finally, cote d'azure

Per a request from my French professor to submit some entries about the end of the trip, I've decided to write a bit about our May 1-5 trip to Cote d'Azure, during which we went to Nice, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Tourettes-sur-Loup, and Monaco.

Nice was a charming resort city. Even at the beginning of May, we noticed the sunbathers slowly coming south, though the beaches directly in Nice are quite pebbly. We visited 3 museums the first day - the first was the Modern Art museum, which was beautifully-constructed, with a cool circular design. We walked through the rooftop gardens and displays and looked down into the empty middle of the museum. During our visit, our art history professor mostly focused on discussing Yves Klein, who developed a special color blue with a chemist and began using it in all of his work. He had several canvases painted simply with this incredibly vibrant color, which was such a dark bright blue it was practically purple.

He painted naked women with this color and had them lay down on his canvases - some of his paintings had these torso imprints of the women, which then smeared off into the side of the canvas, making it look like a mermaid's bodystain.

And here's another one I liked.

This blue was so...engaging. It sucks you in. We talked about whether this was art - this scientific process of choosing the right chemicals to create this perfect blue. He painted the canvas just plain blue to raise the same questions as Man Ray and others were asking - what makes art art? Why can't a urinal be art? Why can't the intention behind my art be to question art itself? Does it have to be beautiful or can it just make you think, to be art? And so on.

The second museum we visited that first day in Nice was the Matisse museum. Jerome, our art prof, was very funny - it was the first time that he wasn't our group's official tour guide, and though he let the young women who led us around speak mostly without interruption, he would correct her once in a while, or, it seemed, test her to make sure she actually knew her stuff. I love Matisse. He has such graceful, simple lines. I prefer these simple sketches to his other work, but everything he did was incredible. I can't believe how one man can go through so many artistic phases in one lifetime. What a guy.


Then we went to the Chagall museum. I love Chagall. By the way, this was my favorite museum day of my whole time in Paris - cool modern art and then two of my absolute favorites, one right after the other. The Chagall museum was a mix of his religious art and his romantic art - one of the rooms was dedicated to his wife. I was really surprised to see, in one of his triptychs, an image of Jesus on the cross, with a rabbi beneath him, holding a Torah and wearing a tallis. I had never seen a painting of Jesus so obviously associated with Judaism. His other religious art recounted stories from the Old and New Testaments. This was one of my favorites - Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden.


Good day in Nice! The other days we spent traveling around to different towns around Nice, looking at several modern art institutes, private studios, and galleries. In Vence, we saw Matisse's chapel, which he designed for the nurse who took care of him in his old age. This was a chapel unlike any other I had ever seen. His art was so simple - a few brush-strokes on tile, a very informal, not overwhelming, but very down-to-earth kind of religious place. Matisse was never that religious, really, so he painted an enormous Mary and Jesus, which looked very much like any mother and child - an image anyone could connect to.

The windows, which he also designed, were gorgeous.

The nun who gave a short speech about the chapel explained that he designed the blue and yellow windows in such a way so that the light that came through the stained glass would filter into violet. It worked. The windows look rather simple, but Matisse obviously put a lot of thought into them.

The sister giving the speech was very feisty. One of the men in the room, who obviously couldn't understand her all-in-French presentation, hadn't turned off his cell phone, and it began ringing during her explanation. She immediately stopped speaking, turned to him, and told him to shut it off. He kept trying and failing, and she shook her head at him and waited the noisy 2 minutes for him to figure out his phone. She tapped her foot impatiently and we all knew right away that should that happen again, and to one of us, we too would get that disapproving look and sharp remark. What a lady. Probably 70 yrs old.

After the chapel, we visited the little town of Vence, which was simply gorgeous - what you would expect a small town in the South of France to be. Windy, hilly roads, cobblestone streets, low arches, flowers everywhere, cats running about, friendly people. It was lovely.

The next day we went to the market, picked up some food for a picnic lunch and went on a hike in the foothills of the Alps, right near the town of Tourettes-sur-Loup. After hiking in the real, Swiss Alps here in Switzerland, I realize that it wasn't much of an intense hike. At the time, however, it felt like we were champions of the mountains. It was a hot day, too. Pictures prove that we were SWEATY once we got to the top. What I'll remember from that day is our art professor wrapping his dirty white tshirt around his head like a turban, and the incredible picnic lunch that I shared with Stephanie. I almost died finishing the hike because I was so full, but it was worth it. We bought fresh cherry tomatoes, apricots, 2 types of goat cheese, a baguette, and olive bread. We had to make other people finish our cheese because we simply couldn't, but I will remember, FOREVER, those perfect cherry tomatoes with spiky bottoms. Look!


We did other things on the trip :
- had an INCREDIBLE group dinner (most gourmet food I had the entire trip) in another town along the sea, whose name I've now forgotten
- discovered an ice cream place in Nice that served basil, tomato, olive, violet, and lavender ice cream (among others)
- had two hours to explore Monaco (which is more than enough - I must say Monaco is extremely boring - YACHTS YACHTS RICH PEOPLE YACHTS SOUVENIRS YACHTS. It's just a principality, after all. Royalty and a beautiful view of the sea!)
- tasted sugared violets, a regional specialty, in another small town

More than anything, this 5-day trip was a realization for me, though a somewhat late one, that France does not equal Paris. Paris does not equal France. Somehow, I think that we in the states forget that there is a lot more to France than just its famous capitol. I loved seeing what I thought was very authentic Southern France - the coziness of the small towns, the warmth of the people (and the weather). The completely different ambiance there really engaged me, and has made me want to go back to France to explore the other parts of the country that I've never really made time for even consdering. So there you have it. (I want to go to Montpelier, Avignon, and Marseille, to start. They'll be on my never-ending "to-visit" list.)

huh?

I discovered a word that all non-native English speakers I have met here use, and which I have never heard used by anyone in the states.

"aggress"

Even my Mozilla Firefox spell-checker wants me to finish this word, with "-ive" or "-or" or "-ion". It's used here in the following ways:

'I was just biking through the park and she began to aggress me! She yelled and swore at me, and told me I couldn't be on my bike on that path."

'We were aggressed yesterday by a couple men."

Has anyone ever heard this? Maybe it's a British thing and so all the Europeans learn it?

a day in Geneva

Some key outfits I've spotted/a sample of my European people-watching:

At the beach - white speedo + fanny pack. All overlap.

On the street - blue camo shirt, green camo pants, purple camo bag looped over the shoulder. HELLO please try pattern + solid.

At the bus stop - crazy hag-like bag lady with droopy flowered clothes and a bunny. On a leash. Eating straw.

Everywhere, on men - Lots of mesh neon tank tops and eurotrash hairstyles that I cannot even locate on Google image search. Imagine short spiky hair on top, and medium length in the back, but spiked backwards (perpendicular to the spikes on top). Disgusting.

(This is not to say that I dislike European fashion and people-watching, only that I can best recall the outrageous things I see.)

israel all the time

I had a pretty horrifying experience this week at the "Fetes de Geneve", which is this month-long celebration down by the lake, with food and rides and games and music. My friend Ophelie (from France, family is from Morocco, Jewish) and I were listening to a band (an Irish group that played the blues and some rock&roll - Geneva LOVES rock&roll). The music ended and a couple guys came up and began to hit on us. They were Moroccans, and Muslim, and Ophelie said "Oh, I come from Morocco, but I'm Jewish." Suddenly everything changed. Immediately they started bashing Israel, saying "Israel does not exist, only Palestine exists, we will have Palestine in the end, you will see." I was so shocked. They kept saying, "No, we don't hate Jewish people, we just hate Israelis" - which is a cop-out. Anti-Zionism is a manifestation, in multiple ways, of anti-Semitism. People who support the right to self-determination for Palestinians but not for Jews demonstrate explicit bias against the Jewish people. Even Martin Luther King expressed this when he made a speech at Harvard in 1968, saying, "When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews; you are talking anti-Semitism." And check out this article for more on the topic: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/nov/29/comment

Anyways, I must say, though, that because of all the work I've done during the course of my internship I felt well-prepared to explain and argue my views on the issues. The men we met were speaking without any knowledge of the history of the conflict, the history of the land, the peace process, ANYTHING. So, in French, I tried to persuade them to educate themselves. How did they expect to be taken seriously when all they were able to say to us was, "We will bomb you out, we will win in the end. Israel does not exist." Why must Israel cease to exist for there to be a Palestinian state? That was a question they could not answer. We kept trying to discuss the two-state solution, with absolutely no success. Ophelie was brave and continued to talk to them for almost 45 minutes. I wasn't as strong - I couldn't push away the feeling that I was talking to children about such a basic thing - educating oneself. They had it all wrong. They were spewing nonsense - false information, radical propaganda. I couldn't believe I was listening to terrorist rhetoric coming out of the mouths of young, mid-20s Moroccan men who connected so deeply to the plight of Palestinians.

The thing is, I agreed with them on some counts. I think there is a LOT to criticize about the Israeli government, and there is no one who criticizes it more fiercely than Israelis themselves. In my opinion, Israel should not be building Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories because that kind of action hinders plans for peace. However, the Israeli government has issued statements time and time again saying that as soon as the PLO can guarantee the security of Israelis across the border, they will immediately pull all settlements and remove the people from that land. Unfortunately, this makes for a cyclical 'chicken and egg' situation.

I really can't stop thinking about the conversation we had with them. One of the men had lost his two twin brothers in Ramallah, the West Bank, due to the conflict (I'm not sure how). Of course he was emotional, angry, aggressive, and would not listen to our side. In the end he apologized for the harsh language he was using and explained simply that "C'est un putain de guerre" or "It's a fucked-up war". I said to him that even though we disagree about the land, at least we have something in common - loss. Hopefully the desire on both sides to avoid further casualties and more loss of life will lead to a reasonable and peaceful solution. Until then, I can only hope that these men and others like them are willing to learn about the conflict instead of repeating the propogandist rhetoric that is perpetuated by Hamas leaders and which fuels supporters of the Palestinian cause.

favorite religion

This weekend I had the privilege of being the first Jew a girl has ever met in her entire life. Veronika is Austrian, and she almost died when she found out that I'm Jewish. Reaction: "YOU'RE JEWISH? But you're so lucky! That's so great! Judaism is my very favorite religion! You're the first Jewish person I've ever met before! I want to live in Israel!" She went on to say that she had always wanted to meet one, but never had the chance, in Austria. What a riot.

Lyon

Here, amongst all of these Europeans who have a language other than English as their mother tongue, who speak in lovely accents and sometimes fumble their cute Europeanized English words, I feel like an idiot speaking clean American English. I think I sound dumb! Yet I'm the one who speaks it fluently! Everyone sounds more worldly when they speak with an accent. Maybe I should pretend to have one. Unfortunately, the only one I can mimic almost perfectly is Russian - any attempts I make at other accents just sound...Russian.

Two weekends ago I went to Lyon, France with my flatmate, Nora, and her friend from work, Alberto, from Spain. It was only about 2 hours from Geneva! I loved Lyon. I fell in love with it immediately and couldn't stop talking about how much I liked it. I kept oohing and ahhing. What a perfect city! It has everything that's good about Paris without the big city craziness. I decided that it's like Paris in that it has great public transportation, is very youthful because it has a good university, and felt like it had a lot of potential in terms of museums, theaters, art, etc - lots of things to do. On the other hand, it has so much of what Paris doesn't - a more comfortable, walkable city center with warm, open people, a great old part of town, and overall, real character. I loved Paris but I always felt like wherever I took the subway in Paris, I would come out and the neighborhood would look almost the same. I love being able to find cute neighborhoods, hidden cafes, hole-in-the-wall shops, etc., and Paris just felt so uniform to me. But in Lyon, the city has so many contrasts. The new town had a giant ferris wheel and a large shopping center, giant fountains and theaters. On the other hand, the old town seemed almost like Italy, with its winding little ruelles (small roads) sprinkled with busy cafes and small shops. Also, Lyon is supposed to be the gastronomic capital of France. Mmm. Overall, I'm a big fan.


pretty buildings

cute street in the old town - beef street

And the cathedral - oh, the cathedral. From the outside it looks pretty boring, actually. It was built not long after Sacre Coeur, so it's pretty modern (mid to second half of the 19th century, I think). When I came in, though, I was taken aback. The inside of the cathedral is completely gilded and covered and gold-tinged mosaics. LOOK:





Lyon, what a charming place.

european accent

Tomorrow night I'm going to a night of Paleo, a week-long music festival in Nyon, Switzerland. It's only 20 minutes away, and I get to see Mika, Justice, Caribou, and I'm from Barcelona, among others. A friend of mine here is working there all week and he has a bunch of free tickets, and he offered me one! I was planning on doling out the one-day entry fee for the festival, but this is so much better.

The other night, chicken breasts were on sale at the grocery store. THIS NEVER HAPPENS. Meat is extremely expensive here. I didn't realize I had bought 4 chicken breasts, and so when I got home and saw that the expiration date was within the week I decided to just cook them all at once. I made two meals - chicken coconut curry (with rice) and marinated chicken with peanut satay chili sauce (with rice). Now I have enough food for an army aka my lunch and dinner for the whole week.

I've been having many conversations lately about what I want to do with myself after I graduate. The funny thing is, I'm having these conversations with people 5-10 years older than me, most of whom don't know, themselves, what their plans are. Everyone kind of just takes things as they come - a cool job here, an internship there, a 1-year Masters program, a year at the German mission, maybe law school, etc. These people are just as confused as I am. Their age makes no difference.

I think in blogging abroad, it's difficult to strike a balance between describing your cool travels/neat things you've done and writing about the mundane details of everyday working life in a foreign country. I'll do my best. This one's mundane.

In other news, someone told me that I don't have a Minnesotan accent, that I don't even have an American accent. They told me I have a "European accent" in my English - this, coming from an American. I was horrified. What does that even mean????