The Sketchy Hotel Story

Ok, better late than never, right?  I know I promised tons of stories from my last vacation.  I don't really have time to write them properly, but they're very interesting.

The first week of vacation, we spent in Marseille.  We went to the Chateau D'If (literature reference anyone?  Just FYI, the movie shows Dantes descending into a pit for his imprisonment.  Utterly impossible.  There is so much sunlight it's unbelievable.)

No pics, no time.  Sorry.

After a few days, we met up with our friend Jonathan from Paris and went to Avignon.  we saw the Palais des Papes, the Pont, and other stuff.  We also took a day to see Aix-en-Provence and Pont du Gard (the Roman Aquaduct).  I wish we'd had more time there.  Sigh.

The bus depot in Avignon is super sketch.  We almost didn't go in it because a) it was night, b) there appeared to be drug-dealer type people hanging around c) it was dark, no windows, and it was creepy.  Somehow we mustered the courage to go inside and lo and behold it was fine.  Still wouldn't go there at night.

Our last night in Avignon together, we went out to a ritzy restaurant.  The waiter really knew his stuff.  In the corner of the restaurant there was an American couple having dinner.  Talk about rude people!  They insisted on speaking English with the waiter and were mad at him when he brought them espresso instead of cafe au lait (well DUH, when you just ask for coffee with your dessert, what do you expect they're going to give you.  It was a classic mistake recounted to me once by a French professor.  That's why we had to laugh).  And then, the waiter (obviously overhearing us speaking English) started addressing us in English.  But then he stopped mid-sentence, apologized profusely, and continued in French.  SOOOO flattering.  He told Laura that if she couldn't figure out the flavors of her ice cream she would have to do the dishes.

The next morning, we bid Jonathan goodbye (and he went off to his super fast train to Paris...Grrr) and we went to Arles.  Then it started to rain.  Then there was a bus strike (they were totally singing Solidarity Forever in French).  Before we knew it, it turned into a national strike of both trains and buses.

When you have a night train back to Nancy to catch, this is not a good thing.

We walked around all day and somehow made it back to Marseille, where we waited. and waited. and waited.  Finally, we went to the guichet and they told us that our train was cancelled.  Could we get a train to Paris? No. Belgium? No.  There were no trains whatsoever.

After a moment or so of intense panicking, we asked for a hotel recommendation and proceeded across the street.  The recommended hotel had closed for the night, but we ran into a guy going into the hotel next door.  The clerk let us in.  Luckily he had one room left.

His "one" room actually belonged to a lady who got stuck in Lyon overnight due to the strike.  So, he cleaned up her personal artifacts (which included a can of tuna, towels, tooth brushes, and other strange items) and told us the bed was clean.  We didn't really believe him as the whole place kind of smelled.  But, as we had no other choice, we decided to make the best of it (we just had to avoid looking into the shower...gross). 

As it happened, he was rather a young guy stuck in a hotel with nothing to do.  When we went down to pay our bill and explain that we had to leave early in the morning, we started chatting.  Turns out, we are the same age.  He tried to get us to stay and talk to him but we told him that we were exhausted and then went upstairs.

Five minutes later, he tried to fix the TV in our room against all our protestations (really, you'd think he never saw a couple of girls before).  But we finally got him out so we could sleep (which we didn't really).

All said, he was pretty nice.  He got up at five in the morning to let us out (and he put on an American flag t-shirt...just for us?).  Awwww.

We caught our train and everything was fine in the end.  We got a little sleep before heading out to Crete the next day.

Saying Goodbye

Tonight and this past week, I've been saying goodbye to all that Verdun has meant to me.

Tonight was my last drink with the French girls, the Spaniards, and the other assistants.  Some of them I won't miss...how could I, I hardly know them? 

I went up to the bartender, Frederick (yep, we're on first-name terms with our bartender...super embarrassing, but a good illustration of what Verdun is all about) and told him and Thierry that tonight was my last night with them.  He gave me la bise, winked, and told me he was coming to Chicago next year to visit me.  yeah right.  It was really touching.  (He owns the place, I think, even though he's kinda young).  As Rosie says, "Never say never" so who knows, I may run into him yet.

Then, as I said goodbye to everyone else, there was an outpouring of people who suddenly want to come and visit me, which was really cute.  The tears aren't coming yet, but I may be a basket case when I see Rosie for the last time.

Last week was also the last week at my lycée.  My students (seconde) were soooo sweet.  They signed a card that said "I love you Mary! Kiss you!  I miss you!" all over it.  Not much variance (the teacher laughed and explained that their vocab was slightly limited).  Then we took pictures together as a group.  Some of my sstudents took celebrity photos with me.  I'm pretty sure that photo is plastered all over the internet by now. One student told me that he will remember me until his deathbed.  Who couldn't help but cry after that?

But that isn't all.  That class gave me two cookbooks and a box of candy.  Another class gave me "a taste of Lorraine" with another cookbook, two jars of jam, cookies, and a pan to cook it.  They also gave me a large bottle of perfum and three smaller samples and a card that had "bon retour"written all over it.  Cute.

The teachers also showered me with gifts.  And the girl I tutored.  Gosh, you'd think the other assistants did absolutely nothing while they were here. I can safely say that I worked hard here, but not enough to deserve all this.

The people here are really generous.  Really Really generous.

 ...my loot.  And this was before I got the candy and the other books.

I still have a few days left of teaching and then a TON of traveling.  It feels so funny to be saying goodbye when I won't be home for weeks yet.

No tears. Not yet.

Germany and Germans

I spent the last weekend visiting Germany and our dear friend the German assistant who left Verdun before the rest of us.

Wow, so much happened...I'll try to condense it.  I have a lot of thinking to do about my whole experience as an assistant and this trip didn't make it any easier. Neither did last weekend.

Anyway. we arrived in Freiburg on Friday.  We hung out for a bit and went to a disco at night.  I'm not much of a disco fan, but it was alright.  The music was all in German (of course!) but they were traditional tunes remixed as rock songs.  Too funny!

The next day, we ate a HUGE Bavarian breakfast.  Afterall, we were in the Black Forest.  There, breakfast includes beer.  No joke, Markus drank a huge pint with his, I had only a few sips.  We ate special sausages, AMAZING mustard, and pretzels.  Rosie has all the pictures of this, unfortunately.

 Then, we walked around town.  It was so pretty.  Well, I'll let you be the judge of that.

 The Cathedral.  It was too big to take a picture of the whole thing.

 Halfway through the day, we stopped at a cafe and had these coffees with vanilla ice cream in them.  An Italian invention, so I'm told.  Rock on, Italians.

 

When I shall think of Freiburg thereafter, I shall remember this particular clock tower which used to be a prison.  Jonas told us that there is a plaque on it that commemorates the last witch that was burned in Germany. True story.

 In this picture you can clearly see the little drainage water thing that Freiburg is most famous for.  There are literally little streams all over the city. In one square, people were cooling off with their feet in it (and a little rack designed to hold their beers in the water to keep them cold.  German ingenuity!

Apparently, though, if you are a visitor and you accidentally trip and fall into one, you will marry a Freibuger.  I didn't fall in, FYI, but I was sorely tempted to "accidentally" trip after I met a certain German-Italian student.  :)

 In the town, there is a small mountain you can climb.  On the mountain, lest you should get thirsty on the climb up, there are beer gardens.  We went two days in a row, it was so much fun.  The first day, we went all the way to the top.  At the top, there is a tower you can climb.  Since everyone else was too tired (or too slow, however you want to look at it), just me and Jonas went up to take pictures.  To be quite honest, the view isn't really worth the climb.  You do it just to impress your friends with your stair climbing skills (learned from living on the third floor).  Trust me people, there is a stair-less way to get to the base of the tower that we would've taken if I had been calling the shots.

 On Sunday, we all went to Mass at the cathedral. It was super cool to go with all my new friends.  Mass in German is super cool.  For the hymns, they had a little digital screen with the song number and verses.  So German!!  Afterwards, we went back to the beer garden for lunch.  I ate schnitzel. Yum!

 So there you have it, Germany.  Goodbye new German friends!! (and German- Italian, and Spanish, and English). 

Oh, you know how in France, pigeons pick at baguette?  Well, in Germany they eat sausages and bretzels.  No joke.  As Maria and Jonas said, they're just waiting for some beer.

Germany: land of pretzels, beer, TONS of meat, beer gardens, and sunshine. 

What makes a place beautiful

I wrote this last week and never published it...oops!
 
Tonight, in Verdun, it is raining.  In fact, it's been raining all day.  As I was walking home from Rosie's, I had the sudden sensation that I didn't find the town nearly as ugly or uninviting in the rain as I had on previous occasions. A few months of hard living can really do that to a person, I suppose.

But it's true.  I had just come from Rosie's hobbit hole (she's a hobbit, no buts about it...she's just a little on the tall side) and my heart was very warm and full of good things.  I was thinking how blessed I am to have friends who care about me.

With the lights beaming onto La Meuse river from the Quai de Londres, Verdun is actually quite beautiful.  It is not beautiful by it own merit but made so by the people who live here.  In a few days, some of my favorite people will be gone, and the town will no longer capture my imagination, love, or appreciation.

I think I've said this before, but I might as well say it again.  It's not about the places you visit, but the people you meet.  Walls cannot speak or welcome you or teach you the essence of a place's culture.  Only people can do that.  The more I travel, the more this has become my motto.

This past weekend I visited our dear friends in Stenay again.  My friend was kind enough to invite us to spend the night in her home with her family.  We had such a lovely time with them, going around and looking at all of the WWI monuments.  It was freezing cold. We took a picnic lunch to eat on the road, but since it was too cold to eat outside, we asked a local cafe if we could eat it there inside.  We bought our drinks from them and had a great time looking at all of their relics from the Great War proudly displayed around the whitewashed walls.  It turned out that it was easier for them to speak English than French because the husband was Irish or something.  Who'da thunk it!!

Afterwards, we went to the theater and then to the home to our other very dear friends in Stenay.  As it happened, their sons were visiting and we all had a good chat in English.   Dear reader, you probably don't understand, but when you've only spoken a foreign language for so long, it is such a relief to speak your own language for a while.  We spoke until 2am and then they kindly took us home.  I really hope we get a chance to see them again (as I wish with a TON of other people here).  They are really two special families.  Oh those polo-playing, posh, intelligent, gorgeous crickets!

In short, my experience here has been a good one, not because of the place (heaven forbid!) but because of the people who live here.  Granted, they never want to leave La Meuse, but that's what makes them so cute. 

I'm sorry, no pics, I don't have time  to upload them. You'll just have to take my word for it that the sons were pretty cute :) just kidding, I'm not that superficial.

The moment when...

...you are about to leave for work and you suddenly remember your umbrella and dash upstairs even though you're late and then later it rains cats and dogs.  Praise the Lord!

Clay birds and apologies

Hello faithful readers, it's me.

I realize that I haven't written anything in a while.  Frankly, I haven't had time.  My life is filled with mini-crises that happen around mid-morning and get resolved by the afternoon. Like when I get mad at my terminals (maybe its because they're boys, but I was never so immature or inappropriate at their age) and then charmed by my 5iemes (little boy with the enormous glasses, I will miss you terribly.  Thanks for being so good in English. I wish my terminals would follow your example).

Yeah, it's the same old story, every day.

I hope...
...my classes this afternoon go better than this morning's classes

I can't wait...
...to do some more traveling.  Face it folks, I'm never coming home :P

I'm wishing...
...I could marry a prince from Luxembourg and live there for the rest of my life.  Each time I go, I say to myself, this can't possibly be the last time.  I went to Luxembourg Ville last weekend for the clay bird festival.  A.MAZ.ING.  Let's just say I'm the proud owner of two whistles (one that works with water in it).

Pictures coming soon.  Maybe.

Until next time,
Mary

i spy

...the horse-drawn garbage truck going down Rue Saint Sauveur on an early misty morning.  After three tries, I finally got a picture!!

Sorry it's sideways!

...the group of English exchange students from another Lycee who look a little lost.  I've run into them twice now.

...my students at the theater.  Yeah, I'm not the only Victor Hugo fan.

...the Spanish assistant, kicking back in our laundromat.

...the pretre doing his shopping.

...my students in Monoprix.  They actually acknowledged my presence.
...the bartender winking at the German assistant.  They don't really draw the line anywhere!


I hope...

...my students didn't see me as I almost got stuck in the undercarriage of a bus trying to retrieve my suitcase :)
...that spring is on the way, like soon.
...that we eat at Le Glacier just one more time!