My semi-valid reason for not having posted: loads of work and a lack of Internet, as you will see when several posts suddenly show up within days of each other. Onward.
It’s my last day in St Andrews and most of the other JSA’s have already left. It’s just me and a bunch of people who are going to come back next year without me. I don’t deny it: I’m feeling a little depressed. Also, it’s raining, which does little to help the mood.
My goodbyes don’t take long; everyone has to be out of the dorm by 10 this morning. I say goodbye to Dawn, my cleaning lady, and the porter, neither of whom I could understand very well my first day here, but who welcomed me nonetheless, and who I’ve seen every day since getting here, and therefore now understand clearly. We pretend we’ll see each other again. I say goodbye to all my friends. We’ll visit, we say, and thank God (or at least Mark Zukerberg) for Skype and Facebook.
Eventually, everyone’s gone. I catch the bus. I’m headed to Edinburgh airport, but not to go back to the States just yet. I’m visiting my friend Emilie, who lives in France.
I take the bus to Edinburgh, another to the airport, a plane to Paris, and the metro to meet Emilie. Since I’m arriving fairly late after all that travelling, we head straight for the goods: dinner. We pop into a wine and tapas place Emilie, her boyfriend and his friend know via the Internet is having some sort of half price night tonight. Emilie and I share a cheese board with some delicious, strong cheese, some foie gras, a French classic, and French sausage. This, topped off with literally the best wine I’ve ever had, made for a night.
The next morning, Sunday, Emilie and her boyfriend are headed to the tennis matches in Paris, to which they got tickets a while ago. While they’re ogling Roger Federer, I ogle some works by Manet, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh and, my personal favourite, Cézanne, in the Musée d’Orsay.
Though I’m no visual artist, I am an avid art appreciator, and spend all day in the museum. I see literally everything, including an impressive amount of paintings I recognise from my art history book. There’s a special exhibit on Manet, and since I got the student ticket and it’s only two euros more and I’m at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, I splurge. Since I’m alone, I can spend all the time I want, which, in all honesty, includes about five minutes at each of Cézanne’s works and a lot of time at the Manets.
This takes my whole day and Emilie, her boyfriend, his roommates and I have a picnic dinner on the roof of their flat in the Paris suburbs that night. We can see a very tiny Eiffel Tower from our spot.
Monday Emilie and I spend a last day in Paris, visiting the fairly new Centre Pompidue, a center for often interactive modern art.
The centre does a good job of blurring the lines between visual, media, film, audio, literary and spoken word arts, one of its main purposes as a museum.
After visiting the Pompidue, we wander over to the Louvre, which I’ve already seen on my last visit to Paris, but which has a big park next to it with a large fountain, which we sit next to, just relaxing. The last time I was here it was much cooler and cloudier, so it’s nice to be able to sit outside enjoying the weather.
Eventually, we decide that any more lollygagging would waste our final day in Paris, so we get up and meander over to the Opera house, which I’ve wanted to see since March. Along the way, we stop by President Sarkozy’s house,
where there’s something big going on. Alas, the guards are typical Parisians, and very rudely tell us we can’t stand very close to the house. Apparently, someone important is inside meeting with the president.
We move on to explore the rest of Paris’s super-rich district, a very beautiful, incredibly up-scale neighbourhood, of course. We finally make it to the Opera House, which is every bit as awesome (in the true sense of the word) as Phantom of the Opera makes it out to be.
Unfortunately, though Emilie and I try desperately to get into the auditorium (we’ve made it there only a short while after the room is closed to those of us without tickets to that night’s show), the Parisian opera guards are not to be schmoozed. Flatly, we are told that since we are not ticket holders, the stage room is closed. And my general rule of thumb is, when a big scary rude person who doesn’t speak the same language you do kicks you out of their building, enjoy some cultural cuisine and try not to feel stupid. Good thing it’s dinnertime. Emilie and I meet her boyfriend, who works very near the opera, for a nice little dinner, our last in Paris.
The next morning dawns bright and early; Emilie and I are taking the train back to her hometown, Besançon, which will be the starting point for our travels over the rest of the week. On the train I sleep, try to read French newspapers, and practice useful phrases in French like “Do you speak English?,” “Where is the bathroom?,” “Speak more slowly please,” and “Actually, I am Canadian.”
Arriving in Besançon, which is in the West of France next to Switzerland, where I get to stay at Emilie’s house, we first explore a bit of downtown, checking out buildings and such, which are very different than in Paris (each city here in Europe, as in the States, most of the time, as an entirely different feel from the last), and our evening ends with a music concert in the rain with some of Emilie’s French friends.
The rock concert features Namasté, Julien Doré, and another band I’ve forgotten the name of. It’s an enjoyable concert, fun to hear what the French are singing and listening to, though a lot of what they play between acts is American music.
Wednesday, Emilie, her friend Marieke and I take another train to Strasbourg, a French town right next to the German border. The architecture there is undeniably German
and I get to see a lot of it since one of the first things we do is take a boat tour on the river through the city. All my pictures from this turn out green because I have to take them through the window of the boat, but we get to see the European Parliament, which is pretty neat.
Also, this church was amazing:
and housed an even more amazing astronomical clock.
I let go of my no-taking-pictures-in-church rule just for this clock.
We spend that night in a hotel in Strasbourg, and the next day head to Colmar, a nearby, similarly German-influenced town. It looks much the same as Strasbourg
and we mostly wander around, checking out the pretty buildings and equally attractive gardens.
We take the train back to Besançon that night, and for dinner Emilie and I make crêpes; she lets me use her family’s crêpe machine, and I make real French crêpes for the first time.
On Friday, Emilie and I trek around Besançon, seeing cool places like where she goes to school, at the Université de Franche-Comté (Franche-Comté is the name of her region)
and where Victor Hugo was born.
On the whole, Besançon is a beautiful French town.
Emilie, her friend Charlotte and I visit the Citadelle, an old fort type structure which now holds a museum for this region, and a museum of the WWII Resistance, which is comprehensive and informative. Also, there’s a zoo, which I think is pretty cool to house in an old fort. Emilie says the French mentality is, there’s no other place big enough to put a zoo, and what else are we using this space for? I kind of like the idea, though it’s a bit strange to me, seeing these old, old walls surrounding a zoo.
Here’s the whole Citadelle:
While these runes have been left, as the runes I’ve seen in Scotland have been left, not having been touched since they were no longer used by the people who built them, in France, they aren’t left solely for the purpose of being runes. I’m not sure which use for the old abbeys and forts I like better, the experiences visiting them being so completely different, but somehow fundamentally the same.
After our trip to the Citadelle, Emilie and I have a night train to catch to Nice, where we’ll be spending Saturday. We don’t get a sleeping car, so sleeping on the seats is uncomfortable, but Nice is more than worth it.
It’s a beautiful city, warm, right on a bright blue Mediterranean Sea, and it’s covered in palm trees.
Emilie and I explore the city (she’s never been here either) and eat lunch on this pretty little street.
Here in the south of France, the buildings, as the water and the sunlight, are brighter than anywhere else I’ve been in France so far, and loads brighter than anything I’ve ever seen in Scotland.
We spend only the day in Nice, and that evening take the train to Toulon, where Emilie’s friends live, and where we’ll spend Sunday. We walk along Toulon’s seaside
and eat bowls of mussels at one of the restaurants right on the water. We drive a little ways, to Sanary Sur Mer (Sanary on the Sea) and that’s where I get in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time.
It’s bathwater compared to my last open water adventure, the North Sea, but we’re kicked out of the water after a short while because of some storms that have churned it up. Lame.
After a little while, it looks like those storms are about to come back, so we head home to Toulon, and watch the French Open on TV, Nadal v. Federer. Emilie tells me the French like Federer better because Nadal wins to much. I just like Federer because he’s Swiss and speaks a billion languages, but everyone in the room is cheering for the same person (though he looses), and that’s all that matters. It’s a fun night, all of us cheering together, and though each can barely understand the other’s language, we’re having a lovely time.
Eventually, though, we do have to leave Toulon on the night train (this time we have sleeper cars – score), and I have to ask Emilie to teach me another French phrase I should have practiced on that first train ride: “Thank you for letting me stay at your house.” Luckily, her friends understand me, and we’re off, back to Emilie’s.
On Monday, Emilie has some appointments, so I go to the Besançon art museum, small, but with a good collection of a number works I haven’t seen or heard of before (for me, art nerd that I am, it’s always a good time to discover new works). By the time I’m out of the museum and Emilie’s back from her appointment, it’s raining, though, so we decide to see a film at the cinema: Midnight in Paris. Luckily, they’ve left it in English and just have French subtitles up, so it’s easy for me to watch. It’s a good film, really, and though I had my doubts at first, I enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it. That evening, we see a beautiful church, which I really like seeing in the dusk.
Tuesday is my last day in France, and Emilie and I take some last looks around Besançon. We sleep in. I buy some souvenirs. We go out to lunch. We see Besançon from the top of a hill.
We go to her friend Charlotte’s house again, and have dinner. A calm, pretty all-encompassing of the city, last day in Besançon.
And on Wednesday, fter eight hours of travel, including a crazy French man who freaked out airport security, it’s easy to tell I’m back in Edinburgh: it’s 10 degrees centigrade and pouring rain. Home, sweet home. I pop into a café and order hot tea and a bacon and egg roll, and though I loved France and think their food is the best I’ve ever had, it’s good to be home, cozy and eating simply. Or back where I feel at home, anyway. On Friday I’m leaving for real.
