Spring Break, Part I

I had two weeks of vacation for spring break, from April 9-26, and ended up spending the bulk of it with my mom. I was up at 5:30 the Saturday after classes let out, and on my way to Paris by 6:45. Her plane from Atlanta was a couple of ours late, but that was fine because I actually love hanging out in airports. So I had some breakfast--an espresso (they grow on you) and a croissant--and I read my new edition of Better Homes and Gardens from cover to cover. All in all, a good morning. When she finally exited the terminal, it wasn't a huge hysterical crying affair, luckily. I think that if we haden't been skyping each other religiously since February, it would have been worse. But we got our museum passes (which I highly recommend) and took the RER into Paris, which cost 9 euros for each of us! Ridiculous.

Our hotel was in the Latin Quarter, the oldest area of Paris after the little islands, and just a few blocks from the Sorbonne, only of the oldest colleges/universities in France. The rooms were soundproofed, which was great because Paris in general is very loud. I had a great time showing mom the typical Parisian vacation: the Louvre, the Orsay museum, and all of the other typical stuff. I have to say that anything less than five days in Paris is not enough if you want to see everything. At the end of each day, we curled up and watched International CNN and BBC World.




We spent an entire day at Versailles. The chateau itself is overwhelmingly and obscenely decorated and packed with rude tourists and tour guides. But afterward, we wandered in the gardents and ate lunch there, too. We both had the bruschetta at one of the little restaurants located on the grounds, and it was absolutely delicious. The bread wasn't too dry or hard, the cheese was only slightly melted, the halved cherry tomatoes were so sweet and warm, and the surprise of the spinach, pesto, and balsamic vinaigrette really made it perfect. I'm pretty sure they made my pear crumble from scratch, too. Yummy. It was one of the best meals I've had in France. Next, we headed to Marie Antoinette's getaways: the Petit Trianon and her hamlet all the way at the edge of the property. The Trianon was much more of my style--it had more of a Regency English feel, and unlike Versailles, they actually followed the caveat of "less is more." The hamlet was stunning. It was really interesting, coming from the tightly controlled and immaculately trimmed gardens of Versailles, to wander around rolling hills filled with winding paths, creeks, wild flowers, a grotto, and an open-air music room. The hamlet was a little farm where Marie Antoinette and her close friends dressed in simpler clothes, raises animals, and kept vegetable gardens. There are still sheep, goats, rabbits, cows, and even a few peacocks. I seriously wish I could impart how beautiful and serene it was. I wanted to just lay on a hillside and watch the swans in the lake and take a nap.

A few other things I would recommend to anyone thinking about taking a vacation to Paris: a boat tour of the Seine; a visit to the archeological crypt below Notre Dame; attending a Sunday afternoon organ concert at Notre Dame (free); and spending an afternoon at the Luxembourg Garden, making sure to take a little tour of the statues of the various women of French history that are in a semi-circle around the fountain.

During this whole time, the train conductors were on strike. This meant massive delays and cancellations. Mom and I found out that our train to Aix-en-Provence was cancelled, and that morning when we got up, I just happened to check online and saw that a train was scheduled to depart that morning...in half an hour. We were very lucky that it was still early morning, that the train station was close by, and that we had a wonderful taxi driver. We got there with 5 minutes to spare, and off we went! The Lyon train station is much bigger than I had thought, and I almost killed mom running to catch the train (sorry!), but we made it! After a quick conversation with an employee on the platform ("Our train was cancelled. We're getting on this one." "Okay."), we were good to go! The train was blissfuly empty and mom was able to nap a bit but also be awake enough to appreciate the scenery. The South is so beautiful and diverse. Cezanne lived in Aix and his Mont St. Victoire paintings do more than enough justice to the landscape. I spent a week with Emilie Dayan and her grandparents in Fos-sur-mer a few years ago and we covered a lot of ground in her car--mountains, islands, marshes, and the seaside! As breathtaking as the green hills of the Loire Valley are, they all look the same after a while.





Our time in Aix was nice and relaxing. We mostely ate, wandered, and did some shopping. Unfortunately, our hotel was further out this time around, and we had to take the bus to get into centre ville. But there was a market that first day where I bought my first real souvenir from France! (Sidenote: "souvenir" is a French verb that means "to remember." The more you know!) Mom and I went halfsies on four placemates and four napkins in a traditional Provençal print. The colors match my plates, so I'm really excited, and they weren't even horribly expensive! This is a photo from the internet, but it's the same colors and pattern:





We also went to the Cathedrale St. Sauver, which is famous for its cloister which was constructed in the first century using stones from the Roman forum that used to stand in Aix. We went on a little tour of the cloister that was all in French and explained the engravings on the columns, so I got to impress mom with my French --> English translation skillz. There were two Australians there though that got their noses out of joint that the tour guide couldn't do it in English, too. Aix is not Paris! Anyway, it was really nice to just wander around in a different, slower city, and to sleep in and read. This hotel didn't have English TV channels, so I think it got on Mom's nerves a bit, but it was good for me to listen to French while on break and to keep up with world events too. (Like volcanoes.)

We thought our train back to Paris had been cancelled, but there was just an error on the website. So, luckily, Mom and I had seats! The hallways between the cars and the stairwells between the two levels were full of people. Other than that, though, the train ride was fairly uneventful. Unfortunately, amidst my discussion (in French!) about the nuclear summit in DC with our taxi driver on the way to the hotel, we discovered that Charles de Gaulle Airport was closed, so both of our flights for the next day were cancelled...

Cliffhanger! And my fingers are hurting and I have class soon.

So there was this beach in Normandy, and one day in June the Americans kicked some ass on it.

Okay, well that's not quite true because the Americans actually didn't get as far up the beaches as the British and the Canadians, but whatever; my American pride chooses to ignore these minor details.

I had to be at the university gates at 6:15 that morning (last Saturday) which meant leaving the foyer at 6:00, which meant getting up at 5:25. When my alarm went off I definitely flailed around in bed for a minute or two, simultaneously trying to figure out why my alarm was going off so early and also turn it off really fast so that I wouldn't wake up any of the other girls on my floor. These walls are really, really thin. After having gotten dressed, I went to the kitchen to get some fruit out of my mini fridge and one of the entrances was LOCKED. Luckily, the other one wasn't, but I was still a bit annoyed. It's kind of like when they lock up the cabinet with all of the dishes and glasses for a weekend--how am I supposed to eat now? I guess my thing is, if you're going to give us a kitchen with our own mini fridges and stuff, why would you lock part of it up?

I digress. I did make it to the buses and everything on time, except Monsieur Melin didn't ride with us. He's also on my list of things I'll miss. He's so amicable all the time, and provides really funny commentary. I kind of feel bad for the students with a lower comprehension level of French because they're really missing out. But another teacher rode with us and I was pretty impressed by him for reasons I'll explain later. This time, the whole gang was together: Inga, Becca, Katie, Nolan, and myself and it was a general good time, except the Notre Dame kids all holed up right behind us and chattered away at 6:45 in the morning. It really got on everybody's nerves and I may have been a bit snappy when I tried to lean my seat back and the guy behind me was like "uh your bumping into my knees" and my response was "well, I'm sorry but I've been trying to go to sleep and it's been a bit difficult!" The only consolation is that he sounds EXACTLY like Tim Gunn. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear him say "make it work!"

We finally got to the D-Day memorial around 10ish and went in. This photo is blown up to EPIC proportions in the lobby, with two captions:

The first is to the left, and it's more like a source caption, but it says, "June 6, 1944, Omaha Beach (Saint Laurent-sur-mer). 7:30 AM. Photo US Army." To the right, in larger font, is "On June 6, 1944, on the beaches of Normandy, more than 10,000 young men fell for our liberty." Yeah, I might have gotten chills. The rest of the memorial is dedicated to the progression towards WWII starting with the Treaty of Versailles, then describing the huge depression in Europe, the rise of Hitler, Nazi and fascist propoganda, the outbreak of WWII, Vichy France, the resistance movements, the general badassery of Charles de Gaulle and eventually the Normandy operations from June to August, 1944.

And there are photos--lots and lots of photos, most of which were shown during the two short films that I watched. I had no idea that photographers and video cameras followed both Allied and Nazi forces around, but it was pretty impressive. The first film was a split screen with the left side showing video reels of Allied commanding officers going over maps and weather reports and resistance reports, then the soldiers loading up onto the boats and getting ready. The right side was the Vichy France/Nazi/Resistance activities, so soldiers looking out over the channel, resistance participants cutting telephone and telegraph wires so the Nazis couldn't communicate, derailing entire trains loaded down with Axis equipment and so on. And then the next morning where the Allies started moving, and there are some pretty impressive shots of the entire fleet of ships moving across the channel with the planes flying just above them. On the right side of the screen, the Nazis finally see them and get all freaked out and start scrambling to their stations and so on. Finally the two screens merge into one and it's just a bunch of shelling and explosions and shots of the men crawling up onto the beach and Rangers basically scaling the side of a cliff because they're, you know, RANGERS.

So the first film was mostly the actual D Day operations and the next was more of the general Normany liberation operations. There were lots of photos of french women crying and clutching soldiers and soldiers carrying kids and animals out of the rubble and frenchies sewing American flags and stuff like that. Again, chills. There were also a lot of photos of dead soldiers and decimated cities. I've wondered why a lot of cities that we've driven through have these huge ugly General Steel-type buildings but now I know that it's because a lot of the country side and cities were absolutely destroyed by the fight between the Allies and the Nazis. Our teacher told us that they basically would go from Nazi stronghold to Nazi stronghold and shell the hell out of it until the Nazis didn't have anywhere to hide and had to surrender or retreat. I'm certainly in no position to judge, but it doesn't seem like that's the most logical way to save a country--I mean, where are all these newly liberated people going to live if all their larger cities are nothing but rubble. And when I say rubble, I mean RUBBLE. There were photos of groups of people (french citizens and soldiers alike) just standing around in the middle of heaps of razed cities with barely, if any, buildings standing. And I'm just such an academic and history freak that I can't stand the thought of destroying centuries of history.

But all of the frenchies seemed pretty ecstatic in the photos, so I guess that's what counts the most.




Thennn we went to the American Cemetary which was pretty humbling, especially after watching those films and discussing them over lunch. The Cemetary is actually on American soil, so I went to America just last week! And by bus! The Cemetary reminds me a lot of the cemetary in Arlington, but on a smaller scale. There about 10,000 men buried there, and there's a small chapel on the grounds, as well as a wall inscribed with the names of all the men that died on during the operations. Every cross (or Star of David) is marked with the name and hometown of the soldier, as well as their division. I definitely teared up a bit at least once. And felt really proud too. My patriotism has grown a lot since being here in France--not necessarily that I think we're the most legislatively efficient country or that we don't have any problems, but that I love America, and we have a good history save for a few significant hiccups (our horrid treatment of the Native Americans and Japanese-American citizens, along with McCarthyism and segregation, mainly) and I think I could even stomach an American history class now just because I want to learn more about my own country. I used to HATE American history.



Anyway. Next we went to the Pointe de Hoc, which is where the Rangers scaled up the sides of a cliff like the monkeys they are and kicked the Germans around for some fun. All in a days work. But the whole point of Pointe de Hoc is that it hasn't been cleaned up, so the holes are still in the ground from where shells hit and the concrete buildings are still all crumbly. It was kind of fun to run around in them, especially with all of the heavy stuff that we'd dealt with earlier. Also, leaving Pointe de Hoc, there was a road named after Bedford, Virginia, where my maternal grandmother's side of the family is from, so I kind of freaked out a bit in the bus.

The final stop was the German cemetary, which I really don't have a lot to say about. I mean, it was pretty, but after learning about and seeing photos of all of the Americans that were killed by these men...I didn't really want to stick around and admire their bravery or anything. Of course, they were probably just doing their job and wanted to go home as soon as the rubber hit the road, but it was a bit difficult to be there.

On the way home our teacher-guide person put a bunch of songs on that were written or sung by french people about the War, along with the english version of one: "The Partisan" by Leonard Cohen. (BTW I listened to Leonard Cohen's live in London concert CD and I might be hooked. I'm definitely buying it when I get back to the States.) I really liked listening to his commentary, from an aesthetic point of view. I like it when french people are very careful with their prononciation and enunciation; I appreciate it from a french-as-a-second-language point of view but also I think it just sounds better in general like that. When frenchies talk really fast I think the beauty is a bit lost. I kind of wanted to record it so that when I get frustrated, I could listen to it and be like "ahhh, THIS is what french can sound like!!" He also passed out a paper that had all of these photos of like, camembert cheese and cows and apples and cidre and so on and was explaining how these are all distinctly Norman products.

So that was my excursion run-down...my last excursion of the semester! (I can't believe I'm going to be home so soon...it's kind of crazy!)