Before we do anything else, let me clear something up:
I got online today and discovered that there are riots in Paris. Believe me, this was as surprising to me as to anyone else, because they’ve been going on for three days and this is the first time I’ve heard about them. Nevertheless, as bad as they sound, I am a world away from them and am perfectly safe and content. Don’t worry!
26 November 2007
This weekend, I had the (mis)fortune to be without any of my good friends here in Paris. All of them were away for the weekend. So, naturally, I took the opportunity to do whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it.
Saturday I ventured up towards the north of the city to visit the Gustave Moreau Museum. Moreau was a painter in the late-19th century. I don’t know enough about art to really say anything about what kind of painter he was, but the majority of his paintings depicted historical or mythological events, using lots of bright blurred colors. I thought the museum was amazing—one of my favorites in Paris. It’s not very big, but in a beautiful open apartment where Moreau once lived. I don’t know exactly how to describe the paintings, but it was almost as if Moreau witnessed my dreams and put them down on canvas. His paintings have the bright colors and inexactitude of dreams, and also their grand epic scale with fantastic animals, soaring mountains, and valleys so beautiful they almost aren’t real.
After the Gustave Moreau Museum—go see it if you have the chance—I went a little further north to see the Moulin Rouge. Can you believe that I have been in Paris for almost three months, and, lover of the film Moulin Rouge as I am, I hadn’t seen it before this past weekend?
Frankly, after the film, it’s a bit of a disappointment. Not only is the windmill less grand in real life, but in the daylight it’s not lit-up and it seems rather ordinary. Though, I’m not sure I would want to venture to the Moulin Rouge by myself at night, as it is in the Red Light District of Paris. It’s also very evident that it’s the Red Light District. When I was in Amsterdam walking around during the day, I was halfway across the Red Light District before I noticed what it was and then it was only because someone told me. But in Paris, I think they saved all of the real estate for all the sex shops, strip clubs, and peep shows for these couple of blocks, but that’s about all that you can find in this area besides bars and night clubs (this really is the area for “Night Life”).
Well, it’s not all you can find, because I found the Museum of the Erotic. Yes, I went in. Let me tell you, interesting as it was, I really wouldn’t recommend going by yourself. I was alone looking at 7 floors of erotic/pornographic photographs and phallic representations from thousands of years ago up until the present day. Frankly, I feel a little vulgar. If you happen to go, bring a friend and laugh at some of the really ridiculous stuff there.
The part of the Erotic Museum that I did like was the floor where they outlined what it was like in the brothels of the Belle Epoque (end of the 19th century when the Moulin Rouge was in its hayday). That was pretty fascinating. The museum was also arranged chronologically, so as you went up you neared the present time, and it was interesting to see how in the beginning there were mostly phallic representations or representations of men and woman having sex which gradually became representations of mainly just naked women doing whatever.
After this I walked around Montmartre trying to find the Montmartre Space of Salvador Dali, but I couldn’t because I didn’t have the right map on me. So, I went home.
The next day I went to Malmaison, the country chateau of the Empress Josephine (first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte). I looked at the RER map (the RER is a train line serving Paris proper and its suburbs) and saw a stop called Rueil-Malmaison which was in the general area of where I knew Malmaison was. I figured it would be no problem to take the RER there and find the chateau, even though my guide book told me that I ought to take the RER to a couple of stops earlier and then take a bus. So, I get off the RER at Rueil-Malmaison, and take a look at the map of the area surrounding the train station. I locate Malmaison, which looks like more of a hike than I had anticipated, but nevertheless I set off with a general idea of which streets to take. After about half an hour I am hopelessly lost, and wander in what I think is the general direction until I finally find a new map and get to the chateau after about an hour of walking. A twenty minute train ride with an hour of walking is not a good ratio.
Despite the initial problem caused by my lack of planning, I get safely to the chateau and take a look around. First, I must preface my description by saying that I’m a teeny bit obsessed with Napoleon as well as with his wife Josephine, partly because I read The Many Tales and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gulland (as well as the two sequels). So, I’ll try not to go on about it too much.
The chateau is beautiful but not too extravagant, and though I was tired I took the time to walk around the gorgeous grounds around the chateau. Josephine apparently had impeccable decorating taste, and it amazes me that there are so many sculptures, pictures, and other reminders of Napoleon there which she left in place even after he divorced her in 1809 because she couldn’t give him an heir. I especially love how Napoleon’s bedroom was decorated like a military tent—even at home he was at war. All in all, I thought it was great, and if you’re in the area, you should definitely stop by.
Then today I went to this café called Angelina’s on the Rue de Rivoli, just north of the Tuileries Gardens. Supposedly, they had some of the best hot chocolate in the world. AND IT’S TRUE! It’s absolutely mind-boggling. The hot chocolate was just so rich and thick and yummy and tasted like a little piece of heaven. Fabulous. I had planned to go there and have one of these hot chocolates I had heard so much about and do my homework at the same time, but I was having such a wonderful time enjoying my hot chocolate that I didn’t do my homework, and even after I got to class and the teacher publicly scolded me for not having done it, I didn’t mind. For everyone who knows how serious I am about my studies, this should give you some indication of how good this stuff actually was.
So there you go! I did all sorts of great stuff, and all of it by myself. Just think, if I had lived a hundred years ago, or even fewer, I wouldn’t have been allowed to go out and do these things my myself, without a man or a maid or a chaperone. Then again, I wouldn’t have been able to go out wearing jeans. Modern times (at least in the West) are pretty good for women.
24 November 2007
Fear not, for all that once was broken is now fixed!
Though the metro make go on strike and ye be forced to suffer in walking everywhere ye may want to go, or be forced to become intimately acquainted with strangers as ye press together on the over-crowded subway cars, fear not, for a light has broken through and ye may now use the metro freely again!
Though the internet at ye olde cafe may go on the fritz and ye be forced to subsist on the meger internet access at school, fear not, for the internet will start working again for no reason at all, and ye may feast upon the abundance of information!
Though ye may be forced to spend Thanksgiving far away from family and friends, fear not, for I will provide you with a friend and a Chinese restaurant on the day of your suffering!
Though all of your friends may leave the city on vacation to visit other people and leave ye all alone this weekend, fear not, for I will send ye chocolate and the third season of Desperate Housewives on DVD!
Though all ye friends and family may miss ye terribly (and ye know that they do…), fear not, for I will provide them with pictures!
If ye are wont to peruse additional pictures from October, here is the way:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0CcMWrlw5bsXYA¬ag=1
If ye be rather inclined to view pictures of Amsterdam, here is ye link:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0CcMWrlw5bsXNQ¬ag=1
If ye prefer to experience images of London, the way will be revealed:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0CcMWrlw5bsXQg¬ag=1
Then again, if ye should want to survey pictures of when ye wise parents visited France, ye shall find the means:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0CcMWrlw5bsXUw¬ag=1
Go now in peace!
19 November 2007
I’m remembering my freshman year of college. I was really homesick until I went home for Thanksgiving, but after that I felt much better and I could really settle into college life. I think my parents’ visit to me accomplished the same thing, because I’m really starting to enjoy Paris again.
Well, except for one thing: the metro strikes. They started last week on Tuesday night and it’s Tuesday again and they won’t be over until Thursday at the earliest. These strikes have been so much worse than the last ones, and I’ve had to walk to and from school quite a few times. Also, there are so many people on the metros that are running that you can’t always get on them because there just isn’t enough room.
Over the weekend I went back to the flea market for some Christmas shopping—I swear you could go there again and again and never see all of it.
Then over the weekend I saw the movie American Gangster, which was bizarre because it was dubbed in French and suddenly Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington were speaking French.
Other than that, I’ve just been hanging out in my room, working on my embroidery, and learning about the German culture from the German student living in my host family. Yesterday he cooked the family a traditional German meal, so tonight I’m retaliating with a small scale Thanksgiving dinner. Wish me luck!
15 November 2007
I know my last couple of notes have been really long, so this one will be short and sweet.
This week everyone imaginable has gone on strike–gas, electric, public transportation, students, teachers, and some others I don’t even know about. And they’re all striking for different reasons–bizarre. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but it is hell to try to get anywhere. My feeling is, if this is the second time in a month that the public transportation is striking, the strikes aren’t doing what they’re supposed to, and they should find a new way of achieving their goals that doesn’t involve me walking an hour to school.
A new student has moved into the apartment for this week and the next one (I think my host family secretly runs a bed and breakfast). He’s from Germany, and he’s my age, and it’s been so great to have someone my age around to talk with. We got in this deep discussion the other day about the differences between American and German lifestyles–very cool.
I’ve settled back into the swing of school without too many problems. I’ve started up embroidery–which I find more fun than it sounds. I’ll make someone a terrific housewife someday.
Well, my European Union midterm beckons. A bientot.
13 November 2007
So as not to make it very difficult to read this entry which has to cover a very packed week’s worth of material, I will break it down by region and date. I also apologize in advance for the length.
PARIS, SATURDAY AND SUNDAY:
My parents arrived in Paris Saturday morning, and I went to pick them up at Charles de Gaulle. I brought them to my café for lunch, and discovered a new role for myself—translator. My parents don’t speak a word of French, so I had to translate their menus for them and order for them. Also, because I know the city and they don’t, I had to do a lot of things for them. It was weird, having to do things for my parents that they might normally do for me. I was suddenly taking care of them, and it threw my perspective out of joint for a couple of days.
My parents were still jet-lagged, so we just wandered around, saw Invalides (where Napoleon is buried and the army museum is) and the Eiffel Tower. Sunday we did some of the most basic Paris stuff—Notre Dame, the Conciergerie, and the Latin Quarter. I enjoyed being able to inform my parents with all of the stuff that I’ve been learning in my classes here, but it was also wonderful being able to see Paris through new eyes again. After being here for two months, I had sort of become jaded to the city’s wonders and forgot how many amazing things there are to see.
D-DAY BEACHES OF NORMANDY, MONDAY AND TUESDAY:
Monday we rented a car and drove out to Bayeux, a small town in Normandy (coincidentally where we all stayed in Normandy for our school trip there). I was apprehensive, to say the least, about being in a car in Paris, and about how well my Dad would drive in Paris. Frankly, when I saw us heading towards to Place de l’Etoile (the enormous round-about that circles the Arc du Triomphe), I was afraid. But we got through it just fine and my dad didn’t see what I was so worried about. I swear the traffic has never been so light.
We finally got to Bayeux and went to the Museum of the Battle of Normandy. I had sort of had my fill of World War II the other weekend when I was in Normandy, but my dad was so excited about seeing all of it that I agreed to do all of it again. Fortunately, I hadn’t seen this particular museum before, so I learned some new facts, like how Britain had to send several hundred liters of blood and plasma to the battlefront in Normandy each day. How do you suppose that got all of that blood?! They must had have an enormous blood drive every month or so.
That night, when we were wandering around looking for a place to eat, we ran into one of my classmates from Paris. Her family was visiting her too and I guess they had the same idea as us. I love that the world can be that small, to encounter my classmate in the same small town in Normandy, and yet so large at the same time.
The next day (Tuesday) we went to see Arromanches-les-Bains and the 360 degree theater, which had a Battle of Normandy movie, and then we went down to the beach to see the remains of the artificial harbor the British installed there to ensure supplies could reach the soldiers in France. Then we went to Les Longues-sur-Mer where you can see old German batteries on the hills above the beaches. They were so fabulously intact and very large as well. I couldn’t help but think how nice it was to get to see the German side of the story. These soldiers were far from home, and probably bored out of their minds watching the horizon waiting for attack, which when it did come probably took them prisoner and would not likely have treated them kindly. The batteries still have their gigantic guns there, and you could walk around and see where they might have slept or kept munitions. I love that you can really access and get close to the history here; in the US, I bet they would have guards posted everywhere and signs and cordoned-off areas and rules, but here anyone could just walk up to them and start poking around, going all the way inside the batteries if you wanted to.
From there we went to the American Cemetery and Omaha Beach, which was depressing. Enough said. Then we got in the car and drove south to Mont Saint Michel.
MONT SAINT MICHEL, TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY:
Mont St-Michel is beautiful. It’s a medieval abbey off the coast of Normandy, southwest of where the Normandy beaches are. It’s really hard to explain what it is, but it’s a town that’s completely walled, connected to the mainland only by a bridge when the sea is at high tide, but when the sea is at low tide, you can just walk out to the abbey over the sands that used to be covered by the sea. So, sometimes it’s an island town, and sometimes it’s not. Pretty cool. What I did not like about Mont St-Michel is that the entire time has basically been turned into a huge tourist trap. Picture taking a Renaissance Festival, like the ones we have in the US, and putting it inside this town. There were tourist boutiques everywhere. I hate being surrounded by tourists, even when I’m one of them.
In any case, the abbey was breathtakingly beautiful and astounding. It’s just enormous, perched on top of this town in the middle of the ocean, and it’s been there for about a thousand years or so. A thousand years. How can you ever wrap your mind around that length of time?
After the abbey we stayed at a bed and breakfast with a couple on the mainland. From them we learned that, true to the stereotype, French people do not work a lot, but that that is mostly confined to the government and large companies, but isn’t necessarily true for smaller companies or enterprises. For example, the waiter at my café is there every weekday morning and all day on the weekends. My host father is barely ever home. I guess there’s a lot of variation.
While at Mont St-Michel, we got the opportunity to taste one of the gastronomic specialties of the area, which in French is les agneaux pré salé. Now when you translate this into English, it means lambs from the salt marshes. There are tons of salt marshes around Mont St-Michel due to the drastic tides. Unfortunately, some French person armed only with a French English dictionary and no knowledge of English at all decided to translate this phrase on a postcard as “the pre-salted lambs.” WHAT?! I love cultural misunderstandings like that. Yes, salé also means salted, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing it means.
CHINON, WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY:
From Mont St-Michel we drove southeast to the western part of the Loire Valley (for those of you who are lost on your maps, this is about 2.5 hours drive southwest of Paris, and it’s where there are tons of chateaux—castles—and vineyards) and stopped in Chinon. Chinon is famous for its wine (look for Chinon—that’s the name of the wine), that it was the birthplace of the humanist writer Rabelais, and that this is the fateful town where Jeanne d’Arc (read: Joan of Arc) met Charles VII and later went on to help the French in the Hundred Years War.
There was an unfortunate occurrence on the way to Chinon, however, which somewhat hindered our ability to enjoy it there. We had this rental car (a Citroën C4, if anyone is interested) that you could only put diesel in. We managed to get all the way through this trip, from Paris to the Normandy beaches to Mont St-Michel and halfway to Chinon, until the tank was half empty, at which point my father accidentally put gasoline in our diesel car. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you the consequences of doing this, but apparently it’s very bad, because the noble little car ran jerkily all the way to Chinon and then collapsed on us. Fortunately, we had made it to a hotel at that point, so at least we weren’t stranded in the middle of the French countryside, but we had a non-working rental car about 3 hours away from Paris. We went through this whole ordeal where we called the rental car place, and they sent over a mechanic from a dealership in Chinon. This mechanic, luckily enough, spoke nary a word of English, so I got to act as translator between him and my father. This might not have been a problem if I had known any relevant car terms in French. I know how to say car, wheel, and gasoline. That’s about it, and it’s only a little smaller than my car vocabulary in English, if truth be told. It made the entire experience very, interesting, to say the least. To make a long story short, the car got fixed by the next day, and nothing was irreparably damaged, though the repairs were somewhat costly.
Disregarding this, I loved Chinon. It was just large enough of a town that you could get pretty much everything you needed there, but still pretty close to a large city, and had lots of good little places for shops and restaurants. I got to have a great duck dinner there. We went to the castle the next morning, and I had a great time climbing all around and seeing it. There’s a Joan of Arc “museum” there, but it really should have been called “Multi-story repository for all Joan of Arc related memorabilia and paraphernalia” but then I think fewer people would visit it. The landscape was beautiful as well with all the vineyards and the castle.
On our way out of Chinon, we stopped off at a vineyard, and got to taste some Chinon wine that was made on that very farm, and we visited the wine cellar where the wine ages and so on. It was very cool.
PARIS, THURSDAY THROUGH MONDAY:
We got back to Paris Thursday late afternoon, and I was late for an appointment so I had to leave. My parents had two very simple tasks to accomplish while I was gone: find the hotel, return the rental car. So when I met them again about two hours later, I was very perplexed to find them stressed, upset, and out of patience. I guess that because we were returning in the start of rush hour, and the streets of Paris are in no way set up in a logical manner, they never actually found the hotel, and had to make their way across Paris in horrible traffic to return the rental car. Talk about culture shock! My dad admitted to me that he finally understood why I was so worried at first about driving in Paris—it’s not for the faint of heart!
The next day, Friday, we went to the catacombs in the Montparnasse area of Paris (the southern part). The only things I knew about them were that in 1786, the cemetery in Les Halles (right in the center of Paris, near the Louvre) was overflowing, and so they decided to put all of the bones in this abandoned quarry in Montparnasse, which was at that time outside of the city walls. I thought that it might be a couple of rooms big, we would be able to get in an out, and it would be no big deal. Obviously, this was not the case. The path through the catacombs is about 2 kilometers long, and is 15 meters underground (about a mile long and 60 feet under). The place was just huge! And there were so many bones!
The story here is that starting in 1786, it took them about a year and a half to cart all of the rotting bodies and bones from one site to the other, and that worked out so well that they decided to empty as many of the cemeteries of Paris into this quarry as the could, because it was a lot more sanitary to have it away from the center of the city and well underground. Eventually someone went down there and arranged all the bones in a somewhat artistic pattern. Later, during World War II, the French Resistance set up their headquarters there, which I could really understand because any German soldier that tried to go down there looking for them would have gotten lost in about two minutes if he didn’t know his way around. Also, it was a pretty creepy place, with six million bones and all these plaques with quotes about death everywhere. Still, it was definitely worth the visit.
We went from there up to the Champs-Elysees and walked down them and through the Tuileries Gardens and into the Louvre. We did the whirlwind two and a half hour tours seeing the crown jewels, Napoleon III’s apartments, the French sculpture, the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, the French painters, the remains of the medieval Louvre etc. I heard once that if you spent 30 seconds looking at every piece of art in the Louvre, you would be in there for 3 months without stopping. I believe it. It just gets exhausting after a while, and even these magnificent pieces of art start to just blend together in your mind. Nevertheless, I love the Louvre. One thing I love about it, that it has over the British Museum, is that the building itself has a history of its own, and the rooms are work of art in and of themselves. There’s nothing like it in the world.
After this we decided to be ultra-touristy and went up the Eiffel Tower at night. They don’t let you climb the stairs after dark in the winter so we went up the elevator all the way to the top. Suffice it to say that there is nothing like that in the world either. You get a gorgeous view from up there, but seeing the Tower itself is beautiful. You never realize until you get right up underneath it how monstrously huge it is, because pictures make it look very spindly and delicate. Nevertheless, there is it, looming and made of a yellow network of metal. It’s just gorgeous.
On Saturday we all went to Versailles and saw the chateau there. The chateau is of course, huge, but it’s not really one of my favorite places to go visit, partly because it’s just so outrageously ostentatious. It was nice, however, to go back this time, because the last time I was there was two years ago, and half of the Hall of Mirrors was under restoration and then the king and dauphin’s apartments were closed because the workers of Versailles were on strike. I’ve decided that I hate hate strikes. If they actually accomplished anything, okay, someone can go ahead and do them. But if you do it all the time, it’s obviously not an effective way of getting what you want, and you should try another way of making yourself heard. In any case, I got to see all of the Hall of Mirrors this time and some of the extra apartments, so that was cool. Then we went out into the gardens, but didn’t stay out there for long because I’ve been sick ever since my parents got here, so I didn’t feel up to wandering around in the cold.
The next interesting thing that happened was that my real parents met my host parents at their house for tea and biscuits (shouldn’t we be having coffee and cheese if we’re in France?). It was a little bit awkward, because although Mme. English is perfectly good (especially since she is American) and she speaks to me in English quite a bit, she suddenly started speaking in French with me when my parents were around. Maybe she was just trying to put on a good spin, like “Oh look your daughter is learning so much French because that’s all we speak to her.” The same thing happened with the kids. Maybe they were shy about trying out their English in front of people they didn’t know, but it was strange all the same.
The first thing that Mme. said to me when I got there with my parents was, “Oh, you’ve gained weight!”……WHAT?! Two questions: One, why would you ever tell me that; two, really? I don’t think that’s a French thing, I think that’s just Mme. She tried to recover by saying that it meant that I was happy. Humph.
In any case, we had an interesting conversation with Mr. and Mme. True to form, we had only been talking about a half an hour before the conversation turned around to George Bush and American politics. I’ve noticed that lots of French people will start talking about politics almost as soon as they learn that I’m American, and talk about it frequently amongst themselves. In the US, I’ve been friends with people for years and I still don’t know their political opinions. It is one of the subjects avoid in the US, along with religion, because discussions about these topics get heated very quickly, yet the French can talk about politics and not get emotionally invested in the conversation.
On Sunday my mom and I went to the Marché aux Puces—the flea market north of Paris, outside the peripherique. This should tell you a couple of things about the market. One, it’s less expensive because it’s technically outside Paris and in the banlieue. Banlieue means suburbs, but whereas in the US living in the suburbs generally connotes upper middle class, here it the poorer immigrant population which lives in the banlieue. The banlieue is somewhat less safe than Paris, but it also allows this flea market, one of the largest in the world, to flourish. It literally stretches for kilometers or miles, and is inside, outside, under tents, on blankets, in the road, just everywhere. The flavor of the market ranges from produce and meat, to clothes and shoes, to garage sale variety stuff, to nice antique furniture and statues, to books and music, and then all the way back again. It’s just about one of the only places in/near Paris where you can shop and come away saying, “Wow, that was a bargain.” There is a reason that the French don’t have a word for “cheap.” Things are just “cher” or “pas cher” (expensive or not expensive).
After this great experience, we met up with my dad again and went to the Musée d’Orsay. We got to see some of the works of Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, Sisley, Manet, Millet, and Pisarro. Some of my favorites were the works by Manet, Van Gogh, Degas, and this one sculpture called “Eve après la pêche” (Eve after the peach) which I just found incredible.
All in all, I think my parents had a good time with me and I had a wonderful time with them. They’ve got me all excited about Paris again, and seeing some of their culture shock made me realize that I’ve really adjusted to some of the cultural differences here. That’s what being is about is all about, absorbing other cultures and learning to understand them. I’m on my way!
10 November 2007
Well, I haven’t really gotten much of a chance to sit down and write since my parents have gotten to Paris. In fact, I’ve had very little down time when I wasn’t thoroughly exhausted.
In any case, I shall try to re-create my trip to London, but it might be tricky since the end of it was over a week ago. I believe I’ve remembered all of the important stuff though.
So, got to London, found my hotel/hostel, and then went wandering around London. I meandered through the streets and discovered, happily, that I have a much better sense of direction in London than I do in Paris. In London, I could actually guess at which way was north—the same is not true in Paris. I didn’t have much of a day left by the time I go into London, so I really just wandered and then went to bed.
The next day I got up relatively early and set out for Westminster Abbey. For any interested parties, this is the place in England to be buried—for kings, queens, poets, playwrights, soldiers, anyone with money, etc. You literally cannot take a step without stepping on someone’s grave or a stone that says “Somewhere below here such-and-such-a-person lies.” They have sarcophagi shoved up against the wall because they don’t have enough space for all of them. They have to dedicate an extra room just to put all of the overflow. On the one hand, Westminster Abbey is amazing, because there are so many of these incredible historical figures all in the same place and all of the artwork is so beautiful (as is the abbey itself) but I felt kind of bad about treading on people’s graves, or that some of them were just completely ignored because they weren’t famous enough to make it into the annals of history. Odds are, when I die, people will remember me for about two generations, and then forget all about me. That’s depressing, and I felt badly for those forgotten in the abbey.
Next I moved on to the British Museum, which is fabulous and enormous and I loved it. For those who like history or museum, YOU HAVE TO GO HERE. Picture this: I was there for two hours, going through rooms and artifacts at a fairly rapid pace. I saw maybe half of the museum. Then, I heard some figure like only 10% of the museum’s collection is actually on display for the public. So, if I took 2 hours to see 5% of the museum’s artifacts, then it would take 40 hours nonstop to see everything. That was great.
Of all of the parts of traveling alone, I think dinner is the hardest time. Eating breakfast and lunch alone is one thing, but I just feel pathetic when I go to a restaurant for dinner with only my book to keep me company. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to just sit in my hotel room and not get anything to eat, so I braved my self-pity and went out to a pub for dinner—have to go to a pub if you’re in London. During the course of dinner, I met about 5 or 6 members of the British army, and they told me all about guard duty at Buckingham Palace and how much they didn’t like the English (they were Welsh). What’s amazing to me is that Wales has been under English domination since the 13th century, and still the Welsh make a distinction between themselves and the English. Also, I always thought that you could go up to the Buckingham Palace guards and they weren’t allowed to acknowledge your presence or smile, but apparently that’s just a myth. One of them said that he couldn’t keep a straight face to save his life.
After all of this I got to experience London night-life. Similarly to Paris, the Underground closes around midnight, so if you want to get home after that you need a cab. Unlike Paris, however, you can actually hail a cab. No Parisian cab driver would actually consent to be at anyone’s beck and call. You must go to a designated taxi stand if you want to find a taxi, and wait there. Or, you could call one. Hailing is out of the question. In London, however, the taxi drivers follow you and practically beg you to come and get in the taxi (at least if you’re in Chinatown at 5 am; that’s as far as my personal experience extends).
Unrelated Fun Fact (UFF): The signs in London do not say “Exit,” they say “Way Out.”
UFF: I hate the pound—as in the British currency, not where they keep stray dogs. I guess I’m not that fond of either pound.
The next day I got up and tried going to St. Paul’s Cathedral, but found that it was closed, so I went to the Tower of London. The Tower of London was definitely my favorite thing in London. The name is misleading, however, because it’s more of a castle or a palace complex than a tower. There are lots and lots of towers there. I got to see the royal residence area, and lots of areas where prisoners were held—prisoners didn’t get a lot of space back then. What’s incredible to me is that you could still see the inscriptions that the prisoners carved into the walls during their “stays” there. One prisoner carved an alchemic symbol and to this day no one can say what it means. I also got to see the crown jewels, the area were people were beheaded, lots of armor and swords and history. It was perfectly up my alley.
Then I passed by London Bridge and went to the National Gallery.
UFF: The Starbucks in London tastes way better than the Starbucks in Paris. I wonder how that happens. And, before you start judging, Starbucks is almost the only way you can get coffee to go in Paris. Globalization isn’t all bad.
The National Gallery was quite a bit of fun. I like looking at paintings and they have a good collection there. Finally it was time for dinner—people eat a little earlier in London than they do in Paris. The second time around eating alone was a little bit better, but still not great. I wouldn’t mind traveling alone as long as I could find someone to have dinner with.
My last day in London, I went to Buckingham Palace, did not see the changing of the guards—I figured I covered that meeting some guards—and then went to see Apsley House (the Duke of Wellington’s mansion). Though the Duke of Wellington never met Napoleon I and fought him in Spain and then defeated him at the battle of Waterloo, he seemed sort of obsessed with Napoleon. He had a giant statue of Napoleon next to the stairs and at least 5 or 6 paintings or Napoleon or his family. It was kind of weird. Nevertheless, it was a cool place to see. Right outside of Apsley House is the Wellington Triumphal Arc, which is just pitiful compared to l’Arc du Triomphe that was made for Napoleon. Really, I think the Duke knew who was the better man.
My last stop in London was the Dali Universe (a museum with some of Salvador Dali’s works). Normally, surrealism is a difficult style of art for me to relate to, but some of his stuff was just incredible. What I found so unbelievable was all of the different mediums that he was proficient in. He did glassworks, bronze sculptures, paintings, watercolors, engravings, and drawings. Some of his stuff was really profound, but some of it just made me confused—where the hell does someone come up with this? Is it possible to get this without drugs?
UFF: It’s really hard to tell when you’re going through the Chunnel on the train from London to Paris. You go through quite a few tunnels and some are long or short, but there isn’t a sign or anything to tell you definitively that that was the Chunnel. I think they should make an announcement on the train.
I made it back to Paris alright, anyway. I had a great time in London; wouldn’t mind going back at all!
2 November 2007
In his book Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll once said that when telling a story, one should start at the beginning, go until the end, and then stop. That seems like very wise advice.
My story begins with a “panne d’oreillé.” Literally translated, it means a pillow breakdown—in French, cars, machines, and pillows can all break down and stop working. When your pillow breaks down, it means that you oversleep or have a really difficult time getting out of bed. My train was leaving Gare du Nord in Paris at 7:55 AM for Amsterdam last Saturday. I woke up that morning, only to discover that my anticipated time of departure for the train station was about 20 minutes behind me. Panicked, I rolled out of bed and got ready faster than I ever have in my life. I rushed to the train station, and managed to find my seat only two minutes before the train left. When I got into Amsterdam, I met my friend N. (who studies with me in Paris) and we took some trains out into the Dutch countryside about a half hour outside of Amsterdam and to meet her grandparents (her mother is Dutch). We got back to her grandparents’ house, which was so cute and adorable. This particular weekend they had two other guests besides us—Marijka and Derrick. Marijka went to high school with Oma (which is the Dutch word for grandma; that’s what we called her) and now they have a reunion with about 8 of their friends every year. Marijka is Dutch as well but her husband is English, and due to him and me everyone spoke in English over the weekend. Derrick was a legitimately crazy old man. At one time or other during our stay there, he tried to dance the cancan, asked Opa (Dutch for grandpa) if he was a homophobe, and read soft core porn out loud to everyone. CRAZY.
Meals in the Netherlands seem to be kind of a big deal. For lunch, we started out in the living room, with white wine, nuts, and quails’ eggs (yummy). After at least a half an hour of this, Oma and Opa went into the kitchen to put the final touches upon the meal. Half an hour later, we went into the dining room, had more wine, and then some Indonesian dish which was sticky rice wrapped around chicken and curry or something like that. Then we all had cheese and meat and bread. Needless to say, I had trouble moving afterwards.
Nevertheless, N. thought that we should go bike-riding around the town and take in some of the sights. I was agreeable to that, especially since the Netherlands has the highest bike density in the world—I thought that it would be like a cultural experience. I mean, I hadn’t ridden a bike in a long time, but I was sure that it would come back to me right away. I WAS WRONG. They say that you never forget how to ride a bike, but I don’t really think that’s true. I sort of had to re-learn bike riding on the spot. I felt like such an idiot, not being able to ride a bike when 4 year old Dutch children can. First the bike was too big for me and I couldn’t reach the pedals. After we adjusted the seat it was still a tiny too big and so I needed to use the curb to get on it. Then, I had trouble pedaling. Once I got the hang of pedaling I forgot how to steer and nearly careened into N. and then into a car. There were some Dutch kids playing nearby and you could tell they were looking at me like I was completely foreign—well, I was. At long last, N. and I managed to get me onto the bike, pedaling and steering all at once (N. had to physically push the bike from behind so that it could get enough speed to stay upright) and as soon as I was going there was no way I was going to stop.
We rode around the town for about half an hour or 45 minutes. The fascinating thing about this town (Naarden) is that it’s basically a man-made island. It’s surrounded by these star-shaped fortifications dating back to 1600 that basically create a giant moat between the town and the rest of Holland. Just picture a castle surrounded by a moat, but then enlarge the castle so that the moat could surround an entire town, and you have some idea of what it looked like. I found the whole thing pretty fascinating, because when you look at an aerial photo of it, it looks just like a star, and it must have taken quite a bit of planning to get it to do that 400 or so years ago.
When dinner came around again, I was quite glad for the bike ride, because I had somehow managed to work up an appetite again. We followed the same procedure as at lunch, only this time the wine was red and there was a lot more food—Indonesian again. Apparently Indonesian food is a very Dutch thing, due to the colonies that the Netherlands had in Indonesia for so long. I believe that Opa and Oma might have even grown up in Indonesia, but yet they still consider themselves Dutch and have been living here since World War II. After the main meal, we had ice cream and lychees (some Asian fruit I didn’t really like) and that was followed by some Indonesian spice cake. I’m surprised that my pants didn’t burst open.
The next day N. and I went to Amsterdam. We got there in the afternoon and met one of N.’s Dutch friends, Michael (I have no idea how to spell how it sounded) and also one of her aunts (I managed to meet pretty much all of her family in only 4 days). We passed by the Wax Museum and the Royal Palace (the Dutch still have a figurehead monarchy, like Britain). Then we went to explore a market and got coffee in a café. The most astounding thing to me was how relatively cheap it was there compared to Paris. In Paris it’s about 4 euros for a hot chocolate (my drink of choice) but in Amsterdam it was only 2. It was so nice. We then got to wander around Amsterdam—I saw the Red Light District and three prostitutes! The Red Light District looks fairly banal during the day though, and it’s quite easy to stumble upon it without meaning to. Although, as N. pointed out to me later, the reason I only saw three prostitutes was probably because all of the others were busy. Ooooh.
After this, N. and Michael and I went to the Van Gogh Museum. Though Michael has lived in Amsterdam for all of his 20 something years, he had never before been to see the Van Gogh museum, so we forced him to come and be cultural with us. The Van Gogh Museum was alright, not great. I love Van Gogh’s work, but I had a problem with its presentation in this museum. All of his works were too crammed together, so after just a couple paintings you started to think—oh, there’s another Van Gogh. Eh.
Next we went to one of the oldest cafes in Amsterdam, right near the museum quarter. I wanted the Dutch cultural experience so we got Heinekens and bitte-balles (spelling?). Heineken is Dutch, obviously, and bitte-balles are like chicken paste (I don’t know how else to describe it) breaded and friend. They were actually pretty good. The only thing we were lacking was some Indonesian food and French fries with mayonnaise (the Dutch don’t like to eat fries with ketchup).
When N. and I got back to her grandparents, we decided to bake cookies. There were a couple of problems with this idea. One, we decided to start with one cookie recipe, but switched to a different recipe halfway through, so the measurements weren’t really exact. Also, Oma and Opa didn’t have any baking soda, so we had to forgo that. Then we also had to guess at the oven temperature because we were using the Crème de Colorado Cookbook which is obviously American. We finally put our cookies in the oven and discovered that they were VERY VERY buttery. My theory is that it was probably due to switching recipes, and also that the Colorado cookbook probably has its recipes adjusted to high altitude, and Holland is negative altitude, so maybe that’s why that happened. Nevertheless, they were quite tasty, just probably really bad for you.
This was about the time that I realized that my wallet was not in my purse. I searched my purse, my suitcase, and the entire house—no wallet. Was it hiding somewhere in the house, or had it been stolen in Amsterdam, or did I leave it in Paris? Most importantly, though, it meant I was out of funds. Wonderful. Just great. My vacation is for another 5 days and I have no money. This began a whole long complicated process of trying to communicate with my family via text messages about cancelling the credits card and bank cards and wiring money to Western Union, because a transatlantic phone call is expensive and I can only buy extra money for my phone in France. I hate bureaucracy.
Monday (the next day) N. and I went into Amsterdam. Our first order of business was to find Internet. I desperately needed to check my email because earlier in the semester a friend of mine studying in London now had said I could stay with him when I was visiting there. About 3 days before I left, I emailed him to confirm that I could still stay with him. By the time I had left, I hadn’t gotten a reply. I checked my email in Amsterdam—still nothing. Made me sort of anxious, as I was flying to London on Tuesday. Nevertheless, we continued to enjoy Amsterdam. Our next order of business was finding a piercing studio. We found one, and, long story short, I got my nose pierced. Yes, it hurt, but I didn’t cry or yelp or anything. First the lady pierced it and then she had to screw in the stud (tiny little diamond stud, no big deal). Getting the stud in was more painful than the actual piercing bit. So that was the crazy thing I did in Amsterdam. My parents still don’t know. I warned them that it might be happening, but I haven’t told them yet that I actually did it and they’re arriving in Paris tomorrow morning. So exciting!
After the nose-piercing adventure, we went back to Naarden and made ourselves dinner while the adults went out to a restaurant. I miss cooking. Technically I’m supposed to be able to use my host family’s kitchen but I really don’t feel comfortable doing that. So, it was nice to be able to make our own meal just how we liked it. That night I tried calling my friend in London, but he didn’t pick up, so I had to again coordinate with my parents in the US to get me a hotel room last minute in London, but they had to pay for it because I had no wallet—but thank goodness I still had my passport otherwise I would have been royally screwed.
Tuesday morning N. and I took a walk around the fortifications and saw the church, and then I got on a train to the airport in Amsterdam for my flight to London.
Actually, I ought to get to bed so that I can get to Charles de Gaulle early tomorrow. London can be a separate story.
