au revoir

It's hard to write a final farewell blog without knowing if I'll be coming back in the fall (though the prospects of getting renewed as a lycée assistant are not as promising as I'd hoped). It's also hard to write a blog after two hours of sleep and several more of laying on the unforgivingly cold and stony floor of CDG, but I know if I don't get this started now I'll never get around to it later. 

(sidebar: Aside from the appalling lack of a tempurpedic mattress, the overnight CDG experience was much nicer than I'd been prepared for. Terminal 2A, while not affording any long benches without armrests or privacy, was clean at least and they dimmed the lights at night with no annoying announcements running. Altogether a much more pleasant experience than when I spent the night in the Lyon airport in December.)

Before I left Sainté yesterday, my friend Orrin and I were discussing how year abroad experiences affect people, and he asked me if I thought I'd changed much. For some of our friends there were more obvious transformations, but I couldn't think of any ways that I had perceptibly changed. Even after reflecting upon it further, I don't think living in France has drastically changed me in any way (folks back home will have to set me straight if I'm wrong on that ;). 

I know I’ve become a more adventurous cook, and I’ve come to appreciate how easy it is to get fresh ingredients at the marché. I’ve always been a huge fan of bread and cheese, though, so being in France has just facilitated my access to the good stuff.

Being here has certainly given me a new perspective on how the US is seen from abroad, at least from the viewpoints of my French, Canadian, and British friends. Especially having grown up and spent more or less my whole life in the South, you don’t realize exactly how…I’m trying to find the right word here… pervasive? the idea of the bible belt is, and just how religious the US really is.  It’s kind of funny that historically Catholic France is now known as a secular-socialist bastion, whereas the US has gravitated towards religion after being founded by many notable agnostics and atheists.

Buuuut this is a travel/living abroad-themed blog, not a political one, so I’ll leave any further discussions to be had in person (preferably over some wine and cheese. Or burgers. Or both).

I'm going to miss France a lot. I already started feeling nostalgic for Sainté (and even for Feurs, to a certain extent) before I even left, and even now I'm not sure I've really processed that my year as an assistant is over. For all that it can be a bureaucratic nightmare sometimes (and for whatever reason, the internet in France seemed to have had a personal vendetta against me), it’s got a lot going for it and I anticipate some reverse culture shock when I get home.

But I know I can be happy no matter where I am, whether in the land of air conditioning, customer service, and McDonald’s or that of trains, wine, and pervasive cigarette clouds, or anywhere else for that matter. It just remains to be seen what lies ahead.

Lyon: bouchons and traboules and macarons, oh my

So, here I am again grasping at straws for why I haven't updated in so long.

Actually, I do have a good excuse or two: for the first week of my spring break, I was flat broke and had nothing interesting to report (buying a plane ticket to the US tends to do that, ugh), and for the second week (once I'd been paid), I was too sick to spend any money traveling. Then all of a sudden two weeks have passed and I'm out of the habit of blogging, and really I ought to be spending all my free time studying for the DALF (diplome approfondi de langue française, a language fluency certification exam I'm taking next week) anyway... you know how it goes.

Of course there's nothing like having a test to procrastinate studying for to motivate me to blog, so finally it's time to catch up! I'll try to make keep these on the shorter side so as to not completely screw myself over for this 90 € test I've just paid for.

Despite being first broke and then sick, I did manage to leave St-Etienne on the one day a full bank account and good health overlapped during the break to go on a day-trip to Lyon with some friends. My friend Andrenne was showing friends of hers from back home around Lyon, and a few others of us decided to tag along.

Our first objective upon arrival was to track down a bouchon, one of the meat-centric (specifically pork) restaurants that Lyon is famous for. We wound up at Chez Georges, a tiny little restaurant tucked in a side street near the Opéra (to the left, checking out the menu). It was a really cute little place, and we wound up almost all getting the menu of the day, which was poached eggs in a beet/mushroom/onion sauce followed by almond-crusted baked fish in a cream sauce. Not very strange-pig-part intensive at all, and ooooh so delicious.

As it was Andrenne's friends' first and only day in Lyon, we spent the afternoon hitting up Fourvière and some other main areas I'd been to before, and then we went to the Opéra in the evening. Verdi's Luisa Miller was on the schedule, and it was a really lovely performance (especially for 13 € last minute tickets!). The only downside to our cheap tickets was that we couldn't all sit together, but it worked out since I wound up getting shuffled from only a partial view of the stage to front row center of the (albeit fourth) balcony.

In order to make up for lost time during the break (and also since now especially I realize I'm running out of time), I went again to Lyon during the first week back of school. I don't have class on Wednesday and had been talking for a while with my friend Stephanie about going "trabouling" in Vieux Lyon and Croix Rousse, and we figured that was as good a day as any. Traboules are old, somewhat secret corridors between and under buildings (which were extensively used during the Resistance), and the old part of Lyon is teeming with them.

And finally, I made an appallingly recent gastronomic discovery: macarons. I'd always ignored them in the boulangeries because they looked like they'd be nothing but dry little sandwich cakes, but oh boy was my judgement in error there. Steph had first introduced me to them a couple days before, and by last Wednesday I had been fully converted to being a macaron-lover. We sought out Sève, a macaron shop on the bank of the Saone River, and each feasted on a handful of macarons:

Mine were framboise (raspberry), praliné (hazelnut), and beurre de caramel salé (salted caramel butter), and I've also previously tasted chocolate and pistachio. Suffice to say they were divine. The color may be off-putting to some, but I anticipate that these delicously moist and flavorful cookies (if you can call them cookies?) will be pervading my dreams for a while to come.

I hate to just throw up such a disjointed post, but it's already long overdue! I'm off to Toulouse tomorrow for the weekend with Vanessa and have a wee bit of a backlog of other entries I've been meaning to write, so I may come back and flesh this out at some later point.

La Grève Strikes Again

Just when I'd stopped thinking about them, France decided to whip out a couple strikes to throw a wrench in my day. I had a package to mail out this morning, so I headed out to the closest post office. Alas, a notice on the door of the darkened bureau notified me that they were closed to strike over poor work conditions. «Le mal vivre au travail : ça suffit !» is their slogan, which I'd loosely translate to mean "Poor working conditions: we've had enough!" I didn't realize post office employees had it so rough, but according to Le Figaro's article long term medical leave as well as suicides are on the rise among these employees. Yikes. Luckily the big post office in town was open, so I was able to mail my package (and provided this strike doesn't last, Mom, you should be getting a little something hopefully in time for Mother's Day).

Strike two occurred when I tried to go to the pool with my roommate Ghislaine. We took the tram up to the Grouchy pool (pronounced groo-shee, of course), only to be greeted by this sign:

"Because of a strike, the pool will be closed at 11:00am. You must leave by 10:40am"

Come on, guys. What's your excuse? Poor work conditions due to chlorine inhalation? It's a swimming pool, for crying out loud. If you don't want to work in the afternoon, at least get creative. What ever happened to just saying that a kid pooped in the pool?

Chartres

Chartres may not be a very prominent blip on most tourists' radar, but after having taken a French class on cathedrals in my last semester at UGA, I was inspired to visit this small city located just an hour outside Paris by train.

Like with Rouen last fall, seeing the cathedral was my main reason for visiting the city... and also like Rouen last fall, Chartres' cathedral was also undergoing massive restorations, which are even visible from this photo taken from near the train station. One of these days I'll learn to investigate ahead of time if there's construction going on...

The cathedral is visible from just about everywhere in town, so it was our logical first stop (after detouring for a ham and cheese sandwich).

Forgive me for a moment, because I'm about to geek out about this awesome Gothic structure. Notre-Dame de Paris may be the most aesthetically pleasing Gothic cathedral in France, but Chartres' Cathédrale Notre-Dame is probably the most interesting, at least in my opinion.

For the probably very few of you who haven't yet rolled their eyes and clicked back to email or facebook or something more interesting, I'll tell you why! I wish I'd been able to look back on my class notes for Chartres so as to be a better tour guide before going with Vanessa, and I wish I had them now too as I'm blogging about it.

So, from entirely fallible memory: Several Reasons Why Chartres is Awesome.

1. Layer upon layer of rich symbolism

(much of which surprisingly has nothing to do with traditional Christianity)

The first thing you notice when approaching the cathedral is the difference in the two towers. One is Minas Tirith, and the other is Minas Morgul... just kidding. The one on the left is the Gothic-style Sun Spire, and on the right is the Romanesque-style Moon Spire. On second thought, maybe I'm not so far off-base with the Lord of the Rings jokes after all...

This cathedral abounds with references to the lunar cycle, one of which being that the difference in height between the two towers is 28 feet, the number of days in a lunar cycle (yeah, yeah, Europe's all Metric now, but this was back in the day when a foot was someone's actual foot).

2. Badass labyrinth

No, you're not likely to get lost in it, but the design and symbolism of this stone labyrinth set in the floor of the nave are still pretty cool, especially since it's one of the only ones still intact since the Middle Ages. The path winds around haphazardly, sometimes approaching the center, sometimes extending back towards the edge.

It's sometimes called the "chemin de Jérusalem" (path of Jerusalem), probably because the holy lands were forbidden to Christians at the time, so following the labyrinth might have replaced actually voyaging to Jerusalem.

A less religion-specific theory is that the labyrinths adopt a pagan symbol to represent the trajectory from birth to death and the afterlife. We're born into the profane world, shown by the entrance to and outer edge of the circle and wend our way --sometimes with strange detours -- to death and paradise at the center.

Like the difference in the heights of the Sun and Moon towers, the diameter of the labyrinth is 28 feet (which is also the same size as the rose window on the west façade), echoing the importance of the lunar cycle. I also remember learning that the number of stones used in the labyrinth equals the number of days in a pregnancy, which reinforces the idea of spiritual rebirth (via death) at the center.

3. Stained-glass windows and the zodiac

For anyone who believes that the zodiac and Christianity are incompatible, here's solid proof that that's not true. The above is one of the cathedral's most famous stained glass windows, with representations of all the signs of the zodiac and the months of the year. Chartres is also famous for the deep blue of its windows, known as "le bleu de Chartres." And if stained glass windows weren't enough to draw you in, the arches around the North entrance to the cathedral also feature carved versions of the signs of the zodiac.

4. Badass relics

Above is le voile de la Vierge, known in English (I think?) as the Sancta Camisa. Supposedly it's the tunic the Virgin Mary wore at Jesus' birth, and somewhere along the line it came into the possession of Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres. In fact, its survival of the fire that destroyed all but the romanesque tower in the 1100s is the main reason the cathedral was rebuilt so quickly, since it was interpreted as a good omen.

It could be said that historians looking back can find all sorts of coincidences and symbols that weren't originally intended by the architects, but there are enough similarities between cathedrals to lead me to think that they are beautifully executed buildings. Their many layers of symbols, both religious, secular, and sometimes downright superstitious served to appeal to and/or intimidate all layers of society, so I'd say they succeeded. If I haven't managed to convince you by now that cathedrals are at least somewhat cool, then I give up!

In addition to the domineering cathedral, Chartres itself is a beautiful little town, especially on a fine spring day. I'll round out this already ridiculously long entry with some shots from around town:

(I swiped a couple photos from the internet due to construction and the labyrinth being covered by chairs when we visited. The first image of the façade comes from here , and the bird's eye view of the labyrinth comes from here.)

a Friday in Paris

Here's another update that's long past overdue, but with two weeks of spring break upon me I now have no excuse not to catch up on the non-marathon related bits of the weekend in Paris.

For someone who was planning on running 26 miles in the very near future, I sure did wind up doing a lot of walking in the couple days before the race. On Friday morning Vanessa and I took the TGV up from Sainté and arrived in Paris, dropped our bags at the hotel, and promptly set out to take advantage of the beautiful weather.

I had an insatiable falafel craving, so based on a vague memory of a little stand in the Latin Quarter that I'd been to with my UGA friends Nick and Maddie during Fall break, we set out to find it. Turns out it's a chain place called Maoz and not so hole-in-the-wall-y as I had recalled, but at 4.50€ for a giant, delicious falafel sandwich I was happy.

Neither Vanessa nor I had been to the Musée de l'Orangerie, so after lunch we decided to walk (again, what was I thinking...) down the Seine, past the Louvre and through the Jardin des Tuilieries to get there. We crossed over at the Pont des Arts, the footbridge known for the many locks placed there by couples overwhelmed by Paris' romance (top left image above). After a thorough but futile hunt for Vanessa and her boyfriend Peter's lock, we continued past the Louvre and took a leisurely stroll through the gardens. According to the French it was unseasonably hot outside, but with temperatures hovering in the low 70s I thought it was just perfect outside, and all the flowers in bloom seemed to agree.

Once again being a temporary resident of France paid off as we were able to get into the museum for free. The Musée de l'Orangerie houses Monet's eight huge Water Lilies paintings ("Decorations des Nymphéas" in French) in two giant oval rooms, which were surprisingly empty for a Friday afternoon. For whatever reason, the general lack of tourists allowed me to get some great photos of the paintings:

The people in the pictures gives somewhat of an idea of scale, but there's no way to describe how standing in front of these giant panels of color and nature makes you feel. I've mentioned before that I feel somewhat cliché being such a fan of Monet and Impressionism, but there's no denying he made some gorgeous works of art.

During Fall break in October while Brooke and Josh were off gallivanting around London, I went by myself to the Musée Marmottan-Monet and liked it enough to want to go back if time allowed, especially since it would be free with my resident visa. We wound up deciding that me picking up my race number was a bigger priority and set off for the failed Race Expo attempt (see the marathon blog for more details on me being a dumbass), although Vanessa did manage to make it there Sunday morning while I was running. It sounds like the huge basement area where they displayed some of Monet's larger paintings was under restoration, so it's a bummer that Vanessa didn't get to see them.

By this time evening was approaching, so we headed back to the Latin Quarter to track down an Italian restaurant to fulfill my carbo-loading requirement. We got off a couple metro stops early to take the scenic route over the Seine and the Ile de la Cité and passed by Notre-Dame. Of course, as anyone who's been reading my blog up to now knows, I can't just idly pass by a gorgeous cathedral (especially Paris') without stopping to gawk and take a picture or two, and the fading light of sunset made it even more irresistible.

This was the third time I've been to Paris during my year here, and I still haven't been able to climb Notre-Dame's tower to hang out with my future friend Le Stryge (though apparently these days he's blocked off by a fence to prevent jumpers). I probably could have made time on this trip, but the idea of climbing a bunch of stairs with a four-hour race on the looming horizon was considerably less than appealing. One day, perhaps!

Marathon de Paris

When I got home last night from the marathon it was all I could do to take a shower and crawl into bed, so the blog had to wait until today. Endorphins don't wait til you have an internet connection before fading, alas!

On Friday morning Vanessa and I headed up to Paris. The marathon wasn't until Sunday, so we had a couple days to sightsee before the race. We visited some museums on Friday and day-tripped to Chartres on Saturday, but details on that will have to wait for a later entry.

Since they don't mail out race numbers, I had to go by the Running Expo in order to pick mine up. After a long day of museum going and strolling the streets of Paris (probably a less-than-prudent idea considering I had an imminent 26 mile race, but oh well), we made our way down to Paris' Parc des Expositions. It was there I made the unfortunate discovery that you had to provide a medical certification from a doctor saying you were fit to run a marathon, which I hadn't even thought to bring since they're not necessary in the US. Thankfully I'd had one done in the fall, so in a panic I called my roommates to see if they could scan or fax it to me. An even better solution presented itself: my roommate Simon was coming up to Paris later that evening for work, so he brought it with him and I met him at the train station to pick it up.

Running Expo: Round Two on Saturday was more of a success. I was there early enough that there was no line, so I got in quickly and had some time to browse the various stands of running gear and promotions of future races. It really amused me to what degree wine and other famous French beverages were used to attract runners to upcoming marathons:


Beaujolais is a region just outside of Lyon known for its red wines; every year on the third Thursday of November, there's a celebration and tasting of Beaujolais Nouveau (or "new" Beaujolais), so called because it's fermented for just a few weeks before tasting. The Marathon de Beaujolais coincides with the release of the new wine, so of course this figures heavily into the promotion of the race. This all sounded lovely to me at the expo, but after running the marathon yesterday I couldn't imagine anything less pleasant than a dehydrating cup of wine...except maybe if someone had told me I had to keep running. The Marathon de Marseilles also jumped on the boozy bandwagon and used pastis, Marseilles' signature liqueur, to promote their race. Ricard is a specific brand of pastis that my roommates are especially fond of, though I'm not much of a fan of the cloudy, licorice-tasting drink.

Sunday morning came sooner than I might have liked, but by the time I was up and dressed I felt ready. Despite my usual aversion to eating before running, I knew it would be a bad idea to go into a four-hour race on an empty stomach and managed to get down some trail mix, fruit, and water before heading to the metro.

The beautifully organized expo gave me high hopes that the race itself would be similarly well thought-out, which I guess it was but for a few notable exceptions:

You might think that the marathon organizers would have realized that 40,000 hopefully well-hydrated people might need to empty their bladders at the last minute before attempting a three to five hour undertaking, and they'd indicated on the map of the start area with a little "WC" dot that there would be toilets in each of the eight start wave groups. And indeed the start map did not lie; there was a port-a-potty in each section. ONE. Eight toilets to serve 40,000 runners... you do the math. Having banked on being able to go pee after having downed a bunch of water in the hotel, I was greatly disheartened to see at least 50 people waiting on line to use one port-a-potty 15 minutes before the race. If I hadn't been in such full-bladdered agony I would have thought to take a picture, because it was a really funny sight.

I did at least have the presence of mind to ask a fellow runner to take a picture of me with my phone camera at the start line, and I also snapped a picture of the start on the way up to my time group's waiting area:



Back in idealistic October when I signed up for the race, I thought just doubling my best half-marathon time would be a good indicator of where I'd finish in a full marathon, and I signed myself up in the 4:00 time group. As the race approached, though, I realized that was perhaps not realistic and thought 4:15 or 4:30 was a more reasonable (if not still totally crazy because I had decided to run a marathon in the first place) goal. I still started with the 4:00 group, which worked out perfectly when I could stand it no more and had to run into a fancy hotel along the Rue de Rivoli about 10 minutes in to the race and ask to use their toilettes. Thankfully they obliged, and I ran out just in time to see a runner with a 4:15-pace banner flying.

Rather than do what I usually do during shorter races and expend my energy by starting too fast, I realized I had to consciously pace myself and decided to stick with the 4:15 group. The first half of the race passed quickly, and before I knew it we were passing the halfway point at 2 hours and 7 minutes (just one minute slower than my first Atlanta half-marathon time, which I thought was kind of cool). Up until the half-marathon point, I felt surprisingly great and was wondering if I maybe shouldn't be going faster, though I was soon disabused of this notion. No sooner had I crossed that point than fatigue began to set in, and by the time we were 2/3 done I knew I would be seriously hurting after.

I also made a point to stop every 5km (about 3 miles) for water and food, generally grabbing a handful of raisins and a bottle of water. They also were offering sugar cubes, bananas and orange slices, but I didn't want to take the time to stop and peel/eat the fruit, and pure sugar just wasn't appealing.

For once, having an iPhone was actually more of a hindrance than it was useful. I'm used to running while holding stuff, and I thought having my phone with me while listening to music would be convenient. I would have wanted my phone regardless in order to meet up with Vanessa afterwards, but listening to music turned out to be unneccesary given all the activity going on during the race. Every kilometer or two there were bands, drum circles, or stereos blaring music to motivate us, and the noise of the crowd was such that I could hardly hear my music anyway. Also, having a precious electronic device to protect really got in the way of wanting to pour water over my head or run through the water they were spraying on the course! I did give in to temptation once (you could even call it necessity, given how warm out it was), and so far the phone seems to have escaped unscathed.

Despite feeling progressively more and more fatigued, apparently I was still advancing as far as my placement in the race, at least according to the text messages Vanessa got about my splits at the half, 30km, and finish. I don't remember all the exact numbers, but of 40,000 runners I was around 22,000 at the half; around 20,000 at the 30km/18.5mi point; and I finished at 17,888. So I finished the top half! Considering only 19% of the runners were women, I'm pretty proud to have done so well.

There's a bit of a discrepancy about my final time; according to the chip/text sent to Vanessa I finished at 4:26, but according to my watch and the fact that I was ahead of the 4:15 pace groups, my time of 4:14:45 seems like it's right. Either way, I did it!

The fun was not quite over once I crossed the finish line. We were herded down the block to have our time chips cut off our shoes, then picked up t-shirts, water, powerade, and fruit. I hadn't made time for more than a couple handfuls of raisins during the race, but once it was over I must have devoured an orange or two's worth of slices in a matter of seconds, and my big bottle of powerade was long gone before I'd even managed to find Vanessa.

I felt during the whole race that we were really packed together; usually after the beginning of most races, people spread out a bit as some speed up and others slow down, but either due to France's narrow streets or just the sheer number of competitors, you had to be just as careful about watching your step at mile 1 as at mile 21. In fact about 20 minutes in (somewhere around the fourth kilometer), the race came to a dead standstill for about 30 seconds, and we only slowly got going again after that.

This only intensified after the race, which brings me to my only other complaint about the event -- the post-finish line set up was horribly arranged. Wanting only to get to the metro and sit down, I didn't dawdle at all once I'd grabbed some basic nourishments, and it still took 40 minutes to trudge a block and a half to find Vanessa. I guess central Paris doesn't have the convenience of being able to spread out the finish area in Piedmont Park like Atlanta does for the Peachtree, but even so, 40,000 sweaty, exhausted bodies (or at least 20,000 around when I finished) along with friends and family members they're trying to meet up with crammed into the space of a block and a half just seems like poor planning to me.

However, I eventually tracked down Vanessa and had her take a lovely sunburnt post-race picture of me, and we set off for the metro (after a brief stop for a candied apple for her and a hard-earned but unfinishable kebab for me). Our hotel was kind enough to let us leave our bags there in the morning after checking out, and they also let me use a washroom to change out of my now biohazardous running clothes and at least wash my face, though unfortunately (more for the world at large than for me particularly) I couldn't take a real shower until I got home to Saint-Etienne.

I wrote on facebook that the marathon was one of the most painfully wonderful things I'll never do again, which I think is true. It was a great experience, but I think one marathon in my life will suffice. Though there is a slight nagging voice in my head wondering if I could break 4 hours... but I'm going to ignore it for a good long while (at least until the idea of walking more than five steps doesn't fill me with abject horror :)

Thank you to everyone who supported me both during the race and while I was preparing for it!

Sick Days and Work Ethic

Today was the first time I called in sick from work since arriving in France. I'm not perfect or anything; it wasn't the first time I missed class due to missing a train or a communication error with a prof, but it was the first time I consciously decided not to go.

I've been feeling the slow onset of a cold for the past couple days, and this morning I woke up with absolutely no voice at all -- a rather inconvenient symptom for someone whose job it is to speak English all day. A bit of selfishness factored in as well, since with the marathon in 3 days I want to be feeling as good as possible (also, the prospect of going back to sleep at 6 in the morning was very tempting). But as soon as I sent out a couple text messages to let profs know I wouldn't be coming in, a huge wave of guilt crashed over me, and I couldn't even get back to sleep.

I'm wondering why I had such a reaction. I grew up watching my parents run their own company out of our house and then later from a real office, and they simply had no time for sick days (though I certainly faked enough of them in elementary school ;). Even now that my mom works as a high school teacher where it's possible to bring in a substitute if you're feeling unwell, she hardly ever calls in sick. With such hard workers as role models, I guess I took up the practice of slogging through the work/school day as well unless I was absolutely out of commission.

I'm not on my deathbed today. I actually feel pretty fine, aside from an increasingly runny nose and an inability to make any sound other than a croak. I guess I always feel like there's an intangible quota of sick days, so to take one when I still could physically manage to go means I couldn't take one tomorrow or next week if I was feeling even worse.

From casual observation, this is not at all how it works in France. I don't know if French concepts of the work week and vacation time (40-50 hours in the US vs. 35 hours here and 1-2 weeks of vacation vs. a month (at least) here) carry over to the way they look at taking sick leave, but it's possible: a little while ago I overheard a conversation in the teacher's break room criticizing one teacher who was coughing and sneezing, saying she should have stayed home so as not to infect everyone else. I can sympathize with the sick teacher, though -- unless you make up your hours, they're docked from your pay, so I'll have to make up the three classes I missed today. Sometimes it seems like the easier way out just to get through the day feeling unwell rather than to face the obligation of finding the time to make it up.

Outside the realm of teaching, there seems to be a certain penchant for milking the system for all it's worth. One of my roommates came home from a weekend skiing with a tweaked shoulder and wound up taking a week off work -- I can't imagine that being acceptable in the US. Maybe the first day or two back, okay, but after that you man up, take some Advil, and get back to work. Then again, if he was offered paid sick leave for it (I don't know if he was or not), I can imagine that being hard to resist as well.

Alright, time for me to brew some tea, go hunt down some throat drops, and try to ignore my guilt. Here's hoping this little cold runs its course quickly so I'm feeling better before the race Sunday!

Grenoble

The haphazard series of day-trips continues! Last Saturday I went with my friend Vanessa to Grenoble. I'd heard from friends who'd gone before that it's a beautiful town and makes for a good day trip, both of which were proven true. Vanessa had heard about a great Marc Chagall exhibit at the fine arts Musée de Grenoble, so we wanted to make it there while the exhibit was still in town (on loan from the Centre Pompidou in Paris).

I think it would have helped to have done a bit more research on Chagall and Russian avant-garde art since the museum assumed its patrons had a certain frame of reference, but the exhibit was still interesting and very informative. In addition to many works by Chagall, it also featured paintings by Vassily Kandinsky, Natalia Gontcharova, and Mikhail Larionov, among others (never heard of any of them? Never fear; I hadn't either).

After the museum, we walked back to an Indian restaurant, Taj Mahal, that our friends Kathleen and Marryn had recommended to us from their day trip a while back. 9 € got us a fried veggie appetizer, chicken curry, and semolina cake for dessert, though we also opted to pay a bit extra for garlic naan bread and mango lassi. The food was delicious and a great value, so it was surprising that we were the only ones in there at lunch time, but consequently we got to chat a lot with the waiter about Indian desserts, language, and traveling in North America.

After imbibing so much delicious Indian food it took a while for us to muster up the energy to move. We did eventually make our way over to the base of the Téléphérique, those bubble things you can see in a picture above, that take you up to the Fort de la Bastille. Unfortunately the line was too long and the day too pretty for waiting, so we decided to try and walk up. A sign at the bottom informed us it'd be an hour-long walk, though we just wound up going part of the way up in order to get a nice view of the city. I'd actually really like to go back to Grenoble eventually and walk or hike up the trail and see the Bastille, the fort that guarded over Grenoble in more bellicose times.

We decided to stroll through downtown on the way back to the train station and got caught up in a flash mob, though we managed to stay on the outside of it. Between that and the beautiful day, the streets of Grenoble were absolutely pulsating with people, and even the Jardin de Ville (town garden, bottom left in the collage above) had multitudes of people out soaking in the sun.

Between a desire to hike up to the Bastille and knowing that I didn't get to try the region's signature dish (gratin dauphinois, a casserole composed of sliced potatoes, whole cream, grated emmental, garlic and herbs), I do hope to find myself back in Grenoble one day.

Comice de Feurs

Between moving to Saint-Etienne and all my travels, perhaps you thought I'd forsaken the small town where I currently work and lived for my first three months here.

If only I could.

Actually, that's not entirely true -- living there may have been truly an exercise in boredom- and bureaucracy-conquering, but I do enjoy working there (if not so much the commute).

But back to the point: this past weekend was the 127th annual Comice de Feurs, a giant agricultural market and festival that completely takes over the town for four days. As the poster shows, you can buy all sorts of farm animals, including roosters (for raising or for making coq au vin), puppies, or very regal-looking cattle.

With the Comice spanning from Friday to Monday, I didn't have to make an extra trip up to Feurs in order to participate (though it may have been a thing of beauty to actually see people in the streets on a Sunday) since my walk from the train station to school on Monday mornings takes me through the center of town. I actually wish I'd thought to take an earlier train so I could have done more than just snap a few photos on my way to work, but at least I got that much.

In addition to browsing livestock, you can also:

Update your farm equipment with a new tractor!

Support local farmers by buying their sausages and nougat!

Buy a new car from the Post Office-turned car dealership!

There's a huge parking lot in front of the Post Office that's usually reserved for the Tuesday farmer's market, so it was very strange seeing it filled with new Renaults, Peugeots, Citroëns, and Toyotas.

I didn't get to see any of the cows, dogs, or poultry myself since I was both on my way to work and you had to pay to get in, but I certainly could smell them! I'd also been wondering if there would be any attractions for kids amidst all theses agricultural goods and drove past some State Fair-esque rides that were starting to be dismantled on my carpool home from work Monday evening, so at least there was more to this event than just cows and tractors. I wonder if they had funnel cake...

As the self-advertised "Capitole Agricole de la Loire," Feurs' Comice seems to attract people from all over the region to stock up their farms, but the local attitude for the Comice seemed to be much less enthusiastic. One of the reasons I saw as much of it as I did is that the usual bakery I stop by on the way in from the train station was boarded up for the duration, so in order to get my pain au chocolat fix I had to seek out a place that actually bothered to be open... athough to be fair, the entrance was almost impossible to get to thanks to the monstrously huge tractor in front of it. Also, last week one of the teachers I work with actually groaned out loud when her son told her he had to go for homework (she later told me she made her husband go).

All in all, I'm glad I got to experience this small part of Feurs culture even though I'm not living there anymore.

Arles

After a day and night in Avignon, we set off to Arles, a town known as a one-time residence of van Gogh and of beautifully preserved Roman ruins. Arles is equally proud of both heritages, and thus street plaques for several different walking tours criss-cross the town (much like the owl foot-path plaques in Dijon). We continued to have beautiful weather as we hit up the main sights:

Les Arènes, Arles' Roman amphitheater

The amphitheater was constructed around 90 AD and could seat about 20,000 people. After seeing the Coliseum in Rome just about anything else pales in comparison, but Arles' version is still quite well preserved (and undergoing renovation at the moment, but I mostly managed to avoid pictures of tarps and scaffoldings). It's still used for bullfights in the summer, hence the bleachers that have since replaced the worn- or carried-away stones that once served as seats. Apparently during the 17th century houses were built inside, back before renovation and restoration of old ruins and monuments became fashionable.

Le Théâtre Antique

Speaking of the days back before preservation of ruins was fashionable, the main reason the Antique Theatre is such a poor representation of its former glory is because people used it is a convenient source of construction materials, and like the Amphitheater, built in and around it. It too is still used today for concerts, movie projections, and live theatre.

Café la Nuit, supposedly the model for van Gogh's Café Terrace at Night

Les Alyscamps, Arles' biggest necropolis

There's more to this necropolis than my picture captures; there's a long, sarcophagi-lined walk that leads up to it. Dating back to the 4th century, it housed Arles' first bishops and is more famous today for being featured in some of Gaugin's and van Gogh's paintings.

Le Cloître Saint-Triomphe

Fittingly right next to the Eglise Saint-Triomphe, this 12th and 14th century cloister was built to accommodate the monks' daily lives. Although both church and cloister are right on the main square next to the hôtel de ville (mayor's office), the cloister was surprisingly quiet and peaceful. Half-dozing for a few moments up on the roof (behind the little arrow-slits in the photo), I managed to get my first quasi-sunburn of the year.

Avignon

A lovely five-hour pause between classes today has given me ample time to catch up on emails and update my CV and eliminate every other plausible excuse for not writing a blog, so at last here's the first of my (hopefully two) updates on Provence.

Once I'd had my fill of day-trips for the first week of winter break, I went with my friends Vanessa and Dan to visit a couple of Provençale cities.

Our first stop was Avignon, which is about a three-hour train ride from Saint-Etienne. The countryside seemed to transform the farther south we went, and what I'd thought was decent enough (if still typically gloomy) weather in Sainté soon gave way to clear blue skies.

Some highlights from Avignon:

The fact that Avignon's still got a fully-intact wall around it is sometimes eclipsed by its more famous attractions, but it was really cool to see as we rode in on the bus from the TGV train station.

The Palais des Papes (Popes' Palace) is one of the bigger sights to see in Avignon, as it was (one of several) seats of the Papacy during the Great Schism in the fourteenth century. Very much living up to palatial dimensions, the Palais was huge but had an excellent layout of information. An audioguide was included with admission, and I'm pretty sure you could spend a whole day in there if you took the time to listen to everything it said.

And here at last is the famous Pont Saint-Bénézet, better known as the Pont d'Avignon. This picture doesn't give the most comprehensive view of it, but it was the best I could do short of crossing the river! It was constructed between 1177 and 1185, supposedly at the behest of 12-year-old Saint Bénézet, who received a divine order to build a bridge out over the Rhône at Avignon. We couldn't figure out exactly why it doesn't span the whole river (and I've since been too lazy to do what would probably be an easy Google search and find out), but my guess is that they had to shorten it to allow bigger boats to pass, since it's not a very tall bridge.

Here's the view from the end of the bridge, looking back towards Avignon and the Palais des Papes.

Annnd finally a random assortment of other photos I took around town, including the awesome upside-down iron elephant statue right in front of the Palais des Papes:

Annecy

A brief three and a half weeks ago (sorry for the delay! I have no excuses to offer aside from my usual delinquency), I went with my fellow Feurs purgatory-suffering friend Laura to Annecy, a town famous for its once filthy but now pristine lake.

Clocking in at a three-hour train ride, Annecy's on the far end of my day-trippable range, but a combination of a sunny day and knowing I probably wouldn't bother making a longer trip of it convinced me to go. Laura managed to escape from her well-meaning but overbearing host family in Feurs, so we met up in Sainté ever so early in the morning and made it into Annecy around 11.

The first order of business -- even before seeking out the lake -- was finding something to eat. We wound up at a dine-in only crepe stand that had only two stools at the counter, which was somewhat odd but worked out perfectly for us. The guy who made our crepes was nice and gave us some advice about what to see in town, though he was thoroughly appalled (even seemed a little bit personally offended) that we were only staying in his lovely town for the day.

After picking his brain and enduring harsh judgement of our travel plans, it was time to see the sights. We had picked up some walking tour maps in the tourist office that we half-assedly followed, but Annecy is small enough that just wandering around will still ensure that you see everything.

Despite the sunny, warm weather, the lake was heavily shrouded in fog. That definitely put a damper on my excitement for the town, but we still had a lovely walk around town and managed to take some nice pictures:

Feeling a bit of a late afternoon sweet tooth, Laura ordered a meringue in a bakery that was almost as big as our heads. Unfortunately she forbid me to take pictures of her eating it, for it was truly a majestic sight to see (this picture of me with the chocolate meringue will have to suffice).

Known more for winter/summer sports than for intellectual pursuits, Annecy boasts only one museum worth visiting (according to my Lonely Planet guide), the Musée Château d'Annecy. We decided to check it out. This museum was the most random collection of things I have ever seen; no coherent theme seemed to link the items, which ranged from coins to an absurd amount of stuffed North American animals to huge empty rooms with tiny modern art installments. This piece took the cake, however:

Major props to anyone who can even attempt to explain what it means.

Only after a thorough tour of Annecy's quaint streets did we head over to the lake in hopes that the afternoon sun would burn off some of the fog. It was certainly clearer than earlier, and I was very much impressed by just how clean the lake was; it almost could pass for a swimming pool. Apparently back in the '60s the lake was a filthy receptacle of all the sewage in the region, but after a massive clean-up effort it's now said to be the cleanest lake in Europe.

ASSE/Brest

One of the great joys of living in Saint-Etienne is that its soccer team, the Association Sportive de Saint-Etienne (ASSE), makes such a delightful acronym to make fun of in English.

I didn't catch the game tonight, but Saint-Etienne beat Brest 2-0... thus proving that ASSE is better than Brest (at least this time around!).

Other favorites include:

- Nice/ASSE

- ASSE/Toulouse

Allez les verts!

Le Puy-en-Velay

Known primarily for its crazily huge (and, let's face it, marginally tacky) red statue of the Virgin Mary, Le Puy is a surprisingly lovely little town. I get the feeling it's not on many people's radar as a big tourist spot, though apparently, perhaps thanks to our giant friend Notre-Dame de France, it does attract a lot of religious visitors each year.

Some friends had day-tripped au Puy a little while ago, so I knew it was a feasible destination from Saint-Etienne. Getting there actually proved to be a little more turbulent than I would have liked; Claire and I were on an almost empty train, but towards the end of the voyage a crazy guy plopped down next to me and across from Claire and started making very strange snorting noises. He was quite an invader of personal space, elbowing me repeatedly and sticking his legs out entirely under Claire's seat, forcing me to cram up against the window and Claire to sit with her legs curled up under her. I also got the distinct impression he hadn't bathed in a few months, but since I was trapped in the window seat we couldn't move... and his level of crazy was high enough that I don't think he'd have taken it kindly if we'd asked him to. At any rate, we suffered through the last 30 minutes of the train ride before arriving in Le Puy, where we told ourselves it could only get better from there.

And get better it did! Friends of a friend live in Le Puy and had invited me to come visit them, so we planned to get some lunch. Claire and I met up with Stephan and Laurence near where they work, and we headed to one of their favorite restaurants nearby. I realized when it came time for dessert that I hadn't had a chocolat liégeois perhaps since I first came to France in September, so when Laurence decided she'd have dessert I thought I might as well indulge as well. One bite of molten frozen chocolate heaven and I was wondering what had taken me so long... then again, you get what you pay for, and a 6.50 € indulgence is not something to be consumed every day. Claire got a café liégeois, which is similar to its chocolate version except you pour a shot of espresso over it instead of melted chocolate. Yum.

But enough about dessert... It was really nice to see Stephan and Laurence again; I had met them once before when an English teacher I work with, Lilian, had shown me around Saint-Etienne in October (back before Sainté was home). They lived in Tahiti for two years with their four-year-old twin daughters and had done some traveling in the US, so they were full of awesome stories and also gave us some great tips on making the most of our day in Le Puy.

One such tip was to check out the bakeries on Rue Pannessac, which invented a pastry called "le pavé de Pannessac" and modeled them after the cobblestones, or pavés, that pave the streets. Claire and I took some would-be arty shots of the culinary pavés with a reflection of their source material in the window, as shown on the right. You'd think our earlier dessert binge would have given us pause, but no! We later stopped back by this bakery and each picked out a pavé; I was feeling adventurous and opted to try the verveine version, since Le Puy is also known for historically manufacturing verveine liqueur, while Claire stuck with the regular chocolate kind (a wise choice, as it turns out). They were an interesting cake-like cookie, with two macaroons surrounding the respective verveine/chocolate filling, wrapped in an outer shell of white or milk chocolate. Gotta love regional French delicacies.

We did manage to fit in some sightseeing between dessert consumptions and made our way up to the beautifully Byzantine and Roman Cathédrale Notre-Dame du Puy (shown to the right and also visible in the first picture, directly below the statue). I do love me some nice Gothic architecture, but I do admit it was a pleasant change of pace to see some colorful Byzantine influence in this cathedral. More than just the building of worship itself, the cathedral complex also comprises a pretty cloister filled with lavender and the entrance to the climb up to the giant Virgin Mary statue, both of which I managed to connive us into getting the EU-resident student price. Mwahaha. I'm pretty sure the shop lady shot us a dirty look afterwards when she heard us speaking English.

Some more photos from around Le Puy:

The view from the feet of Notre-Dame de France

Notre-Dame, up close and personal

The view from the central arch of the cathedral

All in all it was a wonderful day trip, and I'm glad I was able to drag Claire along with me. Tomorrow I'm headed to Annecy with my "student" Laura (who's on exchange au Lycée du Forez), and then next week is Avignon, Arles, Aix-en-Provence and Marseille! Hopefully I can keep up the momentum on blog posting.

au revoir!

Dijon

First, some recommended watching to start off the entry.

Two nights ago I decided I was being ridiculous by squandering my first week of break away in Saint-Etienne and wrote up a list of feasible day trips, determined to strike out upon the morrow. Based on its having the most promising, least sainté-overcast-looking weather, Dijon edged out ahead.

Bright and early yesterday morning I mustered up the energy to catch the 8am train, which put me into Dijon around 11:00. I napped away most of the train ride and was happy to discover that between closing and opening my eyes the world had gone from grey (non-poupon) overcast to cloudless blue skies.

I was surprised to learn that Dijon is actually smaller than Saint-Etienne; they're just now starting to construct a tram line. Its smaller size did make it very navigable though, especially since I'd come without a big plan aside from requisite mustard tasting.

My Grey Poupon references are actually a bit inaccurate as concerns Dijon, since although the Grey Poupon people own Maille, the brand Dijon is most famous for, France actually phased out Grey Poupon a while ago (though for all that they put up a nice store front, I think it's all owned by Kraft these days anyway). Speaking of Maille's lovely storefront:

Since 1747! Owned by Kraft since 1999, but you don't see them flouting that fact...

Wall of Mustard

I sampled the chocolate/speculoos kind, which was definitely weird. Sugary smooth flavor with a hint of mustard, immediately followed by a huge spicy kick... it makes for a nice novelty, but I have no idea what you'd actually eat it with.

There's more to Dijon than just mustard. It used to be the capital of Bourgogne (Burgundy) and has some very rich history. Below are some Merovingian-era sarcophagi outside the Cathédrale Sainte-Bénigne.

The Museum of Archaeology is housed next to the cathedral in an old monastary with exhibits in the monks' dormitory and in the foundations of the building as well:

Dijon is also crazy about owls since a big tourist attraction is a little owl (chouette) sculpted into the side of the city's biggest church, Eglise Notre-Dame. Said to bring luck to those who touch it, its features have almost been worn away by centuries of rubbing. There's even an owl-themed walking trail around the city, the focal point of which is the little carving on the left, below. At the bottom center is a little dragon carving, located in a window just to the left of the owl. Apparently there are conflicting rumors about whether you're supposed to approach or ignore the dragon and whether it brings bad luck or cancels out your owl belly-rubbing wish, but curiosity overcame superstition and I decided to investigate.

I'll soon post a bunch more pictures from Dijon on facebook, but I wanted to at least get a blog up about it before I got lazy and punked out. Tomorrow I'm day-tripping to Le Puy, a small but supposedly picturesque town, and then perhaps Annecy on Saturday. Then Provence next week!