Home.

I meant to write something a few days after I got back. I meant to write something a week after I got back. Neither of these things happened, so we’ll settle with writing something a month after I got back. 

I’ve been in the United States for a month, and it has gone by very quickly.

I had a lovely last 48 hours in France with an amazing night of drinks, debauchery, and goodbyes among friends in Aix and then some time in Paris. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better way to end things. I started to tear up a bit on my train from Aix to Paris thinking about everything and everyone I was leaving behind, but then I was quickly reminded of everything that happened the night before and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. I probably looked like a crazy person, cackling to myself for three hours. Paris was lovely, as always. I love that city so much, and she was very kind to me during the final few hours we were together. Then all the sudden it was time to get to the airport, and a few hours and zero problems later, I was sneaking up behind my mom and sister in the waiting area at O’Hare airport. And then 24 hours after getting off a plane I was back at home with a house full of family and friends. Pure bliss.

People asked if I had reverse culture shock, and there was some. Even while my plane was landing, I was thrown off seeing all the yellow school buses on the road picking kids up from school and seeing baseball diamonds everywhere. People asked if I had trouble driving at first, and the answer is no, not really. I have an excellent memory and sense of direction, so I know how to get places. I didn’t drive in Europe, but in France they do drive on the right hand side of the road. Apparently most people don’t know that, but they do. It’s just the Brits that fuck it up. But moving on, a few days after I got back I was visiting my local library and saw a sign outside the door that read “No Firearms” and I seriously almost started crying. Wisconsin did a lot of things while I was gone, and one of them was the implementation of the conceal and carry gun law. You shouldn’t have to worry about guns when you’re going to the library. I’ve really just been getting overly emotional about all sorts of little things like that. Some of them warranted, some of them not (like seeing how much goat cheese and brie cost).

People asked if I missed France yet, and I didn’t know what to tell them. My response was that I wasn’t sure if I missed France, or if I missed being on vacation. I suppose having returned a month ago, I can conjure up a real answer now. I do miss France—but I’m very happy to be where I am. I miss my friends from Aix and I miss a good baguette, but other than that I’m doing quite well. It’s so nice to be around family and friends again and to be moving on with my life.

I’m now two weeks deep into campaign life, and loving it. I got myself an internship with the Democratic candidate running for Congress in my district. Unfortunately they can’t pay me, but I don’t blame them. I’ve never worked a campaign before (which is rare for someone of my talents/interests/age) and money is tight. So I’m spending my summer working out of one of the larger cities in this corner of the state about a half hour south of here, organizing on behalf of our candidate. It involves a lot of calling potential supporters and asking them for their vote in November, a yard to stick a sign in, and a few hours of their time to help keep this campaign moving. As the weeks go on it’ll get more exciting with different events, but right now we’re just trying to get all the pieces together.  I really love what I’m doing, and it’s incredibly satisfying. Even if I’m given the most boring task like entering data into a spreadsheet, I can think about WHY I’m doing it (to get Paul Ryan out of Washington and Rob Zerban in), and everything becomes exciting. It really seems like my work ethic, strong sense of loyalty, and desire to help my community is a combination of qualities perfect for campaigning.

So I suppose that’s a good summary. I’m still really happy, usually just as happy as I was in France. It’s great to be back in America, especially Wisconsin, and most especially home. I get to spend a lot of quality time with the canine and feline members of the family, who I missed quite a bit. It feels really good to be doing something different with my life. It’s really nice to meet some new people and really start a new chapter. I don’t know what the next few months are going to bring (other than a t-shirt tan and little free time), but I know It’s going to be great.

And so #FranceLife comes to an end, for the most part. Thank you to everyone who made it such a positive experience, be it support from the United States or France—I seriously appreciate it. And thank you as well to anyone who stalked this blog or my Facebook, I hope it was interesting.  And one final time, anyone who came into my life in the past year, my door will forever be open to you regardless of where I end up in life. Come visit.



xoxo
Carly Danger

The Tale of a $5 Bill

On August 24^th, 2011, my mother was saying goodbye to me at the security checkpoint in Chicago’s O’Hare airport. As a last minute gesture to help her daughter, she gave me a bunch of cash just in case. I assured her that I really didn’t need it and that the American dollar was a joke in Europe, but she persisted and I eventually gave up and accepted the money. I didn’t spend much of it, apart from purchasing a few last minute airport snacks to compliment the sandwiches I had packed for my long journey ahead. A few days later, some friends and I were going over to an exchange bureau to convert our traveler’s checks and American dollars into Euro to pay our apartment deposits and place the rest in our new French bank accounts. I thought I had collected all the last minute cash from my mother before going, but I was wrong. I had left one measly $5 bill in the bottom of my bag.

At first I laughed at how useless this bill was to me. There was no point in exchanging it now, because I’d only get between three and four euro for it when switching it. I hoped that I would at no point in the year be so desperate for such a small amount of money, and packed the American currency away in a small pocket of my purse. It sat there for quite a while, until one day after I had been in Europe for quite some time I opened up that small pocket to look for something and there he was, Abraham Lincoln, reminding me of where I came from. I thoroughly enjoyed this bill’s new purpose.

I never got terribly homesick over here, apart from a few incidents. But throughout the year, whenever I was down, bored, or just needed something to smile at, I’d pull out the bill and it would help quite a bit. So I decided that I would replicate this lovely tool when I go home, but the inverse. I now have a 5€ bill tucked into the same small pocket of my purse, and always will. This relatively small piece of blue and metallic paper has now become the physical embodiment of everything that these past nine months were. I’m going to miss Europe very much. I had the pleasure of meeting such amazingly intelligent, funny, and caring individuals who I never will forget. We might not see each other for a long time. We might not ever see each other ever again.  Either way, I’ll never forget about you and I’ll always carry your memory with me. And now that’s a literal statement.

And of course, I hope I’m never in such a place where I’m so desperate that I need to exchange this bill for American currency. Because it still won’t be worth that much in the scheme of things…and who knows if it’ll be worth anything at all for long.  ;)

                                 

10 days.

It's officially 10 days until I come home, so here are 10 things I'm very excited about:

1. Being reunited with family and friends. I haven't seen the most important people in my life in nine months. I've been doing some stretches and push-ups to prepare for all the hugging I'm going to do. Kidding. But seriously, I'm going to hug you in half. Just a heads up.

2. Being reunited with my animals. My cats don't understand Skype. I spoke French to my kitty the other day (because I know how to talk to cats in French) and she ran away. I'm legitimately afraid she won't remember me. And my dogs, I miss them lots. We'll go on lots of long walks and I'll take Buddy to Bradford Beach and it'll be super fun.

3. Being able to communicate with people via phone and not dealing with a seven hour time difference in general. My computer has two clocks running so I don't have to do math, but being closer to everything will be nice. Also so I can stay better in tune with the news cycle...because that's important to me.

4. Not having to think in such temporary terms when making a purchase. Here, I have to think "Do I want to bring this home? Do I have this at home?" when buying something. I'm looking forward to not being between places and just planting myself for a while.

5. Meeting my "new" car. My brother took our beloved Red Baron to Oklahoma for his internship, and I'm entering the real world as a college grad. In America, this means I need my own car. I explained the situation to my mom and step dad a few months ago just to give them a heads up, and they took care of me like they always do. I'm so grateful for that.

6. Rejoining American politics. I've missed them so much. It was really hard for me to go from sitting in the balcony of the House of Representatives watching Barney Frank make fun of Speaker Boehner for crying, to sitting in an internet-less apartment on the other side of the world. I'm super excited for campaign work. I've long been aware of the fact that my reentry to the States timed perfectly with when the 2012  cycle would be picking up, so this has always been the plan.

7. Being able to go buy milk wearing whatever I want. I never leave my apartment without wearing something cute, a bit of makeup, and more often than not, a scarf. Don't get me wrong, I like looking good all the time. I just want the option to be there for me to wear sweatpants and a t-shirt.

8. Being able to think about a bigger picture. I'm not working to pay for the next semester, get through a summer class, or dread becoming an RA again in a few weeks. This is my life now. I'm looking for experience to carefully build a budding political resume and pay my bills.

9. Having my shoes back. Sorry, this is a bit shallow...but I really love my shoes. I have too many of them. Europe hated my "giant" feet and wouldn't sell me anything in a store. It taught me to live a bit more simply which is nice, but the thought of going home to so many options is really exciting for me.

10. Not having people judge me every time I open my mouth based on pronunciation. I have made a great amount of progress with my French this year, but it's always so much better when I'm speaking with other students or friends my age than it is if I'm speaking with a stranger or a clerk somewhere. This country has definitely gone from laughing at me to laughing with me, which is cute. I came to that conclusion on my spring break trip and if that's all that happens--I'm okay with it.

                                

IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN.

DONE DONE DONE

I’m probably done with college. I say probably because there’s a bit of a bureaucratic process that needs to be gone though before it’s official, and I’m just trying to cover my ass in the event that something goes wrong down the line. But I don’t want to talk about why things are complicated. I want to talk about how happy and proud of myself I am right now. 

I (probably) finished my Bachelors of Arts degree in International Politics-US Foreign Policy and a minor in French in four years flat. I finished 95% of the credit requirements in three years at UW-Milwaukee, leaving myself an entire year at a political science university in France to come up with six, relatively flexible credits to take back to finish out everything for good. I gave up having a social life, sanity, and free time for most of the past four years working by two jobs every summer and winter break in order to be able to fill in financial gaps left by the government not caring about a middle class white female like myself. I worked 4am-12:30pm at Target full time and then (most days) would go home to take a nap, and then work as a hostess at a local restaurant at night. And then repeat. For the past two years at UWM, I worked in the dorms as an RA as the most effective means of covering my living expenses in order to preserve my credit and save taking out private loans for my ultimate goal of studying abroad for a year. Though I have positive memories and relationships as a result of it, this also ate up a tremendous amount of time and sanity and I’m happy it’s over. I’m so happy all of that is over.

Though I will never be done learning, I’m so happy that I’m not going to be living semester to semester trying to cover the next tuition bill. I worked hard, got myself an internship on Capitol Hill in Washington (to which I will forever be grateful for my sister for letting me live on her couch and to Congresswoman Gwen Moore+staff for taking me under their wing) and started myself on a proper track professionally. And now I’m leaving France (ps I just lived in France for nine months—that’s insane to think about) and I have stuff lined up for when I get home. I’m going to be working my ass off for one, probably two, underdog campaigns because I believe in what they’re fighting for. I’m going to network the shit out of the Wisconsin political scene, and if for some reason that doesn’t get me anywhere…I’ve already got a backup plan (but I won’t talk about that just yet).

So I guess this is just a huge pat on the back. I did it. I worked hard, and I did it. And I’m super excited to see where I end up because of it. We’ve already uncorked a bit of champagne, and it’s going to continue until the early hours of the morning. Some people have asked if I get to walk at some sort of graduation ceremony, and the answer is no. But I don’t really care, that’s not what’s important to me. I’m going to be borrowing a friend’s graduation get-up when I get back, take a bunch of pictures around UWM’s campus just to pretend it happened like normal, and then I had this moment at the Eiffel Tower a few weeks ago…

 

A huge congratulations goes out to all other friends graduating this weekend, we’ll celebrate when I get back. Also, a huge thank you to everyone who’s been such an important part of my life the past four years and kept me sane during the tough times—you know who you are.

Hugs, kisses, and see you all in 16 days <3

The universe has smiled upon me.

Well, I officially have only one exam left, and I am just beyond thrilled. As a reminder, though I know I have explained it before, exams at my university are weird. You show up to a classroom at the time provided for you, and you literally pick a subject out of a hat. Like...there are slips of paper in a beret. That literally happened to me. Sometimes you can pick two topics, and then keep whichever one you know better. These topics can be overall themes carried throughout the course, a specific event or policy, or some sort of comparison between two topics. The point is, anything discussed during the entire course is up for grabs. So you have your topic, you prepare your information for 10 or 15 minutes, speak for about 10 minutes, and then do a brief Q&A with the professor to hit on aspects you missed or an entirely different topic. If this didn't go without saying, it's in French. And if that's not scary enough for you, this is your only grade for the entire semester. All or nothing. 

So the reason I'm just so thrilled right now, is that today was my last exam in this format. (Tomorrow I have an exam where I select my topic ahead of time and it's also in English...but that's a strange class I won't expand upon.) For all of the exams I had both this semester and last, there were a significant amount of things that I could have randomly selected that I would have been unable to talk about. There was just so much information, and I'm terrible at studying and always have been. The things that I know, I know really well already. If it didn't sneak into my brain throughout the semester, there's no way it's getting in there now. But by some miracle of the universe, I always selected a topic that I could speak about quite well. Seriously, I have no idea how that happened. The odds were against me. All I know is that I'm happy it worked out that way because it didn't have to.

                           

I love the internet.

I don't know how people would have studied abroad in the dark times, pre internet. Only having boats/planes/telephones to send information back and forth across the ocean seems too archaic. I know the thought of leaving all friends and family behind for nine months is scary to some people, but it wasn't especially difficult in my opinion (once I finally got a stable internet connection). Of course it wasn't an ideal situation and I have missed everyone terribly, but easy communication is still possible. I might not understand the internet....

...but I'm forever indebted to its black magic for making my life this year easier.

I bring this up right now because from time to time, like just now, I hop onto Google Maps and take a "streetview" tour of my favorite places back home. It does wonders for homesickness. In 19 days, I'll be back in Wisconsin. I'm going to fling open the car door, run into the house, hug any human family members that are home, find my cat and hope she remembers me, and then wrestle with some dogs. And then repeat...several times. I'm really excited to come home, so much so that I think I might just be screaming the entire drive from O'Hare to my house (Sorry in advance Mom+Andrea) . But when I turn around the corner and see this (minus cars/trees that are no longer there), I'm probably going to lose my shit.


PS I'm still loving France lots and having so much fun and sun and complicated feelings that I don't want to explain now. I'll save that for another post.

xoxo

A picture is worth 1,000 words

I was walking past one of the more popular parks in town a few weeks back, and noticed how the people casually scattered across the grass resembled the famous Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jette by Georges Seurat (as made famous by this scene).  Some of my friends and I had already been throwing around the idea of doing an end of the year event just for us year long students, and I decided this might be a fun group photo if just our smaller group got together and recreated the famous tableau. And today was that day. 

So we had a lovely picnic among friends, and then started staging this piece of performance art. This involved me holding up someone’s smart phone with the image of this painting as a point of reference, and dragging each person one by one to their mark and telling them how to stand. We even had a few props to go with the painting. Meanwhile, there are dozens of other people in the park minding their own business while this large group of Americans is doing who knows what. It was pretty funny. And this masterpiece is what we ended up with:

 

This evening was also the end of the year meal put on by my program. It was the last time we’d all be in the same place, and that was strange. I know once I leave this country there are some people I’ll never see again. For some of them, that’s okay. For others, it’s a sad reality. People can try and try to stay in touch and life just happens. I got to know pretty well most of the people who were here for the year and a couple people who came just for the semester, and I know we’ll all go on to do great things. And of course…

 
...we’ll always have Aix. 

Newspaper Fail

I don’t have time to blog about what I did yesterday helping out at an overseas event for the Democratic Party, so we’ll just have to discuss it in person when I return. But I will say this; a reporter from the local paper came because the French love stuff like this. We staged some pictures to make it look a little more exciting, and they told us it’d be in tomorrow’s paper. 

So today I leave my apartment and walk to the newspaper stand at the main square in town, purchase a copy of La Provence, and proceed to sit up against a large nearby statue to flip through the paper and people watch. I get to page four and there it is—our little article and a large photo. The day before I had been in the little crowd they assembled for the photo, and I was so excited to see my face in a French newspaper and bring it home as an awesome souvenir.

So here’s the photo:
 

Turns out I’m DIRECTLY AND COMPLETELY BEHIND the two women standing in the middle of the line. You can see a little sliver of my shoe between their legs, but nothing more. So all the sudden I found myself sitting on the stoop of this statue, absolutely cackling in public (not French at all) but I couldn’t help it. Either way, I’m bringing the article home because yesterday was really cool.

Better luck next time I guess.

One year.

I think I’ve earned a break from studying.

One year ago today, I was an RA throwing together a Star Wars themed, end of the year, academic recognition banquet for the lovely residents of West Tower. Today, I’m having friends over to watch Star Wars and drink some wine, because we’re in France and that’s what you do here.

Days like today make excellent points of reflection for how far I’ve come. And when I get home, they’ll be little reminders of everything that this year was. For example, a few things that immediately come to mind:

·        October 1^st was spent swimming and tanning on an uninhabited island in the Mediterranean
·        Halloween was in Paris
·        Thanksgiving was spent sharing the tradition with a few dozen international friends
·        Christmas, I was mostly alone, huddled around a computer screen talking to my family via Skype
·        Carlyfest was in Milan
·        Leap Day was spent walking to Germany from Strasbourg
·        Easter was also in Paris

I’m 22 years old. I can say that I’ve lived in a foreign country for almost a year, and that’s pretty badass.

Happy Star Wars Day, and may the Force be with you. 

                                

Skype Christmas 2011

America, fuck yeah.

Carly the Patriot really enjoyed a day walking through WWII history, being able to compare up close the state of warfare today with that of the past, and to see the land where so many Americans lost their lives fighting to protect our Allies and a just cause. I could have spent a week seeing the sights of the D-Day landings and the liberation operations that followed, but only had a day at my disposal. I’m fully aware how lucky I am to have been able to see it due to my current position as an overseas resident, but I really do believe that it’s something all Americans should see. If you’ve ever considered it, go find a jar right now and start saving. It’s was without a doubt one of the most incredible and moving things I have ever seen, and I hope I can see it again later in life.

It’s no secret that I’m a patriotic person. Yet recently, it has become even more apparent how proud I am to be American. For the past eight months, my national identity has been front and center. Being in another country for a year, developing relationships with friends from all corners of the world, and studying political science at a foreign university have shown me a lot. There are plenty of things that I don’t like or understand about America, but there are still plenty of things I love, along with even more that I have hope for. So at the end of the day, I still have a strong relationship with my country.

A large proportion of American’s I have met over here don’t see this the same way. It’s quite common for someone studying international studies or foreign language and who chooses to study abroad does so with hopes of one day expatriating or at least possesses a negative bias towards the country of their birth. I was once part of that crowd.  You might remember me as a 16 year old rebel wearing a George W. Bush as Satan t-shirt (which I still proudly own) who wanted to leave and never come back, but I’ve come a long way since then. It was his foreign policy follies combined with my talent for foreign language that led to the academic track that I’m almost finished with today. I can’t point to a single event that made me have a change of heart, but don’t dare write it off as merely the kool-aid the Right claims that young people drank during the rise of Barack Obama…because that wasn’t it. But what’s important is that it happened.

I originally shipped myself to France for a year because I wanted to become a diplomat someday. That’s not exactly what I’m working towards anymore, but the spirit is still there. I’ve worked all year to serve as a good example of America to those I come in contact with. It’s true that we as a country don’t have the greatest image abroad, and I know one interaction won’t change someone’s mind about an entire nation, but it’s at least a step in the right direction. Just a little freelance civilian diplomacy, if you will.

I don’t know what I want to be when I “grow up”, but it’s my dream to have a real impact on the society I live in.  So while some might be discouraged by the negative aspects of American culture/history, it just makes me want to work harder to improve things for everyone. When I get home, I’m going to spend five months fighting for a cause I believe in, and that I believe will better serve my friends and neighbors. I can’t wait to dedicate myself to the hard work of the campaign trail, with my newly recharged enthusiasm for the US.

One of my pet peeves is blind, American patriotism. As far as my studies have taken me, that definitely seems to be another one of the areas in which our country stands alone. Pick up a book, read some history, talk to some people, and think about what you really want and what you stand for. I’m the type of person who doesn’t really get mad if I don’t agree with you, as long as you’re putting some thought into your decision. I just wish this was something more people put thought into.

This is one of the many things I've learned while I've been over here. I'm going to be a different person when I get back. I'm not entirely sure as of right now how I'll have changed, that will take a few weeks to fully manifest itself to me. But I do know, that I'll be pretty damn happy passing through O'Hare customs June 1st.

In related news, I miss this building. 

Spring Break

I decided I wanted to spend my spring break in France. The problem was, I only had a vague idea of where I wanted to go, and pretty much everyone I know either had big plans to leave France for elsewhere in Europe, or was staying in Aix to save money for post semester travels. Thankfully another girl in my program liked my idea of staying in the country and seeing new places, so we started planning and this is what we ended up with: 

Tuesday:
-6hr train from Marseille to Bordeaux, arriving in Bordeaux early that afternoon
-spend the rest of the day seeing the city
-stay overnight in Bordeaux
Wednesday:
-spend the morning/afternoon seeing Bordeaux
-take a 4hr train to Nantes, arriving later in the evening
-stay overnight in Nantes
Thursday:
-spend the better part of the day seeing Nantes
-take a 2hr train to Tours, arriving later in the evening
-stay overnight in Tours
Friday:
-do a morning tour of two castles in the Loire Valley outside of Tours
-catch an early afternoon train to Caen in Normandy
-stay overnight in Caen
Saturday:
-catch a commuter train to neighboring Bayeux and embark on an all day tour of mostly American sites from the D-Day landings, then head back to Caen
-stay overnight in Caen
Sunday:
-catch an early afternoon train back to Aix 
Here's a visual representation of the route. It ended up being a total of over 1,500 miles, and over 20 hours on a train.

On paper, is was all beautifully planned. We were going to make the best of our time and money; spending a good amount of time in each spot, and finding good prices on hostels and train. We researched and booked tours to get us to the castles in the Loire Valley and the sites of D-Day because they’re not possible to do without a car.
I’m proud to say almost everything worked out PERFECTLY. The only small problems were our tours of castles and D-Day sites never got booked due to some computer glitch. When I didn’t receive confirmation emails I got skeptical. Early in the week I called the D-Day company who told me they didn’t have my request and weren’t doing a tour that day. This was disappointing because this tour went to Mont St. Michel in the morning and the D-Day beaches in the afternoon. Instead, we booked an all day D-Day tour with another company who offered a student discount. The castle tour, I called the company the morning of and was told they didn’t have my request and weren’t doing the tour we wanted that morning—but they had another tour with spots available of two different but equally beautiful castles that we joined instead.
But other than those two small things that could have been a huge issue, which we solved calmly and with time to spare, everything worked out perfectly. Kristie and I have traveled with a variety of people, so we knew what we wanted and how we liked to see things and thankfully we made excellent travel partners. So that’s a summary, and here are my stories….

Bordeaux:
A six hours train was easier than expected. I thought an eight or nine hour flight here sucked, but after all this train travel, it’ll be easier to get home. We dropped our things off at our adorably small hotel and went to explore. It was really windy and rainy, but we didn’t take this trip to not see stuff so we braved the elements all week regardless of weather conditions. We spent the rest of the day exploring the city , and it was so lovely. Bordeaux is a beautiful city, especially at night.
In the morning, we decided to check out an especially exciting museum as something to to—the French National Customs Museum. For 1,50€, we learned about the history of French customs, import taxes, smuggling, and border security. If that doesn’t scream spring break, I don’t know what does. I can barely contain my excitement recounting this now. But seriously, it was oddly specific enough that it was genuinely interesting. Then we stopped for tasty homemade lunch at a restaurant called “Chez Maman” (At Mom’s), had some tasty food, and shared a pitcher of wine. When the server brought our after meal coffee, he also brought us shots of orange vanilla rum, he claimed it was good for your health with the changing temperatures. I wasn’t about to argue with him. Needless to say, we were feeling pretty good as we went to our next museum to learn all about the long history of Bordeaux and the region it occupies. To close out the first leg of the trip, we grabbed some pastries that were the local specialty and boarded our train to Nantes.
The ride to Nantes was especially beautiful. France grows a lot of canola, which produces bright yellow flowers. So the countryside was quite colorful. We even briefly passed by the Atlantic Ocean. We arrived at our super cheap hostel later in the evening, and crashed to rest up for the next day.

Nantes:
We didn’t really know what there was to do in town, since we figured we’d make those decisions when we got there with the help of the hostel desk and pamphlets. Over breakfast, we mulled over a little guidebook and made our plans for the day. Our first stop was a botanical/rose garden and were happy to be greeted by a surplus of flowers. We were strolling through the out of bloom rose garden and all of the sudden heard something strange coming from the river that wound past the park. A large group of children were having a sailing lesson, and for some reason they were screaming the baseline to Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. We walked a bit closer to see what was happening, and were very surprised at what we saw. There were maybe 12-15 tiny, rectangular boats with small sails, and each had two or three children in them wearing lifejackets. But there were no adults in the boats, instead three motorboats of adults were observing/herding the children. We laughed about how you would never see such a thing in the US. It was so ridiculous, I won’t elaborate any further. Heading back into the city, we checked out, at the suggestion of the guidebook, Nante’s revived industrial neighborhood. It featured a large hanger that had stored imported bananas until they turned yellow but was converted to shops/restaurants/bars, a big yellow crane, and some mechanical zoo.
Nantes used to be a very significant port, but eventually the river became un-navigable  by large ships, cutting off the city and its established industry from transportation lines. So they’ve tried to remodel this image, and that kind of reminded me of the work to revive the Menomonee River Valley in Milwaukee. Their crane…was just a crane. It no longer serves any purpose other than a giant yellow eyesore. They’re pretending to smile and say it’s a tourist attraction now, which is hilarious. And the mechanical zoo was just some old factory you had to pay to get into (we opted out) to play with some science stuff and take a ride on a giant robotic elephant. Unimpressed by this area, we headed back into the center of town. We checked out the castle in the center, which was converted to a museum of the city/region’s history, much like what we saw in Bordeaux. It talked about the cities place as a major slave port back in the day, which was very sad. They also talked about their previously described troubles with their shipping industry. We then wandered some more, and caught an early evening train to Tours, to see castles in the Loire Valley.

Tours:
We weren’t there long, checked into our cheap hostel that evening and lounged around to save some energy/money. On our way there though, we were seriously weirded out. Walking past a war damaged cathedral, we heard the strangest noise—a didgeridoo. My friend peeked around the corner, only to see a hooded man sitting in the entryway…playing a didgeridoo. What the fuck.
Anyways, the next morning, we walked over to the tourist office to meet our guide and see some castles. We piled into a van with our guide, two Japanese women, and a Frenchman who was in town for the weekend for a French language Scrabble tournament (ADORABLE).
Our first castle was called Azay le Rideau. There are over 500 castles throughout the Loire Valley, where Tours is located. About 100 of those are open to the public and privately owned, and another ten or so are open to the public and government owned. Azay le Rideau happened to be one of the government owned was, which was awesome because it meant we got in for free as young European residents (the cost of the tour only covered transportation to the castles). It had a moat and the castle itself was so beautiful. The second castle was privately owned and called Villandry. Though the castle is best known for its gardens, the interior was absolutely gorgeous as well since, being privately owned, there was more money invested in it. But the gardens were beyond breathtaking. Everything was so elegantly sculpted and manicured. We returned to Tours and caught a train to the city of Caen, our base for seeing the beaches of Normandy.

Normandy:
The weather in this town/region was not pleasant the entire time we were there, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. We grabbed a quick dinner and crashed at our hotel. In the morning, we took a quick commuter train from Caen to neighboring Bayeux where our guide picked us and three other Americans up for our tour. He was  a young Frenchman who was from the area and was very nice. Our first stop was the German military cemetery, located a short drive from Bayeux. The other Americans we were with, two middle aged sisters and one of their husbands, didn’t really get why/how the cemetery was there. I tried explaining how things like that are necessary for civilized war and a future of peace, but they didn’t seem to understand. Next was the village of Saint Mere Eglise, where paratroopers landed in the wrong spot early in the morning on D-Day. They were supposed to land outside of the town, but due to wind and other problems, they ended up falling right into the main square in town where a large fire was burning. There was already a large German military and French civilian presence dealing with the fire, so when the sky started raining American paratroopers, the scene that followed quickly got ugly. Nearby fences and chimneys still had bullet holes in them from that night almost 70 years ago. We also stopped at a museum that had a plane used in the operations, and plenty of artifacts from the period. Also while in town, we visited the church some of the paratroopers accidentally landed on. War bombing destroyed the original stained glass windows, and after the liberation two new commemorative windows were put in place that featured images of the paratroopers (one made by the town in their honor, and the other as a gift from the veterans to the town). The guide spoke a lot about how thankful the people of this town were for their sacrifice and how they understood the price they themselves paid in the destruction of their town and civilian casualties taken on in order to bring end to German occupation.
On our way to the next spot, the guide stopped at several small things, such as the first temporary airfield the Allies set up in the area which still had the same wire fencing used in 1944, a few smaller monuments, and some of the fields that the Germans had flooded as a means of deterring paratroopers. We had a bit of time at Utah Beach, which was the more successful of the two landing beaches. They had some of the original beach obstacles on display that the army encountered. It was very harrowing to see. It mean, the whole day was…bullet holes and bomb damage everywhere, but the beaches were something else. Looking out at the English Channel and imagining the boats coming in, and then glancing over at the shore, only I really knowing what they could expect to find there.
The next spot was the Point du Hoc, where 200 Army Rangers scaled enormous cliffs to overtake a long range German gun station. The whole site was still full of craters from the 40 minutes of bombing delivered prior to the Rangers’ arrival. Round holes were from aerially delivered bombs, and oval ones from naval strikes. We toured a German bunker. The ceiling was charred from when the Rangers entered with flamethrowers. Some of the walls were full of bullet/shrapnel holes. Everything still seemed fresh. This was also one of the only sites in the area where bomb craters remain. Elsewhere, locals were anxious to fill them in and move on from the war. Our group stopped for lunch at a little fishing village and then moved on to Omaha Beach. We actually visited the sector made famous in Saving Private Ryan, and it was a very emotional experience, with similar things going through my mind as had been there at Utah Beach. The sea was also very rough that day, painting an even better picture of the conditions they had to endure that morning. I could have spent hours there, but the tour had to move on to the next stop, the American Cemetery. On the way there, we passed the first temporary cemetery where American bodies were buried before they were shipped back to America. We were also surprised to see there were houses built all along the beaches of Omaha, but no one is allowed to build there anymore.
Going to the cemetery was technically going back to America, since the land has a similar status that embassies have (http://youtu.be/imeQs7rkPRs?t=11m40s). We wandered through the visitors center, which I could have spent hours more in, and headed out to the cemetery. It was just as moving as to be expected. The soldiers are all buried randomly, officers and common soldiers alike, because everyone’s sacrifice was equal. The guide showed us Teddy Roosevelt Jr’s grave with its Medal of Honor markings. He was buried next to his brother who died in WWI (and the only non WWII soldier buried there), because when you’re a Roosevelt, you can make things like that happen. We stayed for the lowering of the flag and they played Taps.
We then headed back to Bayeux and Caen, grabbed dinner at another adorable creperie, and called it a day. And now I’m recounting all of this in a journal Sunday afternoon on my way back to Aix. I have an hour or so in Paris to change stations, so I probably won’t be above ground but for my time in the stations and won’t actually see the city. But can we observe how crazy it is that I’ll be in Paris for an hour, just passing through? My life is so crazy…and I love it.

And so this is what I did this week. Due to the extreme success and good travel partner chemistry, I was able to do quite a bit of personal reflection and begin to process this whole year, which I’ll share bits and pieces of as the week goes on.

One month left!
For more photos, here's a public link to my album.

THE END IS NEAR

Well I’m almost done in France. This is not a reflective post, just a preview of what the rest of my time looks like.

This week I have some final exams, two of five. My university is a bit strange. I have one week of finals, two weeks of Spring Break, and then one more week of finals. So next Tuesday I depart on a trip west with another girl from my program that will be explained later, then a bit of time in Aix preparing for my last exams, and then about two weeks in France before I head home.

My flight leaves from Paris on June 1^st, but I’ll be taking the train up the day before and staying overnight just because of how the times worked out. I’m very excited to come home, but less excited for my time in France to end.

If you’ve seen on the Facebooks, I’ll be having a welcome home/graduation party Saturday June 2^nd at my house. More details about that are still in the works, so I’ll keep everyone posted.

My tentative plans for when I get back include working for a Congressional campaign. Unfortunately, since I had to work multiple jobs in order to be able to go to college, I didn’t have time for being active with the College Democrats or get in any experience with a campaign during the past four years. You’re probably thinking, “Carly…you spent the summer with Congress, isn’t that enough?” And no. It’s not. I need to get in some time with a campaign to fill in the last bit of skills I need to be eligible for employment in my field of choice. I’m not thrilled about the idea of working for free, but I’m so excited to jump back into American politics. I’m still waiting to hear if I got a fellowship with the Democratic Party and placed with a specific candidate, but I’ll know in the next couple weeks. I have a concrete game plan for this, but I’m not going to discuss it here. If you’re curious, ask me yourself.

This photo is stolen from a friend because it made me so happy to see on Facebook. If you’re flying into Milwaukee from the west, the planes pass not only right over Greendale, but directly over my house. I’m flying into Chicago, not Milwaukee…but I can’t wait to see this again. From the ground.

Is this real life?

Continuing the theme of “my life is way too cool right now”…last weekend was simply amazing. 

Saturday my program took us on an excursion to three nearby sites that all contained ancient Roman ruins. Back in the day, they settled in the area…so there’s still some stuff left from when they were here. First place we visited was a site called “Pont du Gard”. It’s an absolutely massive Roman aqueduct that has been updated a bit to make sure it stays intact for all to come and see, but it was really, really cool. The next stop was the nearby town of Arles, which I had already visited in January with a group from my university, to see their Roman constructed stadium, theater, and other things. A friend and I wandered around the theater, and there were literally just chunks of intricately carved roman ruin things just laying everywhere. Like they were normal rocks and not really cool man sculpted rocks. And the last spot was a site called Glanum that they found on accident in the 20’s, that was actually full of gallo-roman ruins dating back to 600 BCE. Everything we saw was really interesting, and just the idea that I’m living in a place surrounded by settlements that old is absolutely mind blowing.

Sunday was a bit different. A few weeks back I had an idea for a pastry tasting picnic where everyone shows up with a few treats from the bakery, and then everyone gets to try a little bit of what everyone else brought. There are soooo many goodies in the windows at bakeries and pastry shops here, but you’d go broke and gain so much weight if you actually got around to trying them all. So this picnic was a good compromise. There were so many tasty treats and everyone left happy. I got back to my apartment and sat around the kitchen table with a few friends, who were discussing the apparent carnival that was taking place in town today. They had seen confetti all over the main street through town and an abundance of adorable French children in costumes. Intrigued, I pulled up the website of Aix’s tourist office to see the order of events for whatever this carnival was. We were in luck—from 4:30 to 5:30 there was a parade finale at the town’s main fountain/square and it was currently 4:15.

We walked into town not really knowing what to expect, but weren’t surprised by the copious amounts of adorable children and confetti we saw on our way to the location. But then things started to get a bit weird. The main fountain, which is massive, was turned off and the basin was full of silk pillows and decorated with ribbon. There were several highly decorated floats parked all around the roundabout with people dancing everywhere. A confetti cannon fired every few minutes. I thought that there might be a parade finishing here, or just going around the circle a few times, but I was wrong. I soon noticed some arena sized confetti blowers were placed around the fountain, along with some sacks of feathers nearly the size of twin mattresses. Several minutes later, they proceeded to pump billions of feathers into the air for 10-15 minutes. It looked like it was snowing. If I count every feather I see on every bird for the rest of my life, I will still have seen more feathers on Sunday. For something that my friends and I literally just happened upon, I could not have asked for more. It was way too cool, and I have no idea how they cleaned up all those feathers. It now being Wednesday, there are still a few floating around town but the vast majority were cleaned up by Monday.

We still have no idea exactly what this carnival was for, if it’s every year, or why they were using feathers, but I’m not asking too many questions. I’ll just accept it as one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

Me hanging out at the aqueduct.

Soooo many pastriesss

The aftermath of feather time.

Paris take three.

 Earlier in the semester; I proposed to three of my friends here that we all go back to Paris together for a long weekend. They’re three of the same people I went with back in October, so we were planning on a more relaxed stay in the city since we collectively had now seen all the mega tourist sites. So Easter weekend we hopped a train and headed north. We all got there eventually and I experienced no travel troubles. But I’ll just say that the trip got off to an interesting start for some. 

Looking at the forecast ahead of time, it appeared that Friday was going to be the only day with guaranteed sun. Since the palace of Versailles and its gardens were on our list of “things we must do”, we headed over there first after dropping our backpacks off at the hotel. We were excited not only because everything about this place is beautiful, but it’s also free for us. The gardens are usually free to everybody, and getting into the palace itself is free for European Union residents between the ages of 18 and 24. To get in, I didn’t even have to go wait in the long tourist line to buy a ticket. I just had to walk up to the entrance and flash my passport full of official stickers that say I live in France. It’s awesome. The palace was just as beautiful as I expected and it was insane to walk through the same room where they signed the treaty ending WWI. The gardens ended up being a bit more complicated, because apparently the day we were there was one of the six or so out of the entire year where we had to pay about 6€ to get in, which was slightly disappointing at first. But then we perked up because we realized it was because they were playing music throughout the whole outdoor space and the fountains were actually turned on. So it was nice to see the gardens in their full glory.

Saturday we all split up for the most part, with assorted things that we all wanted to do ourselves. I took the train across town a bit to find this little American grocery store so I could buy an expensive bag of peanut butter cups to help keep me sane while studying for finals. They were a bit pricey (9€ for a 1lb bag) but I regret nothing. But on my way where, the strangest thing happened. I was looking at a metro map on the wall after I bought my ticket to double check the lines/directions I was supposed to take, and a man approached me asking in French how to get from where we were now over to the Louvre. I showed him on the map a possible route and offered to go halfway with him because the station I was trying to get to was a place he could transfer to get in the right direction. He took me up on my offer and we chatted the whole way. He was about 50 and from the city of Lyon, and remarked on the irony of an American who wasn’t even studying in Paris showing him how to use the metro. We got off our train and I sent him on his way. It was a really random, yet welcome, event. And even stranger, as I was leaving that station, some other person asked me in French which way “République” was. What was so strange about it was that was the large square/station near my hotel that I had just come from, but we were no longer near. I was not aware that I was wearing a sign that said, “Hi, I speak French. Ask me how to use the Metro”. I spent the rest of the day doing a little shopping, going to see the tiny cemetery where General Lafayette (the main Frenchman supporting George Washington in the revolutionary war) was buried, and wandering around town a bit with one of my friends who came with.

Sunday began with a little project. A few weeks earlier I had tossed around the idea of doing a sort of “senior pictures” photo shoot in Paris with iconic backdrops and super French props. We selected Sunday morning as the best time to do this, because it happens to be time of the week when there are the least people out and about. IE…the least amount of people who will kick my ass for walking around in a blue/white striped dress, a beret, and carrying baguettes. So after stopping for coffee and fresh bread, my friend and I headed over to the park next to the Eiffel Tower. It was absolutely beautiful that morning, and we got some great shots. After that, we grabbed some rent-a-bikes and rode along the Seine and dropped them off at a station near the Louvre. It was super cheap and super fun. Paris has rent-a-bike figured out.  We had picnic lunch at one of our favorite places along the river, and then toured the opera house in the afternoon. And in the evening, another friend and I headed back to the Eiffel Tower to see it sparkle at night one last time, once again pick up rent-a-bikes, and rode along the river a bit before dropping them off near the Champs Elysees/Arc de Triomphe. It was as close to a perfect day in Paris as you could get.

Monday, we checked out of our hotel and headed to the nearby Pere Lachaise Cemetery. It’s famous because well…it has a lot of famous people buried there, including Edith Piaf, La Fontaine, Moliere, Chopin…and tons more. We then split up a bit and one friend and I went to a café while the other two went to see some stuff that they missed the day before. We found THE MOST ADORABLE CAFÉ I have ever seen. It was on a little random side street, and there was no one in there except my friend and I and the owner. It was amazingly cute. I then spent the rest of the afternoon meeting up with an ex-resident of mine from my days as an RA who’s spending the semester in Paris. We grabbed lunch and caught up, comparing experiences in France and whatnot. She was actually the first face from home I’ve seen since I got to France in August. It is a little sad realizing that almost everyone else in my program has friends also studying all over Europe, friends coming to visit them, or family coming to visit them. Having not many friends in a place to study abroad nor having a few grand to drop on a trip to Europe, and family with other more reasonable/responsible financial priorities, I’ve pretty much been left alone here. I’m not complaining though. As much as I wish I could share this with some of the people I care about most back home, I’m really doing fine here by myself. Just commenting on the situation. But even more exciting, said former resident is coming down to the south for her spring break, so I’m meeting up with her and her travel partner and helping them get to a town extremely close to mine. But back to Paris…that evening we caught a train home.

It was a lovely long weekend and I really, really love Paris. It’s a great place to visit for a long weekend, but I’m still happiest where I am. I’m going to have an afternoon and evening in the city before my flight home leaves in June, so I didn’t have to say goodbye for good.

And it’s still surreal that I can say, “Oh yes, I just went to spend a weekend in Paris. Whatever”. My life is too cool. 

Senior photos at the Eiffel Tower

General Lafayette's grave

One of the fountain shows we saw

Day trips.

So if we’re facebook friends, you’ll have seen that I’ve been busy lately. The last voyage I blogged was Strasbourg, one month ago today. And I have done quite a bit of traveling since then…

March 8^th-9th.
An American friend from school and I took a train west to a town called Montpellier to see M83. If you haven’t heard of them, though they are French, they’re famous internationally and have this recent hit song. So after hopping on a train late that afternoon and arriving early evening, we got lost for a while trying to find out hostel walking in every direction except the correct one. But we got there eventually, and the concert was absolutely amazing. They hadn’t played in the south of France in five or six years, and you could see on the lead singer’s face how excited he was to be able to speak French to the audience in between songs and to just be playing a show in France. The next day we woke up, had two hours to wander around the city, and then catch a train back to Aix. Montpellier was a really lovely city. Not that much larger than Aix in terms of space, but it was definitely more urban and less “cute-provençal-town”.

March 9^th-10^th.
The international organization at my university organized an overnight trip west to the cities of Toulouse and Carcassonne. It was so simple—I give them 50€ and they give me a hostel room with friends, all transportation, and they showed us around both places. It was a great time with friends seeing a new corner of the country. We wandered around Toulouse most of Saturday and then some more Sunday morning. If that city rings a bell, it’s because it was in the news a week or so after I was there. But I saw none of that. I just saw some pretty buildings, pretty parks, and ate some delicious regional food. Sunday afternoon we stopped at Carcassonne. I was there at the end of February with one of my friends before I knew this trip was happening, but it was fun to visit again. Carcassonne is a town a few hours west of Aix that has an old medieval city from like the 12^th century. It used to be on the Franco-Spanish border, but then the border got moved at some point so the castle lost significance. But this medieval city was full of toy stores selling princess and knight outfits. It’s kind of funny how Americans take their kids to Ren Fairs and Europeans can just take their kids to a real castle.

March 24^th.
This semester, my American program organized two trips for us that are paid for out of the tuition dollars I pay them. This first one was to a region just a bit north of Aix called “Luberon”. We visited four small villages, a nature park, and an abbey. The villages were all very cute, and most of them were perched on top of hills so that once upon a time when they were built, they could be easily defended from attacking persons. But the best village was Roussillon, where the nature park was. Randomly in the middle of this area, there’s this little blop of colorful soil. There are a total of 17 shades ranging from browns, to reds, to yellows and oranges and they’re used for a bunch of stuff (pharmaceuticals, paints, dyes, etc). They’re really picky with what it’s used for now to protect it, and part of it is now this nature park. It was easily one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The last place we visited was this abbey in a valley. It was kind of depressing because if you run a google image search of the name (Abbeye Senanque), almost all results show it in the middle of a blooming lavender field. Beautiful, no? I was just a tad bitter because the lavender booms two months out of the year here…June and July. Literally, those are the only two months that I’m not in France and I don’t get to see the one thing that Provence is absolutely known for. So it was slightly insulting for me to see a field of dead lavender that will bloom as soon as my plane takes off. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. It was a really, really lovely trip. I’ll just have to use this as motivation to save money when I get home so I can come back here someday at the right time of the year.

March 25^th.
So I was looking at my map of France and marked off all the places I’ve been, and noticed a gap within my immediate vicinity. So I planned a day trip to Toulon, which is the next major city along the Mediterranean east of Marseille. It has a big port with ferries to Corsica/Italy/Africa, ship building, and it’s where France keeps most of their Navy. Their aircraft carrier wasn’t in town that day, but I hear it’s impressive. So three friends and I hopped on a train for about an hour and ended up in Toulon. We walked inland farther to find our first activity…a cable car to the top of a small mountain (2,000ft). Mount Faron is right next to Toulon, so we were essentially on the outskirts of town when we caught the cable car up. Up top, apart from the amazing views, there was a zoo that specialized in the breeding of endangered cats. Obviously, we went there first. It was a bit sad because the cages were all small and I felt sorry for the kitties, but everyone was happily asleep in the sun…like cats do. It’s sunny over 300 days a year here…so it’s a pretty nice place to be a cat. Or a panther/puma/lion/tiger/etc. We saw the pair of tiger cubs born here 10 months ago staring at a random donkey that was wandering through the back part maintenance area of the zoo like they wanted to go eat it. Super cute. After the zoo, we walked around the park up top some more, taking in the views, and then moved on to the WWII memorial. They turned an old fort into a museum to commemorate the Allied landings in Provence in August 1944 and the liberation of Toulon. After Allied troops landed up in Normandy the previous June, they did the same thing all along the south of France. It was super cool actually seeing stuff like that where it happened, as opposed to watching a film or seeing a similar exhibit set up at an American museum. After that, we took the cable car back down the mountain, wandered around the center of Toulon for a bit, and then came home.

March 31^st.
A while back I was looking through a list of “the most beautiful places in France” and saw that one of them, the French Grand Canyon, was located relatively close to where I am. A few girls and I were talking about renting a car to go spend the day there, but then we discovered that this company in town that plans 25€ day trips to all sorts of neat places was organizing a trip so we decided to just do that. Next to the canyon, which is either called the Gorge du Verdon or seriously Grand Canyon du Verdon, is a man-made lake that is the prettiest shade of green. They don’t allow any gas motors on it, only electric and canoes/kayaks/paddleboats, and it’s a reservoir so there’s no gross stuff draining into it. The trip organizers told us that the water would probably be too cold for swimming, but I wore my suit anyways. A former swimmer friend and I decided to go in anyways, since it couldn’t be any worse than an early morning swim practice. It was…because we couldn’t properly swim with our faces in the water and I think my lungs went into a bit of shock the first two minutes because it was hard for me to talk. But we warmed up a bit, and swam from the beach we were at out to the bridge nearby and beached ourselves like sunning seals on some rocks on the other side. We contemplated jumping off all dramatic-like, but our legs were too cold to ensure that we’d be able to safely leap far enough out. So instead we just played with the mud that covered the bottom of this lake. It was all goopy and pure and made our skin all soft. Then we swam back, played with some more mud, and dried off. There were probably 60 people on this trip,and a few dozen more along the shores of other parts of this lake…but my friend and I were literally the only ones swimming. I don’t think I’ll ever swim in a lake that naturally pure again or have a lake to myself. It was pretty much the coolest thing ever. After that, they drove us through the canyon to see it from up higher/up close and take some picutes. I’ve never been to the American Grand Canyon…but I’m pretty sure it’s hard to compare the two. Either way, the French one was so pretty. The last stop was a small village near the canyon where we saw villagey things and climbed up to a little chapel way up high. It was a great day and I got so many good pictures.

And now for some photos:

Swimming at the canyon, compliments of a friend on a paddle boat.

Cassoulet, traditional dish from Toulouse.

Tinted soil at Roussillon.

Final notes:

-If you'd like to see more of a geographic representation of where I've been, I've been mapping it on Google. Click here for the map, and you can zoom in and click on each bubble to see what city it is.
-If you'd like to see pictures, this album contains everything I've done since the end of February for the most and it's visible to people without facebook accounts.

Trouble with the law.

So today as I was going to class and I saw I had a letter in my mailbox from the city of Aix-en-Provence. Curious, I immediately opened it and started reading while I walked. Turns out it was from….the environment police.

Pause.

The environment police. Here in Aix/France I swear there are close to 10 different kinds of cops roaming around. There are municipal police, there are national police, there are heavy duty military style police, there are unarmed security officers, and there are the environment police. Okay so maybe there aren’t 10, but I know for a fact that there are at least those five.

What the environment police do is essentially ticket people for littering or putting their garbage out at the wrong time. There isn’t one designated “garbage day” like there is in the States. Instead, you’re just supposed to put your neatly bagged trash in the street/sidewalk right next to your building after 7pm, and then someone comes to pick it up. This has actually led to much confusion in my household. If the trash can’t be out before 7pm, when is the latest it can go out? We’ve put it out at 730, to have it taken away within a few minutes. We’ve put it out at midnight to have it taken away at some point before morning. We know not what goes on. Furthermore, we’re not entirely sure what days they come around. Is today a holiday? Will the trash men come? If we put trash out Saturday night…will they pick it up or is that too close to Sunday? We lack answers to these questions. All we know is that the environment police are stricter with whatever mysterious policies they have because of the street we happen to live on. It’s very small, very historic in terms of the rest of the neighborhood, and it’s very touristy. But up until now we haven’t had any problems.

So I get this letter saying that at 8am on March 17^th they noticed I had left my garbage outside of my building when it wasn’t supposed to be there. This probably means that the night before either me or one of my roommates took the trash out “too late” for pickup (again, we’re unaware of any time limit). You might be asking yourself…how do they know that I did it? Well what the environment police do is actually open garbage left outside and look for clues to see to whom it may belong, so someone can get in trouble. There must have been something in the trash with my name on it, because I’m the only one in my apartment to receive one of these notices. I talked to one of the ladies who works for my program and she said that I’ll probably get another letter in the mail at some point making me pay some undetermined fine. Bullshit.

How’s that for an invasion of privacy? Even garbage isn’t sacred. I’m shredding to bits anything that ever has my name on it so the goddamn trash police will have to put together a puzzle if they ever want to try this again.

America, I miss you and your simple garbage law.

If this blog were a living thing, it would have starved.

I’ve ignored this blog a lot. My apologies. I’ve done a lot of stuff, and it’s not like I haven’t had time to write about it. I just haven’t wanted to. So today I’ve forced myself to sit down and write a bunch of it out because I have even more coming up and I don’t want memories to be too buried. A few simpler thoughts:

School is going great. My classes aren’t too boring.

I’m starting to freak out about coming some to be a real person/graduate and enter the job market.

I hosted a Super Bowl party for a few foreign friends who had never watched before. We streamed it on my laptop and it was a good time.

I took a day trip to a medieval castle town west of here and it was awesome. But I’m going back next weekend as part of a trip organized by the international club at school, so it’ll get a full post then.

I went back to the calanques (inlets and cliffs at the sea) in Cassis for a 3^rd time and it was just as beautiful as the two previous times. I will keep going back.

I have a plane ticket home. June 1^st. Mark your calendars.

That’s less than three months from now….holy shit.

I’ve been here over six months…holy shit.

So for more detailed thoughts and stories, there are three posts following this one. They’re posted in order that they happened so that you can just scroll down and travel back in time so it looks like I was keeping up with this better…

Miss you all. Hope you’re enjoying that snow. I’m enjoying not having any.

Let's walk to Germany

Back in December, two friends from my program and I booked a three day trip to Strasbourg for our mid-winter break because it crazy cheap (22€ for a 5.5hr high speed train ride each way) and we found an equally cheap hotel in town that didn't look sketchy. It seems like such a long time ago that these plans were put in place, and all the sudden last week it pops up on us that we’re leaving Tuesday morning and we were in a mad dash to figure out what we were doing, who had the tickets, who paid for what, etc. So we arrived Tuesday afternoon, found out hotel, dropped off our things, and then took the tram back into the city center to wander a bit. Strasbourg is really cool because the region it’s in has been passed back and forth between and fought over by the French and Germans for a long time…but now it’s France. And Germany is just across the river. So it looks a lot like Germany architecture wise, but everyone is speaking French. It’s actually really confusing.

The next day, the 1^st part of our schedule consisted of a walk to Germany. I Googled it before I left (look how much I’m learning!) and saw that the satellite photos made the 30 minute walking route look like it was going through an industrial park. Upon careful inspection, I saw that there were indeed sidewalks, so it was still entirely possible. Google Maps did not lie to me…we essentially walked through an industrial park. We saw a hooker. It was far from the prettiest walk I’ve ever been on, and if I hadn’t been doing it to walk to a different country just because I could, there’s no way I would ever do something like that again. But eventually we made it to the park that flanks both sides of the river separating France from Germany that had a pedestrian bridge connecting both halves. It was super cool to be able to do something like that. And because of a European Agreement that both France and Germany, among others, are a part of, you don’t need a passport to cross between the two. There are no border controls. It’s strange to think about, but extremely convenient.

So we then headed into the little town called Kehl on the other side of the river, found the town center, and stopped at a café. I took two years of German in high school and enjoyed it, but did not have any time in college to continue it…so whatever I have left is pretty broken. But I could still order a coffee politely, and get the jist of the menu. My two partners in travel wanted to have a beer since we were in Germany and asked the waitress for a recommendation. First off, she didn’t speak English…but appeared to understand it, clearly. She responds, “ich trinke kein bier, aber….” Which means “I don’t drink beer, but…” and she recommended something that people normally order. What kind of German doesn’t drink beer? Has everything I’ve been taught been a lie? Also…I’ve heard some statistic that 70% of Germans can speak English well enough. So the fact that the one German we interacted with didn’t drink beer or speak English was quite astonishing. I’m not saying that everyone should speak English…not at all. Just going off of what I’ve come to understand from my time abroad had led me to be a little more hopeful that odds were we wouldn’t be totally shit out of luck wandering into Germany essentially speaking no German. I’ve yet to see statistics of beer drinking Germans vs non beer drinking Germans though…so I’ll have to give her the benefit of the doubt on that one and attempt to ignore the stereotypes I’ve learned over the years. Regardless, it was a lovely hour that I spent in Germany.

After a walk back to France/Strasbourg, we moved onto our next activity. Due to the history/geographical location of Strasbourg, it made it a popular and especially symbolic location for European unification efforts post WWII. The city is home to the Parliament of the European Union, as well as the headquarters of the Council of Europe and their famous European Court of Human Rights. The latter being an organization that was started one year before the start of what would eventually become the European Union. The Council of Europe has 47 member states (unlike the 27 of the EU), and not all of them are especially “European” in the traditional sense. For example, Russia, Turkey, and a bunch of far eastern European countries are members of the C. of Europe but would never ever be allowed to join the EU. Also the C. of Europe doesn’t pass any legally binding stuff like the EU does; they mainly just start initiatives and try to put everyone in a better European spirit. Their claim to fame is getting all of their members do away with the death penalty, making Europe the 1^st entire continent to abolish the practice A while back I contacted the visitors offices at the EU’s Parliament and the C. of Europe’s headquarters asking if my friends and I could hop on a tour group coming through. The EU said no, but thankfully the Council of Europe said yes. So we got a tour of their building in English with a bunch of Japanese students. It wasn’t as cool as the European Parliament could have been, but I was still super glad to be able to join this random group, see their building, and learn a bit more about their organization.

The next day, upon the recommendation of a friend of a friend, we headed to a neighborhood called “la petite France”. I understand places like NYC having “little Italy” or “Chinatown”, but I remain perplexed as to why a town in France has a neighborhood called little France. Regardless, it’s the especially cute and especially touristy old looking part of town. We found a restaurant that served the regional specialty of tarte flambée (like a super thin crust pizza with cream cheese, onions, and bacon) and wandered a bit. Soon enough, it was time to get back on a five hour train home.

It was a lovely short little trip, and it was really nice to see another country/another side of France. My only regret is that I wasn’t able to see the Maginot Line. For those of you not familiar, after WWI, the French decided to build this big fancy wall all along their border with Germany, because they feared they would attack again. It’s not a great wall in the Chinese sense, but more of a really long fort equipped with what at the time was super sophisticated military technology. The French figured that this wall would stop the Germans, and they could just focus more on an invasion through Belgium from the north. Well, Hitler did go into Belgium but attacked the French army in some way/angle they weren’t anticipating, defeated the army, and then swiftly took over the rest of France…thus rendering their especially expensive/advanced defense system completely useless. So since for obvious reasons, it’s not a super popular tourist destination, it only opens up during more popular tourist seasons when the foreigners come…because the French don’t want to see it. And alas, I was there at the wrong time of the year and the museum at Fort Failure was closed. Perhaps in the future…

On the bridge. France on the left, Germany on the right.
Little France