As of right now, I have 26 days left in my semester here in Paris. It's crazy to me how fast the time has flown by! On the one hand, it feels like I've been here forever...and on the other like I just got in last week! That being said, as my time here draws to a close, I've been making a list of the things I still want to do and see before I go back to the States. Rather than call it a "bucket list" (implying that leaving France is equatable with death) I've decided to call it my Paris List. In between working on exposés, projects, and studying for exams, I've been trying to steadily work my way through things still on my list.
The first of which was to see Les Invalides. Les Invalides was built as a hospital for veterans, and now serves three main functions. Part of the enormous compound is still a hospital, but it also houses a military museum and the tomb of Napoleon I. It's a beautiful and striking building - I had seen it from the outside many times but never gone in. So Kaellen and I went to check it out last Friday! The building itself is as beautiful inside as it is outside - and Napoleon's tomb was very impressive! The military history museum was very interesting...but there was so much to see and to read that our museum stamina gave out long before we were really done. In any case, an enjoyable experience. I really liked seeing the different uniforms that soldiers from different countries wore during various wars and military campaigns.
^ The dome of Les Invalides - this is the church part with Napoleon's tomb
Another site on my list was the Musée Rodin - an outiside/inside garden museum featuring the works of French sculpter Auguste Rodin. He revolutionized sculpture back when all of the "masters" based their works completely off of the Greek and Roman sculpture of antiquity. His sculptures, on the other hand, are mostly bronze rather than the classic marble and are of real non-idealized people showing real emotion - they really draw you in! I had been wanting to go check it out for a while based on a recommendation from a friend, and when a friend Estefany from school said she was thinking of going, we decided to go together! I loved the outdoor gardens with the statues in them, but also found the indoor museum fascinating with its exhibits showing the process Rodin went through and many of his pre-sculpture sculpture studies in plaster and clay. My favorite part of all was definitely the rose gardens - I think overall I took a lot more pictures of flowers than of the actual sculptures!
While I was on a roll with my museums, I decided to use my day off yesterday to check out the Musée Carnavalet - a museum about the history of Paris. It was recommended to me by my cousin Megan who also studied in paris for a semester, so I decided to check it out. On top of being free, it was in a beautiful historic building with lovely gardens and a real variety of exhibits. The museum tracks the history of Paris from prehistoric times, to the Gallo-Roman settlers, through the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and finally the 20th centuries. There was a whole lot to see, and unfortunately parts of the museum weren't open to visitors when I was there. I did see a lot though - and learned a great deal about the history of this amazing city. I particulary enjoyed just looking around at the different everyday items from the past that were saved and preserved - like a window into a different century! My favorite (besides the gardens) was the sign gallery, which featured old shop signs with descriptive pictures, necessary because most of the clientele of the time was illiterate.
Finally, my most recent adventure was the promised "Paris by night" boat trip with my host mom Madame Alphonse, her daughter Marjorie, and Adam (the other student living with us). We took a boat cruise on the Seine with the Vedettes de Pont Neuf boat company - what an amazing view! Paris is a beautiful city during the day, but it's a whole different kind of beautiful at night! And after our boat cruise, we came back to the apartment and had champagne (Adam's first ever!) to celebrate Madame Alphonse's birthday. What a wonderful night! That's the last of my adventures for now - but I will keep posting updates as I work to cross other things off my Paris List!
^Marjorie, me, and Madame Alphonse on our boat cruise
^ just beautiful! I love this city!
Bonjour à tous!
After my two week vacation, I had a hard time transitioning back into school and homework...but before I had much time to recover I was off again! This time, I spent the long weekend in Germany with my friend Kaellen from Marquette. She has a friend from home studying in Marburg (in western Germany) and spent the first part of the week visiting with her. Friday morning, I took the train out to Frankfurt and we met up at the train station there to take a train together for Erfurt, a quaint little (positively medieval!) town smack dab in the middle of Germany. We spent Friday night exploring Erfurt, seeing some of it's tourist sites and just absorbing the ambiance.
^ the Merchant's Bridge in Erfurt
Saturday, we took the train from Erfurt to Eisenach to see the Castle Wartburg, another charming location and something of a pilgrimage for Kaellen and I since it was the castle where Martin Luther translated the New Testament into the language of the people (well, the language of those people - aka German) while hiding from the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. All the tourists except us were German (or at least German-speaking), so we were given an English translation of the tour and got to follow the group around the castle reading our "subtitle" brochure while the guide talked in rapid-fire German.
^ sitting on the wall of the Castle Wartburg!
Saturday night, we took a train from Erfurt to begin our Berlin adventure. Unfortunately, our train was 90 minutes late, and thus the second half of our weekend trip did not get off to a great start. Luckily, we arrived at our hostel just in the nick of time (the woman told us she was literally just picking up her purse to leave!) and didn't have to spend the night in the train station. On Sunday, we did our intense sight-seeing day, and took a 3-4 hour walking tour through a company called New Europe Tours recommended by a friend studying in Germany with an English college student studying in Berlin for the year, Simon. Simon was extremely knowledgeable and (I thought) very funny - so we learned a lot about the history of this city that has seen and lived through so much and had a good time too. In any case, we were exhausted by the time we got to the end, so we decided to see more of the Berlin Wall outdoor museum called the Topographie of Terror, and then find some dinner. We asked the young woman working the museum welcome desk, and she told us to try one of the train/tram stops, that there were a lot of reasonably priced places to eat nearby. So, Kaellen and I went there only to find a lot of closed-down store fronts and some to-go only kind of joints. So we ended up settling for this restaurant that actually served Middle-Eastern cuisine. No wurst for us, but it was still delicious! Monday we spent some time looking at the East Side Gallery - the other remaining section of the wall that is now covered in beautiful and haunting murals painted by various artists. Then we took a relaxing stroll through the Tiergarten - a garden stretching from the Brandenburg Gate to the Victory Statue, before heading back to the hostel, grabbing our bags, and heading to the airport to catch our flight back to Paris.
Bonjour à tous!
I've been "off the grid" - or off the internet at least! - so it's been a while since my last post. I assure you that I've used my time wisely! For the first time in my memory, I had two whole weeks of vacation for my spring/mid-semester break...and it was amazing! Thanks to the generosity of good friends I was able to spend the first week of my vacation in the Savoie region in the south-east of France (at the base of the French Alps) with Debbie and her fiancée Wim. The weather, food, and scenery were all incredible! For a girl from the midwest, waking up to mountains every morning was a new experience - I think I spent most of my time there with my nose pressed up against the window just trying to take it all in! The weekend I arrived there was an exposition for the St. Jean de Maurienne photo club "Photo Folies" of which Wim is a member, so I was able to see some absolutely beautiful photographs taken by mostly amateur photographers and showcasing everything from the local wildlife to scenes from Carneval in Venice. And while the photos were breathtaking, my favorite part of the expo was spending time getting to know the other photographers and their wives at the meals we shared together at the expo center. They were a very welcoming group, and so much fun! Most of them have lived in the region their whole lives and are close friends with each other. Saturday at dinner I laughed so hard I was exhausted! It was also a lot of fun for me (and great practice!) as I was elected/self-elected to translate for Debbie - between translating their comments for her into English and her comments for them into French I was really put to work! The food, prepared by the wives of the club members, was just incredible. After dinner, they started passing around two different "digestifs" - a very French tradition. The French love tradition, and the drinking etiquette at dinner is no exception. Before dinner, you have an "aperitif" - a kind of appetizer drink; during dinner, you (of course) drink wine; and after dinner you have a "digestif" - literally a "digestive" drink. The first one they had was a bottle of Chartreuse, a very strong liquor brewed by monks in the Chartreuse monastery in the mountains whose only contact with other humans is to sell the liquor (they apparently take a vow of silence). The second one was a home brew called genepi named for a local mountain flower they use to make it. Patrick, the president of the club, pulled the bottle out and it looked exactly like the bottles of "moonshine" I've seen in cartoons and bad movies. To be polite (and because we were more than a little curious) Debbie and I both tried a sip of the genepi - she estimated it at about 150 proof. We decided that it aids in digestion by destroying the contacts of your stomach!
In addition to photo expo, we also spent some time just relaxing, enjoying the beautiful views, and eating lunch out on the porch in front of the house. On Monday, they took me hiking near the mountains Les Aiguilles d'Arves. It was a lot of work, but Wim was a great guide and really helpful for me as a novice mountain climber. We saw some completely gorgeous landscapes and picnicked on some rocks up in the snow. I forgot that you can still get sunburned when it's cold and ended up a little pink (and sore!) at the end of our day but saw some amazing things and really enjoyed myself. We also were able to eat at two local restaurants where Wim knows the owner and sample a lot of the regional specialties. It was a delightful change from Paris to be in a small town where everybody knows each other and even if you don't you wave and smile when you drive past! I can also safely say that I may have instigated another Orangina addiction - you're welcome Debbie!
My second week of vacation, I traveled to Italy with my friend Kimmie (from church at home) who's also studying in France this semester. We figured out one day when we were talking that we had an overlapping week of vacation and decided to plan a trip together. We spent the first part of our week (actually 9 days total) in Rome, and the second half in Naples. Rome was very beautiful, and we enjoyed being real tourists - trekking all over the city, visiting all the sights, and taking tons of pictures! As neither of us speak any Italian (besides grazie!) we were initially a little nervous, but we had very good luck in both Rome and Naples at either finding someone who spoke/understood some English or using hand gestures and pointing to communicate. We hit up all the "main" sights, including the Coloseum, Palatine Hill, the Trevi Fountain, the Vatican Museum, and St. Peter's Basilica. All in all, by the time we got on the train to Naples we had very tired feet!
Naples was a very different experience. We had decided to go because Kimmie's mom had lived there for three years with her family when she was young, so it was something of a personal pilgrimage for her. Not all of it was bad, but the downtown area had a very dirty feel to it - a lot of garbage and graffiti. Needless to say, we spent very little time in the actual city! Luckily, there are a ton of different things to do or see nearby. Our first full day, we took the ferry out to the island of Capri, which was incredibly beautiful and probably my favorite day of our trip. The second day, we took the train out to Pompei and explored the historical ruins preserved there. Our third day, Saturday, it was rainy all day so we didn't get as much sightseeing done as we had wanted to. We did spend some time in the national museum that's in Naples - we saw a lot more naked marble people than I ever want to see again. I guess that's Greek/Roman sculpture for you... After the museum, we had an adventurous trek in the rain and were able to make our way to the address where Kimmie's mom used to live and take pictures of her in front of the building. Finally, we got on a train back to Rome, and from there another train back to Paris. All in all, a lot of train travel and time spent in train stations that left both of us very tired. But we both returned safely - so it all ended well.
This week was back to "business" for me, a rough adjustment from vacation back to schoolwork. But I survived, and now for my reward I'm traveling to Germany with my friend Kaellen this weekend. I'm taking the train to meet up with her in Frankfurt, and then we're taking another train to get to Erfurt, spending two days there, and then heading to Berlin. Based on my research into both it should be a lot fun with plenty to see and do. Hopefully I'll have another post updating you about my trip when I get back next week. For now, I'll leave you with a few pictures from my trips!
^ the view from my window! I can't get over it!
^ the sun rising over the mountains
^ me tossing a coin into the Trevi Fountain
^ sitting on the beach on Capri :)
