bon voyage, bonne chance, et bon courage

so this is it, vichy is done. in a couple hours i leave for clermont ferrand to spend the night with alex and hopefully see some other ex-oklahomans. then tomorrow morning, i meet up with cindy and hunter and begin my tour d'europe! paris, london, brussels, amsterdam, cologne, prague, vienna, graz, munich. we're also going to meet travis in amsterdam and then the rest of the trip, we should have a great time. i probably won't find much opportunity to update during the next week and a half, but i will certainly recount it all once i get back. and july 9, i finally go back home and see all the people that i've been missing like crazy for the last month.

le volcan et la catastrophe de la piscine

it's been another interesting week in france. wednesday, our school put together a trip to scale puy-de-dôme, the biggest volcano in the chain around clermont ferrand. it was a blistering hot day. the path up the volcano was incredibly steep, and it's about a 45 minute climb. i hadn't really prepared myself for the intense lower body workout that i got. at a certain point we got tired of the path, so my danish friend tjanna and i started just climbing up the vertical rock walls. that was a lot more fun, and we actually saved time doing it.


the view from the top was amazing. i saw little white dots forming into straight lines on the ground below that turned out to be sheep being herded across a stream. pretty epic.


you can also pay to hanglide off the top of the volcano. it looked like a lot of fun, especially since you just sit down after walking that whole way, but i didn't have 80 euros to blow.

the remnants of an old roman temple to mercury built on the summit.

the next day, we attempted to go out to the local swimming pool after class. we didn't realize that local in this case means 3 kilometers away. sean, william, our irish friend charlie and i decided to walk there then take the bus back. after about 45 minutes of walking, we found it and paid our 2.5 euros to get in. things went downhill from there. first, we couldn't figure out how to get into the pool. it's a pretty big complex, with indoor and outdoor pools, lots of lanes for lap swimming, a water slide, a lazy river and some sort of bubble therapy chairs. but we could not figure out how to get in. the secret is that you're supposed to go into these specific changing rooms that have a door on the opposite side. when you leave from the other side, you suddenly find yourself harry potter style in a different room leading to the pool. it's not explained very well by signs, so we didn't find that out till we left. we finally stumbled in through an exit and got yelled at a bit. but before we could get in the water, the weather alarm started going off because of lightning, so they made everybody get out.

the sirens finally stopped, and we went inside the main area. we were about to get in the water when a lifeguard came over and told us that we couldn't swim because our swimming trunks were forbidden. it was at this point that i realized that every single person, young and old, skinny and fat, was wearing a skin-tight speedo. we were going to go get our money back and leave, but the lifeguard pointed us in the direction of a vending machine for bathing suits. they had two designs that would fit us, one with just a slight amount of coverage on the legs and one with just the bare amount of coverage to not be considered indecent exposure. the smaller ones were cheaper, so we all bought a pair and strolled out to the pool in our matching speedos. needless to say, pictures were not taken, and if they had been they would not be posted.

this weekend, we stay in vichy. other travel plans fell apart. but it'll be nice to just relax for a weekend. sunday is la fête de la musique, a holiday in which amateur musicians take to the streets in every french city and perform all day, and professionals put on free concerts throughout the day. we're planning to take the train down to clermont ferrand for the day to enjoy the spectacle.

we also had the honor of riding the bus to the volcano with brett michaels. that is all.

le deuxième week-end

it was a good week in vichy. lots of school-related nonsense like homework, but thankfully we have weekends. and thursdays. thursday was william's (né vasiliy in mother russia) birthday, so we went out for a nice birthday kebab dinner and a bar on the river thats called tahiti or something. definitely my favorite bar thus far in vichy.

friday, we got on a train for nice around noon. we connected again in lyon, but unfortunately on the train from lyon to nice i was in a different train car than the rest of the group. that happened to be on a different train (it was split in two, so mine just followed theirs). it was a long trip, but the night was still young when we got to nice so we stopped by our hotel, the hotel de kent, then went straight to the beach. our hotel rooms had really nice, new tv sets in each room but only had three channels. and one of them was just an hour-long news reel on repeat. after the beach, we walked down the promenade des anglais, which runs along the beach, and stumbled upon this really impressive war monument:

those are people on the bottom right. it was huge. and the main part of it was covered with names of people that were killed, i think mostly in the two world wars. we wandered around some more, and stopped at a kebab place (comme toujours) for dinner. these kebabs were different from any that i've seen--it was like a tortilla wrapped around the meat. it was good though. on the way back to the hotel, we saw a little group of street performers, two jugglers and a guy playing guitar. the guitar player was playing a riff then looping it and playing more over it. it was pretty cool until he just stopped playing and started dancing. that was kinda bizarre.

the next morning, we got up and walked out to the russian orthodox church of nice that was built by tsar nicholas. apparently nice was a favorite vacation spot for russian aristocrats, so this is the biggest russian orthodox cathedral outside of the motherland. it was weird to see the eastern architecture juxtaposed with palm trees.



it was extremely hot, so that was enough walking for us. beach time.


we found a decent spot and collapsed for a couple hours. as one might expect, there were lots of nude sunbathers. unfortunately for us, most of the ones around us were extremely large women. it was best to just close our eyes and get some sleep. one problem with nice beaches, im not sure if it applies to the rest of the cote d'azur, but there is no sand. it's more like rounded pebbles and full-sized rocks:


we originally had made the mistake, when trying to decide on which city to visit, of typing "Nice beaches" into the google images search. so naturally, every picture that came up was a really NICE beach. but they weren't in nice, france. we felt slightly deceived, but i guess we should have known better. that stuff was clearly not as comfortable as napping on some warm sand, but we made do. the water felt great, and as the weather report had predicted there was abundant sunshine. will called over a sunglasses vendor and managed to haggle some probably fake sunglasses down from 25 euros to 5 euros. i was impressed. i attempted to apply sunblock, but i apparently didn't do a very good job. i'm still pretty sunburned.

after many hours of relaxation, we walked down the beach a ways until we got to this mountain/hill along the beach. there were stairs going all the way up, so we scaled it and got a pretty great view of the city, definitely postcard-worthy:


there was also this big waterfall coming down from the top of the mountain. the water splashing off of it was quite refreshing. at the top, there's some sort of classy chateau where people have weddings, so ashley had to stop and take creeper pictures of a wedding party.

after we came down, it was about time for dinner. we had decided we'd try seafood while on the sea, so we found a not-too-expensive but still respectable looking restauraunt. they had a section called fish and chips, which i assumed mean that the different fish listed below would be fried and served with french fries. three of us ended up ordering the fresh sea bass and chips, and we were not prepared for what came out:


i've never been faced with a meal that still has eyes and scales before, so i was definitely weirded out at first. but i managed to ignore that and it turned out to be pretty delicious. i think i probably would have preferred the meat sans head and tail and bones. we wandered around the city some more after dinner, had some gelato (we were as close to italy as i'm going to get on this trip, so it was both necessary and delicious). we were entertained by more street performers, this time a step it up-style dance crew.

the next morning, i had to catch my first train back at 9:30. once again, i was on a different train than the others because i'm using a eurail pass, which means often the cheapest trains for the others are not free for me. for some reason i thought i had a 3 hour layover in marseilles between trains, so i had actually planned out a couple things i wanted to see in the city. unfortunately, once i got there i realized that i only had an hour and a half. the main thing i wanted to see was the notre dame de la garde, a huge cathedral on a hill overlooking the city. you can see it here from the train station:


abandoning my public transport plans, i decided to just try my best to walk there with the time i had. but things on hills look a lot closer than they really are. i got about halfway, speedwalking and running up and down the hills of the city, then had to turn back. i'm not exactly sure why, but most of the parts of the city that i walked through smelled awful. like dog crap smell completely permeating your nose. that was pretty unbearable. luckily i did manage to see a couple cool things during my somewhat unsuccessful visit of marseilles.




now, im back in vichy trying to figure out next weekend. it was supposed to be a trip to bordeaux by car with my friend alex from clermont ferrand, but something came up for him so now we're trying to figure out if we can take a train. tomorrow, the school is doing a trip to clermont to scale the puy-de-dome, that big volcano that i saw when i was there. i'm going to go if i can figure out where to sign up.

i'm going to try to make it a habit to end each post with the funniest picture of the day. for this trip--have you ever wondered what it looks like when those street performers that paint themselves gold and pretend to be statues are on break?

à genève, en suisse

so friday afternoon, we all got out of our morning classes at noon and made our way somewhat rushedly to the train station. our train left at 12:45, so we all had to miss afternoon class, but we told our instructor and she didn't seem to mind much.

i find these flyers for train passes amusing. apparently the french embrace slight imperfections. like gap teeth.

our train connected in lyon, so we saw as much of the city you can see in about 30 minutes (basically just the plaza outside the train station):


the ride to geneva was pretty great--lots of french alps and swiss alps. we arrived in geneva, and the confusion began. it turned out that our train took us to the wrong station, and we were told that we missed a connection somewhere. but actually, we had to get on a shuttle train to the other station, which we ran to and jumped on right as it left. once we actually got into geneva, we exchanged some euros for swiss francs, which equal about one us dollar. our hotel was pretty far across town, so we tried to utilize the bus/tram system to make it there. unfortunately, most of the time the stops are not announced, and maps never really let you know where you need to go. so we ended up in the middle of the geneve airport, on the opposite side of town. after wandering for a couple hours, somebody in the group decided to ask for directions. so they chose this guy that we nicknamed stone cold steve austin. he was huge, bald, bearded and tatooed. and fairly helpful. except we couldn't really follow his directions, so it was another hour or two before we made it to the hotel.

the hotel was ridiculously nice. we had two rooms, and each room had a bed, couch and another pull-out bed. so nobody had to sleep on the floor. we decided to have a decent dinner, and went to a kind of ritzy looking pizza place called l'age d'or. two of the guys tried to order a pizza to split and the waitress looked at them like they were insane. 'un pour les deux? c'est trop petit!!!' the food was good, but not filling. and when the girls were sorting through their money, a couple euro coins were mixed in the pile with the swiss francs. the waitress ran over and yelled non non! and pushed the euros away. we did not like her very much.

the next morning, we got up super early and had a really great day walking around the city. here are some pictures of geneva:




the birthplace of rousseau

this is the biggest fountain ive ever seen. for an idea of scale, that is a little lighthouse on the left and those are the masts of ships on the right. william and i were the only ones with the nerve to walk down to the lighthouse thing at the end of the pier. we got wet, but it was worth it.

the city's flag

the headquarters of the united nations are located in geneva, so we walked over there to see if we could get a tour or something. unfortunately, the gates were closed and there were no guides or guards or anyone to either let us in or tell us to go away. but we still saw the un:



on the way back to the hotel around 2, we passed what looked like a carnival, so we stopped in to find food. it turned out to be some sort of fundraising event being held on the grounds of an elementary school. we had some decentish kebabs (everything, including kebabs, is overpriced in geneva. it's an unbelievably expensive city). a girl got up on stage and played a couple songs on her guitar about the stars. they were all basically the same song, but i thought it was great. my favorite was 'elle parle aux etoiles, chaque nuit elle les regarde.'

we walked around and looked at all the junk that moms were selling. emily bought a da vinci print, which she later realized was signed lionardo. fake? who knows. we were passing one of the little tables, and standing there drunk with his biker friends was none other than stone cold! he was wearing the same shorts, and we verified it was him by comparing him to the picture sean took of him the day before at the airport. one of the girls went up to him and was trying to ask if he remembered them. but instead, he thought she was asking for directions again. he looked at his friends, and they laughed (les touristes!!). then he took a deep breath and started trying to give them directions to the hotel. halfway through, they awkwardly thanked him and walked off. it was one of many awkward/amazing experiences in geneva. also, we saw an old man walking a cat in the forest.

for dinner, we had kebabs again, but these were legit kebabs in a little dive restaurant. afterward, we found a nice little portuguese bar and had some good, cheap portuguese beer. but then some drunk locals came in and wouldn't stop staring at the girls. it got pretty weird, so we left. we finally ended up in some british pub. aside from trying some chocolat suisse, most of what we did had very little to do with switzerland. we had italian pizza, turkish kebabs, and portuguese and british beer. all in all, it was a fun weekend. on the way to the train station to return to vichy, two inspectors got on the bus, which we had never been paying for (we couldn't figure out how). we were almost busted for riding without passes, but we managed to talk our way out of it. crisis averted.

now, three more days of class, then we go to the beaches of nice!!! i can't wait. i will close with a picture from geneva that absolutely must be submitted to engrish.com:

vichy!

i've had one week of class (already a quarter done!) and i'm having a pretty good time in vichy. the group of americans here in the dorms are pretty great, so even though every business in vichy holds hours that are impossible to understand and most everything is done by midnight, there haven't been many dull moments.

i have two classes every day, one from 8:45-12:00 and one from 2:00 to something like 3:30. the morning is an actual classroom setting, and the afternoon is more of an oral conversation workshop. it's not too rough, but it's extremely different from any french classes i've taken in the states. there are students from all over the world (only one other american in my class), so if you don't know how to say something you can't just sneak in an english translation. you actually have to describe it in french until they get it. but i feel like i'm already getting more comfortable speaking.

we did a little guided tour of vichy, which was a nice supplement to all of our wandering without really knowing what we were seeing. there are a couple famous natural springs in the city, and we tried water out of one of them. it was actually bubbly and salty and not very good, not really what i expected.

some state building by the dorms

the opera/casino

this imposing structure is the monoprix, the supermarket where everyone gets groceries. i imagine there have been other tenants before monoprix.

the school offered some sort of wine and cheese tasting event thursday, but we didn't want to pay the 5 euros it cost to attend. instead, we bought our own wine and cheese and had a tasting that i'm sure put the official one to shame. and at the very last minute, we decided to spend the weekend in geneva, switzerland. i'll post about that adventure soon.

la voiture des animaux

at noon friday, i caught a train from montpellier to nimes. i was only in nimes for about an hour, then i got on a train to clermont ferrand. it was definitely not a high-speed train--it took about 6 hours to get to clermont. the train was set up with little closed boxes that had about 8 seats, and i ended up riding in a box with a little french woman that resembled my grandmother. she spoke absolutely no english, but we managed to strike up an almost decent conversation, which comforted my fear that i had completely forgotten the french language. the woman told me about how beautiful the view from the train was, and she was right.

she kept saying 'regarde, regarde! c'est tres jolie!' anytime she saw something pretty outside her window. even when i was trying to get some sleep. at one point i tried to ask her if there was a car on the train with food (aliments) and she thought i asked for a voiture des animaux (animal car). that was the funniest misunderstanding i've had since i got here.

i got into clermont around 7pm, and alex, who studied in oklahoma last year, picked me up at the station. we went back to his parents' house and ate lots of food, including fresh bread, good cheese and freshly-picked cherries from their garden. alex's dad showed me the garden and explained every plant. he kept complaining that the garden wasn't organized well--his wife did the layout. his parents were really nice, and it was good to have a real shower and bed that night.
we went and met carole and elise, more oklahoma exchange students, and went to this park on a hill that had a view of the entire city.

then alex took us to a bar he really likes where we had grog. it's rum, honey, sugar and maybe something else served extremely hot. it would be good for a sore throat. after walking around a bit, we went back to chez alex. it was great to see everybody after over a year since they left oklahoma (i also saw angelique for about ten seconds). hopefully i'll be seeing more of them over the next month.

the next morning we had a big breakfast of assorted pastries, then alex and i walked around the city a bit. the entire city is surrounded by volcanoes. this is the puy-de-dôme, the biggest one and also the name of the department:

the cathedral in clermont is actually pretty scary looking. the rocks around the area are all really dark, so the outside is all black, extremely gothic. after seeing some of clermont, alex drove me up to vichy. it's 45 minutes or so by car. vichy seems pretty nice. it's something of a resort city, so there are lots of old people vacationing. but it looks like there are young people as well, and there is a night life (even if everything closes at midnight). no class monday because of pentecost. here are some pictures of my dorm room:

i have four chairs in my room, it's madness. i'll post more from vichy soon.