Merry Christmas, and Happy fourth night of Hanukkah! I'm thinking of friends and family tonight in Paris, and wishing you all the very best of holidays.
And today I have learned an important lesson, one I think is worth sharing: Never book a 4-hour layover in the Mannheim train station on Christmas Eve.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Hello from Berlin!
Arrived in Berlin yesterday and am having a fabulous time. So far, it seems to be a fantastic city! We left on Friday morning with no trouble at all and had a fun time wandering around Amsterdam for two days (it was cold), and yesterday we hopped on our train here. (Actually, "hopped" isn't the right word. It turns out that there are lots of train stations in Amsterdam, and the train station you arrived in is not necessarily the one you might be leaving from, and if you don't speak Dutch it might be a tad bit tricky to figure out what the abbreviations mean!) Lots of things to see and do in Berlin for two more days, and then I'll be heading back to Paris for Christmas.
More soon!
More soon!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Goodbyeee!
So Friday morning, I'm off on the great adventure within the great adventure! I don't know how much internet access I'm going to have, so I may update from the road if I get the chance. I'll be stopping by Amsterdam and Berlin, with a quick pit stop back in Paris for Christmas, and then off to Nice and Italy. Since I'm not normally a big traveller, I'm getting pretty excited, and a little bit nervous!
Things are really winding down with school. Tomorrow I'll turn in my last paper, leaving me with just exams -- and it looks like two of them will be take-home, because I'm leaving two weeks before the real end of the semester. I meant to take pictures of Paris 8 this morning, but I had a tricky time getting motivated. (Actually, it was just one of those days. I overslept by 40 minutes and couldn't really wake up all day long, despite numerous attempts to caffeinate myself into coherence.) I'll try and remember to do so tomorrow. It is, to be honest, fairly gross, as sets of university buildings go. The battalions of cleaning people can't keep up with the muck trekked in by 24,000 Parisian students every day. Add wet cigarette butts and strange, forbidding architecture, and that's pretty much it. Classes tend to overcome the relative shabbiness of the surroundings, in any case.
Last night my host family and I went to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to see a concert of Bach and Mendelssohn piano concertos. It was fantastic. And novel, because the conductor was also the pianist! When he was busy playing, he conducted via expressive head motions.
Anyway, more coming soon!
Things are really winding down with school. Tomorrow I'll turn in my last paper, leaving me with just exams -- and it looks like two of them will be take-home, because I'm leaving two weeks before the real end of the semester. I meant to take pictures of Paris 8 this morning, but I had a tricky time getting motivated. (Actually, it was just one of those days. I overslept by 40 minutes and couldn't really wake up all day long, despite numerous attempts to caffeinate myself into coherence.) I'll try and remember to do so tomorrow. It is, to be honest, fairly gross, as sets of university buildings go. The battalions of cleaning people can't keep up with the muck trekked in by 24,000 Parisian students every day. Add wet cigarette butts and strange, forbidding architecture, and that's pretty much it. Classes tend to overcome the relative shabbiness of the surroundings, in any case.
Last night my host family and I went to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to see a concert of Bach and Mendelssohn piano concertos. It was fantastic. And novel, because the conductor was also the pianist! When he was busy playing, he conducted via expressive head motions.
Anyway, more coming soon!
Friday, December 12, 2008
Political interlude.
Sorry to talk about politics here, but I woke up this morning and checked the New York Times online while eating my bowl of muesli (as I do every morning), and the headline was "Senate Abandons Automaker Bailout Bid." The article contains the following quote from Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell:
Mr. McConnell added: “The administration negotiated in good faith with the Democratic majority a proposal that was simply unacceptable to the vast majority of our side because we thought it frankly wouldn’t work.”
How about nothing, Mr. McConnell? How do you think nothing is going to work?
Regardless of one's opinions on the advisability of large-scale government intervention in private industry, I think that sentence stands as a stunning example of blinkered logic and the yellow-bellied spitefulness of Congressional politics. Since the "vast majority" of the Republicans had advanced no viable plan, they knew that by killing the bill (which passed the House), they were killing any possibility of taking any kind of action at all. And it's not even because of principle! He does not say "because, as supporters of free-market capitalism, we thought government intervention into private industry would be unacceptable" (and he'd have to add "in this case," because I seem to remember reading a little something about a $750 billion bailout package for other industries). He only says he didn't think the other plan would work. So now we'll never have a chance to find out if it would have worked, and I am wondering, more than ever this morning, what coming home is going to be like.
Mr. McConnell added: “The administration negotiated in good faith with the Democratic majority a proposal that was simply unacceptable to the vast majority of our side because we thought it frankly wouldn’t work.”
How about nothing, Mr. McConnell? How do you think nothing is going to work?
Regardless of one's opinions on the advisability of large-scale government intervention in private industry, I think that sentence stands as a stunning example of blinkered logic and the yellow-bellied spitefulness of Congressional politics. Since the "vast majority" of the Republicans had advanced no viable plan, they knew that by killing the bill (which passed the House), they were killing any possibility of taking any kind of action at all. And it's not even because of principle! He does not say "because, as supporters of free-market capitalism, we thought government intervention into private industry would be unacceptable" (and he'd have to add "in this case," because I seem to remember reading a little something about a $750 billion bailout package for other industries). He only says he didn't think the other plan would work. So now we'll never have a chance to find out if it would have worked, and I am wondering, more than ever this morning, what coming home is going to be like.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
The only living girl in Paris.
I know the minute Thanksgiving's over everyone starts thinking about the fantastic Hannukah-Christmas-New Years' holiday extravaganza, but I do want to return quickly to my Thanksgiving in Paris. In short, it was nothing like the real thing, but not bad anyway. Real Thanksgiving is, at least for me, an occasion to be gloriously chintzy and sentimental in a particularly American way; even thinking about it, I'm imagining warmly-lit kitchens, arrays of mismatched casserole dishes and salad bowls, those turkey hand-drawings kids do, snowman sweaters. None of these things exist in the French idiom as I've experienced it. Instead, people from our program met up at a nice restaurant in the 18th, where the tables were set with spotless white cloths and multiple types of forks. We had a delicious dinner. The turkey was, sadly, served on the plate, rather than carved at the table, but I guess it's not really the same if it's not one's Uncle Billy-Bob-Joe doing the carving anyway. The mashed (puréed) potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, corn, cranberry sauce, and gravy were set out in adorable white pots that we passed around. Dessert was cheesecake -- the French version of cheesecake has a different texture, because they don't have cream cheese here and so use something else instead, but tastes pretty close to the American version -- and pecan pie, with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. Oh, and coffee, of course, after we'd spent two hours drinking le Nouveau Beaujolais.
It was a great meal and a good night, but I missed being home a lot that day.
Lately, I've been working on finals. Next week, I'll have my last classes before winter break, and then after break I'll have two more weeks of mostly exams. That means all of my papers are due this month. I've already turned in fourteen pages on Dostoyevsky, and I'm done revising eight pages on French feminism at the turn of the century. Leaves one exam (Francophone Literatures) today, and a ten-pager on Marx for next Thursday. And next Friday, I'll be leaving to travel through Europe by train! (I don't know how much internet access I'll have, but I will try to update as much as possible while I'm Eurailing it.)
I'm trying to take enough breaks from writing to enjoy being in Paris, though, and last weekend Lizzie came to visit, giving me plenty of opportunities to explore the city. I had a really great time while she was here (and I hope she did too!). We went to the Rodin Museum, to the Best Falafel Place in the World, to the Café Universel, to the Marché aux Puces at St-Ouen, to the 11th, and to see the amazing window displays at the big department stores. As usual, I don't have enough pictures, but here's a few.
Opéra Garnier at night. This picture didn't come out too well. When you're standing in front of it, both the scale and the brightness of the gold are beautiful and overwhelming.
Karl Lagerfeld's Christmas window display at Printemps! I was endlessly delighted by this. One, it has nothing to do with Christmas, as far as I could tell. Two, it is utterly terrifying. I felt that the dolls were somehow in danger.
One of my favorite windows, from the Galeries Lafayette. This is what various parents walking by me kept calling a "fashion" window, breaking the displays into pour les enfants (for kids) and juste la mode (only fashion, and not for the kids). I could see why -- although this window was gorgeous, the one next to it had tons of awesome, moving rabbit marionnettes, up to all sorts of shenanigans at a tea party.
The World's Best Falafel! I mean, I haven't been to the rest of the world, but the sign is pretty convincing, and the falafel was undeniably good.
The lights on the Champs-Élysées.
Last night, I went to see Kubrick's Paths of Glory at the Champo -- great great great movie -- and afterwards there was a little talk by Antoine de Baecque. I found this thrilling, because he wrote one of my favorite books about the French Revolution. ("Glory and Terror: Seven Deaths Under the French Revolution," in case anyone's interested.) It was also a little surprising to see an author and historian be so young. I was picturing old and crusty, but events proved me wrong. Gives one hope for an academic career at a young-ish age. At least in France.
I couldn't stay for the whole debate, though, because I had to head home to study for a test. In fact, I'm about to leave for St-Denis in a few minutes to take it -- my Francophone Lit final. Wish me luck!
It was a great meal and a good night, but I missed being home a lot that day.
Lately, I've been working on finals. Next week, I'll have my last classes before winter break, and then after break I'll have two more weeks of mostly exams. That means all of my papers are due this month. I've already turned in fourteen pages on Dostoyevsky, and I'm done revising eight pages on French feminism at the turn of the century. Leaves one exam (Francophone Literatures) today, and a ten-pager on Marx for next Thursday. And next Friday, I'll be leaving to travel through Europe by train! (I don't know how much internet access I'll have, but I will try to update as much as possible while I'm Eurailing it.)
I'm trying to take enough breaks from writing to enjoy being in Paris, though, and last weekend Lizzie came to visit, giving me plenty of opportunities to explore the city. I had a really great time while she was here (and I hope she did too!). We went to the Rodin Museum, to the Best Falafel Place in the World, to the Café Universel, to the Marché aux Puces at St-Ouen, to the 11th, and to see the amazing window displays at the big department stores. As usual, I don't have enough pictures, but here's a few.
Opéra Garnier at night. This picture didn't come out too well. When you're standing in front of it, both the scale and the brightness of the gold are beautiful and overwhelming.
Karl Lagerfeld's Christmas window display at Printemps! I was endlessly delighted by this. One, it has nothing to do with Christmas, as far as I could tell. Two, it is utterly terrifying. I felt that the dolls were somehow in danger.
One of my favorite windows, from the Galeries Lafayette. This is what various parents walking by me kept calling a "fashion" window, breaking the displays into pour les enfants (for kids) and juste la mode (only fashion, and not for the kids). I could see why -- although this window was gorgeous, the one next to it had tons of awesome, moving rabbit marionnettes, up to all sorts of shenanigans at a tea party.
The World's Best Falafel! I mean, I haven't been to the rest of the world, but the sign is pretty convincing, and the falafel was undeniably good.
The lights on the Champs-Élysées.
Last night, I went to see Kubrick's Paths of Glory at the Champo -- great great great movie -- and afterwards there was a little talk by Antoine de Baecque. I found this thrilling, because he wrote one of my favorite books about the French Revolution. ("Glory and Terror: Seven Deaths Under the French Revolution," in case anyone's interested.) It was also a little surprising to see an author and historian be so young. I was picturing old and crusty, but events proved me wrong. Gives one hope for an academic career at a young-ish age. At least in France.
I couldn't stay for the whole debate, though, because I had to head home to study for a test. In fact, I'm about to leave for St-Denis in a few minutes to take it -- my Francophone Lit final. Wish me luck!
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