La greve!

Hi everyone,

This is not an incredibly glamorous post, mais bon, it's what happened today. No long-term trip to Paris would be complete without a strike. Today I proudly experienced my first (and only) Paris train strike. At least they are nice enough to announce it ahead of time. Plus it is now illegal to totally cut off train service. In 2007, they had a ridiculous amount of strikes, and everyone started getting worried about what that meant for national security, not to mention the economy, so now there is a mandatory minimum service, thank g-d. And since they announce it ahead of time, you do have time to prepare. This morning I got a nice good look at my local train station when I waited an hour and 15 minutes for my train to class. I only had to wait about 45 minutes on my way home, and overall, it was just something interesting that I'm glad I experienced.

Normandy and Brittany

Hi guys,

Sorry it's been so long. Things have been picking up since the end of the semester is quickly approaching.

This past weekend I went on a school trip to Normandy and Brittany. If you're scratching your head at the mention of those places, check out a map. They're both regions in Western France on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. We started the trip in a strange island-castle-church called Mont St. Michel. It's essentially this monastery that was built on top of this huge granite island almost on the coast. It's very impressive, like so many other French buildings. It was a little overcast that day, but still very interesting. Of course, it was a little touristy, but it really wasn't too bad.

Then we headed to a little town called St. Malo for the night. It's a marine city within a medieval wall. Unfortunately it was raining, so it was a little hard to do much exploring, but I did find a great dinner. Normandy and Brittany are known for their crepes and cider, so that's what I had. It's always so nice to go outside of Paris because the prices get so so so much cheaper.

The next day (Sunday the 8th) we headed back towards Paris with some pit stops along the way. We visited the American Cemetery in Paris at Omaha Beach, for all of you WWII buffs. It was really neat to see the beach where the Allied troops landed near the end of the war. The cemetery is beautiful, so of course that was beautiful to see. Also May 8th is the anniversary of the end of the war, so there was a nice little ceremony to commemorate that. There were tons of American vets there visiting.

Mont St. Michel

Crepe dinner with smoked salmon and cider

Omaha Beach

The cemetery

Spring Break Part 3: Berlin

Hi guys,

I've broken up Spring Break into seeeveral posts because there's so much info. Keep scrolling down if you haven't read in a while! This one is only about Berlin, but Amsterdam is in the post before this.

Berlin:

My trip to Berlin was very much a whirlwind. Because I booked really cheap tickets, my flight times were a little funky, and I was in Berlin essentially only for one day. It was only one day, but I really saw a ton of stuff, if I do say so. Berlin is a big city, but I found it really nice to walk around in, minus the literally freezing weather. For Spring Break, I knew I was going even further north, but I figured because it is the middle of April, my medium jacket would be warm enough. Oh no. Not at all in Berlin. The whole day I was wishing so badly that I had thought to at least bring gloves, but it was worth it to visit this very cool city. I just wish I had looked at the weather a little more carefully. I think it was about 45 degrees F and lightly raining the whole day. Fun!

I started the day off by taking the train all the way out to Saschenhausen concentration camp. It was very interesting because the train ride out there reminded me very much of the woods in movies about Germany during WWII, like Inglorious Basterds. I’m not sure where that movie was filmed, but it sure looked like it. Luckily, there were plenty of school groups going there, so after I got off the train, I just followed them there. Unfortunately, they were mostly loud, rude, and disrespectful, but what can you do? It blew my mind that teachers/tour guides wouldn’t tell these kids to stop playing around and laughing really loudly at a place like that, but maybe it’s a cultural thing… But in any case, it was a really interesting visit. I’ve wanted to visit a camp for a very long time, so it was so nice to finally get to go. I actually learned some things about the Holocaust, which surprised me. This camp did have some Jewish prisoners, but there were also a lot of Roma and Sinti (gypsies) and political prisoners. There was a ton of information presented, but I’m pretty sure that all the original buildings were destroyed in the mid 1950s because they were structurally unsound, but some of them have been recreated. There is an execution trench where prisoners were forced to execute each other. There were actually remnants of cremation ovens left over. The building around them had been destroyed, but you can still see the ovens. They were rather small actually. Originally at this camp, bodies were shipped out, but when the death toll started to mount as a result of increasingly crowded and unhealthy living conditions, the Nazis got concerned about the town finding out about the increase? That’s what the museum said, although that doesn’t really make any sense. Anyways, in the mean time, they brought in mobile gassing trucks (much like China today) and finally built an in-house crematorium. The infirmary is still there. Originally, they did “autopsies”, and the tables and all the furniture are still there. Of course, they did their perverse medical experiments there as well. Very chilling. The most surprisingly part of the whole visit was the brothel wing of the infirmary. A few years after the camp opened, the officers decided they would like a brothel there. I thought that the Nazis did not rape prisoners because they were so concerned with race, but apparently not. The brothel was also used as an incentive to make prisoners work harder, but the Jewish male prisoners weren’t allowed to use it.

Speaking of labor, one of the weird things that the Nazis made the prisoners do was to test leather-substitute shoes. The Nazis designed faux-leather shoes, and in order to test the soles, they would make prisoners wear very heavy backpacks and run around a track all day. The track is still there.

Like I said earlier, most of the buildings were destroyed in the 50s, but replicas were rebuilt. A barrack was rebuilt, but after the Israeli PM visited in 1992, an arson attack nearly burnt it down. You can still see the charred wood.

After the camp, I headed back in to the center of Berlin. I started with the Brandenburg Gate, the famous German landmark. As I was coming out of the Metro station, there were probably 20 to 30 police vans on that street alone. After talking with some nice Germans, I finally realized that all the security was for the NATO conference taking place just down the street. (I am normally quite up to date on world news, but I’ve been traveling and not paying for newspapers or Internet.) After the Brandenburg Gate, I saw the Reichstag, the German Parliament? There is a beautiful dome on top, but it is no longer open to visitors. Also you can’t enter the building at all without a reservation, but the outside was very pretty anyways. Then I saw the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The best way to describe it is to show a picture. I was shocked to learn that there was no such memorial until the mid 1980s in Germany. Before I took my Holocaust Perpetrators class at Elon, I had not realized that the world (especially Germany) did not really address the legacy of the Holocaust until many decades after the fact. Underneath the hundreds of steel blocks that make up the memorial, there is a little mini museum that addresses Jewish life in Europe before and during the Holocaust. It was very well done and also free!

The next few things that I saw in Berlin concerned the wall. I first went to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the checkpoints left between East and West Germany. The checkpoint is outside; there is a museum inside, but you couldn’t take pictures, plus I just assumed it would have been very touristy. Speaking of touristy, at a nearby section of the Berlin Wall, they literally will charge you 25euro to get an “East German passport stamp”. …… There’s nothing else to say about that. Needless to say, I declined.

Then I visited a museum called the Topography of Terror. It is partly indoor, partly outdoor. It contains a big section of the Berlin Wall and is at the site of some of the most important buildings of the Nazi regime. Those buildings were destroyed after the war, but the museum helps recreate the site. I had not realized that so many historically important buildings were destroyed after the war, but Berlin really does a great job of preserving history. The Topography of Terror also had a great temporary exhibit on Adolph Eichmann. Another thing that I had learned about in my Holocaust Perpetrators class, Eichmann was basically in charge of the transport systems during the Holocaust. After the war, he escaped to Argentina, but Mossad kidnapped him and brought him to Israel to stand trial in the late 1950s. He had a very controversial trial that was largely used to build up the state of Israel. After 4 months of deliberations, he was sentenced to death and executed. Being a Nazi is the only crime for which you can receive the death penalty in Israel. I’m pretty sure that his trial is the only one that took place in Israel.

Finally to wrap up my super charged day in Berlin, I visited the Jewish museum. I originally wasn’t going to, but decided to at the last minute. This was the only thing I had to pay for in Berlin, but they had a great student rate of only 2euro50. It was actually one of the best museums I’ve ever been to. It had a small Holocaust memorial, but the heart of the museum was documenting Jewish culture from medieval times all the way through to today. It was a very fun and interactive museum, and there were plenty of people there.

Spring Break Part 2: Amsterdam

Amsterdam was great fun, of course. I did not see any prostitutes, but the reputations of the coffee houses seems to be right on. While I did not visit one of them, I did finally find a yummy place for bagels! When I travel abroad, I generally try to eat the food of that country, but it had been nearly 3 months since I had had a bagel. Especially anyone who is Jewish can understand why I had to give in. 3 months! Anyways….bagels are not the most interesting part of my trip to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a really fun city, but it also is pretty expensive. The most famous/interesting museums in Amsterdam are the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Rjiksmuseum. Since I can see some Van Gogh in France and because I have to save money somewhere, I only went to the Anne Frank House. I tried to go the first day, during the middle of the afternoon, but the line was about 3 blocks long, so I went back first thing the next morning. I got there about 45 minutes before the museum opened, and at that time, there were only about 5 people in line. It should have been obvious, I guess, but apparently everyone is very interested in this museum. It’s always nice to see people interested in the Holocaust.

The house was fascinating! For some reason, Otto Frank wanted the house left unfurnished when it was turned into a museum, but with photos, descriptions, and film clips, you get a good idea of what it looked like. Speaking of pictures, for some reason, they don’t allow you to take any inside, so unfortunately I don’t have any photos of it. As you make your way up the museum, you first see the offices that hid the annex. The friends of the Frank family who worked for Otto Frank worked there. You then move to the bookcase that hid the annex opening. Very cool! You walk through it, just like they did. You then see all the bedrooms, the bathroom, and the bedroom/kitchen/living/dining room. It made everything I had read in the book so real. The museum wraps up with a relatively small exhibit on Margot, Anne’s sister. Overall, I really liked the museum, but I am always a baby bit disappointed when museums connected to the Holocaust don’t mention the “never again” concept and don’t mention modern genocides. That’s just a small complaint though. Overall it was a great museum, minus the lack of student discounts and not allowing photography.

The other great part of Amsterdam was just walking about town. It totally didn’t matter that I wasn’t rushing from museum to museum all day. It was very nice. Obviously there are canals all over Amsterdam. When I was there, the skies were very gray, so my pictures aren’t great, but I did get some. There was also flowers everywhere, mainly in markets but also planted. In touristy stores, they sell so many tulip bulbs. I don’t think you can import plant products into the US, so I didn’t buy anyone any bulbs, but they were very pretty! Another very cool part of Amsterdam is all the bikes. I really got the impression that most people there commute. There were long lines of bikes riding down the street in the morning. I wish the States could be more like that. 

Spring Break Day 2: Prague Pt. 2

Yesterday was another beautiful day in Prague, very sunny and nice. We headed downtown after breakfast and went to the Museum of Communism. Ironically located next to a McDonald’s today, it documented the rise and fall of Communism both all around the world and locally. It was a lot of artifacts that didn’t see to be particularly famous but helped illustrate what life was like during those times. They had stuff from schools and homes and even the police. After that, we went to the Jewish Museum. It’s actually about 5 or 6 different buildings that you can buy one ticket for. Most of the buildings are synagogues, but they’re currently set up more like a museum. They have old books and artifacts in cases all over. There was one synagogue that was still somewhat set up like a synagogue, the Spanish synagogue. There was also an awesome cemetery with over 12,000 graves dating back to the 15^th century I think. Very very interesting. Then we got lunch at one of those outdoor markets again. Delicious and pretty cheap. After lunch, we just wandering around several big parks. There is supposed to be a big wall of graffiti dedicated to John Lennon, but we couldn’t find it, so we just ended up people watching for a while. Prague is a great city and very fun, but 2 days was definitely enough time to see it.

I’m flying out to Amsterdam tonight, and I’m not sure what my Internet situation will be like there. 

Spring Break: Day 1

Day 1: Prague

We got into Prague late last night. I had ordered a pick up service for the airport, so we didn’t have to mess with trying to learn the metro system, which was nice. Our hostel is actually really nice, as far as hostels go. We have a private room AND a private bathroom, and there is even a nice free breakfast. Breakfast only lasts until 10 AM, so we got up around 9:30 to head down for breakfast. After a little bread, coffee, yogurt, and cheese, we headed into town. The first thing we stumbled across was a cute church with an outdoor market. The problem in Prague is that all the buildings look so beautiful that you’re not sure which ones are famous and which aren’t. The first important building that we ran across was the National Museum. Museum entrance fees can add up, and we weren’t sure how interesting it would be, so we declined. We’re just meandering down the road, and we stumble across this huge group of people practically climbing up this statue in their pajamas. As far as I could tell, it was just a giant pajama party. My Czech’s just a tad rusty…

After that, we wandered through row after row of outdoor market. Today was the kickoff of a couple weeks of pre-Easter fairs/markets all the around the city. They were mainly selling souvenirs, but also some good looking food. By the time it was lunch time, we had wandered away from the markets. We decided to find the river and find a restaurant from there. We did both of those things and found a cute Czech café with an English menu for lunch. Knowing how heavy Eastern food is, I decided to just get pasta with salmon for lunch. It was delicious, and the whole time, we had a great view of the river and the castle.

After lunch, we walked up to the Charles Bridge. The Charles Bridge is one of Prague’s most famous landmarks. It’s just a bridge with some statues on it, but it is quite nice. On the other side of the bridge is the Prague Castle. It’s a mix of a cathedral, the old castle, and some modern government buildings. All of this is WAY up on the top of a hill. Quite a climb, but there was an excellent view at the top. You had to pay to go into the castle, so we declined again, but the inside of the cathedral was nice.

Once we wandered back down the giant hill, we were quite tired. We found ourselves at one of those outdoor markets again, so we all bought delicious Czech doughnuts and sat down for a bit. By that point, there was just a little bit of time before dinner, so we decided we had just enough time to hit the Franz Kafka museum.

Like the Charles Bridge, Franz Kafka is one of Prague’s most memorial creations. He was a Jewish writer from the 19^th century. He’s mostly known for writing The Metamorphosis and The Trial. His writing is bizarre, so I wouldn’t recommend reading him unless you’re adventurous, but he is worth looking up on Wikipedia, especially if you haven’t heard of him before now.

Right before dinner, we stumbled across the other part of our group on the Charles Bridge, and we all got dinner together. I finally got to try Czech food and ordered gulash. It came with bread dumpling and was a delicious beef stew. So so heavy, but delicious.

Cultured Paris

Salut,

Living in Paris is so much more exciting and cultural than Burlington. Yesterday after school I went and watched a burial at the Pantheon. The Pantheon was a church originally, but the Revolution turned it into a Republican monument. Now it is the final resting place to many famous French people, including Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Alfred Dreyfus. The burial that I went to was for Aime Cesaire, a poet and politician from Martinique. He helped bring about the end of colonization and drew attention to the extreme bigotry and racism present in the French Republic. Like his close friend Leopold Senghor, he was both a great poet and a strong politician.

The burial was so interesting because most members of the French government were there. I got to see Frederic Mitterand (currently a  minister and the nephew of former President Francois Mitterand), the Prime Minister Francois Fillon, the Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, and President Sarkozy. He really is quite short, but definitely thinks very highly of himself. There was a pretty long poetry reading, and then Sarkozy gave a short speech. The proceedings were inside the Pantheon, but the crowd was kept outside. There was, of course, a lot of security, but it was really interesting to see all the politicians. 

Tech update - double blog!

Hi guys,

The interesting new post is right before this, but I just wanted to let those of you who are extremely tech-saavy that BlogSpot just came out with some cool new ways you can view the blog. Mom, that does not mean you. 

Flipcard: available at [blogURL]/view/flipcard

Mosaic: available at [blogURL]/view/mosaic

Sidebar: available at [blogURL]/view/sidebar

Snapshot: available at [blogURL]/view/snapshot

Timeslide: available at [blogURL]/view/timeslide

Normandie

Bonjour tout le monde,

Sorry it's been a little while. Spring Break starts Friday, so I've been scrambling to get everything together. Anyways.....

First I have some pictures that I meant to put up a little while ago. I finally got around to going to the Eiffel Tour (I try to avoid super touristy spots for the most part), so here's a little snapshot of that. I started taking a different train to one of my classes, and I actually now pass over the Seine right next to the Eiffel Tour every morning. Talk about a view. The other pictures are from a place called Parc Montsouris. It was developed to give university students a place to exercise away from the roads, and it was beautiful. Full of people on a lovely Paris day.

This past weekend I was in Normandie, which (as some of you learned) is a region, not a specific city. Go ahead and GoogleMap Blonville-sur-mer. That is the actual city that I stayed in. Normandie is not the skinny peninsula of France that juts out into the Atlantic, but just to the east of that. Just look it up. My lovely host family took me along to their country house. Normandie is very much The Hamptons of Paris. Parisian license plates were everywhere. The family just finished building their country home a few years ago, and it is decked out, ready to hold as many family members as possible.

Saturday morning we went into house. The house is in Blonville-sur-mer, but the “big” local town is called Trouville or Deauville. This is where the upcoming G8 conference is being held. It’s a fairly ritzy town. They have several really nice hotels, and two big glitz casinos. We just went in town to buy grocery and to show me around, but we didn’t stay that long. We had a delicious lunch outside, and after lunch, the dad showed me all the local remnants of World War II. This town is not the famous beach where the Allies washed up to save the day, but there still is a lot of history. ALL over the place are these leftover bunkers, where the Vichy soldiers would do everything from eat and sleep to shooting cannons. They’re in remarkably good condition. You can also see their interconnected tunnels that criss cross the entire hill and all of the places where bombs made huge indentions in the ground. Very very interesting…

P.S. For those of you who are not history buffs, the Vichy government is the government in France that was dominated by Germans during the period of WWII. French people hated the Vichy government. It came between the Third and Fourth Republics. France has been in it's Fifth Republic since 1958 when General deGaulle founded it. 

One of the old bombs that was placed high on the hill for visitors much later

View from inside one of the Vichy bunkers

Officer's club

During the war, there was a cannon mounted here. Men from right on the edge of the hill would radio the men working here to tell them which direction to shoot in. 

Secret tunnels to avoid being spotted by planes

The valley by the ocean

Updates

Hi guys,

Sorry it's been a little while. After I got back from London, things slowed down for a while. Spring Break is in a week and a half, so we've been having more grades than usual (midterms). I've mainly just been running around Paris, trying to see all the sites.

One cool thing I did see was the cantonal elections. France is divided into 100 (soon to be 101) departments. Each department is made up of smaller cantons, and cantons are used to elect members to departmental assemblies. Departments are somewhat like states, and cantons are somewhat like counties, but smaller. Like in so many other ways, the French are very old school when it comes to voting. When elections are coming up, you get mailed a packet with the names of all the candidates for the position written on individual pieces of paper. (The French never vote for more than one position at a time). When you arrive at the school (elections never take place at churches; they take separation of church and state very seriously), there are booths, just like in the states. You take one paper envelope and all of your paper slips into the booth, and put the paper of the candidate you want to vote for in the envelope. Then you leave the booth and put your sealed envelope in a huge, clear, glass box. At the end of the day, the two workers come together with their two separate keys to open the glass box. The envelopes are separated into groups of 100, and citizens sit down to count them. One set of people opens the envelopes, and another tallies the votes each candidate wins. It's actually very quick and very effective. I went to watch the counting process last week. They all knew that I was American, so they kept asking me why American elections are so complicated, why we keep using the machines when we have so many problems in Florida, in Chicago back in the day. It was mainly funny, and so interesting to watch this take place. Because I live right outside the business district (La Defense), this entire area votes right, but not so right that they vote for the Front National.

The Front National is like France's version of the Tea Party, but less legitimate and more racist. The party is run by a father-daughter duo, Jean and Marine Le Pen. Daddy Le Pen started the party about 25 years ago, and the daughter has taken over since he retired. They say delightful things like the Holocaust being just a detail in history (Daddy) and that Libyan refugees should be shoved into the ocean (daughter). They are still not popular, but they definitely do draw votes away from President Sarkozy's party, the UMP.

To clear up another misconception about French politics, the French left is not nearly as left as many of you guys might think. The Communist party is nearly non-existent. They do not have any representatives in the legislature. The Parti Socialist (one of the two big parties in France, the nemesis of Sarkozy's UMP party) is really not that leftist either. Big players in their party (included Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the possible 2012 presidential candidate) have/do head international monetary organization, like the IMF, the World Bank, and the European Central Bank. How anti-capitalist can someone like that be? France is more leftist than many people in the States, but the Trotskyists are long gone.

Paris!

Salut tout le monde,

I know it's been a little while since I've updated this baby, but my life has calmed down a bit since I got back from London. We're smack in the middle of the semester (midterm time/just before spring break), so I've mainly just been in class. My French Politics class is going really well. It's so interesting, but it's weird to have a class that only meets once a week. I always avoided that kind of schedule at Elon, but it's really not that bad. We just had a midterm, and I think it went pretty well.

What is not going so well is my Phonetics class. The whole set up is quite strange because it's a hybrid grade with my grammar class, and as far as I can tell, the mixing of those two grades is pretty much arbitrary. I've never taken a Phonetics class before. It sounded pretty interesting and useful, but it's really more like an upper-level linguistics class. Every day, for one hour, we rush through a crazy discussion of differences in vowel sounds, different word combinations, etc. etc. One hour really isn't long enough to get anything done, but I still show up everyday, just in case I happen to learn something. Yuck...

In more exciting news, Paris is finally starting to get warm. It could definitely get cold again, but I'm hoping to be able to mail my winter clothes home soon. It will be so nice to revisit all the gardens around Paris, but spring and warm weather also brings more tourists. Yuck... France has a population of around 65 million, and they get about 80 million tourists each year. I have class by Notre Dame, and there are already so many EF Tour groups everywhere. Americans just don't realize how loud they are. Not fun at all. I get out of class at 4 today and I don't have anything else to do until 8 when I go to the Israeli Film Festival, so I think I'm going to go check out some more gardens. They are all over the place, and it's looking like a beautiful day already.

London!

I left early Saturday morning for London and had a jam-packed weekend. We got into London around 10:30 AM. The train ride was nice. I actually got to see some of the French countryside for once, and of course, we went through the Chunnel. Very anti-climatic like several things in the UK. After getting some pounds and checking into the hostel, we set out. Saturday we walked along the Thames, seeing many sites along the way. We started at London bridge, and going west, we also got to see the Globe Theatre, London Eye (a huge ferris wheel that I wanted no part of), the Tate Modern Museum (some of the best modern art I've ever seen), the Tower of London, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey (from the outside, because it costs 16 pounds to go inside), the House of Parliament, and Trafalgar Square. The London metro has stops all over the place, but it's much more confusing than the Paris metro. We just tried to avoid using it too much. At least on Saturday, it wasn't raining. Cloudy and gray, but not raining. We got lunch at the cutest restaurant right next to London Bridge, right on the Thames. We all got fish and chips. It was delicious, but so heavy that I couldn't finish it.

Sunday, the plan was to see most of the parks and some of the more famous museums. We started the day off at Buckingham Palace, which was very very anti-climatic. Maybe it's very pretty on the inside, but the outside is rather standard (as far as a palace can be standard). Also, the famous guards were not even there! There were a couple of guards, but they were wearing gray, not red. We did get to see a little parade of some sort of officials on horseback though, so that was neat. Then we made our way through all of the parks right next to the palace. Green Park is, well, pretty much green grass everywhere, very pretty. Next comes Hyde Park, by far the coolest. There is a rose garden there (not quite fully in bloom yet) and lots of cool statues. Next is Kensington Gardens, which has a cool statue of Peter Pan and a memorial to Princess Diana, among other things. After the parks, we went to the British Museum. It's kind of like the Smithsonian with lots of artifacts from all over the world. What they discreetly fail to mention is that they stole many of the artifacts from places like Egypt and the Middle East (very common trend in the UK, to glance over nasty things they did in the past). The most famous thing in the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone. After the British Museum, we went to the National Portrait Gallery. Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures in there, but it's a small museum full of portraits of famous British people ranging from Henry VIII to Princess Diana. By this point, we were pooped, but on our way back to the hostel, we ran into a huge early St. Patrick's Day party going on in Trafalgar Square. It looked neat, but we were just too tired at that point. My train on Monday morning left at 5:30 AM, so I had to take a taxi. The taxi company that partners with the hostel was not very professional, but I made it to the station on time and got to experience driving on the opposite side of the road. All over London, they have sides on the road, reminding pedestrians which way to look before crossing the street.

Fish and chips for lunch

The Globe Theatre (Shakespeare)

The outside of the (free) Tate Modern 

Just a little taste of what you find inside the Tate

Just some casual Egyptian art along the Thames

A gray picture of the London Eye

Big Ben!

The classic London phone booth

Super interesting memorial to the women of WWII

Buckingham Palace. No royals, no guards...

Horsey parade next to Buckingham Palace

Green Park (cleverly named)

entrance to Hyde Park

statue of Peter Pan

Abbey Road. Very anti-climatic and not that interesting!

Rosetta Stone in the British Museum

Just some stolen Egyptian artifacts in the British Museum

Pere Lachaise Cemetery

Hi guys,

A lot has gone on since the last time I blogged, so I'm gonna break it up into a few different postings. (Lucky you...)

Right before I left for London, I visited Pere Lachaise Cemetary. It's one of the most famous cemeteries in Paris and is the final resting ground of lots of famous people, including Jimmy Hendrix, Edith Piaf, and Oscar Wilde. It also has several very interesting Holocaust memorials. Unfortunately, it closes kind of early, so I didn't get to see even half of it, but it was still a nice visit.

I'm not sure why, but there were many Asian graves...

Oscar Wilde's grave covered with kisses

Castle?

Holocaust memorials. Very very cool

Life in Paris

Salut,

This has been kind of a busy week with lots of classes, but I've been finding time to explore. Today, as part of my class, we went on a walking tour of the Latin Quarter. It's full of schools and universities and churches. There are some thermal baths leftover from the Roman era still there. I didn't bring my camera today because I had too many books, but I'm going to go back and take pictures.

We also went to the Pantheon. It's a huge building originally constructed as a kind of basicilia for St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris. Over the years, it went back and forth, back and forth between being a  church and being a secular symbol of the state of France. Today it is a national landmark. It has a ton of religious paintings on the walls paired with secular monuments in front of the paintings (for the Unknown Soldier, etc.). The most interesting part is in the basement. There is a crypt underneath the Pantheon that is home to some of the most important influential French people and people with links to France. Just to name a few, Rosseau, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Marie and Pierre Curie, and Emile Zola are all buried in the Pantheon. Very cool. I didn't have enough time to figure out why, but in the crypt, there is also a monument to the "Righteous Gentiles", as we say in English. The "Righteous Gentiles", or in French "Justes de France" or "Justes parmi les nations", are people who were not Jewish but helped/tried to save Jews during World War II. Again, I've got to go back and take pictures.

After class, I visited la Memorial de la Deporation (same name in English). It's a very small little monument for the French Jews who were deported during the Holocaust. It was very cool because it's right next to the Seine, and it is essentially on the same level as the river. Through windows with bars, you look right out onto the Seine. It's very small and almost hidden behind Notre Dame, but nice nonetheless.

I finished out my little excursion today with a trip to the best ice cream shop in Paris, Berthillion. Everyone who spends any serious amount of time in Paris knows Berthillion. I went about 4:30 PM on a Wednesday afternoon, and there was a line. I'll just say it was delicious. I got chocolate and fig. It's very close to my classes, so unfortunately for my wallet, it just might become a regular hangout.

Paris, Fontainebleau, Barbizon

Hey guys,

Since I last blogged, I've been in class a lot, but I've also been finding time to explore Paris and go on a little day trip.

Most days my classes don't start until 2 PM, so I've been wandering around the city a little bit. In front of the Louvre, there is a beautiful garden called Le Jardin de Tuleries. It has all these beautiful statues and fountains.

In front of the Musee d'Orsay

Musee d'Orsay

Le Louvre from across the river

Entrance to the Jardin de Tuleries

Random sphinx statue. The French love Egyptian art.

More Egyptian art.

Every Friday I volunteer with this organization called Le Secours Populaire. I asked my host family, and they said that it is a very well-known, reputable organization. I think they do other out-reach type activities, but they have an in-house soup kitchen. Depending on family size, they give people chickens, milk, cheese, vegetables, fruit, baby food, dessert, rice, pasta, pudding, etc. It's actually a really great set-up, and it's cool to see an organization like this in another country. Obviously I do not take pictures in there, but trust me that it is very cool.

Every day from 2-4 PM (or 14h to 16h, as they say here) I have a French grammar class. On Fridays, we really little excerpts from longer stories. I'm not sure how many of you guys will have heard of her, but we read a story by Marguerite Duras. She was French, but she grew up in what was called Indochina (Vietnam today). The excerpt was from a book called L'Amant, and it was so good that I ran out and bought it. I've been starting to read French books, and it usually takes me a couple tries, but it's been working out for the most part.

Anyways... Saturday the study abroad program took us on a little day trip to Fontainebleau (the famous chateau) and Barbizon. A lot of people have heard of Fontainebleau, but don't necessarily know what it is. It was the royal palace before Versailles was built. It was lived in from the 12th century until the 19th century, so it has a ton of different architectural and artistic styles. Francois I and Louis IX lived here. Like Versailles, it's a huge mansion with lots of art, but it also has huge, beautiful gardens. It was still a cold day, but the sun was out, so it was really nice just to walk around.

After that, we went to a nearby village called Barbizon. Back in the days of the monarchy, it was a private hunting village. There is a huge forest there (that I almost got horribly lost in). After the monarchy ended, the village became a kind of headquarters for a school of painters who liked to paint the woods. Robert Louis Stevenson also liked to come to Barbizon and write. Today, there is just the woods, a couple of hotels and restaurants, and a lot of country homes/farms.

Le chateau

I think this is a statue of Francois I

An up-close view of the front

This one is for you, Dad. I know how you like fancy ceilings.

This one is for you, mom. 

This picture didn't turn out very good with no flash, but this is essentially my dream library. Very Beauty and the Beast-style...

Napoleon's throne. He liked to drop by sometimes.

Some weird, random dog statue in the gift shop

For some unknown reason, Francois love love loved salamanders. They are literally all over this beautiful chateau, except they usually look much more like Chinese dragons. 

A view of the chateau from across the lake

The home of all the famous painters in Barbizon

This is actually the town museum, believe it or not.

Le Bois de Barbizon

All in all, it was a very nice trip. It was funny to be traveling in something that was not a train for once.

This upcoming week, for one of my classes, we have bi-weekly guided walks around Paris, so that should be interesting. I'll put up some good photos of that. I'm also hoping to get over to the famous cemetery where Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison are buried this week, in addition to a cool-sounding memorial to the deported Jews of France during the Holocaust. Next weekend, I'm going to London!

Stay tuned....