October 2005 Archives
We went to La Rochelle yesterday! It's a coastal city about an hour and a half from Poitiers by train. It was the most bizarrely easy travel experience I think I have ever had. The train (10 euros each way with 25-and-under discount card, indispensable for train travel in France) deposited us at the gorgeous, expansive La Rochelle station, a mere five-minute walk from the town's main attraction, the port. Two giant stone towers from the 14th century frame the tiny port, which is about the size of an olympic swimming pool, maybe. Despite their solidity and weight, the towers appear to move and bulge because of how they've shifted and leaned over the centuries. I couldn't stop staring at them. They are so old. The port is filled with sailboats, which are so picturesque they might have been supplied solely for the benefit of the postcard photographers. The streets around the C-shaped port are filled with little cafes and restaurants offering mussels and fries. I really wanted mussels and fries, but the only restaurant that would serve us at 6 pm (our train left at 7:45) was some organic creperie. The hardship.
Upon arrival, Eva, Libby and I plotted our day's exploits while drinking delicious coffee at a sidewalk cafe and gazing at the boats in the port, giddy at the novelty of everything. The weather, by the way, could not have been finer. We strolled around the shops in the old streets of the centre ville, which were much like the streets of Poitier's centre ville, but with shops selling postcards of donkeys wearing pants. We ate sandwiches for lunch and bought pastries from the nicest patisserie I've ever been to - and that's saying a lot, considering I've been living in France for two months. Sitting on a park bench overlooking the pier, half-shaded by a row of trees blowing in the mild breeze, I tasted a French macaron (2 euros) for the first time. It was sticky, green (pistachio flavor), and the size and shape of a small hamburger, but instead of a beef patty there was a cool, creamy pistachio filling. This macaron flew past all of my expectations of French macarons. It was one of the best things I have ever eaten anywhere, and one of the high points of the semester so far. I sure wish I had one right now. Eva had a rhubarb tart, which was also delicious and beautiful - the perfect combination of tart fruit, creamy custard, and flaky pastry, all glossy and pink and golden.
We took a tour boat to view Fort Boyard and l'Ile d'Aix (22 euros per person). That thing went fast! I stuck my head out the window like a happy dog in a car, psyched to be on the water, as we zoomed out into the Atlantic Ocean (off the west coast, at that). We checked out Fort Boyard, this big old Napoleonic pile of rocks which I can't even imagine how they got it there or how many people died in the process. The prerecorded guide said it took 20 years just to lay the foundation. The next stop was L'Ile d'Aix, a little island whose combination of military fort, quaint village and beach makes it the lowest-hanging tourism fruit of all time. We lounged about on the grass on top of the fort, marvelling at how much it ruled to be us just then, then frolicked in the water at the beach and collected shells (and I made sure to secure some souvenir sand in my hair, ears, and clothing), then trolled the tourist shops and made our way back to the boat, washed in that salty, wind-blown, happily exhausted, day at the beach feeling.
Back on the mainland, we met up with some German and Finnish friends from the university and ate at the aforementioned creperie. I got to make up for the lack of mussels and fries with a crepe filled with mussels, shrimp, and calamari in lobster bisque sauce, which was pretty awesome, followed (necessarily, because it was so thin as to be almost two-dimensional) by a lemon and sugar version for dessert. Then we rushed back to the train station, leaving the blue-twilighty shining pier for the partiers. I went to sleep that night still feeling the rolling of the waves and the movement of the train, happy to have finally gotten myself out of town for a change.
Did I ever mention how much I love jambon cru? It's cured ham, and runs between salami and lox in terms of consistency and apparent doneness. It's really pungent, salty and addictive. Yum. There is a whole prepared pork section in the supermarket, with ten thousand kinds of sausage. The French supermarkets basically break down like this: yogurt, cheese, sausage, cookies, bread, fountain pen cartridges. Gum at the checkout counters.
My plans for tonight fell through so instead I screwed around on the internet, looking at pictures of Portland cyclocross races and getting nostalgic, while listening to random cool junk on the radio and eating jambon cru. Most of the time the radio is a choice between trashy French and American top 40 (not that there's anything wrong with that) and talk radio, but every now and then, particularly at night on the weekends, you hit on some gems. The station I have on has been playing pleasant, somewhat arty electronic music with no commercials for the last two hours, only occasionally lapsing into the tasteless and corny.
Toussaint vacation started today and almost everybody I know promptly fled the city: the French to visit their parents, the foreigners to travel to Paris and wherever else. I know I should probably be traveling too, but I really just want to stick around Poitiers all week. Partly it's because I prefer getting to know a small area deeply rather than many different places superficially, and partly it's because I just want to catch up on my studying and writing and do the things I never get around to when I have classes all the time. Today I finally opened a membership at the Mediatheque, and it was like, "Why didn't I do this two months ago?" On the other hand, it's nice to have another cool new thing to discover. The mediatheque is really beautiful and modern inside in a way that reminds me of the UC Berkeley art museum, and apparently you can check out CDs, books, movies, and all kinds of stuff. There were new, interesting-looking people inside and a cafe, where I looked for the counter and instead found vending machines. I think I'm going to spend a lot of time there on Friday. Tomorrow I'm going to La Rochelle, on the coast, if I can make it to the train station in time.
My mom sent me a package with exotic American items not readily available in France: Newman O's, dental floss, clear mascara, balance bars, and echinacea tea! She is the best mom ever! Thanks mom!
This girl from my translation class came over, and she is totally all liberal intellectual American too, from Vermont, and she was like, "WHERE DID YOU GET NEWMAN O'S??" We made vegetarian burritos for dinner, which I didn't even realize I'd been craving until I folded one up in my hand and bit into the crispy edge of flour tortilla, inhaling the pungent aroma of fried green peppers and garlic. I was able to find salsa, a.k.a. "sauce mexicaine" but it actually tasted much more like "sauce indienne" because it had curry or something in it. We joked about how they weren't burritos, but "fusion wraps." The burritos, the package from my mom, the cultural references, everything started to make me feel, for the first time since I got here, that I actually have a distiinctive culture with aspects good enough to be missed. It's easy to just equate American culture with excess, conservative dogma, and efficiency at all costs, but there's cool stuff too, like soy milk and Trader Joe's and the New Yorker and diners and Newman O's. It aint so bad.
My incredible boyfriend got my internet to work last night - over the phone at that! I will never take the internet for granted again. It is an amazing gift. Thanks Kev!!
I hear there's going to be an Ikea in Portland. So I guess I'll come back from France after all.
Tonight my dorm neighbors and I watched Sex & the City in French! It was less funny because I didn't catch all the jokes, but it was more funny, because it was in French. And also because there were French commercials. For example, there was a commercial for apericubes. In the commercial, there were a bunch of cave people having a party, and the cave hostess passed around a tray of apericubes, and the guests were like, "Mammoth flavor! My favorite!" There was also a commercial for a special laundry detergent for black clothes, to keep them looking blacker longer. That is so French!
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J'ai entendu dire qu'il y aura un Ikea à Portland, alors peut-être je vais y retourner.
Ce soir j'ai regardé "Sex & the City" en français! C'était moins marrant parce que je n'ai pas tout compris les blagues, mais en revanche c'était plus marrant parce que c'était en Français! Et aussi parce qu'il y avait des pubs français. Par exemple, il y avait un pub pour les apericubes. En ce pub, il s'agissait des gens de grotte à une fête. On passait un plat des apéricubes, et des invitées ont dit, "Ah, mammouth! J'adore ça!" Il y avait aussi un pub pour un lessive qui gardera plus noir les vêtements noir. C'est tellement français, ça!
Apparently the biking in the rain face is the same in France as in the United States. I saw someone yesterday with the biking in the rain face, and it made me less sad to not have a bike.
Coffee in France is almost always espresso. There is an espresso vending machine in my dorm. The espresso is pretty good, and you can get cappucinos and stuff, which are nothing like American cappucinos, but something like a mocha that is sweet without necessarily being chocolatey. I like it better even though I don't really understand it. I've learned here that understanding something isn't always necessary to be able to do it or enjoy it.
The stupidest thing I have ever come across here is the "sandwich must." For weeks it mystified me; I had the idea that "must" was some special kind of meat or something. Finally I asked this kid in my dorm, I think his name is Pierre, what the deal is. He said that the "sandwich must" is like other sandwiches, but bigger. It is the must big of sandwiches. "Comme en anglais."
