First day in Paris

Yes, I realize I haven't posted anything in a while. I've been busy committing various sins of the flesh before I return to the ascetic life of a graduate student. Anyway, here's the account of my first day or so in Paris.

I caved and bought a first class ticket on the intercité from Caen to Paris, because second class was nigh unbearable. In first class, there was air conditioning and plenty of room to put my luggage. I got my own little seat with a table and an outlet to charge my laptop, so I kind of zoned out and half-payed attention to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid while doodling in my sketchbook for the couple of hours on the train. After all the stress and discomfort, it was nice to sit around and chill without cuddling with a sweaty stranger.

Once I got off at Saint-Lazare, though, everything got stressful and uncomfortable again. It was nigh impossible to exit the building through the sea of Vespas parked out front. I hailed a cab. I told the lady the address of my hotel and then she proceeded to take me on what was probably one of the more terrifying car rides I've ever had in my life. This chick was crazy.

She drove really fast and was rather cranky with me the whole time.

Once I got to the hotel, there was nobody in the lobby and I had to stand there for ten minutes until I got the idea to call them. The phone brought the desk boy running and it turned out he'd been in the dining room, hitting on two girls from Seattle. Then he proceeded to hit on me, trying to woo me with his English skills. I spoke only French to him.

After hauling all my junk upstairs, I proceeded down to the street to find food. Mind, I hadn't had time to eat anything since breakfast in Caen and I'd been walking all day. A short jaunt down Boulevard de Magenta, past many creeps with half-drunk bottles of wine, and I found myself in a rather nice but reasonable place whose name I've sadly forgotten. Everything was candlelit and accentuated with crimson. I sat out on the terrace because it wasn't as hot as it was inside for some reason. The waiter was brusque with me the entire time, but dinner was good, so I didn't really care. On the other hand, they were playing a CD of ABBA's greatest hits, which, for me, is nigh unforgivable.

Penne au chèvre and a glass of Côtes du Rhône. Possibly one of the best bowls of pasta I've ever eaten. It was made with real cream and the chèvre tasted more like double-crème Brie and that bread was soft, crusty and chewy in all the right places. I honestly only ordered the Côtes du Rhône because it brings back fond memories of Lyon.

After stuffing my face, I marched, straight-backed and stony-faced, past the drunken hoodlums. There's this odd little sound I'd been hearing a lot when I walked past people in France. That night I realized that it wasn't people, it was men, and it was a little kissing noise. That's one of the ways they show interest in you aside from incessant staring and the occasional follow-you-for-blocks strategy. I heard the little noise walking back to the hotel and I looked back at a couple of men, probably around my age, who were both giving me insufferable grins. As if I'm supposed to swoon over them. As they turn back around and start walking again I contemplate chasing after them, yelling, "Wait! You handsome devils have stolen my stupid American heart with your crass kissing noises! I thought that the way to someone's heart was through good conversation and mutual interests, but you've shown me better! I must have you both, you darling rascals!" My better judgment told me to make like Tammy Faye Bakker's mascara and run.

I tore up the stairs to my room and forced myself to take a shower even though it was 11pm. After running around Caen all day, I was a mess. After the shower I couldn't sleep, though, and I ended up watching movies most of the night before falling asleep halfway through Fight Club. (I think I treat movies like most people treat security blankets.) My alarm got me up about an hour later at 5, when I rolled out of bed, called a cab, and jammed out to Charles de Gaulle to pick up Justin.


When we got back, we slept like embryos. Poor thing hates flying. But then when we got up we headed over to one of those horrible double-decker tour buses to get the lay of the land.

A strange species of primate I caught wandering the streets of Paris, begging for bananas.

Just a bit of a bridge over the Seine, nothing special. Seriously, it's not that special. You'll find grandiose stuff like this all over Paris.

See what I mean about the Vespas? They're everywhere!

We didn't really do too much the first day because we were exhausted. I dragged Justin to the Indian restaurant next door to the hotel where I stuffed myself with yet more delicious baingan bharta and naan while being snubbed by yet more rude waiters. Oh, Paris. The food was good there, but honestly, Lyon is where I left most of the shards of my poor, splintered heart.

Paradise in Normandy

After getting off the TGV to Paris, I didn't realize that my stopover was so long because I needed to get to an entirely different train station to get to the train to Caen. And with two heavy suitcases, a heavy backpack with a tripod tied to it, another bag full of stuff, and a pillow, in humid 95-degree weather, I had to take a bus across town. When I got to my train, one minute before last call, there was no room on the luggage racks and the seating in 2nd class was so crowded I had to squeeze in between some small children with all my luggage and nobody had any leg room. One could not lean the seats back and there was no air conditioning, and since I was literally incapable of moving without touching someone, you can imagine the misery.

There was so little room that this little guy kept falling asleep and stretching out directly onto my stuff, which I didn't mind, but his mom kept yelling at him not to do it, so the poor thing just kind of scrunched up in the seat like this.

All I could do was to plug in my headphones and shut my eyes. I remember what album I was listening to. It was Ready to Die by the Notorious B.I.G. I was so uncomfortable, stressed, sad, lonely, dehydrated and hungry, and when the music hit my ears it tasted like lemonade. Yes. The music tasted like lemonade. And not that powdery crap. Real lemonade with real lemons and real sugar. I can't really explain it any other way. The golden solace of some good 90s gangsta rap is not to be underestimated.

When I got to Caen, however, my conditions improved so rapidly it was like walking out of Hell and straight onto the Elysian Fields. The weather was reminiscent of Santa Monica in April, and when I got to my hotel I was greeted by an inordinately kind and uncommonly handsome desk boy who got me a glass of water and took my stuff up to my room without even being a creep.

And then there was my hotel room. Oh boy.

After a month on a granite slab of a mattress in a sweaty little room with no working appliances, this was paradise.

And the bathroom didn't look like an airplane bathroom!

All the junk I had to haul around by myself in the land of no elevators. Suffice it to say, I bumped into a lot of people, and I burned a ton of calories.

From my first evening in Caen. This is the river Orne. I was starving so I just walked along it until I tottered hypoglycemically into a Pakistani-Indian restaurant where I stuffed my face with baingan bharta and naan. And oh good lord was it good. I wanted to take a picture, but the guy at the bar was giving me dirty looks. I was, however, rather impressed with the general selection of actual decent vegetarian-friendly restaurants in Caen.

On my way back to the hotel, I stumbled across something horrifying staring at me from inside a taxidermy shop.

Self-serve orange juicer in the breakfast room at my hotel. Seriously, if you're ever in Normandy, Hôtel Bristol de Caen is where it's at.

After stuffing my face with bread and cheese, I asked the same handsome desk boy what was interesting to do in Caen since the buses weren't running to the D-Day beaches frequently enough for me to get there and back without missing the train. And so said handsome desk boy spent literally half an hour giving me detailed directions for all the stuff I wanted to see. It was awesome.

So on my way to my first stop I walked by this marvelous old church and saw this super creepy pair of statues. Note that the old man totally has a fly on his eye.

Same church, different angle. It was super old and gnarly.

An actual medieval castle built by William the Conqueror circa 1060. I didn't stay here long because there wasn't much to see as it's been gutted. It was also damaged pretty badly by bombs during WWII. But I had to see it because, if my decade or so of genealogical research is correct, William the Conqueror is my 32nd great grandfather on my mother's side. I know it's silly and doesn't change the fact that I'm an American plebeian with no real credits to my name (yet!), but it's also kind of cool.

Ze moat beneass ze drawbridge by which I stormed ze castle.

At the Hôtel de Ville (city hall), they have a hideous wax sculpture of William the Conqueror about which I still have nightmares.

Look at it.

LOOK AT IT! It wants your soul!

At the Abbaye aux Hommes, the resting place of William the Conqueror. I lit a candle because I like fire.

The tomb of the thigh bone of my dear old Great³² Grandpa Billy. During the French Wars of Religion in the 16th century, when the Catholics and the Huguenots were going at it, some idiot thought it would be a good idea to desecrate this grave and scatter the bones everywhere. To date, the only bone ever recovered was a thigh bone, and here is where it chills out.

Me 'n' mah pops. Weirdest family photo ever?

Speaking of bones, they put them in little reliquaries all over the place in most of the French churches I've been in. Ew.

 After meeting Grandpa the Conqueror, I headed over to the Mémorial de Caen, which is both a WWII memorial and also a pretty awesome museum. I didn't really realize it until I got here, but there may be a reason why the Caennais were super nice to me once they realized I was American.

The building of the Mémorial itself. The words engraved on the front are "La douleur m’a brisée, la fraternité m’a relevée, de ma blessure a jailli un fleuve de liberté," which roughly translates to "Pain broke me, brotherhood raised me up again, and from my wound, liberty has sprung forth."

By the entrance there are little commemorative stones from a bunch of different countries...here's the US.

Translation: I was born to know you/To name you Liberty.

Canada's was my favorite.

Now we enter the museum. Be warned: some of this stuff is a little grizzly in nature. I can't discuss this museum without making an attempt to treat the subject matter with due care. War and genocide are ugly but they are also real and I refuse to turn a blind eye to them.

My German isn't so good, but I'm pretty sure that says "Our last hope." I was very impressed with the way that this museum went out of their way to show that Hitler went about his Hadean chores quite legally and with an awful lot of support.

An American comic book about General Charles de Gaulle. As an aficionado of comic books, France, and World War II, I thought this was pretty cool.

French antisemitic propaganda for children. The first page translates to "A little later, he ratted someone out to the teacher in order to curry favor—Because he was a Jew!" The second says "At an older age, he cheated at the game so he could increase the number of his toys—Because he was a Jew!" What strikes me particularly odd about this comic is that the little Jewish boy doesn't look stereotypically Jewish, nor does he really look like a little boy. He looks like a very short adult.

 

 

 

More antisemitic propaganda. This is pretty typical, although I don't think I've ever seen one with a humanoid body greedily clutching the world like that. From the propaganda I've studied, the Jew wrapped around the world more often has the body of a snake. To render something subhuman makes it easier to murder, for some reason.

    

Unlike the American museums I've been to that deal with the subject, there was not a lot of sanitization or censorship regarding the brutality of the murderers. Here, they played interviews of witnesses to the massacre at Babi Yar in the Ukraine on the 29th and 30th of September, 1941. Between 100,000 and 150,000 were murdered there, but we'll probably never know exactly how many, or even who many of them were. The woman pictured here was a child when she hid behind the trees and watched the horror in the ravine. Translation: "The earth over the trench opened up at one place, from which the blood spurted out like a fountain."

Bloodstained prison garb from a Russian gulag.

A journal entry from July 15, 1942 entitled "A new St. Bartholomew's Day massacre." (Understatement of the millennium, methinks. The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572 was a torrent of violence by the Roman Catholics against the Huguenots all over France and resulted in thousands of deaths.)

Vive le monde libre!

Dummy paratroopers used to fool the Germans. Or, as I like to call them, "die Gummipuppen." (The Longest Day, anyone?)

Americans on Bloody Omaha. There were a lot of things like this around to show the loss of American life in Normandy, and there were American (and British and Canadian) flags all over the place.

The museum also has a temporary display area and right now they've got up all these rather controversial cartoons.

Of said cartoons, this was one of the more humorous, I thought, myself coming from the land of Priuses and banned plastic shopping bags.

For some reason they also have a pretty big wing on the Cold War, and they had a bunch of stuff from the States and the USSR at the time, and this old bottle of Pepto-Bismol made me chuckle for some reason.

I'm pretty sure that's a Soviet MiG-21. I drooled a little.

A section of the Berlin Wall. It would have impressed me, except the largest section of the Berlin Wall that currently exists outside of Berlin happens to be found on the Miracle Mile about a ten minute walk from my apartment, and the graffiti on it is gorgeous. (It did, however, make me really miss Los Angeles and all the mouthwatering vegetarian food trucks that always hang out about five yards away from that section of the Berlin Wall.)

Outside the museum is a memorial garden where they have little memorials from many countries, but since I was running late, I mostly spent my time paying my respects in the US memorial. There is a huge fountain that turns into a waterfall, and in a little sort of grotto underneath the waterfall are plaques from every US state and territory, and I took a picture of every single one of them. I can't include all of them, obviously, but I put up California, Texas, Arkansas, and Arizona, because the people most likely to read this come from there. However I shall post the link to my Dropbox where I shall upload all of my pictures from Normandy, because I took about 600. (It may, however, do you good to wait a bit for those because it says they'll take four hours to load.)

You'll note that the plaques are on different kinds of stone, and it's usually the state mineral. For instance, the Hawaiian one is pretty distinctive because it's made of lava rock.

Eureka!

Friendship.

Regnat populus.

Ditat Deus.

E pluribus unum.

Overall, Caen was Paradise on Earth, and it was kinda nice to let my hair down and be American for a day. If you find yourself in France, check out Caen. It's tiny (Only about 10 square miles!) and chill, but it's got some really interesting history, great weather, good vegetarian food and extremely kind people. Absolutely loved it.

Last days in Lyon

Yes, I realize I've been a bad blog owner and kept you waiting. I've been trying to work on this for a while but I keep getting verklempt and I've only just attained the emotional stability to look at these pictures again. Maybe. Let's see if I can get through this without crying.

The morning of July 18th. The nearest wall is that of my university, Université Lumière Lyon II. Kinda gives an overall feeling of the day.

 That day, all our classes had various presentations to give, so we all gathered in a big auditorium for some of those, and then others were on display in classrooms. The atmosphere was both jubilant and wistful. Like we'd all accomplished something great and were joyful to have met so many great people from across the globe, but we were all sad we had to part ways.

Me and Ross. I give him a lot of credit in helping me survive Lyon. People thought we were a pair of loons, but we are so much alike we really didn't care what people thought. I can't reiterate enough what an outstanding person Ross is.

There was a class that, from my understanding, played a lot of games in French, and at the end they sat out and explained to us how to play them. I got to play Taboo in French, which was even more fun than the original because it's more challenging to try to explain something in a language that isn't your mother tongue.

From the left: Marta from Barcelona, Clara from Madrid, Hilary from the States, and Diane from Lyon (She was a TA). The theater class put on some pretty hysterical skits. This one was a bunch of people in a doctor's office with different stuff wrong with them. Diane was really funny. She was supposed to be this old lady and her facial expressions were perfect and she kept talking about being able to "faire pipi" which made everybody laugh every time she said it. Which was about 37 times. Just proof that bathroom jokes really are funny even after kindergarten.

Same skit. The girl standing is Maha from Iraq (I didn't get to meet the other one as I wasn't in this class). Maha was in one of my other classes and she is absolutely brilliant. She's a gynecologist and she's only been taking French for about five months, but her French is amazing. She helped me out a lot in L'animal dans la ville, our class about the status and significance of animals in Lyon. We had to come up with decent questions to ask a veterinarian about the animals in the zoo, and she busted out some serious medical knowledge.

The protest. Another class actually arranged a protest as part of their presentation. Right after the skits, we started hearing banging and shouts of "Manifestation!" (Protest!) from outside, and we all just ran outside to see what was going on. They'd made all manner of signs and stuff and they'd written up a really long chant about all the stuff they were protesting. It was mostly about the fact that half the University closed down a few weeks into the program (including the cafeteria and most of the restrooms). Nous voulons manger! Nous voulons pisser! Nous voulons boire un café!

Another hot issue was the dormitory I happened to be unlucky enough to live in for a month, la Résidence Jussieu. Oh boy. They overcharged us for substandard housing (we had to share a bathroom including puddle-ridden, non-working showers with a bunch of guys! And we had no fridges!) and then moved us to another building in the complex for seemingly no reason. Then they demanded we pay them 56 more euro for moving. And even then, the internet barely worked, the power went out a lot, and my fridge was non-functional, and it was in a bad area about half an hour away from school so it was kind of a hassle, especially if you wanted any kind of food. Ever. A pox upon Jussieu.

Annie, one of the girls from Arizona. Complete and total sweetheart. Always had a kind word to say to everyone. She was homeschooled too so we had something to yack about. The Arizona kids kind of took me in and took care of me, especially over the 4th of July when I was a total emotional wreck and I really appreciate them. Good, good people.

 After the presentations, we all had lunch together inside this massive hall because it was raining. And everybody just sort of went crazy. We were trying so hard to pretend this wasn't goodbye, I guess. But we were all laughing and hugging and crying and picking each other up and stuff. It was really emotional.

From the left: Ashley from Arizona and Ariana from Arkansas (Well, actually she's from Georgia but she goes to school in Arkansas). Ashley is a vegetarian, plays the clarinet and has about a million different pirate shirts and has some serious hair-doing talents. Ariana is really brave and speaks her mind and wears whatever the heck she wants in spite of whatever anyone says. She also went straight to India from France for another study abroad program. I have a lot of respect for her.

More Ashley and Ariana. I think this picture captures at least part of the feeling of the day.

After Ashley and Ariana picked me up, Ross felt left out so he had to pick me up too.

My Jussieu buddies, Elena from Italy (she's doing a Ph.D in art history so of course we get along) and the ever-gorgeous Marta.

See what I mean about Ashley's hair? She has talents.

Marta and Valen. I absolutely love these two.

After all the fanfare and to-do, we all stood around waiting for our certificates, and I was very disappointed in my final grade (15.8 out of 20). That is, until someone informed me that between 13 and 14 out of 20 is really good, and by French standards, this grade would receive high honors as the professor would only make a 17, and God himself would only make a 19. I'm satisfied.

My favorite corner in Lyon. From here, you can see the river and the University and the Gaulish chickens on the bridge and it's walking distance from pretty much anything you could ever want.

After leaving the University, some of the Jussieu girls randomly decided to cross the river and get some ice cream in Vieux Lyon.

I just had to get a picture of this menu (they had an English menu and a French one) to give y'all an idea of why people call Lyon the food capital of the world. They even had a tomato basil flavored ice cream.

This is only half of what they had. I ended up getting a white peach gelato, which just reminded me of Texas for some reason. It tasted like home.

Lyon is known for something they call "traboules." A traboule, (derived from the latin transambulare, or "to cross") is a passageway, first built probably in the 4th century in Lyon with the purpose of letting people easily get to the Saône river from their homes, and later for the silk merchants on the Croix-Rousse hill to get to the textile markets at the foot of the hill. In more recent times, the Lyonnais traboules have been credited with helping prevent the Germans from completely occupying the area during World War II by acting as secret passageways.

A plaza at the opening of a traboule. Many traboules also serve as entrances to residential buildings so many Lyonnais use them every day just to get home.

A sign outside a coffee shop in Vieux Lyon that I couldn't resist photographing.

The metro station in Vieux Lyon. It's very, very, very deep underground.

Guillotière. Probably the reason why I sound like I have schizophrenia when I talk about Lyon. See, I love Lyon. Absolutely love it. However, I hate Guillotière. It is full of the vilest, most evil and perverted men you could dream up. I stayed in a hotel there my first night in Lyon, and was harassed very terribly that day along with any other day I was unlucky enough to be there, which was every day because my tramway went through there just to get to school. There was also a metro station that I had to use a lot there.

Lyon is wonderful, but Guillotière is a sheltered bubble of pure evil, a negaverse full of nasty, often drunken perverts that hit on you for breathing and grope you with absolutely no provocation. I have gotten into three fistfights there because of such disgusting behavior, and I am proud to say I won them all.

That night, a bunch of us decided we couldn't stand to not see each other again so we met up at an Irish pub. But before we Jussieu folk left for Vieux Lyon, Marta knocked on my door with a bunch of makeup in hand and said "I'm gonna paint you" before essentially pinning me down and giving me a makeover. Now if you know me, you're probably aware that the last time I really wore makeup was at my wedding three years ago and I did that pretty grudgingly at the behest of my bridesmaids. So I felt super weird. But people seemed to like it, so it was okay.

Ashley and I at the Irish pub. We ordered in French and the bartender actually got annoyed with us because it's apparently a faux pas to speak anything but English in an Irish pub in France. But it all went nicely after that, lubricated with much Guinness and good conversation.

My room in Jussieu the next morning after I'd packed everything up.

The most uncomfortable chair in the whole world! I mostly used it to hold my laptop when I was shooting video updates.

My sweaty, nasty, rock-hard old bed!

A view of my building, Bâtiment D. Don't be fooled by the pretty trees. This place is ghetto.

More of Jussieu being misleadingly innocuous-looking.

One of the last things I did in Lyon was take Ross to the Rhônexpress, the tram that takes you to the airport. Then, not gonna lie, I totally cried a little in the train station.

Then it was time for my own sad departure. But where? I still hadn't bought a ticket. I needed to get to Paris by the evening of the 20th, but until then I was free to move about the country as I wished. So I whipped out my laptop in the train station and tried to choose. It was between Strasbourg and Caen, but Caen took less time and was a tad cheaper, so to Caen I went.

At Gare de la Part-Dieu in Lyon, waiting for the TGV. Did I ever tell you that they smoke like chimneys in Lyon? Like, I'd be sitting there, obviously not smoking because I don't smoke, and someone would try to bum a cigarette off me. Seriously? Does it look like I'm smoking? It doesn't bug me when other people smoke around me, but isn't it just polite to only try to bum a cigarette off of someone who is already smoking? Gosh. Jeez.

Yeah, all those little yellow dots are cigarettes.

Little preview of the next leg of my adventure, which I shall be posting soon.

Thanks for waiting so patiently for this. I just couldn't bring myself to post it, mainly because I just miss those people so much. There was a lot of survival-based interdependence on this trip which led to very deep-rooted and heartfelt friendships, so I hope you can understand. I don't usually make friends easily back home, so the unconditional loving kindness I experienced at the hands of many of these folk was something I found profoundly jarring and is probably what changed me most of all. I am stronger because of all the hell I've been through, but because of all the selflessness of the people around me, I am warmer and I have a whole lot more love in my heart. CIEF folk, if any of you are reading this, thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Your compassion has helped me in ways I didn't even know it could.