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

Amazingly awkward time in Italy

At the start of February, I was experiencing quite the travel bug. I found myself searching for flights to Brussels, Belgium but nothing was cheap enough. Then it struck me that I could take the train from Marseille to Italy, and it might be cheaper. When I was first researching this program in Aix-en-Provence, I decided that I wanted to visit Genoa, Italy because it was one of the closest major Italian cities to where I would be. However, until I had this crazy urge to travel, I hadn’t given going there any further thought. I looked into the tickets, and saw that it would be about 70€ round trip for the train, which was quite reasonable. I put the call out to my facebook friends in town to see if anyone wanted to join me, and one of my classmates from Sciences Po was on board. So we decided Thursday night that we were doing this and purchased the train tickets, booked a hostel Friday, and by Saturday morning at 8am we were on a train headed east.

The first leg of our trip went along the Mediterranean coast the majority of the time, and it was crazy beautiful. The train tracks were practically on the beach. This train took us from Marseille to Ventimiglia, Italy, which is a town just across the Franco-Italian border, and as far in this direction as French trains travel. It’s an adorable little beach town where because of its location, both Italian and French are spoken/understood. This was nice because my Italian was still a bit rusty. We planned a five hour stopover in Ventimiglia to grab lunch and have some time to explore. After some wandering, some delicious pizza eating, and some more wandering, we were back to the station and on our train to Genoa.

We arrived in Genoa Saturday evening and took a taxi up to our hostel because it wasn’t exactly close and the bus system was too complicated to figure out in the dark. The city is directly on the coast (and happens to be Italy’s main port) and quickly climbs into some steep hills. The hostel we were staying at was almost the only one in town, and happened to be on top of all of these hills overlooking the city. This meant lots of super windey roads with hairpin turns zig zaging their way up. It was kind of scary in a taxi, and almost terrifying in a city bus (which we used the rest of the time to get between the hostel and the city center) because the roads were also very narrow and had parking on both sides. Often, the bus would have to stop to let the opposite direction traffic go through because there wasn’t enough room. It seemed like a very stupid system, but they showed no signs of wanting to change it.

We dropped our things off at the hostel, and then headed to a nearby restaurant which the guy at the front desk described as the easiest place nearby to grab dinner. We get seated and immediately notice that something was strange about this place. It seemed like a supper club, or a low budget banquet hall. The chairs were plastic garden chairs, they still had New Year’s decorations up, there was a half assed DJ booth complete with 3 disco lights, and a few strings of rainbow xmas lights were hung in the room. My friend and I were also the only table with less than six people at it. Then we saw someone was setting up at the DJ booth and hoped for some hilarious Italian entertainment, and we were not disappointed. For the rest of the evening, there were at least two couples on the dance floor, one of them being the same guy alternating between three different women. At one point there was a nine year old out there who was doing Shakira-like things with her hips as she danced with her mother…so apparently they pop out of the womb like this (and singing…because they switched to karaoke later). But the food was good, and all the slightly awkward ambiance/entertainment made it quite the memorable evening.

The next day we wandered around Genoa a bit. It was Sunday, so the city was relatively deserted and most shops were closed. It was also quite chilly, which didn’t help anything. We got some quality indoor time at their aquarium which was pretty neat. We were also unintentionally constantly trailing a trio of Italians who were taking dreadfully cliché stone faced European photos in front of almost each main exhibit. And since I think this is hilarious and that’s basically my favorite thing ever, and why I look so “angry” in all the photos I post of myself, it made the endeavor all the more entertaining.

We wandered some more and came upon some random palace in town. We saw it was only 2€ for young people to get in, so we decided to check it out. As we approached the stairs to the entrance, a man comes down and tells us it’s too cold up there and to come back in ten minutes after he takes a break and we could get in. So we come back and aimlessly loiter for a bit with a large group of Italian tourists before this same man spots us and points to where we could buy a ticket and then join the group. So we acquire our tickets, and these people in the office are on the phone, “I have two girls here…are they coming with you? What should I do with them…”. All the sudden a woman appears and tells us to come with her, and she takes us upstairs into the palace. My friend and I were passed back and forth a few times before they decided who was going to show us around, because there was this large organized group, and then a few unrelated stragglers including myself and my friend. So we got a detailed tour (in Italian) of this palace with just four other people, which was much more preferable to the giant group that was also there. My poor friend didn’t really speak any Italian other than “I don’t speak Italian, I’m Canadian” so she only caught every 5^th word, and I think I understood at least half of what was being explained to me. We just maintained facial expressions that gave our guide the impression that we weren’t lost so things didn’t get more awkward. But in the end, it was a beautiful palace, a cheap tour, and just an overall interesting experience to happen upon and be thrown into. We spent the rest of the afternoon in search of food to take back to the hotel for dinner since we knew that with it being Sunday our options would be limited. But we threw together a nice dinner of pesto (the specialty of Genoa), some foccacia bread, porchetta (insanely tasty slow roasted herb pork, a specialty of Rome) and some cheese and we were as happy as could be.

The next day, we went back into town to take a train farther east along the coast to a place called “Cinque Terre” (five lands) which is a string of five small villages 5.5 miles from start to finish that are connected by a walking path and widely regarded as one of the most beautiful places in the world. So we got off the train at the farthest village and went to purchase tickets to enter since it’s a national park. The woman at the office tells us that due to “problems” the coastal path between towns was only available between where we currently were and the next town up, but apart from that we’d need to use the more complicated and mountainous hiking trails, or buy the ticket that was admission use of the train that connects everything. In no hiking spirit, we bought the train ticket, grabbed a copy of the train schedule, and highlighted the trains we would take at each town since they weren’t that frequent and didn’t want to be stuck somewhere too long. The walk to the next town was outrageously beautiful. It was around noontime, and my friend and I started to be craving some lunch. There was a group of dozens of Chinese tourists in the second town, half of which were carrying McDonald’s bags. Intrigued, we tried to find this easy lunch, but it was nowhere in sight.

So we caught the train to the 3^rd town and figured we could find lunch there. However this train didn’t exactly drop us off in the town. It was more like several hundred yards to the side of and then 400 steps below. When you’re starving and just looking for food, an infinite staircase is quite insulting. We made it to the top and began to search for a café/restaurant. However, Cinque Terre is very much a warm weather destination…and it was February. So much of these towns were dormant/deserted. It was nice to be somewhere so popular when it was peaceful, but not when we just needed food. At this point it was now past the typical European lunchtime window (after 2pm), so we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to find a place that would actually serve us lunch, even if they had been open. But we found a place whose door was unlocked and had no one but a family of three speaking North American English inside. They said that the restaurant had fed them, so we could probably still eat too. As we’re standing there awkwardly, a man pops out of the kitchen and asks if we wanted a table. We said yes, and he says we can have spaghetti with either meat sauce or marinara. Just thankful to be fed outside of lunchtime and outside of tourist season, we picked our sauce and sat down. I’m not sure if it was the fact that we were in Italy, the crazy beautiful view out the window, the joy that we finally found someone to feed us, or how hungry we were after a half day of trekking, but it was the best spaghetti I’ve ever had. We thanked the staff and left a nice tip, and raced back to the train station to head to the next village.

This is where our voyage got even more interesting. We got off the train in this little village called Vernazza (the only ones to get off the train, mind you) and immediately noticed copious amounts of construction. My first reaction was that they were just updating the road while it was the offseason. But as we walked into town, we noticed that people seemed to be working on tearing out/re-doing the 1^st floor of every building. We were very confused. There was no one in town except a few slowly walking old people and construction workers. The harbor had no boats/water in it. There was sediment everywhere; it wasn’t just dirt from a construction scene. We came to the conclusion that there had been a flood of some sort, and now had to awkwardly wait 75 minutes until the next train arrived. By the time we were back at the train station, all the construction people were calling it a day and also taking the train out of town. It was incredibly awkward….all these manly men finished with their day of manly work…and then these two random college girls. When I got back to my apartment Monday evening, I Googled the name of the town to see what had happened. Turns out that October 25^th (keep in mind we visited the 2^nd weekend in February) there had been a mudslide that killed five people and buried the town in 12 feet of mud. Holy shit. Because we decided Thursday/Friday that we’d be leaving Saturday morning and figured that while we were in the neighborhood we’d take the train to Cinque Terre and figure out the fine points of our tourist stops with the help of tourist resources in Genoa, we didn’t Google anything. This meant that we had no idea that there was a deadly mudslide and we shouldn’t have gotten off the train in Vernazza. Apparently the “problems” the woman at the starting office referred to regarding the coastal path really meant “devastating/deadly mudslide”. Thanks for the heads up, lady. But really…anyone in their right mind would have Googled something…anything…before going somewhere. But we were pressed for time and didn’t. Moral of the story, Google before you travel so you don’t end up in a disaster zone.

We visited one more town after that and it was nice and problem free. We headed back to Genoa that night, got one more night of sleep at the hostel, and early Tuesday morning headed back to France. Once again we had to change trains in Ventimiglia, but this time only with a 90 minute layover. This allowed us to pick up some last minute Italian food goodies to enjoy on the train and head back to la France.

It was a really great trip and I’m glad that’s how I cured my travel bug. At some point my Italian really started to come back, probably due to extended immersion and having so much of it spoken to me. I was able to ask a woman at the train station going home from Cinque Terre what I was supposed to do if the ticket machine was broken and no one was working at the window, and then would have been able to explain my situation to the ticket checker on board if they had bothered to come through and check tickets…but they didn’t (heeeey free ride home). And then I was able to have a full conversation with this random old Italian man who came to chat with my friend and I on the beach in Ventimiglia while we killed time before the train home. It was nice until he tells me he has a daughter my age and later in conversation says we should get together for coffee next time I’m in town. Oh ps this was on Valentine’s Day…so nothing says happy V-Day like being hit on by an old Italian man.

Green is Aix, where I live. Yellow is Marseille, where we took a bus to from Aix to catch the 1^st train. Red is Ventimiglia, where we changed trains/killed Italian time. Blue is Genoa, where we stayed and wandered. Black is the general location of Cinque Terre, where we learned life lesions.

In the end, the moral of the story is to avoid visiting beach/summer towns in February…because not much will be open and you’ll be stuck in the cold and to avoid touring a major European city on a Sunday…because most things will be closed. And to Google things before leaving so you don’t end up in a natural disaster zone.

Disaster free part of Cinque Terre

24 hours in Paris

At the end of January, one of the new students in my program posted in our Facebook group that she was going to Paris for a concert, and I decided to join. The act in question was Childish Gambino, aka Donald Glover, aka the black guy from Community. He’s been rapping for a while and he’s actually really good. You should youtube him if you feel so inclined. Anyhow, I’m a fan, so I decided to go for it. This semester I wanted to go back to Paris at least twice, with one of those being a super short day trip, just because I can. I’m living three hours away from Paris, and who knows if that will ever happen again.

So the three of us, that being myself and two other girls from my program, caught a Tuesday afternoon train, arrived in Paris by early evening, dropped our things at our hostel, and then metro’ed across town to the venue. We were even lucky enough to have some nice young Parisians help us find the place, which was awesome. Before we left the station, I went to compare the city map I had marked with the venue’s location to the map of the neighborhood near the exit so I knew which direction to head once we were above ground. Sure enough, these two young people were also looking at the map, and asked me if we were heading to the same venue. Turns out they didn’t know where they were going, but with my specifically marked map plus their knowledge of the area, they now understood and showed us where it was. It might sound like I’m making a big deal out of nothing, but this is huge. Parisians are notoriously cold, rude people. So the fact that this happened was nearly the equivalent of seeing a leprechaun ride a unicorn. I don’t think we would have gotten to/been on time for the show without this little Christmas miracle.

The next day, we did a bit of sightseeing. My two partners in travel had never been to Paris before, so we hit a few staples (Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysées, Place de la Concord, exterior of the Louvre) and then it was time for the other two to catch their train home. This gave me an additional several hours to wander on my own before heading back to Aix. Once I was alone, I fluffed up my scarf a bit so it was nearly useless and walked like I knew where I was going, and I was presently surprised. None of the tourist crap peddlers bothered me. No one jingled their Eiffel Tower key chains at me; no one offered me some mock petition to sign while they tried to pick pocket me. It was lovely. So I wandered around Paris for a few hours and just enjoyed my time. And soon enough, it was time to catch a train and head home.

Super glad I made the trip. I really love Paris, and am very thankful I have the opportunity to visit it multiple times this year.

Childish Gambino