Some observations

I just got back to my friends' apartment - tomorrow's the three week anniversary of my arrival here. Wow. Talk about an imposing guest. Fortunately, a departure is in sight. I finally prodded CROUS BLEU, the student housing agency, to give me a room in the university residence Berlioz. I went five times to their office, each time trying to convey as much urgency as possible. I wish I could have hired a small, battered child to serve as my spokeschild. Surely that would have spurred them on more, and perhaps only required three or four visits. The rooms are 12 square meters, or around 108 square feet, and include a bathroom with toilet and shower. Oddly, individual mailboxes are unavailable - instead, each hallway, around twelve people, shares one mailbox. Whoever gets the mail first becomes the mailman. I'm interested to see how this works... I might have to end up using my friends' address or buying a PO box.

Here are a few sweeping generalizations about life in France:

• McDonalds burgers are better here. Or at least that's my opinion after tonight's "Royal Bacon." Mmmm. (Don't yell at me for getting McDonalds in France - it was 10:30pm, everything was closed and I needed something quick after my exhausting basketball practice.)
• Everything's dirtier... at least compared to Indiana. It'd be on par with Tempe, if it wasn't for the dog poo EVERYWHERE OH MY GOSH THERE IS SOME MORE BEING EXCRETEDAS I SPEAK SEVEN FEET AWAY FROM ME.
• Everything's smaller. Taking a shower, using an elevator, squeezing inside a public telephone booth, sitting at a cafe and attending class have all become daily acrobatic adventures. It's like you're always wearing an invisible corset.
  
• Shower curtains are extraordinarily rare. Thus, one must take care to splash as little as possible while showering.
• There is no organization in the university system at all. I registered with the International Relations office... but not for classes. I had to go to a different floor to receive my student card. How does one choose classes? You find out - via obscure bulletin board, random sheets of paper or by consulting tarot cards - and then show up for the first day of class. Eventually - no hurry - you find another obscure office and "inscrire," but only for language classes. If you're taking political science classes, like me, you have to go to a completely different building and office and pray, really pray, that the office will be open. You usually have a 50-50% chance of waiting in a horrendously long line to see a bored, rude and ill-informed bureaucrat, but if it's Wednesday or Friday, you're better off just standing in front of the tram and letting it run you over.
• One must have absolutely no fear of traffic, whether it's giant city buses, stealthy trams, tiny scooters or little cars. You have to step out in traffic, clench your fists and MAKE EYE CONTACT. If you do this, 95% of the time traffic will stop well in advance, smile and wave you across. But if you hesitate, you might as well be wearing a George W. Bush mask.

That should be enough for now. I've heard some curious things about the USA, too -- one quarter of our government is Israeli (unfortunately, after saying this, Ahmed from Lebanon lost much of the credibility he had earned up to that point), all of our school materials and classrooms are sponsored by Coca-Cola (a British girl said this, and I laughed) and 70% of us don't know where Canada is.

One parting note - the bathrooms (90% of which are unisex, quite bizarre) are like cages. Literally:



Ah, I forgot - I saw Shane Black's "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" at the movie theater today. It was excellent - very witty, very gritty. It was in English, with French subtitles - slightly distracting, but helpful when the characters mumbled. It's not out in the States yet - I think it comes out in a few weeks back home - go see it! The movie theater was nice and cozy, and the picture quality was good - but snacks were entirely lacking. The ushers stared blankly at me when I asked if there was popcorn, but directed me to the "bonbons." The "bonbons" consisted of two vending machines in a narrow, dark corner. One had three items to offer - old gum, old French tootsie rolls and old Mentos mints. The other machine was out-of-order, but even if it did work... you could only buy its ice cream with francs - the currency that was phased out three years ago. Next time, I'm taking my own food.

Photo barrage

We stopped for a photo moment on the way to Monaco. I took a picture of my Nice villa, wanting to make sure the gardeners have been doing their job. Yep, excellent as usual.


Here's a wider shot of some of my neighbors... unfortunately, it was a little overcast and God's currently not responding to my requests for increased sunshine. I think He lost His beeper.


Many houses looked like were sprouting out of the rock. The construction effort and skill needed to build these must have been amazing.


My first view of Monaco, from inside the bus! My first thought, "Wow, that's small." You can see the renowned soccer stadium with its open roof in the middle of the picture.


One of the more memorable exhibits in the oceanography museum - the prince's favorite harpoons.


After leaving the museum, I spotted these relics and had to grab my camera. If it weren't for the French signs, I could've sworn I was back home, perhaps in somewhere exciting like Greencastle.


I've never seen an 'Excalibur' car before, and apparently neither had many of my fellow tourists... we all crowded around it; you could practically hear the males purring in delight.


There was only one guard outside the palace, but he looked fierce... or maybe that was the shiny M4A1 he appeared to be very comfortable with.


Here's a shot over the whole bay - those are crowded piers!


...and this is some of the densest, most crowded housing I've ever seen. 32,409 people live in Monaco, and I think you can see almost all of them in this picture.


After leaving the museum, we walked for a bit... and realized we were entering another world.


There's a few nice cars here.


...but I'd rather take this one.


Where were we? Oh, that's right - Casino Monte-Carlo.


Across the street was the equally posh "Hotel de Paris."


Some of the public "art" in Monaco was rather bizarre.


After I lost $3.50 gambling, I decided to cut my losses and caught up with the group. We headed back to Nice, but before entering the city, I took this picture. That bright crescent is, I believe, the Quai des Etats-Unis/Promenade des Anglais - the happening place to be!

It's going down today

"Tomorrow, 5:15pm in the park."

My ex-roommate sent me that cryptic text message last night, apparently in reference to her giving me my pillow I left during my hasty departure from her apartment, along with the mail I've received over the past couple weeks. I'm going to the impromptu rendezvous with a couple of friends who have a car, so we'll be able to make a quick getaway if the situation sours. Maybe I'll try to take my camera and take a few spy photos... once my mail is safely in my possession, of course.

I'll continue the picture posting later tonight, along with a verdict on how the mail drop went, but to keep you satiated, here's a picture I took while having lunch at Nice's Atmosphere Cafe. I have no idea what this man is smoking, and neither did any of my lunch companions. I guessed, "a twig." Anyone have any other ideas?

P.S. You can click on the pictures to enlarge them! (:::nudge, nudge, Dad::::)

St. Paul de Vence

On Saturday, I woke up brutally early in order to take a morning bus to St. Paul de Vence, a small artistic commune about 25 minutes away from Nice. Here you can see the enormous medieval fortifcations that still surround it.


Those huge ramparts guard things inside like this, some sort of skinny elephant sprouting a triangular prism-shaped tumor.


But they also help create views like this, which you could see if you peeked down almost any alley.


If you squint, you can see '1850' on the top ring of the fountain. This was one of the larger squares in St. Paul de Vence... and it wasn't very large!


The cement had all been designed (remember, artistic commune) with little suns, because in the south of France, the sun's always shining.


Finally, here's what it looks like from outside. I couldn't find the clocktower - the streets were too narrow and unmarked, and once you're on them, the buildings tower over you!

Telepherique Part I: The Good Trip

As long as I'm posting pictures, here are two from my first (and much more pleasant) trip up the telepherique cable car system. This picture is of the "zone pieton," the pedestrian zone of downtown Grenoble where cars are forbidden. It's definitely my favorite part of the city; it's very vibrant and always bustling.


Here's a view from inside the cable car, looking slightly southwest over the city. Those two main avenues, from left to right, are Boulevards Gambetta and Jean Jaures. In the picture you can barely distinguish the omnipresent mountains; the city's smog and cloud cover contribute to the poor visibility.

Oops. Just kidding.

Oops. Just kidding - this is the last image from that village. These were the public toilets. They smelled so bad I couldn't use them. Supposedly they are "self-cleaning." After one person used it, the door would lock and it would go through some sort of cleansing cycle, spraying everything down - allegedly - with disinfectant. Ugh. Luckily there was a makeshift urinal that I was able to use, just inside this little hut of feces.


Our other "stretch stop" was beside a very pretty lake nestled in the mountains. A few of the more adventurous members of the group actually went swimming in here. I decided to wait for a real beach.


And here it is, the Mediterranean at night. Wobbly picture, because it was cold out and the waves were crashing rather fast. There was a full moon, and it was so gorgeous.


Nice's Palais de Justice, brightly illuminated.


The conclusion of the day on Friday. As we walked around the old section of Nice, I saw a plaque and went to inspect. It told me just how old Nice is - it was first settled in 500 BC. Wow.

On the way to Nice

On the bus to Nice, we saw some amazing scenery. The busdriver took a mountainous route that was a little slower than the highway, but it was well worth it.


There were mountains as far as you could see, and they were enormous. The villages looked so tiny in comparison.


We stopped for a rest break in a little town. This huge soaring rock was its main claim to fame. It really looks like those buildings are about to be eaten at any moment.


Another picture from the same little village. The mountains were so huge, they looked artificial.


Final image from the little village. I love French clock towers! I hope the new ones in Hamilton County are half as appealing.

There's treasure everywhere!

Oh, I'm so glad I went on the weekend excursion! It was awful for my hopes of improving in French, because 90% of my fellow participants were Americans. The remaining 10% were from Canada (English-speaking, of course), Venezuela (also English), Colombia (Spanish), Swedish (English), Greece (French) and Japan (French). Breaking the weekend down into days isn't elegant, but it's easier to summarize!

Friday - Left campus around 1:30pm aboard a gigantic tour bus. Throughout the trip I was very impressed with our driver's skill. One would certainly not guess looking at "Geezelle" that she was an adept tour bus conductrice - I couldn't believe some of the corners she maneuvered around, the bridges we squeezed through and the narrow streets we barreled down. Most of the Americans I met were from Swarthmore or Calvin. There's a girl from Heritage there, but none of them knew her. We arrived rather late into Nice - the bus took a mountainous route and it was totally worth it - the scenery was absolutely incredible! I took a few haphazard pictures through the bus windows; I need to peruse my camera memory card to find good ones to post... I took almost 300. In Nice, we had a communal dinner at "Le Strasbourg." It wasn't too great, but it filled me up. I went out with five guys and a girl to explore the streets of Nice.

Our hotel was about a half-mile from the beach, so we headed straight for it, and then went to the Marche aux Fleurs, a crowded avenue running along the boardwalk (called the Quai des Etats-Unis) with more flower vendors, street merchants and cafes than you can count. The rest of the group was intent on becoming very intoxicated, but the memory of my previous Friday night was still fresh in my mind, so I satisfied myself with an Orangina (like Fanta, except with a splash of semi-real orange juice) and some pseudo-sour patch candies. I loved the beach and Mediterranean. There was a full moon and it illuminated the entire Baie des Anges. I rolled up my jeans and stood in the tide for almost 15 minutes. We made our way back to the hotel and arrived at 1:06am... 6 minutes after the close of the KFC right next to the hotel. ARGH. I had such a craving for American food, too!

Saturday - What a busy day! I woke up early in order to go on a morning trip to St. Paul de Vence. It's a little commune, nestled amidst medieval fortifications, perched on a hill about 25 minutes from Nice. Artists have retreated there to seek solitude for a couple centuries and it was instantly clear why. I've never seen such tiny winding streets before! They were practically minuscule and the surrounding views, once you went to the top of the fortifcations, beautiful. You just feel protected and shielded from everything around you, but the sea is still very visible, even on a cloudy day. I had lunch at the Atmosphere Cafe in Nice. It was not very good, mostly because every course was somehow ruined: unidentifiable vegetables, overcooked salmon, and a hair in my ice cream. Ugh.

The trip to Monaco in the afternoon fixed everything, though. I loved the oceanography museum MarineLand in Monte Carlo! The royal family's favored harpoons were prominently displayed in the historical section of the museum (the zoo part was also very interesting, but the Italians were horribly rude and I had to calm down a British fellow who was getting especially irate at one bumbling Italian who had barged in front of him while he was videotaping), along with a 1911 picture of Prince/King Albert sitting down in his boat while his Irish captain Patrick O'Leary (I'm just making that name up, I don't remember it) aimed the harpoon gun at a whale less than 20 feet from the boat. Impressive photography! We went to the casino afterwards, and I gambled... in the slots room that I snuck into. You had to be 21 to even approach the tables, I was told, and I didn't want to tempt fate by ending up in a Monaco prison (do those even exist? the whole country is only 2 square kilometers!). I changed five euros into goofy 50-cent tokens, quickly lost almost every spin but walked out with three jangling in my pocket as souvenirs. The cars outside were a comfortable sight. I've never seen so many Bentleys and Ferraris in one place!

We returned to Nice rather late, and I had another mediocre dinner with the group from Calvin. Most of them were tired and headed to bed after dinner, but I stayed out with a few. We went to an Irish pub that closed at... midnight?! Argh. Then, we found a cafe (I don't think it has a name, it was just two wacky symbols) and waited 30 minutes for drinks. We paid as soon as possible, because we were worried we'd never see the waiter again, and headed to the Metal Cafe where other kids from the group were. Unfortunately, that closed at 2am, right when we arrived, so we walked a short ways and went to L'Escalier. I hate to continue the trend of negativity, but it too was pretty mediocre! Its only attraction? Open until 5am. In retrospect, that should have been a warning sign... if you have to keep your club open until 5am to make money, you might want to re-think your business plan! We didn't stay that late, though, and left for the hotel around 3:45am. Because it was raining out, a "bathtub party" was planned and then executed jn a 5th floor room. It sounds really exotic, but it was relatively simple: put on a bathing suit, go in a bathroom, crowd around a full bathtub and struggle for control of the shower nozzle, thus soaking the entire bathroom (and its occupants!) in the process. Luckily that was our last night in the hotel... I knew it was time to head to my room when I fell asleep during the blackjack and Indian poker afterwards. Before I collapsed I looked at the time... 4:42am.

Sunday - Somehow, I woke up to my cellphone alarm at 8:37am. I roused myself at the thought of the Henri Matisse museum, and hurried downstairs for the meager hotel "breakfast;" bread, butter and one tiny cup of orange juice OR hot chocolate OR hot tea. I met up with some fellow art lovers and we took Bus 17 to Cimiez, where we spent a little over an hour in the Matisee museum. I loved it. My favorite piece was "Descente du Croix" - sixteen or eighteen white ceramic tiles with some sort of black paint illustrating Jesus' removal from the cross. We had to run to catch the bus back to Nice, barely making the 12:45pm deadline in time. The bus took us to Antibes, where we waited 15 minutes or so until 2pm for the Picasso museum to open. It was also enjoyable (but I preferred Matisse... shhh!), particularly so because it was free! We lucked out and traveled during "le weekend du patrimonie," when all the museums across the country, I believe, are completely gratuit. My favorite piece was "Joie de Vivre," mostly because I eavesdropped on the tour guides explaining it. Antibes also had quaint, tiny streets, and ancient fortifications, but it lacked the allure and intimacy of St. Paul de Vence. My three scoops of ice cream, chocolate, strawberry and "straciatella," like mint chocolate chunk, were expensive... but delicious. I picked up a liter of water for a euro in a little store. As I walked out, I spotted the same water in a cooler and asked if I could just grab that instead -- nope, the water in the cooler was more expensive, because it was "colder." I laughed and contented myself with the minutely warmer, but more affordable water.

Cannes was the next stop, and I worked up the courage to go swimming. "Brr" can't even begin to express the near-Arctic temperature. However, once completely submerged and swimming vigorously, it felt more temperate, like Lake Michigan in December. I saw the "Palais des Festivals" where, I believe, many of the important film premieres are held. I walked on the permanent red-carpet and marveled at the ongoing Audi A8 show. The building itself was pretty non-descript, and would've been considered downright ugly if I hadn't been distracted by all the colorful movie posters everywhere. The bus ride back to Grenoble was quicker, but I want to completely forget the "dinner" I had at a rest-stop we stopped at. I've never had such awful food. I must have subconsciously anticipated the culinary horrors, because I bought a 100 gram Tolberone bar at the gift shop before the meal, and tore into it once I'd tasted the "food" from the cafeteria. My Orangina and the packaged, sealed yogurt were the only redeeming factors. The "steak" and its "sauce" were disgusting, along with the "carrot" garnish and accompanying "fruit cup."

The bus arrived back in Grenoble around 12:40am, but I opted to stay on instead of calling a taxi - the bus dropped me off 500 feet from my friends' apartment in Echirolles! Hooray!

I did little today - responded to an apartment lead, did some laundry, went to the first basketball practice. My body immediately felt the toll of having exercised little for the past four weeks... I gulped down water like a madman. I took the tram back, and talked with Lee, a Chinese guy also at the practice. He was quite nice and offered to teach me Chinese if I aided him with his English. Hooray! Beijing 2008, here I come! After he got off, I transferred trams and spotted two other guys on the new tram who were also at practice. I talked with one, a French fellow who looked like Carrot Top, until he got off, and then conversed with his friend Patrick from Mauritius until he had to leave. My conversation with them caught the attention of another guy on the tram, and he came over to talk to me - Ahmad from Lebanon was very nice and it turned out that he had had basketball practice that night, too, but with a different intramural team!

Some sort of verbal altercation between a young French guy in his 20s and an older-looking scraggly fellow turned into a physical confrontation. I tried, along with other passengers, to separate the two, and to calm them down. I pulled the "emergency" lever after the young guy pushed the older fellow down and started kicking him in the head. Yikes. The conductor ambled back and asked who pulled the lever (the two had since been separated, and were just slinging insults back and forth). I said it was me, and he asked if I wanted the police called. I asked the older fellow, and he said, No, so the conductor didn't blink an eye, turned off the alarm and went back to continue the conducting. I felt like an international observer. The other passengers who helped restrain the two got off and I stayed on until the end of the tram line (only two stops after mine) because the young guy kept menacing the older fellow. They went separate ways, and I assumed everything was well, so I doubled back and now am preparing to head to bed - the first day of (real) class is tomorrow!

What a strange keyboard

The bus to Nice does not leave until 1:15pm, but I took the bus to campus at 10am because yesterday I noticed several flashing notices on the public transport message system warning about perturbations today. The last time I saw that word used, there was a strike by SNCF rail workers, and it delayed my arrival in Grenoble by a day. I did not want to risk missing the bus this afternoon! I was so engrossed in the latest Economist, though, that I missed by bus stop and had to double back.

I am not bringing my laptop with me, so I am in an on-campus bank, BNP Paribas, that coincidentally also offers free internet terminal access in the branch. Unfortunately, there are several downsides to this service: one, you have to listen to the mostt awful pop music from some obscure internet radio station. I really think that it is designed to make you want to leave as quickly as possible. Two, the keyboard, if it can even legally be called that, is a piece of brushed metal, set flush with a wooden counter-top. It is absolutely possible to develop any rhythm at all because the keys are simple circles that barely depress at all, no matter how much or little force you use. Also, the keyboard is in an abridged French style, which means there are no apostrophes - notice how I have not used any contractions - nor any parantheses or quotation marks. Please excuse any typographical errors. Three, non-bank customers are supposed to only use the terminals for 15 minutes. If you recall my vicious dilemma - I cannot open a bank account without proof of housing, and I cannot obtain housing without a bank account - you will understand that the time restriction is particularly galling. Thankfully, it does not appear to be strictly enforced.

The housing hunt continues. Nobody really knows anything, but they all know someone in a random hole-in-the-wall office on the other side of the city who might be able to help you, if you get there during their office hours, which are probably 9:30am to 11:30am, and 1:30pm to 4:00pm, Monday to Thursday. Finding a French bureaucrat in his office on a Friday is like winning the lottery.

I have been able to read extensively about New Orleans and Katrina - actually, that is one of the first things that most of the other students I have met asks, Are you from the South? Until I correct them, many do believe that Indiana is in the Deep South... I am very happy that the death toll appears to be much lower than anticipated. I always thought that the initial projections of 10,000 dead were outrageous and designed to garner more media attention. I doubt that the total among all the states will exceed 1,000.

Now I am being kicked out, but I will be sure to post more after I return from Nice!

Ce weekend

I just signed up for a trip for foreign students to Nice Cote d'Azur. It leaves Friday afternoon and returns Sunday evening, I think. For 160 euros ($196.29 USD), here's what we'll do:

"Nice, capital of the Azur coast, situated on the Mediterranean, at the foot of the Bay of Angels, is renowned for the charm of its location, its tourist appeal and rich artistic and cultural attractions. You'll visit Nice's old town center, a Picasso museum in Antibes, an oceanography museum (MarineLand) in Monaco, and the cities of Cannes and St. Paul de Vence. Nice's beaches are pebbly, but you'll find fine sand in Cannes and Antibes."

I'm bringing my swimsuit. Anyone want any souvenirs?

"Homeless"

OK, wow -- I've been majorly negligent in updating the blog. Let me recap the last week:

• Tuesday - French roommate Angelina departs from reality, I depart from her apartment and go to stay with another girl from ASU and her French boyfriend in a Grenoble suburb called Echirolles. I soon lost count of how many times I profusely thanked them for their hospitality.
• Wednesday - Much of the day was spent lounging about, reveling in my narrow escape. In the late afternoon we drove around looking for apartments, but didn't see much. My main problem in obtaining an apartment of my own stems from French banks' insistence on every potential customer furnishing proof of residency (aka: lease contract, electricity bill, gas bill), and every housing and real estate agency insisting on an open bank account before discussing any business.
• Thursday - Went to campus and waded through the muck of French bureaucracy, successfully obtaining my "carte d'etudiant" - my student ID card! In the evening, I went out with my friend and his girlfriend to a bar where we met several of their friends. Most of the conversation took place in rapid-fire French and I was frequently lost - but my companions were quite sensitive and repeatedly helped translate or explain things to me.
• Friday - I continued the housing hunt, with little success. French bureaucrats keep the most asinine hours ever. Secretaries are the worst. Their typical work week is as follows: Monday through Thursday, 9:30am to 11:30am, then 2 hour lunch break, followed by a bit more work from 1:30pm to 3:00pm. Arghhh! Oh! On Fridays, they only work from 9:30am to 11:00am. It's maddening! Friday evening I went out with several Germans I had met earlier in the week. There was a free ride on the telepherique, celebrating the one-year anniversary of making the famous cable-car system handicapped accessible. Before I rendezvous'd with the group, I ate an enormous kebab sandwich - at least as big as my skull. Unfortunately, with a full stomach, it was thus rather difficult to gauge the effects of the seemingly harmless wine we later consumed... We danced, took pictures and talked with Brits and Canadians. Then, I woke up at 1:40am, slumped against a mountain railing and absolutely befuddled as to what had happened in the previous two hours. The telepherique had closed at midnight and I felt doomed - the only other way back to the city was an hour-long walk, in the pitch black, down narrow, winding switchbacks. As I walked/stumbled around, I noticed that there appeared to be others who shared my fate - in fact, five others. Including me, that made six, just the right amount that one cable-car could hold. Apparently a technician was still awake at the top of the mountain, and he contacted his colleague down at the bottom, and they agreed to open the telepherique to us, for one last ride down. Whew. As we passed over the city, there were scores of honking cars and cheers and whistles. There must be some reputation for late-night telepherique trips...
• Saturday - I made it back to the Germans' apartment successfully and spent the night on their pull-out sofa. It was exquisitely comfortable. In the morning, I was invited to go on a five-hour hike. Though dressed in the same clothes I'd worn the day before, I accepted - what better way to start the recovery process? The hike was incredibly intense and ranks in my top five "most grueling workouts ever" list. I was utterly drenched in sweat. The Germans were total machines and kept hiking, only occasionally stopping for a quick rest. I kept up... barely. Saturday evening, I went to a British flat-warming party that a girl I'd met while looking at classes and housing had invited me to. I had debated whether to go or not, because I was so exhausted from the hike, but gritted my teeth and went... and I was quite happy I did, because there I met another British girl who told me she knew of a French couple who rented rooms to students and had an open room! I got her contact information and soon left, eager to catch up on lost sleep. (Entering the flat was like entering a mini-UK - EVERYONE spoke English, and there were at least 40 or 50 people milling around.)
• Sunday - a laid-back day, I mostly cleaned up the apartment and re-arranged my hastily thrown together suitcase and bags. I also did a few loads of laundry. It's so nice having clean clothes (even if dryers are incredibly scarce, and almost everyone just hangs their clothes outside).
• Monday - Running more bureaucratic errands, trying to find classes and the relevant information regarding their inscription policies - some classes, you just arrive at the first session and say, Hello, I'm here! For others, you have to go to bizarrely-placed offices, like "B-324bis" and stand for several moments in the door until an older Frenchman notices your presence and beckons you in the room, then hands you a piece of scrap paper and instructs you to simply write down your name, e-mail and home university -- not the classes you want to take. Apparently that information comes later...

And now I'm off to call the older French couple to see if they still have a room left (the British girl mentioned they gave preferential lodging to girls -- argh!). In case that mission fails, I'm off to CROUS BLEU, the regional housing agency, to see if they could potentially aid me. If that strikes out, I'll have to continue to trespass on the hospitality of my hosts for at least a few more days.

You've got to be kidding me

After six days in Grenoble... I'm homeless. A fierce argument with my roommate -- she blamed me for breaking the washing machine, though it'd been iffy since I arrived, then claimed it would cost 400 euros to repair! -- culminated in me walking out with all of my belongings, toiletries and foodstuffs (I brought my wet, dripping laundry, too). I gave her 100 euros and bade goodbye. Fortunately, friends were able to pick me up and I have the luxury of staying at their place for a couple days.

Unfortunately, I left my Frosted Flakes ("Frosties" in France) behind. Time to mount a midnight raid... leave no Frostie behind!

A Full Day in France

Ah, voila -- sorry it took so long to make this post. For the past few days I've had two dual obsessions: reading and downloading information about Katrina, and exploring the city of Grenoble... on foot (which should help explain the delay - this city is huge!). Now, back to my first days in France...

On Thursday, I woke up in Julien's apartment after about 9 hours of sleep, around 10am, happily thinking I was slowly adjusting to the +7 hour time-difference (no such luck; even now, 10 days later, I'm still a bit iffy). I helped him arrange his things and clean out the apartment, a time-consuming task but one that I could sympathize with (it took Dad and I five 70-lb. UPS boxes to ship all my stuff back home from Tempe, and even then my car was jampacked with other belongings). I checked my e-mail online - 80 messages! - and tried to write back a few, but the French keyboard is really peculiar, so it was a painful undertaking.

We went out in the late afternoon and explored Aix-en-Provence, a neat little college town about 20 minutes away from Marseille. I bought a SIM card for my phone (e-mail me if you want the number!) and a calling card to call back home. Julien's roommate arrived and helped move out some of the remaining things with her Dad. We then started taking things over to the new apartment and ended up sleeping there, after exploring the city -- we walked a ton, but WOW, it was worth it. Aix had so many historical buildings (and fountains - Julien said at least 60 exist in the ctiy!), including one that dated from the 13th century. It was quite fascinating, especially at night, when the dim lighting made the stern architecture even more imposing.

I took only a night's worth of clothes with me and we retreived the rest of my luggage and his late Friday morning. We then lugged it all across town to the train station and grabbed a train (with 5 minutes to spare) to Marseille, a large and nasty industrial city. We deboarded and took another train to Les Arcs Draguignan, a small outpost in the south of France, and his uncle and some other male relative met us there. We loaded up the petite voiture and drove to Plan-de-la-Tour. (Yes, I fell asleep along the way.)

We unloaded and... wow. Two thousand people call Plan-de-la-Tour home and I think that's an exceedingly generous estimate, perhaps including all known relatives of the actual inhabitants, and counting every other dog as a person. This was an actual village and it was tiny! (I figured Johnny Depp would've been notified of my arrival; I expected to see him weeping with joy as my procession arrived, but his personal assistant must have dropped the ball - again.) We stowed away my bags -I was so relieved to be free of them; somehow they'd been steadily increasing in weight, or my weariness was starting to exact a serious toll... We explored the village in about 25 minutes, meeting his three aunts, grandmother, uncle and some other relatives along the way. As we were walking back to his house, one of the aunts invited us to dinner. I leapt at the opportunity - and was so glad I did. We had a five-plus hour classic French meal (my first ever!) and it was wonderful. All sorts of local dishes ("Provencal" style) accompanied with two different wines. I was positively gorged. I politely declined coffee, citing urgent reports from my stomach that suggested an immediate implosion was imminent. However, they insisted I try the "Liquer des Moines" - a thick yellow-ish liquer made by some monks on an island south of Nice. "How strong can it be," I thought, "if it's made by monks?" Forty-three percent strong, it turns out, but that really doesn't tell the whole story. This alcohol was SO strong, I had to wince and close my eyes - involuntarily - with every miniscule sip and suffer silently as liquid fire rolled down my throat. It took me 30 minutes to finish my serving, about half a shot glass. His aunt, meanwhile, was able to polish away three in that time... Julien and I waddled back to his house well after midnight and I collapsed into bed, concerned that the sudden increase in weight would strain the bedsprings.

And so concludes Friday night in Plan-de-la-Tour. To follow: Saturday, venturing to Julien's friend's house and pool - BRR, meeting the rest of his immediate family, Sunday, going to the pool again and going to... drum roll... St. Tropez. (Cue the rolling-R sound that Roy Orbison makes in "Pretty Woman.")

Here's what the view over Plan-de-la-Tour looked like from the friend's house...


And oh - here's a map of southern France where you can see all the cities we jetted through... Nice, Marseille, Aix, Draguignan, Ste. Maxime and St. Tropez. Plan-de-la-Tour is northwest of Ste. Maxime, in the middle of absolute nowhere. I loved it :)

Finally in Grenoble

I'm finally in Grenoble and I finally have somewhat reliable Internet access. The last 9 days have been a whirlwind! The flight from Newark to Geneva was brutal - almost 7 hours. There were TV screens positioned throughout the cabin that displayed the plane's location in real-time. Watching us cross the Atlantic was really depressing.

I had 8 hours to wait in Geneva before my flight to Nice. Brutal. I wanted to go out and explore, but I had nowhere to leave my bags and really no idea what to do or where to go. Plus, the ATM machines only dispensed Swiss francs - and what was I going to do with them once I went to France?

I flew EasyJet from Geneva to Nice. They weren't so Easy. I had to pay $64 because my largest suitcase was 8 kilograms heavier than their weight allowance. Granted, it was a behemoth. I think at it's heaviest, it was 35 or 40 kilos. (To get that weight in pounds, multiply by 2.2 - so, between 77 and 88 pounds.) I tried to take the bag containing the jeu de boule, but the x-ray security personnel wouldn't let me past with it... I was frightened to find out how much that weighed, but mercifully they just checked it at the gate and didn't make me pay for that... because I'm sure it would've been obscene. It came out in decent shape once I retreieved it from the luggage carousel in Nice.

Nice was gorgeous - for the 20 minutes or so I saw of it from the plane while landing (during which I looked past the Finnish man lecturing me about George W. Bush and gazed at the Mediterranean), and the 20 minutes that I rode the bus with my friend Julien and his boyfriend Florian from the airport to the train station. Julien and I took a train to Marseille, and then a bus to Aix-en-Provence (I'll try to find a map of France and pinpoint these locations later), where we took a taxi to his apartment. After climbing 8 flights of stairs... I heaved a sigh of relief and relaxed... for a bit. I showered and collapsed on his bed in his room - the last furnished room in the apartment, since he was moving to another apartment on the other side of the city and the landlord was coming in two days to go through a moving-out checklist - while he slept on a mat in the living room like some Hindu guru. I felt bad for about 4 seconds, and then fell into the densest sleep of my life.

To be continued... in the next post, we'll hear about moving to Julien's new apartment, exploring Aix at night, traveling to Marseille... again... and then to, eventually, Les Arcs Draguignan, where I had my first experience with a tiny French car as Julien's uncle and another miscellaneous male family relative met us and drove us to Plan de la Tour, the tres petit village of 2,000 people that Johnny Depp calls home - and where I would spend the next five days. I'll try to start uploading pictures, too! (Alas, my camera has only a short time to live... I forgot its charger aux Etats-Unis. Crap.)