By the Sea, By the Sea

Perhaps my favorite weekend during my pre-session in Paris was two weekends ago when our program visited the northern coast of France to see Mont Saint-Michel and Saint Malo. There is something absolutely magical about each of these places.

Mont Saint-Michel in particular seems like a mystical destination out of an epic fantasy novel. The tiny, tiny town of 25 permanents residents (twelve of whom are the monks and sisters who live and work at the church) sits atop a small island surrounded by the tides that flow in and out around the island "à la vitesse d'un cheval au galop" as Victor Hugo once put it (that translates to "as swiftly as a galloping horse"). The archangel Michael stands atop the magnificent spire of the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel slaying a dragon and protecting the people of the village below. The streets that lead to the abbey twist and turn and wind up and up and up until you have lost track of how many steps you have climb or exactly which path you have taken to get where you are. Mind you, there are not terribly many paths to choose from, but you would never know this from climbing up to the top. Each turn, each corner leads to you a new set of stairs until you eventually give in to the feeling that you are totally lost and only know that any direction up is likely the right direction.

Did I mention that Mont Saint-Michel looks like this?

From a distance, the sight is even more spectacular, especially if you go early in the morning. At that point in the day, there are few cars on the road to cause traffic or to populate photographs of the island, the sun is still rising so one side of the island is bathed in light while the other remains a slight mystery, and the marine layer has yet to burn away so the petite village can appear to be shrouded in mist. Even when driving up to the place in our super fancy Volvo bus, I kept expecting medieval knights on white horses to come galloping by.

The town itself is the most touristy town you will ever see. There is nothing to it but small restaurants and overpriced gift shops. Everywhere you turn, there is another postcard, another set of china adorned with Mont Saint-Michel or the Eiffel Tower, another snow globe with a model of the church inside, another tiny toy knight on a white horse. In effect, I have discovered that Mont Saint-Michel has two functions: to take your breath away and to take your money. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. For instance, some of the restaurants provide entertainment in the form of cooking when you go to them, or even if you are just passing by the window. I watched five full minutes of two men whipping up a batch of a pastry something to a beat and a rhythm all their own. It was extraordinary to see. Had I been hungry enough, I certainly would have stopped for a bite to eat at this tourist-packed establishment, just to watch these guys at work.

The actual abbey is also pretty darn great. Because it has been built and rebuilt and built over and added on to, there are elements that remain from both Romanesque and Gothic eras. For example,

Romanesque:

Gothic:

Romanesque:

Gothic:

This place is ancient. It makes Boston look like an infant and laughs at the missions of Southern California that call themselves old. It is amazing and humbling to think that this church has been around since the Middle Ages.

Saint Malo is somewhat more impressive and delightedly more badass than Mont Saint-Michel, as I see it. This town of a bit over 100,000 permanent residents started out as a medieval fortified town and then became notorious for the French corsairs and pirates that made their home there and forced English vessels passing through the Channel to pay tributes. Also, the man credited with discovering Canada, Jacques Cartier, came from Saint Malo. Clearly, this place knew/knows how to host some purely badass individuals.

These days, Saint Malo is much more touristy and full of interesting historical facts on plaques that sit in front of important landmarks. There are beaches with extreme tides and waves high enough that they breech the wall along the shore and hit the houses:

There is an entire street of nothing but restaurants (this is the "empty" end of the street just about, but it is still lined with restaurant after bar after cafe after restaurant):

Then there are the ramparts surrounding the original city. Two friends and I walked the entire length of the ramparts in less than an hour. That is how small this place is. But these ramparts and the wall surrounding the city are so awesomely tough that the British didn't even bother trying to lay siege to the city in 1758 because they just didn't have the time to lay siege to an entirely fortified city. Below is a map of the city from the era of this British raid:

It doesn't look much different now, to tell you the truth:

It's been built up a little bit. Modern ports have been added. The surrounding areas are now well populated. But the wall is still there!

The town is just wonderful. I had a lovely steak frites dinner, strolled along the ramparts, explored the streets of the city and walked around the fortified church in the evening, went out with a couple friends to L'Alchimiste, a local bar, for a couple drinks, visited the beach in the day with everyone in the program and meandered along the shoreline to my heart's content. I eventually decided that this was somewhere I could live for a few months out of the year, if not permanently. The small coastal atmosphere of Saint Malo is comfy without being suffocating. The beach is lovely. The city is full of tourists, sure, but I'm from San Diego; I can handle tourists who come to visit coastal towns. Simply put, Saint Malo has an innate charm that managed to completely enthrall me.

Oh, have I mentioned that this was the view from our hotel window?

Never mind that the beds seemed to be well worn and a little sunk in (there were still freshly clean sheets, so not all bad). Never mind that the room itself was slanted. The view of the adorable streets made it totally worth it.

I have not spent a single year of my life in a state that did not border an ocean. In fact, I have never spent a year living more than more than 30 miles from an ocean in my life. And I intend to keep it that way.

Peace, love, and giraffes,

Rachel

Au Revoir, Paris, or, How I Nearly Caused a Fight at a Discotheque

My three week stay in Paris is nearing its end. My large suitcase, already heavier and packed more tightly than it was when I first arrived in France, has already been shipped off to my apartment in Aix-en-Provence. My roommate and I are in the process of slowly cleaning up our tiny little hotel flat. Tomorrow morning at 9:45 am, all eighteen members of the fall semester of the Wellesley-in-Aix program will groggily drag our bodies and our luggage onto a bus that will take us to one of the TGV stations for a three hour trip down to the south of France.

I have been to so many places that I do not believe my feet shall ever forgive me for it. I have marched all along the rive droite and the rive gauche. I have wandered through the cramped aisles of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. I have taken a dip in the Atlantic Ocean and climbed to the very top of Mont Saint-Michel. I have stayed out at bars and clubs until three in the morning. I have eaten more cheese in one sitting that I believe should ever be consumed by a human being. I have dined on baguettes, Nutella, fresh fruit and wine for breakfast. I have seen three plays by Ionesco – one which was funny, one which was bizarre, and one which was boring. I have explored the gardens of Monet, the ramparts of Saint Malo, the parks and gardens of Versailles, the great boulevards and the tiny streets of the sixth arrondissement. And so on.

And to be honest, I still feel that I have done half the things I should have done during my stay.

I believe I have my crash courses in all things French to blame for that. My first course was a course in (essentially) the history of French literature, starting with the Middle Ages and leading up to the twentieth century. The second course was what I like to consider the “How to think in French” course, in which passed much of our time focusing on how to construct a “dissertation,” or, simply, a “disserte.” These strange words denote the classic French essay used in many, many different areas of study, and therefore incredibly essential to our studying abroad. It is somewhat more complex than the typical American essay in that there is a “thèse” where you defend the topic given to you, an “antithèse” where you don’t quite refute the topic at hand but rather note the complications related to it, and finally a “synthèse” in which you push the topic even further to indicate the truly complex nature of your topic. In summation, a “dissertation” really goes on to say that nothing is black and white – there’s a whole lotta grey area as well. The third and final course was focused on French civilization, which is a unnecessarily vague way of indicating that one will be studying French current affairs such as “laïcité,” or the strict separation of Church and State, women’s rights, the organization of the French government, the French education system, and so on.

Holy crap, that’s a lot to learn in three weeks. You know what else is a lot? Three exams, a presentation, and a five page research paper all due in the same week. Two of the three exams were an hour and a half of solid writing in French in an effort to prove how good or bad we are at writing in the language which we are studying. The five page paper was an analysis of one of themes we studied in the civilization course. I haven’t even started classes at the University of Provence, and I have already lost sleep over homework.

This pre-session in Paris has been exhausting in every sense of the word. I am beginning to think more and more that I am simply a machine set on auto-pilot and I just pass through the motions of the doings of the day without necessarily being affected by any of them.

But then I take a walk across the Île Saint Louis and encounter accordion players playing some unrecognizable but undeniably French tune with a smile on their faces and a few euros in the hat sitting at their feet. I buy a 2,50€ ice cream cone with hazelnut flavored ice cream. I sit outside at a Parisian café, sipping a coffee and reading a novel as tourists and residents alike pass by speaking every language imaginable. I explore the tiny boulangeries and crèmeries and flower shops that sell their products at unbelievably low prices. I wander in and out of the boutiques with their conveniently labeled mannequins in the window displays. I sit on my bed by the window of my hotel flat and look out over the rooftops of Paris as the sun sets. And that is when I remember that Paris is the city I have been dreaming of visiting for years, and I am finally living that dream.

In some ways Paris has met and exceeded every expectation that I had. In some ways it has also disappointed me greatly. But that is all to be expected, is it not? Nothing is ever the utopian dream you imagine it to be. I think that when I arrived here, I was expecting something wonderful and new and totally unfamiliar to me. I was looking forward to being able to meet and speak with real live French people. I was going to have the time of my life in the city of lights and of love. In fact, I was looking to live a fairy tale or the script to a cheesy Hollywood film. And thus I was disappointed when I realized that Paris is, in so many ways, just like every other large city in the world: there is awful traffic, noise at all hours of the night, undesirable catcalls from the windows of passing cars, graffiti on the sides of ancient historical buildings, tourists bent over maps of the city as they wonder where the closest metro station might be… I can go on. There are also an obscene amount of smokers in Paris. I do not believe I have walked down a single street in this city without smelling cigarette smoke. I feel as though my lungs have been irreparably damaged. Death by secondhand smoke, here I come! It is as though Parisians either do not understand or refuse to believe that smoking = DEATH. Seriously. It smells awful. It puts ridiculously gross chemicals into your lungs (you know, the organs that basically keep you alive). It causes cancer. Smoking is just gross no matter how you look at it.

But how can I honestly let that ruin my experiences here? I’ve dined atop the Eiffel Tower. I’ve walked the Champs Elysées. I’ve been to the Louvre to see my all-time favorite piece of art (La Victoire de Samothrace). I’ve visited the Musée d’Orsay and stood in front of the painting upon which an entire episode of Doctor Who was based. I’ve taken lunch at Les Deux Magots and thus followed in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway and the Lost Generation. I’ve learned about different types of wine and cheeses so that I will always be able to choose a good wine or cheese to go with a meal. I’ve listened to Ave Maria played on the organ in an old basilica and learned how the instrument actually works (you can play parts of it with your feet!).

Oh, and I also nearly started a fight at a nightclub.

So here’s how it went down. Last night, we celebrated a friend’s birthday by all going out to a discothèque for drinks and dancing. We all danced together in a large group and occasionally wandered over to the bar to get something refreshing (and to watch the bartender toss and twirl the glasses and bottles as he prepared the drinks). Eventually, men at the club started asking the women of the group to dance. I began dancing with a man about my height in a white button-down shirt who, I quickly discovered, had hands like an octopus and wasn’t really getting the clear and unmistakable message that I was interested in dancing and not… well, definitely NOT interested in whatever he was interested in. In order to escape the clutches of Mr. Octopus, I made something up about being overcome by the heat of the crowded dance floor and left the dude for the bar where I ordered a mineral water to cool off and enjoy the entertainment provided by the charming bartender. Ten minutes later, I rejoined my friends on the dance floor, Mr. Octopus was nowhere to be seen, and I was ready to party again. Not two minutes later, another man, whom I shall name Mr. Jacket because he kept messing with his jacket while we were dancing (as in making like he was going to take it off, but then never actually takes it off), came up and started dancing with me. He also was rather close for comfort, but was much more willing to dance as opposed to bump and grind as so many men like to do on the dance floor these days.

So we’re dancing, and everything is going relatively well. I’m holding my own against Mr. Jacket, who obviously thinks he’s hot stuff and keeps trying to speak to me, but either can’t enunciate to save his life or wasn’t speaking loud enough because I could hardly understand a word he said to me unless he repeated it four times. My friends are right nearby. I’m feeling about as comfortable as I ever do when I’m dancing with someone I don’t really know. And then… Oh, and then. Mr. Octopus comes up behind Mr. Jacket, sort of on his right, holding a drink, and just stands there watching us. I see this expression on his face that seems to express some sort of betrayal, as though he wonders how I could have ever consented to dance with someone else when I’d been dancing with him. He then starts to size up my new dance partner, and I begin to seriously freak out. Mr. Octopus is obviously drunk, and is obviously not one of those really happy drunks that laugh really loudly and make friends with everyone. Mr. Octopus is a drunk who blubbers over nothing and punches someone because that someone is dancing with “his girl.” I’m not certain whether to ignore him, confront him, point him out subtly to Mr. Jacket, move away quickly from the both of them and rejoin my friends… I have no idea what is going to happen, but I’m pretty certain that I’m about one hip shake from pushing this guy over the edge and making him attack Mr. Jacket with the ferocity of a tiny Chihuahua. Absolutely terrified that Mr. Octopus is going to start a scuffle with Mr. Jacket over me and that Mr. Jacket will then subsequently beat the shit out of Mr. Octopus, I start to dance slowly, somewhat awkwardly, and definitely nervously.

Finally, Mr. Jacket notices Mr. Octopus and immediately picks up on the situation, clever boy, and says something to the effect of, “Yeah, she is hot. And she’s dancing with me. GTFO.”

And that was the end of Mr. Octopus. Mr. Jacket was a little harder to get rid because he totally thought he was going to score with me and tried to follow me out of the club when I left with my friends. Luckily, one of the men on the trip with us was standing outside waiting for us, so I started hanging all over him to indicate that Mr. Jacket was nothing more than a memory to me already.

I am very seriously considering wearing a turtleneck the next time I go out to a nightclub and dancing exclusively with my female friends to give off the appearance that I have no interest in what any of the men at the club might have to offer. Because, honestly, I’m not interested in what they have to offer. I am there to dance and have fun with friends. End of story.

Haha, so as you can see, my adventures in Paris have been quite varied and never fail to make for an interesting time at the very least.

If I were to sum Paris up in five words, these are the ones I would choose: sprawling, ancient, sophisticated, scandalous, and overwhelming.

Peace, Love, and Exhausted Pandas,

Rachel