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????

Swiss adventures

I HAVE TO RETURN TO THIS BLOG.

Geneva's a great place. It's ranked 3rd for best quality of life in the world - Switzerland, unsurprisingly, has 3 cities in the top ten! There are fountains on every streetcorner with, I swear, pristine Evian water flowing out. It's a nice, clean proper, quiet place. They say the summer here is a bit more lively, and it has been. So far, the European Cup in June definitely kept the city going. Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, and of course Switzerland had massive contingents here, and the Portugese and Spanish fans in particular would honk their car horns and scream and holler until 2am when their team won. Thanks to the games there was always something to do, and having the screening center 3 blocks from my apartement was VERY convenient.

The Fete de la Musique was great too! I don't think I will ever again see that many people in Geneva in one place. There was great music - everything from blues to aretha to jefferson airplane to screamo - and delicious food.

I've gone on several Swiss day trips. First, Montreux.

I went to Montreux the first weekend I was in Geneva, with an intern from work and a friend of his. Montreux is also on Lake Geneva and the view of the mountains is INCREDIBLE. Look!



Actually, I may have taken this picture in Vevey, but that's only 20 minutes away from Montreux. Same diff.

We went to Chateau de Chillon, a beautiful castle right on the lake which was once the home of the Counts of Savoy. It had a neat moat, some funny medieval toiles (just holes in a bench above the water), and a dark dungeon, where a monk, François de Bonivard, was kept, and about whom Lord Byron wrote a poem - The Prisoner of Chillon.


Me and Daniel, an intern from my NGO who left 2 weeks after I arrived.

Montreux has a very famous jazz festival every mid-July, and so when my mom was in town, we took the train to see what it was all about. The free jazz was ok - I'm sure Quincy Jones' 75th Birthday Celebration would have been far more impressive but we were not willing to dole out the 250 francs per person required to get in. Also, it was raining, and the whole shore of Lake Geneva was covered in a sort of fair, or market, with lots of delicious food and cool trinkets but way too many people. So unfortunately, I didn't get the best impression of beautiful Montreux the second time around.

Other things in Montreux - a statue of Freddie Mercury (Queen owned a house here and they recorded a lot of their music there), and gorgeous shutters and house facades. Like this.



My mom and I also went to Neuchatel, though on a Sunday when, as everywhere else in Switzerland, everything is DEAD. CLOSED. SHUT DOWN. I think people just resign themselves to laundry and reading on Sundays. However, even despite the yucky weather (it rained all weekend) the town was extremely cute, with lots of cobblestone streets, bizarre colorful fountains, red rooftops and one really neat flat painted street. Here are some pictures:


that weird flat street


At the chateau up at the top of the hill, overlooking the city.

Mom, in the old town.

I'll be blogging more! I have pictures to post and everything! Now that my parents have visited, I will have lots to write about. I've been so bad at this blog, tsk tsk.

the HRC

So I've been in Geneva for about 2 weeks and have just completed my first full week of work. I really like my job. Everyone in the office is so friendly and open and helpful. I never feel like an idiot for asking questions, since, of course, I just don't know how things work quite yet.

The 8th session of the Human Rights Council has been convening for the past 2 weeks, so what I've been doing is essentially attending all of the meetings, taking down, verbatim, what the delegates are saying, and reporting back to the organization with reviews of the day's discussions. It has been so interesting to observe the way that these diplomats speak to and about one another. There are so many careful subtleties that they use in order not to ruffle anyone's feathers. The delegate from Slovenia, who has been speaking on behalf of the European Union for this session, once said, in response to numerous interruptions by the delegate from Egypt during NGO speeches, "This is becoming a farce." A FARCE is extremely strong language when it comes to UN diplomacy. It's just interesting how careful the delegates have to be.

The languages used in the HRC are just as fascinating. The interpreters that work for the UN do simultaneous translating, which requires them to listen to what the delegates are saying and translate at the same time, while also listening to what the delegates say afterwards, while the interpreters are translating. It's incredible, to not only develop that kind of multi-tasking ability, but also to be able to have the kind of specific, technical, and also diplomatic vocabulary that the delegates use in their statements. The delegates themselves are so very articulate. Often, even when they are not reading their statements, it sounds as if they have already planned out what they have to say and are simply reciting it. No hesitations, no ums, no pauses, just perfect speeches. That's not to say that they always say something significant, but they can say nothing so beautifully.

I often listen to the French translation, or the Russian translation, just to hear the type of language that they are using. It's so technical. I find that I'm understanding more of the French than the Russian, simply because I never encounter that kind of sophisticated, technical, diplomatic language in Russian.

Here's a picture of one of the HRC sessions that I found online, which looks exactly like one of the rooms they have been convening in. I usually sit on the very far left, behind the divider.



I've also been working on several research projects, looking into human rights violations in Russia and analyzing the 2008-2009 members of the HRC in terms of their own human rights status. So many of them have terrible human rights records, so it's a shame they were voted in as members.

This weekend is the Fete de la Musique, a festival during which there is always some kind of band, orchestra, or group playing music all over the city. I'm actually going to leave soon to find some music to listen to! Maybe salsa? Or some blues. We'll see.

LISBON

In other news, Sarah (my friend from high school who has been spending a year in Geneva) and I just returned from a fabulous weekend in Lisbon. It is a beautiful city - very hilly, with tons of winding side-streets covered in streamers. My favorite street is below (I don't even remember its name!).

It's so steep! There were old ladies just sitting on their stoops with their small dogs all up and down this street. Old men were barbecuing, more old ladies leaning out of their shuttered windows. And the entire time, music was playing from every corner! Here's a video of the street - listen to the music. I'm pretty sure it's Amalia, whose voice I heard all through the secondhand market and very frequently being played from inside people's homes.



We visited the Tower of Belem, built in the early 16th century as part of a defense system. It was absolutely beautiful. The architecture iss very Moroccan, and was influenced by Moorish design. The tower is quite small, only about 35 meters, so it was hard to picture it as useful for defense. It was used for other things later on - a customs post, a prison, etc. Really cool place, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.



We also visited the castle in the old city, a second-hand market, the beach, numerous statue-filled plazas, a beautiful church, and we walked along the port. And we ate a LOT of seafood. Check out these snails! We ate them with toothpicks!

Also, the last night we were in Lisbon, Portugal won against Turkey in one of the Eurocup games, actually held in Geneva. WOW. People go nuts. Sarah and I were sitting in one of the plazas and heard hundreds of cars honking, people running around with the Portuguese flag waving in the air, people leaning out of car windows, through sunroofs, yelling...it was quite an experience. That night, a bar played only traditional Portuguese music and I danced with a very happy 55 yr old man wearing the Portuguese team's jersey, who then returned to his balcony above the bar, where he danced alone for everybody down below. He's the one facing the camera, dancing with someone facing away from the camera.

just got here

First impressions of Geneva plus things I forgot to check on:

1) Didn’t realize I wouldn’t be given towels here! Am going to have to air dry after showering until I find a towel tomorrow.

2) Didn’t realize I would need to buy my own laundry detergent! Must do this before doing laundry. Am in desperate need of doing laundry. Host family could not do laundry for past 3 weeks.

3) Geneva is a rather small, sleepy city that has been suddenly overtaken by football fans. Half of the Eurocup games are going to be held in Switzerland, and half in Austria. Two games were held in Geneva last night, when I was still in Lisbon. Everything is dead in Geneva on Sundays, and late at night, but this Eurocup has forced lots of places to remain open, which is great.

4) I swear, Europe has to complicate everything, even grocery stores. There are 3 different sizes of this one grocery store. The top level, the largest store, is located where? IN THE AIRPORT. The others are smaller and less cheap, apparently.

5) My roommates are nice but seem to be quite busy with their own stuff, and will likely be keeping to themselves for the most part, from how they’ve described their experience in the apartment.

6) Excellent designers, those Swiss. My room is very nice, simple, and sleek, as are the main rooms of the apartment. Here are some pictures of my room. I'll get pictures of the main rooms of the apartment up later.





I don’t currently have internet so I will probably post this tomorrow, when I will also hopefully have the following:
- Swiss SIM card
- Laundry card
- towel
- laundry detergent
- bus pass

Tomorrow is going to be one hell of a scary day. All I have on me (not online because I don’t have internet) when it comes to info about Geneva is a transportation map and a regular map. Where do I buy things? Where do I find bus passes? Where do I go grocery shopping in town? (I already bought some things at the airport grocery. THE AIRPORT. How bizarre).

The prices here are absolutely outrageous. A bottle of water at the airport was 6 Swiss Francs. A kebab in town was 12, and Sarah said that was one of the cheap places. Oyyyyy.

not an update

Oh, I'm no good at this blogging business. I will try to catch up soon, but that will probably happen once I'm in Geneva. We only have a week and a half left here, and I have a list of things I want to do in Paris before I leave, which trumps blogging.

However, lists make me feel like I'm accomplishing something, so here's a list of what I want to blog about, eventually:

1) Nice, Vence, Menton, Tourettes-sur-Loup, Monaco

2) Florence (subsections for: art museums, David (gets his own section), gelato, cat-calls)

3) The stress of doing research in Paris (lack of libraries)

4) The Barber of Seville at Opera Bastille

5) Our visit to a mosque

6) How much more I like French people nowadays

7) How my host family is always M.I.A.

8) This one puppy in Florence I almost stole (just kidding, that's the whole story)

I'll try harder this summer, I promise.

cultural events

So for this program, CUPA, the Center for University Programs Abroad, gives us 200 euros to spend as "cultural money". If we have any of those 200 euros left at the end of the trip, we have to give them back to CUPA. So far, I have used the money on dance classes, a tour of the Palais Garnier, the entrance into the Institut du Monde Arabe (Institute of the Arab World), the train ride to a cool museum in Reuil-Malmais, and the admission price for a French movie. My next 3 planned events sound fantastic.

1) Champagne tasting cruise on the Seine (in the evening! on a bateau-mouche) on Monday night with several other ladies from the program

2) Soccer game - the last of the regular season before World Cup qualifiers, between France and Colombia

3) To spend the last little bit of money, hopefully a 10-euro walking tour in Montmartre or the Marais district one of these coming weekends.

Can't wait!

Palais Garnier

After we got back from Barcelona, we had one day in Paris before leaving for Nice. So Megan and I went on a guided tour at the Palais Garnier.

The Palais Garnier holds the famous "Phantom of the Opera" Opera House which is no longer, in fact, used for operas due to lack of space (they simply can't accomodate the number of people who normally attend the opera, so now they are held at Opera Bastille). The Palais Garnier now hosts mostly ballet and modern dance performances.

The Palais is beautiful and extremely gilded. You can see the front of it on a post I made earlier, when we went to the ballet there. It was commissioned by Napoleon III, who had recently endured an attempted assassination at the Opera Bastille, the other Opera House. He decided he needed a safer place to view his operas, and had an architectural contest, which Charles Garnier won at the age of only 32. It was completed in 1874.

This looks a bit like the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.


The tour guide explained the many different entrances into the Opera, which depended on the social status of the guest. Unfortunately, Napoleon III died before the Opera House was completed, so he never even got the chance to use his special kingly (emperor-ly?) entrance. As a result, they never built it! The walls are just covered with plain white plaster.

Another fun fact - because the chandelier was lit by candles and it was so difficult to lower and lift it (it weighs 6 tons!), it was impossible to turn out the lights during performances. So people didn't pay attention to the performance as much as they paid attention to EACH OTHER. That incredibly heavy chandelier fell once, killing one person. That accident was actually the inspiration for "Phantom of the Opera". Also, back in the day, the Opera took hours and hours, because the guests would have a huge dinner during intermission.

My favorite part of the Opera Garnier was the Chagall painting that surrounds the main chandelier. It was only put in place in 1964, and the installation was quite a scandal. People complained that it clashed with the rest of the Opera House, and I think they're right. But it clashes in a good way! It's so bright and colorful, and pays homage to many composers, musicians, dancers, works of art, and places in Paris. Take a look.




I think it's great. But then again, I love Chagall.

oh host family

My host-father just:
1) Came home unexpectedly after saying he was going off to the summer house with the rest of the family for 2 weeks;
2) Was shocked that there was still water all over the kitchen floor (even though I told him about it days ago and he tried to help me fix it but it didn't work);
3) Mentioned to me, in context completely unrelated to it, "the bathroom door that I never close, which is so impolite to do in France." Thanks for mentioning that to me AFTER 7 WEEKS OF STAYING HERE! Also, he has been home a grand total of maybe 8 days this whole time I've been here. What does he know?!

Oy vey. What a host-dad, what a host-dad.

Did I mention that after the 2nd time I asked them to do my laundry at their country house (because the laundry machine here broke) he requested that I not ask them to wash my jeans "so often"? ONCE for one pair and TWICE for another IN 7 WEEKS?! Oh, Europe makes America look so fresh and clean. People just wear jeans for weeks and weeks here. I don't get it. Washers are readily available, people! Oh, Europe.

laundry is so easy in the states

Quick story.

My mom told me that when she was in college, she learned German only from female professors and so when she lived in Germany for a couple months it was at first very difficult for her to understand men when they spoke German to her. I think that's the reason why I have a hard time understanding my host father - I have only ever had female French professors!

My host father attempted to fix our washing machine a couple days ago. The next day, he and my host mother left for their summer home, to stay there (again) for another few weeks. Unfortunately, I have a good feeling that he exacerbated the laundry machine problem, since now the kitchen is half-covered in water. I thought it might evaporate, but it just keeps on a-coming. I called him today and he tried to explain to me over the phone which little knobs to turn under the sink. Can you imagine?! I barely know those words in ENGLISH let alone FRENCH. It's hard enough speaking French on the phone, when you can't see people's mouths moving. And my host father doesn't understand the concept of using simpler language when I don't understand certain words. He just repeats them over and over again and then says the stuff I DO understand in English. Oh, dear. Anyway, hopefully this water will stop coming out of the washing machine and filling up the kitchen. I'm leaving wet footprints all over the apartment. Due to the washing machine problems, I've been washing all my clothes by hand, only asking my host family to wash my clothes at their summer home twice (since it takes them a week or so to even bring my clothes back - not worth it). Woohoo! Laundry problems!

Espagne

OK ALEX I know this is not up-to-date. You've encouraged me, well done!

First, Barcelona: April 25th-29th

Barcelona was such a sunny contrast to cloudy, rainy Paris. It immediately improved all of our moods, and all we wanted to do was be outside all of the time. Thankfully, everything in the old city of Barcelona was within walking distance. Our hostel was in a perfect location, just off of Los Ramblas, which is a main street, and not too far from the water either. I bought at 2-day tourist bus pass and did both the Northern and Southern loop, visiting the Sagrada Familia and spotting other Gaudi creations all through the city. We also saw the Olympic stadium, which wasn't as exciting.

The Sagrada Familia was incredible. When Megan first saw it, she said, "It looks like it's melting', which is in fact true. It looks unlike any Catholic church I have ever seen. It resembles a sandcastle, or an underwater palace for mermen - very Little Mermaid-esque, really. Half of the church's exterior looks a bit aged and dark, while the new part looks like it is made out of sandstone! It's unfinished and it has been said that it probably won't be completed until 80 years from now, since it's funded only by anonymous donations and by visitors' admission fees. What's amazing is that Gaudi never saw and will never see his project completely realized, yet he devoted the last 15 years of his life to planning it. And now, the rest of the construction is being done according to his blueprints but is also using some more modern technology to modify his work. (Oh no! Ethical dilemmas!)



The inside was also beautiful.


I liked how on the bus tour, our audioguide pointed out other Gaudi architecture all across the city. The architecture, in general, in Barcelona, is a really interesting mix of new and old. I'm glad we took the bus tour, because it would have been difficult to get a real sense of the city otherwise.

We were so surprised by how friendly everyone was in Barcelona. Honestly, we never spoke to one actual Barcelonian other than our hostel clerks, but all the tourists were so fun! We had two nice British girls living in our hostel room, we met Australians and Irish tourists and one fellow American (a 17-yr old heading off to Princeton next year), and many more. It was so nice just to talk with other people our age about what we were all doing in different corners of Europe. So many people had taken a couple of months off from work or school to travel - it seems like a very European thing to do. Jealous!

The marketplace was probably my favorite part of Barcelona. We visited the Boqueria marketplace which was absolutely packed with bright fruits, cheap and fresh fruit juice, beautiful assortments of candy and candied fruit, and lots of meat and fish. I ate a delicious lunch of Rasberry-Pineapple juice (fresh), organic roasted vegetables with rice (amazing) and a couple jellied/candied/dried fruits and chocolate.

Just look at this! Yum!


The food in Barcelona was incredible. I ate paella almost every day. I could eat paella every day for the rest of my life. We also tried a tapas bar once! Katie and I tried an octopus dish, which was delicious. We spent almost 3 hours at the restaurant our first night in Barcelona, and in the end, it only cost us 20 euros each! We had 2 pitchers of Sangria, appetizers, a main dish, and dessert. What a deal! Those kinds of deals simply do not exist in Paris. This restaurant was an A+. If anyone goes to Barcelona sometime soon, find Les Quinze Nits (yes, the name is in French, but it's Spanish-Mediterranean cuisine).

Anyway, Barcelona was wonderful; definitely a success.

The Palais Garnier will probably be next, followed by Nice and the rest of Cote d'Azur.

just a taste

I HAVE MY COMPUTER BACK. AND MY LIFE. AND MY SANITY.

So much has happened since the last time I wrote in here. I would really like to catch up but I know that I just won't be able to do it quite as thoroughly as I would hope. When I have time, I'll write about Barcelona, the Palais Garnier, Nice, Vence, Menton, Tourettes-sur-Loup, and Monaco (yes, we went to Monaco for 2 hours). But here's just a little taste of the pictures and stories to come.

Check out these cuts of meat. Barcelona marketplace. Who can spot the bull testicles? How about the tongues?

Nice had some of the best seafood I have ever had. Seafood pizza - le pizza des fruits de mer. Delicieux! (Mussels, shrimp, octopus).

Check out that blue! Cote d'Azur!

More to come.

later!

4 other girls in the program and I are leaving tomorrow night for Barcelona. We have high hopes for good weather, and I'm really excited to see some great Gaudi architecture, like the Sagrada Familia Cathedral:


Be back on Tuesday! And soon after, we're off to Nice, by train.

update!

I'm sorry I haven't been able to update this very often. Not having a charger a.k.a. not being able to use my computer makes homework, travel planning, facebook-surfing, and blog-updating quite difficult. And expensive.

Things I have done in the past week that I haven't blogged about:

1) Toured Notre Dame, went up to the top of Notre Dame and admired Paris from above. Took pictures of creepy and strange gargoyles (one was eating enormous grapes!)

2) Held a dinner party at my host family's apartment because my entire host family was gone for the weekend. I won't see my host parents again until 2 weeks from now, but my host-sister just got back last night. I made ratatouille and pasta, and people brought cheeses, baguettes, wine, salad, and a berry tart. It was delicious.

3) Visited several artsy libraries, one at the Centre Pompidou, to do research for a project on Kader Attia, a French modern artist who focuses mostly on society's replacement of religion with consumerism and commercialism. Cool, very strange installations. Look him up.

4) Picasso Museum. Unfortunately half of the museum's collection is in Madrid, but it was great nonetheless.

5) Went to the Montreuil flea market. It was less of a legitimate flea market, more just a giant clothes and electronics street market, but it was fun. I bought a pair of pointy beige/gold heels for 15 euro, some great red nike hightops for 20. What a deal! I love markets.

6) Today, went to Montmartre, wandered through the sex shop/strip show/Moulin Rouge streets, visited Sacre Coeur and the artists' district, and had some delicious goat cheese and mint (I know, strange) pastries. This weather is really getting everyone down. Even in this beautiful area, the cold, cloudy, windy weather makes people grumpy. It's hard to avoid.

Things are fine in general. We only have 4 days of classes and then...Barcelona! And then, a day after we get back, we're off to Nice on a train. And when we get back, Alex (Sciuto) will be in Paris for a couple days, so I get to show him 'round these parts, and then I only really have 3 weeks left in Paris. Time flies, it's true.

Some good news! I finally have a place to live in Geneva! I'll be staying at Centre Protestant 2, in the center of the city. This student housing is in a suite, so I will be in one of 3-5 singles with a shared kitchen, living room, and bathroom. Can't wait! Also, I'll be overlapping for almost a week and a half with Sarah, my friend from high school who has been living in Geneva all year. I'm so excited to see her.

So that's that. Now I have to go pay 5 euros for using the internet. GOSH.

blech

My computer charger broke! The cord connecting my battery to the wall outlet started sparking last night and practically caught on fire. One of the wires snapped, I suppose, so I'm "sans" (without) laptop access for a little while, until I get a new cord.

In other news, clothing stores in Paris make me feel like a mammoth. The largest size for pants in almost any store is a 42 or a 44 (sizes 6/8, 8/10 in the states), which is just OUTRAGEOUS. I guess every French women is a size 0-4. Unreal.

the ballet

Last night our group went to a performance by the School of Dance (L'Ecole de Danse) of Paris, which was held at the Palais Garnier, or the National Opera House. It looks like this:


Incredible, right?

Anyways, we saw three performances. The first was "Soir de fête", which had extracts from "La Source" by Léo Delibes and was choreographed by Léo Staats. It was very classical ballet,with a leading male and female dancer, and pairs and 3 and 4-somes of ballerinas in matching tutus upholding the soloist's frequent feats of twirling, leaping, etc (I don't know the real ballet terms).

The second was "Les Forains", music written by Henri Sauguet and choreography by Roland Petit. This told the story of a traveling troupe of performers, including a clown, a little girl, a women who danced with flowing transparent robes connected to sticks she held in the air, so she resembled a butterfly, Siamese twins, and a magician with a puppet ballerina. I loved how the dancing was incorporated into the story, and how the dancers lit up as they performed for the passersby, while before and after, while coming to set up the tent and then slowly packing up, they looked like a bedraggled group of nomads.

The third piece was "Symphonie en trois mouvements" by Stravinsky, with choreography by Nils Christe. This was REALLY modern and reminded me of my class on Music in Paris at the Turn of the 20th Century (remember, Hannah?!?!) We watched a reenactment of the original Rite of Spring choreography for the Ballets Russes. The choreography used a lot of turned-in feet, angular movements, and stomping. It was meant to reflect the savagery of the music and of the story. I thought I recognized some of that in the choreography of the Stravinsky that we saw last night. It was very modern, using lots of non-classic, flat movements, turned in feet, and some tumbling and stomping, too. I loved it. All the men and women wore mesh black shirts or dresses over shiny purple and blue leotards. It made them all look the same and it was such a cool effect, seeing everyone do the same flat angular movements at the same time. It was my favorite.

Here are some pictures of the Opera House. It's incredible. The ceiling was painted by Chagall in 1964, though the building itself was built much earlier, officially opening as the National Opera Theatre in 1875. It was this Opera House that inspired Gaston Leroux to write "The Phantom of the Opera"! Anyway, it's beautiful.

Centre Pompidou, briefly

Today I went to the Centre Pompidou. Initially, we had planned to look at some work by Hannah's artist, Christian Boltanski, and then use the Library of Public Information, a library which is free and open to the public, to do some research. Unfortunately, the line for the library was incredibly long so instead, we spent some time in the museum itself.

When it comes to some modern art, I like it simply because I know I would enjoy having it on my wall. Nice colors, cool swirls and designs, or multi-colored geometric shapes, etc. But I can't quite see it as ART. I can't see an artist putting much thought into simply designing something pleasing to the eye - for instance, Gerhard Richter's "1024 Farben", below, which I saw today.



There were some other paintings and sculptures and odd things, however, that were so very deliberate. One piece was called "Arabian Stars", by Jordi Colomer, and it was a video of a bunch of Arab chidren in Yemen walking through the streets holding various painted cardboard signs which said, in Arabic, "Picasso", "Pikachu", "Minnie Mouse", and later, several names of popular Arab poets and musicians. Watching it, I couldn't quite understand; was it political commentary? Western imposition of culture? A contrast between a new generation of Muslims and the "Arabian Stars" (note: not Arabic) and Western stars of the past and present? I wasn't sure. The cool thing about modern art that I kept thinking about today is that it isn't simply a representation of what the artist sees, but is frequently a deliberate attempt to persuade the viewer/spectator to really think hard about what the artist has put together and imagine what it could mean. After reading about the piece, I learned that Colomer was commenting, really, on Yemen specifically, and on its modern society, its use of Chinese plastics, Japanese cars, Russian Kalashnikovs. And she was also commenting on how Picasso is a name virtually unfamiliar to most Yemenis, while, she mentioned in an interview, she was corrected several times on the Arabic spelling of "Pikachu". And then, I wonder, is this really modern art? Or is it just a video that then needs so much additional explanation and background information that its really just social commentary in the end. Where is the art?

Anyways, here's Hannah and me in one of those odd outside-the-building escalators in giant tubes at the Centre Pompidou.

I liked this painting.


And this one.


On my way back home, I stopped in the Chatelet metro station to watch this group of musicians perform. They played mostly Ukrainian folk music, but I caught some Shalom Aleichem, too. It's hard to describe, but their voices and the music just filled up the station. Really beautiful harmonies. It was pretty mesmerizing - I could only get myself to leave after they started packing up.

doors

I just noticed - at almost every entrance here, you have to PUSH the door to get in. It takes quite a lot of getting used to.

le misanthrope

This afternoon we went to see Molière's "Le Misanthrope" at the Comédie Française. The main action of the play focuses on Alceste, who entirely rejects all the social niceties and proper courtly politeness in favor of a far more honest and sincere approach to his interaction with others. This makes him incredibly unpopular with the other members of the court. While holding on to and fiercely demonstrating these values, Alceste is also in love with Célimène, a woman of the court who cares enormously about her social reputation. I found the play, when reading it over the past two weeks, to be rather comedic; even the ending (spoiler!) was funny, in my opinion. After everything that has happened and Célimène is exposed as a gossipy social climber who actually despises most everyone, she still refuses Alceste, telling him that she is unwilling to go off into the wilderness with him to live away from silly court life.

I liked the play when I read it, but I couldn't stand the way that the play was performed today. It was SO OVERDRAMATIC and such a true TRAGEDY. I couldn't believe it. I think they were trying a new, modern approach. They added quite a lot of sex to the play, which is completely nonexistent in the text, and they really overdid, in my opinion, the onstage laughter. It was used so often that it seemed almost maniacal, and in the end, the actors had laughed much more than the audience had. That definitely didn't seem right to me, especially since I found the play pretty clever and funny when reading it, and not at all while viewing it. Also, in writing the play is rather flat in terms of onstage movement. There are very few stage directions, and most of the situations are simply two characters having a conversation. In this production, though, the characters were blustering around as if there were a time limit on standing in one place. They were constantly flipping their coattails and running to and from different corners of the stage. It was pretty distracting.

It was rather hard to follow the French. If we hadn't read it in class last week, I wouldn't have been able to follow the play at all. Mostly I think it's because the actors' tones changed so drastically in the performance; from yelling to sobbing to laughing to whispering. It made the already very rapid French speech even more difficult to comprehend.

Anyways, good play, not my fave production, beautiful building for the Comédie Française. We weren't allowed to take any photos, but it was very beautiful, I promise.

cneai

On Wednesday, I went with several others to a museum outside Paris, in Chatou, France. The museum is called CNEAI, or the "Centre national de l'estampe et de l'art imprimé", which as you can probably guess, means the National Center for 'Embossed' and Printed Art. They had a really cool exhibition on display called "Black Noise, A Tribute to Steven Parrino". This exhibit consisted of 32 small printed books, following the "american comic book style", as they said, which were put together by artists and friends of Steven Parrino. This was done as a way to commemorate his life after he died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 46 in 2005. Parrino's work was very punk/rock and he himself was involved in the music scene for a while. His work is heavily comic-y and seemed mostly inspired by destruction, sex, and satanic themes. The 32 comic books, though, were all over the place in terms of artistic themes, focus, etc.

My favorite, which I didn't take a picture of, was a collage of letters, postcards, and photos that Parrino had sent to several of the artists over the years. These artists had put all of these correspondences together, with a couple wikipedia articles on clinical lycanthropy, all to prove that Steven Parrino was, in fact, a werewolf. One of the first pages had a small piece of notepaper on which the artist who had put together the collages had written,
To Do:
Find proof
Draw conclusions.
It was very funny and oddly affectionate. Also, reading penpal letters and postcards from this artist whose life the exhibit was commemorating made Steven Parrino a lot more real. Some proof, if you're interested, was that he died on a full moon, he had written in one of his postcards that he was "growing his hair out" and "waiting for full moons", and a picture of him in sunglasses matches very closely to a picture they found of a big husky wearing sunglasses. Aha! Proof!

Another work was a strange collaged piece that really was entirely over my head. I had no clue what he was getting at. Very heavy on the hermaphrodite, adam and eve, mythology themes. I really liked the artist's frequent plays on words, though. Check this out:



I like the "be sea ch", implying the "search" while writing "beseech". Cool. But I didn't get the ultimate point of his book.

Also, another fave of mine was one artist whose work consisted almost completely of extremely light pencil drawings. This was the cover of her book, and I thought it was so cool. It's hard to see, but it's half of a woman's very scrunched-up face.



And here's one of Parrino's own pages. It's probably the least crazy/sexual/satanic one there. I liked the "live" and "die" in the Trix rabbit's eyes and the extremely mesmerizing look on the man's face on the right. Also, the girl's crazy face as she eats her cereal. So weird.