Day Thirteen: Nothing Good Ever Happens on this Day

5/25/2010

I woke up really early today sometime between 05:00 and 05:30 without doing so purposely. The ironic part about this is that when you account for the time difference between France and Ohio then I woke up at about the same time of K-Mag’s accident exactly five years ago. It doesn’t seem possible that all of those things happened five years ago. Paying attention in class today was difficult just because I kept thinking back to all of the events that occurred in that following week and I kept thinking about what people back home were doing today and thinking about. I wish I could be there. I’ve also been reflecting on the past five years today. I can see that he had an influence on the direction of my choices and he really did lead and exemplary life. I definitely think that Kyle would have made it into Ohio State and he would be living it up there and probably would have made the ‘best damn band in the land’ in the marching band. I miss the connection I had through and with Kyle to the friends from New Bremen. I can still remember coming home with him after our longer than usual confirmation classes in the months leading up to his accident and having some in-depth conversations about our future and hopes and dreams. Of course I’ll never forget how he would always make fun of me for my technique of eating yogurt (in particular the Dannon Le’crème). I know there is no way I could have made it through those hours, days and weeks following without all of the support from my friends and the school for allowing us the freedom to do what we needed to do and also all of the words and helpfulness from those I barely knew. I’ll always remember how our class bonded in the hours and days following. I was blessed to get to spend a lot of time with Kyle growing up with our almost daily bike rides and some longer trips to Ft. Loramie for ice cream.  I miss ya bud and know you’ve been there in some crucial moments since.

Once we got to class today we learned that our professor from Audencia that gave two lectures last week and was scheduled for this afternoon and tomorrow morning had a heart attack in the morning or overnight. So, Dr. Sullivan had to step in today and lead some last minute case discussions. After class and while checking Facebook messages, I found out that my distant cousin Stefan in Berlin that would be leading us around Berlin this weekend just herniated a disc in his back. It looks like he won’t be able to take us around Berlin, but we are still planning to come up and they’ll be able to go out to their town festival. Hopefully he’ll recover this week and will be back to a better condition by the weekend!

I walked to the local cathedral today just to stop in for a few minutes since I haven’t had the opportunity to get to church for the past two weekends. Ironically an evening mass started literally the second I walked in so I ended up sitting there and attending mass. I have to say that just closing my eyes and listening to the mass in French (especially the singing) was amazing. I really enjoyed it and was glad I went.

Dinner tonight was tough. The lasagna with fish chunks was pretty good, but the cucumbers cut lengthwise was extremely difficult to get through without showing a face. It looked really good because I thought it was pasta, but I was sure wrong. Thank god we had brownies and a fruit salad with a leech fruit from China to wash away that disgusting taste from the cucumbers.

That’s all for today.

Day Twelve: Traveling

05:00 came pretty early and we made the train to the airport and then two planes back to Nantes plus a bus and tram back home. The afternoon was spent in McDonald’s on the internet getting caught back up. For dinner we were just going to get some crepes and decided to ask Maria and Lauren down the street if they wanted to go along. Texting didn’t get a response, so our host mom suggested we just go down and knock on their door. It felt so elementary, but we did and their host mom answered. You could tell she was a very proper French woman and we were invited in after she found out we were looking for the ‘American girls’ – ha! We ended up getting them out of an awkward situation as their mom’s son was in town for dinner and neither spoke much English. Well it was already after 20:00 and all of the creperies were closed (especially since it was a bank holiday). What began as crepes turned into a large meal at an outdoor restaurant near a city fountain square. We ordered an appetizer of escargot which is one of my new favorite things! I will most definitely be searching for it when back in the states, but it’s just snails. You have to use this special little holding tool and with your other hand use a pick to pull them out. They were served in some kind of olive oil and herb sauce. We got to bed early after watching French news with Sophie.

Day Eleven: Winter 2035 – Where I’ll Be

After a restful sleep after being forced to watch Pretty Women in French we got our day started very early with breakfast and a beautiful sunrise up in the Alps. I had a great conversation with a guy from Georgia and his wife on the inability of Europe to pay for their early retirement and large benefit programs. The couple in their mid fifties spurred a thought in me that I hope I can keep and fulfill. They came to Murren to ski in the winter twenty-five years ago and always pledged to come back at some point during the summer and this was their journey back. I think it’s a great idea and will come back in twenty-five years to go skiing!

Long story short, we ended up getting back into Interlaken and were too late to really do many of the extreme sports that we wanted to do. I really wanted to go zorbing, but found out that it is only done in the early morning. If you’re not familiar with zorbing; it’s the activity in which you are placed in a plastic ball and roll down the mountain. I really want to try to do that sometime though! Instead we did an almost free option which was to go back to Lautterbrunnen and do some hiking on the bike path along the river. We saw a smaller, but still cool waterfall nearby and hiked all the way up to it. We weren’t able to get entirely behind it, but were only about ten feet from doing so! It provided a great view of the valley. In Lautterbrunnen we accidentally walked through a cemetery. Cemeteries there look much different. The rows are very close and tight. We realized that they must not do the graveside burial at the burial plot, but rather outside or inside a building on the grounds. Otherwise it would be very difficult for people to stand.

The girls went shopping and I decided to just spend the final ninety minutes sitting on a park bench people watching and watching the paragliders land in the grass center of town. A few rough landings, but it appeared everyone was enjoying their glide down. We caught our train back and I sat across from a lady that started to speak to me in German. I soon told her I spoke English and she said a few things and laughed. Of course she brought up Obama and the oil spill. I showed her on a map of where I lived and how flat it was and she got plenty of amusement from that. Occasionally she would make comments to me and I wouldn’t understand, but she was apparently entertaining herself as she would always laugh.

Of course I got another sandwich in Bern and we met the rest of the group back at the hostel in Geneva again and checked in. We went out for dinner and drinks for Sara Shadowen’s 20^th birthday and got a 10 liter beer tower for the whole group. It was much more impressive than the beer towers at Skipper’s in Oxford!

Day Ten: Trains Galore!

Saturday mornings very early shower in the hostel had to have ranked in my top five worst showers ever, but we were still able to make it to the train station and found out only four of us would be continuing on to Interlaken. I think a few of the others missed out on a beautiful journey. They were pretty nice train cars, but it wasn’t one of those 160 mph trains (that’s next weekend!). The ride to Interlaken would have been worth the trip itself. Geneva is apparently located along a picturesque lake that is huge. A few minutes later and we had our first glimpses of a far away glacier covered mountain range. Before long we made our only connection in Bern, Switzerland. Now let me tell you that I will typically eat anything and chances are I will like it. I am telling you that this was the best sub (not called a sub there, but forget the proper name) sandwich I have ever had in my life. I got the ham and cheese in this dark brown/light red bread that turned out to be just crispy on the outside and deliciously sweet on the inside. The first bite I got all cheese which was really tasty. The second bite proved to be the unsuspecting explosion of flavor that I had been missing while in France. The thinly sliced ham (looked just like bacon as it was strips with the fat included) just blew my mind away with its smoked flavor. Spectacular! So on the third bite I noticed this unusual sauce that I thought was some kind of mayonnaise. It went really well with the ham, but by the end of the sandwich when it was lathered on more thickly I realized that it was some kind of real butter. Oh was it so good, but probably terrible for my health. I know I just wrote a paragraph on a sandwich, but it was that good.

So we finally get to Interlaken after coming around another large lake (Inter-laken….between two lakes….) with breathtaking cliffs. We found Jon’s hotel/bed and breakfast and we set off to walk around Interlaken because we got into town too late to really do anything up in the mountains for the day. Of course everywhere you can buy watches and Swiss Army knives. We found this small, stand-alone shop of Swiss Army knives and went in as a nice little couple greeted us. I ended up getting a money clip/small knife with scissors combo and Jon got two camo knives for himself and brother that was actually graduating from West Point as we were buying them. After walking around and seeing a large fire in the city, we decided to make for our first ‘little’ adventure.

We walked out of town to find the lake on the other side of town. Only problem is that it was much further than we thought. After atleast ninety minutes of walking and almost giving up once we could finally see the shoreline for a bus ride back, we decided to take some shortcuts through some factories, hay fields and gravel lanes to get to the lake. It was beautiful but perhaps the spot we stood was not worth the trek. After walking out into the ice cold water we headed back into town and caught the bus to save our feet.

We just decided to get off at any stop in the city. We stepped off near the Hooters and to my huge surprise I hear someone shout my name! As I’m confusingly looking around I hear a second voice yell my name! It turns out to be Mary Richardson and Annie Dillard from Circle K back at Miami! I couldn’t believe it and soon found out that they had been in the city all week for their education based program. After a quick catch-up we left to sit down and found a little pub on the busiest street corner to enjoy a nice cold beer. We sat next to two tables of local guys and after a while we see this guy and group of guys walking down the sidewalk and the one guy is wearing a mesh shirt, fake cop hat, sunglasses, leather chaps and carrying a plastic bag. It was a very odd site and became much more awkward as he passed by only to find out there were no backsides to his leather chaps. Of course we laughed at this and that was a mistake. Sure enough the whole group turns around and stops at our table. It turns out he was having his bachelor party and apparently they do things differently in Switzerland. Later that weekend I would come to find out from Jon that his girlfriend had actually been the person to write the lettering on his open backside earlier in the day…..with a picture to prove it.

Jon split for the night for his romantic evening leaving Ashley, Stephanie and I to find a hostel as we hadn’t had time or internet access the days leading up to the weekend to book a hostel. That turned out to be a mistake. A hotel would be expensive and we tried four hostels that were all booked. At the fourth hostel a man in hiking gear was getting his room key when the bartender told us that he had no space in the inn for us. Not to be left out in the cold (we did contemplate the tent hostels…) the man receiving his room key told us to hold up. So we did and he started to tell us about his amazing hiking trip up in the mountains. Confused about why he was telling us this, he eventually got to saying that up in Murren there were some places to stay and he saw some ‘vacant’ signs posted on several places up there. He recommended we go up there and wrote us a map and directions on how to get there. He said it would probably take twenty minutes….

….Boy was he wrong. With very few other cheap options we decided to take him up on his offer. After a fifteen minute walk across town on the first leg we got to the train station to take a train to Lautterbrunnen. I saw Mary again and found out they were staying in a town out near us. We bought our 7 Frank one way ticket and soon were off. Fifteen minutes later we arrived in Lauterbrunnen. That completed leg two of four and we were already well past this man’s estimated time. Not thinking much about it we found leg three which was the cable car up the side of the mountain. After the local guy’s reply to the question of if this is the way to Murren with a jokingly ‘you have to walk’, we hopped on and had an amazing view of the valley and mountains surrounding. After ten minutes we were up to over 5,000 feet. We get off at a very quiet and small leg four station. When I mean quiet and small, I mean a single car, wooden train car. Us and about eight others hop on and soon are off around the curves of the mountain steadily climbing. The views kept getting better and better with each bend. Soon enough we found a view of the closest glacier covered mountain. It was beautiful. We get to the stop and I thought that this was Murren. Up unto this point I wasn’t concerned and was so distracted by the scenery. When I saw that there was one building with a first floor restaurant and second story rooms, I began to freak out and think that this guy was totally wrong and we had just wasted all of this time at six at night on this journey. Luckily this was not our final destination. Twenty minutes later we arrive at Murren.

It looked pretty small with only a few buildings. So we quickly walked into one of the first buildings we see and the Eiger Guesthouse was that building. The bartender greeted us and said she had one room available for the night and gave us the key to check it out. On the the third floor we found a small room with four beds. We took it. We originally planned to meet up with Jon and another Miami group at night after checking into our hostel, but we soon realized that all of these little trams would not be running late at night and that we were stuck for the evening. We soon walked around to take in the scenery as the sun set. Words can’t describe how beautiful the cliffs and mountain peaks were as we were at about the halfway point. My photos will have a tough time capturing the essence of the town and scenery. I read a monument in Murren that claims that the winter Olympic sport of slalom was first attempted as  a sport a few decades back in this very town. After talking to a few people and walking around the mountain we decided that food was needed. We stopped in a little place on the edge, but the inside was full. So we walked around the side, but it was getting cool. We thought we would try somewhere else and there were two young guys sitting there as well. As we turned around they hollered that we should have dinner with them. After walking away and getting the okay from the girls that it would be okay to eat with them, we sat down. I ended up having a great porkchop with a mushroom and cream sauce and also frites (fries) with a great Utrueb beer. It turns out that these two guys were from Minnesota and had literally just graduated college and were backpacking around Europe before jobs and grad school. We had great conversation and spent over an hour having dinner. By this time it was getting dark (21:00) and they had a walk back down the mountain to the village just below. After walking back to the Eiger we were just too tired to do more socializing and soon went to bed as we wanted to get breakfast when it started at 07:30. It was definitely a day of trains galore and some leaps of faith that turned out to be well worth the effort!

Day Nine: Eurotrip! “You’re in France…that’s Switzerland” – in the airport

5/21/2010

This weekend marked the first weekend available to travel freely around Europe! It became an amazingly beautiful weekend getaway in the Swiss Alps. Many things didn’t go as planned, but everything turned out for the best. After a quick two hour class in the morning in which each group shared their marketing product idea (our group’s is the Microsoft Surface, but my idea was the rubber/carpet ‘bumper bully’) we were free. After a quick trip home to pack and a stop at the train station to book tickets to Berlin for next weekend we were at the airport (which you don’t have to take shoes off for!). Surprisingly when we got off the plane in Paris, there was a person greeting us to drive us separately across the airport grounds to another terminal to ensure we made our flight! I love Air France; nicer planes, more comfortable and MUCH more space for carry-ons.
Once we got our luggage we had to decide which way to exit. France to the left or Switzerland to the right. It only made sense that since we came in from France that we should just continue out that way since our luggage came in there. After failing to retrieve Swiss Franks from a misleading parking ticket dispenser the man that sat next me on the plane kindly informed us that we had in fact walked back into France and would need to walk back across the terminal to enter into Switzerland. Embarrassing for us all, but didn’t know Geneva was on the border. The nine of us took taxi’s to our hostel with a white haired older lady that was listening to get-up techno music…rather odd. I think our group was simply the blind leading the blind this weekend because we weren’t even walking into the right room and of course Matt unknowingly turned on the lights to the room that we weren’t supposed to be in. After getting the right room and figuring out how to put the sheets together, we looked for food and the only cheap thing was a kebab shop. Amazing lamb sandwich and good fries.

Nantes Castle

5/20/2010

Today was my first day waking up a wee bit too late, but we managed to have a very quick breakfast and made it to school in plenty of time. Dr. Sullivan gave a passionate lecture on the European Monetary Union. He started with some historical information back to the gold standard and how that was essentially abolished and why. We talked at very macro levels of currency exchange, but it was very interesting to think about governmental institutions essentially instituting depressions to shrink a country’s money supply to pay off deficits. It put into context the thought that the economic power of the world really is only held by a very few people in our world and especially how quickly decisions made can effect world wide finances.
A professor from Audencia came in to talk about Germany and it reinforced a few lectures my architecture professor gave a few weeks ago. We spoke a lot about Berlin, but I never realized that the Berlin Wall fell as a result of peaceful demonstrations by the people and I also learned that it was largely built almost overnight on August 12, 1961. I learned a lot more about the division from the west and the east and the results that has caused today. The western portion of the country (Germany has 16 states – federal system like the US) is much more economically prosperous than the eastern portion of the country in which Berlin sits. Berlin is broke, but used to be a major industrial center. However, once communist Russia took control of that portion of the country, businesses moved away from Berlin into the west. Today Berlin is very cultured, diverse and artsy. Germany is also one of the richest nations in Europe and has the third highest average income (41,000€). Also I learned that about half of German women work, but mostly only as part time. This is because of the issue of childcare which is usually ran by churches (church and state is not separated in Germany), but care ends at 2:00 p.m. and that obviously does not work well for a career. Additionally the birth rate is low in Germany (1.3) and this is a problem very much like the United States and several other European countries when it comes to funding pension programs and healthcare as there will soon be a big boom of retirees just like in the US. The government is currently trying new programs (like 1 year parental leave with 80% of your salary) to boost the birth rate and one year after this was implemented (2007) there was an increase in the birth rate.
Class was out at 1:00 today and we went downtown to have lunch. I had an amazing turkey sandwich with a great mayonnaise from a little restaurant in the street. The streets are so narrow here and one area is just filled with restaurants. My friend Ashley and I walked around and also stopped for a super delicious chocolate éclair. We walked a few blocks further to the castle and met in the center courtyard.
We had a tour of this castle even though we did walk through it and get a brief history on Monday. In 2007 the castle opened after a nearly 17 year restoration to turn the castle into a museum of the history of Nantes. Our tour guide gave us all headsets to listen to him as he spoke. It ended up being a great 90 minute tour. I learned that Nantes, even though that it is many miles from the sea, it still has been the most important port in France because the river flows into the city. It became part of the slave trade in Europe (abolished in 1848, ’84 or ’98) in which sugar from Haiti was traded to France and then slaves came from Africa to Nantes and African goods were traded to Haiti. This became an important trading triangle in the history of France.
Nantes became a highly industrialized city include shipbuilding and also Lu or Lou biscuits which is a type of cookie/graham cracker that we have actually had while here at dinner. They also grow a lot of small beans and a very world famous small leafed lettuce. The castle is what you might picture and the inside was all white from the limestone. It was very nice and the modern elements of the building tied in nicely.
I’m sitting in the back porch and formal garden of my host mom’s house right now. There are some unusual sounding birds here that I have never heard before. We will have dinner soon and tonight will be a mini pub crawl with the French students from Audencia. We’ll meet at 21:00 and go from there.
I likely won’t post for several days as I’m leaving Friday night via an Air France flight to Paris and then off to Geneva, Switzerland by 22:00 Friday night. We’re staying in a hostel and then catching a train to Interlaken on Saturday morning and meeting up with another smaller group from Miami. We are perhaps thinking of going ATVing through part of the Alps and for sure some hiking. Saturday night at a hostel then more time on Sunday in Interlaken before taking a train back to Geneva Sunday night and a flight back to Nantes earlier Monday morning. All 9/13 of us are excited to go see the Swiss Alps!!

Day Seven: Cointreau

5/19/2010
Today’s big adventure was a class trip to Angers, France (1 hour via bus) to the one and only Cointreau (quen-tro) distillery and bottling factory. Cointreau is a type of triple sec distilled from orange peels that is used in cocktails. In fact, the cocktails in Sex and the City use Cointreau. I had never heard of it before, but it has been around for over 150 years. They sell 50 million bottles a year around the globe and there have been many marketing campaigns that have been important in the history of marketing. We learned about several of these including one in which an ad ran for two weeks of a woman having her shudders closed because she was sick; two weeks later the ad revealed an opened window with a high class woman drinking a glass of Cointreau and saying that Cointreau made her better. I like their marketing tagline which is ‘Be Cointreauversial’! It was also very interesting to learn that in France in 2007 a law was passed that forbids advertisements for alcohol from displaying any portion of a human body in the ad. After seeing the distillery room where the orange oils are removed via vapors (this room smelled delicious and looked like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) we saw the mixing rooms and the bottling lines. Cointreau uses a secret recipe which is a proportion of the orange oils mixed with alcohol, water and sugar to make the drink. Also the square bottle was revolutionary for its time as nearly all bottles of alcohol were sold in clear glass bottles formed into objects. There was a lot of copying of this product and the bottle that was patented.
Of course the trip ended with a tasting of a cocktail in their company bar for the fifty of us and it did taste pretty good!
Oh and dinner was great tonight once again! I never thought I would eat these but we had lentils with ham. Lentils are amazing and I’m surprised I never had them before. I think the name was just a turn off for me. We did have a ton of bread though. Too much. Another entrée was a soft, warm bread with olives baked in and it went really well with salad.

Host Family and First Day

5/18/2010: Part Two
On Sunday it was an anxious bus ride from Versailles to Nantes to meet our host family at the train station. I had only heard a little about them before arriving. I was wondering about how to greet our host mom. Boujour? Hello? Shake hands? Hug? Or the American horror of the two cheek kiss? Everyone was excited to pull up and see a few French people with signs with our names on them. I soon spotted Mrs. Mcaire. She initiated the hand shake. Thank god. We hopped in her Volvo and we zipped across town as she drove the manual like an expert.
I was so relieved to discover that she spoke English very well; as some of the other parents clearly did not speak much English as they picked up other estudiantes. She told us we live very close to the downtown area as we drove past the history museum and soon we were parked on the sidewalk up against her house. Mrs. Mcaire’s (Sophie) husband works for an oil company in Paris and often times comes home on the weekends. Her one daughter is married and lives elsewhere around the world. Another son is graduating on Friday next from university in Paris. They are planning a big celebration for him there. He will be a nuclear engineer working for the state nuclear power company and traveling to various plants around the country to evaluate their efficiency and work to make improvements. Her other daughter also attends university in Paris.
While I moved into my room she made dinner for us. Salad with basalmic vinegar, potato omelets and a wide pasta with some kind of basil sauce and of course a little red wine. Dessert was natural yogurt with sugar. Not too bad actually. After dinner Jon and I took a walk around the nearby blocks passing by several large churches and stumbling upon a dark brown castle just one block from our home. We spent a little more time getting directions for the bus and tram and capped off the night watching French television upon which we finally found Two and a Half Men in French. I personally prefer to sleep in a cold room as often is the case at home and had heard that French families often keep their homes cool because water and electricity cost very much. Needless to say, it was a very cold night and I only had one blanket on my bed. Good thing I brought along the thin and small blanket from the Delta flight!
Day Five: The day got started early and breakfast consisted of Nestlecafe Instant Coffee and small toast with a honey jam. We left at a quarter ‘til eight and Sophie showed us the bus stop we could use if we wanted. We purchased our bus/tram ticket packets for two weeks worth (24€) and she walked us to the tram stop. She was so nice as to get on to show us where to put our tickets to be punched before she hopped off.
The tram was filled with dozens of other university aged students and of course nearly all of them got off at Audencia. It’s one building complex that is five stories and in modern architecture design and for all intensive purposes, the building is white. We had no clue where to go but eventually found an entrance and made our way into the main lobby and followed signs to our fourth room auditorium. We were greeted by the Audencia staff and the director of the program (an expatriate) shared his insight on the purpose of our time in Nantes. Quickly thereafter we were in the thick of things with our first professor, Paul Danague. He’s an English man and is very entertaining to listen to. Soon after we had a thirty minute break to get coffee in the café. Coffee here is very different than in the US. It comes in very small cups and is very strong. Afterwards a young French lady professor had an interactive discussion with us about management differences between French and US companies to gauge our level of knowledge for a proceeding class this coming Wednesday. We talked about the typical brand name blunders, business relationship differences and work schedule differences. I soon found out that French people only work for 35 hours and then receive overtime pay. There is no 60 hour work week in France like in the US where you don’t get paid extra if you are on a salary. In France you must be paid extra above 35 hours and there are many, many more bank holidays. Additionally we found out it is not a good thing to not go around and shake everyone’s hand in the morning and on the morning following a bank holiday it is expected that you go around talking about your weekend with your colleagues. I think I could work here. Ha!
Lunch was confusing but some French students from Audencia took us to the cafeteria to buy a full lunch for 3€ and we went with Greek pizza instead of some kind of fish. In the afternoon we took the tram back downtown to meet a tour guide to do a walking tour of the city. We saw the cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul that took over four centuries to build and was completed in the late 19th century. It is made of limestone so it literally dissolves away so there has been a massive reconstruction of the outside. Additionally much of the outside statues were destroyed during the French revolution and nearly all the stained glass windows destroyed. The church is unique because of the amount of time it required to build. The design of the church takes on both the Renaissance aspect and later the Romanesque style. The inside is more than 38 meters high making it one of the highest ceiling cathedrals in the world. Inside is a tomb built for St. Ann of Britainy’s parents. One section was completely rebuilt as it was struck by a bomb during WWII and a fire in the attic caused much damage because of the water used by the firemen.
The tour continued with a walk through and around the castle next to the cathedral. It is rather large and sits along the river. It is here that many important treaties have been signed, several Kings of France ruled from and even became a military base. It also is of white limestone with a very white cement paste placed on the stone. Our tour took us to several other important buildings in the city.
Our evening started with me flagging down the French girls in a Red Bull car and they drove around the circle and gave everyone free Red Bull just like they do back in America! It was a great photo op with these ladies. One group of us walked around to find a internet café. We did find one and had to buy a round to get the password. I began talking to a local at the bar asking for a good recommendation as to what to get. I was told to get a Affirgmele and got the 25 cl glass. To my surprise the conversation I had with this local led to my drink being free. We did some research on travel before walking back to the restaurant called Hyoppopotmus.
I was fortunate enough to have one of the French students sit next to me. Her name is Melanee and very cute. We had great conversation during the course of the two and a half hour meal. I was surprised by the ‘salad’ that we received but she thought it was completely normal. It looked like spam with a leaf of lettuce and a tomato. The spam which turned out to be a sausage with capers wasn’t too bad and bread made it even better. Salad was followed with black currant better known as kierre in France. It’s a special kind of wine. They soon served us our entrée which was duck and potato. Wine was not good with dinner. It was very watered down and even Melanee couldn’t drink it. Dessert was a chocolate mousse and of course coffee. After a toast from Sulle and an explanation of the meal from the Audencia director, we went with Melanee to a favorite spot, John McByrne. Ironically it is an Irish pub. We watched the Boston Celtics play and had a nice glass of Guinness before heading back home.
Day Six: Today began our very first big day of classes. We learned about business in Scandanavian countries (Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway). Speaking of Norway, on my flight from Dayton to Minneapolis I sat next to a man from Norway on his way to San Fran. He kept asking me all kinds of questions about words in the magazine, but we did have a good conversation. Additionally we learned about the UK which was clarifying for me. I didn’t realize that Scotland, Ireland and Wales also made up the UK with England. However Britain is just England and never call a Scot, British. We also had a class on European Labor Law which was rather confusing. It just didn’t sound efficient.
After class we went to the actual train station hoping to book tickets to Switzerland and have some better information. It was an interesting cultural experience. So we spent atleast ten minutes explaining to the travel planner our plans and getting some prices. Unfortunately the clock struck 17:00 while we were explaining and just about to book tickets. The man literally said he was done for the day and had to quit. After frustration from our group, some minor arguing and more frustration we walked away. Ironically the guy sitting next to him works until 19:00. So we had to wait in line again behind some other Miami groups. We had to explain this all again (even as the other guy sat there tallying papers) and we got a different price that was more expensive. We didn’t buy anything. We all had to get home to our families to eat, but am going back to school to meet up and plan our trip or an alternative trip.
I’m sitting at home right now and we don’t know what to do. There is half prepped food on the kitchen table and an hour later we just discovered that our host mom is upstairs in her bedroom. We aren’t sure but we think she might be sick because she keeps coughing. We are starving! I think we will go upstairs in a few minutes, call her name and say we are going back to school and will grab a ham and cheese sub on the walk over. More tomorrow…..
5/19/2010: Le Cerce Rouge
What a night tonight turned out to be. To update you on dinner this is what happened. As we were going upstairs to tell her we were going back to school to use the internet, she was walking down as well. Tonight was our first normal night to have dinner with her so we thought she would have dinner ready between six and seven when we arrived home from university. However, she said that we do not eat until 20:30 in France. So we ended up staying and having an amazing meal. I’ve had goat cheese on slices of tomatoes once before, but this was very delicious. We also had an odd combination that I would never think to put together but turned out to be delicious. Sliced potatoes and mushed up zucchini! Hmmm! Then to top it off we had another amazing portion. Some kind of croissant rolled up to a point with a square base and filled with ham and melted cheese. Oh was it fantastic! Very glad we stayed.
We left and went back to Audencia since the school told us it is open 24/7. We walk into the main lobby and it is not lit and only one room is lit and there are a table of professors in there. One comes out yelling in French to us pointing to leave and to not be here. We had to have looked like deer in headlights the four of us did. So we left (even though we were able to badge in) and went down to the main train intersection to find an internet café and for the other half of our group to meet with us. Unfortunately they could not make it, but after many minutes of searching and asking for ‘weefee’ (a.k.a wifi) while pointing to my laptop we were directed to a place called Le Cerce Rouge. Of course we felt obliged to purchase something for using their internet so I got a Kopenbourg. Very good. We spent nearly 90 minutes looking at trains for Switzerland for some very cheap prices, but appeared that our group of seven would not sleep together in the same car. Suddenly a somewhat tipsy French man came up to our seating area and started talking to us and asking what we were looking for. It became apparent he is a frequent visitor and friend of the bar/café owners. Long story short we are pretty sure we decided to not go to Interlaken, Switzerland. However, we asked him for suggestions that were nearby. He suggested La Rochelle, France. Googled it and it is beautiful and only two hour by train. So, we are most likely going there, perhaps Normandy and maybe swing by Paris again? It is another Bank holiday Monday so we have no school so we can travel. This man turned out to be a very great guy and offered a lot of suggestions and told us all about La Rochelle and places to go and that we had to visit the islands out in the ocean/bay. We ended up exchanging e-mails and will send him our feedback on the trip! We stayed until nearly midnight and it did not seem so late at all. I am amazed at how fast time passes while I have been here. Oh and Le Cerce Rouge translates to The Red Circle and that is the internet password incase you are ever there!

The First Impression of a New Culture

5/18/2010: Part One
Well it has been quite some time since I have last posted on this blog. I created this for my English 112 class my second semester of freshman year. I decided before leaving for Europe not to post my journey. However, as I have been going about my travels, I have realized that I will forget a lot of this journey. I tend to forget things often unless triggered by a thought and I don’t think many sites in Ohio are going to trigger many memories from architecture….
To recap my first four days:
Day One/Two: I said good bye to mom at the airport in the morning and began my voyage. Many storms were rolling through the Midwest, so they had to change my flights. It worked out to my advantage as I skipped Detroit and went straight to Minneapolis. In Dayton I ran into Jessica Schwieterman from Minster (also a new officer in Circle K at Miami) on her way to Anchorage for the summer. Upon arrival in Minneapolis I met up with the four other Miami students on my flight. Being the nice guy I am, I gave up my aisle seat to a French girl to sit next to her friend and ironically it was the seat next to another Miami student. Unfortunately it was the middle seat….. The older man next to me was very amusing and we had many good conversations on the nearly nine hour voyage. The meals were surprisingly good!
After passing Passport Control we were greated by Pierre from the school in France. Pierre is very young and turned out to provide many laughs especially upon using ‘foul’ language to pregnant Bosnian women scamming us to give them money by reading their well written message on well worn paper. He became our tour guide through Paris.
Upon all fifty arriving at the hotel, we set voyage on our first adventure. We traveled across Paris via metro to IES Center for orientation. We were all very tired as it was already Friday and had been up for nearly twenty-four hours. After ‘safety’ training (a.k.a scaring the crap out of us of everything that could happen to us) we walked. Devin and I made a side trip around the block and were soon lost by all the odd angled streets. Our first interaction with a French person on the street came from a sweet, old lady with a bonnet as she gave us directions back.
The day continued with a boat tour on the river through Paris to see all of the world renowned sites. It was a dreary, cold day and not good for walking around. Ironically it was the 400 year anniversary of the assassination of ******** the Fourth in the streets of Paris. We stood by his statue for many hours wondering about the podium, lights and speakers of the occasion. Later that night the celebration was on tv. We were told that four important documents are housed in boxes inside the sculpture of the horse he is riding.
Dr. Sullivan (a.k.a Sully) took us to an area nearby called ‘So Michele’ which translates to ‘Saint Michael’ to have dinner. There dozens of restaurants in tiny alleyways. After nearly thirty minutes of searching the five of us (Jonathon, Devin, Trevor and Chad) settled on a small place that only held maybe twenty people. AMAZING food! French onion soup, pasta with salmon and caramel custard desert. The waiter was not too happy with our lack of French, but we left a much larger tip than usual so I’m sure he was happy then.
Day Three: The sunny morning began with a walking tour from an older French woman. I forget her name but she was very sweet. She shared more information than I’ll ever need about all of the palaces in Paris. Apparently many of the kings decided they didn’t like their huge palace and decided to build another a few blocks away. We learned about the prison in which Marie Antoinette was held and executed as well as the multiple guiatine locations.
I was very excited to see the entrances to the metro stops. They were crafted of cast iron over a century ago in the arte neuvo style in which all of the interior and exterior decorations are of a very leafy nature. I learned about this in my architecture course last semester and we talked about these entrances. Unfortunately most of them were destroyed during the French Revolution. The tour guide also took us through a flower shop square and I saw some of the most amazing flowers for purchase. These shops used to be all over the city to supply fresh flowers to the many palaces, but really only one exist today.
Next the guide took us to Notre Dame Cathedral, but we first walked through a large tent of bakers making very elaborate designs out of bread. Unfortunately we had no time to enter the crypts of Notre Dame to see old vestments, but we did get a picture with Quasi Moto (sp?) before entering. It was a rather amazing building. I learned that Notre Dame is not the biggest, best or tallest cathedral but is the most famous. Sully also told us that all of the mile markers on highways in France are distances from Notre Dame as it is at the center of France. The tour guide stressed the description of the stained glass windows which were beautiful as you can imagine. The significance is that some of them have survived from Miedevil times. They survived the French Revolution when nearly all religious representations were destroyed including many of the statues on the outside as well as the bombings of WWII. Although the cathedral was not bombed the vibrations from nearby explosions shattered many windows. Additionally the cross and statue of Mary holding Jesus in her arms that lies behind the alter is of significance. Louis XIII came often to the cathedral to pray for a son to inherent his throne as he and his wife (I forget her name) had not become pregnant. The story goes that he made a deal while praying that if the Lord would bless him with a son that he would give this statue and things to the cathedral. Well one day soon after Louis XIII was supposed to travel to Versailles to begin a hunting trip. The weather became very bad and his assistants advised him to not travel and postpone one day. The king did not want to as all of his belongings had already left with his servants. The assistant told him that since all of his belongings were not in the palace (The Louvre) that he should spend the night in the Queen’s bed. The story ends nine months later with the birth of Louis XIV in which we also saw a statue celebrating this birth. To end my story about Notre Dame, the hunchback a.k.a. Quasi Moto is tauted with saving Notre Dame Cathedral. After the French Revolution the government wanted to destroy the cathedral. However, somehow as it was the home of Quasi Moto it was saved and a very small display (the size of two bowling balls) protrudes from the side of the building. The book the Hunchback of Notre Dame is still the best selling book in Europe. I guess I should read it to get the full story.
Behind Notre Dame in the formal gardens we saw a wedding and also saw the memorial to the Holocost. Oh, I should also mention that several people believe to see orbs floating in several of their pictures inside Notre Dame, but others taking pictures of the same location at a different time do not have them. I don’t know what to make of it, but it is interesting. Additionally, there was a short mass going on while we were in the cathedral. Oh and one small door in and one small door out. Would not meet U.S. firecode standards; Rick Simon would not approve!
This day we also toured The Louvre which was originally built in the sixteen century as a military installation. About a century after Louis XIV decided to move the palace of the King to Versailles, it became a museum. Today it houses some of the most famous paintings and sculptures in the world. We met at the famous glass pyramid added in 1989 in the center courtyard. My favorite archway was Porte Colbert (I’m sure named for Stephen Colbert – ha) and Porte Sully of which I of course took a picture because of our professor and Mr. Sully from Russia! Our tour guide was a studying student from Germany and she showed us to only one wing. This building is huge and amazingly decorated inside. Unfortunately we only had ninety minutes to tour and she knew way too much about the paintings. We stopped at about seven paintings to learn about them. She talked for atleast ten minutes on each painting which was nice, but became rather daunting. We did get to see the Mona Lisa and many other paintings by Picasso in which they were landmark paintings.
The end of our tour took us to the Eiffel Tower. After an hour we made it to the top and got to see all of Paris. It was a very neat experience, but not as exciting as I was hoping because it was at the end of a long day and it was not lit up yet. Other notables of the day were walking past the Museum of Modern Art. I can’t remember the style of architecture, but it was another building we studied in class. It was one of the first buildings to display the structural and functional elements of the building outside. So for example, all of the air ducts run along the outside of the building and have giant two story air intakes coming up from the sidewalks. Also, the cantilevered structure of the building using trustes is outside and displayed. I learned from an architecture class two years ago that this was a new design for any structure and very innovative. It was great to see the building in person!
After the tower tour six of us were starving and stopped at a random restaurant called Castle Café. We learned that by using some French to greet and order tap water that we would be well received. This waiter however was very entertaining and funny. He gave many winks to the girls and was very interested in making it a good time for us. We soon realized that dinners take much longer in France as it took nearly two and a half hours. However, it was good bonding time for the six of us as we all became really good friends and will be for the rest of the trip (Trevor, Devin, Annie, Amanda and Ashley). That night we went out to a ‘lounge’ that was all black, mirrored and little lighting for a few drinks. Again, great bonding time for the six of us plus one more.
Day Four: It began with a violent domestic dispute beginning in the buffet line, moving to the lobby, continuing outside the main entrance and ended with the policia arriving. We began a bus ride to Versailles (less than an hour away) in which two people were late…together….after a long night of partying. I can’t begin to describe the stupidity of these two people. The one girl forgot her luggage (she didn’t come back to the hotel) and so went inside to change clothes (keep in mind, the clothes were in her luggage) and bring down her luggage. Only she forgot to bring her luggage again and the bus left. YES VERY STUPID. Not only that, but her Passport was in her luggage. After she stopped laughing about it she told Sully and she had to instead of touring Versailles, take a train back to Paris to get her luggage and got back just twenty minutes before leaving.
However, the rest of us toured the amazing palace built for the king. Again, huge with gold plated fencing and gold plated roof. I can’t describe the paintings on the ceilings nor the number of sculptures I saw and simple hallways that were just glorified to no end. However, the fireplaces were huge. The logs in them literally were ten feet long. Simply amazing to think about how many servants it took to run the place and to simply keep it decently warm. I loved it, but it was crowded. Many interesting items. We also toured the town at a fresh produce market, a Catholic Cathedral, a beautiful hotel and many streets.
The four hour bus ride to Nantes was very nice and I enjoyed watching the countryside. Western France is rather flat and has rolling hills like southern Ohio. Lots of farming with American equipment and a similar highway system to America. I was surprised with the differences, but all traditional stone houses and small roads like you see in movies. Very appealing.
I have to say that I really have enjoyed everything about France up to this point. I honestly could see myself becoming an expatriate and living here or somewhere in Europe for a few years. I feel like I have such deeper appreciation for things after spending a short amount of time here. It is late and I will post more on this night of meeting our host family and then the first full day in Nantes in tomorrow’s post!
Au revoir!