As November 2008 rolls back into history, a cold spell suddenly hit France, not sparing even the warmest and coziest parts of the Mediterranean coast. For the first time since we arrived here, people are wearing scarves not purely as a fashion statement. I gave in and bought one, too - a black and white thing that keeps you surprisingly warm and immediately adds fifteen European-ness points to whatever else you wear with it. Speaking of buying, however, after having just taken out the money that I'll need to pay as rent for the rest of my time in the apartment, I will need to be as frugal as I can if I'm to stay in the green. There's an incredible supermarket called Carrefour (Crossroads) that's a little far from our house but so cheap that it's still worth going. Just as an example, you can buy a 2L coke bottle for 29 eurocents... A dozen of eggs for one euro... Et cetera.
For my birthday last weekend, there were actually three separate parties. On Friday, we went out with the French girl Chloé, whose birthday was a day ahead of mine, and a whole bunch of (mostly French) friends. On Saturday, some more French people came over to the apartment and brought an Irish movie to watch. Even though the actors all spoke in English, their accents were so bad that after ten minutes or so I suddenly realized that it was much easier to just read the French subtitles than to try and understand what they were saying. That was a little ironic. And then on Sunday we held a low-key Pink Floyd soirée with Brad and Dora, quite a remarkable finish for the already amazing weekend.
All throughout last month, we went to lots of nearby towns and villages, but as these experiences were mostly visual, just look at the freshly uploaded pictures!
Another piece of good news is that the abstract that I submitted to the Biophysical Society was finally accepted, and I was given a time a place to present a poster at the 53rd Annual Meeting in Boston in the beginning of March. Which of course means that now I have to make the poster, but you know, that'll probably get finished the day before, as usual...
Now that it's colder outside, I'm spending a lot more time with the guitar, and some inspiration actually began coming in. I have a nearly finished song, I just have to figure out what it will be about and write the lyrics. All the instrumentals are pretty much down, though, and although the demo recording sounds unbelievably awful with my webcam microphone, I can hear it in my head and I think/hope that it has potential.
I just realized I still haven't written anything about our weekend in Marseille! We spent most of the time walking about the beautiful city (once again, look at the pictures, they're all in a separate album titled Marseille), but by far the most exciting part of the trip was the visit to the castle of If. If the name doesn't ring a bell, you must not have read the 'Count of Monte-Cristo'... Anyways, the castle stands on a small island in the harbor and was originally built to protect the city from a maritime invasion. Or so the king claimed, because the liberty-loving citizens of Marseille were sure that the main purpose of the castle was to keep an eye on them and not let the city get out control. It is rumored that during the more volatile times the cannons of the fortress would every once in a while get rolled over to the other side and faced the harbor rather than the sea - just in case...
The castle is, however, more renowned for its role as a state prison second only to the Bastille. It was not built with this function in mind, but after several military strategists proved to the king that its design was flawed and completely inadequate for warfare, the king decided that the castle would be more useful to the state as a high-security detention facility. It's ironic that the place's most famous prisoner (by far), the Count of Monte-Cristo, is a completely fictitious character. However, Dumas visited the castle prior to writing the novel and described it in such a detailed way that the Count's cell could be easily identified and labeled as such.
As a final note from Marseille, I learned where the word 'quarantine' came from. It originates from the French word for the number forty, and refers to the forty days that all people and goods from incoming ships had to stay in a specific place and were not permitted to enter the city, out of fear that they might be carrying some unkown disease. It was a great idea, but one beautiful day a ship coming in from the East arrived late and was allowed by city authorities to bypass the quarantine, as it was carrying goods that were, at the time, in very high demand. In full accordance with Murphy's law, it so happened that aboard this exact ship lurked several rats carrying fleas infected with the Bubonic Plague, and within a few years nearly 15,000 of Marseille's then-25,000 population had succumbed to the disease.
And, finally, coming back to the blog's title. I watch the sun rise over the Mediterranean every Tuesday morning thanks to my 8am class. I'm still not a fan of waking up that early, but seriously, out of all the possible 8am class experiences, this is definitely not the worst =) One of these Tuesdays I will remember to take my camera with me - of course, it won't look the same on the picture, but you'd at least get a sense of the kind of beauty I see every week...
That's it for now... Leave comments! =)
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Stir it up
Before I begin telling traveler's tales, just putting it out there: Europe was absolutely crazy about who will become the next US president. Between Nice, Amsterdam, and Geneva, this last week was Obama overload - you can see his face in stores, on the streets, even posted on the walls of ancient castles (take a look at the photos on Picasa). And last night, Sara, Dora, David, Brad, and I stayed up until 6:30 in the morning at Brad's house, watching the election progress live on CNN - because of the time difference, he began delivering the victory speech with the first rays of the morning sun. It was a beautiful moment, I can't tell you how proud I am of this country right now... I also can't tell you how much the Europeans' opinion of the US has improved overnight!
Another thing: you can visit me virtually by clicking here. This is the door of my apartment building, you can then drag the image around for a 360 degree view. You can even look up and see my windows on the top floor! Finally, if you really have a lot of free time, feel free to walk up the street... Google is amazing.
So Amsterdam. Nine hundred years ago, this place was a cold and depressing swamp. Then a few fishermen decided to settle there because there was much fish and not very many people, and the rest is history. The name of the city comes from its first major construction project, a dam on the river Amstel, completed sometime before 1204. Following this, the little town very quickly grew into a port of international significance thanks to its location and the incredible natural harbor formed by the mouth of Amstel. The settlers encountered only one minor problem: there was literally no dry land to build upon. Remember, the place was a marsh. What the people ended up doing was digging countless canals in the swamp, piling the extracted mud and peat between the canals, and building upon this foundation. Later on, they added windmills that pumped water out of the canals - in fact, by the 16th century, one in three windmills in the entire country of Holland was dedicated exclusively to pumping, and water in the canals was kept at up to 3 meters below sea level.
Today, the difference is even larger and is maintained by massive pump stations that, in the very unlikely case of complete failure, would submerge not just Amsterdam but a good portion of the entire country up to second-floor windows - this last happened just over 50 years ago, in 1953, killing two thousand people and destroying 3,500 homes and farms. The precious value of dry land is evident everywhere. Almost all staircases are extremely steep to conserve horizontal space. Many houses actually lean out above the street in an effort to increase the area of the top floors (reminder - when you watch pictures in Picasa, click on the Slideshow button - otherwise they're really small!).
The atmosphere in the city could not be more unlike that in Geneva. There are, of course, several important museums - and you can buy a 20-euro museumkaart that grants you year-long access to almost all of them, something we absolutely took advantage of, seeing Anne Frank's house, the Van Gogh museum, the Rijksmuseum, the science one, the photography one, and a few others. But at night, when Geneva shuts down and sinks in darkness, Amsterdam opens up and becomes Party Central (or, rather, Centraal, since the Dutch absolutely love spelling everything with doubled-up letters). Up until 4 or 5 am, the city is soaked in light, and crowds of young people wander the streets, floating in and out of bars, discos, coffeeshops, and whatnot. We stumbled upon at least three enormous free outdoor concerts, and one of the nights we were there all the museums in the city hosted thematic parties (which we unfortunately could not enjoy because all the performances, games and so on were in Dutch).
Also, the bicyclists in Amsterdam are probably the craziest in the world. First of all, they are innumerable - there are definitely a lot more bicycles on the roads than cars, buses, and trams combined, and every road has a special designated bicycle lane. The cyclists are so self-assured that they would never a) stop for anyone/anything, except traffic lights, b) yield to anyone/anything, and c) reduce their speed. If you accidentally walk onto a busy bicycle lane, you probably WILL get hit - we saw quite a few minor bicycle accidents over the three days we were there.
My overall opinion of Amsterdam: amazing place to go for a few days, NOT a great place to live in... I don't understand how the locals don't go crazy with all the noise and light - I guess one can get used to anything.
Let me just reiterate how cheap one can fly with Europe's two major low-cost airlines, EasyJet and Ryanair. My flight from Geneva to Amsterdam was 15 euro, all taxes and fees included... The only inconvenience was that, on the way back to Nice, we had to spend the night in the Dublin airport. Dublin is VERY MUCH out of the way, but the tickets were surprisingly cheaper like this... I could not believe the amount of people who stay in that airport overnight! Every cushioned horizontal surface (benches, armchairs, some tables) had at least one sleeping person on it. For the sake of travelers' comfort and relaxation, every fifteen minutes the following announcement was broadcast VERY LOUDLY over the PA: "Please keep your baggage with you at all times. Unattended baggage will be removed and may be destroyed". I think I will remember this phrase forever, word for word... Also, we were woken up at least three times by policemen who walked around checking everyone's passports. But you know, given how much cheaper it was to fly this way, I'm not complaining!
Back in Nice, it's been raining for over a week now, and everything is cold and wet. The forecast looks a little better for the weekend, I'm so glad I missed most of the rain thanks to fall break! This coming weekend Mme. Letzter is taking us to Marseille, one of France's largest cities... Therefore, a new blog and new photos will appear in less than a week! Miss you all!
Another thing: you can visit me virtually by clicking here. This is the door of my apartment building, you can then drag the image around for a 360 degree view. You can even look up and see my windows on the top floor! Finally, if you really have a lot of free time, feel free to walk up the street... Google is amazing.
So Amsterdam. Nine hundred years ago, this place was a cold and depressing swamp. Then a few fishermen decided to settle there because there was much fish and not very many people, and the rest is history. The name of the city comes from its first major construction project, a dam on the river Amstel, completed sometime before 1204. Following this, the little town very quickly grew into a port of international significance thanks to its location and the incredible natural harbor formed by the mouth of Amstel. The settlers encountered only one minor problem: there was literally no dry land to build upon. Remember, the place was a marsh. What the people ended up doing was digging countless canals in the swamp, piling the extracted mud and peat between the canals, and building upon this foundation. Later on, they added windmills that pumped water out of the canals - in fact, by the 16th century, one in three windmills in the entire country of Holland was dedicated exclusively to pumping, and water in the canals was kept at up to 3 meters below sea level.
Today, the difference is even larger and is maintained by massive pump stations that, in the very unlikely case of complete failure, would submerge not just Amsterdam but a good portion of the entire country up to second-floor windows - this last happened just over 50 years ago, in 1953, killing two thousand people and destroying 3,500 homes and farms. The precious value of dry land is evident everywhere. Almost all staircases are extremely steep to conserve horizontal space. Many houses actually lean out above the street in an effort to increase the area of the top floors (reminder - when you watch pictures in Picasa, click on the Slideshow button - otherwise they're really small!).
The atmosphere in the city could not be more unlike that in Geneva. There are, of course, several important museums - and you can buy a 20-euro museumkaart that grants you year-long access to almost all of them, something we absolutely took advantage of, seeing Anne Frank's house, the Van Gogh museum, the Rijksmuseum, the science one, the photography one, and a few others. But at night, when Geneva shuts down and sinks in darkness, Amsterdam opens up and becomes Party Central (or, rather, Centraal, since the Dutch absolutely love spelling everything with doubled-up letters). Up until 4 or 5 am, the city is soaked in light, and crowds of young people wander the streets, floating in and out of bars, discos, coffeeshops, and whatnot. We stumbled upon at least three enormous free outdoor concerts, and one of the nights we were there all the museums in the city hosted thematic parties (which we unfortunately could not enjoy because all the performances, games and so on were in Dutch).
Also, the bicyclists in Amsterdam are probably the craziest in the world. First of all, they are innumerable - there are definitely a lot more bicycles on the roads than cars, buses, and trams combined, and every road has a special designated bicycle lane. The cyclists are so self-assured that they would never a) stop for anyone/anything, except traffic lights, b) yield to anyone/anything, and c) reduce their speed. If you accidentally walk onto a busy bicycle lane, you probably WILL get hit - we saw quite a few minor bicycle accidents over the three days we were there.
My overall opinion of Amsterdam: amazing place to go for a few days, NOT a great place to live in... I don't understand how the locals don't go crazy with all the noise and light - I guess one can get used to anything.
Let me just reiterate how cheap one can fly with Europe's two major low-cost airlines, EasyJet and Ryanair. My flight from Geneva to Amsterdam was 15 euro, all taxes and fees included... The only inconvenience was that, on the way back to Nice, we had to spend the night in the Dublin airport. Dublin is VERY MUCH out of the way, but the tickets were surprisingly cheaper like this... I could not believe the amount of people who stay in that airport overnight! Every cushioned horizontal surface (benches, armchairs, some tables) had at least one sleeping person on it. For the sake of travelers' comfort and relaxation, every fifteen minutes the following announcement was broadcast VERY LOUDLY over the PA: "Please keep your baggage with you at all times. Unattended baggage will be removed and may be destroyed". I think I will remember this phrase forever, word for word... Also, we were woken up at least three times by policemen who walked around checking everyone's passports. But you know, given how much cheaper it was to fly this way, I'm not complaining!
Back in Nice, it's been raining for over a week now, and everything is cold and wet. The forecast looks a little better for the weekend, I'm so glad I missed most of the rain thanks to fall break! This coming weekend Mme. Letzter is taking us to Marseille, one of France's largest cities... Therefore, a new blog and new photos will appear in less than a week! Miss you all!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Smoke on the Water
Hey everyone! This is going to be really short, because a) internet is very expensive in Geneva, b) the keyboard layout is once again different (seems like every European country makes up its own keyboard), and c) I have to catch my flight to Amsterdam in a few hours and I still haven't packed =)
So, we spent the last few days on the shore of Lake Geneva (in French it's called Lac Léman, I don't get why there's such a discrepancy). To all of those who care, this is the lake that inspired the song "Smoke on the Water". Anyways, I'm proud to say that I spent more money on museums and guided visits than I did on food! The Swiss really seem to be all about world peace and universal friendship. Geneva harbors the second largest United nation complex and the Red Cross headquarters, the nearby city of Lausanne that we also visited happens to be the Olympic capital of the world, and I'm not even talking about the Geneva convention (by the way, we took pictures in front of the room where it was signed). It is also the cleanest large city I've ever seen, with a beautifully developed public transport network that is completely free for all tourists. Basically, it's a country of hard-working hippies. That is not to say that it is absolutely perfect, of course - I would appreciate food being not as expensive, for example (the only really really cheap thing is chocolate. Swiss chocolate.)
This is terrible, I wish i had more time to write about all of the super-interesting stuff that happened, but time is running short, I guess I'll update this when i get to Nice and upload all the pictures. Or, rather, not all, but at least a selection of the over 200 I took so far. What else is crucially important? Oh yes, we went to CERN, the huge European nuclear research center! They have a cool museum where you can stand inside a replica of the Large Hadron Collider tunnel and look at the ORIGINAL paper by a CERN engineer that first presented the idea of the World Wide Web. On the top of the paper, you can see the guy's boss' famous resolution: "Vague, but intriguing". This was less than 30 years ago.
We also visited the enormous Patek Philippe museum (that's a famous watchmaking company) and saw the most complicated mechanical watch in the world which adjusts automatically for not only leap years, but also the few skipped seconds that accumulate despite leap years... This thing took 5 years to design and build, too bad it's not really needed anymore - with electronic watches, you can just write a short algorithm that will do this... And, finally, we stopped by the houses of the mortal enemies Rousseau and Voltaire, the fathers of Western democracy and modern theatre.
OK, well the computer's warning me that time is almost up and I'm about to get kicked off... =( I'll write again when there's a chance! Miss you all!
So, we spent the last few days on the shore of Lake Geneva (in French it's called Lac Léman, I don't get why there's such a discrepancy). To all of those who care, this is the lake that inspired the song "Smoke on the Water". Anyways, I'm proud to say that I spent more money on museums and guided visits than I did on food! The Swiss really seem to be all about world peace and universal friendship. Geneva harbors the second largest United nation complex and the Red Cross headquarters, the nearby city of Lausanne that we also visited happens to be the Olympic capital of the world, and I'm not even talking about the Geneva convention (by the way, we took pictures in front of the room where it was signed). It is also the cleanest large city I've ever seen, with a beautifully developed public transport network that is completely free for all tourists. Basically, it's a country of hard-working hippies. That is not to say that it is absolutely perfect, of course - I would appreciate food being not as expensive, for example (the only really really cheap thing is chocolate. Swiss chocolate.)
This is terrible, I wish i had more time to write about all of the super-interesting stuff that happened, but time is running short, I guess I'll update this when i get to Nice and upload all the pictures. Or, rather, not all, but at least a selection of the over 200 I took so far. What else is crucially important? Oh yes, we went to CERN, the huge European nuclear research center! They have a cool museum where you can stand inside a replica of the Large Hadron Collider tunnel and look at the ORIGINAL paper by a CERN engineer that first presented the idea of the World Wide Web. On the top of the paper, you can see the guy's boss' famous resolution: "Vague, but intriguing". This was less than 30 years ago.
We also visited the enormous Patek Philippe museum (that's a famous watchmaking company) and saw the most complicated mechanical watch in the world which adjusts automatically for not only leap years, but also the few skipped seconds that accumulate despite leap years... This thing took 5 years to design and build, too bad it's not really needed anymore - with electronic watches, you can just write a short algorithm that will do this... And, finally, we stopped by the houses of the mortal enemies Rousseau and Voltaire, the fathers of Western democracy and modern theatre.
OK, well the computer's warning me that time is almost up and I'm about to get kicked off... =( I'll write again when there's a chance! Miss you all!
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Weekend of Two Cities
So, this last weekend I took full advantage of the 1-Euro bus service in the region and went to two very different places, Grasse on Saturday and Monaco/Monte-Carlo on Sunday.
For all you uneducated people out there (don't worry, I didn't know this myself until I went there), the little and unnoticeable town of Grasse has maintained, for centuries, the status of the perfume capital of the world. At first sight, there is nothing special about it: no huge cathedral in the middle, no especially picturesque houses clinging to steep cliffs, no secret mountain lake... But, walking through the 'downtown', famous names immediately catch your attention: Molinard, Galinard, and Fragonard are all based here, offering free visits of their still-working perfume factories that bring in over 600,000,000 euros a year. In fact, two-thirds of France's natural aromas are produced in this little town that hides its immense wealth behind old and battered building façades.
We walked into the Fragonard factory - not because we had any special preferences, but just because they happened the first parfumerie that we noticed. The free guided visit exceeded any and all of my expectations. The lady was unbelievably nice and knew all there is to know about the workings of a perfume factory. She explained to us the specifics of hot grease extraction - when heaps of flowers are thrown into a cauldron of melted animal fat and stirred until the fat absorbes all the odor - and cold grease extraction, used for flowers so fragile that they lose their scent immediately upon contact with hot fat, which involves sticking the flowers to a layer of spread-out cold fat and waiting for the fat to slowly absorb the odorant molecules. She showed us the room with containers holding thousands of liters of some of the world's most expensive perfumes - did you know that, to make one liter of the "essence" of a particular flower, you need to collect between two and three thousand pounds of petals? We also got to see the room where the soap is being made (and the only room where I managed to take some photos when the guide turned away, as photography is STRICTLY forbidden - take a look on Picasa!) and, finally, the laboratory. This is where the "nose" works (that's really what they call them), sitting in front of an "organ" of smells. The organ consists of countless tiny bottles and flasks, arranged in many rows, containing all or almost all distinct smells used in perfume production, and a large mixing flask in the middle.
The guide told us about the education required to become a nose. There are only three schools in the entire world: one in Grasse, one in Paris, and one somewhere in Switzerland. The exam that you have to pass at the end requires you to be able to distinguish and name over 500 different smells, as well as be capable of smelling a complex perfume and breaking it down into the individual components. At the end of the tour, the guide let us smell samples of some of the perfumes currently on sale in their store and challenged us to guess what components were present in them. An average perfume that you buy in the store is composed of 25 to 250 different individual scents (about 150 on average), but picking up even the basic and most prominent ones is harder than it seems. I succeeded at finding vanilla in one of the samples and lemon in another, but that was about it... If you're at all interested in all of this, you should absolutely read the book "Perfume" by Patrick Süskind - it's way too freaky and crazy, but definitely a worthwhile read.
Oh, and Grasse is also full of cats of all breeds and sizes. It's a random observation, but you really can't help noticing all the felines... They're everywhere. One even attacked us and chased us away from the town hall - I don't know if he was trained to do that, or if he just happened to find our company too unpleasant.
The Principality of Monaco that we visited on Sunday yielded somewhat fewer memories, but was still worth the bus ride. It's a tiny little sovereign state surrounded by France and the Mediterranean, with a prince from the Grimaldi royal family which has ruled the principality since 1297. Monaco collects very few taxes, and so millionaires from all over Europe buy apartments in the high-rise buildings and declare them as their primary residences, thus evading the taxes they would have had to pay in the country where they actually live. Most of the millionaires don't really spend too much of their time there, and the people on the streets are generally tourists. You do see the occasional Ferrari or Jaguar driving up to a house, though, so I guess the millionaires do come every once in a while to pay their bills and do some cleaning in the near-empty flats. Monte-Carlo was a little disappointing, with a single casino that was very low-key and discreet - nothing on the scale of Las Vegas or even Altlantic City. We didn't even go in because the casino charges 10 euros just for entering the premises.
I'm leaving to Geneva in two days! Had to struggle through about 20 minutes of panic today when I realized that Switzerland is not a Schengen country (I only have a Schengen visa), but then it turned out that they do not require a visa from U.S. citizens OR Green Card holders, whew!
I guess the next post will be describing Amsterdam and Geneva adventures... See you later!
For all you uneducated people out there (don't worry, I didn't know this myself until I went there), the little and unnoticeable town of Grasse has maintained, for centuries, the status of the perfume capital of the world. At first sight, there is nothing special about it: no huge cathedral in the middle, no especially picturesque houses clinging to steep cliffs, no secret mountain lake... But, walking through the 'downtown', famous names immediately catch your attention: Molinard, Galinard, and Fragonard are all based here, offering free visits of their still-working perfume factories that bring in over 600,000,000 euros a year. In fact, two-thirds of France's natural aromas are produced in this little town that hides its immense wealth behind old and battered building façades.
We walked into the Fragonard factory - not because we had any special preferences, but just because they happened the first parfumerie that we noticed. The free guided visit exceeded any and all of my expectations. The lady was unbelievably nice and knew all there is to know about the workings of a perfume factory. She explained to us the specifics of hot grease extraction - when heaps of flowers are thrown into a cauldron of melted animal fat and stirred until the fat absorbes all the odor - and cold grease extraction, used for flowers so fragile that they lose their scent immediately upon contact with hot fat, which involves sticking the flowers to a layer of spread-out cold fat and waiting for the fat to slowly absorb the odorant molecules. She showed us the room with containers holding thousands of liters of some of the world's most expensive perfumes - did you know that, to make one liter of the "essence" of a particular flower, you need to collect between two and three thousand pounds of petals? We also got to see the room where the soap is being made (and the only room where I managed to take some photos when the guide turned away, as photography is STRICTLY forbidden - take a look on Picasa!) and, finally, the laboratory. This is where the "nose" works (that's really what they call them), sitting in front of an "organ" of smells. The organ consists of countless tiny bottles and flasks, arranged in many rows, containing all or almost all distinct smells used in perfume production, and a large mixing flask in the middle.
The guide told us about the education required to become a nose. There are only three schools in the entire world: one in Grasse, one in Paris, and one somewhere in Switzerland. The exam that you have to pass at the end requires you to be able to distinguish and name over 500 different smells, as well as be capable of smelling a complex perfume and breaking it down into the individual components. At the end of the tour, the guide let us smell samples of some of the perfumes currently on sale in their store and challenged us to guess what components were present in them. An average perfume that you buy in the store is composed of 25 to 250 different individual scents (about 150 on average), but picking up even the basic and most prominent ones is harder than it seems. I succeeded at finding vanilla in one of the samples and lemon in another, but that was about it... If you're at all interested in all of this, you should absolutely read the book "Perfume" by Patrick Süskind - it's way too freaky and crazy, but definitely a worthwhile read.
Oh, and Grasse is also full of cats of all breeds and sizes. It's a random observation, but you really can't help noticing all the felines... They're everywhere. One even attacked us and chased us away from the town hall - I don't know if he was trained to do that, or if he just happened to find our company too unpleasant.
The Principality of Monaco that we visited on Sunday yielded somewhat fewer memories, but was still worth the bus ride. It's a tiny little sovereign state surrounded by France and the Mediterranean, with a prince from the Grimaldi royal family which has ruled the principality since 1297. Monaco collects very few taxes, and so millionaires from all over Europe buy apartments in the high-rise buildings and declare them as their primary residences, thus evading the taxes they would have had to pay in the country where they actually live. Most of the millionaires don't really spend too much of their time there, and the people on the streets are generally tourists. You do see the occasional Ferrari or Jaguar driving up to a house, though, so I guess the millionaires do come every once in a while to pay their bills and do some cleaning in the near-empty flats. Monte-Carlo was a little disappointing, with a single casino that was very low-key and discreet - nothing on the scale of Las Vegas or even Altlantic City. We didn't even go in because the casino charges 10 euros just for entering the premises.
I'm leaving to Geneva in two days! Had to struggle through about 20 minutes of panic today when I realized that Switzerland is not a Schengen country (I only have a Schengen visa), but then it turned out that they do not require a visa from U.S. citizens OR Green Card holders, whew!
I guess the next post will be describing Amsterdam and Geneva adventures... See you later!
Monday, October 13, 2008
Hi, nice to meet you! Now kiss me.
Hey, welcome back! Sorry for the long pause, I was busy making and spending money. More specifically, I worked on a grant proposal so that I can continue getting paid at the lab, and booked trips for both fall break and winter break. Which means that now I really have to stick to that 2 Euro lunch menu, but: 1) I'm leaving for Geneva and then Amsterdam in 10 days, and 2), but certainly not last, Alina is coming here for a week in the winter, and we're traveling to Paris together for New Year's!!! The degree of awesomness of all the aforementioned can hardly be underestimated ;).
Meanwhile, it's classes and work and many many new friends over here. I'm beginning to spend more and more time with people outside the Maryland group, both foreign and French. On Saturday, two German exchange students and I went to Menton, a small town on the coast about a mile away from the Italian border. If you thought the views of Nice that I had put up earlier were beautiful, go to Picasa again and take a look at this. The old part of the city sits on a very steep hill, and all of its tiny streets are actually staircases. I was just wondering how in the world the people who live in these houses lug heavy things, ex. furniture, up all these stairs, when the answer came roaring out out one of the alleyways. Picture a VERY large shopping cart with caterpillars instead of wheels and a motor that moves it according to the direction in which the person walking behind is pushing. That thing climbs the stairs as if they weren't even there, a very practical solution, I suppose. I don't think I would necessarily want to live in Menton, as there's nothing to do, really (except maybe bake bread or study at the tiny College of Maritime Law), but it's absolutely stunning. Look at the pictures. Look at the pictures. No, I'm not trying to hypnotize you, where'd you get THAT idea from? Look at the pictures.
Another trip that you have to see the pictures from was a short hike between two mountain villages (album titled "Walk to Contes"). The only thing I can really say about that one, apart from "go on Picasa right now", is that we picked grapes and figs on the way. Growing on the side of the road. Just like that. This story works best when told in a casual tone, something along the lines of "Oh yeah, we're walking, picking some grapes and figs, talking about such and such things..."
It's also cool that the bus driver knows almost everybody on the bus by the name, since there're not too many people living in this village and he's one of the few drivers assigned to the route. He would exchange jokes and very personal stories with the passengers, all while driving up a road that was definitely not intended for buses half that size. The switchbacks are so sharp that, on some turns, the driver can't make the turn directly and has to switch into reverse, roll back a little, turn a little more in forward gear, go back again - like a car turning around in a very narrow street. Every time an approaching car jumps out from a turn just in front of the bus, our merry driver slams on... the horn. Not the brake. Mind you, the blasting horn of these buses could turn some medium-sized ships green with envy. If I were driving on a winding mountain road in my little Smart or Mini and suddenly saw this behemoth approaching and bellowing for me to yield, a heart attack would have been inevitable. But the drivers here seem not to mind - they quickly pull over, let us through and just wave amicably!
Oh, yes, the title of this post! Time for a little culture lesson. In and around Nice, whenever you meet somebody you know, you have to kiss them once on each cheek. The same goes for people you're being presented to. The common acquaintance tells you the other person's name and tells them yours, and then you kiss. This bears practically the same level of intimacy as our "Hi". Not doing it would be approximately equal to not greeting someone you know, and can be regarded as offensive. The process gets progressively longer and more entertaining with more people. If, for example, a group of 10 students meets a group of 5 students, that means a total of 100 kisses (remember, one on each cheek!) Normally, the larger group stands in a semicircle, and the smaller groups goes around in a line kissing everybody - a method polished to perfection for the sake of time economy. The only cases when an exception is granted or tolerated is between two guys (the local guys still do it, but they understand that foreigners may be uncomfortable with it and do not insist), between people of very different age, or if someone is very sick. Once again, this is not a French thing - this is a Nice thing. If you're a guy yourself and tried to kiss a guy you just met in Paris, for example, he would have no questions about your orientation. You can still kiss girls in Paris, but from what I gather it's not required and mostly reserved for closer friends.
Another cultural thing - many bars, clubs, and pubs employ exclusively anglo-saxons who can barely, if at all, speak French. At first I thought that it was just a few super-touristy establishments, but then last Friday I went out with a French crowd, and they took me to one of their favorite places - I ended up translating all the dialogue between them and the bartender, as the only way they could communicate without a mediator is with wild hand gestures and menu-pointing. Very ironic. There're even some clubs that don't let you in unless you're a native English speaker in an effort to "preserve the atmosphere"... Now how is that reasonable? Discuss.
I know I'm boring you with French facts, but here's one last one: because public schools are strictly secular (it is forbidden to wear any signs of faith, including head scarves, crosses, stars of David, and whatever else you can think of), many Muslims enroll their children in Catholic schools because they end up being more tolerant than public ones. There is a Catholic school in Marseilles, for example, where over 70% of all students are Muslim. They are allowed to wear head scarves and pray openly during recess or lunch hours, something they would never be able to do in a state-owned facility. Once again, discuss.
Well, I suppose that's plenty for now. Write me some comments! Thanks!
Meanwhile, it's classes and work and many many new friends over here. I'm beginning to spend more and more time with people outside the Maryland group, both foreign and French. On Saturday, two German exchange students and I went to Menton, a small town on the coast about a mile away from the Italian border. If you thought the views of Nice that I had put up earlier were beautiful, go to Picasa again and take a look at this. The old part of the city sits on a very steep hill, and all of its tiny streets are actually staircases. I was just wondering how in the world the people who live in these houses lug heavy things, ex. furniture, up all these stairs, when the answer came roaring out out one of the alleyways. Picture a VERY large shopping cart with caterpillars instead of wheels and a motor that moves it according to the direction in which the person walking behind is pushing. That thing climbs the stairs as if they weren't even there, a very practical solution, I suppose. I don't think I would necessarily want to live in Menton, as there's nothing to do, really (except maybe bake bread or study at the tiny College of Maritime Law), but it's absolutely stunning. Look at the pictures. Look at the pictures. No, I'm not trying to hypnotize you, where'd you get THAT idea from? Look at the pictures.
Another trip that you have to see the pictures from was a short hike between two mountain villages (album titled "Walk to Contes"). The only thing I can really say about that one, apart from "go on Picasa right now", is that we picked grapes and figs on the way. Growing on the side of the road. Just like that. This story works best when told in a casual tone, something along the lines of "Oh yeah, we're walking, picking some grapes and figs, talking about such and such things..."
It's also cool that the bus driver knows almost everybody on the bus by the name, since there're not too many people living in this village and he's one of the few drivers assigned to the route. He would exchange jokes and very personal stories with the passengers, all while driving up a road that was definitely not intended for buses half that size. The switchbacks are so sharp that, on some turns, the driver can't make the turn directly and has to switch into reverse, roll back a little, turn a little more in forward gear, go back again - like a car turning around in a very narrow street. Every time an approaching car jumps out from a turn just in front of the bus, our merry driver slams on... the horn. Not the brake. Mind you, the blasting horn of these buses could turn some medium-sized ships green with envy. If I were driving on a winding mountain road in my little Smart or Mini and suddenly saw this behemoth approaching and bellowing for me to yield, a heart attack would have been inevitable. But the drivers here seem not to mind - they quickly pull over, let us through and just wave amicably!
Oh, yes, the title of this post! Time for a little culture lesson. In and around Nice, whenever you meet somebody you know, you have to kiss them once on each cheek. The same goes for people you're being presented to. The common acquaintance tells you the other person's name and tells them yours, and then you kiss. This bears practically the same level of intimacy as our "Hi". Not doing it would be approximately equal to not greeting someone you know, and can be regarded as offensive. The process gets progressively longer and more entertaining with more people. If, for example, a group of 10 students meets a group of 5 students, that means a total of 100 kisses (remember, one on each cheek!) Normally, the larger group stands in a semicircle, and the smaller groups goes around in a line kissing everybody - a method polished to perfection for the sake of time economy. The only cases when an exception is granted or tolerated is between two guys (the local guys still do it, but they understand that foreigners may be uncomfortable with it and do not insist), between people of very different age, or if someone is very sick. Once again, this is not a French thing - this is a Nice thing. If you're a guy yourself and tried to kiss a guy you just met in Paris, for example, he would have no questions about your orientation. You can still kiss girls in Paris, but from what I gather it's not required and mostly reserved for closer friends.
Another cultural thing - many bars, clubs, and pubs employ exclusively anglo-saxons who can barely, if at all, speak French. At first I thought that it was just a few super-touristy establishments, but then last Friday I went out with a French crowd, and they took me to one of their favorite places - I ended up translating all the dialogue between them and the bartender, as the only way they could communicate without a mediator is with wild hand gestures and menu-pointing. Very ironic. There're even some clubs that don't let you in unless you're a native English speaker in an effort to "preserve the atmosphere"... Now how is that reasonable? Discuss.
I know I'm boring you with French facts, but here's one last one: because public schools are strictly secular (it is forbidden to wear any signs of faith, including head scarves, crosses, stars of David, and whatever else you can think of), many Muslims enroll their children in Catholic schools because they end up being more tolerant than public ones. There is a Catholic school in Marseilles, for example, where over 70% of all students are Muslim. They are allowed to wear head scarves and pray openly during recess or lunch hours, something they would never be able to do in a state-owned facility. Once again, discuss.
Well, I suppose that's plenty for now. Write me some comments! Thanks!
Thursday, October 2, 2008
First week of school - 70 degrees and sunny
On Monday, I got up bright and early, excited to go to my first real class of this semester. The three weeks of "intensive preparation" and exams don't really count - they have been more of a continuation of summer break than anything else. As the classroom was filling up, Dora and I, both feeling a little intimidated about having placed in the highest and hence most difficult level, cautiously spoke with the people sitting next to us to figure out how well they know French. The results exceeded our worst expectations: the Mexican girl on the right had lived here since 2005 and spoke the language perfectly with all the slang and local expressions, and the Norwegian lady on the left had been teaching French in Norway for fifteen years and had a doctoral degree in translation. Frightened, we waited for the professor to arrive. Fifteen minutes later, he still wasn't there. Half an hour later, no sign of him. Finally, we sent a delegation to the secretariat to see what's going on, and found out that the professor has called in ill. Not a problem - the beach is 10 minutes away from the University, and the two hours that we had until our next class were spent peacefully tanning under the Mediterranean sun.
The adventure did not end here, though: the next class ALSO happened to be canceled, this time for an undeclared reason. The same fate awaited our third and fourth classes, and soon we found ourselves walking back home from the first day of school without having seen a single teacher. Quite a promising beginning!
The following day, however, everything went as planned. Profs showed up, and we discovered that we had nothing to worry about - the two super-French speakers whom we had used in our random sampling of linguistic ability are actually far ahead of everyone else in the group, and we fall somewhere very close to the middle. Even more importantly, the professors all seem very knowledgeable and interested in their respective subjects. It was interesting to hear the "economic and political geography" professor's view of NATO (which the French call OTAN by the way - all the same words, just pronounced with a French accent and reversed in order). So anyways, he said that NATO has, since the fall of the Soviet Union, lost all of its purpose and should be disbanded as soon as possible. He also defended Russia's actions in the Georgian conflict, saying that he can't blame the Kremlin for seeing America's presence in the region as a threat to their security. I don't know if I agree entirely, but it was interesting to hear how differently the entire situation is perceived here - in the States, every newsflash would have had some kind of synonym of "Russian aggression" present.
One of my favorite pastimes is now lying on the beach with a French book. I almost finished my Balzac, ready to move on to more contemporary things. I am also much more tan now than I was at the end of August, which is at the same time cool and ironic. Life is also becoming a lot more established, especially with regards to food spending: I normally eat a little piece of yesterday's bread for breakfast, then buy some tasty little thing from a boulangerie (bakery) for lunch - usually a piece of quiche or a slice of pizza, both of which cost only 2 euros - and then we take turns cooking dinners at our apartment. The pizza is, by the way, not even the same dish as the thing they call pizza in the States. It has very little cheese, a very thin crust, amazing tomato sauce and lots of mixed veggies. Definitely a great treat.
Today, we went to the cinema to see the new film "Entre les murs" (Between the Walls). It's about a young and inspired teacher working in an inner-city school in a poor district of Paris. He tries and tries to give something to the 13- and 14-year-olds, searches incessantly for a way to connect with them, but it just doesn't work. The barrier between them, consisting of a whole mix of social, linguistic, educational, and moral differences, is almost impermeable. They refuse to believe that he actually cares about them, and he can't understand what and how they're thinking. Eventually, during one of the classes, he finally loses his temper for a second, and the students immediattely band together against him. The movie ends at the end of the school year, when he asks the pupils to share something they had learned over the past nine months, and some are unable to come up with a single thing. It is frankly one of the most depressing yet thought-provoking films I've seen in a while, I strongly recommend seeing it at some point... By the way, there were no subtitles and I understood everything!!! Not every single word, of course, but all the conversations and ideas. The words that I didn't recognize were either apparent from the context or just not very important. Yay!!!
Well, I guess I'll get going, it's a little late and I have class tomorrow... If they don't cancel it, that is... Look at the new pictures on Picasa!
The adventure did not end here, though: the next class ALSO happened to be canceled, this time for an undeclared reason. The same fate awaited our third and fourth classes, and soon we found ourselves walking back home from the first day of school without having seen a single teacher. Quite a promising beginning!
The following day, however, everything went as planned. Profs showed up, and we discovered that we had nothing to worry about - the two super-French speakers whom we had used in our random sampling of linguistic ability are actually far ahead of everyone else in the group, and we fall somewhere very close to the middle. Even more importantly, the professors all seem very knowledgeable and interested in their respective subjects. It was interesting to hear the "economic and political geography" professor's view of NATO (which the French call OTAN by the way - all the same words, just pronounced with a French accent and reversed in order). So anyways, he said that NATO has, since the fall of the Soviet Union, lost all of its purpose and should be disbanded as soon as possible. He also defended Russia's actions in the Georgian conflict, saying that he can't blame the Kremlin for seeing America's presence in the region as a threat to their security. I don't know if I agree entirely, but it was interesting to hear how differently the entire situation is perceived here - in the States, every newsflash would have had some kind of synonym of "Russian aggression" present.
One of my favorite pastimes is now lying on the beach with a French book. I almost finished my Balzac, ready to move on to more contemporary things. I am also much more tan now than I was at the end of August, which is at the same time cool and ironic. Life is also becoming a lot more established, especially with regards to food spending: I normally eat a little piece of yesterday's bread for breakfast, then buy some tasty little thing from a boulangerie (bakery) for lunch - usually a piece of quiche or a slice of pizza, both of which cost only 2 euros - and then we take turns cooking dinners at our apartment. The pizza is, by the way, not even the same dish as the thing they call pizza in the States. It has very little cheese, a very thin crust, amazing tomato sauce and lots of mixed veggies. Definitely a great treat.
Today, we went to the cinema to see the new film "Entre les murs" (Between the Walls). It's about a young and inspired teacher working in an inner-city school in a poor district of Paris. He tries and tries to give something to the 13- and 14-year-olds, searches incessantly for a way to connect with them, but it just doesn't work. The barrier between them, consisting of a whole mix of social, linguistic, educational, and moral differences, is almost impermeable. They refuse to believe that he actually cares about them, and he can't understand what and how they're thinking. Eventually, during one of the classes, he finally loses his temper for a second, and the students immediattely band together against him. The movie ends at the end of the school year, when he asks the pupils to share something they had learned over the past nine months, and some are unable to come up with a single thing. It is frankly one of the most depressing yet thought-provoking films I've seen in a while, I strongly recommend seeing it at some point... By the way, there were no subtitles and I understood everything!!! Not every single word, of course, but all the conversations and ideas. The words that I didn't recognize were either apparent from the context or just not very important. Yay!!!
Well, I guess I'll get going, it's a little late and I have class tomorrow... If they don't cancel it, that is... Look at the new pictures on Picasa!
Sunday, September 28, 2008
I need some cell minutes so I can find the Germans...
Well, I've got good and bad news. The good news is that Brad, Dora, and I all placed in the 3rd and highest level of French for foreigners. The bad news is that the resulting schedule is completely incompatible with my potential work in the lab, since the days I need the most, Monday and Tuesday, also happen to be the days when I have class from early morning to late afternoon. In full accordance with Murphy's law, Wednesday and Thursday are almost completely free - and useless.
We're finally beginning to meet real French students! There's a small club at the university called Café Polyglotte, which is essentially a group of students learning English who invite foreign students learning French for a weekly 2-hour-long informal chat over tea and biscuits. Everyone speaks only French for the first hour and only English for the second. It got off to a very good start, and yesterday we already took a little trip to Cannes with the Polyglotte gang. Adventures began in the train station, where we realized, ten minutes before the scheduled departure, that ticket machines accept neither Euro bills nor American credit cards. Since not a single one of us had the required 9 Euros worth of change, it was a frantic scramble to either exchange bills or find French people willing to put our ticket on their credit card - given the limit on the number of single card transactions, our French friends couldn't buy tickets for all of us. When the problem was finally solved, it was too late. Or, rather, it would have been, had the train not been delayed due to technical reasons. I can only guess as to what these reasons could have been, but the station supervisor seemed to be playing a little game with us: every five minutes or so, he would go on the intercom and tell the passengers waiting for the Cannes train to move to a different platform or a different area of the platform we were on. When the train finally did arrive, it was already full - but apparently there is no limit to human compressibility, and trust me, the sardines have it pretty easy in their allegorical can.
Once in Cannes, we took a ferry to a nearby island and walked through its groves to a rocky beach with a view of the city. The day was, in two words, a language overload. The younger generation uses such enormous amounts of slang that their conversations are basically incomprehensible if all you've learned is textbook French. I feel like I'm slowly getting the hang of it, but there's a lot to learn... Which only makes everything more interesting, of course. One surprising fact that I picked up from the students is that good contemporary French music is practically nonexistent. They listen to British and American rock and German sonic experimentation, but when it comes to their own language, the list of listenable bands is sadly very short.
Check out the Cannes pictures on Picasa!!!
The wrinkles in inter-group relationships are clearing up a little, at least no one is banned from our apartment. I still don't understand what exactly happened in the first place, but I talked to the warring parties (read: party, since the problem was pretty one-sided), and everyone is cool. Which makes me happy, because frankly, although we're enjoying a very courteous relationship within the apartment, we really have very few common interests. And since we had given up speaking French at home, all the more reasons to look for friends from other sources!
The Germans that briefly came into the scope of my roommates' interest left back to Germany after a heartbreaking (well, not really) farewell party. They were somewhat entertaining and more German than you can possibly imagine. They also lived far away and were hard to find, which explains the quote in this post's title (cell phone minutes are extremely expensive and are widely regarded as one of the most valuable resources of city life). Speaking of city life, I'm really beginning to feel at home as the people working in local bread stores start recognizing me. I even had a deep conversation with a lady from the nearest bakery a few days ago when there were no other customers and she was visibly bored of not having anyone to talk to...
I can't believe I'm here for almost a month already!
We're finally beginning to meet real French students! There's a small club at the university called Café Polyglotte, which is essentially a group of students learning English who invite foreign students learning French for a weekly 2-hour-long informal chat over tea and biscuits. Everyone speaks only French for the first hour and only English for the second. It got off to a very good start, and yesterday we already took a little trip to Cannes with the Polyglotte gang. Adventures began in the train station, where we realized, ten minutes before the scheduled departure, that ticket machines accept neither Euro bills nor American credit cards. Since not a single one of us had the required 9 Euros worth of change, it was a frantic scramble to either exchange bills or find French people willing to put our ticket on their credit card - given the limit on the number of single card transactions, our French friends couldn't buy tickets for all of us. When the problem was finally solved, it was too late. Or, rather, it would have been, had the train not been delayed due to technical reasons. I can only guess as to what these reasons could have been, but the station supervisor seemed to be playing a little game with us: every five minutes or so, he would go on the intercom and tell the passengers waiting for the Cannes train to move to a different platform or a different area of the platform we were on. When the train finally did arrive, it was already full - but apparently there is no limit to human compressibility, and trust me, the sardines have it pretty easy in their allegorical can.
Once in Cannes, we took a ferry to a nearby island and walked through its groves to a rocky beach with a view of the city. The day was, in two words, a language overload. The younger generation uses such enormous amounts of slang that their conversations are basically incomprehensible if all you've learned is textbook French. I feel like I'm slowly getting the hang of it, but there's a lot to learn... Which only makes everything more interesting, of course. One surprising fact that I picked up from the students is that good contemporary French music is practically nonexistent. They listen to British and American rock and German sonic experimentation, but when it comes to their own language, the list of listenable bands is sadly very short.
Check out the Cannes pictures on Picasa!!!
The wrinkles in inter-group relationships are clearing up a little, at least no one is banned from our apartment. I still don't understand what exactly happened in the first place, but I talked to the warring parties (read: party, since the problem was pretty one-sided), and everyone is cool. Which makes me happy, because frankly, although we're enjoying a very courteous relationship within the apartment, we really have very few common interests. And since we had given up speaking French at home, all the more reasons to look for friends from other sources!
The Germans that briefly came into the scope of my roommates' interest left back to Germany after a heartbreaking (well, not really) farewell party. They were somewhat entertaining and more German than you can possibly imagine. They also lived far away and were hard to find, which explains the quote in this post's title (cell phone minutes are extremely expensive and are widely regarded as one of the most valuable resources of city life). Speaking of city life, I'm really beginning to feel at home as the people working in local bread stores start recognizing me. I even had a deep conversation with a lady from the nearest bakery a few days ago when there were no other customers and she was visibly bored of not having anyone to talk to...
I can't believe I'm here for almost a month already!
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
A seashell from Australia <3
I was finally able to catch the post office people! They don't work and Saturdays and Sundays and take 2 hour long lunch breaks on other days of the week. Anyways, after making me run back home to get my passport (a student ID and an ISIC card were dismissed as insufficient pieces of identification), they gave me a huge packet with "FRAGILE! DON'T BEND!" written all over it in a very familiar handwriting =) . Inside was the biggest postcard I've ever received, drawn by Alina to mark the end of the second year (or, rather, beginning of a third year) of happiness =)))
I'll upload a picture of it as soon as I buy new batteries for my camera... Also included in the package were a cute little stuffed Australian friend whose species I failed to identify (Alina, help me out!), and a half of a petrified seashell 180 million years old. You can only guess where the other half is... =)
I'll upload a picture of it as soon as I buy new batteries for my camera... Also included in the package were a cute little stuffed Australian friend whose species I failed to identify (Alina, help me out!), and a half of a petrified seashell 180 million years old. You can only guess where the other half is... =)
Monday, September 22, 2008
Heritage Day
I would first like to apologize for the tiny number of pictures - photography was prohibited in practically all museums. The few photos that I did manage to take are appended to the "First Days" Picasa album.
On Friday, we got a chance to sit in on a rehearsal of "Rock n' Roll" by Tom Stoppard at the National Theater of Nice. The opening is scheduled for next Friday, but nothing was ready yet. The angry director yelled at the actors, at the musicians, at the sound engineer, and at the lighting engineer with few pauses in between. Stage transitions didn't work properly; one time, a huge bookshelf nearly fell on top of the director as it was being dragged onstage because the control room engineer forgot to raise one of the side curtains. When the support band came on, the lead guitarist realized that he had no sound and yelled to the sound engineer - only to find that the sound engineer has mysteriously disappeared from the mixing desk. The furious director sent a few people out to find him. After five minutes or so the engineer suddenly appeared in the hallway, peacefully strolling towards his working place while hugging a random girl and whispering something in her ear. He didn't realize how much he's been missed until a stream of curses from the director snapped him back into reality and made him sprint to the mixing board, flip a couple of switches, and plug the lead guitar into the PA. This made me remember the "ok, take a nap... and zen FIRE ZE MISSILES!" Anyways, we'll see this production sometime in October, I'm really wondering how they're going to pull it off...
This past weekend, France celebrated Heritage Day (well, actually, two days). What this essentially means is that all museums are open to the public free of charge. By far the coolest one was the musée Masséna, located in a beautiful oceanfront mansion that used to belong to Masséna himself. This guy was one of Napoleon's marshals, and the mansion was in fact a personal gift from Napoleon. Items on display involved a jacket that Napoleon wore on Elba (that I was able to smuggle a picture of), Josephine's wedding dress, and tons of historical artefacts from Nice. I found the building we're living in on plans dating back to the 19th century =)
Now, two weeks into the trip, some tensions are already beginning to appear within our little group... My roommates have decided that they don't like two other girls, Sara and Dora, and so I guess they're no longer welcome in the apartment. Which is a shame, because Sara's a great cook and Dora has many interesting stories to tell, having lived in Hungary and travelled all over Europe... New people and new friends are appearing, though, but so far most of them are other foreign students - Germans, Swedes, Belgians, Austrians, etc. I'm hoping that eventually we'll get some real French people in the group, too!
On Friday, we got a chance to sit in on a rehearsal of "Rock n' Roll" by Tom Stoppard at the National Theater of Nice. The opening is scheduled for next Friday, but nothing was ready yet. The angry director yelled at the actors, at the musicians, at the sound engineer, and at the lighting engineer with few pauses in between. Stage transitions didn't work properly; one time, a huge bookshelf nearly fell on top of the director as it was being dragged onstage because the control room engineer forgot to raise one of the side curtains. When the support band came on, the lead guitarist realized that he had no sound and yelled to the sound engineer - only to find that the sound engineer has mysteriously disappeared from the mixing desk. The furious director sent a few people out to find him. After five minutes or so the engineer suddenly appeared in the hallway, peacefully strolling towards his working place while hugging a random girl and whispering something in her ear. He didn't realize how much he's been missed until a stream of curses from the director snapped him back into reality and made him sprint to the mixing board, flip a couple of switches, and plug the lead guitar into the PA. This made me remember the "ok, take a nap... and zen FIRE ZE MISSILES!" Anyways, we'll see this production sometime in October, I'm really wondering how they're going to pull it off...
This past weekend, France celebrated Heritage Day (well, actually, two days). What this essentially means is that all museums are open to the public free of charge. By far the coolest one was the musée Masséna, located in a beautiful oceanfront mansion that used to belong to Masséna himself. This guy was one of Napoleon's marshals, and the mansion was in fact a personal gift from Napoleon. Items on display involved a jacket that Napoleon wore on Elba (that I was able to smuggle a picture of), Josephine's wedding dress, and tons of historical artefacts from Nice. I found the building we're living in on plans dating back to the 19th century =)
Now, two weeks into the trip, some tensions are already beginning to appear within our little group... My roommates have decided that they don't like two other girls, Sara and Dora, and so I guess they're no longer welcome in the apartment. Which is a shame, because Sara's a great cook and Dora has many interesting stories to tell, having lived in Hungary and travelled all over Europe... New people and new friends are appearing, though, but so far most of them are other foreign students - Germans, Swedes, Belgians, Austrians, etc. I'm hoping that eventually we'll get some real French people in the group, too!
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Snowed in... No, seriously.
I decided to to switch over to Picasa so that it'll be easier for everyone to see the pictures (plus they will be of better quality). Please visit my page here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/vbelyy/
There's now also a link to these pictures on the left-hand side of my blog page.
This weekend Mme. Letzter, our resident director, took us out to the mountains. Nice actually owes its beautiful climate to the Alpes Maritimes, which surround it in a demi-circle and protect it from all the clouds swinging in from the mainland. Some of the mountains we can see from our window, which you'll notice if you follow the Picasa link! Anyways, the train ride in itself was quite an adventure... Covering a very modest horizontal distance of no more than twenty-five miles, the tracks have to climb a lot in order to clear the mountain pass and roll over into the plains of Italy. As a result, the trains go through over 40 tunnels and at some points have to slow down to a crawl as they clear the unbelievably sharp turns. In fact, at one point along the route the engineers could not come up with an easier solution for gaining 30 meters of elevation than building a kilometer-long tunnel that makes a complete 360 degree circle inside the mountain in an upwards spiral. Speaking of Italy, their trains could not be more different from the French ones - they're painted in all colors of the rainbow and completely covered with graffiti on top of that. Quite an interesting sight.
We got off the train in the village of Tende, and after a short car ride began walking up one of the mountains with our guide Frédéric. Just a few steps afterward we found ourselves right in the middle of a herd of cows, who were quite peacefully strolling in the opposite direction. They started licking our hands to express their friendship, but because of their persistence and the coarseness of their tongues we soon moved away from their path and waited for the herd to pass. The shepherd walking at the end turned out to be a really nice guy and talked us into walking with him to the farm and buying some homemade cheese from them. As we continued the ascent, the air became noticeably colder and the rare raindrops began to look more and more like flurries. By the time we got to the refuge (a little stone building where travelers can spend the night), no one had any doubts that it was snowing. By the time morning came about, there were a couple inches of snow on the ground and it continued to fall, and so the return trip became quite a challenge given the absence of proper clothing.
For the rest of the day, we walked through the countryside starting in a beautiful village perched on a sharp cliff. Our guide brought us to one of the most bizarre places I've seen here so far, a community of semi-hippies who decided to go off and live in the forest by themselves back in the 1970's. We were greeted by their spiritual leader, a crazy-looking guy with dreadlocks that Bob Marley couldn't even dream of (unfortunately, I only have one picture, because we were somewhat intimidated and didn't know if he was okay with cameras). He barely spoke to us, but did point us to an old sorcerer/healer's hut in the woods. Built like an Native American tepee, it immediately reminded me of the movie Across the Universe with its sheer randomness. We were already leaving when the sorcerer himself got out of a small shack nearby, chased us away and said that if we wanted to see him, we have to call ahead. Apparently, technology has seeped into his life, too - the guy now has a cell phone.
Unfortunately, I have to wake up veeery early tomorrow, so this will be it for today - although there's tons of stuff to tell. On a final note, we visited the Science and Mathematics campus of the University of Nice, and the entire thing is built on and around the former private park of a 19th century Russian baron. The castle that the baron lived in is now the administration building of the University, and the park that he created was kept up, modernized and transformed into a gorgeous campus. Just look at the pictures.
http://picasaweb.google.com/vbelyy/
There's now also a link to these pictures on the left-hand side of my blog page.
This weekend Mme. Letzter, our resident director, took us out to the mountains. Nice actually owes its beautiful climate to the Alpes Maritimes, which surround it in a demi-circle and protect it from all the clouds swinging in from the mainland. Some of the mountains we can see from our window, which you'll notice if you follow the Picasa link! Anyways, the train ride in itself was quite an adventure... Covering a very modest horizontal distance of no more than twenty-five miles, the tracks have to climb a lot in order to clear the mountain pass and roll over into the plains of Italy. As a result, the trains go through over 40 tunnels and at some points have to slow down to a crawl as they clear the unbelievably sharp turns. In fact, at one point along the route the engineers could not come up with an easier solution for gaining 30 meters of elevation than building a kilometer-long tunnel that makes a complete 360 degree circle inside the mountain in an upwards spiral. Speaking of Italy, their trains could not be more different from the French ones - they're painted in all colors of the rainbow and completely covered with graffiti on top of that. Quite an interesting sight.
We got off the train in the village of Tende, and after a short car ride began walking up one of the mountains with our guide Frédéric. Just a few steps afterward we found ourselves right in the middle of a herd of cows, who were quite peacefully strolling in the opposite direction. They started licking our hands to express their friendship, but because of their persistence and the coarseness of their tongues we soon moved away from their path and waited for the herd to pass. The shepherd walking at the end turned out to be a really nice guy and talked us into walking with him to the farm and buying some homemade cheese from them. As we continued the ascent, the air became noticeably colder and the rare raindrops began to look more and more like flurries. By the time we got to the refuge (a little stone building where travelers can spend the night), no one had any doubts that it was snowing. By the time morning came about, there were a couple inches of snow on the ground and it continued to fall, and so the return trip became quite a challenge given the absence of proper clothing.
For the rest of the day, we walked through the countryside starting in a beautiful village perched on a sharp cliff. Our guide brought us to one of the most bizarre places I've seen here so far, a community of semi-hippies who decided to go off and live in the forest by themselves back in the 1970's. We were greeted by their spiritual leader, a crazy-looking guy with dreadlocks that Bob Marley couldn't even dream of (unfortunately, I only have one picture, because we were somewhat intimidated and didn't know if he was okay with cameras). He barely spoke to us, but did point us to an old sorcerer/healer's hut in the woods. Built like an Native American tepee, it immediately reminded me of the movie Across the Universe with its sheer randomness. We were already leaving when the sorcerer himself got out of a small shack nearby, chased us away and said that if we wanted to see him, we have to call ahead. Apparently, technology has seeped into his life, too - the guy now has a cell phone.
Unfortunately, I have to wake up veeery early tomorrow, so this will be it for today - although there's tons of stuff to tell. On a final note, we visited the Science and Mathematics campus of the University of Nice, and the entire thing is built on and around the former private park of a 19th century Russian baron. The castle that the baron lived in is now the administration building of the University, and the park that he created was kept up, modernized and transformed into a gorgeous campus. Just look at the pictures.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Golfers and suitcases
Fun French fact of the day: you are never supposed to put ice in your drink, even on the hottest of days, because drinking cold water is apparently dangerous for your health. It is equally dangerous to run out of minerals, so one could learn the Periodic Table just by reading the labels on the bottled water shelf in a convenience store.
My roommates/apartment-mates arrived, and so has (albeit a little later) Kayla's lost suitcase. It decided not to take the London flight and spent a quite peaceful night in Boston, where it was discovered in the morning and eventually delivered right to our door. Speaking of which, another fun fact: the French are all about saving energy, so at night the staircases and hallways in every apartment building are pitch black. When you enter someone's building, the first thing you do is search for a tiny green light that marks the position of the switch. You then have about a minute to run up the stairs and find the apartment door, otherwise the light turns off and you're back to the starting point.
Ok, back to roommates. They both seem very nice and friendly. Lourdes' boyfriend is waiting for her back in the States, and although she loves it here she's still feeling a bit down about not being to see him for another four months. Kayla, on the other hand, is on the lookout for French guys but is still somewhat shy about speaking the language. That'll probably go away soon, especially with Brad and myself making everyone speak French even amongst ourselves. The policy is not yet enforced in our apartment, however, but we're working on it.
Today I visited my new lab for the first time. It's enormous, taking up an entire floor of the building and employing over 8 postdocs, many graduate students and quite a few technicians. The people there speak French and English roughly 50-50 percent of the time, as many are foreign and don't have a good grasp of French. After talking with my potential mentor, it looks like I will have a project there, but the string attached is that I will have to dedicate a LOT of time to this - they're busy people and don't want to invest time in teaching me whatever it is they're doing if I'm not going to produce any results. Interestingly, the whole story about the French working very little does not hold up in science at all. The people I met told me that they're usually in the lab from 8am to 8pm, with a short lunch break in the middle.
As I was getting there, I got pathetically lost when the bus passed my stop. I later figured out that you do need to let the driver know you want to get off, but the buttons that you have to press are tiny, unmarked, and hidden. Anyways, the bus made so many turns between the missed stop and the next one that I wandered hopelessly off course and ended up on a golf field (don't ask), where a very surprised golfer explained to me that I was actually right in front of the building I've been trying to find for the past two hours.
I'm uploading all of this using the University's WiFi network, but the campus is a good 50 minutes walk from our house so this is not going to work as a permanent solution. We're doing our best to get the internet started up, and have already created a French bank account, which is one of the key requirements. I'll let you know when things get settled!
Bonne journée,
Vlad
PS A few pictures are now on Facebook!
My roommates/apartment-mates arrived, and so has (albeit a little later) Kayla's lost suitcase. It decided not to take the London flight and spent a quite peaceful night in Boston, where it was discovered in the morning and eventually delivered right to our door. Speaking of which, another fun fact: the French are all about saving energy, so at night the staircases and hallways in every apartment building are pitch black. When you enter someone's building, the first thing you do is search for a tiny green light that marks the position of the switch. You then have about a minute to run up the stairs and find the apartment door, otherwise the light turns off and you're back to the starting point.
Ok, back to roommates. They both seem very nice and friendly. Lourdes' boyfriend is waiting for her back in the States, and although she loves it here she's still feeling a bit down about not being to see him for another four months. Kayla, on the other hand, is on the lookout for French guys but is still somewhat shy about speaking the language. That'll probably go away soon, especially with Brad and myself making everyone speak French even amongst ourselves. The policy is not yet enforced in our apartment, however, but we're working on it.
Today I visited my new lab for the first time. It's enormous, taking up an entire floor of the building and employing over 8 postdocs, many graduate students and quite a few technicians. The people there speak French and English roughly 50-50 percent of the time, as many are foreign and don't have a good grasp of French. After talking with my potential mentor, it looks like I will have a project there, but the string attached is that I will have to dedicate a LOT of time to this - they're busy people and don't want to invest time in teaching me whatever it is they're doing if I'm not going to produce any results. Interestingly, the whole story about the French working very little does not hold up in science at all. The people I met told me that they're usually in the lab from 8am to 8pm, with a short lunch break in the middle.
As I was getting there, I got pathetically lost when the bus passed my stop. I later figured out that you do need to let the driver know you want to get off, but the buttons that you have to press are tiny, unmarked, and hidden. Anyways, the bus made so many turns between the missed stop and the next one that I wandered hopelessly off course and ended up on a golf field (don't ask), where a very surprised golfer explained to me that I was actually right in front of the building I've been trying to find for the past two hours.
I'm uploading all of this using the University's WiFi network, but the campus is a good 50 minutes walk from our house so this is not going to work as a permanent solution. We're doing our best to get the internet started up, and have already created a French bank account, which is one of the key requirements. I'll let you know when things get settled!
Bonne journée,
Vlad
PS A few pictures are now on Facebook!
Monday, September 8, 2008
L'arrivée qnd elevators
Hi all!
I've not too much time today sitting in the internet café, especially considering that the keyboard layout is different and it takes forever to type certain simple words - if you find some q's instead of a's, for example - well, that's because they're switched =).
Saying that this place is beautiful would be grossly understating the truth. The thing that surprised me the most so far, interestingly enough, was the water at the beach. You know how city beaches are always crowded and the water's all murky and suspicious-looking? Well, here it happens to be that exact aquamarine color that you see on tropical island postcards - and transparent to the point that you can not only see your own feet, but also the rocks on the bottom several meters underneath. This is partly because the beach has no sand (it's completely covered with pebbles), but whatever the reason, it looks almost unreal.
I haven't met my roommates yet, since they're only supposed to arrive today, but the other people on the program all seem exceptionally nice. There's this guy Brad who absolutely refuses to speak English in France and shames the rest of us into taking our own dusty Fench out of the closet, brushing it up and trying to regain some control over it. For now we look like a bunch of idiots strolling down the street and using wild and sometimes very questionable gestures as we try to explain words we don't know/remember without reserving to English.
The apartment is on the fifth and last floor of a very French building that must be over a hundred years old. An elevator was recently installed there, but the thing is actually somewhat intimidating. It seems that the French in general have a thing for really REALLY small elevators, but the one at our place beats anything I've seen so far. Its official capacity is four persons; I don't know how the designers envisioned that happening. Maybe if two people curl up on the floor and the other two stand of them? But then again, the ceiling is not that high either...
Anyways, I have to run, but will try to write something else when I get a chance... Miss you all!
I've not too much time today sitting in the internet café, especially considering that the keyboard layout is different and it takes forever to type certain simple words - if you find some q's instead of a's, for example - well, that's because they're switched =).
Saying that this place is beautiful would be grossly understating the truth. The thing that surprised me the most so far, interestingly enough, was the water at the beach. You know how city beaches are always crowded and the water's all murky and suspicious-looking? Well, here it happens to be that exact aquamarine color that you see on tropical island postcards - and transparent to the point that you can not only see your own feet, but also the rocks on the bottom several meters underneath. This is partly because the beach has no sand (it's completely covered with pebbles), but whatever the reason, it looks almost unreal.
I haven't met my roommates yet, since they're only supposed to arrive today, but the other people on the program all seem exceptionally nice. There's this guy Brad who absolutely refuses to speak English in France and shames the rest of us into taking our own dusty Fench out of the closet, brushing it up and trying to regain some control over it. For now we look like a bunch of idiots strolling down the street and using wild and sometimes very questionable gestures as we try to explain words we don't know/remember without reserving to English.
The apartment is on the fifth and last floor of a very French building that must be over a hundred years old. An elevator was recently installed there, but the thing is actually somewhat intimidating. It seems that the French in general have a thing for really REALLY small elevators, but the one at our place beats anything I've seen so far. Its official capacity is four persons; I don't know how the designers envisioned that happening. Maybe if two people curl up on the floor and the other two stand of them? But then again, the ceiling is not that high either...
Anyways, I have to run, but will try to write something else when I get a chance... Miss you all!
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