Legends of Islands and Port Towns

Before recounting my weekend's adventures, I would like to report that the pigeon dinner on Friday night was a success.  Our goose egg also turned out to have two yolks!

Double yolk!

And now for the weekend! I went on another trip with CIJP (the club for young people in Paris), but this time we turned north out of Paris and made a five hour drive up into Normandy to visit Mont Saint Michel on Saturday.  After spending most of the day there, we drove over into Bretagne to spend the night in Saint Malo, which we then explored on Sunday.  On the drive up to Mont Saint Michel, I read a story by Maupassant (Le Horla) that was assigned as homework for my 19th century literature class.  In this story, which is written as a diary with dated entries, there is an entry about when the narrator went to Mont Saint Michel.  How appropriate! He talks about walking all the way to the top and having a conversation with a monk (of which there are none nowadays).  This monk proceeds to tell him a legend of Mont Saint Michel, and it goes a little something like this:

The inhabitants of Mont Saint Michel say that, at night, the sound of the tide coming in sounds like the braying of goats.  Boaters who have been out at night report seeing two hooded figures walking around the town.  You cannot see their faces, but they have the bodies of goats and are speaking to each other incessantly in a language that no one understands.  Every once in a while though, they stop...and at the top of their lungs they...bray like goats...

The End.

Yeah...well, the tide didn't come in while we were there, so I can't confirm the goat noises, and I certainly didn't see any hooded figures traipsing about the town because #1 it was day time and #2 it was too warm for anyone in their right mind to be wearing a hooded cloak.  In fact, it was so lovely out that my friends and I had a little picnic on one of the various lawns around town.  The sun was shining, the grass was green, and we made sandwiches using the ginormous amount of left over baguette I had from the night before.  After lounging around the lawn for about an hour and a half, we made our way up to the abbey for our scheduled tour.  Our tour guide, Alain, was amazing! He was so animated and knowledgable and hilarious! I enjoyed him.  He taught us all sorts of fun facts like that the abbey has been struck by lightening several times, and therefore has been rebuilt a lot.  The facade of the abbey is actually from the 19th century! It was turned into a prison after the French Revolution, so the whole place was basically trashed by delinquents and that's why there is no more of the original paint on the walls or any original stained glass windows or tiling on the floors.  It's sad, because you go to a place like this (or any cathedral really) and you think you're seeing it as it was back in the Middle Ages when it was all hip and happenin', but really, you're seeing the stripped down, vandalized version.  That's why I'm glad to have had such good guides on my excursions so far.  They keep me from coming away from places like this with the wrong idea in my head of how things actually were.

We also learned that the tides of Mont Saint Michel are the highest tides of Europe--think 4 story building, and you've got a pretty good idea! They're fast too.  People who walk out to the island (that used to be the only way to get there at low tide, but you can drive on a man-made road now) can die from poor timing if they get caught by the tide.  Or, you can always sink into the quicksand and drown that way.  Making a pilgrimage to this place is no joke.  And people still do it.  I actually saw an agèd nun walking up the stairs to the abbey and she was wearing muddy/sandy Crocks from her walk over the immense tidal plane.

After our tour we had a few more hours to putz around the town so we took a stroll around the ramparts. The views were most certainly sweeping, but they were largely gray and sandy.  There honestly wasn't much to see except for a nearby island that the monks used for periods of intense isolation, which I found hilarious.  I mean, come on, they already lived on a practically inaccessible island! How much more isolated could you get? To each his own.

We then walked out onto the man-made road and took some pictures of the entire town before getting back on the bus and heading to Saint Malo.

View of Mont Saint Michel from the parking lot.  There was a sign

at the entrance to the parking lot that warned of the high tide

that comes up above the parking lot!

Lunch spot.  When we arrived, we were the only ones sitting on the grass.  

By the time we left, there were people sitting all around us.  

This would not be the last time on this trip that we took on the roll of trendsetters :)

My friend, Chrissy, and me with the abbey in the background.

On the way to the abbey for our tour.

Again with the mini doors! How do I fit?!?!?

19th century facade on an abbey from the Middle Ages.

The inner court of the abbey of Mont Saint Michel.

Our wonderful guide, Alain.

Walking around the ramparts.

Our hostel in Saint Malo was actually about a 20 minute walk from old town Saint Malo (the part inside the ramparts), but it was nice to walk along the beach on the way to and from dinner that night.  It certainly made us hungry for our crêpes! Bretagne is known for its galettes, which are savory, and crêpes, which are sweet.  We had them for dinner that night, then lunch the next day and they were infinitely better than any crêpes I've had in Paris.  There's something about getting them from the source that just makes them that much more amazing! Bretagne is also known for its caramel beurre salé (salted butter caramel), so I had a crêpe caramel beurre salé for dessert with my dinner, and I bought a bag of caramels to bring home with me.  There is caramel beurre salé at chocolatiers all over Paris, but again, nothing like getting it from the source!

We woke up early Sunday morning and strolled over to the old town for a tour given by a native Malouine.  There was a crazy fog that morning and when we were on the ramparts it kept coming in and out, so one minute you would be looking out at the Fort National (located on an island that is accessible at low tide only), and two seconds later it would be completely covered in a blanket of fog.  I felt like the Black Pearl was going to show up any minute and undead pirates were going to start pillaging the city.  Which reminds me: Saint Malo has a very strong Corsair history.  Corsairs are basically legal pirates who work for the king in wartime pillaging enemy ships and bringing back the booty to port towns like Saint Malo.  Saint Malo, because it is so close to England, was a key port town for France and therefore was heavily protected.  The bay of Saint Malo is littered with little islands that all have forts on them in order to protect the town.  Aside from that, it is also very difficult to enter the bay.  There are only two passable routes, and you've really got to know what you're doing, hence the hundreds of shipwrecks.

Our tour guide shared two stories with us about certain street names that were pretty interesting, so I'll share them with you now:

Rue du Chat Qui Danse

The English once planned an attack on Saint Malo that involved sailing a ship loaded with gunpowder into the ramparts and setting it on fire.  They actually made it pretty far into the bay, flying a French flag and making the Malouines believe that it was the shipment of blé (wheat) they'd been expecting.  Then they started setting fire to the fortress islands and kind of gave themselves away.  The Malouines evacuated the town.  Then they got stuck several meters away from the city walls because the tide was going out! The Brits decided to set fire to the boat anyway, and it (obviously) created a rather large explosion.  Many British sailors died that day.  Not a single Malouine lost their life, unless you want to count a cat.  Yes, the explosion killed a cat.  The road was named after this cat, and still serves as a little "up yours" to the Brits. 

Cave canem:

In Latin, cave canem means "beware of dog."  Saint Malo used to be protected by dogs that patrolled outside the city walls at night. They were quite vicious, and would attack anyone who approached the city after curfew (at which time the gates to the city would be closed and if you were late coming home--tough cookies). Apparently the mayor's (or maybe it was the Duke...) son was visiting his fiancée, forgot about the curfew time, and was killed by the dogs when he tried to enter the city. After this incident, the dogs were put out of commission via poison and their legacy rests on the manhole covers all over town. There is also a famous song that Europeans know that mentions the dogs of Saint Malo. Apparently they were a big deal.

There is a street called Rue du Gras Mollet (road of the fatty calf) after one of the dog keepers who was apparently rather portly and was consistently being bitten on the calf by the dogs.

A manhole cover with the crest of Saint Malo and the famous guard dogs.

After our tour we had the rest of the day to walk around and explore the city.  We walked around the ramparts, strolled down some of the streets, and made a little excursion out to the Fort National (luckily it was high tide, but unluckily the fort was closed that day).  I'll let the pictures (and my captions) do the rest of the talking:

Pirates!

The city crest and Duke of Bretagne's crest.

The two oldest and only two wooden houses left in the city 

(the other one is the white one on the left). 

They've survived two fires.

You can tell by their style that the house builders 

at the time were also the ship builders.

The French writer, Chateaubriand, is buried on the island behind me.  

He was also born in Saint Malo.

Le Fort National

The British are coming! The British are coming! Fiiiiiire!

Brise-lames--wave breakers for the huge tempest of the equinox.  

They're tree trunks that have been buried in the sand and they are changed every 50 years.

Crêpe caramel au beurre salé avec chantilly.

Chrissy and me having our galettes for lunch at La Licorne (the Unicorn).

Notice the medieval towers and ramparts in the background :)

Galette with sausage, egg, potatoes, and onions.

Nutella beignet! Chrissy and I split this baby.

Hannah's gaufre (waffle) avec Nutella et chantilly.

The town hall with the flag of Saint Malo flying at the top of the tower.

Saint Malo and Carcassonne are the only two cities in France 

that can fly their own flag higher than the French flag.

Try Something New!

Anna and I went out for margaritas and Moroccan on Tuesday night after class! I had never been to a Moroccan restaurant before and I really loved it.  Aside from having to ask our waiter for our 5 euro in change back (he might have thought we were tipping him because we're American), it was a very delightful dinner.  I loved the atmosphere, the location (close to school), and the food! We each shared what we got, so she had some of my meatballs (I don't remember what they're actually called, but they are essentially meatballs) and I had one of her kebabs.  Mmmmm!

Tonight we are cooking pigeon.  Yes, pigeon.  I also picked up a goose egg from the fromagerie on the way home.  Clearly tonight is "try something new night--the fowl edition".  We just keep passing pigeon  in the butcher's shop and these goose eggs in the fromagerie, and we finally decided that now was as good a time as any to try them out! I'll let you know how it goes when I post after this weekend, which brings me to....I'm going to Mont Saint Michel and Saint Malo this weekend!!! Yaaaay! Photos and stories to come!

The Rule of Three

Alright folks, seeing as how it's been a while since my last entry and a lot has happened, I am going to make this entry as efficient as possible.  Fairy tales are built on this principle, so why can't my life be too? The Rule of Three.  Three major cities (Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris).  Three major events from each location.  Ready? Set! Enjoy!

Amsterdam:

1.  Traveling by bus: Anna and I traveled from Paris to Amsterdam by bus last weekend.  We left Saturday morning and it took us about nine hours to get there.  Mistake? Not at all.  I actually had a rather pleasant time.  We drove through cities such as Brussels (not so beautiful), Antwerp (more beautiful), and Rotterdam (most beautiful!) along the way, and as we made our approach to Amsterdam, we passed lots of fields with sheep and giant old windmills.  Unfortunately, I did not capture a picture of one of these windmills, but I assure you, they were quite adorable, and quite impressive.  The only real negative to the trip up was a car crash that we witnessed right next to the bus.  A man lost control of his car and crashed into the median and bounced around the road back towards the bus.  It was extremely shocking, but what made it even more bizarre was that the bus didn't stop, and we literally just left him behind with his airbag in his face like it didn't matter.  I was a little unsettled by that event.
The journey back to Paris was also by bus and also nine hours.  We got to the bus station a little early so that we could finish eating our Wok to Wok dinners (really good Chinese fast food), and it's a good thing we got there when we did! The man at the ticket counter informed us that the bus was leaving earlier because it was overbooked and they needed to leave someone behind! Glad it was not one of us.  Other than that, the ride home was perfectly fine too.  I slept almost the entire way (10:30pm-6am).  When we got back to Paris, Anna and I walked up to Sacré Coeur to watch the sun rise over the city.  It was more of a general brightening instead of a magnificent sunrise, but it was definitely an incredible way to end the trip.


2.  Couchsurfing! Yes.  Anna and I went to Amsterdam, met up with someone we had only ever communicated with over the internet, and slept on his couch.  Mistake? Not at all! Yosef, our host, was amazing, and so friendly.  We brought him some macarons from our favorite place for macarons and chocolates in the Marais (Maison Larnicole) as a thank you for hosting us.  By the time we got to Amsterdam, they were a colorful crumbly crushed mess.  We assured him that they would taste good anyway :) He took us on a walking tour of the city as soon as we got into town, and we saw more of Amsterdam in about 3 hours than we ever would have seen by ourselves in a whole day! He took us to the major squares (called "plein" in Dutch), we ate at his favorite Thai restaurant for dinner, and walked through the Red Light District where the canal was swimming with sleeping swans.  Extremely poetic.  Anna's theory is as follows: at night the swans sleep and their souls become prostitutes.  He also showed us the amazing public library, complete with a restaurant and a cafeteria, as well as an entire floor devoted to DVDs!  As we walked around, we talked about everything from politics to cultural stereotypes.  Anna and I explained that, in America, politics is one of the three topics to be avoided, and he told us that he and his friends always talk about politics and religion very openly.  For hours even!  I think the key is that they don't make it a personal discussion, unlike all political discussions I've been a party to in America.  After being reminded by Yosef that it is completely possible to have a political/religious discussion without making it super personal, all I want to say is, "Shame on us."


3.  Thoughts about the city: I love Amsterdam.  It is a relatively small city, but chock full of character.  It is very old and very crooked; hardly any of the houses stand exactly straight because the land is so swampy.  There is a myriad of bridges that span the little canals that cut through the city about every two blocks or so.  There are tons of museums, but Anna and I only went to two of them because there are no student rates :( We went to the Van Gogh museum first, then the Anne Frank house.  There was also a Picasso exhibition in the Van Gogh museum, and that was pretty fascinating.  I loved the Van Gogh museum.  There was so much to see, and they incorporated other artists like Monet, so you'd be walking along and then, all of a sudden, this distinct style pops out at you and you're like, "WHOA! Oh hey, Monet.  I like you.  I like you a lot."  The Anne Frank house/museum was incredible.  It is not furnished, but they have filled it with information and videos of interviews with people like Miep Gies, Hannah Goslar, and Otto Frank.  The most chilling video definitely came from her father, Otto.  He expressed that he always felt he knew Anne well, but after reading her diary and seeing the depth that she possessed, he was convinced that no parent ever really knows their child.  It was heartbreaking to hear.  After the Anne Frank house, we set out on the canal for a one hour boat tour with a wonderful guide who explained to us the important buildings and structures we were passing (like the three story parking deck for bicycles at the train station to accommodate the almost strictly biking culture that is unique to this city).


Overall, after only a little over 24 hours in Amsterdam, I was extremely happy with the trip and would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Walking around after we arrived, colorful lights and a bike taxi.

Lost and Found in Vogel Park

I AMsterdam :)

Fun fact from Yosef: 

The hooks at the tops of the houses are used for lifting large objects 

so that they can be moved into the apartments through the windows.

Some of the older apartments have these from when they were storage houses, 

and large loads needed to be lifted into them from the boats in the canal.

Me on a bridge, surrounded by bikes.

Sunset on the canal during our boat tour.

Berlin:

1.  My hosts: were the best that I could have ever hoped for! I stayed with the extended family of my good friend, Patrick, who I know from high school in Atlanta.  He is originally from Germany and his father's twin brother lives in Berlin with his family.  Anne, Patrick's cousin, is about to finish the German equivalent of high school, and her boyfriend, Sebi, who is also a good friend of Patrick's, was visiting this weekend as well.  I know Sebi from when he came to stay with me in DC while he and Patrick were making their way around the U.S. as part of their summer vacation.  Follow? Haha!  It sounds complicated, but with the hospitality that the Berlin Haken's showed me this weekend, it all became very simple.  They welcomed me into their home, gave me a whole room to myself (their youngest, Finn, is currently studying for a year in Norcross, GA, where I went to high school), fed me, and showed me around the city.  We had a long, European, post-dinner discussion like I'm used to having at my best friend Maya's house.  I haven't gotten that so far from my host family here in Paris, and I was so happy to just sit and relax at the end of our dinner last night and discuss the oddities of American English, share my travel plans for after my program, and learn some key words and phrases in German.  I saw the huge moon last night thanks to a heads up from Anne's mother.  We went out to a bridge on the canal near their house and looked at it over the water.  I tried desperately to hear the difference between the 'u' and 'ü' vowel sounds as they taught me to say words in German.  I saw the Reichstag, Brandenburg Tor, Jewish Memorial, Potsdamer Platz, Alexanderplatz, Hackescher markt, and the neighborhood of Kreuzberg (where Anne and her family live) thanks to them.

2.  Food:  Also thanks to my hosts, I had some legit German cuisine while I was there.  First there was the currywurst (curry sausage), then döner kebab, and finally...SCHNITZEL!  The weinerschnitzel was by far my favorite thing that I ate there because we made it ourselves.  We were going to go out, but we didn't make a reservation in time.  I wouldn't trade our homemade schnitzel for anything! It was wonderful because I got to see how it was made, and now I can make it at home when I'm missing my time in Germany.  It's rather simple, and tastes delicious.

The one non-German food that I had while in Berlin was...McDo.  I've been wanting to go to a McDonald's in Europe ever since I arrived to see if it is any different.  I've heard from several people that it is better over here.  It certainly has a better reputation than in the U.S.! Well, I had a cheeseburger and french fries, and guess what? It. is. the. same.  I'm not going to lie, I was disappointed.  I expected angels to start singing and the skies to open up when I took my first bite of hamburger.  This did not happen.  In fact, the opposite happened.  If anything, the angels and the sky were upset with me for having broken my 7 year stint of no McDonald's just to try it in a different country.  Let's just say I won't be going out of my way to dine at a McDo for the rest of my time in Europe...or for the rest of my time on Earth, for that matter.

3.  Thoughts about the city: Berlin is a very big city! I most definitely did not see it all, but I felt like I covered so much ground.  It is also a very new city compared to most other European cities, so it does not have that old architectural heritage you'll find in Amsterdam (with the hooks) or Paris (Haussemann).  Most of the buildings are of the hasty style from the 60s-80s, and every building, no matter how nice or pretty it is, has graffiti on it.  Graffiti is legal in Germany, so you get a lot of really amazing artwork, but you also get a ton of scribbles.  While that does not make the city look very clean, it does make it very colorful, and there is some merit to that (especially when it's a cold, grey, rainy day like Friday was).  Saturday was a beautiful sunny day with clear skies.  We visited areas that were less about monuments, and more local spots.  This is when we walked along the canal near Anne's house, and where we had the best döner kebab in Berlin (according to Anne and Sebi--and I believe them!).  I like the German people for their friendliness (and their recycling habits) better than the French with their attitudes, but I am glad that I live in Paris.  I find Paris to be more put-together looking (which is very much my style), and I understand the language.  As I heard more and more German, I started to catch on.  I think that I could definitely learn German if I stayed there for a few months.  Even over a week I'm sure I would make a lot of progress since after only two days my comprehension was picking up.  French is a lot easier for me though, considering that I've been studying it somewhat consistently for about eight years now.  I would go back to Germany, and Berlin, again though.  I'd like to spend more time there, if not to see more of the country, then to spend more time with the Haken's--they truly made my visit to the city memorable, and I am extremely grateful to them.

A piece of the Berlin Wall in Potsdamer Platz

Sebi and me in front of the Reichstag 

Brandenburg Tor

Anne and me in front of the museum for modern art

Currywurst

Alexanderplatz!

Enjoying the sun outside of the Ampelmann store at Hackescher markt.

Cooking the schnitzel

My German lessons from Sebi :)

Paris:

1.  National Archives: my new favorite museum that I've been to so far in Paris! I saw Molière's marriage contract, the Edict of Nantes, and Marie Antoinette's last letter (written to her sister from prison).  There was also a huge expo on the Templar Nights!!! Hundreds of pages of testimonies in the trials of the Templars, and records that they kept of their treasures, etc.  Aaaand, there was a expo on assassination attempts throughout history, with all the evidence, costumes, plans, guns, and so on.  It is essentially a history nerd's paradise.


2.  Jour du Macaron: Today, when I arrived back from Berlin around 10:00, I met my friends over at the Passy metro stop (where the bridge from Inception is).  From there, we made a tour of the city, collecting three macarons at each Pierre Hermé store (of which there are seven), ending the day with a total of 21 macarons each!!! And do you know how much I spent for all these delicious treats? Under 5 euro.  That's right, I basically stole all of those macarons.  But really, there was a fundraiser going on and you'd give a donation at each store in exchange for three macarons of your choice.  Clearly, being a student and only having had a little bit of change left in my wallet, I donated very little at each store.  At the end of the day, I came home with such flavors as "rose," "pistachio," "chocolate," "vanilla & olive oil," "passion fruit & chocolate," and...get ready for these: "asparagus & hazelnut oil," "mint & pea," and "fig & fois gras."  Haha, yes.  These are cookies with these flavors.  I have not tried them all yet, but I have a feeling that I will like some better than others...
P.S. Fig & fois gras is actually a good macaron flavor.  Mint & pea, not so much.  Also, apparently there are pieces of green olives in the vanilla & olive oil one.  What?!? Oh, and the asparagus & hazelnut oil one was very good.  Only drawback would be the pieces of asparagus that were in it.  
I have officially ceased to think of macarons as cookies.  They are now just a vehicle for experimentation with any flavor combination you can think of.  Either that, or they decide the ingredients by spinning a wheel with every flavor known to man on it, à la Wheel of Fortune.


3.  Thoughts about the city: My newest note on cultural differences between the U.S. and France can be summed up with one word: poop.  Why poop? Because I have now stepped in it three times, that's why.  (Granted, one of those times was in Berlin...)  As I have already mentioned, Parisians love their dogs.  They dress them in little coats and carry them in their purses.  Adorable.  But the one thing they do not love about their dogs is their poop.  In fact, they dislike their dogs' poop so much, that they refuse to pick it up, despite there being a law and despite being provided plastic baggies and trash cans at little poop stations around the city.  So, since the Parisians don't want to deal with their puppies' poopies, I have to.  From sidewalk to shoe.  Yes, sidewalk.  I'm sorry, but what part of your conscience lets you watch your dog poop on the sidewalk, then lets you walk away??? Personally, I was raised with a little more of a social conscience than that.  And then it struck me: for a society that is so largely based on community and equality and fraternity and all that jazz, the Parisians have the least social consciousness that I have ever witnessed, and the sidewalk bares the brunt of this selfishness.  Planters along the sides of the sidewalks are basically huge ashtrays filled with cigarette butts.  The gutters are teeming with debris.  The sidewalks are slathered in poop.  The only reason this city is not knee deep in cigarette butts and does not smell everywhere you go (it only smells most everywhere you go) is the city clean-up crews that consistently wash the sidewalks, sweep out the gutters, and rake the planters.  This is a vicious cycle that, though it does create jobs, also makes it socially acceptable to leave excrement in highly trafficked public places! My sense of social consciousness and my shoes disapprove.
On a more funny note, I've noticed that Parisians like to give their toddlers who wear glasses the most colorful and eccentric looking frames that I have ever seen.  They're thick rimmed and brightly colored (blue, or red for example) and they tend to look like goggles!  They absolutely dominate these children's faces, and it is so cute.


And now for something completely different:

A young man with a parrot.

Édit de Nantes

Molière's signature on his marriage contract!

Beautiful ceiling in the National Archives

Vive le Jour du Macaron!

(5 are missing...it was a long day)