'Tis the Season

Alors, nous sommes arrivées au décembre... where does the time go?! I absolutely cannot believe there are only 17 days left until I'm home for the holidays. Don't get me wrong, I'm so excited to spend a few weeks catching up with family and friends and eating real home-cooked meals--I've been trying my best in my wee kitchenette, but it's just not the same. Unfortunately the short amount of time until I get to see you all means there's an even shorter amount of time until I have to take my finals. And then I'm halfway done with my first year of college. Whoa.

As much as I might want to kid myself, there's no denying that we've entered full-on winter here in Paris. No snow to date, but I've definitely had to break out the earmuffs and gloves on my bike, and I've taken to wrapping a scarf around my neck and another around my face, but even the biting chill of the wind off the Seine is preferable to having my face in someone's armpit on the jam-packed metro...at least in my opinion! Plus I get to see all the store windows painted with scenes of snowmen and Santa Claus and the elegant wrought-iron balconies draped in cheesy Christmas lights. Love it!

Before I start talking Christmas, though, let me rewind to Thanksgiving! NYU hosted a dinner for all the students and faculty at a restaurant in the Saint-Germain des Pres district called Le Solferino. It was truly a Franglais affair with even more bread than I'm used to at home...no complaints here. We were served butternut squash soup, mashed sweet potatoes (my favorite), green beans, and some type of delicious meat which I'm ashamed to say I'm not even sure what it was. A turkey was definitely carved by our campus director John Moran, but none of that bird made in onto my plate. I have a sneaking suspicion it was foie gras but I don't want to ask because I'd rather not have a lovely meal tainted by the knowledge that I feasted on a liver patê. If you can't tell, I'm still getting over some of my American food complexes, which were not helped one bit by my earlier experience with escargot. And of course the most important part of the meal...pumpkin pie! It was more of a tart with actual chunks of pumpkin, but it was cinnamon-y and warm and came with homemade whipped cream--none of that low-fat, fake sugar nonsense--so I'll give the French an A for effort!

There WAS a turkey...I have proof!

 The other highlight of the evening was being asked by the GLS dean Fred Schwarzbach to take a photo. He's the director of my major/program, and he decided to spend Thanksgiving with us in Paris! This ended up on the NYU Liberal Studies Instagram, something I had no idea existed until my friend sent me the picture and told me I was famous.

On the left are Leah and Jonah...my companions at the dinner table! Above are two GLS juniors. One big happy NYU family :)

After our Thanksgiving dinner, the rest of my weekend was pretty busy and fun-filled as well. Saturday morning I caught an early train to Dijon. When I visited France for the first time this past Spring with KHS, we spent a few days in Dijon where Kirkwood has something like a "sister school." Each student from KHS got paired up with a student from Boivon and had dinner with them and their family, so I went to visit my friend Magali and her family again.

It was such a lovely and relaxing weekend! When I arrived, we went to lunch in the city center. Dijon is definitely a city, but it feels much more quaint than Paris. It wasn't too terribly cold, so we walked around for awhile, wandering in and out of tiny shops and also stopping for a treat:

It's never too cold for a Nutella milkshake

 That evening I had my first crepe-making lesson. Magali's parents already had plans to dine at a friend's, so we had full reign of the kitchen. I did the measuring and mixing and left the hard part to the expert, but I came back to Paris with a recipe, so maybe if I'm feeling adventurous one evening I'll give it a whirl! Thin pancakes...how hard can it be?

After dinner, we went to see the Hunger Games--en Francais, of course! It was my first French film that didn't involve subtitles, and I was pleasantly surprised how well I was able to follow. Then again it probably helped that I read the books in English and therefore already knew the plot, but I'm still counting it as a victory.

Sunday morning we had a leisurely French lunch that may have been one of the best meals I've had here. People say everything closes in Paris on Sundays, but that isn't completely true. You can still find cafes and boulangeries and the occasional supermarket open for business. In Dijon, its absolutely true. There isn't much to do in the city, so instead of just the traditional Sunday family dinner, they go all out and do lunch as well. Magali's mom began cooking around 10 am and we sat down to eat at 1 pm. She had roasted a chicken and made homemade ratatouille and skillet potatoes. After that we had the obligatory cheese and bread in-between course, and we finished it off with homemade chocolate mousse and raspberries. Yum!!!

The exception to the less-than-lively Sundays I described above is the Marché de Noel, an annual outdoor Christmas Market. These are very popular all over France, but Dijon's is the first I have visited so far.

Stands selling everything from scarves to sausage to nougat to dolls. Perfect place for Christmas shopping! Or a ferris wheel ride if you are so inclined.

Dijon town hall--they have an outdoor skating rink in the plaza in front of it!

There was no way I could thank the Blatter family enough for being so warm and welcoming, but I tried my best! 

Back in Paris, I'm now on the hunt for the best Marché de Noel, but in the meantime I'm just enjoying all the festive decorations popping up :)

I took this at 5:30 pm on my way home from school; it already looks like night time! But Notre Dame lit up is one of the most magnificent sights.

Christmas tree in front of Notre Dame

Happy Holidays everyone! 

November update

Please forgive my negligence once again. I've been meaning to write; I swear! But you know what they say about good intentions...

Anyways, for those of you who don't know, I'm a fall fanatic. As I write this I'm listening to an autumn playlist on 8 tracks while drinking chai tea and burning a pumpkin-scented candle (courtesy of my wonderful family's care package--thanks mom and dad!) So naturally during the month of November I've been trying to soak in as much crisp, apple-cinnamon, red and orange and yellow goodness as I can. I've been back to visit my favorite outdoor places, and if I thought they were beautiful when I first arrived at the end of the summer, then they're absolutely magnificent in the fall. I know spring/summer is supposed to be the peak tourist season in Paris, but I personally recommend the autumn months. I guess I'm a little biased, though.

With regards to the Lyon trip, it was a great weekend! I think a pretty apt analogy would be to say that if Paris is New York, then Lyon is the equivalent of Boston. It has a slightly more laid-back feel but is definitely a city in its own right. A city with excellent cuisine, I might add! Two of the standouts for me were a cheesy polenta side dish and a soup I had with lentils, chickpeas, pepper, and lamb. The absolute best though was a Lyon-ese (I think I just made that word up) specialty called quenelles. They're essentially cheese dumplings that you can have either grilled or fried. I chose grilled, and they almost ended up like a toasted ravioli with cheese instead of meat inside. ALMOST but not quite. Or maybe that's just my wishful thinking because I really miss toasted ravioli...

Lyon used to be a textile capital, and now there are only 5 master weavers in France who know how to operate one of these bad boys.

At Les Halles market in Lyon 

Quenelles!

Not bad, Lyon. Not bad at all.

Between Lyon and Paris we stopped at a teeny tiny village called Pérouges. It has about 150 inhabitants and looks like a post card. Also--some of the best fall foliage I've seen! :)

A cow? I don't think we're in Paris anymore...

The town "center"
 

A lovely countryside panorama taken by my friend from his wall-top perch.

Back in Paris, we've been exploring the Bastille and Saint-Martin neighborhoods a bit more, as they are both adjacent to our little Oberkampf district. The Place de la Bastille is surrounded by lots of great little restaurants and bars, and on Sunday mornings they have a giant outdoor market. Saint-Martin (the area around the canal by the same name) is a very young area with a kind of hipster vibe. Lots of cozy cafes!

Back on Oberkampf, we've steadily become friends with a waiter and bartender at a place right next door to us. It's kind of a hole-in-the-wall, but they play awesome music and its reasonably priced, and it's usually fairly crowded but we can typically find a place to sit which can be rare on Friday and Saturday nights. One of my favorite things in the place is a sign that says: "The bartender is always right. If they aren't see rule number one." A far cry from the customer always being right in the states, eh? But I'd say that pretty much sums up the French dining experience. There's also this gem.

Yoda is saying "Drink you have; but hurry I should, because 8:45 it is." Happy hour ends at 9...such wisdom.

Other than that, it's been pretty standard routine. I've been to a few more cool museums. The Jeu de Paume has an amazing photography exhibit by Garry Winogrand right now. It's sort of like a primitive humans of new york project with just pictures and no accompanying stories, but he essetinally traveled from coast to coast from the 50's to the late 70's taking candid photos of people. I also got to go on a tour of the French National Assembly with one of my classes, and I visited the National Museum of Immigration. Very cool! And in an attempt to be budget and eco-friendly (full disclosure: mostly the former), I switched out my metro pass for a Velib one, which is the French equivalent of the city bike system, and I've been trying to bike most days when it isn't raining! European drivers are crazy though, so please keep my in your prayers as I navigate the bike lanes of Paris. Hugs to everyone back home...the countdown stands at less than 5 weeks! :)

Halloween French Style and Meet the Kiddos

Last weekend was Halloween (duh), and I was intrigued to see how the French celebrated. I already knew it wasn't nearly as big of a deal as it was in the U.S., but I still didn't know exactly what to expect.There were several bars and clubs advertising Halloween-themed events, some even went so far as to call is "American Halloween," and we decided to check out a couple that were close by and also free entry because why not?

I decided to keep my costume simple, and boy am I glad I did. I wore red pants, a striped shirt, my glasses, a beanie, and voila...where's Waldo? (Fact: My costume was inspired by the episode of Modern Family I watched the night before where Lily is Waldo.) We ventured around to several options that were awkwardly empty before ending up at a place on our street. At first glance you honestly wouldn't have had any idea it was Halloween. No tombstones, no spiderwebs, no Monster Mash, no candy, no witches, NOT EVEN A JACK-O-LANTERN. Once we got inside though, we had several costumed comrades. The reason I was relieved to have chosen my simple costume was that people seemed to have general half-tried like me, or gone all out. And the ones who committed hadn't gone for the cutesy costumes, either. I'm talking wigs and fake blood out the wahzoo.

When I got home that night, I naturally checked under my bed, in my closet, and kicked in my shower curtain to ensure that Michael Myers wasn't hiding in my apartment. Before going out, we had watched Halloween in my friend's room. I voted for Hocus Pocus, but I was sadly outnumbered. Needless to say I don't handle scary movies well.

Now onto this week... I'm officially a working girl! I'm after-school babysitting for a French-American family; the mom is from Paris and the Dad is from Washington D.C. They have 3 little boys: Ulysses is 6, Nelson is 4, and Salvador is 3. They're all blond-haired, blue-eyed, adorable little Frenchies. They're all learning English, but they (especially the younger 2) still feel more comfortable speaking to me in French. I've been pleasantly surprised by how much I'm able to communicate with them in French, but thank goodness Ulysses is there to act as a translator when necessary. One of the things I did understand was when Salvador said, "Est-ce que on peut aller chez toi aux États-Unis?"
He asked if we could go to my house in America :)

Here's Nelson! He usually holds domain over the stroller.

Salvador got a little cold, so he borrowed Ulysses' coat...

One day, the younger two were still on fall break so they were visiting their grandparents in the north of France, so it was just me and Ulysses. We went to the Parc des Buttes Chaumonts, which happens to be (in my opinion) one of the most beautiful parks in Paris, and incidentally one of my favorite places to run since it's almost exactly a mile and a half from my apartment. They do pony rides, and Ulysses decided that's how he wanted to spend our "activity money" his mom had given us.

He named his horse Duncan. He loved Duncan.

While I'm vaguely on the subject of horses, this chien de Paris was more like a cheval de Paris!

 Also going on this week was "Les Automnales de Saint Germain," a sidewalk craft/food fair a block away from the NYU building. They had everything from soap to nougat to jewelry to paella. And also "authentic American donuts," but I took a pass on those. I love all the random markets that seem to just spring up around Paris! Although I could do without the crowds that block the sidewalks, but oh well. C'est la vie.

On Thursday, I went out to dinner with Annie and her parents who were visiting. Our friends Melanie, Jaci, and Leah also went. They had used Airbnb, and we tried a restaurant that was highly recommended by the woman whose apartment they were staying in. I had beef bourgignon, which was delicious, and "tarte au tartiner du pomme" for dessert, which was basically a warm apple crumble.

Mmmmm.

Annie's parents were awesome! They were so happy to meet us and see who she's been bummin' around with in Paris, and they offered up a place to stay in San Francisco whenever we'd like, which I really hope was for real...

Yesterday, I had a Skype call with student government representatives from the groups of freshmen starting at the NYU London and NYU Florence campuses, the other two options for doing your first year abroad. We're planning to set up a weekend exchange among all three campuses so students can visit and have a place to stay and someone who knows the city to show them around, so it's looking like more weekend trips may be on the horizon! :) Speaking of trips, I leave tomorrow for Lyon, France's "second city" known for its gastronomy, so expect more food pictures to come :)

And one last picture to close on...

Look what I found at my favorite thrift shop! Almost bought it.

First to Vienna, then back to Paris

We left for Vienna right after classes ended on Thursday. When I say we, I mean me, Melanie, Annie, Jaci, and Bojana. Thankfully, having learned from my close call on the morning we left for the south of France, I made sure I was packed and ready to go the night before, so essentially all I had to do was put on my shoes and grab my bag as I walked out the door. 
I found myself reliving my metro-with-luggage experience once again, though this time was much easier because a) I actually knew where I was going b) I wasn’t alone and c) I had a backpack and a purse instead of two rolling suitcases. We had been nervous about making it to the airport on time but ended up having almost 2 hours to spare when we arrived. We patted ourselves on the back and felt like quite the accomplished jet-setters. 

We had a quick layover and connecting flight in Frankfurt and got into Vienna right around midnight. We opted to take a cab to the hotel rather than try and navigate a new metro system in a foreign language late at night; it was an excellent choice because driving through Vienna at night was absolutely stunning, even though I probably would have chosen a different soundtrack than Adele’s “Someone Like You,” which was the driver’s selection. In a way the architecture reminds me of Paris, but even more uniform and much better maintained. It looked as if someone cleans and restores the buildings every week—maybe they do I don’t know—but that’s how pristine it was! Immediately we all commented on the lack of garbage in the streets and the absence of the omnipresent smell of urine in the metro station and the odd realization that we were breathing air composed of more oxygen than cigarette smoke for the first time in two months. By Sunday we actually kind of missed the messy humanity of Paris, but I’ll get to that later.

When we got to our hotel, we were all giddy because it felt like we had walked into something out of a Wes Anderson movie…namely, the Grand Budapest Hotel. Maybe it was the exhaustion from traveling or the excitement of a new city or just our general weirdness, but we all talked in these horrendous German accents (except for Mel’s which was spot on) for the rest of the night.

We woke up early the next day because we wanted to make the most of our short weekend trip. After a quick breakfast we started walking in what we believed to be the general direction of Saint Stephens Cathedral because we knew that was top on our list of places to see that day. We did eventually make it there, but it ended up being our last stop of the day after several pleasantly unplanned detours. 

Among those detours were several other beautiful, baroque/romanesque churches and the Albertina Museum of Fine Art, into which we received free admission because we’re students under the age of 26. Europe knows how to do things the right way :) We were able to see works by Picasso, Degas, Monet, Modigliani, and Evard Munch. Another bonus? We were allowed to take pictures!

Walking along the Danube

Lots of cool graffiti 

And some street art

Hello to you, too.

Church #1

They must get lots of international visitors...

Church #2

Andy Warhol's Mao Zedong

And Jackie O

And Mick Jagger

Picasso

Matisse

Degas

Monet

We decided to stop and refuel at the Café Mozart right across the street, one of Vienna’s best known cafés. I had the “Traditional Viennese Soup,” a delicious combo of dumplings, beef, potatoes, carrots, and some other veggies in a broth base. Between that and the endless supply of hearty bread, I agreed with the other girls that I didn’t think I could tackle one of Café Mozarts monstrous desserts, as beautiful as they were, so we decided to all share a piece of warm apple strudel. Yum!

Lunch!

How can you choose??

Replenished and slightly bloated, we were all ready to do some more walking. This leg of our journey led us to stumble upon some of Vienna’s ornate government buildings. We saw the Parliament building, Palace of Justice, and the Rathaus (city hall) and its surrounding gardens as well as the Opera House and Rathausplatz, a charming square where we found various booths selling all sorts of treats, crafts, and knicknacks. Our trek from Café Mozart had gotten our metabolisms going again, so naturally we had to stop for a snack of pretzels and warm apple cider…when in Vienna, right?

Opera House

And inside

Rathausplatz

You can't pass up 3 for 6 euros!

 We finally made it to Stephansplatz, a labyrinth of side-streets surrounding the square where the actual church is found. It took a lot of willpower not to stop in every boutique we walked past, but our destination was in sight so we put on our blinders and tried not to notice the plethora of flannel scarves and made-for-fall boots we were passing up. And good thing we did, because the inside of the church was amazing! Pictures don’t even do it justice, but I tried.

Friday night, we went back to a cute side street near the Danube River we had walked down during our earlier wanderings and found a cozy restaurant with no fewer than 6 items on the menu containing pumpkin in some way, shape or form. I’m a pumpkin fanatic, so I may or may not have gotten pumpkin soup to start and then risotto with chicken and pumpkin as a main course. I regret nothing.

After dinner we walked around for awhile. It was eerily empty compared to Paris, and undoubtedly much more quiet, but we still commented on how safe the streets felt. We made our way back to our hotel, watched part of the Sound of Music on Jaci’s laptop (I wish I was kidding about that part but I’m not), decided which characters we would all be and sang a few off-key numbers before going to sleep.

Saturday we greeted the day early once again, though this time setting off in the opposite direction to find the Hundertwasserhaus, a modern art museum built right in line with its surrounding buildings but in a style all its own. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of those landmarks that people protest at first because of its strangeness but gradually come to love…just like le Tour Eiffel :) 

Afterwards, we enjoyed a traditional Austrian lunch…I ordered champignonschnitzel mostly because I liked the sound of it, and it was a very lucky shot in the dark! It ended up being chicken schnitzel (breaded and pounded very thin) with mushrooms and cheese dumplings in a white cream sauce. We then took a stroll through the nearby Stadtpark. Even I, with my non-existent German skills, could figure out that translation. It was a beautiful place to rest for a bit and of course snap some photos! We gave ourselves permission to go all-out tourist in Vienna since we usually try to keep that in check in Paris like the seasoned Frenchwomen we are. Ha.

Mel, Jaci, and me

Stadtpark

Me and Jaci

Our next stop was Schönbrunn Palace, which gives Versailles a run for its money if you ask me. This was our first time using Viennese public transport since we had arrived, and while we were waiting in like to buy tickets from the kiosk, a helpful young woman confided in us that nobody actually pays. The Austrian system of regulation is notoriously lax, and we could essentially hop on and off as we pleased. It turns out she was right, and it was quite a revelation to us: no pesky tickets or malfunctioning Navigo passes; no bars to hop over (figuratively for us, literally for those who jump over the ticket gates in Paris), and no uniformed officers waiting at the exit to check that you’re being honest! Crazy.

That night, Melanie, Jaci, and Bojana were heading to a performance at the opera they had bought tickets for earlier that day. Annie and I had opted out and instead were going to meet up with her cousin who just happened to be studying abroad in Vienna this semester with Wake Forest University. He and some of his friends took us to an outdoor skating rink (also free), and that was actually magical. It was sort of like Steinberg’s on steroids. There was a stage with live music in the middle of the rink, a small café/bar just on the side of it, and a magnificent Viennese building lit up against the black sky as a backdrop. I felt like I belonged on the cover of the book Angel on the Square (because of the picture, not the title, and ignore the fact that it takes place in Russia). Also, neither Annie nor I fell down so yay for small victories! We were still pretty full from our big lunch that we had eaten relatively late, so instead of dinner we opted to skip straight to dessert. I don’t even have the words to describe the hazelnut torte I ate, but I can assure you I will take the memory to my grave.

We tried to turn in early because we had a wake-up call coming at 4 am, and mind you with daylight savings it was going to feel like 3 am. Ouch. We were both reluctant to leave and also excited to get back to Paris. Vienna showed us an amazing weekend, but the city definitely has a different vibe and I think I prefer the bustle and vivacity of Paris. 

After our layover in Dusseldorf, we were on our final plane back to CDG. I was seated next to a man from China named Joseph. He was visiting France for the first time by himself with no French language capabilities. His predicament was all too familiar for me, so when he asked for my help in navigating the airport and heading in the direction of his hotel, I could hardly refuse. During the flight I gave him a quick crash course, a French 101 if you will, so he could at the very least ask people if they can parler Anglais. French people generally don’t appreciate if you just start right off in English, and I can’t say I blame them. We (myself included) tend to assume that EVERYONE speaks English, but imagine how we would react if someone just walked up to us in the States speaking German and expected us to understand? It makes their sass seem a bit more justified. 

Once we got to CDG, I did for him exactly what that lovely couple did for me on my first day in Paris. I helped him claim his luggage, take the airport shuttle to terminal 3, buy his ticket from one of those impossible machines, and then wrote out the directions he would need from the station where I would leave him. In return, he gave me his business card, so if anyone is heading to China, I might have a tour guide for you! 

Meanwhile, as I herded Joseph through CDG, another young man, Sam, asked if he could join our caravan to Paris. I looked at the other girls with an apologetic smile. They tell me not infrequently that I’m too nice to strangers, and this was not helping my case. Now in my opinion its the more the merrier so of course I welcomed him aboard. In a funny coincidence, Sam was a student studying abroad in Vienna and visiting his boyfriend in Paris, the flip-side of our circumstances. Even funnier, he’s originally from Manhattan and has a number of friends that go to NYU! I can’t stand the song, but its true: it’s a small world after all!

When I finally opened the door to ma petite appartement, I was surprised how much it felt like I was coming home. Don’t get upset, ma famille, nothing will ever be home like good ol’ Missouri, but it was nice realizing how comfortable I am here. Even though there are still some days where I feel like an outsider, they are few and far between, and nothing like it felt in Vienna where I didn’t speak the language or have any knowledge of the layout of the city. Not like here where my metro route home was almost second nature, and when I bumped someone with my bag on the street, “pardon, désolé” came out automatically. 

Now that I’m back in Paris, I have a couple more updates for you all—spoiler alert, I’m officially a working girl— but I’ll save those for my next post because I don’t anyone falling asleep at their computer screen after this novella. À bientôt!