Au Revoir!

It’s going to be the little things I miss, the things around Metz, Cora, the idiosyncrasies of GTL. After an evening in Metz, Zach and I rode the Tardif, the big kids late bus, back to the Technopole tonight. It’s by far not uncommon to hear American music playing, or even bad French remakes of American music, but this evening the music selection was truly Ironic. I had just finished humming along to a little Oasis, when familiar guitar chords were strung on the radio, guitar chords that were immediately recognizable as “Born in the USA,” and I just had to laugh. Here I was on the 11 o’clock late bus back to the Technopole, thousands of miles from the USA, surrounded by Frenchies, listening to a song that, due to less than stellar air play in France, I was in all probability the only one who knew the words.
Just thinking about being “Born in the USA” brought my thoughts back to home; I guess you could say that I was going to Carolina and Tennessee in my mind. I miss my parents and the rest of my family, I miss my Webb girls and my Thetas, I miss sweet tea, and southern voices, in reality I just miss being able to say please and thank you instead of S’il vous plait and Merci. I miss cheap Mexican food, Frosted Mini Wheats and Mayfield milk, god how I miss Mayfield’s…I miss not being able to drive and having to depend on public transportation. I miss Wendy’s late nights, or anybody’s late nights instead of everything closing promptly at 10 pm. At times when I look up after zoning out while walking down the street, things look strikingly American. There is a McDonalds, a woman in a Gap t-shirt and a kid in Nikes, George Clooney is posing in an ad for coffee and couple of Coke cans are littering the street. Maybe it speaks volumes for the strength of the American advertising dollar, or maybe I just notice the American product offerings to help me feel more at home, as a baseline to cushion the adjustment.
But after three months, I have finally gotten the hang of this whole French business, I like to think that I have become somewhat acculturated. When I think about going home in exactly one week it makes me conscious of just how much I will miss about France when I am home…More than anything I am going to miss the freedom and flexibility of being able to explore another entire continent, arguably at my leisure, despite the fact that our break-neck pace has been less that leisure-full. In just three months I have been able to visit and enjoy 7 countries, have been forced to function in five different languages, and have seen more places and experienced more things than most college kids, and honestly many adults ever have the opportunity too. I’m going to miss riding home on the train from my last adventure brainstorming where I want to head the next weekend, what I want to see, and do, and visit. I’m gonna miss the feeling of total and utter confusion when some one comes up to me babbling in a foreign language and the only thing I cam stammer is “je ne parle pas français” (I do not speak French). I’m gonna miss making fun of one of my favorite species of humans, the Euro-creeper. On a side note, I encountered one of my favorite Euro-creepers this evening waiting for the bus, a presumably homeless, African American, scratch that, African Frenchie, pushing around a fully stocked baby carriage, with no baby…The Euro-creeper never ceases to amaze me, and oddly enough, I never feel threatened by them. That’s another thing I’m going to miss, being able to “embrace the wander” as I call it, without thinking twice about where I’m walking, never having to worry that there might be a dangerous Euro-creeper around the next corner. My sense of safety, which might just be naivety, has yet to be threatened. I feel a lot safer wandering around any of the cities we have been to this summer, than I do in downtown Atlanta. I am also going to miss the sense of historical significance. Everything in Europe is old; it’s beautiful and majestic. It makes me, as an American, realize that we are just little fish in a big pond of history. Every street has buildings that put our national monuments and stately courthouses to shame, churches that make the National Cathedral in Washington look like a joke. Cobblestone pedestrian roads lined with shops and cafes, situated in buildings dating from the 1600’s and later, with undulating and perfectly articulated facades. Random flowerpots bursting over with colorful explosions, mosaics on the floors, frescos on the sides of buildings, pitchers of fine French wine for only 8 euro…I’m going to miss it all.
When I look back at myself three months ago, I was a very different person, but that is because this trip has forced me to change my ways. Has forced me to become a little less American. I order things off menus that I don’t know what they are. I recognize a simple word like Poulet, chicken, and just go with it. This sometimes doesn’t work in my favor - think the tripe incident - but I deal with it in strides. At home I would have questioned its preparation, asked for no tomatoes and mayonnaise, or a side of bar-be-cue sauce, but I can’t do that here, I don’t know enough French to be picky. I’ve become fine with wearing the same outfit twice in the same month, I just have to suck it up and deal. It’s been cold and rainy and windy almost every day we’ve been here. I’ve become acclimated to the rain. I know before I leave my room everyday, regardless of whether its sunny or not, it will rain and I need to bring an umbrella. Public transportation and the tiny, often smelly bathrooms on trains no longer sketch me out. I’ve learned to carry Kleenex, because chances are, there won’t be toilet paper. I’ve learned to cook, and sometimes I screw up, but at least I know that no matter how bad it is, Zach will eat it and I can just go and make myself some pasta. I’ve had to learn how do deal with the fact that over here I can’t get instant gratification. Everything isn’t going to be how I want it, so I’ve learned to shut up and deal.
Three weeks ago I would have given my left elbow to have been on a plane home. I wanted to go home sit by the pool and pout about the fact that it rained on my parade both literally and figuratively. I was tired from the non-stop pace of the trip. I was sick of having to cook. Sick of doing laundry. Sick of the fact that my room had gotten messy and stuffed with souvenirs that I had no place for. I was having anxiety about the fact that I hadn’t scrapbooked spring semester and now I have the whole summer to do too. And I’m not gonna lie, those things are still dwelling in the back of my head, but now that I’m down to the home stretch, the last week, I cant stop thinking about that fact that even though I’m going home, I’m going to be leaving another home that I have grown up in the last three months, and that makes me sad…
This weekend we went up to the resort town of Trouville on the Norman coast. We tried to lay out and study, but the cold and the wind and the rain made it less than conducive to actually getting work done. Instead, we camped out at the indoor pool during the day and then embraced the wander at night. My pictures from this weekend are up, as always, on my Web shots in an album titled “Trouville.” For the next week we are going to be stationed in Paris, taking in the sites and sounds of the capital, that while we’ve been to now five, six? times, we’ve still yet to really visit. And then on Monday, we head back home, back to Knoxville, at least for a little bit.
Au revoir and Lots of Love,
Hillary




Trouville!

Bonjour!

I never thought I would say this, given the general attitude towards Americans, but, I believe that we are a much more respectful people on the whole than people give us credit for. We respect personal space, we respect others rights and opinions, we are respectful to our elders. I say this because this weekend in only a few short hours, I observed total disrespect on two separate occasions by two totally different sets of individuals.
While in Munich this weekend, we chose to take an afternoon trip to the legendary Neuschwanstein Castle, the model for the Magic Kingdom’s castle at all of the Disney theme parks. We arrived at the train station about thirty minutes before our train was scheduled to leave and as I was wandering around killing time, I was elated to discover a bookstore that still had copies of the newest Harry Potter book in English! Ready to settle in and begin my book on the 2-hour train ride, as soon as the train pulled in, we hoped on and I began my book. Several stops outside of Munich, on our way to the small town of Fussen on the German/Austrian border, three boys boarded the train and sat in the bank of seats behind Zach and I. I was completely absorbed in the trials and tribulations of Harry Potter and did not realize the disturbance these 12-ish year old boys were making until they began physically beating on the back of my train seat. Zach, who had been attempting to sleep, since he was being ignored by me, had already been being aggravated by these kids for quite some time. I turned around to observe the boys and realized that they were having what could best be described as a body-slamming wrestling match in the seat behind us. Their screaming and cussing, on top of the pounding on my seat, had begun to totally inhibit my ability to continue with my date with Harry, and so my level of aggravation was also mounting. After dealing with their behavior for nearly thirty minutes, Zach finally snapped and decided he would have to do something, since these children obviously were not accompanied by any sort of parent. Knowing that these kids didn’t speak English, Zach chose to simply stand up and in his most authoritarian voice asked the kids to stop. They obviously got the message and moved to another cart of the train to reek havoc on some other travelers.
When we reached Fussen, we took a bus up to the ticket office of the castle and purchased our tickets. Since the bus didn’t continue to the summit of the mountain where the castle was situated, we were left with two options : walk straight uphill for nearly a mile, or take a horse drawn carriage ride…Wonder which one I chose? The horse drawn carriages each held about 12 people – 10 in the actual carriage, with two sitting next to the driver right behind the horses…Being the first ones on the carriage I chose to sit next to the driver behind the horses so as to have a better view. And what a view it was. Our ride through the mountain forest was enchanting, until I realized that the sounds coming from the horses directly in front of me was not their harnesses rubbing against leather but was instead an extreme case of flatulence. The smell became unbearable; the people in the back of the carriage were now beginning to wonder what the sounds and accompanying smells were. And then, nearly at the summit where the beautiful Neuschwanstein Castle was about to come into sight, first one and then the second horse decided to release their, um…load? What a lovely ending to our horse drawn carriage ride…Not surprisingly we chose to walk down the hill on the return journey…
After our tour and exploration of the fairytale castle built by King Ludwig 2 of Bavaria, whose insanity lead to his removal from the throne, we headed back to Munich, again by train. The return train was quite crowded, but Zach and I did manage to find two seats together and I again settled down with Harry. However at the train’s first stop, my concentration was immediately broken as two young men boarded the train. One had a long greasy black ponytail and was wearing a leather studded jacket, tight black pants and intimidating steel toe boots. The second, was quite a bit more colorful. Wearing red and black plaid pants and a similar black leather bomber jacket, this fine example of the term “Euro Trash” also had a sharp and spiky red Mohawk nearly three inches high. Between the two of them they had probably 25 piercing on their head and face alone, including large gauged ear piercing that I am quite sure my pinkie would have fit through. Luckily for Zach and I these studs decided to sit down right behind us! I had returned to Harry Potter for not even 5 minutes when from behind us came blasting angry German, head banging, “hate the world” music – I think you understand. I really couldn’t believe their total disregard for everyone around them. I know that their message had to be some typical “you can’t tell me what I can and cannot do”, but frankly they shouldn’t be able to force me to listen to their music if I don’t want to, that’s a violation of my rights. I thought that Zach was going to jump out of his skin, as he was again planning on napping on the train. I amusingly reminded him that these were big boys who he couldn’t intimidate with a loud voice, and that his Swiss army knife didn’t stand a chance against whatever they more than likely had. We stayed our ground and didn’t give into their attempts to make everyone move, and soon an elderly woman feebly crept over to them and asked them, nicely, in German to turn down their music (or we assume). One of the creepers had the audacity to shout, presumably “no” to her, and then spat at her. Again total disrespect. When one of them staggered off to the bathroom a short time later, I used it as an opportunity to steal a glance, at them and their hideous music machine, which to mine and Zach’s amusement was an old school boom box that only played Tapes! When was the last time that a solely tape player has been in production? 1995? Their angry “hate the world” music wasn’t even on CD! We continued to bare the music for a good hour and a half until we were nearly back to Munich, for when, again to our amusement, their ghetto tape player, ate their tape. One of them kinda roared and hit his head as the other attempted, unsuccessfully, to re-spin the tape. Zach and I were dying laughing as other random people on our train cart began a scattered applause. As we were getting off the train I bent down to one of the angry Germans and simply quipped, “Maybe its time to upgrade to an Ipod?” He flicked me off, but I felt really proud of myself!
This weekend we are heading up to Trouville, a resort town on the beaches of Normandy, for a little rest and relaxation before Exams next week. In reality, Zach wanted a low-key weekend with no sightseeing to study, he thinks he might get a 4.0 this semester – I’ll believe that when I see it. Sadly no debauchery planned for my 21st on Sunday, seeing as I have two exams on Monday morning…that’ll have to wait till I’m back at Clemson…My pictures from Munich are up on my Webshots as always, at <> in an album called Munich!
Lots of Love,
Hillary


P.S. I have finished Harry Potter, anyone who cares to discuss, feel free to email or IM me!



Munich!

Bonjour!

Firstly let me apologize for the less than timely nature of this letter. Last night had a bit of a run in with a pan I was baking Salmon in, and have severely burned my right hand, which has necessitated Zach typing this letter while I dictate...I don’t really mind, I don’t like doing things for myself anyways. That being said please excuse his more than likely spelling, typing and grammar errors, I’m sure there will be plenty...
This weekend we went to Dijon to meet up with Zach’s parents who had come over to visit us. With Zach and I it is not surprising that tragedy struck not four hours into our trip. After dinner on our first night in Dijon, we all returned to our room that now included two rollaway beds for Zach and I to sleep on. Zach’s first reaction, since he is such a slacker, was to plop down and lounge on his bed. While completely innocent, that was perhaps not the best decision, for as he launched himself onto the rollaway bed, it collapsed and right onto his mother’s unsuspecting feet. According to Zach the bed was “improperly” set up however I’m convinced that he is just that much of a walrus...The screams that were then unleashed probably made the neighbors wonder if someone was being tortured in the “Romani Conti” room, and sent all of in the room into a flurry trying to remedy the situation. Zach and I headed down to the hotel’s bar to get some ice, which mind you is pretty hard to come by over here, and after about an hour we had all calmed down enough to finally go to bed.
Despite the fact that the weekend did not start off on a great foot... (haha I crack myself up...) we had a really great time. The next morning with the help of an ace bandage, Zach’s mom was good to go; despite that fact that we now know she did in fact fracture her foot. We went on a morning tour of several local wineries and spent some quality time driving through the vineyards that fan out all around the city. Going into wine cellars with several hundred thousand bottles of wine in them was incredible, and defiantly brings a whole new meaning to the song a Little Dust on the Bottle. Sunday we kinda randomly decided to drive to Geneva, Switzerland, and spent the day tooling around the city and taking a boat tour out on Lake Geneva. I had anticipated that Switzerland would be cold, you know, that whole Alps thing? I was defiantly wrong; it was by far our warmest and sunniest day to date while we have been
in Europe.
This weekend we are heading back to Germany, specifically Munich. I’m pretty pumped about it because I have been looking forward to visiting Neuschwanstein Castle, the model for Disney’s Magic Kingdom castle, since I first saw it on the Discovery channel in the spring. Hopefully my hand will have recovered enough to allow me to type next week!
Lots of Love
Hillary



Geneva!



Dijon!



Wine Country!

Bonjour!

I have had a long and arduous relationship with the Bicycle. Like all kids I had a tricycle, and in time upgraded, thanks to my grandparents, to a blinged-out pink and sea foam green little girl bike with training wheels, and streamers on the handle bars...be jealous…However, living on the side of an exaggerated hill, with limited flat surfaces, it was very difficult for me to gain experience on my new set of wheels. And it wasn’t until I spent the summer I turned 7 with my grandparents that I learned how to ride my bike without the training wheels. Once I had become freed of the embarrassing training wheels I became obsessed with my bicycle, and the following Christmas Santa brought me my upgrade, a burgundy “Giant Awesome” Mountain Bike. It was neither really that Giant or Awesome, and I believe there might have been a Christmas day display of my only child syndrome, in the form of a crybaby fit over the fact that the bike wasn’t green – I’ve tried to block this out – but my bike became my favorite toy. Many a Saturday afternoon was spent biking the Cades Cove Loop or the Third Creek Bike trail with my Dad, and then one day it stopped. Maybe I got too old to ride my bicycle and opted to go to the mall instead…Maybe it was because a UT student was murdered on the bike trail and I was too freaked out to ever return…Maybe I just got Lazy…We’ll never know…
My reunion with the bicycle came the summer after my Sophomore Year of High School at a little thing I like to call “Ivens Family Boot camp – The Kiawah Island Edition” in which every morning started bright and early at 7am with a run, aka I would run out of sight and then hide behind a tree with the latest edition of Seventeen magazine, and every evening ended with a sunset Bike ride. Needless to say there had been some time between my last bike excursions and Boot camp. I was unprepared. I tried riding the bike around in the driveway to regain a feel for the freedom and I failed. I finally got good enough that as long as I was going straight and wasn’t expected to stop I could manage to stay off my knees, which was when we decided to take a bike ride through the salt marshes that surround all of the Carolina Barrier Islands. Bad idea. Salt marshes have lots of bridges, narrow bridges, and it was my first encounter with one of these bridges that I found myself pedaling off of the bridge and into the salt marsh. Needless to say I had a good cop-out of bike riding for the rest of the trip. It would be nearly five years till I would attempt to ride a bicycle again…

We go shopping, we visit art museums, we embrace the wander, we rifle through flea markets in hopes of finding a real diamond in the rough, and I realize that these are more me doing things while Zach tags along. Out of the goodness in my soul I try to do things on our trips each weekend that Zach wants to do, and so when he repeatedly expressed to me that he wanted to rent bicycles in Amsterdam, I finally relented. Sunday morning bright and early we headed to Mac’s Bikes to rent bicycles for the day. While I never shifted out of first gear, rode continuously with the brakes applied, lagged behind Zach at least 50 yards while walking my bike up every hill and over every bridge, shockingly enough I had fun. My butt was, however, less than thrilled about the journey - pretty positive its gonna be a while before I stop wishing for one of those donut shaped pillows people with hemorrhoids sit on…We rode down the Amstel River heading outside the city for a breath of fresh air, and to catch a glimpse of real working windmills.
The Netherlands are a beautiful country, something I would have never realized had I remained within the canals of Amsterdam which are often described as the rings of Hell…On the outside you have stately canal houses, quaint streets, and beautiful flowers…as one progresses into the center of Amsterdam you have the true heart of the city, the inner most ring of hell, crowded with coffee shops, selling their legalized marijuana and hallucinogenic drugs, and the Red-light District with its off color Live Shows and prostitutes in every window. I think that it speaks volumes for Amsterdam that while we were visiting, we tried, twice, to visit the two main Cathedrals in town, each time being met with locked doors - once in the middle of the afternoon - while only a street over the doors to the coffeehouse and the windows to the prostitutes were always open…Despite the Debauchery that generally characterizes Amsterdam, I loved the city. The Van Gogh museum was like nothing I had ever seen before, its collection was so comprehensive…The Anne Frank House was truly moving and the most tasteful museum of its sorts that I had ever been to…The Heineken Experience, was, well, a brewery, but was expertly laid out and a testament to Marketing know-how…The weather was fantastic, it was our first sunny weekend of the trip…And the Bike trip which took us through a Park, and old cemetery, the countryside and to a windmill, all contributed to this being a pretty fantastic weekend.
My pictures are as always up on my Webshots: . In addition to pictures of Amsterdam there are also pictures up of the GTL study abroad field trip to the WW1 battlefields of Verdun. This weekend Zach’s parents are coming for a visit, and we are heading to Dijon, the heart of wine country and where they make the mustard!
Lots of Love,
Hillary

Bonjour!

Before I left I was warned, “Remember they eat weird stuff over there in France, you never know, you might end up being served cow brains or sumthan’…” but after nearly two months of being over here and never encountering anything more disgusting than escargot, the warning was forgotten…a warning I now regret not heeding…
On our first day in Normandy we took the train down to Mont Saint Michel, the mythical abbey and church built on an isolated craggily rock-faced island just off the coast. It is said that the Archangel Michael appeared to the local bishop around 700 AD and told him to “Build here and Build high,” and reassured the bishop that “If you build it…they will come”…I had always thought that that line originated with the movie Field Of Dreams, obviously not…Anyways, and so they have come, for centuries religious pilgrims and now tourists have flooded this tiny island, and Zach and I were right there among them this Friday morning…We trekked up what seemed like thousands of stairs that lead to the pinnacle where a less than impressive church was set, and upon our descent we decided that we should have some lunch on the island before boarding the train and heading back to Bayeux. We opted for the first non-sketchy restaurant with a descent fixed-price menu to settle in for lunch…We both opted for salad for our first course (the other option was duck foie gras, which I already knew to steer clear of), for dessert we both order Crème Brulee – always a safe option in France, and for our main “plat” Zach ordered Roasted Pork, and I made the fateful decision to order Tripes, or as it was translated on the menu “Traditional Normandian Stew.” With a translation like “Traditional Normandian Stew” I figured I would be getting something like a fish stew, since I was also under the misconception that Tripe was a type of fish…I now realize that I was thinking Trout…Note to Self: Tripe and Trout are two very different things…
Our first course of “Salad” was really nothing more than shredded carrots and lettuce, Zach and I both agreed that we had a word for that back in the States, and that would be Coleslaw, and that they might consider including that in their updated menu. Once we had finished, they brought us out our main courses, two plates of Roasted Pork…I got the attention of our waiter and informed him that I had not ordered the pork, but had ordered the fish...the Tripes? He grabbed my plate muttered something that could best be assumed to be “oh yah” and hurried off to get me my “Traditional Normandian Stew.” Moments later he returned with a steaming bowl of stew. There were stewed potatoes, carrots, peas, and this odd looking meat…I couldn’t really cut it up in the bowl so I flopped a piece out onto my plate…It defiantly wasn’t fish, it was much to rubbery…from personal experience I know that meat over here tends to be kinda fatty…but there didn’t appear to be much “meat” in the traditional sense either. In fact, it looked like, what I imagine it would look like if calamari and a manicotti noodle got together and had a baby…I tend to be a pretty picky eater but I figured, this is a nice restaurant…whatever this is cant kill me. So I grabbed my knife and cut myself off a piece…Zach set there, on the edge of his seat, anxiously awaiting whether or not I would actually try it…and I did, and I will attest to you right now it was literally the worst piece of food I have ever put into my mouth, and I have had to struggle through several attempted home-cooked meals by Celeste Herbert…I tried one of the potatoes and it too tasted like it had been marinating in manure for the last few hours, but I feel like the real indicator of just how nasty this meal was, was that when I offered a bite to Zach, he refused…yes ladies and gentlemen, Zachary Christiansen refused food.
Just what exactly Tripes were had been in the back of my mind all weekend, and so yesterday when we got back to Metz and I was once again reunited with my laptop, I relied on the definitive source on all subjects to help me gain some enlightenment into Tripes: I Wikipedia-ed it. My first skimming of the page was enough to make my stomach turn over on itself again, the words “cow or sheep digestive tract” said it all, but to top it all off it is stewed with potatoes, assorted vegetables and cow foot!!! And to think, I sent back the roasted pork…You might be wondering if the Crème Brulee faired any better, and sadly I report that it did not…my crème had not been “Brulee-ed” and tasted more like a bowl of cold hard boiled eggs in custard form. Needless to say the rest of the weekend I stuck to food that was explicitly described in my French menu decoder, and even then aired on the side of caution…
The rest of the weekend we explored all that Normandy has to offer. We took a day long “Battle Bus” tour of the D-Day beaches and other significant WW2 sights, and then spent a day exploring the coast of the English Channel, first with a stop in Honfluer, a quaint fishing town and art enclave, and then with an afternoon in the resort town of Trouville. Shockingly enough it was cold and rainy so I was unable to bask in any golden rays, despite the fact that I was at the beach…My pictures as always are up on my Webshots: in four albums: Bayeux! Mont St. Michel! WW2 Tour! And La Cote Fleurie!.
This weekend Zach and I are headed to Amsterdam…No comments please…
Lots of Love,
Hillary

Bonjour-ish

I hear there are droughts, its hot and sunny over there...Lucky You...
For the next three days I have a lot to look forward to…according to the Weather Channel there is a 100% chance of showers here in Metz for the next three days…100%. I’ve never actually seen them say 100% before, that without a doubt it will rain, and not scattered showers which is another cop-out used to cover up the in-precision of weather forecasting, but 100% chance of showers. I guess I should be thankful, at least it isn’t 100% chance of thunderstorms, or snow….
If someone had told me that it would still be cold and rainy in France at the end of June I would have laughed at them, but it is, still, cold and 100% rainy here in Metz. It has become a bit of a running joke between Zach and I because no fail when we get off the train in Metz back from our weekends elsewhere it is always cold, dark and pouring rain…its such a reassuring welcome home…
The last few weeks have been an indication to me that global warming is a total sham, its not happening because we’re polluting the atmosphere or whatever other random theory you might think, it can easily be explained by this: Mother Earth is going through Menopause and is forcing everyone living with her to deal with it as well. Take today for example, I woke up and looked outside my tiny porthole to see not surprisingly rain…I got ready, and headed out the door for my first class and it was not only 100% showers, but pouring rain and huge gusts of wind that nearly blew my new Van Gogh umbrella inside out as I walked around the glorified pond known as “Symphonie Lake” that obstructs my walk to class each day…by the time I got out of class, one hour later, the rain had stopped and the clouds were dissipating, and sure enough by the time I had gotten out of lunch the sun had come up and the humidity was rising making me feel like I was having a hot flash too…This weekend I had to put up and take down my umbrella, put on and take off my jacket so many times that it became second nature for Zach to grab my purse whenever we changed environments so that I could reoutfit myself for whatever random weather condition Mother Earth had thrown at us…
The worst part about this 100% chance of rain is that I think I have begun to suffer from SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. The rain and the clouds and the cold weather has begun to get to me, I cope with this just fine at school because of my 20 minutes each day laying on a deserted island, or in a tanning bed…but there is no tanning bed here or real sun either, and I’ve begun to lose my golden glow both externally and internally. Several of you have mentioned it to me and its true, I have begun to sympathize with Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I’m clicking my heels because there really is no place like home…There is nothing that I wouldn’t give for a Diet coke, good West Tennessee BBQ, and some Spill the Beans Ice Cream…But for right now I will have to be content with Fanta, Jambon and Formage Bagettes, and Nutella…
This weekend Zach and I took it easy and slowed down our break neck pace for a weekend in Paris. It turns out that since we both have early exams, we will be able to leave Metz early and will have nearly a week in Paris at the end of our trip, so seeing everything this weekend was not imperative. We focused on Greater Paris this weekend first with a trip down to Versailles on Saturday and then a trip up to Giverny, the home of Claude Monet, on Sunday. The waterlily gardens at Giverny were truly moving, and several hours of peace and serenity of gazing at them were just what I needed to fuel me for another week of school…The pictures are up on my webshots in three albums, Versailles!, Giverny!, and Paris!...check ‘em out. This upcoming weekend we are heading up to the Normandy region and are taking a day trip to Mount St. Michel and are doing the Battle Bus tour of the D-Day beaches, which comes highly acclaimed by Ralph and Celeste…It should be a moving and rather informative weekend.
Lots of Love,
Hillary

We Have Survived...

Our weekend in Madrid had been characterized by unseasonably cold and wet weather, sadly un-“Mexican” food, and a string of cancellations and closings including our long anticipated bullfight: after showing up at the Plaza del Toros, hoping that our weekend would end on a high note or at least rather intriguing note we were again disappointed to find out that the bullfight had too been canceled due to inclimate weather (or at least that was what we were able to gather from the signs at the box office). Angered, distraught, and too tired to attempt to hunt down an acceptable place to eat dinner, we opted for the stereotypical American option : The Hard Rock Café. As a way of making up for my lack of tacos and fajitas that I had been looking forward to - and had sadly realized were NOT Spanish dishes, I ordered a massive margarita and Quesadillas, while Zach attempted to replenish his cholesterol and further confirm his status of American ordering a Hickory Bacon Cheeseburger and a Budweiser – on tap. We had a lovely meal, eating our American food, listening to American music, and surrounded by fellow Americans…Dog tired, we left about eleven, hoping that an early night could mean an early morning…
As we were leaving the Hard Rock Café we noticed a stream of people walking, and cheering down the street…Apparently there had been a soccer or “futball” game tonight, that ironically enough, had not been rained out…and Apparently this was a pretty big soccer game…and Apparently they, Madrid’s team – Real Madrid (pronounced Re-Al)– had won…and Apparently there was fixin’ to be some kind of a celebration… Curious about this whole soccer culture, and open for any sort of positive experience from our weekend in Madrid, Zach and I joined the crowd…
We walked along with the stream of chanting college kids all the way to the Plaza de la Cibeles where they were going to have a little pep rally…I thought to myself, well this could be cute, I bet a bunch of the fans will come out and the team will show up and we’ll all cheer - maybe there will even be cheerleaders, and they’ll shoot some fireworks and we’ll all go home, safe and sound…I obviously misjudged the level of fanaticism that is involved with European “futball”, because in case you, like I was, are not aware, soccer…It’s kind of a big deal over here…When we arrived at the “pep rally” it was about Me, Zach and about ten thousand fans…but by the time that the team did show up, it was me, Zach and several hundred thousand of our new best drunk, smelly, soccer-fan friends, all cheering in unison...Zach and I attempted to join in just so we didn’t look stupid, but joining in on a cheer that is in a foreign language is a little bit difficult…I was amazed by the crowd, you might even say baffled, and this coming from a girl who is intimately familiar with 100,000 screaming Tennessee fans. The city had set up a huge platform around the iconized fountain at the center of a roundabout right in the middle of town. There were people packed into each of the 6 roads intersecting at this round-about, all cheering the Real Madrid song, sounding off noise makers, and attempting to sing “We are the Champions,” which instead was more of a “We are the Chomp-onions” and a slurring of the words in the verses – obviously knowing the words wasn’t as important to them as the theme. A stunning lightshow of soccer balls and soccer net was being projected up into the sky, soon followed by a mass-release of balloons and a Fireworks display that would put Booms day or the Fourth of July fireworks show on Mud Island to shame.
I don’t mind being in crowds, I have a pretty clearly designated personal bubble, but at an event like this I was mostly comfortable, at least until the pushing began. When the team arrived, the crowd began to literally heave, I was being pushed forward but there was nowhere for me to go. There were streams of people fighting there way to get closer to the stage, and people fighting to get away from it. Boys were shimmying up traffic light poles, street lights, and decorative poles with floral hanging baskets, all in an attempt to catch a glimpse of there favorite players…I’m not gonna lie, I was standing on tip-toes in hopes I might catch a glimpse of David Beckham too… However, once my foot had been trampled on by the man in front of me, and our claustrophobia was growing, we had both had our fill of the soccer celebration and began our up stream exodus from the scene.
As we walked away, after struggling for nearly thirty minutes to make our way through the crowd, I was again amazed by the mass pandemonium that was taking place. There were cars parked everywhere, crooked and illegally in any fashion just so that they could get to the rally. There were Real Madrid flags hung out hundreds of windows, sounds of the teams rally song could be heard all over the city from recordings being boomed over loud speakers to car horns tooting along as they drove. And still, even as the rally was in action, people were still streaming out of side streets and down the roads trying to make their way to the Plaza to show support for their team.
Making it back to the room safe and sound but exhausted, we immediately turned on the local news in hopes that we could see what was still happening back at the victory celebration – Real Madrid had won the Spanish National Championship game. Obviously being unable to understand what was being spoken, when they showed pictures of the stage and roundabout, where nearly 400,000 people had just been gathered, completely empty, we assumed that these must have been shots from earlier in the night, possibly during set up? Then footage began rolling of Police officers firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd, and people fleeing the scene. Those who were not inclined to leave were being forcibly pushed with the policemen’s shields and beaten with clubs…talk about police brutality…From what we read on the internet the next morning, we learned that fans had begun lighting firecrackers in the crowd which the police had thought were gunshots…the obvious course of action would be to fire teargas and rubber bullets into the crowd…this action lead to a mass frenzy of people trying to leave the scene, several of whom were trampled by the crowd. In the end more than 100 people were injured, a quarter of whom were so seriously injured they required hospital attention…Man am I glad that we chose to leave when we did or else this weekend could have ended on a real downer…
This weekend we are taking it slow and going to Paris for the weekend…We’re not going to be doing too much sightseeing, maybe head down to Versailles for the day, but mostly just relax, this pace we’ve been running has been pretty draining and I could defiantly use to sleep in. Pictures from this weekend are up in two albums on my web shots…I hope you’ll check them out.
Lots of Love,
Hillary