"Réjoissez-vous, puisque Vous-Savez-Qui a enfin disparu."

Let's be clear: I don't miss the snow.  Especially not this scene every morning:

But I will admit that sitting on the train, piping Christmas music through my headphones, and gazing out the window at the sun setting over green fields in December feels a little strange.  The weather here in the Vendée ranges from November-like overcast and rainy to alternating rain and sun, like March or April.  It doesn't feel like any season to me.

Hungry for some holiday music, or for any music at all, I finally decided to wander into the Conservatoire de la Roche-sur-Yon on Monday.  It's a music and theatre school where all ages can take classes and study instruments and voices seriously, parallel to the one that I worked at in Cannes.  My hopes of finding an ensemble to play with weren't particularly high since the wind band is a very American tradition; I've never found the equivalent of a community band in Europe.

But la Roche surprised me.  Just as I pitched my case to the receptionist, the conductor of la Philar de la Roche-sur-Yon happened to be passing through and he invited me to join on the spot.  That evening, I brought my flute au Conservatoire for my first rehearsal...and, exceptionally, the ensemble turned out to be a legitimate wind band, correct instrumentation and all.

You often hear that "music is the universal language", and it's true: without knowing every individual word uttered, the rehearsal, its progression, and everything the conductor described was crystal clear to me.  It also turns out that band itself is universal.  During rehearsal, there was an excellent volley of snarky comments between the second flutes and the first trumpets; the conductor got all bent out of shape over the oboist who missed her entrance; the percussionists were ignored unless they made a mistake; the conductor got all bent out of shape over the saxophones who collectively missed their entrance; the first flutes decided they were more important than the conductor and decided to drown out his commentary with their tuning ritual.  I could have been sitting in college or high school or middle school band; in France, in la Roche-sur-Yon, I found an element of "band" that is universal.

On Tuesday, my luck continued.  I went to the médiatheque (library) early, before students got out of school, to search for the first Harry Potter book in French.  I've been going every few days to search because kids' books (and Disney movies) are very popular and often checked out; I've had no luck with Harry Potter since I got here.  Tuesday, the stars aligned!  Thanks to the first few chapters of Harry Potter à l'École des Sorciers, I can bring you the following mots du jour:

pianoter - to drum one's fingers
un Moldu - a Muggle
Vous-Savez-Qui - You-Know-Who
les lunettes en demi-lune - half-moon spectacles
Éteignor d'argent - silver Put-Outer (Deluminator)
un cochon avec une perruque - a pig in a wig

Wednesday was the beginning of Christmas celebrations in la Roche.  Most of the lights in the city went up on the first of December, but yesterday was the official tree lighting.  A group of us went to Place Nap for the fun; I think we were more of a spectacle than the actual tree lighting.  Just by standing in the city center, a group of étrangères all speaking together in French attracted a lot of attention - so much that we were distracted and missed the first illumination of the tree.

Wednesday evening was also my first time at something called Café Polyglottes: an informal association in the Vendée that sponsors language evenings in la Roche.  Two times a month, you can RSVP online and show up at a café to speak whatever languages you want.  It's an opportunity for native French speakers to try other languages with assistants like us as well as international students...and we can speak French with them.  At the café, we organized ourselves in groups of English, Spanish, German, and Chinese speakers, and then moved around during the course of the evening depending on what language we wanted to practice.  It's very informal, but we were able to meet and exchange stories with many people of all ages; I'm excited to go back for the next one.

Despite the often gloomy weather, we still get some stunning sunrises...and an abundance of rain, of course, leads to an abundance of rainbows.

"Tu te sens ça, Julian? Ça c'est l'arôme de Thanksgiving."

"Do you smell that, Julian?  That's the smell of Thanksgiving," I stated as I proudly stirred the cranberries (okay, cranberries plus un mélange de fruits rouges - a mix of red fruits).

This is my second Thanksgiving in France, but my first attempt at co-cooking the meal (with Elyse)...and both of our first attempts at cooking the meal in general.  We decided to have our Thanksgiving meal the Saturday before at Elyse and Lisa's house for a group of ten.  There were many lessons to be learned, as well as many French mots du jour.

Lesson One:  Finding the ingredients
une dinde - a turkey
I started my search early, questioning as many French people as possible at the beginning of November.  I explained the situation to Lise and Christophe when I visited them; they explained that turkeys are common here for Christmas (as well as huitres and foie gras), so "tu dois pouvoir la trouver" - "you should be able to find one".  I asked around among the teachers au collège too; they said the same.  I then made the tour around la Roche-sur-Yon: to every supermarket and every single volailleur (poultry vendor) in town.  It seems you can only get a whole turkey starting in the month of December.

la sauce aux canneberges - cranberry sauce
They don't have cranberries, either.  Not until Christmas.  And definitely not before Christmas markets.  A very helpful man at an épicerie pointed me in the direction of a small shop called the Quatre Saisons, where he heard that they sold dried cranberries.  He was right; I added them to my mix of frozen fruits...and it worked: the first Thanksgiving miracle.

la tarte aux citrouilles - pumpkin pie
This really doesn't exist at all in France.  When studying in Cannes, this was the one piece of the meal that was not up to par; they didn't completely understand the pumpkin purée.  But I insisted.  I spent three hours in the grocery store studying the various options; finally, I settled on cooking a frozen pumpkin cube mix as a base for the filling.  Elyse, Lisa, Laura, Kate, and I labored over the creation for several hours the night before, even making our own pie crust.  It turned out spectacularly: the second Thanksgiving miracle.

les patates douces - sweet potatoes
I also insisted on sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top.  The strange thing is that you can't find plain white mini marshmallows: they're all jumbo marshmallow mixes of white and pink.  While it tasted the same, it looked a little like the Easter bunny showed up and threw up on the top of the dish.  But, bonus points for finding sweet potatoes from the USA.

Lesson Two:  Shopping
Here's just a handful of vocabulary that we gleaned from our initial visit to the grocery store:

le sucre - sugar
la cassonade - brown sugar
le bouillon de dinde - turkey stock
les guimauves - marshmallows
sans gluten - gluten free
le chantilly - whipped cream
la farce au pain de maïs - cornbread stuffing

So you can probably imagine at this point how our initial shopping trip felt.  Having no idea what many of our ingredients should look like in the U.S., we truly had no idea what they should look like in France.

Lesson Three:  Cooking 
Somehow - and I'm not sure how - we did really well.  We started bit by bit, making the cranberries and substituting the substitutes for the stuffing and pumpkin pie.  Our only real glitch was the stuffing: we tried to make cornbread stuffing, but there was a problem with the ingredient maïzena - which is the translation we found for both "corn flour" and "corn starch" - and we discovered that it is actually corn starch.  So we ended up creating some substance that resembled a middle school science project (neither liquid nor solid), which Lisa miraculously turned into pudding.  Wild rice is also not a thing here, so our stuffing was a mishmash of white rice and whatever happened to be in the kitchen at the moment, but it turned out decently.

You can make fun of us for les poulets (chickens; for all you West Wingnuts, we had three named Eric, Troy, and Gail - the chickens C. J. couldn't pardon because they're French and not turkeys), but that's about it; we managed rice stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, salad, bread, pudding, and pumpkin pie, all gluten-free.  Best of all, we gave American food a good name and proved that we eat more than hamburgers and buffalo wings.

Partager au lieu d'acheter: Les vacances, Part II

partager - to share
au lieu de - instead of
acheter - to buy

In France, and in Europe in general, a movement is starting:  Sharing instead of buying.  With the help of several websites, people can post what they have to share and others can choose what they'd like - for example, cars (for ride sharing) with BlaBlaCar or apartments for short stays with Airbnb.com.  Through Airbnb, the four of us found a lovely apartment au centre-ville de Caen.

Caen from the Château Ducal

Caen was a completely new city for me, and it was definitely my favorite of the trip.  It was a bit smaller than Rennes: a little quieter and very liveable.  Though it was almost completely destroyed during the world wars, there are several sites from before the wars that are completely intact.  You can walk down a street of modern buildings and randomly stumble upon a medieval tower that happened to live through the war.

We first went to the Château Ducal, an old castle built around the year 1060 which now houses le Musée de Normandie and le Musée des Beaux-Arts.  We found that much of the ancient history of Normandie is almost the same as the history of Bretagne that we learned about in Rennes, but it was interesting all the same.  Le Musée des Beaux-Arts made me begin to change the way I think about art museums; sometimes, it feels like each art museum is the same here if you try to study and memorize each painting too hard.  For me, it's better to walk through at a quicker pace to get a sense of the ambiance of the museum; in the end, I returned to a small collection of impressionist-style paintings or the region that I thought were unique and beautiful.

Me, Laura, Lisa, and Elyse at the Abbaye aux Hommes

Another morning, we toured the Abbaye aux Hommes, an abbey that functioned in many ways throughout the years.  In addition to the medieval history, we enjoyed seeing the small "graffiti" that past students wrote on the walls of some of the rooms; in some respects, students are exactly the same from generation to generation.  It was also interesting to learn how the church and state waffled over the abbey; it's now a government meeting place.  If you look at an aerial photo of Caen taken just after D-Day, you'll be amazed to see the Abbey aux Hommes and Abbey aux Dames that remained intact in the middle of the rest of the city - a mess of completely-destroyed buildings.

Minnesota plaque in Caen

That afternoon, we hiked about forty minutes to see the WWII memorial and gardens to the north of Caen.  Though we didn't have time for a full museum visit, we walked through the peaceful American and Canadian gardens behind the museum; I found Minnesota!  There's also a lovely, spacious park nearby with flowers, trails, animals, and a panoramic view of Caen.

Our other project, I think most important for Elyse and I, was to see les plages du débarquement -

les plages du débarquement - D-Day Beaches

- so we took a day to travel to Bayeux, a small town, but the first to be liberated after the D-Day invasion of WWII.  We were hoping to go from Bayeux to the Omaha Beach, but because of les vacances, the bus hours were different and it was better for us to go to Arromanches, a small beach town between near Canadian and British beaches.  Arromanches itself was beautiful, quiet, and relaxing.  We only had a couple of hours there; we had a picnic near the water and explored a bit.  When we returned to Bayeux, we visited the journalist memorial, the cemetery, and the Musée du Débarquement, which we thought was extremely well done.

Cemetery in Bayeux

It's also a little strange and foreign to see American-style memorials and gardens here in France, with space, perfectly-mowed lawns, and that particular air of American reverence.

View from the Arc de Triomphe

After four days in Caen, it was time to say goodbye to Lisa; Laura, Elyse, and I continued on to Paris where we were joined by Henry, the Canadian, who was in Paris for the first time.  It was fun to show him around...and to see his face when he realized exactly how large the Louvre is (no, you cannot see it all in an hour).  I did get to take advantage of my shiny new "Pass Éducation" that lets me into all national monuments for free - that means I can explore the Louvre at my leisure this year, as well as climb the Arc de Triomphe as many times as my heart desires.

In addition to exploring several new neighborhoods, I also stood in line for almost three hours at the Grand Palais to see the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition on a recommendation from Lise and Christophe.  Niki de Saint Phalle is a French artist who grew up in New York; through her art, you can see the many life phases that she experienced.  Her feminist art was particularly progressive during the second half of the twentieth century; she's probably most famous for her Nanas sculptures.  The exhibition was tied together with videos from the '60s in which Niki de Saint Phalle explained her art - she really nailed it.  You could tell that the interviewers were trying to ridicule her and expected her to fall flat on her face...but she always had a solid and witty response.  And today, her sculptures decorate the fountain in the modern and lively Place Pompidou in Paris.

Land of the Pommes: Les vacances, Part I

Two and a half weeks of work merited two weeks of vacation.  France is divided into four school "zones" - A, B, C, and D - in order to stagger their vacations.  As the Académie de Nantes is in Zone A, we got to kick off les vacances de Toussaint (All Saints' Day break)!  Very early in the morning on our first Monday off, I headed north by train with Laura, Elyse, and Lisa.

Our first six days were spent in the region of Bretagne, just northwest of the Pays de la Loire.  We used Rennes, the capital city, as a home base; we were content staying in its only youth hostel with our own room and access to a nice-sized kitchen.

Rennes itself reminds me of Beauty and the Beast, which we often resurrected in song while walking through the streets.  There's an old town with endless crêperies and cafés and unique buildings with dark wood beams on the outside.  My favorite part was la Place des Lices, the home of France's second-largest market every Saturday morning.  Our favorite market finds were pink tomato-flavored cheese and green pesto-flavored cheese, which would be epic melted over pasta.  We also found a variety of live seafood and of course the regional specialty galettes saucisses (savory sausage crêpes) that you can pick up and eat on the street.  Bretagne is known for its savory galettes and also for its apples and apple products; one of my favorite treats in Rennes was an apple crêpe flambée with cider at the Crêperie St. Anne.

Hence my French Mot du Jour:
une pomme - an apple

Near the river, you can find modern stores and restaurants.  We visited le Musée des Beaux-Arts for a variety of visual art; it had a good variety of art and most of the modern pieces were not too weird for me (I only saw one blank white panel that was trying to call itself "art").  Not far from la gare is a modern media center called Les Champs Libres which includes le Musée de Bretagne, a museum and space for traveling exhibitions, a planetarium, and a science center.  We saw the permanent expositions at the museum on the history of Bretagne, which explained events in the region from the ice age up through the World Wars - it was very well put-together.  Lisa and I returned later to see a free artist exhibition, "Fragile Territories" by German artist Robert Henke.  We sat on the floor of a giant dark room and watched a giant screen that looped...well...this:

http://youtu.be/k7G8mhH7iRo

Strange, but after awhile, very hypnotic and relaxing.

Me, Laura, Lisa, and Elyse à Mont-Saint-Michel

We used Rennes also to access some nearby smaller towns.  Our first day excursion, by bus, was to Mont-Saint-Michel, the now-very-touristy ancient abbey, military stronghold, and prison.  It was my second visit, but it's an impressive sight and I got to see the new, almost-finished pedestrian and motor access roads.  The weather on the coast was windy, but sunny and beautiful for pictures.

The next day, we headed by train to St. Malo, an old walled city also on the coast.  It has a beautiful view of the sea; the color of the water was a unique sea-foam green.  We spent the morning roaming the ramparts and hunting down all the statues indicated on our tourist map.

We stumbled upon a gem of a crêperie for lunch.  Tucked away on a small street, we somehow got the last unreserved table (by about five minutes - several people came in just after us and were turned away).  The propriétaire (owner) visited with us for a long time and explained their extensive menu of galettes and crêpes in detail.  Experiences like this are one huge reason I love France: numerous owners of small restaurants and shops are so proud of their art, services, cuisine, and products...and they are not in it for the money.  My galette was by far the best I've ever tasted:  Camembert with lettuce and a very light scoop of apple sorbet on top.

We also took the opportunity to try kouign amann in the afternoon, a famous gâteau breton (cake of Bretagne).  One of the teachers au lycée had told me that, even though it's basically just butter and sugar, "Il faut le goûter" ("You have to try it")...and it was delicious, especially with friends to split it with!

In the afternoon, Elyse and Lisa and I went to the history museum located in un château.  I gleaned quite a bit of interesting fishing vocabulary for mon petit cahier of new words, as St. Malo has lots of fishing history.  At the end of the visit, we climbed the tower for an aerial view of the town and sea.

And on our way back to la gare, Laura and I began a new tradition: carousels.

The following day, I went on an excursion by myself to the town of Dinan.  Dinan was probably my preferred place of the three; the buildings had a unique medieval style full of greenery...and even in the rain, it was charming.  There were many ramparts surrounding the town to try to find and explore, each with stunning panoramic views of the town.  I visited a small château that had been converted into a museum of art and ancient military history; you can still see the ancient kitchen and well, moat, and tomb.  I also enjoyed the very small Musée de la Harpe - a one-room museum filled with harps from around the world.  Since I was the only one there, I spoke for a long time with the woman working the desk about music, and she let me try a couple of the instruments.

 

Panoramic view of Dinan

After our six days in Bretagne, the four of us hopped on another train headed three hours east to continue the adventure!

"Do you have a gun?"

After a few months off of teaching and a lot of initial paperwork confusion, stepping into a classroom again instantly felt like home.

The downside to my teaching schedule is the number of classes I work in.  English is the most popular foreign language for students, and as a result, there are more English teachers and classes than there are for other languages.   I would have had plenty of work to do just at le lycée every week being shared between five English teachers and twelve classes total, but l'académie decided to divide my time even more by placing me half-time at un collège (a middle school) in the nearby town of Aizenay: that means five more teachers and twelve more classes.  One difficulty is remembering how each teacher wants to use me in his or her class and what I need to plan - some teachers want me to take half the class and teach a short lesson; others want me to speak individually with students to build their speaking and listening skills; others want me to co-teach with them in front of the whole class.  I get Wednesdays off, but I'll be spending those days studying mes trombinoscopes (my class rosters with pictures).

My first full week of teaching was at Collège Soljenitsyne in Aizenay...the middle school whose name no one can pronounce.  Getting there is a little complicated; it's fifteen minutes away by car and the buses only run once per day in the afternoon, so several staff members who live in la Roche take turns driving me as it fits with their schedules.  (This week, on my day off, I attempted the bike trail between the two towns.  It weaves through lots of small, cute farms and you have to be careful not to hit horses and other cattle.  I made it, but without a proper distance bike, it took four and a half hours round-trip...and I wasn't able to move very much in the days after.)

Collège Soljenitsyne

After my first fifteen minutes at the collège, I knew I was going to love it.  As teachers started filing into the salle de profs (teachers' lounge) in the morning, they all greeted and welcomed me, some giving me a tour of the school and talking excitedly about their classes.  The students were, if possible, maybe even more friendly, excited, and curious.  Most students come from farming communities in the area.  Most of the English classes had prepared questions to ask me about my life and family, Minnesota, and the United States; I brought lots of pictures and maps to help explain.  Since this region of France is not a popular tourist destination for the average American, people from the U.S. are considered exotique...and a true rarity.  It was fascinating to discover the things that surprised students and I was taken aback by some questions - "Do you have a gun?" and "Have you shot someone?", for example.  They were very interested to learn about immigration from Mexico into the U.S. and to discover that Spanish is a very common foreign language for American students to learn.  Some were also floored to learn that the U.S. has more than Hollywood and the Empire State Building, that I've never bumped into George Clooney (or any other celebrity) wandering through the woods of northern Minnesota, and that I've never seen a caribou.  They ogled over the picture of St. Paul streets covered in snow and the picture of an "average-sized" house in the U.S., and wanted to know if I ate hamburgers for every meal.

Streets of Aizenay;
St. Joseph, a small chapel;
inside St. Benoit des Landes

Teachers and staff are also curious and friendly; the staff lounge is always a welcoming, lively place to relax and chat.  There are several five- to ten-minute breaks throughout the day when everyone congregates there to have coffee, and of course everyone stops for at least an hour at lunchtime to eat together.  I've had a hard time explaining the "time is money" mentality of the U.S. to students and teachers alike here.  In English, we say that we "spend" time; in French, the translation is to "pass" time.  This also pertains to work time too - in class, there is no real rush to learn too much too quickly - but students learn at least as much since they aren't as stressed.

I had no morning classes on Thursday, so I explored the town of Aizenay on foot.  It's very small; at the center, there's a large, beautiful church surrounded by small shops (many boulangeries and patisseries, of course).  I stopped for a coffee at a brasserie which, it turned out, is owned by a father of one of my students, and I made friends with several people on the street who were happy to show me around and chat for a few minutes.  Small experiences like that melt my heart; people are so happy to "pass" time talking with strangers.

Lycée Edouard Branly

My second full week of teaching was at Lycée Branly, where I live.  It's definitely a different environment.  High schools are bigger and have many more teachers; the community is not as close-knit, so it's difficult to get to know everyone.  Lycée Branly is also a lycée professionel - the American equivalent is a technical college or trade school.  The stereotype of LPs is that students are not very motivated or intellectually inclined; while I can see where the stereotype comes from, I found that students' motivation really depends on their teacher.  I have some classes that will be a joy to co-teach and others where the teacher just wants me to take over so he/she can have a break.  Either way, it will be interesting and fun to teach specialized lessons using culinary, business, and shopping vocabulary.

After only two and a half weeks of teaching for the assistants, it's already time for les vacances - two weeks off!  Time for more travels!

Most of the foreign language assistants in la Roche-sur-Yon:
representing England, Germany, the U.S., Canada, and Spain

"L'auberge espagnole" - me, Julian, and Laura - roommates at Lycée Branly

Paperwork.

You can't break a promise to a four-year-old.  That was why, during one of my last days in the United States last August, I could be found perusing postcards at Como Zoo.  Almost every Sunday last year, as part of my job with Berlitz, I taught Daniel and his dad, Kevin; Daniel loves animals and loved the zoo, so I told him I'd send him something from Minnesota when he and his family moved back to Shanghai last June.

While teaching with Berlitz last year, I remember having adult students come to their lessons in a panic over things like bank accounts, mortgages, and car payments.  While I always made sure to answer their questions, define words, and practice any conversations they requested, I didn't fully understand at the time how they felt or why they would often thank me profusely for what seemed like the smallest bits of information.

My first two weeks in la Roche-sur-Yon were a humbling experience.  While I've now started to find the town very charming and rich in unexpected ways, my first days were truly a struggle.  I've been attempting to s'installer (settle/move in) in several ways: opening a bank account, getting a phone number, completing housing and immigration forms with the French government, enrolling in social security and health insurance, figuring out my apartment/roommates/facilities...oh, and getting trained in on my actual job, too.  I'll tell you the story of just a sliver of the paperwork cauchemar (nightmare) so you can get an idea: the following is a piece of the bank/phone saga.

I thought I had a great plan before I left the U.S.  I had asked a CELTA friend, Katie, for some phone plan advice, and she gave me a few companies to research.  While I was in Paris, I stopped by the Virgin Mobile store to see if I could get a plan started.

You can have very strong language skills and still have no idea how to explain yourself in a phone store, I discovered quickly.  While I was able to perfectly describe what I wanted in a roundabout way, I did not have the exact French language for words like "plan", "no contract", and "unlocked".  For the record, I have now learned these useful mots du jour:

un forfait - plan
sans engagement - no contract
débloqué - unlocked

The man working at the store tried very hard not to laugh at the extravagant phrases I was using to describe what I needed, and then explained that it was necessary to open a bank account before I could buy a French SIM card.  He also noted that there was a Virgin Mobile store in Nantes that I could visit once I'd arrived in la Pays de la Loire.

I needed to open a bank account for several other purposes as well, so it was my first priority when I arrived in la Roche-sur-Yon (aside from buying a toothbrush, but that's another story).  On my second evening in la Roche, I met the only other American here, Elyse, and she recommended a bank that she's used before called LCL.  After asking her some questions about her experience, I decided to open an account there as well.

In order to open a bank account in France, you need a few documents: your passport, of course, and une attestation d'hébergement - a document that proves that you live in France.  For that, I needed to find la gestionnaire, Madame Baudry, au lycée (at the high school) where I'm living.  While Mme Baudry lives in the same building as me, I couldn't seem to track her down for two full days; finally, I went to her office first thing in the morning and told the other two women who worked there that I didn't mind waiting - I had brought a book and was going to stay until Mme Baudry returned.  I had nothing else to do until I obtained the document.

I thought the two women were going to have a nervous breakdown with me sitting there; despite my protests, they fervently searched for Mme Baudry's whereabouts and kept asking if I wouldn't rather repasser plus tard (come back later)? - but when I asked for a specific time, they said they didn't know.  It took all morning, but Mme Baudry returned, met with me, and I left with my attestation d'hébergement in hand.

Later that day, armed with my identification and paperwork, I showed up à la banque LCL, fully expecting to have an account opened by lunchtime so I could get a phone plan in Nantes the following day.  I learned my next phrase du jour beforehand, thinking it was basically sufficient enough to explain myself:

Je voudrais ouvrir un compte bancaire. - I would like to open a bank account.

Of course, I embellished the phrase for the man at the front counter, explaining a little more about my situation.  He looked at me as though he would die of fright, and promptly led me back to a couple of offices where he spoke very rapidly in French to the two women working there.  One, Hélène, asked if I could make an appointment to come back later.  I said, "Of course; when?"; she responded, "Next Tuesday?"; I must have looked absolutely horrified...Hélène was sympathetic and met with me right away.

In the U.S., you can go to the bank and do transactions anonymously or meet with any available banker to discuss the specifics of your account.  In France (at least, in small-town France), no.  You are paired with a banker who is responsible for you and your account; you have to go to that person anytime you have a question or want something changed.  That is why, normally, you have to schedule a rendez-vous with your banker - he or she needs time to research your situation and needs in order to best help you.  Luckily, Hélène had just guided Elyse through the process of opening an account and was familiar enough with it to bend the rules for me.

Hélène was the first person in la Roche-sur-Yon who went the extra mile to be incredibly patient and help me out.  She also made me realize exactly how much it means to foreigners to have a native speaker who is patient enough to allow me to use my French but who is also willing to explain things several times so that I understand, and slow down her speech when necessary for me to comprehend.  While I understand basic bank lingo in the U.S., I felt completely stupid and a little scared at first not fully understanding the phrases for things like "monthly credit card charge", "security charge" (in case the card is stolen), "minimum account balance", etc.  Now, after the initial shock, I can use my frequent trips to the bank as learning experiences to obtain more French vocabulary.  Hélène explains things very calmly and simply.

Unfortunately, my luck stopped there.  I traveled to Nantes the next day to be told by Virgin Mobile that il faut absolument avoir une carte bleue (you absolutely have to have a bank card) to get a SIM card.  So I had to wait a week before a couple of bank codes were mailed to me: first, my internet code; then, my PIN for my card.

While waiting for my card and PIN, I stopped at nearly every phone shop in la Roche, comparing prices and requirements.  When I finally received the card and activated it, I thought I had everything figured out (again):  I went to Crédit Mutuelle on a recommendation.  This time, I expected to have to schedule a rendez-vous later, but they took me without a problem.  Another new ally, Vincent, was ready to break a couple of rules for me to get my phone up and running sooner rather than later...mais alors, he was hit with a computer error message while trying to input my card information.  After much ado and a few phone calls, he gave me the bad news.

You can pay for your French phone plan however you like; however, to pay for the French SIM card and phone number with that particular company (which costs as little as one Euro.  One.  Euro.) you have to use a MasterCard - not VISA - connected to your bank account.  Of course, my bank card is a VISA.

In the end, I was able to order my SIM card online through a different company and pick it up a week later at a store about twenty minutes north of centre-ville; after some scary moments attempting to navigate automated messages in French, my phone is up and running.

Around the same time, I received an email from Kevin - Daniel received my postcard and was so excited to tell his teachers and classmates that he received a letter "from the other side of the world".  I'm happy to now better understand how their family, and many others, felt moving across the world, struggling to establish themselves in a place with different systems and customs for things as "simple" as opening a bank account.

Excursions, excursions

Elyse, the other American assistant, and I decided it was obligatory to visit Nantes before the start of classes.  Nantes is the closest large city and the center of our académie (the equivalent of a school district, but it covers much more territory than districts in the U.S.).

Nantes on the Loire

Nantes is a lively city on the Loire river with a variety of things to do.  Since we know we'll be coming back several times throughout the year, Elyse and I weren't pressées (pressed) to see everything at once; we spent a lot of time walking and getting the gist of the city's layout.  One of the popular and more modern attractions in Nantes are their mechanical animals - la Roche-sur-Yon apparently stole the idea from them - which can be found on a carousel and a mechanical elephant that you can ride near the river.

Château des ducs de Bretagne

Shrubbery in les Jardins des Plantes

While we decided to wait for another time to ride the mechanical animals, we went to several other important monuments.  The Château des ducs de Bretagne is free and open to the public; you can roam the ramparts and picnic on the lawn just outside by the river.  Not far are the Jardins des Plantes, one of my favorite parts of Nantes.  The gardens are large, serene, and well-kept, with ponds, paths, birds (freely-roaming ducks and parakeets in a large cage), and elaborate shrubbery clipped in the shapes of animals.  I could move to Nantes just for the gardens.

Le Bouffay

Nantes also has a stunning cathedral...which, no surprise, was destroyed during the world wars, rebuilt, and then set on fire at some point during the mid- to late-1900s...and then rebuilt.  When looking at the outside, you can see the white stone used to rebuild the new sections and the grey stone from the old cathedral.

Our favorite area in Nantes is called the Bouffay, where the cobblestone streets narrow and fill with restaurants and outdoor cafés.  It's a great place for perusing menus and relaxing, and is especially lively in the evening.  Elyse and I found a perfect hole-in-the-wall restaurant for a Roquefort salad and moules frites (mussels and fries) before heading back to la Roche.

For the record: the best chocolate in Nantes can be found not far from le Bouffay at a shop called Castelanne.  It was so delicious, it made both of us cry.

A few days later, once we had met more assistants, we decided to travel to a town called les Sables d'Olonne.  Elyse, Henry, Laura, and I went together early in the morning.  About thirty minutes away, right on the Atlantic coast, les Sables is the Florida of France: a retirement town with a beach.  The town itself isn't much; there's a touristy cluster of shops, a church, and a seashell museum.  There's a nice port with lots of boats and a poissonnerie with very fresh fish.  The beach itself is wonderful, with soft, fine white sand...and the scariest, largest meduse (jellyfish) I've ever seen washed up on shore - I had terrible flashbacks of my jellyfish sting in Cannes.  After a lunch picnic, we walked north to one of two lighthouses.  A placard nearby told me that it's known as the little Tower of Pisa (apparently it leans just a bit, but I couldn't see anything). 

  

 

In the afternoon, we were joined by Jack and Kate, two English assistants from la Roche, and Christopher, an English assistant who lives in les Sables.  We spent most of the afternoon eating ice cream and dipping our feet into the ocean, and of course waving to America across the Atlantic.

After a day of beach and sun, everyone was tired and we decided to head back early to see if we could take an earlier train back to la Roche.  We all have cartes jeunes, or youth cards, which discount every train ticket we buy within France (by 25-60% each trip, so it's a fantastic deal); the problem is that we don't get the full discount if we travel during morning and evening rush hour.  In order two save a grand total of two Euros each, Laura and Elyse and I decided to keep our original tickets, which happened to be for a regional bus that functions like a train for ticket purchase purposes.  It was also the final bus of the day.

You can probably already see where this is going.  While I understood when the woman at the ticket counter told us to wait for the bus devant la gare (in front of the train station), we took it a little liberally and followed a sign to the bus station on the side of the train station, where we saw other regional buses and assumed we were in the right place.

6:30 came and went with no bus.  I started to get uneasy, and sprinted back to the ticket counter in the train station.  The look on the woman's face was a mix of horror, pity, and how-could-you-be-this-stupid-I-said-in-FRONT-of-the-train-station.  It seemed we were stranded in les Sables overnight...on the eve of our first day of work in la Roche.  Mortified, we scrambled to think of people to call - luckily, Elyse has a working phone - but none of us particularly wanted to phone our cooperating teachers to ask to be rescued before school had even started.  Finally, Elyse remembered our friend, Gwendolyne, a French university student who lives at the same foyer de jeunesse as Elyse and who has a car; Gwen was kind enough to drive down to les Sables after class and rescue us.  Un grand merci to Gwen!  We provided a picnic for her in la Roche last weekend as a thank-you.

La vie en pays yonnais

It's been almost two weeks since I arrived chez moi in the Vendée region.  After five days living the marvelous Parisian life, the slow, small-town pace of la Roche-sur-Yon was a bit of a shock to the system.

The Pays de la Loire region of France is divided into five sections; la Roche-sur-Yon is in one called the Vendée.  The town is, as I was told beforehand by several people, tranquille; calm and fairly quiet.  From my apartment au lycée (at the high school), it's about a ten-minute walk to the city centre.  On the way, you take a modern and unique red pedestrian bridge (the fifth and sixth pictures on the left) that links the outer area of the city to the center; the bridge is also the background image of this blog.  After passing la gare, you'll continue to the Place de la Vendée, the smaller of two main city squares, and Rue Clemenceau, the shopping street (last photo to the left).  La Roche has a good variety of stores, especially clothing and jewelry shops, as well as several banks and, randomly, opticians.  You can find at least a dozen opticians au centre-ville alone; the concentration of opticians here is like that of coffee shops in Seattle.  I was happy to also discover many boulangeries (bakeries) and patisseries (pastry shops) that are even open on Sundays - nearly everything else in town is closed, but people need their fresh baguettes.  My favorite boulangerie is called L'Imperial (second-to-last photo, with the green awning); they have a special baguette-like bread that is heaven on earth.  The first time I bought one, it was still warm from the oven and I decided to taste just a bit on my way home.  By the time I reached my apartment, it was half gone.

If you look at an aerial map of la Roche-sur-Yon, the outer perimeter of le centre-ville is shaped like a hexigon with the most important square in the middle: la Place Napoléon, or Place Nap for short.  Place Nap (top photo) used to be a parking lot, but is now a gorgeous park with plants, lights that sparkle at night, a nice café, music that is piped in through speakers at certain times of day, a snazzy statue of Napoleon riding a horse, and ponds with real fish and mechanical animals.  In the second photo, you can see a couple of the mechanical animals that are actually in the pools; in the afternoons, you can use control panels in the park to manipulate the animals and make them move in various ways, kind of like puppets.  They represent the menagerie of exotic animals that Napoleon brought back from Egypt in the late 18th century.

People here adore the slow, simple life; as quiet as the town is, there are cafés and brasseries everywhere and by mid-afternoon every day, almost every outdoor seat is full.  To be fair, the weather has been perfect for lounging outside; very foggy and a little chilly in the early mornings, but around seventy degrees and sunny every afternoon.

One of my other favorite parts of la Roche-sur-Yon is their covered Marché les Halles near Place Nap (third photo).  It's a decent-sized market with a variety of fruit, vegetables, cheese, meat, fish, bread, pastries, jam...and it's very highly rated in France.  I go almost every day for fresh produce - it's open every morning except Sunday - and have made friends with several vendors who love chatting and teaching people about their food.

The Vendée region is known for its extensive hiking and biking trails; the terrain is fairly flat.  One of the English teachers au lycée is going to loan me un vélo (a bike) for the year and most of the other assistants are trying to get them too so we can explore further on the weekends.

La Roche-sur-Yon is the perfect-sized town for meeting other assistants...and meeting French people!  If I taught in a bigger city like Nantes, there would be around one hundred assistants also working there; in some small towns, there are only one or two assistants.  In la Roche, we have a group of about fifteen or twenty (I haven't met all yet) from all over the world:  Spain, Germany, Venezuela, China, England, Russia, Canada, and there are just two of us from the U.S.

Henry (Canada), me, Laura (Spain), Elyse (U.S.)
Me and Laura, ma coloc
Henry, Kate (England), me, Elyse, Jack, and Christopher (both England)

There's always someone to meet up with for coffee, a meal, a walk, or a day trip to another city.  We all have slightly different living situations, so we share kitchens, laundry facilities, and household utensils.  I live with two colocs (roommates): Laura from Spain (Seville) and Julian from Germany (Bochum, not even ten minutes from Essen).  They both work at Lycée Branly part time and at different middle schools in la Roche for the rest.  Living with them is so fascinating; although Julian can speak English and Spanish and Laura can speak a little English, we all speak French at home.  It's great practice, but I think I'm picking up some Espan-français and Allefrançais: Spanish and German phrases that probably don't translate into French (or at least don't mean the same thing to native French speakers)...but we use them anyway.  As we continue to settle in, I'm excited for them to teach me some Spanish and German!  At the moment, we have the best-sized living space of anyone and the most-furnished kitchen and an old TV with several stations so we can practice listening to French; it's a lively place with friends coming and going frequently.

On the other hand, the logistical end of moving here has been a bit of un cauchemar (a nightmare).  As soon as I have a working cell phone, I'll write the abridged version of the bank account/phone plan saga, an incredible and mind-boggling tale that well illustrates the quirks of the not-so-logical logistical French way of life.  In the meantime, I have a few more stories to share soon about day trips in the Pays de la Loire!

European street music project

In celebration of today's internet installation in my apartment, I can finally upload and share the clips of music performances (mostly street musicians) I've collected started since arriving in Amsterdam.  Enjoy!

Amsterdam Centraal Station, 9/6/14:
http://youtu.be/beS_2-E4lXs

Bruges, Belgium, 9/12/14:
http://youtu.be/RTF_CiZKOFk

Sacre-Coeur, Paris, 9/19/14:
http://youtu.be/O76nWMUY5Lc

Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, 9/21/14 (L'été from Vivaldi's 4 Saisons):
http://youtu.be/YRhXsaiQ3Aw

A random moment à la Roche-sur-Yon involving a truck carrying a band dressed in neon yellow and a handful of traditionally-dressed chefs, 9/27/14:
http://youtu.be/24rK-_5IGfs

Water dancers + classical music + hip hop music au Festival Météores, la Roche-sur-Yon, 9/27/14:
http://youtu.be/lBDzN3BsaQk

"Paris reminds me a lot of L.A."

I have never had much luck with hostels in Paris, and this time was, at first, no different.  Since I initially wasn't sure if I'd stay all weekend in Paris or go somewhere else, I only booked two nights at a place near the Louvre.  Like many Paris hostels, it was rather dingy and cramped...but most worrying was its lack of proper lockers.  While I can definitely rough it for a few nights, I've been carrying my flute with me during this trip and I really have to make sure I have a safe place to store it when I'm out for the day.  The only lockers available were in the lobby and looked like they could disintegrate if you brushed them while walking past, but as they were the securest option, I grudgingly used them.

I shared a room with five other Americans - college-age students on some kind of cruise ship tour of Europe.  They had also just arrived in Paris and were a rather entertaining bunch; the title of this post is a quote from the most astute of the group.  Another gem was, "Oh, God, I'm so glad you're normal" (when they discovered that I was also American).

I have an agenda of things that I always have to do and eat in Paris:  I did the usual picnic by la Tour Eiffel at sunset, hike to Place Monge for my panini and nutella crêpe from my favorite vendor, pain au chocolat and people-watching in the Jardin du Luxembourg...  But this time, I was lucky to have five days and plenty of time to relax and discover new things.  I took advantage of the sketchy hostel's location and spent a day near the Tuileries, where I visited two new museums on the west end of the gardens.  Le Musée de l'Orangerie holds Monet's les Nymphéas as well as an impressive collection of impressionist paintings; I recommend it.  Just north of that is the Jeu de Paume, which had a couple of more modern, philosophical artist exhibits.  I enjoyed seeing Kati Horna's photography, but the other two exhibits were rather bizarre.  I read the French descriptions; I looked at the artwork; I didn't understand; I read the English descriptions; I looked at the artwork; I still didn't understand.  At the very least, I collected a lot of new French vocabulary for mon petit cahier (my little notebook).

View from my hostel

View from the top of Sacre-Coeur

The next day, I switched to a new hostel in Montmartre.  When I arrived, I felt like I'd won the lottery - it was clean; small, but not cramped; my room opened onto a nice terrace with a view of Sacre-Coeur; there were free, secure storage lockers right in my room.  The Village Hostel in Montmartre: my official Paris hostel recommendation.  I took advantage of the opportunity to spend a day in Montmartre; there are many cobblestone streets and shops and restaurants to explore.  (You'll also get an unavoidable workout walking up and down the hill.)  If you walk about twenty minutes behind Sacre-Coeur, you'll find a less-touristy neighborhood with espresso for under two Euros.  My favorite new adventure was climbing to the top of the Dom of Sacre-Coeur; I went mid-morning to get a stunning view of all of Paris.  The steps were much sturdier and less scary than those in Delft.

That weekend, les Journées européennes de la Patrimoine were happening - a celebration of European heritage, which means that in every city, for one weekend, nearly all museums and national monuments have free admission.  (It also meant that Paris was extremely busy and there were long lines for everything.)  I did go to and enjoy Musée Cluny, a collection of art and artifacts from Paris and the surrounding area during the Middle Ages.  Many of les sculptures, les tapisseries (tapestries), et les vitraux (stained glass windows) are worn or broken, but the museum holds the famous Dame à la Licorne tapestries, a series of six impressive tapestries made in the 1400s that show the five sense (le toucher, le goût, l'odorat, l'ouïe, et la vue) plus one extra: mon seul désir (my only desire).

My favorite part of les Journées de la Patrimoine was a free Saturday evening concert I came across by accident.  I attended the récital inaugural des grandes orgues restaurées de Notre-Dame de Paris.  Notre-Dame's organ has been undergoing restoration for about two and a half years; aside from a short period in July of 2013, when it was used to celebrate Notre-Dame's 850th birthday, it hasn't been played.  The sound of the organ, which has been my favorite sound in the world since I first heard it while studying abroad, returned to the cathedral for the first time Saturday evening.  Three major organists played, all official organistes titulaires (tenured organists) of Notre-Dame: Jean-Pierre Leguay, Olivier Latry, and Philippe Lefebvre.  Lefebvre is a legendary improviser who teaches improvisation courses at the Conservatoire de Paris; his final improvisation was truly one of the most incredible musical moments I've ever heard.  Beyond the music itself, people-watching at concerts in Europe is truly an experience in itself.  Notre-Dame was packed with people that evening: every seat was filled and people of all ages were standing in the halls and sitting in the aisles.  You could tell that the récital meant a lot to some who couldn't seem to wipe the smiles off their faces throughout the program and even after the final chords sounded.  The following clip is the end of a the classic Bach Prelude et fugue en ut mineur played by Leguay:

http://youtu.be/A3ZSv6G-VEs

If that wasn't enough excitement, I decided to get a ticket to a Sunday evening small string ensemble concert at Sainte-Chapelle, a smaller chapel not far from Notre-Dame which is known for its incredible vitraux.  If you want to see Sainte-Chapelle, I really recommend going for a classical music concert there.  You get to sit, relax, enjoy the music, and spend time slowly admiring the stained glass windows.  The l'Orchestre Classik Ensemble's music was incredible smooth and skillful, and they really put on a show, moving around the altar (and sometimes running around the chapel) as they played and interacting with each other.  The highlighted piece of the evening was Vivaldi's 4 Saisons, but this is a bit of their rendition of Pachelbel's Canon that opened the performance:

http://youtu.be/-C0DgAJhEoY

The final highlight of the Paris adventure was visiting Edith, another friend from the CELTA who works for Disneyland Paris, and her family for Sunday lunch.  She lives in Torcy, a suburb of Paris accessible by a forty-minute train ride.  It was a nice afternoon seeing her and her husband, David (who visited Strasbourg last summer) and meeting their two kids and cat, Kiwi, while speaking a lot of French.

Vieux amis, nouveaux mots

My first days in France were probably my favorites of this adventure so far.  Last Sunday, I took the train from Liège to Brussels to Paris, where I had to take two different Métro lines and sprint through three stations and across the Bercy neighborhood to a smaller station to catch a train to Nevers.  (I made it in record time and didn't get my suitcase stuck in a single turnstile.)  Two hours later, I arrived to a very warm bienvenue from mes amis Lise and Christophe, who were my hosts last summer in Strasbourg.  Christophe has worked in Nevers on weekdays for a few years now, but since it's a five-hour train from Strasbourg and they were only able to see each other on the weekends, Lise moved to join him last spring.

It's strange to think that, a few months before the CELTA, I randomly picked Lise and Christophe off of a list of possible housing choices.  They've turned out to be two of the most wonderful people I've met in France - genuine, easy-going, friendly, and curious; they turn simple outings like museum visits or walks along the Loire turn into lively adventures.  At my request, they wholeheartedly agreed to put me through three days of French immersion boot camp.  Lise's strong Alsatian accent presented the most difficulties for me, paired with her always-poetic prose, but my listening and speaking had become much more fluid by the time I left Wednesday.  French grammar has been coming back to me quickly, but vocabulary is a different story; I've been collecting new and forgotten words in a notebook.  I've gained some interesting and technical words from visits to museums and churches.  Lise and I had an excellent time trying to use some of these words in conversation after she helped me to understand the definition:

un plat à barbe - shaving plate
les voûtes en berceau - a type of arches often found in Roman and Gothic churches
truculent - eccentric, colorful, original (as in a personality)

La Faïence

Nevers is a small but charming town on the Loire, two hours south an a tiny bit east of Paris.  As Christophe explained to me, it is en décline economically; lots of shops have closed in recent years and people have moved away.  Nevers' main industry and claim to fame is la faïence (earthenware pottery painted in white, blue, green, yellow, and brownish purple).  In the 1600s, the town was full of pottery ateliers and vendors which were popular with upper-class customers.  Eventually, pottery from England rose in popularity and drove most of Nevers' pottery makers out of business; there used to be hundreds of ateliers, and now there are only five left in the town.  As a result of the poor economy, you will come across many disgruntled and pessimistic people in Nevers.  Lise and I met a man working at the Musée de la Faïence who seemed hate everything from Nevers to Paris to Obama to François Hollande.  He asked me to marry him and I declined on the grounds that he thought that Denver was north of Minnesota, among other reasons.

View from the apartment; Palais ducal de Nevers

Nevers is also home to the oldest château in the Loire Valley, le Palais ducal, which I could see from my window at the apartment.  Built in the 15th century, it was home to much royal drama during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance; I found it impossible to keep track of who married whom and who was exiled and whose children inherited what.  Le Palais was restored in the 1980s and now includes the tourist office, a small museum with information about Nevers and its history, and an aquarium where you can learn about all the fish of the Loire river.

Also well worth a visit is la Cathédrale Saint-Cyr-et-Sainte-Julitte, to continue with my theme of beautiful buildings that were destroyed in wars and are still undergoing restoration.  In the summer of 1944, the cathedral was accidentally hit and almost completely destroyed by an overnight airstrike.  Most of les vitraux (stained glass windows) have now been replaced by four different artists, and the result is absolutely stunning if you visit mid- to late-afternoon.


The best part of Nevers was spending time chez Lise et Christophe et leur chat (their cat) Vodka, who's grumpy as ever and still hates me.  Lise cooked excellent meals; she even made delicious escargots for me when I said I'd never tried them.  (It took me a few tries to get the technique down - I accidentally flung one poor escargot across the room, like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman - but I perfected my skills!)  There's a jazz festival in Nevers in November, and I'm hoping to visit again then - there's a train connection between Nantes and Nevers in the city of Tours, so I can travel between the towns without sprinting through Paris.  And Christophe insists I have to try frog legs next time.

Un beau jour à Bruges

On Friday, I set aside the day for a solo mini-adventure.  I researched Antwerp, Bruges, Gent, and Brussels before deciding to head all the way across the country (which is only a two-hour train ride) to Bruges.

Bruges is a small, picturesque town - a good place to relax, wander, and enjoy the ambiance.  Canals and forty-some bridges circle the city centre.  Near the train station, there's a beautiful monastery, park, and lake complete with a plethora of ducks and more swans than I've ever seen in one place.  The square in the city centre is enclosed by a handful of huge, elegant buildings - a museum, the Stadhuis, and many cafés and restaurants.

The greater part of the day was spent wandering the cobblestone streets, admiring, and people-watching.  The only drawback to Bruges is that it's buzzing with clones upon clones of the stereotypical tourist, complete with fanny pack, camera and neckstrap, and always with city map in hand.  If you can get past that, and maybe find some quieter, less-traveled streets, the buildings and shops are wonderful to peruse.  I did take a canal tour just for kicks, although I didn't see much that I hadn't already seen on foot (the only difference was being on a boat with thirty other people and a driver/tour guide who cracked relentless terrible jokes).  It was worth enduring the bad jokes, though, because you get to listen to the tour guides speak five or six languages fluently.  They ask you what language you prefer when you get on the boat, and they rotate through all languages as they give the tour; our boat heard everything in English, Italian, and German.

Another must-see in Bruges is the Église Notre-Dame (Church of Our Lady), which houses la Vierge à l'Enfant (Madonna and Child) sculpture by Michelangelo.  It was made around 1504, and the sculpture is one of the few by Michelangelo that are located outside of Italy.  The church also owns a handful of paintings that are on display, and there's a small but pretty garden area and canal behind the church.

For dinner, I had an amazing dish of carbonnade flamande (beef stew) with applesauce.  My other adventure was visiting a shop called the Chocolate Line, which was featured on a cooking show called the Hairy Bikers.  The Chocolate Line is known for bizarre chocolate flavors, like grass and one that numbs your mouth.  I discovered that these are used mainly for demonstrations, but I did pick up a variety of flavors like apple vinegar, lemongrass, and passion fruit.  We sampled them after dinner the next night in Liège and they were incredibly flavorful; they outshone even Godiva.

On Saturday, my last night in Liège, Mary and Bruce had their neighbors (a Belgian couple, Daniel and Isabelle and their son, who's around Joseph's age) over for dinner.  They were excellent company and we all had a blast; we even tricked Daniel into trying some caca coffee after dinner...which, he admitted in the end, was not bad.  The experience was also a crash course in French for me as everyone spoke very quickly and wittily while I attempted to cling on and follow the conversation.  For five straight hours, it was exhausting, but it was the first step in jogging my memory and forcing me to think in French again, just in time for me to travel south into France.

"Can I get you a caca coffee, straight from a weasel's - ?"

That was my warm welcome to the city of Liège, Belgium.  After traveling solo through the Netherlands for a few days, it was wonderful to see a familiar face.  I stayed with Mary, a friend from last summer's CELTA days.  Mary teachers English at the Université de Liège and her husband, Bruce, is the principal horn player for l'Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège.  They're both American, but have lived in Belgium for twenty years.  I also met their children, Joseph (who's in high school) and Lys (middle school), their dog Hope, and cat Fleur.

The "caca coffee" is an interesting side note: it's actually an Indonesian coffee called Kopi Luwak, made from coffee beans that are first eaten, partially digested, and excreted by a weasel-like animal (a luwak, in Indonesian).  It's surprisingly smooth with hints of chocolate and hazelnut; chalk-full of caffeine; and it'll cost you about $30 per cup.  Mary got it as a gift from a Vietnamese student.

On the train from Rotterdam, I enjoyed watching the Dutch landscape melt away into Belgian countryside and cities.  Most signs in Belgium are written in both Dutch and French, but it's helpful to be able to recognize both the Dutch and French names of cities; it took a few baffling moments before I realized that Luik is the Dutch name for Liège, and I was therefore thankfully on the correct train.  I had only a slight moment of panic when I had to make a quick connection in Brussels; I simultaneously forgot the French word for "platform" and the Dutch phrase for "which".  The woman at the ticket counter just looked at me curiously when I spit out, "C'est à quel spoor?" in an American accent.

The Université and Philharmonique haven't started yet for the year, so Mary and Bruce took turns showing me around the city.  Liège has quite the extensive history; it was especially important during WWI, and this year being the hundredth anniversary of the war, there were several exhibitions on the subject throughout the city.  Because of its central location between the Netherlands, France, and Germany, Belgium was caught in the middle of much of the fighting during the world wars.  During WWI, Germany used Belgium as a means to reach and occupy France, and the process of taking control of Liège was particularly brutal.  After several battles, during which the Liègeois resisted relentlessly, around 5,500 civilians were killed in total.  Because of the world war history, you can find many people in this part of Belgium who are very friendly to Americans.

In fact, they're still rebuilding and repairing damage from WWII; as a result, the city has a true mix of historic and modern architecture.  In the churches, for example, it's difficult to find original stained glass window panels (and those remaining are usually in pretty bad shape), so you may see ancient stained glass next to a modern window designed by a twentieth-century artist.  Even more common are half-finished windows - they're in the process of replacing each panel one by one as they find the money (bottom right photo, taken in the cathedral).  The unfinished panels are just clear glass.  The top right photo shows the ceiling of another church, Saint-Jacques, which has a much different feel:  It was restored using Gothic, Rococo, and Romanesque elements, the effect of which is a rather rustic ambiance.  The church pictured on the left, Saint-Barthélemy, is now nicely restored due to a chunk of money from the Roman Catholic church.

Saint-Barthélemy's claim to fame is its baptismal font, known as one of the "seven wonders of Belgium" (pictured on the top center).  It was created sometime during the twelfth century by a goldsmith named Renier, who used a technique of wax-melting that was beyond revolutionary at the time.  The baptismal scenes featured on the font are incredibly intricate.  Liège is lucky to still have the font; it was originally made for a church called Notre-Dame-aux-Fonts, which was demolished by French revolutionists in the late 1700s.  The people of Liège hid the font (although the original lid disappeared), and about ten years later, it was safe to move it to Saint-Barthélemy.

Le perron; la Montagne de Bueren;
le Palais des Princes-Évêques

Another piece with some interesting history is le perron, a stone column near the main market square (top left photo).  It's considered one of the most precious pieces of architecture and history in Liège.  In the 1400s, the Duke of Burgundy captured the city and moved the perron across the country to Bruges to punish the people of Liège.  It was returned after his death.  There were several other times throughout history that the perron was dismantled and hidden by the Liègeois for safekeeping; during WWII, for example, the Germans' attempts to steal it were unsuccessful.  It's not elegant by any means and it's in very rough shape from the many periods of destruction in Liège's history, but it's a special symbol of local autonomy and freedom.

There are many, many more historical monuments and stories in the city from every era of history.  A lot of history from the Middle Ages and Renaissance have to do with power struggles between princes and the church; it all gets very complicated, but you can still find remnants everywhere.

Mary took me to the Restaurant Nanesse near le centre-ville for lunch to try some specialties of Liège.  The city is known for its peket, or gin; they like to experiment with a variety of edgy flavors.  I was skeptical, but ultimately impressed with my peket fruit des bois (fruit of the woods).  The main course was boulets-frites (meatballs and fries) with gravy sweetened by apples and pears.

There was one other famous specialty left to try in Liège, which brings me to my first French Mot du Jour (Word of the Day):
le gaufre - waffle

And, for good measure:
le gaufre à la cannele - cinnamon waffle