Un Petit Séjour à Lyon

So, this past weekend I may have skipped a day of classes on Friday, but it was all for good reason. You see, I was on my way to Lyon, the second largest city in France, and a major Roman city as well back in the day. However, it didn't happen to fall far enough south for the temperatures to climb above the 13 degrees or so that were forecast for Caen. Anyway, I suppose you're all tired of listening to me talk about the temperature in degrees celsius, but you have to understand that as an American, beginning to develop a sense for any part of the metric system feels like a pretty hefty achievement.

Honestly, I didn't do much on my first night in Lyon except sleep. My train got in at about 23h03, so most everything to do outside of going to bars was closed, and I was hardly dressed for that. So, I crawled under the covers and wondered what the whole space between Paris and Lyon looked like, since I missed that joy of riding the train by taking a night train.

Friday was a lovely day, although bitterly cold--always seems to happen like that, doesn't it? Well, it helped that I had a lovely hand-made scarf to keep me warm, thanks to my best friend's birthday present that happened to arrive in April or so (a few months late) last year, but was well worth the wait :) Of course, the very first thing I did in Lyon was climb Fourvière, one of the two major hills of Lyon, and the location of the famous Notre Dame de Fourvière, which is one of many locations on the Pèlerinage de Saint Jacques de Compostelle, a route that guides several pilgrims through France and Spain on foot, visiting various cathedrals and other religious sites along the way. Fourvière is one of the many places where pilgrims travelling this route stop to pray for a successful journey.

The basilica itself is spectacular. Having spent the entirety of my stay thus far in the north of France, I'd grown very accustomed to the typical Gothic cathedrals--a bit darker since bright golden cathedrals really aren't very pretty when the sun rarely shines. Don't get me wrong, Notre Dame de Paris made my heart beat fast with its unbelievable vaulted ceilings and its beautiful stained glass windows, and my local gothic church in Caen, St. Pierre, has a lovely charm to it, although I'll be sure to dress warmer next time I go to mass in a stone church. Fourvière, however, is gold and bright blue on the ceilings, and a brilliant white on the outside. I was reminded more of the Italian churches here, although Fourvière definitely maintains the bon goût that I've come to expect from the French--yes, they use gold from time to time, but it's not usually the overwhelming, loud sort of design you'll find every once in a while in Italy. Needless to say, this basilica was worth visiting, and afterward, there is a beautiful view of the city of Lyon from a point right next to the basilica. After my time in Caen, which has a hill, but happens to be on the slightly flatter end of things, it was nice to go to a city that had something resembling hills.

After Fourvière, it happened to be about noon or so, so what better way to continue my tour of Lyon than with lunch at a brasserie in the district near the Cathédrale de St. Jean? This included a couple delicious Lyonnais specialties, one of which I never knew originated in Lyon. Ever wonder where "French onion soup" comes from? Yes, that's right, from the gourmand capital of France, Lyon. However, they call it gratinée Lyonnaise and it's absolutely fantastic. Everywhere I saw it being served, it came in a giant ceramic bowl with a little lion-shaped gargoyle on the side, and then they piled on the croutons and gruyère, which was lovely. I have to say, few places do food like France does, and if you get a chance to try the real French onion soup, do so, because it's a much more complex and interesting flavor than what you'll usually find in the States.

The second course was a quenelle, which is really pretty hard to explain, but it's like a dumpling with a puff pastry coating on the outside, and mine came soaked in lobster sauce. It's hot, it's bready, and it just melts in your mouth, which made it perfect on a pretty chilly day.

A photo of a quenelle de Lyon, although my plat was just a bit different...I had rice on the side rather than cheese and haricots verts.

After finishing out the lunch with a healthy serving of mousse au chocolat, I moved on to visit downtown Lyon for a little while, which included a stop at la Place de Bellecour, one of the oldest squares in Lyon and a major shopping district. From there I walked around for a bit, and eventually decided to take a break from walking and take a bus tour of the city.

Usually, my technique lies more along the lines of figuring out a few things and otherwise discovering the city as I go. However, when I came to Lyon, I knew almost nothing about the city, so taking a guided tour wound up being pretty interesting. The bus went up Fourvière hill, which got a bit treacherous at points, but I made it out alive, and past the Place des Terraux, where a very ornate fountain is located. More than anything, I was thrilled to learn about Lyon's Roman heritage, as well as the silk industry that once inhabited La Croix Rousse, the other major hill in Lyon. All of this helped me begin to form an image of the city and its character beyond the few things I'd seen so far.

After the bus tour, I took a brief walk through the shopping district near Bellecour and found a lovely chocolate shop. Usually, I look at those shops and I know I can't afford them, but I happened to stop this time and invested in a box of chardons per a recommendation. Now, I knew very little about chardons when I bought them, but they looked like delicious chocolate that came in all sorts of pretty colors. Imagine my surprise when I found out that they're really filled with some breed of alcohol (out of curiosity, I looked on the label to see what exactly was in there but all it said was "alcools"....)!! Not to say that liqueur and chocolate don't go well together, but biting into the first one was an experience when the alcohol inside the chocolate almost went all over the place...

I suppose the last thing I did that night was dinner, and I'm sorry that I've taken up so much room with food descriptions, but I happened to eat some pretty fantastic stuff in Lyon. Friday night dinner was probably the most traditional French meal I've ever had, and it felt like such an etiquette lesson--if there's one thing I've learned about the French so far, it's that there's a certain way you do things, a certain time you show up, etc, and if you don't respect that it's rather frowned upon.

Dinner started with an apéritif, which doesn't refer to appetizers, as we Americans would think, but rather to a fairly light drink. I was already familiar with this institution, but hadn't really had many apéros while out to eat yet due to budgetary restraints. Anyway, the apéritif was a kir, which consists of white wine mixed with syrup. Usually I take the classic kir, which is mixed with cassis, or blackcurrant, syrup, but I tried it with peach syrup for a change on Friday. Honestly, I'll probably stick with cassis next time, but it wasn't too bad. I didn't actually order an entrée, but when I got my tartiflette as the plat, I don't think I needed an appetizer. Tartiflette is a much better version of potatoes au gratin. Mine was simply scalloped potatoes smothered in Muenster cheese, and I had a glass of white wine to go with that, which worked excellently. Finish it off with a lovely dessert whose name I can't remember right now, but it was similar to the shell of an éclair, with ice cream inside and chocolate syrup all over. Goodness knows what I'm going to do back home without French pastries--I haven't found anything in the states that compares.

I would also like to mention that after reading about Eau de Vie in a French novel or two, I finally had the opportunity to try it. It's a hard liquor, but looks like water for all intents and purposes. I suppose it was alright, and I'd definitely consider trying it again, but maybe mixed with something else (you can all start making comments about how stereotypically female that sounds now...).

My second day in Lyon consisted of two major museums: the first one being the museum dedicated to the Lumière brothers. When I first came to Lyon, I was told it was "la ville des Lumière," but little did I know that this title was a reference to the makers of the first French film ever. Therefore, I spent a lovely morning and part of an afternoon perusing old film equipment and clips from silent movies, as well as some of the first color film slides....apparently they used potatoes in the process of making said slides, which I didn't know before that museum.

After a brief repos that afternoon, I went to the museum of Guignol, the animated puppets that used to decorate storefront windows and such. This was an absolutely charming little gem, with scenes from several great French writers and even a large pastoral scene inspired by several paintings from Jean François Millet. Among the literary scenes were a montage from Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris and Rabelais' Gargantua, and what would a French literature montage be without a bit of Jules Verne, namely 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea? I absolutely loved roaming about and checking out the guignol exhibits, even though I was one of the youngest non-parents there by far...still, it's a Lyonnais specialty, and something worth seeing in my opinion. Then again, maybe it's just that I love quirky gems like that :)

I do have to mention that Lyon has the oldest Roman amphitheatre in all of France, and I absolutely loved running around in that thing. I literally ran up the first set of steps, even though some of them were about knee-high on me, and then found every way possible to avoid following the beaten path through the other ruins behind the amphitheatre. After all, when there are so few guard rails, what's the fun of taking the easy path to get to the top? It was completely doable, and I loved climbing up the ancient walls, being one with the ruins if you will. There's also a smaller amphitheatre next to the big one, and it had some windows built into a wall behind it which were maybe six feet off the ground or so. I managed to find a way to crawl into one of those windows and sit for a little while to enjoy the wonderful view of Lyon that comes with putting an awesome amphitheatre close to the top of Fourvière hill. All in all, go see the amphitheatres--they were probably my favorite thing in Lyon, and I won't make another visit to Lyon without seeing them again and probably climbing around in them.

That night, I actually wound up at the same restaurant as Friday, but for a rather different experience. This time, I partook in choucroutes, which honestly seems a bit German, probably because it's Alsacien in origin. It consists of sausage, potatoes, and sauerkraut, and tastes absolutely delicious. Wrapping it up with a tarte tatin, which is an apple pie (sort of) with caramel in it, made for a wonderful end to my experience with Lyon and the food there. However, after dinner, I had a long walk along the Rhône, one of the two major rivers of Lyon, at night time, when the street lamps illumine the surface of the water, and everything seems so peaceful. It seemed like a wonderful way to end my adventures in Lyon, and I even got to see a few of the houseboats along the river. All in all, Lyon was a pretty big success.

Sunday morning, I watched the rugby World Cup before leaving to catch my 13h45 train to Paris. On the way there, I decided to buy two Paris Metro tickets while on board the train since I had a whole hour and 45 mins between my arrival in the Gare de Lyon and my departure from St. Lazare. Thanks to my generally decent memory, I also remembered that the metro stop for the Tuileries was on the way from Gare de Lyon to St. Lazare, which left me with no questions as to what to do with my extra time. Honestly, I had thought of dropping in at Angelina's for a nice chocolat Africain, but since it was Sunday (when all French people go out and about) and the weather was absolutely perfect, the line was out the door. Therefore, I opted for macarons from Ladurée instead, a bit more expensive, but not a terrible trade. To be really honest, it was better weather for macarons anyway.

So, with rose petal macarons in hand, I made my promenade through the Tuileries, and found what seemed to be the only empty bench in the entirety of the gardens. Before anyone else could take it, I sat down and enjoyed a praline macaron before getting up to find my metro station to St. Lazare.

I made it back to Caen just fine, as is evidenced by the fact that I'm writing this, although the train was a bit slow. Of course, I happened to be taking the train that stops in every tiny village between Paris and Caen, and you'd be surprised how many there are, and how little needs to be there to say that a train station exists. However, my journey was made a little brighter by the toe blond, green-eyed French two year-old sitting across the way from me. At one point he decided to sit down in the empty seat next to me, and his father, who was really a gentle giant sort of guy, said, "You 'ave a new French boyfriend." Absolutely adorable, and they were a really nice family. However, I was also very happy when I finally arrived in Caen at about 8 and could finally go back to my dorm and make some pasta (typical poor college student food) before going to bed.

Hope everybody else had a lovely weekend, and à la prochaine!

Gabrielle Sidonie

Les Syllogismes....

Have I ever mentioned just how much I adore Monsieur Rogues and his Rhetoric class? There's something strangely endearing about the way we treat the whole thing like a game--essentially, we were supposed to make up conclusions and we were encouraged to find the most nonsensical thing possible. This was a bit of what I'd been missing the past few days, the love for academia that just results in pure joy. When I'm home, I've often experienced this same feeling with my fellow Classics majors, when we start talking very intensely about a certain facet of the text we're reading, and it just results in utter hilarity. Anyway, it was a lovely class today, and I wish I were looking as forward to the rest of the day...

Tomorrow I hop on a train to Lyon around 18h00 at night, which means that tonight is preparation time. I've been looking around at what you can do in Lyon (it's the second largest city in France after Paris--figured it shouldn't be too hard to find stuff to do), and it looks like it's going to be a wonderful old Roman city. Fourvière is their big gothic cathedral (there's one in almost every city worth its salt in France), and la colline de Fourvière is the site of the original Roman settlement, so there are plenty of ancient ruins. Who says I need to pay to go back to Greece and Italy when there are plenty of Roman ruins right in my backyard?

Hope you all have a lovely weekend, since I'll be away starting tomorrow evening, and I'll be passing la plupart d'aujourd'hui doing things like laundry and packing...à tout à l'heure tout le monde!!

Gabrielle Sidonie

Coup de Foudre

It's that moment where you're finally past the rosy glasses and the blatant appearance of a tourist, when you're starting to settle into the humdrum existence of that new, beautiful place that you're going to inhabit for a painfully short time. It's that moment where you wonder why it has to end, and you realize that this could very easily be your humdrum existence for a good long while, if you could only find a way to make it work. Perhaps that's why it's so fantastic: get a decent job, make some new friends, and spend your days roaming about the city, taking time every once in a while to prendre une verre in the company of your very own Gothic church, wherever it may be. Eating a sandwich in a lovely park where the children babble in a tongue that you'd never imagined you'd be able to speak like you can now. Yes, if you lived here for a while, maybe you would grow tired of it, but after you left, you could revel in the beautiful memories of all those pieces of perfect tranquility: the violet horizon on the rare clear day in Normandy, the rolling hills of Bretagne, the breathtaking, romantic quality of Paris. I knew that when I came here, I would love France. Who knew I would fall in love with it, though. J'en suis amoureuse, je l'admets. Come what may, I can only hope that sometime, in the not-so-far-away future, I will find my way back to this ancient, quintessentially classy country, where I will have left a little piece of my heart. Words cannot express how thankful I am to have had the opportunity to have a post-dinner glass of cider while admiring Caen by night, when the lights of the city illuminate the looming steeple of St. Pierre. La France, je l'adore, et c'est ici où je laisse un peu de moi, pour le retrouver un jour quelconque, ou pour qu'il puisse jouir de cette beauté incroyable, parce que le monde m'a attrappée et ne veut pas que j'y retourne. Mais je vais retourner quand-même, parce que qu'est-ce que c'est la vie si on ne rêve pas, et si on ne vit rien de ses rêves?

Long-Awaited Update

So, I'm sitting here on a very pretty Friday afternoon in Caen, and I suppose the middle of October is as good a time as any to update you all on what I've been doing here. Sorry I've been terribly lax about this, but when you're in France, there are so many better things to do than sit in front of a computer and write (although I can't really say my handwritten journal has progressed much further than my electronic one at this point...).

I suppose the first thing is classes. They've been in session for about 4 weeks now, and I love my literature track sooo much. I was placed in C1, which is a level of proficiency approaching fluency, and from there we could follow either an economics/business track or a literature track. For those of you who know me, you would know that that choice was a total no-brainer. On top of the fact that I pretty much came here to study literature because the course offerings at my home university were rather slim, I had the primary literature professor as one of my orientation teachers. Monsieur Rogues is the absolute, quintessential old Frenchman from every movie. He's from Marseille, and comes in every day with his perfectly coiffed hair, even though he rides his motorcycle to work (still don't know he manages that...). Also, he's just a joy to listen to when he talks about the old French literature, and you can tell it really is his love in life--that and music. He once spent a good twenty minutes telling us about the concert schedule for classical music in Caen, y compris an organ concert in St. Pierre, our local gothic church.

I suppose my other favorite professor is Monsieur Laurent Sénoze, for my written expression/comprehension class. He's a bit of a dirty Frenchman, but in the best possible way. I've learned so many, er, nuances about the French language that I would never have understood quite as well without M. Sénoze's vivid imagery. In fact, I would launch into an example of this, but you really need the hand gestures/sounds that he does oh so very well. For instance, the word mâle (you'd think it means male, as in the gender) has a very different connotation in French than in English...it doesn't really refer to people, but rather to animals. Ergo, when used in reference to people, the word has more of an animalistic undertone, if you catch my drift. This is but one of the many tidbits of wisdom which M. Sénoze has imparted upon us.

And I suppose if I'm going to talk about my favorites, I might as well talk about my not-so-favorites as well. Madame Toussaint is a very nice lady, but the very thought of a two and a half hour grammar class is daunting enough, and her method is just maddening. Every single time I'm sitting in that class, I'm sitting there thinking of what I could be doing with the time she wastes all the way up until 6 pm or so. I'll just leave it at that, because she is a very nice lady, I just don't happen to enjoy her class or her teaching methods very much.

And I suppose you might like to know my schedule, which is easier to put in writing than to tell to people, because most of the classes only occur once a week, which means there are a lot of them:

Lundi

10h30-12h00: Littérature et Histoire Littéraire with M. Rogues

13h00-14h30: La France Contemporaine

15h20-14h50: Compréhension et Expression Ecrites with M. Sénoze

Mardi

9h00-10h30: Littérature et Société Française with M. Rogues

10h40-12h10: Compréhension et Expression Orales

Mercredi

9h00-10h30: Rhétorique et Argumentation with M. Rogues

13h00-14h30: Comprehension et Expression Orales

14h40-16h50: Grammaire with Mme Toussaint

Well, I was going to start talking about my travels so far, but since this has already unfolded into a rather lengthy post, I'm afraid you'll just have to wait to hear about that. For now, I bid you à bientôt!

Amicalement,

Gabrielle Sidonie

Packing

So, there it is folks, the majority of my life for the next three months, all in one big suitcase. I can barely even sit still without thinking about what it's going to be like living in Normandy for so long, and needless to say, I'm so excited! It's about time, but the nerves are starting to go away, and now I'm ready to start this adventure. Who knows what's going to happen in France, after all, where they speak the language of love and dine on world-famous food on a daily basis? Ok, so maybe that's a bit of stereotyping, but I'm sure it's going to be a fantastic experience, and I think I have everything I need right here in this, er, little suitcase. I leave Tuesday and probably won't have much to write until Wednesday, when I'm getting in at Charles de Gaulle. Hopefully, somewhere between CDG and St. Lazare, the train station whence I'll be departing for Caen, I'll have time to commemorate my first day in France by snagging a nice croissant et un chocolat...ou quelque chose comme ça! Until then, happy Labor Day to all my American friends, and hopefully you'll hear from me again soon!

The Long and Winding Road

Here I am, about two weeks away from the day when I will board a plane to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, the beginning of mes aventures. Needless to say, it's taken a while to get here. I've slogged through countless pages of applications, from both ISEP (the study abroad program that is allowing me to go) and, of course, from the notorious CampusFrance. After the very idea of going to France occupied a good two or three months of my life, I've finally arrived at the best part. My visa arrived weeks ago, I now have a secure credit card that will accompany me on my European travels, and most of all, I think I might be mentally prepared to go abroad alone for the first time in my life.

France has been my dream, ever since I started studying French in middle school. I can now read the great French novelists without too much difficulty--Balzac, Zola, Camus, and so much more. How far I've come since the days of singing songs about how to say "hello." Promptly after my high school graduation, I was allowed to go on a trip to Greece and Italy, the experience of a lifetime when all was said and done. However, I would have traded that if it had meant seeing France, this country I have come to love almost as much as my own.

Of course, I am fully prepared that maybe not every Frenchman will be a dashing young man with a brilliant, romantic spirit, but there is the France I have loved through its literature, and I understand that the new France could quite potentially be something different. However, it is a country that I have always admired for its sense of identity above all. Coming from America, we're all such a hodge-podge of different things, and sometimes it's hard to pull one definitive identity from that. Hopefully, I'll get to see the inspiring pride in the French people for myself, while learning their language even better than I know it now.

Last, but certainly not least, I wouldn't be anywhere close to here without the support of family and friends. Everyone has been nothing but supportive despite the occasional jealous grumbling. From helping with the plane ticket, to just affirming that this was a feasible option, my family has been wonderful about all of this. Also, I send my eternal gratitude to our director of the study abroad program at my university. He has answered worried phone calls, calmed me down about the paperwork that was yet to arrive, and most of all, done a wonderful job getting me pumped up about this experience.

Last time I went to Europe, I went and saw Rome, Athens, Florence, Pompeii, and Pisa, all in about a week and a half. This time promises to be an entirely different experience. I will be living in the town of Caen, which is located in Basse-Normandie. With a population slightly over a hundred thousand, you could hardly call it a metropolitan center, but this is exactly what I want. Friends of mine who have been to big cities during their study abroad always mention the English that is present, the slang, things that would make it more difficult for me to really learn the language. Of course I'll visit Paris. I'm building a list of places to go that includes Le Théâtre de la Huchette, Père Lachaise, the Pantheon, and the usual sites. As a French lit buff, I would love to see the graves of Colette, Balzac, and Zola, as well as the other famous people who keep residence in Père Lachaise.

However, first I have to get there, and I am so excited just for that. I will try and keep you updated as much as possible, and I look forward to sharing my adventures with you!