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.