A Page Turning Thriller Featuring Christine & Le Voleur

Recently interesting occurrences? Why, I've got plenty! Here they are in chronological order, and in order of increasing interesting-ness.


For starters, Thursday night I ate a large amount of smoked salmon for dinner because that's what my host father, Ghislain, made for us (normally Thursdays we are given food that we have to cook ourselves because my host mother does not have time).  That's something I've certainly never done before.  And then, he offered us vanilla ice cream for dinner.  Toppings? Carmel and syrup, of course!

The ice cream was excellent.  We tried the caramel.  Also excellent.  We did not try it with the syrup...


Another interesting event is the discotheque that my friends and I went to last night called Duplex.  It's free for students on Thursday nights before 12:30, so clearly we were interested.  It's right by l'Arc de Triomphe and we had a great time! The only odd part was the beginning of the night, right when all the students were arriving.  You see, before 11, this place is (apparently) the spot to be if you're a middle aged man and you don't want to go home after work.  I had one man put a top hat on me and ask if I wanted to be on television.  I politely declined.  He insisted that his friend was some well known French TV personality, but I clearly do not watch any TV here, so how would I know, much less care? Regardless, it was a strange and confusing conversation and I quickly proceeded to seek out people my own age to talk to.  Turns out student night at Duplex is very international.  I met an Italian, a Belgian, and a Russian! There was a guy who said he was from the Caribbean, had a really bizarre accent, and also said he lives in London...unclear.  All in all, a good night and somewhere to go back to for a good price (FREE!!!).


Today we had no classes, as will be the trend this entire semester with Fridays.  Never before have I had a class-less Friday in college.  I am in heaven.  My weekends have become limitless! So, what did I do with my first free Friday? I visited Notre Dame! It was a somewhat incomplete visit since we didn't go up to the top, but we walked around on the inside and marveled at the grandeur of it all.  I will definitely be going back to go to the top, but perhaps it will be warmer that day :)


Now, what blog entry on Voyages en Vrac would be complete without an epic tale of Christine on the metro: Christine et Le Voleur--The Great Chase! (Mom, Dad, make sure you're sitting down for this one.)


My friends and I are on the metro going to Notre Dame, and the last train we get on is super crowded.  The guy standing in front of me has his bag all clutched to his chest, and it looks like he's searching for something on the inside of his coat underneath his bag.  I have my camera in my pocket, ready to take pictures of the Notre Dame, so I zip it up just in case.  When we step off the train, I look to my purse out of habit because in the DC metro you have to swipe to get out of the metro too.  Here you just walk on out.  Anyway, I look at my purse, and it is open! My. wallet. is. gone.  Gone.  Immediately I know that guy standing in front of me took it.  My first thought is, "Wow, that's impressive!" quickly followed by, "I need to find him!"  The train is still at the station, so I go back to to car I was on, and I quickly scan the people inside, but I don't see him.  I look down the platform, and I can't see him walking away.  I think, "Shit.  It's gone.  I will never see it again."  Luckily, I had taken all my cards out the night before for the discotheque and I didn't have a whole lot of money inside, so I was almost ready to settle for the loss.  But I decided to check the train one last time (obviously all of this is happening at lightening speed, because the train is still there), and I see him! I get on, grab his jacket and say, "YOU! You have my wallet!" He shakes his head but I say, "Yes you do, you have my wallet.  Give it to me!"  That is when he runs.  I still have him by the jacket, and the metro doors are starting to close, so I squeeze out after him.  He twists away from me on the platform and starts to run up the stairs.  I pursue, shouting "Voleur! Voleur! Il a mon portefeuille!" ("Thief! Thief! He has my wallet!")  As we mount the next flight of stairs, I'm looking to the people around me as I'm running and shouting, and the men look at me with this, "Really? Oh, him?" kind of look and then start to move after him too.  I'm guessing the fact that I'd drawn such attention to him made my pickpocket a little nervous, so he threw my wallet to the ground and ran out of the metro.  I quickly picked it up and looked through it to see that everything was there, still running up the stairs in case I had to continue my chase.  Everything seemed in order though, so I stopped where I was on the stairs and looked up to find at least three very concerned Parisians asking if everything was alright, if they should chase him down.  I thanked them and told them everything was still there, amazed that Parisians had involved themselves in someone else's affairs, and relieved that I had actually managed, by myself, to get my wallet back! I then proceeded to take this picture once we exited the metro.

Christine and her wallet, reunited! Also, there's the Seine!

Wow! Just typing up that story got my heart racing! Rarely does a person experience that much adrenaline.  After it happened, I thought about what made me chase after this guy, who was shorter than me, yes, but in his 20s and certainly strong and able bodied.  A few days before, one of my IES classmates had her wallet stolen out of her purse in the metro by a 12 year old boy and she chased him down and made him give it back to her.  The day before, one of the assistants at IES told me the story of when her wallet was stolen out of her backpack on the metro and she chased the kid (also pretty young) to a construction site where he showed it off to his friends.  She demanded it back, and they were so shocked to see her there that they did.  Hearing those stories definitely gave me the courage to go after the guy.  After all, I had almost accepted the fact that it was gone forever.  I know the situation was potentially dangerous, but it was the middle of the day in a busy metro station, so I felt pretty secure about crying "thief!" and getting a response from the crowd.  Albeit, a very French reaction, but a reaction nonetheless.  If I had been alone or if it had been nighttime, I would not have been so confident. Also, if he had pulled out a knife or put up any kind of fight, I would have immediately forgotten I ever even owned a wallet ever in my life and left him alone.  I was very lucky, and I learned an important lesson: even if you think you have a safe purse because it's close to your body, you should always hold it in your hands on a crowded metro car.  Also, if the guy standing in front of you makes you nervous because he's reaching around for things under his bag (even if you don't feel him in your purse), automatically assume he is up to no good and act accordingly by protecting all valuables.

Fin.

Final destination: Notre Dame

Sunday's dinner: une quiche, la salade, et une baguette!

The chocolatey fare at the patisserie by IES.  I keep intending to try an eclair but I always forget!

La Joconde de Léonard de Vinci

20 post cards for 2,50!

A golden-gilded room at l'Opéra.  (Turns out all of this is wood, painted gold, and the only things in the room that are actually made of gold are the statues by the fire places and the chandeliers.)

A=Q, W=Z, and M is a Semicolon

As I become more familiar with the French way of life, I can't help but compare what I observe to how I am used to things running in the U.S.  This is not to say that I am distraught that they don't do things "our way" or wish they did things differently.  I guess it's just human nature to note what is different and compare it to what is quotidienne for us.  I have been doing a lot of this human nature observing these past two weeks, therefore I present to you my "List of Things that are Different in France From in the U.S." also known as "A=Q, W=Z, and M is a Semicolon."


1. The French love coffee.  They drink it in the morning, at lunch, in the afternoon, and at night.  They even have Starbucks, the staple of every American street corner.  However, you will never never ever see anyone on the streets of Paris with a cup of Starbucks, or a travel mug in hand.  Never.  Ne-ver.  You do not take your coffee to go.  Tack-y.  (Good think I don't drink coffee...)


2. Waiters do not work for tips, therefore the service is much slower and the wait staff much grumpier than in America.  This makes for very long meals, so one must either be very patient or place a tracking device on your waiter so that you can track them down when you're ready for the bill.  They absolutely will not bring you the check unless you ask for it.  I consider this a nice alternative to the experience I had at a CPK one time, when I got my pizza and my check at. the. same. time. proving that there is a point when trying communicate that you're on top of your shit becomes rude.


3.  Bag boys do not exist.  Sometimes, as a fund raiser (like ASB-style), young people will bag your groceries for a tip, but otherwise you are on your own.  I must admit, the first time I went to the Franprix and realized after I payed that I still had to put my things in a bag myself, I was pretty taken aback.  I like the independence of it though...makes you stay on your toes at the check out too, because you end up racing the cashier while they ring you up.  Better hope you finish bagging by the time you have to pay, because if not, you'll be bagging while someone else's groceries are being thrown in your direction.


4.  Their keyboards are made by Satan himself, no joke.  At our school, we have some American keyboards that are calibrated to type like a French keyboard (at least I think that's the situation...).  This means that, like the title of this post, A=Q, W=Z, and M is a semicolon.  Also, the period is the comma key, to get a comma you press the M key, and activating caps lock opens up a whole world of symbols that are otherwise inaccessible.  The first time I sent my dad an email from one of those computers I couldn't find the period, so I had to type the entire email without proper punctuation!  You try typing complete thoughts without a period.  Not easy.  Today my friend, Chrissy, and I were forced to use one of these devil keyboards to write an email because the internet wasn't working on any of the computers that had regularly calibrated keyboards.  It was hilarious.  We did a lot of sleuthing, and discovered the period which I had not found in any previous attempts.  We did not, however, locate the @ symbol.  We ended up copying and pasting an @ from another email.  So clever.


5.  Final observation for this post: Parisians will touch you.  I've always heard that Americans are friendlier, they smile at everyone, they will start a conversation on the metro, etc.  The French are known for their steely expressions and rude demeanor, but what people do not know about them is that they have almost zero concept of personal space.  They do not wait in lines, but in clumps.  They do not "move to the center of the car," but crowd towards the door of the metro.  They do not simply say, "Pardon," when they want to get by you, they physically displace you from their path.  I didn't realize how little Americans touched until I was touched by a Parisian.  It's rather shocking when you're not used to it.  At the same time, they are not as rude as their reputation might lead you to believe.  If you ask for directions, they will gladly help.  If you speak French with them (and you do it at least moderately well) they will compliment you.  They do smile, though not to strangers.  Also, everyone does not have a poodle.  Rather, they all have dogs that they can fit in their purses à la Paris Hilton.  Stereotypes are being broken every day.


I'm sure I will notice more things and perhaps add them to this list.  Quickly, a little about what I've been doing: I went to the Louvre on Monday with friends and say La Joconde (Mona Lisa) and it was bigger than I expected! Today I went to l'Opéra for a tour with IES.  It was beautiful!  And now I'm going out to dinner.
Until next time!

On the way to Ian's place--Le Tour Eiffel

Les Rognons

Last night Anna and I went to dinner with Ian (a friend of mine from GW) at this restaurant called Polidor that was in Ian's guide book.  It had a great atmosphere and, like all other French eating establishments, very slow service.  We were sitting by the entrance, and all night we were in a constant battle with the door.  There was a curtain in front of it to help keep out the cold, but people would stand there in the doorway with the curtains open, letting all the cold in from when the door opened.  The real geniuses would open the door, stand there with it open, and just kind of hang out while they checked out the restaurant and decided whether or not they wanted to actually come in.  We were constantly asking people to close the door, and when they didn't listen to us or exited without closing it, Anna had to reach over and push it closed.  Keep in mind that it was super cold and rainy last night and we were in a warm restaurant.  The temperature difference created quite a chilly situation.

Now, while that door story might seem like the event of the night, something even more important happened at the restaurant: I made my first (and hopefully last) ordering faux pas.  We were all three getting the 22 euro deal that included an entree, main course, and dessert.  Ian and I got the pumpkin soup for an entree (yummy!!!) and ice cream for dessert (best chocolate ice cream I've had in a while).  And for the main course? Well, Anna and Ian went for beef bourguignon, and I somehow got it into my head that the word for pork was rognon, which it is not.  For the record, the word for pork in French is porc.  Brilliant.  So turns out I ordered kidneys.  How did I finally figure this out? Why I ate some, of course.  Suffice it to say, I did not like them.  The texture is very dense and almost mushroom like, which didn't immediately bother me, but it started to after 3 bites.  Then there was the taste.  It's exactly what you would imagine innards should taste like.  There's this weird aftertaste that you can just tell comes from the inside of an animal's organs.  Not a pleasant eating experience.  I must say, though, I am proud of myself for figuring out that I don't like kidneys by actually trying kidneys without knowing that they were kidneys and therefore brining all my preconceptions about kidneys to the table.  So, go me...?

My lunch was much better yesterday.  I went to Les Halles, which is the HUGE mall that is literally like a zoo these days because of the winter sales that are going on.  I went to H&M and finally got some black flats.  Anyway, the road outside of Les Halles is full of places to eat, and I chose this restaurant called Flam's, which is short for Flammekueche.  Flammekueche is an Alsacien flat pizza with a super thin crust and not your usual pizza toppings (also they don't use pizza sauce, so it's not really all that pizza-like).  I really liked it and I knew what I was ordering and there were no surprises there.  Safe, but still something new.  And not kidneys.

Bloody Metro

Another crazy tale of the Paris metro:
So I'm leaving the Musee d'Orsay with a bunch of people from my program (we went on a tour and it was great! they're very strict there--the tour guide made my friend and me spit out our gum and she went up to this random man and told him to get off his cell phone....) and I'm walking with my friend, Andre.  I hear this noise behind us and I turn to look, and there's this group of 4 older teens, maybe 19 or 20 year olds, talking really loudly and goofing off. But my attention is drawn to one of them in particular on account of his bloody right hand. It's got a white gauze bandage on it, but the blood is seeping through. I say, "Andre, check it out, this guy has major carnage going on," and when we both turn around to look, I swear to God, his hand has gotten bloodier.  So we get on the moving sidewalk in the metro, and the group of kids starts to pass us. The guy with the bloody hand is last, and I'm pressing myself up against the right side of the moving sidewalk to avoid contact with his possibly diseased and almost certainly drugged blood. Once they've passed, I look down, and there is a path of little blood drops along the moving sidewalk! Ew.
Also, he had blood all over his belt and underwear from where he'd been pulling his pants up using his bloody hand. I'm thinking, wow, this poor kid is really hurt, but the next thing I know, he's jumping onto the middle part that's between the moving sidewalks and he's running down it to get to the front of his group of friends. It is at this moment that I lose any and all sympathy for him. He's obviously very reckless and is in no pain on account of all the drugs he's probably on. I then proceed to follow his dribbled path of blood (which is growing more pronounced by the second) to the platform where we're waiting for the same train. I made a point of not getting on the same car as him (obvi), but when I got off at my stop, I walked by the car he was in, and before the doors closed, I saw him sitting in one of the seats by the door with this pool of blood at his feet.
Oh yeah, and he was smiling and laughing with his friends like nothing was wrong.
WHAT?!?!
I asked the French guys sitting next to us at dinner that night if that was in any way normal (because absolutely no one in the metro station seemed overtly alarmed by any of this), and they said no. However, they did say that it was normal for Parisians to say nothing to him about it in case it might "vex" him.
French people are odd.

Mais, que sera, seara.

The Epic of Christine and Her Bags in the Metro of Paris

My first day in Paris:
The flight was good. I watched Eat Pray Love (I didn't like it--very blah) and was able to sleep for a few hours. When I woke up, it was light outside.  I was very lucky to have had a "night" so that my body wasn't feeling like it was missing something. I got to the airport, had my passport stamped (after much walking around), picked up my bags, and grabbed a taxi. All very simple. The taxi took me to the building where orientation was going on and as I was getting out of the cab, one of the IES directors (Agnès) walked up and introduced herself and took me inside, where she proceeded to tell me that I was the absolute last person to arrive. Haha, yaaay!
After awkwardly standing in the corner while I waited for the current session to finish, they introduced me to the other students.  Of course they said, "This is Alexandra..er...uh...Christina? Christine!" so a third of the group probably thinks my name is Alexandra, another third, Christina, and the lucky final third has my name right.  After the next session on racism in France (fascinating laws they have here!), I met Anna, my housemate.  We get along great because we both go to school in DC and we're both Theater majors.
Anna helped me take my things home before we had to go out again for dinner on a boat on the Seine. We were going to get a taxi, but we had such problems finding one, that we just took the metro. 


And here commences The Epic of Christine and Her Bags in the Metro of Paris:

First there are only stairs. Lots and lots of stairs. We encountered maybe 2 escalators the whole time. Luckily Anna was handling my smaller black rolling bag for me, but I worked up a big old sweat carrying my green REI rolling bag, my Gregory pack, and my purse up and down the steps.
Second, I am walking through the turn-style: I get the REI bag through, I get my purse through, I get my body through...the doors shut on my backpack. So there I am, stuck with backpack on one side and myself and everything else on the other. Thankfully this man came along and pulled the doors open for me so I could slip through. Unfortunately, in the process of slipping through, my Nalgene was popped out of the water bottle holder of my pack and it disappeared into the turn-style machinery. With my Mr. Sippy. I still want to cry just thinking about it. I'm SO UPSET THAT I LOST THAT WATER BOTTLE!!!! Aaaand my new Mr. Sippy!!!! :( I really really want it back. I'm kind of obsessed with my water bottle and Mr. Sippy...
Ok, so third: the trains are super packed, and here we are with all this luggage, and no one moves in towards the center of the car like they should (and unlike DC, there is no voice over the speakers telling you to "move in towards the center of the car"), so the doorway is super crowded. I'm standing in the middle of everything, completely unable to move. At one of the stops, this woman is trying to get by me to get off and she trips on my boot. She stumbles, falls to the ground out on the platform, and probably twisted her ankle. I'm apologizing profusely, completely embarrassed, and I can't even help her up because I have too much stuff and I'm stuck where I am. Then I look down, and my boot is broken. Yes. She had tripped on the strap that's on the side of the boot, and ripped it off. So, I drag myself (and the bags of course) to the house with the strap hanging off my boot.  Oh, and it was raining outside when we got out of the metro.The End.


Now, on to the good part! The walk from the metro to the house is not bad at all. It's a very pretty area (all of Paris is pretty though) and their house is extremely nice. There is a gate at the street that has a code, then you walk through the yard (they have a lot of yard space!) up to the front door. The door is wrought iron and glass. My room is up the spiral-y staircase (!!) and it's in between Anna's and my host parents. Monsieur Pasquier greeted me at the door and gave me a little intro tour, but I didn't get to meet Mme. Pasquier until the next afternoon. They are so sweet. She is extremely friendly and he is super funny.  I don't think he speaks any english, but she does. One of their sons lives downstairs in a chambre de bonne, and he's very friendly and helpful.  His name is Charles, he's 23 (and no, he's not single, for those of you who were wondering).
We had to be at the Seine at 7 for dinner on a boat with IES, so I took a quick shower/bath...thing...you see, they don't really have a shower. They have a tub with a faucet and a movable shower head attached. You have to kind of crouch down and wash yourself with the shower head. It's very complicated and it's going to take a lot of getting used to. I got water everywhere the first time haha!
My bedroom has a loft bed that I have to climb a ladder to get onto! There is a bookshelf, a desk, and a closet. Plenty of storage room. Aaaand, Anna and I share a balcony!



Alright, this post is certainly long enough! On to the next story!

Bonjour et Bienvenue à Paris!

After only ten days in the City of Love, I decided that I needed to share the love by creating a blog.  You're welcome, Mom and Dad, for creating a handy-dandy shortcut to help you avoid sending every email you get from me to all our relatives and friends.  Also, I was getting tired of copying those stories into three different Facebook message threads for my different groups of friends.  I will post my original stories (The Epic of Christine in the Metro, the Bloody Metro, and Les Rognons) for the benefit of all, and then I'll add on as more ridiculous and noteworthy things (hopefully) happen to me.
If you were wondering what the name of my blog means, it's basically "higgledy-piggledy travels."  I wanted the title to convey the random and spontaneous nature of the stories I'll be posting.  And I wanted it to be in French.  Done and done.  Therefore, please do not expect every story I post to be of the same genre.  I will be all over the place, in my travels and my writing.
So...here we go!