So, I realize I haven’t told you guys much of anything I’ve been up to since I went to England, and since those are pretty much the most recent photos I’ve got up on my webpage, I figure it’s time for some stories….it’s been a while since most of this stuff happened though, so I should be able to shorten them up a bit…
One, that wasn’t a huge adventure, but just kind of cool was going to a bar in Freiburg (Germany). It’s just so cool to be able to “go to Germany for the evening.” The bar was really nice too, so that always helps: it’s on the 17th floor of an office tower, with a fantastic view of the city (which I have otherwise not seen…I guess that’ll have to wait until next year).
The next day was an action-packed trip to the Mulhouse Zoo with Aimée. It’s a small zoo, but is complete with “les castors Canadiens” translated into English on the sign as “American beavers”… riiiiiight… and grizzly bears. I think the best part was when we were hanging out with the gibbons (a type of monkey) and one of them kept coming up to the glass and swinging around in front of us, looking right at us, like he was showing off. After 10 or 15 minutes, we discovered why they put glass on the front part of that cage, when the monkey hung directly in front of Aimée’s face, and peed on the glass.
In May, my best friend Cynthia came to visit for a week, which was fantastic. She arrived on (rugby) Sunday, which was particularly handy, since she plays rugby too. Unfortunately she would be arriving later, and it was an away game, and they lost, which generally means there won’t be much celebrating. Nonetheless, on our way out to dinner, we walked by the club so I could show it to her, and there were a number of players having some drinks. We stopped in for a little while, then headed off to the Salsa (our intended destination), although several of the players planned to come by for a drink later (I think I mentioned a long time ago that the Salsa is their main sponsor). Dinner was fantastic, as was dessert…mmmmmm…crême brûlée….and just after we finished, the boys showed up, and the party started. The guys thought it was pretty cool that Cynthia played rugby, and Beef, who was particularly friendly, invited her to practice with them over the summer…riiiiiight.
Next up was a trip to Strasbourg. We went up in the evening, and relaxed at a patio bar, while Cynthia, Aimée and I talked about just about everything, and Nico tried to understand (ha! the tables had turned! for once it was them struggling to understand us instead of vice versa!). The next day there was going to be a train strike (not a terribly uncommon event unfortunately), but Strasbourg-Mulhouse is a fairly busy route, so we figured there would be at least a couple of trains through the day. Aimée and I needed to be back for our last Italian class at 5:00 though, so we went to the train station first thing to find out what trains were running. There had been 2 early in the morning, but the next wasn’t until 5:00 (plus an hour on the train, and a half hour walk to campus…yeah…we weren’t going to make it to class). To make things worse, it was rainy and cold, and most stores weren’t open yet. We found a department store (stopping to check movie times on the way) and killed some time there, grabbing (what else) croissants for breakfast. By the time we left the store it had stopped raining, and had warmed up a little. We did lots of window shopping, warmed up at a café at lunch time, and headed up to the cathedral (the main attraction in Strasbourg). For a couple of euros, the three of us braved the stairs, climbed the cathedral. Now, I’ve done the CN Tower stair climb a couple of times, and I walk EVERYwhere so you wouldn’t think it would be that bad, but with the French obsession with spiral st aircases, there was a new dimension. We took some photos of the city, and headed back down (getting even dizzier, since the trip down is so much faster and easier!). By this time we had to head to the train station. Luckily, for some unknown reason, the train wasn’t full to bursting as I had expected, but it was certainly busier than I’d ever seen.
Next on the agenda was some Mulhouse sites. Namely O’Bryans, where we finally found a place that beer wasn’t ridiculously expensive (I wouldn’t know since I can’t stand the stuff). Cynthia enjoyed her huge beer, and I went for my standard vodka and apple. It was then that I discovered that I could never again drink vodka and apple since ‘the incident’ weeks earlier, when me and vodka and apple got in a fight (he’s not my friend anymore).
That was the night that I talked in my sleep in French, actually, so at least we had a last good laugh together before parting ways.
The next day we went to Bale (Switzerland) so Cynthia could enjoy the pleasure of travelling to another country in under 30 minutes (although now that she lives in Niagara, perhaps that’s not as much of a novelty to her). The plan had been to go to Freiburg the next night as well (two countries in under 30 minutes is twice as cool) but those plans fell through. Instead, a bunch of people were going to the Salle des Coffres (not my favourite bar by a long shot, but Cynthia wanted to go dancing, so we went). It turned out to be fantastic: Havana Club was doing a tour, complete with live band and dancers, and free t-shirts and hats for everyone. It was even cooler for Aimée who had never heard of Havana Club (I had forgotten that the US and Cuba don’t get along very well).
Finally, was the trip to Paris. Cynthia was flying out from there (as I will be), so we decided to go up a day early, and check out the sites. After a whirlwind tour, we had seen Place de la Concorde, the Champs Elysées, and the Arc de Triomphe, and it was already getting dark. We then headed towards the Eiffel Tower. Now, you’d think that the Eiffel Tower would be hard to lose, but since the buildings are so high [or more specifically the tower is so much lower than you might expect] and the streets are so narrow, and not at all straight, and since we didn’t take the most touristy route, we actually had some difficulty finding it (although now and then we caught a glimpse and could alter our route accordingly). By the time we got up the tower, it was dark enough for some cool night pictures of the city, although neither of us had a very good camera for such things. Ah well. I did, however, get a cool picture of the reflection of the Eiffel Tower of the wet street on our way there (yep, it rained while we were in Paris too). Finally, we headed to the hotel to get some sleep so our respective trips home wouldn’t kill us.
In the morning, I saw Cynthia off to her train to the airport, and decided to head down to the Louvre in the couple of hours I had to kill before my train, and since there was apparently a store near there where I could find one of the gifts I’ve been trying to find basically since I got to France. From the train station I took the nearest streets heading in the right direction, and found myself on Rue St Denis (for those that know where that is, I imagine you’re already laughing). St. Denis would take me almost all the way, if I followed it to the end, and it wasn’t very busy (being 11:00 on a Sunday morning) so it seemed like a good route. I was amused at the number of ‘adult’ video stores, but hey, this was Paris. I passed under an arch (sort of a like a smaller version of the Arc de Triomphe) and the street became a pedestrian street (I love France). At this point, though, the number of ‘peep shows’, video stores and other adult entertainment venues increased to about 60 or 70 percent of the stores (the rest being doner kebab places or other such fast food). I almost laughed when I saw my first Parisian prostitute. The 20+ others I passed in the next two blocks just added to my amusement. Apparently their (ahem) office was nearby. After that, I saw no more prostitutes, but the types of stores were consistent the rest of the way…except for the church…right across from a peep show. There were a few people going in and out of there (the church people, the church!) so I went to see. They were right in the middle of mass though, so I didn’t go in. As I walked back out, facing the peep show, I couldn’t help but wonder what was there first: the church, or the prostitutes (I don’t mean the specific ones I saw, although most of them were pretty old….).
I finally got down to the Louvre, but didn’t have time to go in. I took some pictures of the outside, and realizing that being a Sunday, even if I could the store I was looking for, it would be closed, I headed to the train station for the trip home.
So that was Paris.
My next trip was to “the south of France” (to be said with a snobby British accent). Nico, Aimée, Abby (a friend of Aimée’s who was up over from the States) drove down south to Martigues (just outside of Marseilles). Aimée and Abby took off from there for their trip across the south and into Spain, and Nico and I stayed with Marc (another friend). For most of the trip, the weather had been getting progressively hotter, and although it was already evening in Martigues, it was sweltering. We went up to t he beach, just as most people were leaving, and were there until the sun started to go down after 8:00 (have I mentioned that I love France?).
Day two was a trip to the Calanques, between Marseilles and Cassis, where there are some gorgeous mountains ending at the sea. Wow. After first parking in the wrong place and getting a little lost in the mountains (life is sooooo rough) we headed back to the car and tried again. This time we found a closer spot (about the closest you can reasonably get is an hour on foot). We headed along a trail through a park that would bring us to the water. To actually get there though, we had to leave the wide trail and climb down the mountain. It was great! We didn’t spend long in the water (the mountains that surrounded the place we were swimming was soon blocking the sun). We started working our way up one side, chasing the sun, until we were at the top, and still losing the sunshine. We headed back down (and then back up the other side) to the trail and back to the car.
Day three was a trip into Aix-en-Provence, where we found, for 2.00€, a meringue the size of my head….mmmm….pure sugar…We just walked around the city, stopping for a beverage at a café on one of the main streets. As I’ve just discovered (looking through the pictures I haven’t been able to upload off my camera) it was there that Nico and Marc felt the need to take stupid pictures of each other while I was in the bathroom. But I digress. A few minutes later we came across a motorcycle show/rally (whatever) with plates from all over Europe (my personal favourite was the one with European plates, but a trailer with a Quebec plate). After I had the most disappointing crepe I’ve had since I got to France, we headed back to Martigues for the night, and realized that being a long weekend, we were going to have to head out early. Ultimately though, the trip home took less time than the trip there as we used our incredibly powers of reason (an a good map) to get out of the traffic jams and around Lyon where the worst of the traffic was.
When we got back, there was a rugby game in full swing in Mulhouse (although Mulhouse wasn’t actually playing in it). I hung out there for a while with Jérôme, who had invited me to Europa Park the next day (a theme park in Germany). It was then that he informed me that we would be leaving from Strasbourg. I went home, unpacked from Martigues and repacked for a night in Strasbourg and a day in the sun. Europa Park was pretty cool, although not nearly as big as Canada’s Wonderland. When we got back to Strasbourg, around 8:00, we realized that the trains were again on strike, and I was stranded in Strasbourg (again). I stayed another night at Jérôme’s (we were going to go out, but I fell asleep before 9:00). After almost 12 hours of sleep I got up for what I expected to be an exciting day of nothing. I went to the train station to see the strike schedule, and was very happy to discover that starting at 1:00 there would be a train every 2 hours (a considerable improvement on the last time!). I then headed back into the city in search of that same gift I was trying to find in Paris. After hitting several plausible stores, I finally found one that directed me to the best place to…outside of downtown. He gave me directions by tram, but I had time, so I headed on foot. It seemed to take forever to get there, and ultimately didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but found some good stuff anyway. The walk back seemed (thankfully) much quicker, as it was getting time for that first train. As expected, the train was full, but I was sitting with a elderly British couple, who I spoke with until they (and just about everybody else) got off at Colmar (about halfway to Mulhouse). From there there were far fewer people on the train, and it was a little more relaxed.
So, that brings me to June 3rd. Since then, I’ve just been trying to avoid the sweltering heat, and am now nursing a cold that I can’t possibly imagine how I caught, given that it’s about 300 degrees in Mulhouse, and you can imagine that Batiment A is not air conditioned. So now, I’m just trying to prepare for September, and enjoy my last 2 weeks here.
So yeah…I don’t imagine I’ll have a ton to say over the next two weeks, so I guess I’ll sign off with:
I’LL SEE YOU ALL SOON!!!!!
