subscribeNo Prague, but…
Friday July 14, 2006
Just to update: Prague is unfortunately a no-go. They were booked as of Tuesday, early, so I was placed on the waiting list. They let a few people in, but I was too far down to actually get into the trip. My roommate and a bunch of other people are going. Ah, well. Mary and I will go sightseeing somewhere else in Bavaria! It shall be enjoyable. Especially as there’s some sort of Bavarian festival on Sunday morning in the Englisher Garten, with women in dirndls and men in lederhosen. I’m going to take lots of pictures — and maybe see if they have a cheap dirndl for sale somewhere…
My next update will be Monday, as I’ll likely be out of town tomorrow and there’s no way I can access the internet on Sunday.
Tschüss!
Salzburg, Österreich war sehr toll!
Wednesday July 12, 2006
So Saturday night at the Olympiapark, Ian asked Mary and I if we’d be interested to go to Saltzburg, Austria on Sunday. We looked at each other incredulously. “Austria. Tomorrow?” He was pretty casual about it. We were flipping out. Of course we wanted to go. Apparently in Bavaria, there are train tickets that go for certain zones of travel, and there is a 25€ ticket for up to five people to travel to zone 2, and Salzburg (from now on I’ll spell it in German) is on the fringe of the zone. So getting five people… makes each ticket 5€. I flipped out. Austria, for 5€!? No way. (The fact that Austria is 2 hours from München helped, too.) We agreed to meet at the Haupbahnhof at 7am to get on a 7-something train to Salzburg, so we’d arrive sometime in the 9 o’clock hour. I went back home and asked my roommate and Stephanie if they’d be interested — both were as surprised as I that they could go to Austria with such ease! — and eagerly agreed to wake up at 6am to get to the Haupbahnhof on time.
Waking up was probably easy because I was so excited. I poked Ayse until she opened one eye and then we set off at a quick pace up the street to meet Stephanie and get there on time. We arrived at 7:05, and couldn’t find Ian. I didn’t know who else was going, so the three of us searched the station for someone we knew, then all of a sudden they were there. We were 13 all told — but we couldn’t find Mary anywhere. The train was at the platform, and we couldn’t wait, so we hurried to catch it, with three tickets for the thirteen of us — only about 6€ a ticket. Mary never arrived despite the cell phone calls we attempted, so we shrugged and boarded, and most of us napped on the ride. When I woke rather abruptly, I looked out of the window to see which station we were at — and I saw the Alps.
I’ve never seen mountains like that before. (Vermont… does not count. No, not at all.) They were still far off, and fields of green farmland stretched between the train and the mountains, with almost nothing else in between, as far as I could see. They rose sharply from the ground at a surprising angle, with clouds wreathing their uppermost peaks in mist. I grinned. Mountains! The train continued on and before long we arrived in Salzburg.
Our group disembarked and we found a tourist station, where we purchased maps. “Erin, is Salzburg the city in The Sound of Music?” Stephanie asked me. I frowned. I had no recollection. I hadn’t seen the movie in years, and I know the opening starts with a gorgeous panorama of an Austrian city and it starts with, “—, Austria, in the last golden days of the thirties.” But I couldn’t remember where! “I don’t know,” I said. “I bet we’ll find out really quickly, though.”And sure enough, in the tourist booth there was a sign for a Sound of Music guided tour and later on, at 19.30 Uhr, a Sound of Music sing-a-long, in a theatre. Costumes were “not necessary but highly encouraged!” What could you dress up as? I wondered. A nun or a nazi? Kind of… weird. Yeah.
Setting out into the city, our large group attempted to make its way toward the river and the main attractions we could see on the map. As is usual with European cities, the main attractions were large Kirchen, or churches, and Mozart. Mozart ist 1756 in Salzburg geboren. (I can speak German! Ha!!!) They take their Mozart seriously in Salzburg. Apparently, Vienna and Salzburg have a sort of tourist rivalry; Vienna, as the old capital of the Hapsburg empire, was where Mozart lived a great part of his live when he was a great court composer. The two Austrian cities are in a constant battle for domination of the Mozart city. Hehe. Anyway, we took a short cut through a wooded park and came out in the garden of a palace, right near the water, with a fantastic view of the domes and the castle on the mountain ahead of us. Salzburg, if nothing else, is picturesque.
By the time we got to Mozarts Geburtshaus (the house of his birth… and Germans don’t believe in possessive apostrophies), the group was becoming harder and harder to keep track of, especially as most of us didn’t know each other. The majority of the kids spoke excellent German and so Stephanie, Ayse, and I had a bit of trouble talking, though I could understand them and speak in simple sentences. We decided it was best to split by ticket — three tickets for five people, so we’d split into a group of five, and two groups of four — and attempt to go sightseeing independently.
In our smaller group, our new prerogative was to see as much of the city south of the rushing alpine river as possible, in as short a time as we could, attempting to get back to the train by at least 5 or 6pm. We walked from church to church, from cobbled street full of vendors to cobbled street with arching fountains, passing tourists and even bedecked World Cup fans preparing for the evening’s final match. At every turn there was another dome, and always the arching mountain in the center of the city with the castle. We checked the map and saw there was a tram going from the base to the top, sort of like Pittsburgh’s Incline, and we decided to pay the 10€ to get to the top and have access to the panoramic view and the museum in the castle.
The castle was… amazing. It was originally a keep built by the archbishops when Salzburg was granted a diocese from the Pope in the early middle ages, and was mainly there for protection and arms for most of its next millenium of use. Salzburg was originally a small town built up around the vast salt mines (Salz, in German, is salt). The mountains and the rushing water yield fantastic types of marble and stone, and there was even a scientific museum explaining the different kinds of rocks, with a jewelry shop. The castle/keep itself was rather unadorned, even in the prince/archbishop’s chambers and the main inner part of the castle built at the height of the Renaissance. Salzburg is a simple city with a simple sort of outlook, or at least it had one; nestled in the mountains, it’s not a center of culture or urbanity, but a quaint place that even today functions more like a tourist city than a city like Munchen, which is a central hub of Germany.
They had a marionette museum in the castle, oddly (remember what I said about odd museums in odd places? Wow!) and it was kind of funny to see the puppets from the movie Amadeus. I wanted to see Sound of Music puppets, but oh well. Part of the castle had a pretty substantial museum from the history of Salzburg and of Austria, starting with its medieval roots and going up through the wars Austria was involved with over the centuries… there were items from the peasant and religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, items from Napoleon’s conquest of Germany and Austria… and more. Then we went into the room with Austrian soldier garb from every major battle/war in Austria’s history… leading to World War II. Oh man, was that odd. Having only ever seen American and French and British WWII uniforms, I’d forgotten that when Austrian soldiers were drafted into the army… they joined the Nazis. Freaky beyond imagining, seeing uniforms with the Edelweiss crest of Austria and… tiny, tiny Swastikas. I shivered. They hid them well, but they were there. It was really like watching the Sound of Music when you see Liesl being so happy with Rolfe, then Rolfe telling her he’s joined the army — then you realize, with horror, that good, kind, next-door-neighbor Rolfe, is now a Nazi. They played it down — Austria hasn’t really, er, won many wars, so everything was quite played down — but still. You can’t just pretend that whole decade or two didn’t happen…
We left the castle soon after that, making our way down the mountain and back through the ancient, curving streets to the train station. We felt thoroughly touristed-out and I was prepared for a nice nap. Salzburg was completely worth the trip, though. Buildings there were built five and eight hundred years ago, churches even older, and walking down the streets — streets that looked unchanged from the 18th century — was completely worth it. And I saw Haydn’s grave! Or I think it was his grave, maybe a memorial. (Haydn, for those of you who didn’t take Mr. B’s music class, was a composer of some reknown in the 18th century. I could hum you a few bars of one of his more famous pieces, but… blogs being all written and such…)
It was a fantstic day. And natually, I took pictures!!!
Enjoy!
The real Versailles isn’t pronounced Ver-sales, like they say in Pittsburgh…
Sunday July 2, 2006
So yesterday I didn’t really have a chance to sit an type up my summary of my day, so now that I’m awake and it’s a bright and lovely day, and I’ve had my croissant and baguette and coffee (which, I’ve discovered, they’re charging me for… I think… at least they’ve been writing down my room # every day… or maybe not…) I’ll give you the update.
I started out the day by checking my Frommer’s 2005 tourbook, which I recalled from my cover-to-cover read of it last year that it had a detailed explanation of how to get to Versailles. I followed its instructions by taking the Métro from the stop by the hotel to the Hotel des Invalides, which then led me to take the SNCF train (a suburb train, as opposed to a subway train) to the Versailles Rive Gauche station. (The ticket kiosk was more friendly to me this time, unlike the one in CGD; this one decided it wouldn’t speak to me in English, though, so I had to pull together my fantastic French reading comprehension skills to assist me in purchasing my billet à retour.)
The train was pretty cool in and of itself — it was a double decker… so cool! — and I spent the ride (which was brief in my estimation, but was likely around 30 minutes) reading Eldest (the book I mentioned the other day, by Christopher Paolini. Sort of Harry Potter meets Lord of the Rings). Getting off (along with… 200 other people) at Versailles and taking the quick trip up the street, I was amazed at the little town/city that must have grown up around the palace and later the tourist site over the years. It was quite quaint. Then turning left… boom. (The French must love surprises, because they keep doing that. You’re walking placidly down the street and BOOM, ancient building. Like… the uniform 5-6 stories of every building in the entire city except for the magnificent ones completely compounds the surprise factor.)
As I was saying before I went on a tangent (don’t you love my parenthetical commentary?), the palace was just there. I walked up the long walk, which I could imagine took 5 minutes in a horse-drawn carriage but was more like 15 by foot, and joined the line for entrance… the 100 yard long line of tourists waiting to purchase their billets. I pulled out Eldest again and started reading, realizing that I wanted to finish it before Germany, and then recalling that there is an English book store in München near the Sonnenstraße! *does the happy dance* (Even in Paris I can’t abandon books completely.) After a good long 40 minutes of reading and having the sun beat down on my neck, I finally arrived inside, let them scan my bag, and saw the line continued. Oh, joy. I was at the window soon enough, pulling out my Euro, and soon I was on my way to the rest of the palace.
Versailles is… amazing. It was so cool, if a little threateningly opulent at times. I wonder how much of Versailles was Louis XIV’s desire to show off the riches of France, and how much it was to intimidate, because that much opulence was seriously intimidating. I doubt if I had an audience with the King, or Queen, or Emperor, as it were, in the palace I would be able to keep a clear head, because just staring at all the gold would probably make me want to bug out rather than comporting myself properly. Perhaps that’s the entire idea, get your noblemen to lose their wits and you can make them obey you… hrm. During the Sun-King’s reign, it’s said, he kept his nobles with him at the palace, playing games of cards and wits, because he wanted to keep his eyes on them. (Or so said my history professor, a little bitterly, last semester.) Apparently the absence of nobles and their direct rule in their home counties and duchys and baronies helped encourage revolutionary thought among the farm folk, leading Louis XV to remark that the déluge would come soon — and it did, for Louis XVI. It’s so interesting to think that Versailles was only home to a few monarchs, especially after seeing how much work, marble, gilt, and jewels went into the place. At least Napoleon had the sense to make use of it as one of his palaces, and then Rockefeller the sense to invest in it as a tourist attraction.
I can’t fully describe what Versailles was like with words, unless I start getting into fiction-writer mode, because it’s just something that you have to see, or at least have to feel described in excruciating detail. The most annoying thing, though, were the sheer number of tourists, taking pictures of everything, and making it exceedingly difficult to imagine the palace as it must have been. The signs (in French and English) attempted to explain the use of each room during the different reigns of the Louis (plural) who lived their and their respective Maries (These monarchs had little imagination. Everyone was Louis or Marie. Click for more). The ceilings, the paintings, the chandeliers, the sculptures… wow. I was heartily impressed by everything I had the chance to see. I didn’t pay for the all-day pass, which enabled full access to everything, but getting to see the Hall of Mirrors, the bedchambers, the gardens, all of that was fantastic. My pictures will show more.
Then I traveled back on the train (more reading!) and got off the Metro at the Hotel des Invalides (which was built as a military academy and hospital and housing and such by Louis XIV. From there I walked north across the Pont Alexandre III past the Grand Palais to the Champs-Elysées, and I walked west to the Arc de Triomphe, past expensive shops and restaurants charging 40 Euro for a price fixe meal. Yikes! It was much like walking down Fifth Avenue in New York, but muuuch wider. Pretty cool. Then I got to the Arc de Triomphe. For a startled, panicky moment I wondered if I would have to cross the Place Charles de Gaulle (the roundabout around the Arc) but yes, the French anticipated my fear, and for my sake, built an underground tunnel connecting them. Wasn’t that thoughtful? Anyway, crossing over I paid the requisite fee to climb the stairs (always charging for stair climbing… they should pay me for that exercise!) and relished in my 2 Euro under 25 discount. Of course when I reached the top… the sun was hidden. It was beating down the entire day, only to hide behind a momentous cumulus cloud the moment I decided to get to the top of the Arc. *shakes fist at sky* So my pictures were in cloud shadow, but I wasn’t going to wait the 30 minutes it would have likely taken for the sun to clear. I walked back to the hotel then, enjoying a long route and a stop at a French grocery store for some Orangina.
So that was my day! Sorry about the late post. (I had to finish Eldest, after all. *looks around guiltily*) As promised, here are pictures!
(They’re tacked on to my other pictures, so the links I creatively edited should simply connect you at the point where I’ve added new photos… If not, just browse through until it starts looking Versailles-ish. The first image of the new pictures is one of an anime convention in Paris I saw *grins at her sister*)
More soon… from Deutschland! I’ll have to check out of my hotel in 2 hours, leave my luggage here so I can go see Sacre Coeur and the Moulin Rouge and then I’ll be traveling overland tonight, from Paris to Munich, so I won’t be online until tomorrow. Wish me luck, and I’ll catch everyone later!
Ich bin eine Touristin!
Friday June 30, 2006
Whew. What an interesting city Paris is!
I started off the day by going downstairs to find croissants and coffee waiting in the hotel. The croissant… was fantastic. Nothing in America has ever compared (and I love croissants). The coffee was strong and black, except for my Splenda, and in addition to the croissant was a small 1/4 of a baguette. So. Tasty.
After breakfast I trotted off to find my way from my hotel to the Madeleine, then down to the Place de la Concorde. In the mist of early morning I again could see the Eiffel Tower peeking through to the southwest behind the square’s famous Obelisque. I headed to the Seine this time, instead of into the Tuileries, and walked alongside the river until I arrived at Pont Royal, near the entrance to the Louvre. I walked down to stand between the Arc du Triomphe du Carrousel.
I walked through the pyramid entrance to the Louvre itself at about 9 o’clock, and with my bag through the security scanner, I was in the main entranceway and moving immediately to the Denon Wing to see La Jaconde, the Mona Lisa, first. Past Winged Victory and through rooms of statuaries and Renaissance art, I finally found her, sealed in her case of glass with a modest number of onlookers. I wasn’t expecting her to be so small, I suppose, but I stood there for a good few minutes and stared. Opposite the Mona Lisa was another of my favorite paintings of the renaissance, one that I’ve seen a few times in my history textbooks, The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Paolo CALIARI, dit VÉRONÈSE. (Yeah Google for providing that!) I caught the Madonna of the Rocks by Da Vinci (I’d wanted to look at it since The Da Vinci Code, which was huge in the Louvre! They were selling merchandise and “The Da Vinci Code Audio-tours” everywhere.) I tackled the main galleries and I went at a relatively quick pace, knowing that the Louvre is terrifically huge. I am pretty happy with what I saw, though I definitely got lost more than once in the tangle of rooms. The best had to be seeing Louis XIV’s old bedchamber. So much of that building is so fantastically ornate (not including the French crown jewels) that I was just standing, staring at the ceiling or the walls as often as I was looking at the art itself. A fantastic place.
After I decided I’d done enough touring of the museum to satisfy myself, I headed back to the Seine to walk to Ile de la Cité, the larger of the two islands in the Seine. I crossed Pont Neuf and headed east toward Notre Dame, stopping on the way to get a crepe. I walked up to the guy, asked for “un crepe complete” and got a crepe with jambon (ham), gruyère, et oeuf (egg). It was fantastic. He handed it to me in a little wrapper and I walked to Notre Dame eating it. After I finished I took pictures of Notre Dame and wandered inside. They were having services in English and French as I entered, and many tourists stopped to join in, but more still walked around the exterior taking lots of pictures. It was pretty intense. All of my photos of Notre Dame (except for the one someone took with me in it) are blurry like crazy. I’ll have to take a book back with me and sit in the back garden and relax a bit tomorrow. Anyway, Notre Dame was surprisingly small. Not that I wasn’t shocked with its height and grandeur, but the outside didn’t seem nearly as large as I imagined it. (Possibly due to the fact that in the time when the story of The Hunchback of Notre Dame supposedly took place, it was one of the tallest structures in the whole of Paris, so that Disney movie has forever made it seem large to me.) Inside it felt almost exactly like St. Patrick’s in New York, except for all of the paintings—and the windows. Wow were there windows.
After Notre Dame I wandered down to the Crypt Museum underneath, where they showcased the ruins of the ancient city settled by the Parisii and later conquered by the Romans. It wasn’t nearly as interesting as the admission fee seemed to hint it’d be, but it was cool anyway. I emerged and attempted to go to St. Chapelle, but it was closed. I’ll have to go back anyway… I might want another crepe.
I took the subway to the Eiffel Tower next. The most amazing thing is every time I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower, it pops out of nowhere, and I literally gape. I don’t realize my mouth is hanging open. It happened again when I got off the Métro right near it, and got even worse as I got closer and closer. It was incredible. So I was walking around at the base, looking at the pillars and thought, Interesting. I wonder if there’s a short way to do this. The guidebook recommended the best idea was to take the stairs to the deuxième étage, and I decided it might in fact be worth the Euro. I got over to the only pillar that said “Escaliers seulement” and I got on line behind a few American girls and in front of two French guys. Everyone on this line, I noticed, must be under 30. Then a family came up and I heard the mother’s loud voice proclaim, “Escalator? That’s a good idea, I didn’t know there was one!” The French guys behind me snorted with repressed laughter. I looked at the two American girls and they looked hopelessly embarrassed for the woman. Escaliers = stairs, not escalator. I got my ticket and then started. Approximately 680 stairs later, I nearly wanted to collapse. Halfway I thought, My inhaler would have been a good idea. Three-quarters, I thought, Maybe I don’t need to go all the way to the second tier. Seriously. Then I was there. Oh, man. So much better than the first floor. The panorama was intense. I could see what could only be Sacre Coeur in the northern distance, then started identifying the landmarks. The only bad thing was the lack of benches. Where were they!?
When I got to the bottom again, I was tired, hot, and my legs were twingy. The muscles shuddered every few steps and I thought I’d surely seize up any second. I found a cart with “glace” (ice cream) and walked over to see a man and his two kids disagreeing behind a woman who ordered two cones. I walked up to the woman in the truck while she was getting the kids’ order and said, “Citron,” in a perfect French accent, whacking noise included (I know, because she repeated it and it sounded the same!). She nodded and dispensed it, then noticed the kids babbling happily in French and said something to me to the effect of, “Children and ice cream, they’re so funny…” something. I grinned and nodded, paying her and bobbing my head. “Merci!” I said, and she grinned back, as if we’d shared a conspiratorial moment. Yay for being confused for someone who can actually speak French! Woo-hoo!
After Le Tour Eiffel, I was about ready to die. I walked across the street to the Jardins du Trocadero, with their huge fountain pool. It was hot and humid with bright sun, and there were kids and adults fully clothed, splashing around, along with people in pieces of bathing suits. Most were just sitting around it, however, dangling their feet in the cold water. I joined them for a good twenty minutes, thoroughly enjoying the numbing cold on my aching, Eiffel Tower-climbing feet. That’s exactly what they need to have more of in major cities—huge fountains you can swim in! What a world that would be… Anyway, after I was thoroughly relaxed, I headed over to the Métro and made my aching way back to the hotel, grabbing a baguette and some fruit tarts en route. So awesome!
I’ve now gotten more of a taste of Paris and I think it’s such an interesting city. Language-wise it’s diverse, but so far not so much as I thought. Near the major tourist attractions I was at today (the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower) nearly everyone around me spoke English or were carrying books/maps in English. It was surprising, I guess, to not see more obviously non-English speaking tourists. There are plenty of French people, clearly, but I’ve only heard one German speaking family and passed a handful of Asian tourist groups from Japan or China, with their guides speaking rapidly and the group half-running to keep up. A few Spanish speakers were in the Louvre, and I overheard some Italian on the street. I saw a few school tours, both from France and from the Americas (there was a Canadian group near Notre Dame), and it’s funny to try to play the guess-the-tourist’s-nationality game, which I usually get right. Hehe. Are we Americans this blatant in every country? I literally stuck out like a sore thumb yesterday (partially from what I was wearing, partially my complete lack of lingual confidence) and so today I made sure I was dressed and attempting to act as much like a Parisian as I could. I wore a skirt and sandals with one purse (ha, yes, I wore a skirt climbing the stairs to the Eiffel Tower… as were almost all the obviously non-American women—some in heels! I’m not crazy). I think I fooled three people into thinking I was French or at least European today, so no disdainful looks at all today, yay! Blending in, blending in… such an important skill for a city like this, where the signs above the ascenseurs (elevators) in the Eiffel Tower said, “Watch for pick-pockets!” Hopefully they’ll go for the Hawaiian shirt-wearing guy with the fanny pack instead of me…
Lots of PDAs, too. (Public displays of affection.) I normally never have seen people making out on the streets, literally tackling each other horizontally on benches or on the grass like I’ve seen here. And not just teenager types. Oh, no. C’est Paris, n’est-ce pas?
Now, for the requisite pictures:
Clicky (Album style, for better quality but you’ve got to click each one individually)
(They’re in chronological order, so just keep up with my yammerings above and you’ll see what I saw in the order I saw it. And I apologize for some of the pictures’ quality… my camera has issues with its focus feature most times I turn it on.)
Enjoy!
Je suis arrivé à Paris!
Thursday June 29, 2006
Boy have I had an adventure since last I posted. (I haven’t slept since then, either.) Let me recap. I’ll attempt chronological order, but that might not be possible given my lack of sleep and possible incoherence.
1:15pm. Arrive at Newark.
2:25pm. I get all the way to the gate, after bidding my family good-bye, when I’m summoned to the counter. They tell me the flight to Boston will be delayed enough that I’m sure to miss my connection. They give me a cab voucher, reroute my ticket to JFK airport, and tell me I’m going to still arrive in Paris by the same time, but direct from JFK to Charles de Gaulle. I sprint to collect my luggage, get a cab, and get my butt to JFK. My cab driver, appropriately or coincidentally, is a native French speaker.
4:10pm. Arrive at JFK. Traffic on the Belt was horrific for a good half-hour, so I arrive a wee bit late. Then I see the check in line. It’s a good hour long. (Boarding for the flight, according to my ticket, starts at 5:10pm.) I groan.
5:05pm. I’m checked in. I sprint to the gate, or attempt to rush through the metal detector, whipping my bundles and speeding to the gate. I get there, and everyone’s milling around aimlessly. This is a 767 we’re talking about, and so there are lots of people milling in the cramped, aluminum can of a waiting area before the gate.
6:05pm. I’m on board the aircraft. At last. I sigh and read about 10 chapters of Eldest.
7:15pm. We’re actually taking off. Amazing.
8:30pm. The woman next to me gets chatty. She’s a guidance counselor from Long Island going to Barcelona to study Spanish in an intensive 2-week program. What a coincidence, eh? We chat about language and such, and she and I complain about Regents exams. It’s a fun time. (But I want to keep reading my book! Argh!)
9:40pm. They start Failure to Launch (with Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker). I literally am cracking up, clapping and really getting into it. Half the flight’s asleep, but I’m on EST, so it’s still only 10pm for me. I really enjoy it.
11:something. The movie ends. Sadness! I attempt to doze off. In reality, I’m half-awake, waiting for them to start the promised showing of The Incredibles. They don’t.
5:35am, GMT+1. From this point, I decide it’s time to think in Paris time. I decide to try to call it bedtime until the plane rolls into CDG at 7:55am. I nap for a collective 15 minutes.
7:00am, GMT+1. It’s breakfast in Paris! (Only it’s still 1am EST, so most of us are a bit not in the mood for food.) Except, they’re hot croissants. Ah, plane food. Even if it’s microwaved, it hits the spot. Except for the dinner of lasagne we had at 8 o’clock. Blech.
8:10am. I get off in the bright daylight of Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport. Whopee! Except it’s totally farm country around the airport, and except for the occasional sign in both French and English, it resembles a polished glass-and-concrete Newark. With soft angles. It’s a lovely place, but at commuter hour, it was packed. And the City of Lights… is not here. Additionally, when you’re sticky in the soon-to-be 80 degrees F weather of Paris and there are 300 other people in the vicinity… needless to say, I started getting cranky. Not to mention my rolling luggage is 52lbs! I manage to change my American dollars and head to the right escalator.
9:something. I discover I have absolutely no idea how to purchase a Parisian métro ticket. I was literally imagining Métro-card kiosks. I mean, this is the 21st century. I get there, and the only kiosks are selling the equivalent of Amtrak and commuter tickets, no Métro billets. Those kiosks also only accept “cartes français.” Boo.
9:something, after aimless wandering. I brave the queue for the ticket window people. The lovely ladies keep saying, “Next, please!” so I think, “Oh, yay! I don’t have to actually think about my ancient French!” But I step up to not a lovely lady, but a cranky man. I stare at him blankly for a moment, somehow contemplating asking for what I want in French, then push that thought away instantly. “Can I buy a Métro ticket here?” He looks at me, and smiles amusedly. Amusedly! This is CDG! He’s gotta expect tourists! He then hesitates, asking, “One person, one way, yes?” “Yes.” He prints it and hands the little purple thing to me. It resembles a carnival ticket. “Merci,” I mumble, and slump off to find the Métro tracks. That look he gave me will always be the look I will always associate with the amused, “Aw, la pauvre américaine, she cannot speak French!” Frenchman. Bah! To add insult to my imagined injury, the next man steps up and says quickly, “Je voudrais une billet à retour pour Paris.” I frown, annoyed, and find the Métro.
10:01am: I get on the Metro. It’s somewhat like a NYC subway, but the seats are furry, like Pittsburgh buses. (The seats are smooth plastic except for a patch of furry padding on the back and bottom, which can hardly be called a cushion, hence why I refer to it as fur.) Why do they do that?
10:20am: I arrive in Chatelet-Les-Halles, a hub (much like Times Square) for the Métro. I change subways and get on one headed to the Madeleine, the nearest major stop to my hotel, as far as I can figure.
10:45am: I emerge in the sun of the street next to the Madeleine. I’m so preoccupied with the fact that (1) I haven’t slept. At all. (2) My back hurts from my ridiculously sized bookbag. (3) My luggage is 52 frickin’ pounds! and… (4) now I have to find the hotel, that I completely don’t even see the Madeleine until it nearly smacks me in the face. Okay, not literally, but I turn and wow. It’s there. Then I see the facades. Then I see the shops.
I am in Paris. I feel a bit dazed. But I still have to get to the hotel.
I grumble and pull my fifty-pound luggage down the street, guiding myself half by instinct, half by sheer exhausted excitement. And my map. (Small detail.) I find the hotel—at last, may I add—and pass about a dozen bars on the way. Bars, patisseries, bistros, cafés, you name it, they’ve got it. Oh, and a handy marché (market) and a fresh fruit vendor. This is a block from my hole-in-the-wall hotel.
I take that back, my hotel isn’t a hole in the wall. It’s as if they took a 5 story apartment building and sliced it vertically (vertically) into thirds. This building is tall and skinny, and some of the rooms have their own strange stairs leading directly to the door. Some might think it’s sort of strange, but hey, C’est Paris, n’est-ce pas? I say, “Bonjour” to the concierge and hand him my email with my info. He glances at it, types some stuff into the computer, then looks at me. “Parlez-vous français?” he asks hesitantly. “Un petit peu,” I reply sheepishly. “Okay,” he says, and then half-gestures, half-explains for me to leave my luggage and go wander for an hour while they prepare my room. Oh great, I think. I’m hot, annoyed, haven’t slept in 24 hours and I’m supposed to go “enjoy Paris.” On my way out, I notice a small computer wedged in a corner. A sign next to it reads, “1/2 Heure, 4€” And I realize: that is their internet.
I slowly begin to panic.
I haven’t slept, I haven’t eaten anything but plane lasagna (which was terrible) and a croissant and my only way to contact the states is a small computer. I fervently hope I can access wireless. I take a stroll down the street and find a café of sorts, which I’d seen on the walk over. I go inside after carefully practicing what I am going to say and I say,
“Je voudrais un foccacia—”
« Non, » the woman behind the counter snaps. « Nous ne servions pas les focaccias maintenant. Seulement les sandwichs, salades, et omeletes. » I blink, surprised I completley understood her rapid speech, and immediately say, « L’Artist, si vous plait, » naming a mozzarella, tomato, and basil sandwich on a baguette. (I started typing in French in Microsoft Word, and it reverted my quotation marks to French style, automatically. Scary!) Anyway, she could tell (or could she?) that I was not easily acquainted with French, so she rang me up with a little disdain (“Six Euro quatre-vingts!”) Brilliantly, I manage to get away with a sandwich, an Evian, and a cookie (their French “value meal”) and sneak into a corner to eat. I make my way back the hotel, exhausted, but only after stopping to purchase my first bottle of wine. Ah, Paris. C’est necessaire pour l’experience! The stairs barely fit me and the lift—the lift!—can fit (imagine this) one-and-a-half people. Yes! A half person could fit in that lift, but not two whole people. I’m gasping from claustrophobia and I climb my way out onto the fourth floor. My room is small and cramped, like the rest of the place, but the bed is large and it’s clean and tidy. A good sign!
So that’s where I stand. I’ll figure out the internet soon enough.
[Actually written 12pm GMT+1 28.06.06]
Two blocks from the Champs-Elysèes!
Monday June 19, 2006
Apparently my Paris hotel is in an amazing location:
Hopefully connecting to internet will be as easy as going to the closest metro station! I’ve already deciding I won’t be uber-touristy (i.e. not kill myself to see museums and the like) but will try to take a leisurely trek through the city, absorbing the sights and culture casually instead of keeping a breakneck schedule. It’s going to be busy enough in Munich without me arriving exhausted, I figure. I’ll take the plane ride to figure out a more distinct day plan for my first day or two, then I’ll see what the weather is like and proceed from there.
Now to practicing my broken French and my half-forgotten German… er, Deutsch…
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