Wow, I've been terrible, haven't I? The longer I've gone without posting, the harder it is to start again, but here I am. A LOT has happened in the past two months. I've been to Dijon, Dole, Montbéliard, Colmar, Geneva, and some place called Calgary. I've also had a sinus infection, been incredibly sleep-deprived, and had many great moments with friends. Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?
The weekend after my previous post I ended up going to Dijon with Andrea, my friend who works in Besançon. My fantastic proviseur adjointe welcomed us into her home, so we got to spend time with her her family as well as explore the city to our heart's content. Dijon was lovely, a little cold maybe, but after a while that didn't really matter. We saw the main cathedral, the wicked art museum, the medieval district, the Chateau des ducs de Bourgogne, and the farmer's market, where I bought crème de cassis, the liqueur used in kir, my fave cocktail. We also spent at least twenty minutes ogling the wares of a used book stall- so many gorgeous covers, so little money to buy them with....
On November 16th, Felipe and I went into Besac for our visa validation appointments. First, we had to go to a pulmonary specialist's office where we had chest x-rays done, as well as the speediest physical that I've ever experienced. Official x-rays and health certificates in tow, we went to the OFII office where, after a mercifully short wait, we became official temporary residents of France!
Next weekend, I welcomed a bunch of friends from Besac and MontB to Morteau, and we spent Saturday and Sunday hiking and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. It was seriously warmer that weekend than it had been at the end of October! On Saturday we went to Roche Jeannin, a huge rock formation that emerges from a steep hill overlooking the valley, and saw the Table du roi on the way down (a huge flat rock that was supposedly used for druidic sacrifices!). Sunday morning, I made "Canadian pancakes" and then we hiked up Mont Vouillot for an afternoon picnic. Friends, nature and pancakes, what more can I ask for?
The following Saturday, I went to Dole for American Thanksgiving and a Coeur de pirate concert. Due to the train strike, I ended up arriving several hours later than I'd planned, but still in time for dinner with Jessica, Marie, and more assistants from Dole and Lons-le-Saunier. The dinner was held at the apartment of a french friend of theirs, the only place they had access to that had a full kitchen! It was delicious and I was so glad to be getting my yearly dose of Thanksgiving, albeit a month and a half later than usual. After dinner, we walked across town to the concert hall, where there was a festival celebrating the local artists of the year. The headliner, however, was Coeur de pirate! I really don't know how she ended up performing in Dole, but it was the first date of her European tour and ended up being a great concert. She was a lot smaller in person than I thought she'd be, and a fantastic live singer.
The first weekend of December I went up to stay with my friends in MontB to see their Christmas market and also hopefully go to a Christmas market in Strasbourg or Colmar. Friday night we went to a mom and pop restaurant in the middle of nowhere that served a whole group of us a whole lot of delicious local food. We had Morteau and MontB sausages, hashbrowns, cancoillote (amazing liquid cheese), salad, and bûche de Noël, accompanied by copious amounts of wine. After that, we went to a local bar and then we jetted off to a club called the Moulin Rouge, which didn't remind me at all of Moulin Rouge and more of Union, a frat boy-infested club back in Edmonton. Suffice to say, it was a very late night that left us all pretty useless the next day...
Saturday night we were invited to have raclette at the house of one of the guys who came to the club the previous night. I jumped at the chance, never having eaten raclette before, and didn't regret my choice. Raclette is a typical Savoyard and Swiss dish, involving raclette cheese, potatoes, vegetables, and charcuterie. The cheese is heated in mini pans on a central element that you put in the middle of the table. Once melted, you scrape it onto the potatoes and enjoy. It was absolutely delicious.
The next morning, my friend's boyfriend drove one of his cars and let another assistant drive the other as a group of us went up to Colmar, a city in Alsace about an hour and a half away from MontB. It was absolutely gorgeous. The architecture was very German- all half-timbered and brightly coloured stucco. I felt like I was in Germany again, to be honest. There were also several small canals coursing through the streets, which were all fully decorated for Christmas. The flower planters had pine trees in them, hilariously coated in fake snow- there wasn't actually any real snow! As for the Christmas market, it consisted of quaint wooden stalls spread over several city squares, offering everything from scarves to Christmas ornaments to vin chaud. It was also completely packed! Even though we kind of had to rush back to Montbéliard so I could catch my train, I'm so glad that I got to see a typical Christmas market.
My odyssey back to Canada began on December 17th. A teacher at the school who's actually from Switzerland came to Morteau to pick me up and then drove me to Neuchatel so I could catch my train to Geneva. I figured out the Geneva bus system in the dark and eventually made my way to the hostel, arriving at 8pm. Exhausted, I was in bed by 9:30! The next morning, I was up early to catch my 9am flight. I find it funny that I've now been to Geneva four times (once with the rents when I was 17, three times using the airport) and have barely spent any actual time in the city. Maybe I should rectify this in the next few months.... My flight home was relatively painless: I arrived in sunny Calgary all in one piece with all of my luggage.
Being home was weird. I didn't have to run the shower for 20 minutes for the water to be warm! I had an actual kitchen at my disposal! I could hug my parents and my dog instead of just staring at them on a computer screen! I tried to see as many friends as possible, saw two movies (MI:4, Sherlock Holmes 2) and spent lots of time with family. During Christmas dinner at my aunt's house, I met my cousin's new girlfriend, who was English and had also done the teaching assistant program. We bonded a little over our mutual experiences. My last hurrah was a dinner party with friends on the Friday night before I left, at which I discovered wine + cookie decorating = hummus icing? Ick!
My flight back wasn't so enjoyable, as I was on a plane full of babies. Then I had to wait four hours for my flight to Geneva in the Amsterdam airport, trying to sleep on a bench intersected with armrests. Then there was the two and a half hour train ride to Morteau that I spent nodding off and then waking myself up again in a panic, not wanting to miss my stops where I had to transfer trains. All in all, I was awake for about 26 hours. Thus, my first week back at work was full of bêtises and extreme fatigue. I wasn't completely over my jetlag until about half-way through last week. Add homesickness to that, and you've got the full, miserable picture.
I haven't really done that much this month. Felipe had a friend staying with us for the first two weeks, whose name was also Sarah. We went to the local Clock Museum, a Hip Hop Festival, and made tartiflette together. Sadly, she left this Sunday. It was really nice having a girl around. This past Saturday I went into Bezak for girls night with Andrea and Yenny (the only Canadian girl I've met here!) as well as Suzanne and Cari, two assistants from MontB. We went shopping and I ended up finding a few great deals at the soldes (bi-annual sales held all over France). Then we had delicious Italian for dinner. Cari and Suzanne headed back to MontB and the rest of us went to Andrea's apartment, where we met up with a German assistant and played Apples to Apples and watched part of Bridesmaids. It was a good night!
For a conclusion, I have to state that I will never go this long without posting ever again! This took me forever to write, and I had to leave so much out because of expediency. I will post again next week, because I might be doing something exciting this weekend!
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Toussaint, or the novel about trains
For the past week and a half, I have been on Toussaint vacation. I know, I know, I barely worked for one week and I've already had vacation! Well, that's France for you. I went to Lyon, Toulouse and Carcassonne, three completely different cities in different regions of France. It was fantastic!
First stop, Lyon. My train was an hour and a half late, so I got into town after the tourist office had closed, separated from my travel companions and with no idea how to get to the hostel. Enter the cell phone, possibly the best invention ever. After a few metro transfers, I met up with Jessica and Marie, two English-language assistants from Dôle, at Place St. Jean, next to the Cathedral. Jessica is from Texas and Marie is from the North of England, and before this trip I'd only briefly met Jessica at our stage days, and Marie not at all. We trudged up the Fourvière Hill to drop off my stuff at the hostel, a cardio workout I wasn't really expecting, and then vacation could really start.
We spent about four days in Lyon and had a blast, walking around the streets of Vieux and moins-vieux Lyon , drinking lots of wine, and doing a bit of shopping. We even managed to fit some culture in with a visit to the Musée de Beaux Arts, one of the best art museums in France. The city is gorgeous. It's situated above and at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone rivers, and the main part of the city is an isthmus separating the two. Despite being a little cold, walking was really enjoyable. On Sunday afternoon we went to Parc de la Tête d'Or, a huge park on the north end of the city that has a lake in the middle, a zoo and a botanical garden. It was absolutely full of people; families, couples and groups of friends out enjoying the last of the nice weather. There were people on bikes, rollerblades, scooters, skateboards.... That morning on the banks of the Saone River, we saw a food market, an artisan market, and a book market, where I managed to score some really cool old postcards.
Lyon also marked my first experience with Couchsurfing! On Sunday night, we met up with Jake, an American lecturing in English at a uni in Lyon, at the Gallo-Roman ruins. He led us back to his place where he cooked us supper, an absolutely amazing savoyard dish called tartiflette, which is a bacon, cream, potato and reblochon cheese casserole. Absolutely heavenly. We sat around the coffee table in the middle of his studio apartment in St Georges, and talked about language and travel with him and Lucy, the English translator Couch-surfing with him. To finish off the night, we went to a local pub called the Smoking Dog, where I learned the noble sport of coaster-flipping. That was just a couchsurfing hangout, however. My real couchsurfing happened on Tuesday night. Jessica and Marie left for Dole that afternoon, and afterwards I wandered around Vieux Lyon in the rain, buying a few presents and absorbing the medieval ambiance. At one point, I actually stopped in the public library and read some of a Nick Hornby book (in English, of course) to escape the wet. Then I gathered my suitcase from the hostel and journeyed on three metros to Croix Rousse, an old neighbourhood on a hill overlooking the city. It was a bit of an adventure finding my host's apartment in the dark and the rain, but it didn't take long. Then I got to meet Kevin and Celinève. Celineve restores old books, and Kevin is a web and graphics designer, and that night they had a casual get-together with friends that involved delicious blinis and wine. I got to meet younger French people, exercise my french, which I really haven't been using enough outside of school, and learn a lot about la bise. Apparently, when you're visiting friends, as soon as you enter the house, you have to go around and give la bise and say hello to everyone in the room. The same goes when you leave. The whole experience was pretty cool, to say the least.
The next morning I got up early and walked around Croix Rousse a bit, then left for the train station in time for my 11:27 train. Then I got there, looked at my actual train ticket, and realized that my awesome first class ticket deal had been booked for 9:37, and that I'd been looking at a different ticket in my purse when verifying my departure time. Yes, I arrived at the station a full hour and twenty minutes after my train had left. Instead of having a meltdown, I went immediately to the line for the ticket counter and phoned Matt to tell him my news while I waited. I have to admit I was a little disappointed on missing out on first class, but more because I had to buy a whole new ticket that cost more than my original one, with the added bonus of a way less convenient schedule. I ended up on a train to Montpellier, where I had to wait for four hours for the next train to Toulouse! My original ticket had me arriving around two, and I ended up getting there just before eight! Fortunately, Montpellier was a relatively pleasant stopover. I got to walk around the esplanade without a sweater, eat ice cream, and sit in the grass reading French poetry.
So here continues the pattern of train troubles and arriving in a place after the tourist office closes, with no idea where the hostel is. At least this time I had the number, that Matt had phoned England and gotten his mum to look up, and he waited for me at the station after his train had arrived from Montbéliard so that we weren't separated at any point. On the way over on the train, I'd had a passing thought that perhaps if we were really late, the hostel would have given away our beds or else be otherwise locked up for the night. Visions of sleeping on a park bench began to dance in my head. Luckily, the hostel reception phoned me almost as soon as I arrived at the train station, so I assured them that we were coming and also got directions. Thus began our trudge through nighttime Toulouse. It took us a little longer than we thought to find Petite Auberge de Compostelle, owing to rather vague directions, but we got there just before nine o'clock, when the reception closed. We were so happy to be in Toulouse and to have beds to sleep in that we went out for a celebratory meal of crepes and cider.
Here, owing to a really bad cold and some unfortunate weather, things get a little fuzzy. Toulouse is a really interesting city, completely different from anything that I've seen in France so far- everything is made of red brick, a little gritty, some of it a little rundown, but still amazing. It is full of students and didn't seem to have too many tourists at this time of year, which was nice. We spent a lot of our time just walking around in the streets of the main part of the city, near the uni, the Capitolium (home of the local government) and the main square. We visited the Abbatoirs, a modern art museum in an old abbatoir, and the Fondation Bemberg, a small-scale but quality art museum housed in a former mansion. We also walked along the Garonne River several times, which was oddly shallow considering how high the bridges were and how wide it was. Matt and I spent a lot of time trying to stay out of the rain, unfortunately. We also had to deal with colds and a lack of sleep caused by interesting hostel residents who decided it would be a good idea to play the piano at 4 in the morning. They only did once, thank goodness, or I may have committed verbal assault....
We left for Carcassonne on Saturday morning, a mercifully short journey. Unfortunately, once there we had to walk for half an hour across town with our bags in order to get to our hotel, which pretty much destroyed any energy I had for the day. Sunday was better- the sun was shining and we walked all around the old, walled city. It was a ruin for a long time, but got redone in the 1800s, and it is absolutely amazing. It's super touristy, full of little over-priced boutiques and restaurants, but the actual place, the buildings, the chateau, the basilica, the twisting cobbled streets, the ramparts and the battlements, is incredibly cool. My favourite part was walking around in the morning, before the hordes of tourists choked the streets with their dogs and their voices, and it was quiet and peaceful and I could get more of a feel for the place. We visited the chateau (you had to pay to get in) and the Basilica, and it was really unfortunate how loud the tourists were in a place of worship (it is an actual consecrated Basilica)- I found it pretty disrespectful how they walked all over the sanctuary and took pictures with the flash on. The chateau was really interesting- I found out there that the City has been added to so many times over the centuries that they're not really sure what it originally looked like, and how its present incarnation isn't quite accurate, owing to the artistic license of the architect who oversaw the reno.
We also walked around in the lower city, which was built when the walled city fell into disrepute. It was a bit run down, and some of the architecture reminded me of what I'd seen in Cuba, kind of colonial Spanish. We planned to go for a bike ride next to the Canal du Midi that runs right past Carcassonne, but unfortunately Monday, the day we picked, was windy and cloudy and it seemed like it could rain at any moment. Fortunately we were able to walk along it for a while on Sunday afternoon. The Canal was gorgeous, lined with some kind of gum tree on one side, and then forest on the other. River cruises and house boats passed us a few times, and there were lots of people biking on the path as well. I definitely want to go back to Carcassonne in summer, or spring, when I actually have money to rent a car and stay in a guest house in the country. There are loads of vineyards and little villages around the city, and there's actually an airport as well!
We left Carcassonne yesterday, and spent about 8 hours each on trains getting back to our respective homes. First, we spent just under six hours getting to Dijon on the TGV. Despite the fact that it was pouring rain most of the time, watching the countryside and architecture change every twenty minutes or so was absolutely fascinating. We also read a lot of magazines and newspapers, however! Then, we spent an hour in Dijon waiting for our train to Besançon, buying our tickets while we waited- I had to choose a TER to Morteau that left only five minutes after my other train arrived, or else wait and hour and a half until the 8pm train. When I got to Besançon I had to sprint to the main part of the station to check which platform the TER was on, because the TVs with the platform listings in the tunnel were all turned off. Then I had to run back down the stairs, through the tunnel, up more stairs to the platform and onto the train, all with my suitcase and backpack! I made it, completely out of breath, just before they closed the doors.
This vacation taught me a lot: Check your train times. Then check them again, and make sure you're looking at the right ticket! Bring lots of things to do on the train, because it will be boring. Pack light (I'm getting pretty good at it at this point). Stay calm, and retain your sense of humour. Make sure you know the address, directions and phone number of the place you're staying before you get there. Bring Cold FX. Everything is going to be okay.
First stop, Lyon. My train was an hour and a half late, so I got into town after the tourist office had closed, separated from my travel companions and with no idea how to get to the hostel. Enter the cell phone, possibly the best invention ever. After a few metro transfers, I met up with Jessica and Marie, two English-language assistants from Dôle, at Place St. Jean, next to the Cathedral. Jessica is from Texas and Marie is from the North of England, and before this trip I'd only briefly met Jessica at our stage days, and Marie not at all. We trudged up the Fourvière Hill to drop off my stuff at the hostel, a cardio workout I wasn't really expecting, and then vacation could really start.
We spent about four days in Lyon and had a blast, walking around the streets of Vieux and moins-vieux Lyon , drinking lots of wine, and doing a bit of shopping. We even managed to fit some culture in with a visit to the Musée de Beaux Arts, one of the best art museums in France. The city is gorgeous. It's situated above and at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone rivers, and the main part of the city is an isthmus separating the two. Despite being a little cold, walking was really enjoyable. On Sunday afternoon we went to Parc de la Tête d'Or, a huge park on the north end of the city that has a lake in the middle, a zoo and a botanical garden. It was absolutely full of people; families, couples and groups of friends out enjoying the last of the nice weather. There were people on bikes, rollerblades, scooters, skateboards.... That morning on the banks of the Saone River, we saw a food market, an artisan market, and a book market, where I managed to score some really cool old postcards.
Lyon also marked my first experience with Couchsurfing! On Sunday night, we met up with Jake, an American lecturing in English at a uni in Lyon, at the Gallo-Roman ruins. He led us back to his place where he cooked us supper, an absolutely amazing savoyard dish called tartiflette, which is a bacon, cream, potato and reblochon cheese casserole. Absolutely heavenly. We sat around the coffee table in the middle of his studio apartment in St Georges, and talked about language and travel with him and Lucy, the English translator Couch-surfing with him. To finish off the night, we went to a local pub called the Smoking Dog, where I learned the noble sport of coaster-flipping. That was just a couchsurfing hangout, however. My real couchsurfing happened on Tuesday night. Jessica and Marie left for Dole that afternoon, and afterwards I wandered around Vieux Lyon in the rain, buying a few presents and absorbing the medieval ambiance. At one point, I actually stopped in the public library and read some of a Nick Hornby book (in English, of course) to escape the wet. Then I gathered my suitcase from the hostel and journeyed on three metros to Croix Rousse, an old neighbourhood on a hill overlooking the city. It was a bit of an adventure finding my host's apartment in the dark and the rain, but it didn't take long. Then I got to meet Kevin and Celinève. Celineve restores old books, and Kevin is a web and graphics designer, and that night they had a casual get-together with friends that involved delicious blinis and wine. I got to meet younger French people, exercise my french, which I really haven't been using enough outside of school, and learn a lot about la bise. Apparently, when you're visiting friends, as soon as you enter the house, you have to go around and give la bise and say hello to everyone in the room. The same goes when you leave. The whole experience was pretty cool, to say the least.
The next morning I got up early and walked around Croix Rousse a bit, then left for the train station in time for my 11:27 train. Then I got there, looked at my actual train ticket, and realized that my awesome first class ticket deal had been booked for 9:37, and that I'd been looking at a different ticket in my purse when verifying my departure time. Yes, I arrived at the station a full hour and twenty minutes after my train had left. Instead of having a meltdown, I went immediately to the line for the ticket counter and phoned Matt to tell him my news while I waited. I have to admit I was a little disappointed on missing out on first class, but more because I had to buy a whole new ticket that cost more than my original one, with the added bonus of a way less convenient schedule. I ended up on a train to Montpellier, where I had to wait for four hours for the next train to Toulouse! My original ticket had me arriving around two, and I ended up getting there just before eight! Fortunately, Montpellier was a relatively pleasant stopover. I got to walk around the esplanade without a sweater, eat ice cream, and sit in the grass reading French poetry.
So here continues the pattern of train troubles and arriving in a place after the tourist office closes, with no idea where the hostel is. At least this time I had the number, that Matt had phoned England and gotten his mum to look up, and he waited for me at the station after his train had arrived from Montbéliard so that we weren't separated at any point. On the way over on the train, I'd had a passing thought that perhaps if we were really late, the hostel would have given away our beds or else be otherwise locked up for the night. Visions of sleeping on a park bench began to dance in my head. Luckily, the hostel reception phoned me almost as soon as I arrived at the train station, so I assured them that we were coming and also got directions. Thus began our trudge through nighttime Toulouse. It took us a little longer than we thought to find Petite Auberge de Compostelle, owing to rather vague directions, but we got there just before nine o'clock, when the reception closed. We were so happy to be in Toulouse and to have beds to sleep in that we went out for a celebratory meal of crepes and cider.
Here, owing to a really bad cold and some unfortunate weather, things get a little fuzzy. Toulouse is a really interesting city, completely different from anything that I've seen in France so far- everything is made of red brick, a little gritty, some of it a little rundown, but still amazing. It is full of students and didn't seem to have too many tourists at this time of year, which was nice. We spent a lot of our time just walking around in the streets of the main part of the city, near the uni, the Capitolium (home of the local government) and the main square. We visited the Abbatoirs, a modern art museum in an old abbatoir, and the Fondation Bemberg, a small-scale but quality art museum housed in a former mansion. We also walked along the Garonne River several times, which was oddly shallow considering how high the bridges were and how wide it was. Matt and I spent a lot of time trying to stay out of the rain, unfortunately. We also had to deal with colds and a lack of sleep caused by interesting hostel residents who decided it would be a good idea to play the piano at 4 in the morning. They only did once, thank goodness, or I may have committed verbal assault....
We left for Carcassonne on Saturday morning, a mercifully short journey. Unfortunately, once there we had to walk for half an hour across town with our bags in order to get to our hotel, which pretty much destroyed any energy I had for the day. Sunday was better- the sun was shining and we walked all around the old, walled city. It was a ruin for a long time, but got redone in the 1800s, and it is absolutely amazing. It's super touristy, full of little over-priced boutiques and restaurants, but the actual place, the buildings, the chateau, the basilica, the twisting cobbled streets, the ramparts and the battlements, is incredibly cool. My favourite part was walking around in the morning, before the hordes of tourists choked the streets with their dogs and their voices, and it was quiet and peaceful and I could get more of a feel for the place. We visited the chateau (you had to pay to get in) and the Basilica, and it was really unfortunate how loud the tourists were in a place of worship (it is an actual consecrated Basilica)- I found it pretty disrespectful how they walked all over the sanctuary and took pictures with the flash on. The chateau was really interesting- I found out there that the City has been added to so many times over the centuries that they're not really sure what it originally looked like, and how its present incarnation isn't quite accurate, owing to the artistic license of the architect who oversaw the reno.
We also walked around in the lower city, which was built when the walled city fell into disrepute. It was a bit run down, and some of the architecture reminded me of what I'd seen in Cuba, kind of colonial Spanish. We planned to go for a bike ride next to the Canal du Midi that runs right past Carcassonne, but unfortunately Monday, the day we picked, was windy and cloudy and it seemed like it could rain at any moment. Fortunately we were able to walk along it for a while on Sunday afternoon. The Canal was gorgeous, lined with some kind of gum tree on one side, and then forest on the other. River cruises and house boats passed us a few times, and there were lots of people biking on the path as well. I definitely want to go back to Carcassonne in summer, or spring, when I actually have money to rent a car and stay in a guest house in the country. There are loads of vineyards and little villages around the city, and there's actually an airport as well!
We left Carcassonne yesterday, and spent about 8 hours each on trains getting back to our respective homes. First, we spent just under six hours getting to Dijon on the TGV. Despite the fact that it was pouring rain most of the time, watching the countryside and architecture change every twenty minutes or so was absolutely fascinating. We also read a lot of magazines and newspapers, however! Then, we spent an hour in Dijon waiting for our train to Besançon, buying our tickets while we waited- I had to choose a TER to Morteau that left only five minutes after my other train arrived, or else wait and hour and a half until the 8pm train. When I got to Besançon I had to sprint to the main part of the station to check which platform the TER was on, because the TVs with the platform listings in the tunnel were all turned off. Then I had to run back down the stairs, through the tunnel, up more stairs to the platform and onto the train, all with my suitcase and backpack! I made it, completely out of breath, just before they closed the doors.
This vacation taught me a lot: Check your train times. Then check them again, and make sure you're looking at the right ticket! Bring lots of things to do on the train, because it will be boring. Pack light (I'm getting pretty good at it at this point). Stay calm, and retain your sense of humour. Make sure you know the address, directions and phone number of the place you're staying before you get there. Bring Cold FX. Everything is going to be okay.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
EUROTRIP IS GO
This summer my friend Erika and I are going to backpack through Europe for 3 weeks, from July 18th to August 5th. We're going to Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Rothenburg, Nuremburg and Bayreuth. Yesterday we booked two hostels, and this afternoon I bought my backpack. Needless to say I am ridiculously excited.
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