Ohhhhh my gosh this week has been crazy ridiculous. I left Dresden last Thursday and met my mom in Paris that night (after crazy amounts of delays and missed connections and cancellations for both of us). Yay!
On Friday we did, um, everything. We got up at like 10 and went downstairs for breakfast, which was super delicious and super cute. Our hotel was built in like the 1700s or something so the basement/breakfast room had brick arches and a fireplace and no windows. The food included cheeses, fresh squeezed orange juice, lunchmeat, fruit, and the BEST baguettes and croissants I have ever had. and also delicious, delicious hot chocolate. After that we walked to Notre Dame, since it was like literally a couple blocks away, and looked at the outside for a while, and then looked at the inside, which was really pretty. They had a mass going on while we were there so we got to hear lots of religious French being spoken and also some things being sung.
After Notre Dame we took a water bus/taxi down the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. It was sunny mostly (except in the morning when it rained) but really, REALLY windy all day, like 20-30 mph Chicago style, so we didn't go up because it would have been windier and worse. So, we took the water taxi again and went to the Musee D'Orsay and looked at lots and lots of art. The impressionist wing was under construction so they had moved all the paintings to temporary halls and not everything was on display, but overall we got to see a lot... it was just a little disorganized. I decided that I really like impressionism and post-impressionism, especially compared to realism. We had lunch in a cafe there when we got there since it was like 3 pm, looked at art for a while, and then had coffee in a different cafe around 5.
Since we hadn't seen enough art yet we walked to the Louvre (this was around 6 pm - they are open late on fridays)! It was really empty (comparatively speaing) and we didn't have to wait or push through crowds or anything to see the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. Then we walked through part of one floor of the egyptian collection, which was really cool, and then it had gotten kind of late so we decided we wanted to go home and get dinner. Going home proved to be a bit challenging since we couldn't find our way out of the museum - we tried to go based on the map instead of the signs pointing towards the exit, because the signs pointed towards the direction we had just come from and we didn't want to backtrack, but that was a poor choice. Eventually we found our way out. The outside of the Louvre is gorgeous at night, especially because if you look the other way you can see the Eiffel Tower!
For dinner, which we started around 9:30, we went to this restaurant about a block away from our hotel that my mom had gone to with her mom when they were here like 25 years ago. It was expensive, but there was SO MUCH FOOD it was definitely worth it. The first course was a basket of crudites, and I tried new foods like endive and cabbage (ok yes i have eaten cabbage before but not by itself and not that voluntarily), and they had delicious homemade dressing and bread. The next part was a buffet-style area that had all sorts of different kinds of dried sausages and things like corn, pasta salad, olives, other food I didn't recognize, pate, and I think duck confiture? It was all really delicious. I had never had pate or confiture before and now I think I am spoiled and will never be able to go home. That and the fact that a bottle of Evian is like 50 cents here. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that during this part of the meal I said something like "mm, this wine goes really well with the pate", because it did... never thought I'd hear those words come out of my mouth. After that we had a choice of steak, leg of lamb, some kind of lamb cutlet, or salmon. I got steak and my mom got lamb, which also came with a potato and more salad. After that the waiter brought us an assortment of fine French cheeses, followed by a basket of all kinds of fruit like pears and clementines and kiwis. Everything was really really fresh and ripe and delicious! Finally there was dessert, which was a choice of chocolate mousse, creme carmel, or creme anglais. Man, what a meal.
On Saturday, it was bright and sunny when we woke up so we decided to go to Versailles! It was ridiculous. Like, where did all this gold and money and art even come from? Like the museums on Friday, it was relatively uncrowded, so we could walk through at our own pace and actually see the rooms because they weren't jammed with people. After walking through the palace (ps, the hall of mirrors is completely worth all the hype), we went out back to the gardens. It was a little disappointing because since it's the middle of winter, nothing is really growing except for the evergreen bushes. But now I have an excuse to go back there! By this point in the day it had clouded up and gotten cold and windy so we decided to head back home. The Eiffel Tower was right on the way back to our hotel, so we stopped there and actually went up in it this time. It had gotten really windy so we just went up to the second floor instead of the top, which was perfectly fine. We were there at dusk so I got to see a bird's eye view of Paris in the daytime and at night! While we were up there we saw a guy who had just proposed to his girlfriend (like she was saying yes as we walked past) and it was super cute.
For dinner that night we went to a gourmet restaurant on our street. The food was good but I felt like it was a test of manners and wine knowledge more than a meal.
On Sunday, our train didn't leave for Germany until 3 pm, so in the morning and early afternoon we walked around Ile Saint-Louis (where our hotel was) and went into the cute little shops that lined the streets. We got onion soup and crepes for lunch, since we hadn't eaten any in Paris yet, and tasty gelato for dessert.
The trip back to Germany was interesting. All the flights out of Paris had been canceled due to REALLY windy crazy bad weather, so the train was jammed (luckily, we had seat reservations). We had to stop a few times to let bad weather pass, and later we found out that during Saturday and Sunday they had had the worst storm in 10 years - around 50 people died, and 900,000 people in France were left without power. The only way it really effected us was that it made our train an hour late, but it could have been a lot worse.
So. Now I'm in Tübingen! It's kind of weird but mostly nice to know that I'm FINALLY done moving around, until August when I come back home. The town is really cute and is exactly what you think a German town near the Black Forest would be like - lots of cobblestoney streets, little shops and cafes, and hills. My goodness are there hills. My dorm is on top of a hill on the northern edge of town and when I look out my window I can see pretty far. I am really excited that I'm going to be here during the summer because that means things like biergartens and outdoor cafes will be open, and near the university buildings there is a big huge park that I can definitely see myself hanging out in a lot.
I haven't met many students or even my floormates yet because right now the university is on break (classes run from October-February, break for March, and then start up again on April 12th and end in late July). The few people who are around that I've met have been nice, but it's hard to get to know anyone yet because we all have single rooms and I am almost never home. My German class (this time it's through the university so on top of teaching you German they also teach you about the town, young student culture, classes, etc.) goes from 9 am to 3:30 every day. There's a 1 1/2 hour break for lunch from 12:30-2 but I live so far away from where class is that I just eat lunch in the cafeteria here and then hang out til class starts again. After class I come to the library to use the internet because you can't get it in your room without a number and password, which you only get after you matriculate, and we all just turned in our papers yesterday, and it takes about a week. So, anyway, I use the internet here, then go grocery shopping, and so far this week I have met up with other students from my class after dinner for drinks or a movie or general hanging out. Last night we saw The Men Who Stare At Goats (or, auf Deutsch, Männer, die auf Ziegen Starren). It was good and I liked it but it was so weird that I couldn't follow all of the German, so I'm not 100% sure about some things that happened.
The kids in my program are mostly pretty cool. There are sort of 2 main groups of people that I hang out with - the rowdy Americans who just got here and so they want to go out and party all the time and I sometimes go with them when they invite me because they are entertaining; and the people that are more like me (i.e. laid-back and understanding of other cultures) that I would actually call up and do something with voluntarily. In that group there are a couple Americans, two girls from Denmark, a girl from Belgium, a couple guys from Brazil, and a girl from the Faroe Islands. They're a lot of fun and we all speak German pretty well so it's good practice to hang out with them.
Today I am going to IKEA to buy dishes and things to make my room look less depressing (right now it has empty white walls and a cold tile floor), so I gotta go do that and get some lunch before I go. Hopefully the snow won't have messed up the trains too much. They seem to be a lot better at clearing off streets and sidewalks here so it should be fine.
Bis bald!
