: a halved avocado drizzled with red wine vinegar, and two soft-boiled eggs sitting next to an egg cup at the side of the plate. Between the avocado and the eggs was a tiny bowl of sea salt, complete with miniature spoon.

What was I supposed to do with this meal? I assumed the avocados were meant to be eaten with a spoon, but the eggs were more of a mystery. I remember egg cups from when we lived in England-- people would crack the tops off the egg and dip rectangles of toast into the warm yolk. Somehow I thought that that probably wasn't the intention here, though. I decided that whatever my eventual course of action, it would be necessary to rid the top half of the egg of its shell.

But apparently that was wrong. Midway through my peeling act, Louise came in and gave me a very puzzled look, then went off in very rapid French in a tone that indicated I was doing something wrong. I understood that she was probably concerned that I assumed the eggs to be hard-boiled, and would bite into one and be sprayed by molten yolk. Finally I said to her, in English, "are you saying that the insides are still gooey?" "Ouais," she confirmed, with a smile.

She left for a minute and I decided it would be best if this whole dinner debate ended as quickly as possible. I scooped out most of one of the avocado halves, but had to forgo the second, and tried to separate out the remainder of the egg innards but ate several shell fragments in the process. My mom had also indicated I could partake of the fruit basket and yogurt, so I grabbed a kiwi and a container of yogurt and smuggled them back to the safety of my room. The small-scale adventures, I expect, will never end here.

While we're on the topic of amusing French food, consider the following snacks I bought today at Franprix (competitor to Monoprix):

From left to right, we've got: Barres (Chocolat Noir), a granola bar variety that I buy because it's the cheapest that the supermarchés carry, but also because they are tasty goodness; a breadstick-type snack product called Flutes, which are made with carbs, cheese, and butter, from what I can discern from the packaging, and probably pack about 1,000 calories per stick but it's totally worth it; fruit biscuits, also cheap; a doll that I bought at the Musée de la Poupée; sugared "cacahuetes," which may or may not be cashews since it sounds kind of similar; and finally some roast-chicken flavored ridged potato chips. How best to describe these chips... let me just say that if heaven has a vending machine, these chips will be in it. I am seriously considering sending a care package of French snack foods to my U.S. address, just because they're better than anything I've ever eaten.

Alright, now that I'm done singing the praises of pantry staples, I will take you on a whirlwind tour of Le Marais, a former swampland that is now home to a charming Renaissance-era neighborhood of Paris.

Here we are at the Hôtel de Sully, one of several hôtels particuliers (former private mansions) in Le Marais. We are standing in the stone-paved courtyard that would have served as a driveway for carriages bringing visitors to the mansion. The building is now owned by the state and contains offices for the Ministry of Culture and Communication.

A passageway leads to the gardens and former master/mistress's quarters of the Hôtel de Sully. The precise, well-cropped garden is typically French, according to Paul, and contrasts with the more natural, overgrown style associated with English country gardens.

The entrance to the Hôtel Carnavalet, another hôtel particulier that has been converted into a museum on the history of Paris.

Inside the carriage courtyard of the Hôtel Carnavalet is this amazing statue of Louis XIV. Paul pointed out the interesting contrast in Louis' attire: his hair is contemporary to the 17th/18th-century, but the artist has presented him in the wardrobe of a Roman warrior, presumably to suggest that his status equals that of the great men of Antiquity.

Here we are in front of another architectural marvel: l’Hôtel de Soubise. Although most of the building was erected in the early 1700s, it incorporates a portion of an earlier residence. The turrets visible in the upper left corner of the picture are the vestiges of the Hôtel de Clisson, a 1300s manor house that once occupied the site. Now it's used to house part of the French National Archives.

Before Paris underwent a city-wide initiative to clean and restore its historic buildings, all of the facades looked like this hôtel particulier. Paul told us that the black deposits are due to the pollution of diesel fuels; for some reason this building has escaped governmental pressure for a similar revamping. The wooden doors are decorated with twin Medusa heads to discourage unwelcome visitors.

So that's your architectural history lesson for today.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who's been leaving comments-- it's nice to know my lame jokes are being appreciated.

Boursin: a delicacy for the simpleminded

2008-02-25T20:29:00.006+01:00

I'll explain the heading for this entry by relaying the conversation I had with my host parents tonight at dinner (with Dave Sedaris-esque translations).

Dad: Do you know the cheese Vacherin?
Me: No, I know it not.
Mom: One can buy it solely in winter. We must snack on it after dinner.
Me: I am in accordance.
(we snack on the Vacherin)
Me: Mm!
Mom: You enjoy?
Me: Oui! (then, after a pause) There is a French cheese that I like, which is called Boursin, but in the United States it is very expensive.
Mom: Ah oui, le boursin! It is not expensive here.
Me: Yeah, I saw it in Monoprix, less than two Euros.
Mom: Yes. But in France, that is not considered a real cheese.
Me: Oh... I like it.
Mom: I will buy of the boursin for you. But it is not a true cheese.
Me: The Vacherin is like the fondue.

So just in case you thought buying that $6 boursin from the Busch's cheese section makes you cultured... it apparently doesn't.

In other news, I had my first Louvre visit today. We spent an hour in line getting our unlimited access student cards, so now in theory I can go back whenever I want. We spent a lot of time looking at 18th-century female painters (Vigée-Le Brun and Vallayer-Coster, for those wondering) but on the way out we passed the headless statue of the Winged Victory, and I had another one of those gasp-of-realization moments that I'd had when I first saw the Eiffel Tower. It was incredible to be five feet away from something that had only ever existed in my Humanities 101 textbook.

Meanwhile, back at home, Tilo was busy retching all over my possessions. Just kidding, but I did wake up this morning to discover that he had had a little kitty barf on the one blanket I brought from home. Since I was already late for my first day of French class and didn't know the word for blanket or vomit, I decided not to tell my host mom until later ("vomir" turned out to be the appropriate verb).

Speaking of French class, it went well despite being three hours long. Mondays and Wednesdays are going to be looong mornings. It's pretty interesting though because we are required to speak entirely in French (not like UM, where the "French-only instruction" means that the prof talks to you in French until she has something important to clarify, and the students whisper in English during the lesson). At the Institut Catholique (le "Catho") you can't whisper in English to your neighbor anyway, because the classes are international. In mine we have American, Japanese, Taiwanese, Peruvian, Thai, and Korean students. It was interesting and a little confusing to hear the various students' first-language accents coming through as they spoke French. My professor is really nice though, and she seems like she'll be a stickler for correcting our pronunciation mistakes, which is good. Tonight at dinner I was telling my parents that my French prof is actually Italian (not that you can tell from her perfect French) and that her name was Madame Palmiero, and my dad laughed and said, "Ah, she must use her hands a lot when she talks," then added "PALmierO!", imitating the sort of accent that Americans always use when they're impersonating pizzeria chefs ("Mama mia! The cheese-a is perfetto!").

I really hope the class helps me become more conversational in French so that I can talk to my host family more animatedly at dinner. Right now I mostly say "oui" et "merci" and "ah!". I thought I'd known a fair amount of French before I got here, but it turns out that the kinds of things you learn in high school and college French are not really all that applicable to everyday conversation. I have a lot of random phrases stuck in my head that are more or less useless in casual conversation ("He is going parasailing" "Do you think the windbreaker suits me?" "This changes nothing"). In talking to the other girls in my program, though, we realize that we are largely at a loss for the things we need to say to our families on a daily basis ("If I bought a pack of yogurt at Monoprix would you mind if I stored it in the fridge?" "I was wondering if there is a laundromat near here" "Tilo vomited on my blanket this morning"). All in good time, I suppose.

Musee de la Poupee, Musee Grevin

2008-02-24T20:57:00.008+01:00

Before I get into the real point of this entry, consider the following image:

Chicken and thyme flavored potato chips! Love it!

Anyway. So I woke up this morning and decided it was a lovely day to knock a few items off the extensive List of Amusing And/Or Bizarre Places to Visit in Paris, which I created before I left home. I called Elizabeth and we decided on a duo of themed attractions: the Musée de la Poupée, and the Musée Grèvin.

The Musée de la Poupée was a several-room collection of dolls, dating from the early 1800s to the present. I wanted to go to this museum because I have a genuine interest in dolls, having been a connoisseur of Barbies and the American Girl Doll fad, but also because large groups of dolls scare the daylights out of me. I've selected some of the best pictures to represent our visit.

Aww, cute little turn-of-the-century dolls.

Is this politically correct?

Fifties Housewife Doll instructs pupils in the art of wife skills.

I feel like this picture should have an lolcats caption. "ATTACK BABY: PWNAGE IMMINENT."

The museum also had fertility figures and dolls from other cultures. The one on the top is a voodoo doll with pins stuck into it. What I want to know is whether the intended victim really wore that awful pink checkered dress.

Thus concludes the doll museum, so now it's time for the Musée Grèvin. A lot of the waxworks were of famous French persons that Elizabeth and I didn't know, but we posed with them anyway.

Me and the Governator, one of the few American celebrities that the Musée Grèvin deemed worthy of inclusion.

Jean-Paul Sartre and I discuss existentialism and the reason for No Exit's anticlimactic ending.

Apparently these women are comic French characters? Elizabeth blends in so realistically.

They had Rhett and Scarlet!!

Joan of Arc and I are stoic because we are about to be burned at the stake.

I contract Black Death. ("Bring out yer dead... bring out yer dead..." "I'm not dead yet!" "You will be." "I'm feeling better!" "Bring out yer dead..." "I'm going for a walk later!")

Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!

Charlemagne and I are pals.

Elizabeth assists Leonardo da Vinci with his latest invention.

Maybe if I stare Hemingway down his writing won't suck so much.

Shopping

2008-02-23T19:49:00.001+01:00

No pictures today, because blogspot apparently can't handle the National Geographic-esque onslaught of photos that I have been attempting to weave into my entries. But that's okay because I didn't take many pictures today anyway, since I was too busy shopping until my feet fell off.

My first and most important mission was to locate a hair straightener, since I wasn't allowed to bring mine due to European voltage incompatibility (according to the people who went last year, converters did not prevent their electronics from frying). In yet another poorly-constructed sentence, I asked my host sister if she knew of a good place to find the device ("As-tu une suggestion pour un edroit ou je peux acheter un....") but realized I didn't even begin to know how to say hair straightener, or blowdryer, or anything that might help me explain my need. "It is for... the hair..." I attempted, pulling a section through two fingers to imitate straightening. "Ah," said Louise, mercifully understanding, then told me that I could probably find one at the "grande surface" near the St. Placide metro stop. After meeting up with Erin, who was enjoying a $13 French onion soup at a nearby cafe, we set off. Despite getting temporarily sidetracked by a FNAC store, which turned out to be the equivalent of a Best Buy, I did eventually find a straightener in the Montparnasse centre commercial. Unforunately I also spent like, my life savings on it. C'est la vie.

After the successful purchase of the hair straightener we embarked on a long and far less successful search for a specific pair of boots that Erin had seen at a boutique, but couldn't find any in her size. Since we were nearby we also took a jaunt to Le Bon Marche, which Wikipedia tells me was the first true department store in history. It was very "aesthetically pleasing," as Erin said, but about as expensive as a Saks, so we limited ourselves to trying on some hats and critiquing the architecture. Outside the Bon Marche we ran into an anti-colonization protest parade (one of the banners proclaimed that it was anti-colonization week. Is it usually pro-colonization week?) which was interesting, but since our student handbooks clearly state that we should avoid participation in any social or political rallies and protests, we were obliged to keep walking.

Today was my host sister's 22nd birthday and I thought it would be a nice gesture to get her un petit cadeau, so our next stop was at the chocolaterie near my apartment, where I had one of my landmark victories of language. The shop was set up with some prepackaged chocolates and truffles, but for the most part you had to indicate which of several homemade chocolates you desired and estimate how many grams' worth you wanted. I asked the vender a question about the pricing, made three selections, and told him that I did not want the total package to exceed 300 grams, all in French. I was happy when he responded entirely in French, too, since most Parisians have been humoring our attempts to pose questions in French before they cut us off and finish our thoughts in English. Even if the responses are too complicated or the questions too fast, it makes me feel better when a Parisian speaks to me in French because it's an indication of their faith in my ability to comprehend. Not that I always do, but I'll never improve if they keep narrowing their eyes and repeating things slowly in English. Louise looked surprised when I presented her with the assortment ("J'espere que tu aimes le chocolat...") but gave me a grateful if awkward hug nonetheless. Now I'm at home eating taboule and some sort of chicken pita sandwich that I purchased from another Monoprix, which incidentally had the same giant psycho chocolate bunnies as the last store. I have decided to purchase one of these bunnies so that I can be like Dave Sedaris in Me Talk Pretty One Day ("the rabbit of easter. he bring of the chocolate.") and also because it's the funniest and/or most horrifying Easter candy I've ever seen in my life.

So that was my first Saturday in Paris. Tonight Erin and I are going to see Atonement (in French it's Revien-Moi, "Come back to me") at a local theater, but we don't know if it'll be in French or English. We're hoping it'll be English with French subtitles, which would be an amusing change of pace in the world of foreign films. I hope there won't be a lot of other Americans there though, like there were last night at the Eiffel Tower. Apparently the Americans come out in droves after sundown in Paris, because I heard more English under the Tower last night than in the whole week I've been here. And of course it was also the English speakers lounging around on the grass, sitting between each other's legs and yelling to their friends across the street, or shelling out pocketfuls of Euros to purchase mini light-up Eiffel Tower keychains. For the first time I wanted to pretend I wasn't one of them, but someone who actually belonged in this city, or who at least deserved to be here appreciating its culture. Despite all the times I've been one, I just wanted the tourists to go home.

I have the feeling this blog is going to have a loooot of pictures

2008-02-22T21:19:00.004+01:00

So that tour was yesterday. A few of the girls went out afterwards to check out some bar they'd heard of and/or to see the Eiffel Tower at night, but the rest of us took the Métro back to our apartments. Paul had warned us that the people on the Métro can be a little weird, and we're definitely finding that to be true. If a car is totally empty, for instance, and you plop yourself down in a seat, the next person on the train may come and sit RIGHT next to you, and then you are forced to have an awkward "excusez-moi" encounter when your stop arrives. Also the men have no reservations about staring at you if you happen to be a youngish, moderately attractive woman. One of the girls in our group even said that a guy licked his lips at her in the Métro the other day. Paul assures us, however, that Paris is exceedingly safe.

Molly and I decided to wait until today to see the Eiffel Tower. We're going to be visiting it for our Paris by Site class, but it's not until the end of the semester and it seems odd to live in Paris for four months and not even see its most famous landmark. She lives in the 16e arrondissement, so she's not all that far from the Tower, but I'm more centrally located in the 6e, so I had to take three Métro lines to get there this morning. None of the stops are right on top of the Tower, though, so I had to get out and walk for the last fifteen minutes. I walked down the Boulevard de Grenelle and turned the corner, looking at my handy Paris Pratique guidebook to make sure I was going in the right direction. According to the map, I was close-- I looked around to see if I could spot the Tower on the skyline. Nothing to the left. I turned to the right and literally gasped.

There it was, right in front of me, the feat of engineering that turn-of-the-century Parisians abhorred as an ugly, industrial eyesore, but which has since become a symbol for their beloved city and its brilliant ingènieurs. It's one thing to see something over and over again in pictures and movies, but to get off the Métro and wander uncertainly down the Quai de Grenelle until you find yourself within mere blocks of it is quite another. I followed the dirt concourse of the River Seine, casting not-so-furtive touristy glances at the world-famous monument across the street, and smiled at the thought of that first moment, the sharp inhale and realization of "oh my God, there it is." This was why I had come to Paris. I want life to take my breath away.

As I got closer I got better pictures.

I met up with Molly under the Tower. We dodged some Bosnian beggars asking for money and got in line for a ticket to the première étage, mostly because it was cheapest to only go to the first floor, and we'll be climbing to the top with our class in June.

From the first floor of the Eiffel Tower the people look like tiiiny ants standing in line to overpay for their tickets.

On the first floor there was some sort of global warming exhibit, which included this ridiculous picture of a seal.

It's me in front of the River Seine!

Molly poses next to what is undoubtedly the smallest taxi in Europe.

Sorry Ji Li, I don't buy my Asiatic Specialties from traitors.

The text on this news magazine says "Generation Obama: Can he change America?"

The bunnies are freaking scary! Look at their eyes!

Easter is so much more intense in France than it is in the States-- at least the candy. We went to a Monoprix, which was sort of the equivalent of a Meijer, and there were entire aisles devoted to this specialty Easter candy. You can get chocolate rabbits of all shapes and sizes, in addition to eggs, bells, snails, seashells, roosters and fish.

And, apparently, Strawberry Shortcake! But in France she's called Charlotte aux Fraises (Strawberry Charlotte).

They sure do love Mr. Propre!

And that concludes the photo tour for today. Tonight we're going back to the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up, and then out for dessert to celebrate Elizabeth's birthday. Au revoir!

Walking tour day

2008-02-22T21:17:00.002+01:00

It's picture time!

Here we are in front of the Palais du Luxembourg, now the seat of the French Senate, which overlooks the famous Luxembourg gardens. I didn't bother taking a picture of them, though, because there's not much to look at in February. Paul (blue coat, backpack) told us that it would be beautiful in spring, and that little French boys would be sailing toy boats in the fountain. Precious!

That fugly skyscraper in the background is somehow visible from like everywhere in Paris. It was apparently built in the 70s before the anti-ugly-building laws, and it's one of the few skyline eyesores in the city.

The Pantheon, where the "great men of France" (and Marie Curie because she's just that cool) are buried. Paul was telling us a story about how the oldest French survivor of WWI (until recently there were two, age 110 and 112) was going to be invited to be buried there as a nod to his patriotism, but both of the men adamantly refused because they disagreed so strongly with the politics that brought France into the war. As Paul said, "Quite a political fervor, at over 100."

Would Phaedrus approve of this restaurant? (See Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.) We've been seeing these next to McDonalds (le MacDo!) a lot. That's Elizabeth, whom I met at the airport, posing in the picture.

Paul took us out for a group dinner on Thursday night. The restaurant was underground in this amazing 13-century building that was originally a church, hence the vaulted ceilings. For an appetizer I tried something called terrine de canard, which was kind of a firm pâté made of duck meat, served with pickles and eaten on baguette bread. The second girl from the left in the picture ordered an entrée that consisted of some sort of stuffed intestines. The brave among us tried a piece, and it wasn't bad. Mostly like bratwurst. P.S. If you're wondering about all the wine glasses, Paul definitely didn't order a limitless supply of red wine for the table.

This picture is mostly for Justin's ogling pleasure, since it was probably the best chocolate cake (gateau trois chocolats) that I've ever had. The spoon coming out of nowhere in the left of the picture is Erin putting some of her white chocolate mousse cake onto my plate for tasting.

Un petit peu de photojournalism

2008-02-22T00:08:00.015+01:00

Bonjour tout le monde!

My semi-successful shopping trip for a laptop adapter plug means that I am once again online. Time to recap.

Let's begin with some visuals of my accommodations.

C'est ma chambre! Note Tilo on my bed. The poster above the bed says "Affiches Americaines" (American posters). Intentional? Je ne sais pas.

A better picture of Tilo. It's 1am here, and while I was uploading this picture Tilo was out in the hall, busy having the loudest catfight on earth with the new tabby. My host dad came out and whispered "Qu'est-ce que tu fais? Shh!" ("What are you doing??")

I took a picture of my breakfast because it's the cutest thing I've ever seen. This is what they put out for me in the morning, since I get up a little later than the rest of the family. The bottle on the right is some tri-fruit version of orange juice, the white one is milk, and the little jars on the left are "confitures" (jam) for my daily toast and/or rice cakes. Note the cloth napkin in the metal ring-- I'm not sure what to do with it if I actually get it dirty. They always just roll theirs back up and put it in the bread basket.

The French version of Mr. Clean is a little bit hilarious. He's Mr. Propre, here to disinfect your "cuisine"! I'm glad no one came back home while I was taking pictures of their under-the-sink chemicals.

Now for the rest of the apartment:

My bathroom. You will notice that the toilet is in its own room on the right, whereas the shower, sink, trash can, and a hidden washing machine are in the room on the left.

The kitchen. The oven is the small, square appliance under the microwave at the right of the picture. Space is at a premium in Parisian apartments, so everything is very creatively arranged.

The living room. Looks really formal, so I don't go in there.

An inexplicable product apparently called wombat? What does that girl have to do with wombats though?

The view out the window. The other beige buildings across the street are apartments, and there are shops on the street level.

I've been in Paris for three days now, and it's amazing how much more confident I already am. Yesterday I walked into an Orange (ore-onj) shop, which is basically the equivalent of a Verizon store, and explained to the employee that I needed their cheapest available cell phone with pay-per-minute credit and "le texto," all in French. Considering that my American cell is part of our family's plan and I've never needed to deal with anything phone-related, I doubt I could've even done it in English. I also navigated the metro for the first time today and used the electronic kiosk to purchase a carnet (car-nay), or a pack of 10 tickets, using the all-French instructions. It wasn't until later in the day that someone told me that I could've selected the little British flag on the menu screen to switch the process to English, but I'm pretty proud of myself that I managed in French anyway.

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is called Paris By Site, which focuses on monuments, landmarks, and other features of the city. Today our program director, Paul, who is also the prof for the class, took us on an abbreviated walking tour of Paris. The pictures will have to wait until tomorrow though, because getting those ones of the apartment posted was trial enough. We have a free day tomorrow, so some of the other girls and I are planning to go to the Eiffel Tower in the morning and then do some more walking around (I feel like I could walk around Paris for the next four months and never know where everything is). Also, one of the girls in our group is having a birthday tomorrow, so we're going to take her out for dessert or something, assuming we can locate a restaurant that offers cake for less than 7 euros. I spent the equivalent of $8 on a coffee today when we all sat down for a drink after our walking tour-- Paris is not, apparently, for the faint of wallet. But at least you don't have to tip.

Bonsoir for now.

Je suis arrivee

2008-02-20T18:43:00.003+01:00

I am typing this from the fifth-floor guest room of a tiny apartment whose windows overlook one of the narrowest and most congested streets I have ever seen in my life, which can only mean one thing: I am in Paris.

Not that it was a breeze getting here. Charles de Gaulle is the first airport I have ever been in, for instance, that requires you to follow endless directives of signs through hallways and escalators before taking a train to an entirely different building just to retrieve your luggage. But that was a minor confusion compared to the comically impossible task of locating the shuttle that was supposed to take me to my host family. After circling the arrival floor for a good half hour in an increasing panic, I finally sidled up to another girl dragging two large suitcases and asked if she was, perchance, from UM. “Yes!” she said, obviously grateful to have found a fellow navigational idiot. The terminal we were looking for, 2a, turned out to be one floor up and several concourses away, mystifyingly far from our original meeting in 2c. After finding our supposed pick-up point and realizing there was no one there (we were half an hour later) we tried calling the pay-phone number in our orientation email, only to receive an error message. The driver did finally show up, as did three other girls from our program, who had apparently been wandering aimlessly as well. In the car I discovered that I was the only one who had never received a welcome email from my hosts—the other girls relayed information about their new families; one girl’s new mother even advised her to bring clothes appropriate for gardening and trips to the opera, both of which she hoped they would be able to do together. In my head I imagined my host family at their apartment, blinking incomprehensibly at my poorly-constructed introduction email and deciding that it would be best to pretend it had never happened.

Our shuttle wound its way through Paris, making death-defying U-turns in the middle of five-street intersections and casually cutting off other cars and mopeds. Finally the driver stopped in front of a large, ornate double-door in the midst of a line of shops and pronounced the first girl home. “Bon chance!” we said as she lugged her bags to the nondescript door. “It’s like the Leaky Cauldron,” I observed as the other girls laughed.

It turns out we are all living in Paris’s version of the Leaky Cauldron. The entrances to the apartment buildings are interspersed with shops, with unlabeled door fronts leading to several stories of housing above busy commercial streets. We drove through a seedy-looking area populated by more sex shops than I have ever seen in my life (one of them was called—I am not kidding—The Erotica Supermarket. I exchanged wide-eyed looks with the other girls and we agreed not to go there, ever.) The second passenger was dropped off a couple of blocks away, and a few minutes later it was my turn.

“That’s my door!” I exclaimed as the driver pulled up to 116 Rue de Rennes.
“It’s a nice door!” said the other girls, with unbridled enthusiasm.

After several unsuccessful attempts at the keypad code, I found myself in a small lobby, facing a locked door. With no phone number for my program director and no cell phone to call either him or my host family, I experienced a brief burst of panic. Then, to my relief, I spotted an intercom with a button bearing their name. I pressed it.

“Bonjour?” I said tentatively, into the speaker. Nothing happened. I pressed it again. “Hello?”

“Allo?” said a female voice from the intercom. I pressed the button to speak again.

“Bonjour,” I repeated as one of my bags toppled over onto my foot.

“Stop pressing the button!” said the voice.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

“We are the fifth floor, on the right. I opened the door.”

I tried the door. Still locked.

“I’m having trouble with the… never mind,” I mumbled apologetically as the door creaked open.

I located an elevator without any up or down buttons and pressed the glowing number 5. No one was going to come help me with my bags? Probably they were not amused by my repeated ringing of the doorbell. After a few minutes spent standing in front of the nonresponsive elevator, I gathered my burdens, eyed the winding staircase and sighed.

On the fourth flight of stairs, the voice from the intercom rang out again.

“Why have you not used the lift!”

“Oh… hello… I tried but it didn’t work.”

“Of course it works! It works very well!”

“Oh… okay.”

I rounded the corner of the staircase and was greeted by a middle-aged woman with bare feet, wrapped in a white bathrobe. “Excuse me,” she said. “I am sick.”

After a reproachful demonstration in the art of elevator operation (the entrance outside the apartment, incidentally, has a button) she ushered me inside. We had several minutes of awkward half-French, half-English communication before she gave me a glass of water and showed me my room, which overlooks the street. Then she showed me the kitchen and bathroom, advising me not to take very long showers. As we walked around the apartment, two other people slipped by us with brooms and vacuum cleaners. “Le mardi et le vendredi, ils font le ménage,” she explained, adding that the cleaners would be tidying my bedroom every Tuesday and Friday, as well. Then, after a brief and confusing exchange which I vaguely understood to mean that she was leaving me for awhile, I retreated into my room and unpacked. I listened until the cleaners were gone, then slipped into the bathroom for the world’s fastest shower before returning to my room for a nap. Several hours later, following restless dreams wherein French people complained to each other that I was an insufferable simpleton, I awoke in my darkened room. I poked open the door and peered down the hall. The place appeared empty. I decided to try to find a clock, but in the unlit hallway I nearly stepped on a shadowy, unmoving object in the middle of the floor. I squinted at it in the dark, wondering what it was, until it stretched out two slender legs and trotted toward me with a happy chortle.

A cat.

An all-black, long-tailed, real Parisian cat. It looked like Cole but less plump. A wave of relief washed over me as I realized I wouldn’t be deprived of feline company for the next four months.

I coaxed it back into my room, where it followed me onto the bed, situated itself in my lap and rewarded my petting with an instant purr. “Hi cutie,” I said, and began to cry. My first friend.

A little while later my French mother returned, followed within the hour by my French father and sister. The latter, Louisa, is 21. I don’t know my French parents’ names yet—my timid “Je m’appelle Sara” was met with smiling silence. The family also has at least two older siblings who no longer live at home. The black cat, I learned, was Tilo, who is apparently not very happy due to the fact that the family just acquired a second cat, who is hiding somewhere in the apartment. My French father is very nice—he offered to help me go shopping for a laptop converter plug tomorrow during lunch—and he and Louisa had a late dinner with me (my French mother was having dinner with a colleague, if I understood correctly) that consisted of sliced ham and salami, mustard, cheese and bread, leeks, and some sort of celery coleslaw that took them awhile to explain since the mixture in the bowl was stringy and beige and thus did not match my usual understanding of the vegetable. We had a pleasant and only mildly awkward dinner conversation, and I was able to understand most of the direct questions posed to me and respond somewhat appropriately. At some points Louisa and her dad would talk to each other, though, or the phone would ring and one of them would answer it, and then I was totally lost. I also made myself cringe by perpetuating the midwestern tradition of using one’s hand to point out the locations of towns in and around Michigan, even going so far as to indicate that Chicago was a little to the left of my wrist when my dad mentioned he had done a “stage” (internship) there many years ago. Louisa made un café for herself and me following dinner, which consisted of a few ounces of the strongest espresso I’ve ever had. Then, announcing that she was going to go work, she retreated to her room.

So that was my first day. I’m typing this from my (as yet battery-powered) laptop, with Tilo curled up on my legs. I wonder how the other girls are doing with their host families. We have orientation tomorrow at 2 at the Institut Catholique, which I hope will involve information on how to purchase cell phones, hair straighteners, and other necessities that we were told not to bring from the States. Updates on that to follow. Until then, as the French say, à demain.