I Suck At Updating

Seriously. I think I am actually assimilating to French culture because I seem to be getting closer and closer to adapting the very laid-back attitude of "Oh, it'll get done eventually." And that is an awful idea to have. I need to be studying, filling out forms for credit transfer, finding out about how we shall be making up the time that we missed in class due to the "grève," getting in touch with the cultural exchange program I signed up for to see how my forms are being processed, and, of course, updating my blog. Oh, and there are a whole other slew of things I have likely forgotten, but they are on the to-do list as well.

Life, though, does seem to be a bit more relaxed here, which is a lovely change from Wellesley, but actually has caused more concern on relief on my behalf because I truly want to do well here. I want to earn good grades that will give me an extra confidence boost for when I go back to the States and have to finish up my pre-med requirements. If I do well here, then I will be on a roll and ready to tackle organic chemistry with all the energy of a French protester. And that, dear readers, would truly be a sight to behold. I honestly could not tell you how effective their strikes, protests, manifestations, and riots are in terms of influencing their government, but they are nothing if not determined to have their voices heard. 

(On a somewhat unrelated to my eventual narrative note: A friend of mine actually posted a really interesting article about why the French strike to her Facebook page, and I think it is very informative. The article can be found here.)

It has officially been two months since I came to France, which is rather surprising when I think about it. It certainly does not feel as though that much time has passed already. I certainly do feel as though I have seen a lot in a somewhat limited period of time, and I definitely get the impression that my French has improved in certain ways over these past two months, but I consider the fact that I have been in France for over 60 days now... well, that seems pretty darn staggering.

Aix-en-Provence is an absolutely gorgeous old town about 30 minutes northeast of Marseille. My apartment building, for example, is a charming unit from the 17th century (assuming I remember correctly... might have been 18th century...), which concretely establishes it as the oldest building in which I have ever lived. And that is not even close to the oldest building here. One of the older (and distinctly more noticeable) buildings here, for example, is the cathedral, which dates from around the 12th century and is one part Romanesque, one part Gothic, and one part Neo-Gothic due to some renovations in the 19th century. 12th century not old enough for you, hardened and world-weary reader? Well, the cathedral gets better. Inside and off to the right in a small alcove are the remnants of a 6th century baptistery, which would not actually have been a part of the former 6th century cathedral but would have been a separate, though adjacent, building to the actual church. I have spent several hours trying to wrap my mind around how friggin' old that really is, and I have discovered this to be nearly unfathomable and thus worthy of my undying admiration.

Yet despite its medieval roots in Christianity, Aix is a highly modern city in its own way. It is, after all, the city with the second highest cost of living in France - just after Paris, of course. Here, you can find an Hermès boutique, a Rolex shop, a Longchamp store... and if those "magasins" just aren't really your style, there is always the H&M which is about 10 minutes walking distance from my apartment. And in addition, there are numerous bars and cafés and restaurants all with outdoor terraces - some of which extend out into the public squares after the morning farmer's markets have been cleared away. And even at some of the cheapest brasseries, the food is still a level above some of the best mid-priced restaurants in the United States. (I will admit, however, that I am still adjusting to French cuisine, so everything here is new and interesting and tasty and French. I might have a different opinion come next May.) It is not uncommon to spend two hours at a restaurant for lunch or for dinner. More than once, I have run across friends sitting outside at such-and-such a café, sipping a tiny French coffee, munching on a croque-monsieur, or studying for class. It is also very common to run into people at establishments such as Wohoo, Sunset Café, or O'Sullivan's, which are known for their *ahem* alcoholic beverages. There are entire streets, in fact, which are practically lined with bars and/or clubs, and bar hopping is almost like a national pastime for French students on an average Thursday evening. Likely due to its high density of ever-changing (international) university students, Aix is a lively town and certainly does not feel like a stifling village that needs to be escaped each weekend via an excursion to Marseille where one can get in touch once again with civilization.

One of my greatest fears in coming to France was being able to communicate with others my age. I worried every day about my ability to understand what they were saying due to 1) my knowledge of "textbook French" and thus total lack of knowledge of French slang and contemporary idioms and 2) the all-too-common tendency for people my age to not only talk at a rather rapid pace, but to hardly enunciate a word that we let loose from our lips. This, coupled with the vestiges of my near-crippling shyness from which I suffered as a mildly awkward and definitely brainy child and my concern over French opinions of American citizens, had me wondering if I would ever effectively communicate with other French students to the point that I could actually call them my friends. Oh, and to top it off, they have Southern French accents.

Yeah, that was really silly of me to worry about.

Turns out, while people aren't exactly clamoring to be your friend, it is actually fairly easy to make friends as long as you actually put forth a little effort. In fact, it is essentially a more advanced, mature version of kindergarten where you walked over to one of the other kids on the monkey bars, introduced yourself and promptly announced that you and your new acquaintance should be friends. Now, though, you meet at a bar/club/café/classroom/party/etc., introduce yourself, talk about your life plans, compare lifestyles in France and the U.S., exchange phone numbers and slowly begin hanging out more and more, inviting each other to parties or movies or a little afternoon snack. You have to be willing to network and to put yourself out there as a foreign student there to speak French and to make the most of the time allotted to you in Aix. And once you do that, the French are very, very friendly. Since one of the first things they learn about you is that you are foreign, they will be happy to speak a little more slowly for you or help you when you are struggling with a word or turn of phrase that you can't quite make work. They also tend to have a lot of questions about life in a foreign country in general.

And my fear of incomprehensible slang? Yeah, well, I hear that now and then when I am out shopping and run across some high schoolers, but not so much in the everyday conversations between myself and a native French speaker. The problems with enunciation happen fairly frequently where they speak a little too quickly or don't articulate with the finesse of a stage actor, but considering that this also happens to me in English (albeit with a greatly reduced frequency) I have learned to not let it bother me too much.

My general comprehension of French has increased since arriving, as well. Even if I cannot understand everything that is said or sung or written, I finally know enough French and can translate in my head rapidly enough that I can catch the general understanding of things. Tiny nuances are still lost on me, but each day I feel as though I am getting closer and closer to my goal of fluency. I can converse easily enough, and my sentence structures and use of grammar and vocabulary are slowly becoming more sophisticated. It is an exciting process overall.

All of my new French friends seem to think that I am quite good at speaking French. They find my accent to be astonishingly non-abrasive and are overall impressed that after six years of learning a foreign language, I can speak with such ease. Hah, they are totally overestimating my abilities, but their kind comments are a welcome ego-boost to this foreigner. Classes are running smoothly, too. My history and art history courses are quite fascinating - I have never learned so much about the Middle Ages in my life. And my translation course is very interesting from a grammatical viewpoint. Learning, learning, learning: there really is something new every day, which makes my inner Hermione Granger jump for joy. Yippee!

My French friends all seem to enjoy going to the cinema as well, which is excellent news for me because, in my opinion, going to see French movies where there are no subtitles and you can't ask anyone to repeat themselves is an excellent test of one's comprehension skills. Last Thursday, I went out to the movies with a few friends, and we saw Les Petits Mouchoirs (English description here), which, I was told, was a classically and typically French film: where the emotions are super intense and nothing much really happens throughout the course of the movie. Those can actually be some of the best movies, though (ref. A Bout de Souffle, arguably Belmondo's best film), and I found the film to be highly enjoyable. It ran a little long at the end, but the balance of comedy and tragedy was appropriate and it gave a fairly accurate depiction of life in France. There were certainly little details I missed through a lack of comprehension, but once I figured out that Guillaume Canet's project (he wrote and directed the film) was basically a French adaptation of The Big Chill, I was able to understand so many more things about the movie. This was simply further evidence that a good portion of anything involving Guillaume Canet will be of quality (excluding The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio, which many people pretend never happened).

And now, a few pictures to finish up this entry. Enjoy!

Our living room - and my computer Aristophanes

Our lovely kitchen and my roommate's family cookbook

Rue Granet - view from our window

Place d'Albertas

Place de la Rotonde - as seen from les Allées Provençales

Tootles, y'all! Next entry will be about my travels in Provence!

Gros bisous!!

Rachel

Louis the Lucky Duck

If I lived somewhere with a garden like this

I am certain I would never want to leave. Versailles is worth the visit for this tiny corner of the royal gardens alone. I'm not even including the fountains and the hidden speakers in the walls of shrubbery that play classical music and the perfectly white marble statues and the vividly colored flowers. Heck, I'm not even talking about the parks that extend outside of the initial manicured gardens. I refer merely to what is included in this picture here. I would be content with this for a lifetime.

It boggles the mind to think that this once belonged to a single man. To be fair, he was the leader of an entire nation, but, hey, Obama is the leader of one of the most powerful nations in the world, and he doesn't have a garden like this.

Let's continue with our pretty pictures tour, shall we?

The Royal Gate - Read: the second of two gates leading to the château

The chapel

Strange Japanese statue in front of overly ornate door

The Hall of Mirrors, part 1

The Hall of Mirrors, part 2

I spent a fair amount of time being herded through room after room after room of absolute magnificence by the crowds of people.

Originally, I had planned upon heading out to Versailles early that morning with several others on the program so that we could beat the crowd and have the château to ourselves. However, the previous night of partying in Paris (during which I nearly caused a fight at a discothèque, as you may recall) and my complete inability to get out of bed in a timely manner meant that there was no way in this life or in any other that I would be catching the 8:19 am train out to Versailles. Nope. Nuh uh. It just was not in the cards for me. (I later learned that some people had managed to get up and get on the early train - Bravo, I say!)

Instead, I caught the 10:19 am train and arrived about 45 minutes later at the train station. I had done some research on how to get there a day or two before, so I knew that getting there was quite simple: take the RER to the end of the line, get off, walk a little bit, and then begin drooling over the pretty. What I failed to remember to do in my research, though, was to figure out that little walking bit. I had, of course, looked at the train station on the map to gain a sense of how far away it was from the actual château, but upon seeing that it was roughly a five minute walk or less, and there did not seem to any tricky twists or turns, I did not do any further exploration of this map. Thus, when I arrived at the station, I was completely lost. I had been under the impression that all I needed to do was walk out of the station, look around, spot Versailles, and begin marching toward it. I had also been under the impression that the train station would not be surrounded by buildings but would instead be right on the edge of the Versailles property. This was not the case. The station is in the town, about a block away from the palace, and the one is not visible from the other. 

Thankfully, just about everyone else on the train with me had the same destination in mind, so it took me about a microsecond to figure out that I merely needed to follow the mob of fellow tourists to reach my goal. From there, it became a matter of standing in lines to gain access to the museum and parks. I was fortunate enough to miss the really large crowds, which showed up about half an hour after I did, but I still had to wait about 45 minutes total (30 to get my ticket and another 15 to enter the grounds proper) before I could actually begin exploring to my heart's content.

I spent about an hour and a half strolling through the place on my own, spending as much or as little time as I wanted in each room. There were always people around, though, and I thus felt obliged to not linger too long in one place - it somehow seemed rude in my eyes.

My favorite room, without a doubt, was the Hall of Mirrors. I spent more time there than anywhere else in the interior of the château. It is also probably the largest room open to visitors in the building, so it lends reason to my directly proportionally increased amount of time spent there. I love sunlight and being surrounded by natural light, so this room was like a dream come true. Upon my arrival, the sky, with its clouds a darker grey than I had ever seen in the sky, had been threatening to pour down on everyone unfortunate enough to be caught waiting in line, which had included me. Luckily, though, by the time I reached the Hall of Mirrors, the rain clouds had, for the most part, gone off to unleash their drenching fury elsewhere, leaving behind happy fluffy clouds and intermittent patches of sun. This meant that the room was fantastically bright and lovely. The light flooded in through the grand windows and the golden statues holding aloft the magnificent candelabras gleamed.

Pictured: Gleaming golden statues holding aloft magnificent candelabras

Louis XIV probably never realized just how freaking lucky he was to wake up in this bed:

Pictured: A bed (literally) fit for a king.

and then walk out though his bedchamber into the Hall of Mirrors before throwing open the windows and gazing out over his magnificent gardens every morning. (I imagine that this is what he did every morning, weather permitting, because I certainly would have.)

WHICH REMINDS ME.

The gardens. Hands down the most amazing place I have ever been to. I spent more time meandering through those gardens and parks than I did inside any of the residences.

After my trip to the palace of Versailles, I ate a quick lunch of a provençal sandwich on foccacia bread, which was an excellent combination, along with "un coca" (I'm pretty sure that you can no longer go anywhere without running into Coca-Cola) and a slice of apple pie at the local café at the museum. I then decided that it was high time I took advantage of the "passeport" ticket that I had purchased which allowed me to visit not only the gardens and parks, but the adjacent properties that had once belonged to other members of the royal family, including Marie Antoinette. On my journey through the royal chambers of Louis XIV, I had, of course, glimpsed the greenery that was to come, but it was still nothing compared to the real thing.

The first thing I noticed as I entered what really amounts to a gargantuan backyard was the faint vibrations of classical music drifting through the air. I wondered to myself where this music could be coming from because it seemed as though an actual orchestra might be just around the corner or down the next flight of stairs. I discovered, to a bizarre melange of dismay and joy that there was no grand orchestra set up in the gardens, playing for my listening pleasure, but, instead, that there were small but powerful speakers hidden away in the giant walls of shrubbery such as the ones pictured below.

A shrubbery that Mom would be proud of

 This meant that the classical music was everywhere you went in the gardens. It did not extend as far as the parks, which are actually open to the public, but the gardens are massive enough that you can spend hours there, moving from fountain to fountain and from musical piece to musical piece. There exist a plethora of alcoves and pathways which play their own specific pieces of music - which is fantastic if you want to hop from piece to piece, but can also be aggravating when you are on the verge of recognizing a piece only to have it turn into something else as you head 'round the corner.

Now, initially, I headed off to the left of the property, where the plants were all perfectly manicured into small swirls of green, punctuated with flowers such as these:

However, I soon headed back for the main path that sloped down from the château. I believe it was then that I first noticed the pure white marble statues lining the central walkway. My inner art history nerd began to hyperventilate from the sheer number of new works to examine - only this time, I could examine them out in broad daylight instead of in moderately lit museums. Again, the question crept into my mind as to whether Louis XIV ever truly realized how totally awesome his life at Versailles had to have been. I mean, the dude has a copy of the Laocoon sculpture, which is one of the most legit pieces of art ever. On a scale of one to holy-crap-they-just-don't-do-art-like-that-anymore, the Laocoon is divine magnificence. In fact, I don't even think Medusa could turn people into stone with the same sort of realism and ideal proportions as the Laocoon. Anyway. My nerd is showing.

What I am trying to say is that walking down through the main gallery to the Apollo fountain is such a treat: gorgeous flowers, epic classical music, and plenty of classical statues with fig leaves over their nether regions to keep this a family affair.

I took my time moving through the gardens, but did not do too much to stray from the central path because I had a sneaking suspicion that one wrong turn, and it would suddenly be worse than the third task of the Triwizard Tournament: walls of shrubbery closing in around me, a sphinx with some annoying riddle, and one wrong decision to touch some cool looking object, and suddenly I'm in a graveyard, watching Ralph Finnes prance around evilly, and trying not to make fun of his lack of a nose.

Thankfully, it appears that stuff only happens in England so I did not have to see any Dark Lords regain a corporeal form.

I did, however, manage to get ever so slightly lost. On my way over to the domain of Marie Antoinette, I managed to completely overshoot my target entrance by taking the wrong tree-lined path. The map I had with me was not very helpful, either, because it was rather difficult to approximate my location relative to the giant canal running through the grand park. So I ended up travelling backwards through the Trianon and the domain of Marie Antoinette. It probably did not make much of a difference, though, because both places were somewhat boring. The Trianon was spectacular in that each room was perfectly color coordinated, but by then my interests in the interiors of buildings had ever so slightly waned.

Eventually, I headed back toward the direction of Versailles, again overshooting my destination such that I was back at the opposite end of the gardens from the Apollo fountain at a set of three fountains to the right of the Versailles establishment.

Lucky for me, though, I had arrived just in time for the fountains to turn on. Earlier that afternoon, they had been quiet, but now they were alive and made the place all the more amazing to my impressionable young mind. Now I was content to wander and lose myself in the mazes of plants, following only my instinct and the sound of falling water. I saw some pretty darn cool stuff.

Yeah it's pretty darn cool

This is even cooler

The fountain that took the cake, though, had to be the mirror fountain with "jets d'eau" that danced in perfectly synchronized time to pieces of classical music. I happened upon this fountain just about half an hour before the gardens closed for the day and figured this was too cool to pass up. So I completely ignored the "keep off the grass" sign, took a seat on the grass, and began watching the water show. I was severely distracted by the pretty for a good quarter of an hour.

Imagine that you can also hear a piano sonata or two right now. Then feel like one classy dude.

I managed to accomplish a goal of mine that day: stay at a museum until closing. After the piece that I was listening to (which might have been German, now that I think about it, but who knows) had finished, the show was over, the fountains were shut off, and everyone was ushered out of the garden by a gentle female voice that kindly informed us in three languages that the palace was closing and everyone needed to GTFO. I made my way back through the rows and rows of plants to the first terrace of manicured green and proceeded to follow the mass exodus out through the gates, casting strange glances at the people who were still trying to get inside the gardens even though visiting hours had clearly ended for the day.

Versailles was absolutely worth the money I had to spend to see everything. I wore myself out so much trying to catch a glimpse of as much as I could that I napped between stops on the train ride back.

All in all, wandering around a royal estate on one's own for a day and never quite knowing where you are going but always knowing exactly where you are is, in my opinion, the best way to see Versailles. Just go and explore. There will always be something to take your breath away.