I'm officially done with six weeks of school, and am thusly a week past being over the hump. I guess I should do some reflection of what I've done so far or something. Anyway, I think that's more for myself to do than for me to do on this blog, at least when I need to catch y'all up on the last week.
Once again, I don't remember everything that happened, just because things start to blend together when you're doing similar things all the time. We had Practicum presentations again on Thursday morning, so those were fun again. A couple girls recreated some Ingres paintings, another guy made some drawings of pigeons, someone brought us some cake and someone else made this crazy broken-wine-bottle-Jesus-on-a-crucifix. Good stuff. I wrote poems that I you can read below this.
Thursday night we went to a jazz club--Caveau de la Huchette in the Fifth. Not a particularly great band, but enjoyable nonetheless. The cool thing was that it was in this underground stone lair. It was seriously like a dungeon. (I think it was actually a courtroom, then a prison, then an execution chamber, but it seemed like a dungeon.) The other cool thing was that there was a big dance floor in the middle of the dungeon, and people were dancing pretty much the entire night. There was this old guy in overalls who was particularly awesome, though only because he was wearing overalls rather than for being a good dancer. I'm gonna get a pair of overalls when I get back. I feel like overalls need to make a comeback.
Friday, I met up with Michael and Natalia for dinner at a RestoU (Univeristy-associated cafeteria) for a really cheap dinner. It was crappy, but really cheap. Since they closed early, we went to get drinks at a bar before we met up with Heimunn. Turns out since we finished dinner so early, it was still happy hour! Hooray, happy hour! The bar was called La Bodega de la Soif, or something like that, on rue Guisarde. Nice place, and good drinks. Natalia ordered a ginger cosmo, which was really good. Jen joined us right after happy hour ended, so she had to pay full price, but then a girl started to put on nail polish (while sitting in a little, classy bar, nonetheless) and it started to smell bad so we left to go find a bottle of wine at a supermarché and hang out on the Pont des Arts.
We walked to the nearest Franprix and were looking at wine when we realized we didn't have a corkscrew (French lesson of the day: corkscrew = tire-bouchon), so we tried to find a twist-off, of which there were none. Then we figured we could just push in the cork, but we couldn't tell if they were synthetic or real, and synthetic ones are really hard to push in (as we discovered on another occasion when we had a bottle of wine that needed to be opened without a corkscrew). Anyway, it didn't end up mattering because you can't buy alcohol in supermarkets after nine or something stupid like that, so I bought a can of Pringles and a package of gummies and we went to find a convenience store that sold booze. I don't know if they don't care or if they don't have the same rules, but we bought a bottle of white wine (which the shop proprietor kindly opened for us) and we headed to the Pont (which means bridge, if you didn't know that). Anyway, we hung out at the Pont being generally jovial until we got too cold, then headed off to catch the last Metro home. I actually missed the last Metro and had to take the Noctilien.
Saturday early afternoon, I went to rue Cler in the Seventh, where there's supposed to be a pretty decent market. However, by the time I got there, it was pretty much just the shops along the street that had stands outside, so I don't know if it was because it's the off-season or if because it was too late that there weren't more vendors. We walked down the street to see what was around and ended up getting lunch in a café which was pretty good. I also bought a tire-bouchon at the Franprix at the end of the street, just to be prepared. Anyway, over lunch we discussed plans for some other time that dictate buying bread, meat, cheese and wine, then walking over to the Eiffel Tower to have a picnic. Then I went home to do some laundry and get some work done before going out that night.
Our night started in the Eleventh at Blue Elephant, a Thai restaurant with multiple locations in multiple countries. It was kind of expensive, but very good. I have to say, I miss Asian food. (We were discussing getting dim sum this weekend but plans fell through. We might go in the next couple of weeks, though.) We followed dinner with another failed attempt to buy alcohol at a supermarket, followed by a successful attempt to buy other alcoholic products at another convenience store. (I call them convenience stores but they really just sell food and drinks.) We proceeded to the Metro to go to the Grand Palais to try to see the Yves St Laurent collection, but it turns out the line was a couple miles long and we didn't feel like waiting for a decade, so we sat outside the Petit Palais (across the street from the Grand Palais) and drank our purchases, putting my earlier purchase to good use. After that, we headed to Showcase, a nightclub, which we failed at going to previously, and failed again that night but in a different way. Turns out it was really lame, at least while we were there.
Sunday was work-tastic, as well as Monday and not really Tuesday, but that's where I am now. I'm headed to Barcelona this weekend and I'm going back to Amsterdam the weekend after that, so I really only have one weekend left in Paris then I'm heading home. Crazy. See you soon, I guess.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Some Poetry (written for the Practicum)
Plentiful Poems Pondering Paris
or
Twenty-one Tidbits Tallying This Thinkers Thoughts
like a draining sink,
paris spins into the first,
sucking in tourists
yet undiscovered,
the deuxième is unknown--
at least to this guy
no longer a swamp,
arrondisment number three
pleine des gays and jews
Our stay in the fourth ended quite well,
As MIJE was a wonderful hostel.
As we got on our way
I told myself, "Hey,
I should come back sometime for falafel!"
aliens from space
landed in the cinquième,
built oppressive squares
My favorite arrondisment, six
Is a great place to go just for kicks.
But if you're going to school,
You might look like a fool,
Because French turns your brain into bricks.
the eiffel tower
overshadows the seventh
it's really quite big
a song told me,
"il y a tous que vous voulez
aux champs elysées"
les grands magasins
are all i've seen of the ninth
quelle dommage, i guess
the weekend starts here
at gare du nord in the tenth
there are lots of trains
i have hardly seen
the one called the eleventh,
but i ate there once
an hour away
the twelfth is too far from me
inconvenient
fire and thermophones
rue des frigos, treizième
and i'm still confused
those kids at the fond
know where it's at--the fourteenth
not that i've been there
the metro tunnels
of the fifteenth, i know well
sadly, that is all
The sixteenth is really quite pretty,
A most beautiful part of the city.
I'd just like to say
That I'll live there some day,
And that I don't live there now is a pity.
the north side of town,
that is, the dix-septième,
just isn't my hood
prostitutes abound
in arrondisment eighteenth
'round the moulin rouge
there is nothing there
by there i mean the nineteenth
that i know about
jim morrison's corpse
lies under the twentieth
now, a tourist site
Boulogne-Billancourt's home to me.
Four miles from ISEP, or three.
If I had my druthers,
I'd change my host mothers
And move to l'Île St. Louis
or
Twenty-one Tidbits Tallying This Thinkers Thoughts
like a draining sink,
paris spins into the first,
sucking in tourists
yet undiscovered,
the deuxième is unknown--
at least to this guy
no longer a swamp,
arrondisment number three
pleine des gays and jews
Our stay in the fourth ended quite well,
As MIJE was a wonderful hostel.
As we got on our way
I told myself, "Hey,
I should come back sometime for falafel!"
aliens from space
landed in the cinquième,
built oppressive squares
My favorite arrondisment, six
Is a great place to go just for kicks.
But if you're going to school,
You might look like a fool,
Because French turns your brain into bricks.
the eiffel tower
overshadows the seventh
it's really quite big
a song told me,
"il y a tous que vous voulez
aux champs elysées"
les grands magasins
are all i've seen of the ninth
quelle dommage, i guess
the weekend starts here
at gare du nord in the tenth
there are lots of trains
i have hardly seen
the one called the eleventh,
but i ate there once
an hour away
the twelfth is too far from me
inconvenient
fire and thermophones
rue des frigos, treizième
and i'm still confused
those kids at the fond
know where it's at--the fourteenth
not that i've been there
the metro tunnels
of the fifteenth, i know well
sadly, that is all
The sixteenth is really quite pretty,
A most beautiful part of the city.
I'd just like to say
That I'll live there some day,
And that I don't live there now is a pity.
the north side of town,
that is, the dix-septième,
just isn't my hood
prostitutes abound
in arrondisment eighteenth
'round the moulin rouge
there is nothing there
by there i mean the nineteenth
that i know about
jim morrison's corpse
lies under the twentieth
now, a tourist site
Boulogne-Billancourt's home to me.
Four miles from ISEP, or three.
If I had my druthers,
I'd change my host mothers
And move to l'Île St. Louis
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Back in the Saddle
So I haven't posted in over a week. Not a whole lot happened last weekend, nor last week up until these last few days. I guess I'll pick up where I left off, and tell what I remember.
I don't really think much happened last weekend, from what I remember. Saturday, I went to visit Les Égouts de Paris (the sewer museum) for Mark's class. It was crappy, both literally and figuratively. Sunday, Michael's sister was here so we went out for lunch in the Marais, then wandered over to l'Ile St Louis to get ice cream at this famous place, which ended up being really, really good. I got a fudgy brownie with chocolate-orange ice cream. Super fudgy and amazing. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Nothing particularly interesting happened during the week. My host family went to Israel, so I had the house to myself, but we're not allowed to have other people over so I didn't throw a raging party or anything like that. Pretty much the same thing as always except I could get up and not put on clothes before I went to the bathroom in the morning.
Thursday night, a group of us went to the Lido cabaret on the Champs Elysées. It was pretty whelming, which is somewhere in between over- and underwhelming. Anyway, I paid fifty euro to watch an hour and a half of showgirls prancing about on stage to pre-recorded music. Also, they lip-synched (very poorly) instead of actually singing, which was disappointing. And the champagne they served was pretty bad.
Friday morning, I got up at the crack of dawn (or maybe even before) to catch my 9:25 train to Amsterdam. The crew for the weekend was me, Jen, Michael and Midori, but Jen booked her ticket an hour earlier (because some stupid booking issues on the website) and Midori was still in class, so Michael and I spent four hours napping/talking/eating/etc in first class. Yes, first class. Not second class. It was awesome.
So we arrived in Amsterdam and immediately went to a coffee shop where Jen had been hanging out for the last hour or so. I had a brownie and Michael and I each had a three euro spliff. Surprisingly cheap, but also probably not the best decision, because the tobacco hit me pretty hard and I was mildly nauseous for a little while. After motivating ourselves to stand up and continue our day, the three of us went to buy tram tickets and find our hostel in a purple haze, which took a considerable effort and an inordinately long time.
Upon our arrival, we decided it would be best to take a nap, so we slept until Midori got in an hour or so later, then we wandered around for a bit until dinner, which was pretty mediocre and rather overpriced, but I didn't care at the time. We were all pretty worn out after a long day of travel, so we went to bed immediately after dinner. Lame, I know, but at least I got a full night's rest.
Saturday was pretty awesome. We woke up to nice weather and everyone else went running while I slept more and eventually took a shower. Then we all went to get breakfast at a place called Bagels & Beans, and I ordered a goat cheese, bacon and pinenut bagel, but they brought me a goat cheese, walnut and honey bagel instead, which was still good but not what I wanted. We continued the day at a coffee shop, then walked through the red light district, grabbed a snack, went to Rembrandt's house, did a little shopping in an open-air market, took a boat tour, went to the Van Gogh museum, and finally made it to dinner.
Dinner was pretty great. Mark referred us to a restaurant that his friend had recommended to him called Tempoe Doeloe, which specialized in rijstafel (rice-table) which is pretty much Indonesian-style tapas. Apparently it's unique to Amsterdam, which seems kind of strange, but I haven't seen it anywhere else or heard of it before Mark told me about it, so I guess you really can't hear it anywhere else. Anyway, the food was great. They served multiple levels of spiciness, notated from - to +++. +++ was pretty outrageous. Mark warned us that the spiciest food was not for the faint of heart, but Jen was convinced she could handle it. When we got to the restaurant, she ordered some kind of kebabs+++ and the waiter kindly suggested that she get the sauce on the side and add it herself if she could take it. Turns out he knows his stuff because I tasted a pinhead sized drop of the sauce and it was pretty much like someone poured a volcano into my mouth.
The rest of the meal was also great. Fantastic desserts. I had this mango concoction of fresh mango and mango sorbet in a mango sauce (with mint and fresh passionfruit), Jen had fried bananas flambéed in Grand Marnier (at the table) with ice cream and coconut sauce, Midori had some very pretty fruity drink thing and Michael had an Irish coffee and a cake thing. Also, the service was excellent and friendly and the restaurant had great atmosphere and all that. Overall, a great meal. They even gave Jen and Midori red roses because it was Valentine's day.
Sunday was also good, though slightly more dreary and rainy than Saturday. We went to Bagels & Beans again for breakfast, where they messed up my order again (same thing) and there was generally poorer service. However, there was a cat that was unreasonably friendly and sat in Jen's lap for a good 10 minutes after we had finished eating. Then we went off to the Rijksmuseum or something like that where there was lots of Dutch artwork. We spent the rest of the day in coffee shops and wandering around and eating. Generally a good time. After dinner we went to see Revolutionary Road (with Dutch subtitles). Not my cup of tea, but still a pretty good movie.
Monday's train ride was uneventful, again in first class, but this time with all of us on the same train. Lots of catching up with email, schoolwork, etc. Anyway, I made it back in time for class, but I was too tired so I just went home and slept for another couple hours. Today I had class and stuff, generally uneventful. Mark asked us about rijstafel and i had more class, then I came back here and didn't do work.
And now you're up to date.
I don't really think much happened last weekend, from what I remember. Saturday, I went to visit Les Égouts de Paris (the sewer museum) for Mark's class. It was crappy, both literally and figuratively. Sunday, Michael's sister was here so we went out for lunch in the Marais, then wandered over to l'Ile St Louis to get ice cream at this famous place, which ended up being really, really good. I got a fudgy brownie with chocolate-orange ice cream. Super fudgy and amazing. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Nothing particularly interesting happened during the week. My host family went to Israel, so I had the house to myself, but we're not allowed to have other people over so I didn't throw a raging party or anything like that. Pretty much the same thing as always except I could get up and not put on clothes before I went to the bathroom in the morning.
Thursday night, a group of us went to the Lido cabaret on the Champs Elysées. It was pretty whelming, which is somewhere in between over- and underwhelming. Anyway, I paid fifty euro to watch an hour and a half of showgirls prancing about on stage to pre-recorded music. Also, they lip-synched (very poorly) instead of actually singing, which was disappointing. And the champagne they served was pretty bad.
Friday morning, I got up at the crack of dawn (or maybe even before) to catch my 9:25 train to Amsterdam. The crew for the weekend was me, Jen, Michael and Midori, but Jen booked her ticket an hour earlier (because some stupid booking issues on the website) and Midori was still in class, so Michael and I spent four hours napping/talking/eating/etc in first class. Yes, first class. Not second class. It was awesome.
So we arrived in Amsterdam and immediately went to a coffee shop where Jen had been hanging out for the last hour or so. I had a brownie and Michael and I each had a three euro spliff. Surprisingly cheap, but also probably not the best decision, because the tobacco hit me pretty hard and I was mildly nauseous for a little while. After motivating ourselves to stand up and continue our day, the three of us went to buy tram tickets and find our hostel in a purple haze, which took a considerable effort and an inordinately long time.
Upon our arrival, we decided it would be best to take a nap, so we slept until Midori got in an hour or so later, then we wandered around for a bit until dinner, which was pretty mediocre and rather overpriced, but I didn't care at the time. We were all pretty worn out after a long day of travel, so we went to bed immediately after dinner. Lame, I know, but at least I got a full night's rest.
Saturday was pretty awesome. We woke up to nice weather and everyone else went running while I slept more and eventually took a shower. Then we all went to get breakfast at a place called Bagels & Beans, and I ordered a goat cheese, bacon and pinenut bagel, but they brought me a goat cheese, walnut and honey bagel instead, which was still good but not what I wanted. We continued the day at a coffee shop, then walked through the red light district, grabbed a snack, went to Rembrandt's house, did a little shopping in an open-air market, took a boat tour, went to the Van Gogh museum, and finally made it to dinner.
Dinner was pretty great. Mark referred us to a restaurant that his friend had recommended to him called Tempoe Doeloe, which specialized in rijstafel (rice-table) which is pretty much Indonesian-style tapas. Apparently it's unique to Amsterdam, which seems kind of strange, but I haven't seen it anywhere else or heard of it before Mark told me about it, so I guess you really can't hear it anywhere else. Anyway, the food was great. They served multiple levels of spiciness, notated from - to +++. +++ was pretty outrageous. Mark warned us that the spiciest food was not for the faint of heart, but Jen was convinced she could handle it. When we got to the restaurant, she ordered some kind of kebabs+++ and the waiter kindly suggested that she get the sauce on the side and add it herself if she could take it. Turns out he knows his stuff because I tasted a pinhead sized drop of the sauce and it was pretty much like someone poured a volcano into my mouth.
The rest of the meal was also great. Fantastic desserts. I had this mango concoction of fresh mango and mango sorbet in a mango sauce (with mint and fresh passionfruit), Jen had fried bananas flambéed in Grand Marnier (at the table) with ice cream and coconut sauce, Midori had some very pretty fruity drink thing and Michael had an Irish coffee and a cake thing. Also, the service was excellent and friendly and the restaurant had great atmosphere and all that. Overall, a great meal. They even gave Jen and Midori red roses because it was Valentine's day.
Sunday was also good, though slightly more dreary and rainy than Saturday. We went to Bagels & Beans again for breakfast, where they messed up my order again (same thing) and there was generally poorer service. However, there was a cat that was unreasonably friendly and sat in Jen's lap for a good 10 minutes after we had finished eating. Then we went off to the Rijksmuseum or something like that where there was lots of Dutch artwork. We spent the rest of the day in coffee shops and wandering around and eating. Generally a good time. After dinner we went to see Revolutionary Road (with Dutch subtitles). Not my cup of tea, but still a pretty good movie.
Monday's train ride was uneventful, again in first class, but this time with all of us on the same train. Lots of catching up with email, schoolwork, etc. Anyway, I made it back in time for class, but I was too tired so I just went home and slept for another couple hours. Today I had class and stuff, generally uneventful. Mark asked us about rijstafel and i had more class, then I came back here and didn't do work.
And now you're up to date.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Rien de Spécial
Nothing's really happened in the past week. I had some class on Tuesday, more class on Wednesday, more class on Thursday, and even class today, Friday, which is atypical and annoying. I guess yesterday was somewhat interesting so I'll write about that. However, it requires a little bit of context so I'll put that in too.
Mark Applebaum is teaching two classes here this quarter; we call them the Survey and the Practicum, but they have longer names that I don't actually know. The survey is the class where we go see artistic things around Paris and write about them (like the Picasso exhibit I went to on Sunday night/Monday morning). The Practicum class is where we create works of art (literature, painting, music, sculpture, etc) inspired by Paris and our experiences/impressions/etc. I'm in both of the classes.
Our first Practicum projects were due yesterday, so I created something I call the Bagarette. It's pretty much a baguette that I painted and burned to look like a cigarette butt.
I made up some crap about how it represents the misplaced values of French culture and such, but I really came up with the idea for the object itself before I came up with an idea for the object to represent. Some other projects were pretty cool, and some were pretty lame, but I think Mark liked mine. It turned out pretty well, I feel.
Yesterday evening Mark took his classes to IRCAM, which is a progressive musical research institution near the Pompidou Center. I couldn't go on the tour because I was in my African Lit class, but I made it to the concert after the tour, which was well attended, despite the aesthetically displeasing music that was performed. Apparently the music was really hard to play, but that doesn't make it any better to listen to. Sorry to rain on the experimental musicians' parade, but what you're doing isn't going to be popular.
I've been playing a ton of scrabble (Lexulous) on Facebook, so if you feel like challenging me, I'm down for more games.
I guess that's all. Hopefully I'll have something more worthwhile to post after this weekend.
Mark Applebaum is teaching two classes here this quarter; we call them the Survey and the Practicum, but they have longer names that I don't actually know. The survey is the class where we go see artistic things around Paris and write about them (like the Picasso exhibit I went to on Sunday night/Monday morning). The Practicum class is where we create works of art (literature, painting, music, sculpture, etc) inspired by Paris and our experiences/impressions/etc. I'm in both of the classes.
Our first Practicum projects were due yesterday, so I created something I call the Bagarette. It's pretty much a baguette that I painted and burned to look like a cigarette butt.
I made up some crap about how it represents the misplaced values of French culture and such, but I really came up with the idea for the object itself before I came up with an idea for the object to represent. Some other projects were pretty cool, and some were pretty lame, but I think Mark liked mine. It turned out pretty well, I feel.
Yesterday evening Mark took his classes to IRCAM, which is a progressive musical research institution near the Pompidou Center. I couldn't go on the tour because I was in my African Lit class, but I made it to the concert after the tour, which was well attended, despite the aesthetically displeasing music that was performed. Apparently the music was really hard to play, but that doesn't make it any better to listen to. Sorry to rain on the experimental musicians' parade, but what you're doing isn't going to be popular.
I've been playing a ton of scrabble (Lexulous) on Facebook, so if you feel like challenging me, I'm down for more games.
I guess that's all. Hopefully I'll have something more worthwhile to post after this weekend.
Monday, February 2, 2009
"Bruges is a shithole."
This past weekend was the Bing Trip. We visited Flanders (which pretty much means Northern Belgium plus a little of France and the Netherlands), but really only three cities, being Lille, Gent and Bruges (in that order). By the way, I'm not sure if Gent is supposed to be spelled Gent or Ghent, so I'm just going to go with Gent, because it's shorter. If you don't want to hear about the trip in detail, I'll summarize it in a few words: freezing, and boring tours. If you'd rather hear about it in detail, read on and I will elaborate to a greater extent than you probably care about.
We left on Friday on a train from Gare du Nord at about 11:00. Not a particularly interesting train ride, since the French countryside is pretty plain. A lot of flat farmland, with nothing on it because, surprise surprise, it's winter. More on that in a bit. We arrive in Lille around noon, drop our bags off at our hotel (Hotel Brughel--pretty nice) and go to lunch at a brasserie called Les 3 Brasseurs (the three brewers). For the record, brasser means "to brew" in French, so technically a brasserie is a place where they brew beer. For the most part I think they just serve beer, which is alright as well.
Lunch was not spectacular, but definitely satisfying. We got a couple beers on Stanford's tab, as well as a decent meal. After lunch we set off on the first of our walking tours for the weekend. Our guide, a middle aged French lady, ended up being one of the worst tour guides I've ever had, not accounting for the fact that there isn't much to see in Lille and it was about 30 degrees. Winter kind of snuck up on me this weekend. I looked at the weather forecasts, which called for weather in the low 30s, which is only slightly colder that what it's been like in Paris for the past few weeks. Didn't think about wind chill. Boo.
So the tour was stupid and difficult to understand (because it was in French). Even Mark Applebaum was making fun of the tour guide by the end of it, mostly in the style of our falsified tour on Wednesday previous. Pretty much the only redeeming factor. Then we got on a bus (with eight seats and a table in the very back) to go to a small city a little ways off that was famous for its wool products. Needless to say, the delinquents sitting in the back of the bus (to remain unnamed) were a little too loud and obnoxious while the tour guide was trying to talk at a bus full of sleeping people, and Estelle (the director of the program) had to tell us to pay attention, which they respectfully didn't really do. Oops.
The museum in the little town (whose name I don't recall) was housed in an old bath house, which was actually pretty cool (and by far the best part of that day). The bath house, constructed in Art Deco style, was very pretty, and the tour was short and warm, and the tour guide wasn't awful. Greatly improved from earlier. Then we piled back into the bus and headed back for dinner on our own and the rest of the night free. Dinner was nothing exceptional (frogs legs, lamb tajine and a brioche, and beer, of course), then I passed out pretty early for a brief night's sleep.
We got up at 8:00 on Saturday to eat and load on the bus at 9:00 to go to Gent, for which no one was particularly excited. Turns out it was the best part of the trip. After an hour bus ride, partly consumed by more of Mark's absurdities, we arrived in Gent and did pretty much the same thing as the day before, except for longer. Dropped our bags off at our hotel (which was actually a Best Western, in Belgium. What?) then took another walking tour, to which I gave my complete attention and did not in fact listen to my iPod. The guide was, in fact, better than that of the previous day. Lunch was on our own, so we went to some restaurant and got terrible service, waiting an hour for our food and not getting waffles or moules frites (mussels and fries).
Lunch was followed by a tour of a chatêlet (little castle) that had some interesting history and lots of holes in the floor to drop things on attacking troops. Nice view of the city, but altogether underwhelming. Anyway, it was a decent time, despite losing most of my extremities to frostbite and getting severe hypothermia and going into shock. Needless to say I was happy to get back to the hotel to warm up briefly before heading off to dinner at the Belgia Queen, right on the river that runs through Gent (I don't know the name).
Dinner was amazing. Great food, great service, great atmosphere, great time. When we got to the restaurant, I our tables weren't ready, so the sent us up to the top floor, which was somewhere between a bar and a club, for apertifs. We waited around there for a while, making conversation, drinking kirs and listening to bad techno for an hour or so until our table was ready.
So our tables (two long tables) were on the same floor as the open kitchen, so I located myself in a position from which I could watch the food being prepared, but I forfeited my seat to Heimunn who wanted to gawk at the attractive kitchen staff. Michael and I preferred the sole female waitress, who was quite gawk-worthy herself. The food was excellent. Also one of the better meals I've had since I came to France. Kind of modern food, but not pretentious or too avant-garde. Good stuff. Scallops starter, chicken main course and chocolaty not-entirely-cooked kind of cake thing for dessert. Also, excellent wine. Probably the best wine I've had since I got here. Then back to the hotel for more sleep.
Sunday was not fun. Another early morning and hour-long bus ride, spent asleep. "Bruges is," as Colin Farrell puts it in the Oscar nominated film In Bruges, "a shithole." It actually isn't, but my experience there was pretty mediocre. It was about 20 degrees, and nobody was wearing enough clothing, despite the two previous days' experience of refrigeration. Seriously, no good. We got another boring tour guide, and I spent the morning wishing I were asleep, or at least inside drinking hot chocolate and eating waffles. We got an hour free before lunch, so we (me, Jen, Heimunn, Michael, Farah, Midori and Mackenzie) went to a restaurant across the street from the restaurant we were going to go to for lunch and got moules frites to satisfy one of the weekend's cravings. We got a table next to a gas fire and slowly began defrosting with our first lunch; after we finished, we ran across the street to our real lunch to eat again with the rest of the group.
Second lunch, at Huidevettershuis, was pretty good as well. We had some kind of fish with bacon to start, guinea fowl with potatoes and apple sauce for the main, and a fruit salad for dessert. (And a beer. The waiter who brought it was berated by Estelle for serving us beer when we weren't supposed to have it. Poor guy.) Second lunch was followed by a horse-drawn tour through the rest of Bruges, which was not great either. We saw a windmill, which I thought was more Dutch than Belgian, but it's alright. Then we went to a museum in an old hospital, which was awful because it was pretty dark and not very warm and everyone was falling asleep but we had to listen to the guide talk for another hour but nobody was really paying attention and it was all bad.
Finally, we were free for a couple hours before the bus left, during which we bought some Belgian chocolate and ate some waffles, of which I had two, and both were excellent. I ate a lot that day, to pack on the extra blubber that would help keep me warm. It didn't work at all. So we went back to the bus and watched In Bruges, which was an excellent movie, and we came to the same conclusion as Colin Farrell, except we didn't actually get shot several times or see any kids get killed (fortunately).
After a long day, finished by a bus ride back to Lille and a train back to Paris, I was ready for a good nights sleep. No such luck on that front. At midnight I was off to the Grand Palais to see an exhibition of artwork called Picasso et les Maîtres (Picasso and the masters) for Mark's class. We couldn't get in until 2am, so we went to a café to have a cup of coffee and stay not freezing. The show was interesting, to see stuff Picasso did next to comparable stuff by other artists (Renoir, Cezanne, etc). The crazy thing was how crowded it was at 2am on a Sunday night. Totally insane. There was a super long line (hundreds and hundreds of people) outside and TV crews and everything. Couldn't believe it.
We didn't leave until about 3:45, and I was very pleased to find that it was snowing, despite the incredible cold. It was quite beautiful and romantic, being in Paris on the Champs Elysées in the middle of the night with the snow (big powdery snow, not crappy slushy snow) appearing out of the darkness and powdering the sidewalk in a cushion of white. That was really cheesy, but I'm ok with it because it was awesome. I shared a taxi back with Midori and Natalia (who also lives in Boulogne-Billancourt), so I got off with Natalia because I figured I could walk home from there. It was 4am by this point.
So I set off to find the Metro station, thinking I knew where it was (with a general indication of direction from Natalia) and I set off thinking it might take me fifteen minutes or so to get home. False. I walked about ten minutes one direction, and things just started getting less and less familiar looking, so I turn around and walk back the other direction (again, ten minutes, plus some) and things also don't look familiar, so I text Natalia and try to orient myself, and apparently at this point I was going the right direction, so I continue. It's still snowing, and still beautiful, but I have no idea where I am and I don't have a map. Good situation. Finally I come across this guy (what he's doing out at 4:30 I have no idea) and I ask him where my Metro stop is, and he tells me it's just past this hotel on the left, so I keep going, and I find a hotel and the wrong Metro stop. Great. Then I go back a little ways to where I saw a cop car sitting in the road, so I ask the policier where it is and they give me proper directions, and I walk another 20 minutes through the snow to get the proper Metro stop when I finally make it home at 5am.
Then I had class today, which was lots of fun. I also wrote a story in French about a dinosaur named Larry who battles some ferrets in the mountains for my French class. Good fun.
Also, I found out that Michel, my host mom's boyfriend, lives in Bretagne (Brittany), which is why he hasn't been around for the last two weeks. And that Boulogne-Billancourt is where they make (made?) a lot of French movies. Apparently it's a pretty good area. But it's still far away.
We left on Friday on a train from Gare du Nord at about 11:00. Not a particularly interesting train ride, since the French countryside is pretty plain. A lot of flat farmland, with nothing on it because, surprise surprise, it's winter. More on that in a bit. We arrive in Lille around noon, drop our bags off at our hotel (Hotel Brughel--pretty nice) and go to lunch at a brasserie called Les 3 Brasseurs (the three brewers). For the record, brasser means "to brew" in French, so technically a brasserie is a place where they brew beer. For the most part I think they just serve beer, which is alright as well.
Lunch was not spectacular, but definitely satisfying. We got a couple beers on Stanford's tab, as well as a decent meal. After lunch we set off on the first of our walking tours for the weekend. Our guide, a middle aged French lady, ended up being one of the worst tour guides I've ever had, not accounting for the fact that there isn't much to see in Lille and it was about 30 degrees. Winter kind of snuck up on me this weekend. I looked at the weather forecasts, which called for weather in the low 30s, which is only slightly colder that what it's been like in Paris for the past few weeks. Didn't think about wind chill. Boo.
So the tour was stupid and difficult to understand (because it was in French). Even Mark Applebaum was making fun of the tour guide by the end of it, mostly in the style of our falsified tour on Wednesday previous. Pretty much the only redeeming factor. Then we got on a bus (with eight seats and a table in the very back) to go to a small city a little ways off that was famous for its wool products. Needless to say, the delinquents sitting in the back of the bus (to remain unnamed) were a little too loud and obnoxious while the tour guide was trying to talk at a bus full of sleeping people, and Estelle (the director of the program) had to tell us to pay attention, which they respectfully didn't really do. Oops.
The museum in the little town (whose name I don't recall) was housed in an old bath house, which was actually pretty cool (and by far the best part of that day). The bath house, constructed in Art Deco style, was very pretty, and the tour was short and warm, and the tour guide wasn't awful. Greatly improved from earlier. Then we piled back into the bus and headed back for dinner on our own and the rest of the night free. Dinner was nothing exceptional (frogs legs, lamb tajine and a brioche, and beer, of course), then I passed out pretty early for a brief night's sleep.
We got up at 8:00 on Saturday to eat and load on the bus at 9:00 to go to Gent, for which no one was particularly excited. Turns out it was the best part of the trip. After an hour bus ride, partly consumed by more of Mark's absurdities, we arrived in Gent and did pretty much the same thing as the day before, except for longer. Dropped our bags off at our hotel (which was actually a Best Western, in Belgium. What?) then took another walking tour, to which I gave my complete attention and did not in fact listen to my iPod. The guide was, in fact, better than that of the previous day. Lunch was on our own, so we went to some restaurant and got terrible service, waiting an hour for our food and not getting waffles or moules frites (mussels and fries).
Lunch was followed by a tour of a chatêlet (little castle) that had some interesting history and lots of holes in the floor to drop things on attacking troops. Nice view of the city, but altogether underwhelming. Anyway, it was a decent time, despite losing most of my extremities to frostbite and getting severe hypothermia and going into shock. Needless to say I was happy to get back to the hotel to warm up briefly before heading off to dinner at the Belgia Queen, right on the river that runs through Gent (I don't know the name).
Dinner was amazing. Great food, great service, great atmosphere, great time. When we got to the restaurant, I our tables weren't ready, so the sent us up to the top floor, which was somewhere between a bar and a club, for apertifs. We waited around there for a while, making conversation, drinking kirs and listening to bad techno for an hour or so until our table was ready.
So our tables (two long tables) were on the same floor as the open kitchen, so I located myself in a position from which I could watch the food being prepared, but I forfeited my seat to Heimunn who wanted to gawk at the attractive kitchen staff. Michael and I preferred the sole female waitress, who was quite gawk-worthy herself. The food was excellent. Also one of the better meals I've had since I came to France. Kind of modern food, but not pretentious or too avant-garde. Good stuff. Scallops starter, chicken main course and chocolaty not-entirely-cooked kind of cake thing for dessert. Also, excellent wine. Probably the best wine I've had since I got here. Then back to the hotel for more sleep.
Sunday was not fun. Another early morning and hour-long bus ride, spent asleep. "Bruges is," as Colin Farrell puts it in the Oscar nominated film In Bruges, "a shithole." It actually isn't, but my experience there was pretty mediocre. It was about 20 degrees, and nobody was wearing enough clothing, despite the two previous days' experience of refrigeration. Seriously, no good. We got another boring tour guide, and I spent the morning wishing I were asleep, or at least inside drinking hot chocolate and eating waffles. We got an hour free before lunch, so we (me, Jen, Heimunn, Michael, Farah, Midori and Mackenzie) went to a restaurant across the street from the restaurant we were going to go to for lunch and got moules frites to satisfy one of the weekend's cravings. We got a table next to a gas fire and slowly began defrosting with our first lunch; after we finished, we ran across the street to our real lunch to eat again with the rest of the group.
Second lunch, at Huidevettershuis, was pretty good as well. We had some kind of fish with bacon to start, guinea fowl with potatoes and apple sauce for the main, and a fruit salad for dessert. (And a beer. The waiter who brought it was berated by Estelle for serving us beer when we weren't supposed to have it. Poor guy.) Second lunch was followed by a horse-drawn tour through the rest of Bruges, which was not great either. We saw a windmill, which I thought was more Dutch than Belgian, but it's alright. Then we went to a museum in an old hospital, which was awful because it was pretty dark and not very warm and everyone was falling asleep but we had to listen to the guide talk for another hour but nobody was really paying attention and it was all bad.
Finally, we were free for a couple hours before the bus left, during which we bought some Belgian chocolate and ate some waffles, of which I had two, and both were excellent. I ate a lot that day, to pack on the extra blubber that would help keep me warm. It didn't work at all. So we went back to the bus and watched In Bruges, which was an excellent movie, and we came to the same conclusion as Colin Farrell, except we didn't actually get shot several times or see any kids get killed (fortunately).
After a long day, finished by a bus ride back to Lille and a train back to Paris, I was ready for a good nights sleep. No such luck on that front. At midnight I was off to the Grand Palais to see an exhibition of artwork called Picasso et les Maîtres (Picasso and the masters) for Mark's class. We couldn't get in until 2am, so we went to a café to have a cup of coffee and stay not freezing. The show was interesting, to see stuff Picasso did next to comparable stuff by other artists (Renoir, Cezanne, etc). The crazy thing was how crowded it was at 2am on a Sunday night. Totally insane. There was a super long line (hundreds and hundreds of people) outside and TV crews and everything. Couldn't believe it.
We didn't leave until about 3:45, and I was very pleased to find that it was snowing, despite the incredible cold. It was quite beautiful and romantic, being in Paris on the Champs Elysées in the middle of the night with the snow (big powdery snow, not crappy slushy snow) appearing out of the darkness and powdering the sidewalk in a cushion of white. That was really cheesy, but I'm ok with it because it was awesome. I shared a taxi back with Midori and Natalia (who also lives in Boulogne-Billancourt), so I got off with Natalia because I figured I could walk home from there. It was 4am by this point.
So I set off to find the Metro station, thinking I knew where it was (with a general indication of direction from Natalia) and I set off thinking it might take me fifteen minutes or so to get home. False. I walked about ten minutes one direction, and things just started getting less and less familiar looking, so I turn around and walk back the other direction (again, ten minutes, plus some) and things also don't look familiar, so I text Natalia and try to orient myself, and apparently at this point I was going the right direction, so I continue. It's still snowing, and still beautiful, but I have no idea where I am and I don't have a map. Good situation. Finally I come across this guy (what he's doing out at 4:30 I have no idea) and I ask him where my Metro stop is, and he tells me it's just past this hotel on the left, so I keep going, and I find a hotel and the wrong Metro stop. Great. Then I go back a little ways to where I saw a cop car sitting in the road, so I ask the policier where it is and they give me proper directions, and I walk another 20 minutes through the snow to get the proper Metro stop when I finally make it home at 5am.
Then I had class today, which was lots of fun. I also wrote a story in French about a dinosaur named Larry who battles some ferrets in the mountains for my French class. Good fun.
Also, I found out that Michel, my host mom's boyfriend, lives in Bretagne (Brittany), which is why he hasn't been around for the last two weeks. And that Boulogne-Billancourt is where they make (made?) a lot of French movies. Apparently it's a pretty good area. But it's still far away.
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