eastern bloc winds: 100% colder than any other winds

I'm back from my Central/Eastern European adventures in one piece, but my camera is dead so I haven't been able to upload any pictures yet. Don't worry, they're coming soon. Until then, some highlights from my trip:

- Slovakians are really into sheep's cheese, which makes for some delicious tiny dumpling/noodle/pasta-y things

- Bratislava (aka "the Brat") is tiny and lovely and you can walk it easily, plus there are random statues of Soviet war-type things all around

- it also has a bar called the KGB bar!!!!

- Budapest has too much awesome to do in a day so we extended to a day and a half; most of this was spent exploring the various Mexican restaurants of the city. Also the baths!

- Vienna is PRETTY but COLD

Either my throat is bleeding or I have TB. Finally.

i'm really cold

because I am sick again. Anyone surprised? Didn't think so. It's not anything too bad, just annoying...I think I have a mild case of the flu or something. I definitely have a fever and am FREEZING right now.

So life in Paris hasn't been terribly eventful the past couple of weeks. I talked to a nice old man on the Metro yesterday who asked me for the time. Numbers are my downfall in any language (including English) so that took a lot of effort. He chatted to me about how he's happy that his English is very good (it wasn't) and that he knows Italian too, and obviously French. For some reason he thought I was Spanish but when I said I was American he said, "God bless America!" He's the only person to have expressed such a sentiment so far, and it really surprised me.

We've spent 2 weeks learning about various French pronouns in class and it's killing my brain. I love grammar and such but these are so hard! I also have to come up with a topic for my 10 page research paper for my lit class...so I have had actual work to do.

In other news, I am going to Eastern Europe this weekend and am ridiculously excited! (By the way, the Germans made fun of me for using the word "ridiculous" in normal conversation - is that weird? They seemed to think it was terribly snotty and stilted, but maybe that's because they mostly talk to a Southerner...) We're going to Bratislava, Slovakia from Friday morning to Tuesday evening, and we'll be taking trips to Budapest and Vienna, both of which are really close. I hear there's a short boat ride you can take from Bratislava to Vienna and we'll see if we can do that.

This will be my first time in Eastern Europe! (Unless you count Turkey? I don't think so.) Slavs! Hungarians! I can feel many a history lesson coming on.

goodbye, bavaria

Because it doesn't fit in anywhere else here's a view from my cousin's apartment. You can see why I am quite jealous of his location.


So the next day the Germans went back to Jena or wherever else they might want to go, and we had to find somewhere to print my tickets. After another very large breakfast we wandered around looking for internet cafes and such, finally having to print them in a fabulously sketchy "casino".

Then to the most important part of my journey: the quest for lederhosen! It was Sunday, so nothing but churches were open. I had to settle for peering in windows, but I was satisfied. The pics didn't come out so well, though, because I was taking them through glass. Here's some men's lederhosen then baby lederhosen! Note the suspenders.



Actually on Friday night we saw people coming back from the Bockbierfest wearing lederhosen and that made my night; my cousin said sometimes people just wear them around!

There isn't much left to tell about my Bavaria trip..we walked around for a while before I had to leave, so I got to see pretty much all of the town. My knowledge of German at least tripled during my 2 days there so that's kind of exciting. I would definitely go back to Bavaria; to be honest I didn't terribly like Germany when I went years ago - it wasn't very interesting - but I didn't see this area. If I get the opportunity to go back, I will.

frisbee, mountains, and bockbier

Saturday my cousin's friends came to visit, but before they got there we decided to make a giant breakfast. There is a nice little market in the square near his apartment that he'd never really visited so we went there to get food. We wound up having strawberries, Nutella, bananas, fresh bread, cereal, eggs, and some sort of yummy sausage. Wow. I actually have a picture of it if anyone's interested.

We took a long journey to his work in an attempt to print out my return tickets but were unsuccessful. I did get some nice pics on the way, though.



After picking up his friends (one of whom studies at Jena! And knows the Burschenshaften!!) we climbed up a giant hill with very nice views



and a very Baroque church at the top (at least the inside..yeesh)



There was a cafe there so we sat and had a beer and looked at the pretty views. This is apparently what Germans do, according to my cousin. And then down the hill for a doner (yummy Turkish sandwichy thing - there are a lot of Turks in Germany and they brought their lovely cuisine) and, obviously, some beer.

It was at this point I learned about bockbier, which is, I think, a Bavarian specialty and is thicker and stronger than other beer. They told me the limit even for German men is 4 (which is 2 liters of it, by the way). We had it at this place that has the best name ever, if you can imagine it in German: Schloderer - with an umlaut over the o. It just sounds great.

After a game of frisbee the Germans got some pizza (pizza?!), and later we set out for somewhere to hang out. All the big beer halls were pretty full so we ended up back at the Schloderer place where a traditional Bavarian band happened to be playing! You know...lederhosen, accordians, oompah band. It was pretty awesome, but the Germans thought it was lame. Oh well.

return to germany

Friday I left early in the morning to set out on my loong train ride to Bavaria. I don't know how far the trip is, but I would guess somewhere around 700 miles, and I had to change trains twice. The tickets had been a whole issue in themselves the week before: I booked them online a week and a half before I left, and the ones to get there should have come in the mail days before the trip but they didn't. So much for German efficiency. I wound up having to buy another ticket there and currently am in the process of getting a reimbursement from the German line...we'll see how that goes.

So I left at 7 in the morning and got there around 3:45pm. The first leg of the trip, to Frankfurt, had a pretty empty train so I got to stretch out and relax a bit. The conductors thought I was French :)

For the last part I got to look at this gorgeous scenery of the Bavarian countryside (I took a bunch of pics just like these):



Immediately after getting to Amberg, the small town where I stayed with my cousin (once removed...? something like that) we left for Regensberg, a larger town where there is an Ikea. He hasn't been in his apartment that long and needed furniture so we took a little side-trip. Regensberg is a pretty nice town; it's not very large, but big enough to have several interesting things. Unfortunately, we only got to see one of those, the large cathedral, because we had limited time. I took pics but it was dark, so they ended up like this when Photoshopped:


I was quite hungry from the lack of good food in German train stations (that's how I knew I was no longer in France) so we looked for a place to eat and lo, fell on an outpost of Munich's most famous beer hall!


I had a traditional Bavarian meal - knudel - which turned out to be quite delicious, and of course the requisite beer. Now, I'm rather notorious in some circles for my distaste for beer so I was hesitant to order a real German one, thinking it would be significantly worse. The parents and such won't like this, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't bad. And hey, I was in Bavaria I'd probably be declared a witch or something if I didn't have any.

So then we went back to Amberg and visited the bar he lives above (he doesn't even have to walk outside! It's just below him!) where we ran into some of his colleagues from work. One of them is only known to me as "Pooo!!!"

They were German, of course, so I couldn't really speak to them, but their English was workable. When they found out I'm from New York they told us a club in Amberg was having a New Yorker DJ for the night and they wanted us to check it out with them.

We did, and it was interesting...apparently no one dances in German dance clubs, or does so awkwardly and with very small movements. I asked one of the Germans about it and he shrugged and said, "I guess it's not the German mindset." I talked to a bunch of people my cousin knows and they were invariably excited to find out I was from New York and most asked how I could possibly be interested in such a small town as Amberg when I'm from there. Silly Germans.

strasbourg deux

All right, last time I gave a general look at Strasbourg, so now I'll just talk about a few things we did/saw...

One of our first stops was the E.U. Parliament, which is a little bit outside of the central city but on the tramline. It's this enormous, modern, glass structure shaped in a hollow oval, and it has all the flags outside.



I don't know if this is THE Parliament - as there are other places in Europe where the E.U. will meet - or even if THE Parliament exists, but whatever they do there leads the Strasbourgians to believe they inhabit the "capital of Europe".

Only groups who call ahead can get tours of the building, so we could only walk around the inside courtyard. Security watched everyone carefully to make sure no one slipped in the many doors lining the circle.


Next we headed to la Petite France, a remnant of the medieval city that is still done up in an authentic way. It has tons of those old-looking houses and sits right on the river:


We didn't actually do much there but walk around, but it was so interesting! Tons of the buildings showed dates from 1400-1600, like this sauerkraut restaurant


After that we ate lunch then visited the cathedral. It is the tallest Gothic structure in the world, and for a while was the tallest building in the world. Inside there is a huge astronomical clock with little guys that come out and ding on glockenspiels every 15 minutes. I couldn't get a picture of it because it was so dark in there, unfortunately. The whole thing, unusually, is made of sandstone, so it does not have the same cold, grey look as most Gothic cathedrals. I only have good pictures of the outside, like I said, but if you're interested Wikipedia has some good pics of the inside.




I climbed to the top (well, as close as they let you) of one of the towers and got some great views of the city, one of which is in the last Strasbourg entry. There was a little museum on the bells and the construction of the towers, but most interesting were the names carved into the side of the towers:


I don't know how well you can see that, but the names were carved by tourists who have visited the cathedral throughout the centuries. It was just as much a tourist attraction as it is today starting in the early 1700's, as you can see by the carvings. One even had a little Star of David by the name.

I then went to the Museum of Decorative Arts, one of three museums housed in the Palais Rohan, where the archbishops of the Alsace region lived. It is a gorgeous Renaissance building, and the museums all seem really interesting, though I did not have time to visit the other two. The one I did visit focused, unsurprisingly, on how the rich of Alsace decorated their homes. There were some cool exhibits that I couldn't take pictures of, but I was able to get some of the porcelain. Aside from that, there were rooms done up as they would have been centuries ago, some turn-of-the-century toys, things like that.

So it was a really good trip and probably more interesting than I had thought it would be!

oops

Profuse apologizes for lack of updating...I've been busy and was in Germany this weekend. Tomorrow?

strasbourg un

Saturday I went to Strasbourg, right on the German border and France's 9th largest city (which isn't saying a whole lot). It was gorgeous and interesting and I had a really good time.

Alsace, the region around Strasbourg, has changed hands between France and Germany so many times throughout history that the culture there is nearly as German as it is French.


It certainly looks like a German city because most of its current buildings are from periods when it belonged to Germany. Those buildings, by the way, are very old, charming and quirky.




A lot of Strasbourg's appeal to tourists, aside from the French/German mixture, is its very medieval feel; the streets and buildings have mostly kept their medieval layouts, and the whole city is dominated by a huge Gothic cathedral. Across the river, however, are EU Parliament buildings that are super modern.

I didn't have too much in particular I wanted to do except look at some sites and museums, and the two girls I went with also had little on their agendas: one wanted to see the EU and the other mostly wanted to eat food. We arrived around 9:20am so most things were closed as we looked for breakfast. We wound up going to a boulangerie and splitting a small loaf of this yummy-looking bread that was sort of like glazed brioche. We don't have it in Paris, I'm not sure what it is. It was so good we looked around for more (all bread-type things are glazed there, mmm) and got it in a different form that reminded me of challah.

After just walking around the streets for a while we took the tram to the EU. The tram was an interesting experience: there's nothing stopping anyone from simply getting on and before every stop it plays very interesting music, all kinds of things from bits of symphonies to almost Jaws-like ominous phrases. It was borderline ridiculous for such a small and informal setup.

For lunch we made our way back down to the center of the city, right outside the most medieval part. We had gotten recommendations online and from guide books and chose one that seemed very authentic; like I said, one of the girls really wanted to eat Alsatian food. It was this tiny place with maybe 7 or so tables, had toy witches hanging all around the ceiling, and seemed to be run just by this one guy.

Alsace has a few particular specialties we wanted to try, so we wound up splitting a choucrute (sauerkraut), a tarte flambee ("a thin-crust pizza with a cream sauce base for toppings) with onion, ham, chevre and gruyere, and a potatoey dish with Munster cheese. I got creme brulee for dessert and it was delicious. In fact, our whole lunch was pretty good - we ate soo much. I guess before coming to France I wasn't quite clear on what sauerkraut is. It's not my favorite thing but it was decent, and seemed very authentic. (Pardon the weird light in this picture, the restaurant was very dark.)


Then we split off for a while to do our own things, and I went to the cathedral and climbed to the top, went to a museum, and then back to the medieval area. By the time I got out of the museum - around 6:00pm - everything started closing. It was really strange; all kinds of shops, even touristy ones, were closed by 7. There were just a few fast food joints open by the time we walked back to the train station.

Our train back was delayed 10 minutes, but that turned into 45 by the time we got back. TGV, though, will give partial refunds (or possibly credit? I'm not sure) if one's journey is delayed more than a half hour, so that's interesting.

I sat behind a little girl, probably 6 years old, and I couldn't figure out whether she was French or German, but she really epitomized the Alsatian confusion: talking to her grandmother she'd constantly switch back and forth between German and French, sometimes in the middle of sentences, just using whichever language she felt like. I found out she had come from Germany (she told me the train from Germany was delayed 2 hours because trees fell on the tracks) but her French did not have a German accent. Alsatians do have a distinct accent, but German accents are much different. I'm no German expert, but that didn't seem to have much of an accent, either. Her grandmother did the same thing. When the train was stopped and the girl turned around to talk to me she was perplexed by my inability to understand the German she used, but she was pleased to meet an American.


More later on some of the things we saw.

general updates

This week Paris decided it was going to get cold again. Colder than pretty much all of February. Holly warned me about this early on: Paris likes to lead people to believe it's going to be spring soon, but in the beginning of March it always tricks them and gives them all colds. Sneaky. So like I've said, I really wanted to go to Versailles but the cold rainyness has put off those plans.

I haven't been doing much wandering around at all this week, to be honest. On free museum day (last Sunday) I did, but it's been yucky out since then. I had a French test yesterday that I actually studied for, and I've been tired from lack of sleep.

In better news, I've discovered a really good, relatively cheap but sort of chain-type cafe near my Sorbonne class that is perfect for getting coffee and breakfast after phonetics. You can get a large coffee or hot chocolate and a mini baguette for 2.85, which is really good.

I keep aiming to get to the National Library (maybe even apply for a research pass!) but every time I go I wind up not having enough time before closing to check out the visiting policies. I did get down to the Opera again, though, and found out they only sell student passes in September. So if I want the student discount tickets I have to go to the house on the day each opera's tickets go on sale and line up - some people begin at 4am. Other than that, I can go the day of and try to get standing room or leftover tickets. That usually works in New York, so I think that's what I'll try. If not I guess I won't be going; the cheapest regular tickets are 70 euros and most of these operas I can see in NYC.

Hm, what else...phonetics is over for the next week, hooray! I love the class but don't love its earliness. The cat is in heat again and likes to wake me up at night to hang out and meow. I'm waking up at 5 tomorrow morning to get to Strasbourg and determine once and for all if Alsacians are French, German, French-German, German-French, Freman, or just bipolar. The people I'm going with want to walk a few kilos while we're there to cross the German border but I'm going to Bavaria next weekend anyway...so we'll see.

I'M SO COLD!

brussels, finally

I went to Brussels many years ago when I was a wee lass, but it seems pretty much the same. Generally cute, a few interesting buildings, rather dull, really good snacks. Nothing against Brussels; it's a lovely city, it's just that for me it borders between dull and pleasant. It was really cold, too which probably didn't help.


That's a view from outside St. Michel's, the official cathedral of the Belgian royals. It's kind of a rip off of Notre Dame in Paris:


There was a mass going on when I went in and I didn't realize it at first. Sort of embarrassing. It has pretty stained glass, but I don't think it's original.

We took a long bus tour of the whole city and I got a bunch of pictures of things and I'm not sure what they are. We went by the two royal palaces, within about 10 minutes of each other, a handful of churches form different periods and a rather mind-boggling number of parks and gardens. Aside from the very heart of the city, most of Brussels actually looks like suburbia. This thing is kind of interesting:


It's a giant model of an atom called the Atomium (creative) and it was made for the World Fair when Belgium hosted. All that's left of those World Fair structures is this and an American amphitheater. I didn't get pics of the EU parliament, sorry.

Then we were dropped off in the middle (read: tourist section) of the city to wander by ourselves. It was very cold and windy, as I said - so windy the 90% of the city that seems to be under construction was in danger:


My main goal was not to see the sights - as there really aren't many - but to eat food. Sure, everyone knows about Belgian waffles and chocolate, but they make a wide variety of sweet and fattening deliciousness. I got a few yummy caramels, of course sampled the waffles and chocolate, and some ice cream and macaroons (below).


The two I got were one from the far right end (almond milk) and the darker pinkish/red one (strawberry poppy). Both were scrumptious.

We visited the chocolate museum, St. Michel's cathedral, the peeing mannequin and the touristy indoor market but were too tired and cold to venture much outside of the city center. I wanted to go to the Beaux Arts museum but it closed at 5; I heard later it wasn't that great, though.

We did have a good time just wandering around the city, which has some really interesting window shopping and is generally very friendly, but we had to be back at the mannequin to meet and make our train. Three people, however, took a bit too much time getting back to the peeing boy (and perhaps had too good a time sampling the Belgian beers?) and we wound up leaving pretty late. Then Holly found out the Metro machines did not take foreign cards (a pattern, it seems) so it took a while to get the cash for our tickets. The Metro took its sweet time coming, and by the time we got to the station we had about 3 minutes to make the train.

Of course, none of us new the Brussels station well and had no idea where we were going. But 40 people sprinted through the station, running into each other and shouting the whole way. Two girls wiped out and were left behind in the frantic search. Turned out though, when the first of us got to the platform (I and about 4 others took the correct turn out of the Metro) the train began to pull away: no one made it. After a bit of confusion and a few freak-outs, Holly got us all tickets on the next train back to Paris, only an hour after ours.

Hm, this probably makes it sound like I didn't really enjoy the trip, but it's more I just didn't care as much for the typical sights one is supposed to see in Brussels. It really is a nice city, and I think I'd like spending time there not as a tourist.

municipal elections

While all of you in the States have been bombarded with stuff about the primaries, we're about to do municipal elections here. Each arrondisement (administrative neighborhoods of Paris, very old) votes for people to represent them to pick the mayor of Paris. These electors are the ones who actually pick the mayor, but it looks like everyone takes these elections pretty seriously.

Last weekend Catherine said one of the parties (Socialist, I think) organized a bike ride around the southern part of the arrondisement where people rode around and around the circle in the Place d'Italie. I'm not sure what this was supposed to accomplish, but it amused her. Just now she gave me the materials each party sends out to people so I could look over then, and they are interesting. There are more parties here, and with Sarkozy doing so badly in public opinion (he got down to 30ish% approval way faster than Bush and now is lower than Bush ever was - the other say I saw a graffitied "SarkoSSy") all the opposition parties gleefully tear him apart. Here's a rundown of their general thoughts (I'm translating so it's possible I've gotten something wrong):

Independent workers' party - more HLM (like low-income) housing in the district because Sarkozy is threatening old and young people's abilities to rent in Paris and a ceiling price for HLM; public money going to useful construction projects; lowering of water price; against making universities "independent" [of the state] because it would let them fall into "the hands of private interests".

National Front party (Sarkozy's) - they hate the Green party; stop gang violence because “Paris perd son cachet, son âme, son identité!” [Paris is losing its cachet, it's spirit, its identity!] and part of this is to allow less immigration and stop building mosques and cathedrales; a more direct election of municipal offices; make people not feel forgotten...? I'm not sure I get that one (Pire, de nouveaux égoïsmes, s’installent à l’égard des familles, des commerçants, des classes populaires et des classes moyennes. Tous ont le sentiment légitime d’être oubliés, délaissés, abandonnés.) This is the only party on whose list of supporters I see a very large number of retirees

Some dudes who like diversity - diversity; make the tramway longer! (no one uses the tram); more retirement homes; build more schools (but they're seriously everywhere, on like every block) and make them more handicap accessible; make hours for municipal leisure activities (sports buildings and such) longer - this is why they don't even have a name, Parisians hate to work. But they have the two time French boxing champion supporting them!

Véronique Vasseur (more on her later) - hates the Commies/Greens/Socialists because they make the roads dirty and make people lack ambition; she's the doctor who wrote the book about the Prison de la Santé, so she wants the conditions there to be better, though I hear she doesn't care about the conditions at the places they keep illegal immigrants when they find them; make the tramway longer!; more video surveillance!

The Greens (who generally have the most interesting jobs) - general ecological stuff, the most interesting of which is to set up a "fruit and vegetable" food stamp type thing; they have a list of international supporters including one José Bové, militant paysan et altermondialiste (militant countryman [really "peasant"] and alternative worlder. Hm.

"100% Left" party - more apartments built by the river; more open meetings of the arrondisement admin and all of Paris; free parking at train stations and quays; more welcoming reception for those coming to Paris without papers; it has a possibly unsurprisingly large amount of student/professorial supporters.

"Pour un 13e de Terrain" party (not really a party..) - more culture (example: make Chinatown prettier!); a very large retirement home for 13ers; improve traffic (?); more cultural intergration

Alternative Left party (I do believe these are the more radical Communists in disguise, and also have José Bové's support) - redistribution of wealth (that's all it says!); seizing of vacant buildings for HLM housing; let those without papers wander Paris instead of putting them in temporary housing where they can't work; and my favorite, they want to give me the right to vote (le droit de vote et d’éligibilité pour les étrangers non-communautaires). I'd probably vote for these guys because one of their platforms is "pour combattre la misère." Many on the list definite themselves as a "fighter" for something or another.

The "Workers' Fight" party - mostly they complain about Sarkozy, and want to sanction him

The "Make Paris More Humane" party - more housing; make the tramway longer!; offer more community classes for things like gardening and sports

Most of the people running, by the way, are not politicians; they have regular jobs and are just people who live in the 13th. First round of elections are this Saturday, and the second next Saturday.

no mistakes, my dears

I want to go to Versailles this week but it's so cold! Every day I go out hoping it'll be nice enough to walk around the gardens but it's not. I've not been able to sleep at all this week and I'm getting past the point of tiredness into delirium - so apologizes to anyone who's been subjected to that recently (ahem, Tim, David, Priyam, Kerry).

I was almost asleep last night and then there was a spider on my bed. It was all I could do not to screech, and I couldn't sleep the rest of the night.

I'm thinking I should just ignore all personal interaction while I'm here as that hasn't been working out so well for me. I've messed up everything with all my friends at home and have gotten into the middle of two distinctly different crowds here: the ones who were tipsy off half a glass of wine a couple of weeks ago, and the ones who spent last weekend in Amsterdam testing out every story they've ever heard about the place. It's rather awkward and honestly I'd prefer to hang out with the people from my French class.

The Bastille Opera building is so confusing. I want to get a student season pass (such good deals! so cheap!) but I literally cannot find the ticketing place in the Opera. Verdi! The Barber of Seville! Dido and Aeneas!

I'm pretty sure I should just become one of those disaffected, bitter Parisians who sits in Montparnasse all the time. And wears black berets. I just can't bring myself to take up smoking - otherwise I'd be perfect!

new classes

So the final part of my academic life in Paris has begun: we've started phonetics. It's a bit earlier than I'm used to but not terrible if I manage to get to bed at a decent time. And the class itself is really interesting, much different than anything else I've had. Language classes generally focus on the learning the words and translations, but in phonetics we really just work on pronunciation. We go over certain aspects of the sounds for the first half hour of class, and for the second half hour record ourselves phrases over a few times. The prof then listens to the tapes and I guess will give us individual corrections and comments. Every person in my class is a native English speaker, so part of it will probably focus on what common errors English speakers make in French pronunciation. The past 2 days we've gone over l'enchainment consonantique (er, I think) which is how the words run together in French, and tomorrow we're starting vowels. Very exciting (not sarcasm).

There's a girl from my program in the phonetics class, and we both have the pratique at 12pm after it. So we've gotten coffee and worked on our homework together between classes both days, but it's kind of awkward because we don't have that much in common. Yesterday we went to a chain coffee shop where she knew a couple people that worked there and one guy (a native French speaker) took his break to help us with our homework. It's useful to have a Frenchie around to correct my French grammar homework.

In other class news, a girl told me today she thought I looked like Sarah Brightman. Um. I guess this means my hair is getting too long. And possibly that I seem psychotic.

PS - if you Google image "Sarah Brightman" one of the things on the first page is captioned "Angie as Sarah Brightman" - that's not me I swear (I'm not that creepy).

business

At a request from David - sorry I haven't updated in a few days, I have been generally tired and busy. So here's a quick rundown: Saturday I went to Brussels and bought a lot of sweets and missed the train back (but there was another), Sunday was free museum day and I some duck for lunch, yesterday phonetics was too early, I got help with my homework from a Frenchie and and spent altogether too long looking at trains to Germany. Also I'm not going to Nice this coming weekend but Strasbourg.

I'll update more fully when I get back from class today.