Vacances de Toussaint: Prague

Almost 3 months ago now (just a bit behind on the blog!) I had a two week vacation- my first of 3 that are built into the school year (actually there are 4 but my contract will be up by the time the fourth one rolls around). It's a pretty sweet deal.

At the time of the vacation, I had been in France for a little over a month and we had only worked 3 weeks :) The reason for the break was All Saint's Day (Toussaint) on Nov 1 - the holiday Europeans celebrate instead of Halloween. Although I was bummed about not being able to celebrate Halloween, I was more than happy to trade it for the 2 week vacay.

My parents decided to come over to Europe during my break and we planned to travel to Prague, Dubrovnik and Rome. I was really excited because each city and country were new for me.

The Friday before break started I took the train up to Paris and spent the night in a hotel near Charles de Gaulle. I was originally supposed to get into Paris around 11 at night, but my "gardien" (he's kind of like the super of our residence), M. Martin, pushed me into moving up my train because he kept telling me I would "finir par morceaux," meaning end in pieces, aka get cut up if I dared crossing Paris by myself at 11 at night. He also told me, mind you after I had already booked my room, that the hotel I was spending the night at is infamous for bed bugs. Thanks M. Martin. I didn't end up getting bed bugs so hah.

Despite originally going to the wrong terminal at CDG, I made it 10 minutes before check-in ended and the guy kindly ignored the fact that my suitcase was overweight and let me go without paying. Although I had booked on some sketchy airline I'd never heard of before (Smart Wings - reminds me more of Role Models than an airline) it took off on time and I landed in Prague without a problem.

It was snowing the day I arrived and even though it made it quite cold, it made the city look magical. Prague is awesome. My mom kept exclaiming throughout the trip, "This is the most beautiful city I have ever seen." And I agree, even though my dad's response was always, "Don't let the French hear you say that!" And yes, Paris is beautiful as well, but Prague is just more enchanting. One of the coolest things about it is its range of architecture styles. The Old Town boasts gothic architecture, while other parts of the city exhibit anything from Baroque churches to cubist apartment buildings and the Art Nouveau style of the Municipal House to the deconstructivist (aka New Baroque). Did I just convince you there that I majored in Art History? I did take a year of it, but most of that came from Wikipedia. I can pretend right?

Trdelníks being grilled over a fire. They are then rolled in a sugar and walnut mix

Prague had great food, although most of the city seemed to be culturally diverse in terms of food as I saw various cuisines from French to Irish to good ole American with T.G.I Friday's. Since the cold had come, on the streets you could buy hot wine, pretzels and these awesome sugar pastries called trdelniks. I had many great Czech beers, including the famous Pilsner Urquell (which is also sold in the U.S.).

Original Budweiser we had at dinner one night
Has nothing to do with the American brand

Other sights and attractions: 

Powder Tower

View of Prague Castle from one end of the Charles Bridge

Charles Bridge crowded with tourists

St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle

Golden Lane in Prague Castle
Historic houses from the 15th century that have been preserved to show artisan life of the time in which they were inhabited. Franz Kafka lived here for a period of time.

Astronomical Clock [Prague Orloj]
Councillors at the time blinded the clocksmith who designed it so he could not replicate the masterpiece anywhere else. Every hour on the hour a crowd forms in front of the tower to watch the clockwork procession of the Apostles and other figures, such as Death and Vanity. At the end this weird chicken comes out and clucks.

Old Town Square at night

Another shot of Old Town Square at night

Old Town Square again

Spanish Synagogue, don't mind my thumb.
Contrary to the impression the name gives, the synagogue was not a place of worship to Spanish Jews living in Prague (which of course is not what I thought...), rather a synagogue so named for the moorish architectual influences. 

Old Jewish Cemetery
If you can't tell by the picture, we did not actually go in

Creepy baby statues on the other side of the bridge on Kampa Island

Lennon Wall

Although Lennon himself never visited Prague, he was a symbol of freedom to the youth in Prague still living under the communist regime. When Lennon was assassinated in 1980, his picture was painted on this wall, which already served as an outlet to defy authorities through graffiti. Police tried several times to whitewash the wall, but within a day the wall would again be covered in paintings of Lennon and poems praising freedom.

Frank Gehry's Dancing House
Controversial at the time of its construction in the 90s since it stands out among typical Prague architecture. Gehry originally gave it the nickname Fred and Ginger (of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) since the building resembles dancing partners, but then later rejected it himself as he didn't want to push American Hollywood on the city.

Wenceslas Square with the National Museum behind. A long street leads down from the museum towards the center of town and is lined with various shops and hotels that kind of reminds me of the Champs-Elysées.

It was kind of a bummer though since we couldn't go into the National Museum, National Theatre or the opera house since they were all closed for construction of sorts. 

We also went and saw a chamber orchestra concert at the Municipal House. Prague seems to be famous for these types of performances, as they were posters all around for concerts almost every night.

My parents looking like such tourists (couldn't leave this out!)

After Prague we headed to Dubrovnik and Rome, which I will be writing on soon. Stay posted!

Life as an assistant

I've been here in Dax for just about two months now - doesn't seem like it's been that long! Two months and I've only written one blog post, yikes.

My life for the past two months has mostly consisted of eating more Friotellas (that I talked about in my last post), having a pretty lax schedule and trying to settle in. Oh and getting a two-week vacation after only teaching for three weeks. For most people in the U.S., that is the amount of vacation they get during an entire year. In France, you get a minimum of five weeks (paid) vacation, but usually it's six. I remember a teacher I had while studying abroad told us that by the time December rolls around, if you haven't taken your full five weeks of vacation for the year, some places will tell you just not to come in at all until the new year. Sounds awesome, although I don't know how entirely true it is throughout the entire country.

unfortunately not what my local
boulangerie actually looks like

And it's not just in vacations that the French really know the joie de vivre: most people work 35 hour work weeks (they think Americans are crazy for our 40+ ones, but let's be realistic it's more like 60, sometimes 80); France has its own version of the Spanish siesta, where shops close anywhere between 1130 am & 130 pm; French schoolchildren only go to school 4 days a week; everything is closed Sunday, maybe the boulangerie will open for an hour or two so we can get our beloved baguettes; and most places here in the south(west) are closed Monday too. At first the siesta thing and being closed Sunday/Monday was annoying since I'm used to the convenience of 24-hour grocery stores to get my cookie dough fill (by the way they DO sell it here!), but when you think about it, it's a pretty awesome lifestyle. And it makes me feel less like a bum if I do absolutely nothing all day Sunday knowing nothing is open anyway.

Anyway, going back to where I left off in my last post, when I was bored out of my mind being the first assistant to arrive in Dax, I took a little day trip to Biarritz- a resort-town renowned for surfing. Even though it was late September, there was still a huge number of surfers there (the waves are apparently at their peak in early fall), although the day I went the waves were pretty huge and almost no one was surfing. Biarritz is cool, but the main attraction is definitely the beach. There's not a whole lot of other touristy things to do, although I did see the Roche de la Vierge (Rock of the Virgin) and go to the Maison du Chocolat, which the guidebook falsely described as if you were stepping into a real-life Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

La Grande Plage in Biarritz

By the last week of September, we had all arrived. In total we are 8 assistants: 2 Americans girls (Emily & I), 2 English girls (Rosalyn & Natasha), 2 Canadian girls (Emma & Sherry), 1 Spanish girl (Elena) and 1 Honduran girl (Keidy). Five of us teach in primary schools and the other 3 are with middle and high schools. I teach at 2 primary schools with Keidy- one just 5 minutes walking from where we live and the other about 15 min by bike. Although our contracts said October 1, we actually didn't teach the first week. We mostly observed classes and had our orientation meeting to get all of our paper work sorted out. By this point I was finally feeling my nerves cooling and that I was getting the hang of life here - I finally had internet, I got my mobile phone set up as well as my bank account. Although, apparently I signed up with the snobby bank --BNP Paribas, which is a partner bank of Bank of America-- and it took forever to get my debit card. 

Like I said earlier, I have a pretty relaxed schedule: I only work 12 hours a week. French kids don't go to school on Wednesdays, so my 12 hours are spread out between Mon, Tues, Thurs & Fri. The school kids also get 2 hours for lunch and at least two breaks for recess, not to mention separate time for gym where they'll go across the street to the park, go to the pool for swimming or just play in the schoolyard. My nine year-old self would have been super jealous of these kids.

A typical day consists of me having one or two classes in the morning, coming back for a 2 or more hour break at lunch and then having two to four classes in the afternoon. My class load varies though, for example on Mondays I have four and on Tuesdays I only have two. I have no Thursday morning classes, but then have six classes on Fridays that I wish were a bit more spread out throughout the week. But still, I can't complain.

Friotellas nom

Besides classes, I have a nice little bundle of extracurriculars going on the side: Monday evenings I'll be co-leading a conversation class with Natasha for teachers interested in learning English; Tuesday nights I take a French class with a couple of the other assistants, usually followed by sushi; Wednesday we have off so during the day Emma and I take Spanish (which is interesting since it's taught for French people, so we're learning to speak Spanish through French), usually followed or preceded by going to French Coffee for a Friotella; Thursdays I go to a philosophy discussion group, which I initially started going to purely with the intention of improving my French language but I've actually quite started to enjoy the philosophy aspect of it; and Fridays I hate my life with six classes to struggle through.

We also end up going to LeClerc (the local supermarket) several times a week to pick up things here and there, but also to stop by the cafe to creep on/talk to a guy that works there that is, like, totally mignon (cute). 

Some Saturdays there are also rugby games, which are a lot of fun to go to. In Dax, Rugby takes more precedence than football (aka soccer for you non-cultured folk), so people get really excited about going to the games. There's one this Saturday but we planned on having our Thanksgiving dinner that day since we all work Thursday, so we're going to have to figure out what to do about that - drama!

Cheers!

Petit Intro to Dax (D'Aqcs)

The train ride down from Paris to Dax went by much faster than anticipated.

I chatted with the man next to me almost the whole way down to Bordeaux, which is where he was getting off for a business trip. We talked about various things, but of course the topic of politics came up and he asked who I was voting for (which reminds me I need to get my absentee ballot). He was nice, but it got a bit weird when he gave me his email address and phone number since he was at least twice my age (and married). I think he may have just been excited to meet an American, since he was excitedly talking about having a native to show him around DC if he goes there on business. I am not sorry to say I misplaced his info.

After he got off at Bordeaux, a guy my age sitting near me who I had chatted with in the lunch car (and by the way, food on SNCF trains are absolute rubbish), sat down across from me and we talked the rest of the way to Dax. Politics came up again. I felt like an ignorant American in speaking with both the Bordeaux businessman and my new seatmate since it was pretty obvious they knew much more about American politics than I did about French politics. I couldn’t even remember at first the name of their new president (it’s Hollande) but I really have no idea what his political platform is. But, I hope to change that (& just knowing more about French culture in general) during my time here. They both boosted my confidence though since they told me I speak pretty good French.

Dax and the river Adour

Stepping off the train in Dax from Paris was like entering another world. I left behind the cold, grey unwelcoming and impersonal city of Paris to a sunny, small, quintessential friendly southern French town. Not that I don't love Paris to visit, but I would never want to live there. People are just flat out more friendly in the south. Even the kid I spoke with on the train (who is from Paris) agreed that Parisians are not a very welcoming group of people. In Paris if you don't speak perfectly fluent French or "Parisian" French or you have an accent, people become exasperated with you and make fun of your French. I've experienced this even with people in the tourism industry who you would think would be sucking up to you.

In Dax, I noticed a considerable difference in people's attitudes towards those who were clearly tourists even in the first half hour I was there- from people on the train platform to the cab driver to the woman who welcomed me at my hotel. Although tourists in this part of France are typically quite different from tourists in Paris. A cool thing about Paris is it's diversity and the number of tourists from all over the world who come to visit the City of Lights (and Love?). In Dax, if you are a tourist you are more likely to be French. An upside to this is that people don't automatically speak to you in English. The first few days I was here I was quite nervous about how bad my French was going to be after not having spoken it all summer, but I just had to keep reminding myself that my French is most likely a lot better than their English.

I spent the first  two nights in Dax at a hotel right next to the river, the Adour. The Adour actually splits Dax in two. Just north of Dax is a town called St. Paul les Dax, and they are both quite small. Together, I think the population makes about 30,000.

Before getting here, I had debated about potentially living in nearby Bayonne (about a 45 minute commute) since I wasn’t sure if I was going to like how small Dax was. A couple different French people told me that Bayonne isn’t much bigger though – maybe 40,000 -- so only 10,000 more people and there isn’t much more to do there. After being here for almost a month now I am liking Dax quite a bit.

Dax, or D'Aqcs (how it is spelled in the regional dialect of Gascon) is in the region of Aquitaine. There are 27 regions in France, each of which are broken up into smaller départements. Aquitaine consists of 5 départements: Gironde (where Bordeaux is located), Dordogne (where the prehistoric Caves Lascaux were found), Lot et Garonne (lots o farms there I think), Pryénnées Atlantiques (where Biarritz is located) and Landes (where Dax is!) The image is a bit pixelated, but you can kind of see where it indicates Bordeaux in the north, Dax in the south west ish and Bayonne/Hendaye below Dax:

Dax is cute and small. It’s also a premier spa town in Europe. There are thermal baths on just about every street. I have yet to go to one (surprising for me). Although, most of them seem like they are tailored towards people with medical problems such as fibromyalgia (I’ve seen that in a lot of the descriptions). There is a culture of “curistes,” people who will travel to Dax to go to the baths everyday for three or four weeks to help with their medical issues. There are also med students here who study only thermal treatments.

One of the more famous spas, Les Bains St. Pierre
(I actually don't think you're allowed here unless you do have a medical issue)

This was not my hotel, I just like the pic

Anyway, I spent my first two days here in a hotel by the river and then moved into the residence on Friday. I was the first assistant to arrive by a good five days, so I spent a lot of time by myself when I first got here. It got lonely at times but I kept myself occupied by walking around and trying to get to know the town or skyping with my parents. Settling in seemed to take a bit since getting internet/bank/phone stuff set up was a bit complicated. I couldn't get internet in my room until I had a French phone number to send the access code to, but I couldn't get a French phone number until I had my bank card from the bank (I later found out this wasn't true) but I had to wait for my bank account to get approved first. By the way it's been 3 (almost 4) weeks since I first opened my bank account and I have yet to be approved by snooty BNP (it's the "rich people" bank according to some people but I chose it because they're a partner bank with Bank of America. That was a mistake), but I have internet and my phone.

The gardien at the residence, Monsieur Martin found me a bike the next week which made life so much easier. From the residence it takes about 30 minutes to walk into centreville, which is fine for a nice stroll from time-to-time but when you're going in multiple times a week it's much easier to go on bike, which only takes about 10 minutes.

La Fontaine Chaude built in the 1800s under Louis XVIII
A symbole of thermalisme in Dax

The main part of centreville consists of typical narrow French streets that twist and bend their way down to the Fontaine Chaude (above). There are a lot of cool shops and restaurants tucked and hidden away that I've started to discover since being here. At first glance, the whole center area seemed very touristy, but I found that the touristy restaurants are really only the ones facing the river.

One of my favorite places here is one that I actually stumbled upon my first day: a coffeeshop called French Coffee Shop. Feeling a bit overwhemled my first day from walking around and not knowing where I was, I decided to stop in the coffee shop to get a bite to eat and just study the map. I went in and started chatting with the shop owners and turns out they knew the assistants from last year! They at first had assumed me a tourist, as do most people in this town. The shop itself is warmly decorated in natural, earthy tones with tons of comfortable furniture, free wifi and even a computer to use the internet on. Their drinks are on a whole other level. It's like Starbucks on crack. They have all the normal lattes, capuccinos, etc drinks that you would imagine but also have smoothies and these crazy milkshake combinations that are obviously my favorite.They make the specialty drinks both hot and cold, with Oreo, KinderBueno, choc chip cookies, etc... basically a chocolate fiend's haven (aka me). My favorite so far is the FrioTella, a cold chocolate milkshake made with Nutella. I can't think of anything more delicious.

One of their Oreo creations. Nom.


That's all for now! Ciao!

Ze City of Lights

It was a weird feeling landing in France. Iceland felt more like a vacation than a pre-moving journey, and I was kind of sad to not be landing back and home and see my parents and friends. It was hard to stay sad though since we were all pretty excited about being in France: the land of wine, crêpes and kebabs (yes, kebabs)!

Getting from the airport to our hostel was quite a journey. After collecting our bags, Olivia and I said adieu to Nick who was headed straight to Chambéry. We headed off towards the currency exchange. Guess what? They didn’t take Iceland Krona, but they did take the Thai Baht… (???!). The guy told me I could probably find somewhere in the center of Paris to exchange my krona (although I forgot, of course).

Ahh La Tour Eiffel

Afterwards, we boarded the shuttle to a different terminal to catch the RER train. For those who have not flown to Paris before, the airports are all located a bit outside the city and Charles De Gaulle is about 45 minutes outside Paris. When we got to the terminal to catch the RER, we realized all the machines only took coins or cards, so we waited about 20 minutes in line at the ticket counter to pay with cash :/  Once on the RER, we got off at Gare du Nord to catch the metro. After lugging our suitcases to and fro across the train station in search of a machine to buy metro tickets, we finally asked a worker who told us we didn’t need one since we came on the RER (cool). However, there were no elevators or escalators, so we had to drag our suitcases down about 3 flights of stairs.

Luckily, though and much to our surprise, various passerby helped us carry our suitcases up/down the stairs at the metro stations since they clearly felt bad for us. I don’t remember experiencing such hospitality in the past. At our destination station, a fellow traveler asked if we were by chance heading to the St. Christopher’s hostel, which we were! He was Australian (the second one we met that day- we met one in line at the RER station) and also participating in the TAPIF program in Marseille. We dragged our suitcases up the metro stairs one last time (with more help, thankfully) and headed off down the street to the hostel. We were getting some weird looks from some of the other hostel-goers due to the excessive amount of bags we had. We ended up seeing the other Australian from the RER there and he commented on this, so I felt compelled to explain we were moving for 8 months and we NEEDED ALL 10 PAIRS OF SHOES (just kidding, I didn't bring that many...maybe).

I had heard really great things about the St. Christopher’s chain – they have hostels in Amsterdam, London etc and are rated highly on hostelworld. This one at least definitely tried to get all the money out of you they could, which is annoying because people staying in hostels are usually broke college-aged kids. They wanted something like 20 euro to store your luggage for 24 hours which is absolutely ridiculous we just left our bags near our bed and put the important stuff in the lockers provided underneath the beds. There was also wifi, but it was super crappy, so they also tried to charge you to use the internet on their computers in the lobby. It was fine though for two nights and we were just happy to not be dragging our suitcases around the city.

Although the hostel was in an arrondissement (city district) further towards the edge of town, it was close to a couple different metro stops, which was convenient. Olivia and I were just starving since we hadn’t eaten since the croissants on the plane and found the closest café to get a late lunch/early dinner. We got a funny look from the waiter when we ordered our food since it was only about 530 pm and unlike in Iceland, the French (and the rest of Europe) eat later and don’t close their restaurants by 9 pm! I ordered the carbonara, which I did pretty much every single time it was on the menu when I studied abroad last time. This was just alright though. Certainly doesn’t beat the carbonara I had in Montpellier.

We suddenly realized how tired we were since we barely got any sleep the night before and went back to the hostel to take a nap. We had set our alarms for 930 p.m. so we could get to the Eiffel Tower before the elevators closed at 11 pm. Well, we didn’t end up getting out of bed til 1015 or so, but still headed off to the Eiffel Tower to see it even if we couldn’t go up. You don’t immediately see it once getting off the metro at the Trocadero, so I felt the suspense turning the corner waiting for it to come into sight. It’s so magical to see at night. I was super excited to see it again, so I couldn’t imagine how Olivia felt seeing it for the first time. Even though it was past 11, there were still a lot of people (and annoying people trying to sell you souvenirs and those stupid glowy balls that they fling into the air). We got a bit lost on the way back – I knew the Champs Elysées wasn’t far and we were hoping to see it lit up at night, but we forgot to cross the river and just ended up taking the metro at Place de la Concorde. When we went to switch trains, we found the connecting one had already shut down since it was past 1 am, so we just hopped in a cab for the remainder of the way back since there was no way in hell we were walking through Paris towards the suburbs at 1 am.

Every so often the Eiffel Tower will erupt in an explosion of dancing lights that cover the tower from top to bottom. It's really quite magical to see. The lights would only show up well if I took it out of focus. Still looks cool though, eh?

Tuesday we had plans to meet one of my friends from abroad Emily, who is also doing the TAPIF program in Paris. We met her in the 4^th arrondissement and were supposed to go to a falafel place for lunch that she said was really good. What we didn’t realize, though was that it was the Jewish holiday and the place was actually closed. That explained all of the nicely-dressed women and boys in yamachas that we saw the night before near our hostel. There was a falafel place across the street that we went to instead, although Emily said it meant they probably weren’t authentic since they were open on the Jewish holiday (even though the signed said in huge red letters, AUTHENTIC). We ate in a park nearby and then all three headed off to the train station to get our cartes 12-25.

One of the great things about France is their train system – you can take a train to pretty much any corner of the country. I wish we had such good infrastructure. Another good thing about France is if you’re under 25, you get discounts on a lot of things. La carte 12-25 is a discount card for trains that you can buy if you’re between the ages of 12 and 25 to get between 25 up to 75 percent off train tickets. So Olivia and I got our cartes 12-25 as well as our train tickets to head off to our respective areas the next day (me, Dax and her, Le Mans – about an hour from Paris).

After saying bye to Emily, Olivia and I headed off to see Notre Dame on the Île de France. We took the requisite tourist pics in front of the cathedral, although due to construction half of the square was blocked off by scaffolding, and then headed inside. One thing I hadn’t noticed before was that inside they have the crown of thorns (well, a replica) that Jesus wore. Then we waited about 30 minutes in the cold to get up to the towers – the real reason for visiting Notre Dame. When I went to buy my ticket, I was expecting to pay the 6 or whatever euro for the under 25 group, but the guy saw my OFII (basically, the immigration office) stamp from when I studied abroad last time and since that meant I was a “resident” of France I got in for free! There’s no expiration date on the OFII, so he had no way of knowing it was two years old and I had since been living back in the U.S.

Even though it was easily my third or fourth time up in the towers, the view is always spectacular. The grey buildings and slat roofs of Paris seem to extend for miles, interrupted by the Eiffel Tower to one side, a cluster of business buildings further out and of course Sacre Coeur towering off over Montmartre in the distance. We got to go up a level even further, which I don’t think I had been up before. We then headed back to the right bank towards Le Louvre and Les Jardins des Tuileries. It was past 5 so the Louvre was closed – not that we had time to try to tackle it anyway.

We didn’t feel bad about not trying to visit everything in this trip since Olivia is only an hour from Paris and will have plenty of opportunity to go back and I’ve already done the touristy stuff before. We continued past the Louvre into the Tuileries, although half of it was blocked off for more construction. It felt like I was back on campus in Blacksburg with the never-ending construction. We walked about halfway up the Champs Elysées and then decided we were cold and hungry and went to a café/restaurant for steak-frites (nom). Of course once the waiter realized we were American (which probably didn’t take long) he kept speaking to us in English, even though we were only speaking to him in French. That’s one thing that’s frustrating about big cities like Paris – they’ll just keep speaking to you in English. I had that happen to me in Montpellier. But I don’t think as many people speak English in Dax so I won’t have to worry about it there.

The next morning, we decided there was no way in hell we were dragging our suitcases through metro stations again. Olivia and I hailed a cab from our hostel and although he looked at us with some doubt and told us we were “chargée comme des mules” (loaded with bags like donkeys), all of our stuff fit into the taxi. Once at the gare (train station), Olivia and I said adieu at the end of my platform as I headed off to find my car and she had some time to kill before her train to Le Mans.