beaujolais! beaujolais! beaujolais!

last night marked the beginning of the new season of beaujolais wine. evidently it is one of few wines that actually tastes best when it's new. (i've also heard it's one of the worst wine regions in france). nevertheless, there are celebrations all over the beaujolais region, and lyon (being the biggest city in the region) was no exception. we arrived at 9:00 to find a small crowd and nothing happening. so we retired to a bar for a few hours and returned at about 11:30. the festivities began with the new wine being brought into town on a horse-drawn carriage. the barrel was adorned with a red cloth and some rather wimpy-looking tree branches. the horse/carriage were followed by people (rather wildly) waving lit torches, a huge marching band, and plenty of idiot tourists (such as myself) trying to snap pictures/not get trampled. it was a sight.

when they arrived at the clock tower they brought the new barrel of wine to join what i imagine was barrels of the old wine. then the spectacle began - showers of fireworks shooting out from behind the barrels, colored lights (and more fireworks) illuminating the clock tower, and of course terrible french techno music. they began a very snappy chant (see title) that fit in nicely with the music. then they count down and finally illuminate the giant '2008' at the stroke of midnight. it's a bit like new year's but about 10 months late. then the madness begins. they offer a 'degustation' of the new wine, gratuit, which evidently means everyone rushes forward and smashes into the person in front of them. some people were there for the wine, others just seemed to be there to encourage the madness. eventually, we got our samples and the crowd thinned out a bit.

and that was how we rang in the new year of wine.

gooooal(s)

just before i arrived in france i came up with a mental list of things i hoped to accomplish while i was here - improve my french, travel, etc. etc. pretty standard. after being here for about six weeks i've come up with a new set of goals. while they may not be as practical, they certainly seem more fun.

• be able to write with the handwriting of a french student. (i'm getting there!)
  
• finally get the whole 'celsius' thing down. and kilometers, if i'm feeling ambitious
  
• distinguish between regional english dialects
• be able to walk by (and smell!) a patisserie without staring in amazement/whimpering a little
• have some sort of understanding of french wines. or at least be able to fake it convincingly.
• be able to tell people off in french (i've had to do this twice now but it was not quite to my satisfaction)
  

more to come..

velo'v/hate

so lyon, being the wonderful city that it is, was one of the first to implement a city-wide biking system. there are bike stands all over the city and they cost next to nothing. in fact the first half-hour costs exactly that: nothing. this combined with lyon's rather flat terrain and ubiquitous bike paths and bike lanes make it ideally suited for velo'ing, or, i should say, velo'v-ing. (they found a cutesy name for it, naturally.) the one catch? you need a bank card with a 'puce' - a little chip that, for some reason, is only put in european cards.

and so the saga began..

i waited three weeks for my bank card (they forgot to order it), four weeks for my pin code (they had to send it twice), a week to recover my card (eaten by the atm) and, later, several days to find a bank that would 'unblock' the card so i could actually use it.

once i finally had a working bank card i assumed there was nothing standing in the way of my velo'ving. i went to one machine, it accepted my card, gave me a receipt, told me to wait and.. told me the machine could not give me a velo'v card. no reason. just couldn't. tried another machine.. it didn't work at all. tried a third machine, out of sheer masochism - same story as the first. i gave up, assuming there was something wrong with my card. or that maybe it was just france being france.

then today, on a whim, i tried a machine across town and, much to my surprise, it worked on the first try. it was wonderful! i biked down rue de la république, the major pedestrian streeet/commercial center of the city and then across the river to my apartment. it was absolutely delightful; i think i was actually grinning the entire time. when i wasn't dodging wheelchairs and small children, anyway.

we got off to a rocky start, but now i'm totally smitten.
i love velo'v!

looking to the future

as this vacation draws to a close my mind begins to turn to other things.. namely our next vacations.

i have lots of ideas but i (sadly) realize that i can't make them all happen.
here are the front-runners thus far:

france to croatia overland
hits up some exciting cities (venice? grenoble? zagreb?) as well as some new countries (hello, slovenia). and with the 169 € 15-day bus pass this seems like a brilliant plan. if only all the good cities in croatia weren't so far out of the way.

tunisia!
i would love to get to tunisia somehow. they have a) the obvious appeal of being a muslim country with (naturally) beautiful artwork b) the charm of being on the mediterranean and c) very close proximity.. as the crow flies.. to france and moderately inexpensive plane tickets. plus i hear their doors are pretty gorgeous.

iberian peninsula
beautiful beaches, moorish architecture, a little español, and the ever-elusive tapas. not to mention the one and only annie mchale.

turkey
while i have already been to turkey i am more than sure that it's worthy of a more in-depth visit. i've found some gorgeous regions as well as fabulous architectural masterpieces. now if i could just get around that $45 visa business.

thoughts? comments? relatives who'd like to feed/house me?
send 'em my way.

not so nice Nice

nice
from aix we took a train (for some reason cheaper than the bus) to nice during which it began to rain. by the time we got to nice it was pouring (see fig. 1). we got out and after a quick stop at the tourist office (extremely helpful!) and an internet cafe, happened upon a nearby hostel. we got a 'suite' with a kitchenette for 17€/night, which we thought was decent. against our better judgment, we decided to go out and attempt to explore the city despite the rain. we walked all the way down to the water and back only to discover that even the french riviera doesn't look great when it's dark and rainy.

back at the hostel our struggles with cooking continued. we discovered our kitchenette had: no knives (the woman running the hostel lamented, "they always take the knives.."), many small bugs, few and sticky cooking utensils, no soap, and forgotten nutella (this we weren't too upset about). with much difficulty, including an incredibly slow stove and a brief power outage, we eventually made some delicious and very welcome soup.

the following days were spent trying to keep dry (usually in museums and wherever else we could find cover) and trying to see what we could of nice. after a day we met up with our rather miserable and sick-looking friends who did not look excited at the prospect of more rain. we got lucky one day when the sun (gasp) almost came out and we were actually able to see how pretty the water normally is. other highlights: watching a tour bus knock over a huge lamppost - it broke in about 6 places and the driver promptly came out to check the damage.. to the bus.

the other highlight, just as with the first half of the trip, was not in nice at all. we hopped on a bus to vence (for a paltry 1 euro) where we were greeted by rain and could not find a dry place to have our typical makeshift lunch. we eventually found a small park where we sat on the ground under a bridge.. but that wasn't the highlight. after our less than comfortable lunch we walked on to the matisse chapel (excuse me. the chapelle de la rosaire.. by matisse) which, at 3 euro, was the highest admission price we paid on the entirety of the trip. the chapel was small and simple - the only colors were the yellow, green and blue of the stained glass and the black lines of the paintings on the wall - but masterfully executed. we were able to listen in on what i suppose was a docent's explanation of the chapel; it seems matisse chose nearly everything in the chapel (down to the altar stone that looked like bread) and very methodically. he called it his masterpiece, and with good reason. we spent quite a while there but probably could have stayed longer and been very content. unfortunately taking pictures was (like so many things in france) interdit, so i can't post a picture, but it's worth googling.

and that was our vacation in brief. it was wonderful, we saw some beautiful things, but we were eager to get back to lyon.

vacances en partance

as i mentioned already, the french calendar is very liberal with vacations. this is why, after two arduous weeks of actual teaching, we had a two-week vacation. most of us (assistants) were too busy settling in to make plans in advance. this turned out to be a mistake, since train prices tend to go up and not down. shocking. we ended up making a quick trip south to provence and the côte d'azur. i'll attempt to summarize the best of each.

aix-en-provence
after leaving a cold, foggy lyon we were happy to arrive an hour and a half later in a warm, sunny aix-en-provence. as we walked out of the train station we were greeted by the lion king song playing from someone's car radio. strange, but we took it as a good omen.

the town of aix-en-provence was lovely, with sunlit trees lining the streets and picturesque yellow and peach colored buildings. i particularly enjoyed their markets (crafts/soaps one day, clothes another day). one day a nice older gentleman personally escorted us to the 'best' bakery in town. regrettably we missed cézanne's studio and presumably a good view of mont st victoire. other than that our stay in aix-en-provence was short but enjoyable. the best, however, was our trip that took us an hour and half away.

cassis
we took a bus ride down to the tiny town of cassis, where we were dropped at a random bus stop halfway down to the waterfront. it was a very cute little town of small shops, bakeries and restaurants leading up to the boat-lined harbor. a bit like annapolis except that you're on the mediterranean rather than the chesapeake bay.

from the downtown we walked about 30 minutes until we reached the starting point of our hike through the calanques, which are "a geologic formation in the form of a deep valley with steep sides, typically of limestone in part submerged by the sea. it can be considered a mediterranean fjord." we hiked up for about half an hour before we stopped for our typical lunch (comprised of grocery store, bakery and hostel breakfast goodies. total cost: 2.08 €) on a rock overlooking the sea.

we continued on until we reached the bottom of one calanques where we found families swimming and playing in shallow green water. we hiked up (there was a lot of up and down) where we had beautiful views of the white cliffs, blue-green water and little boats below. it was pretty amazing. we even made it to the 'calanque d'en vau' (though one man adamantly explained that we wouldn't reach it) which seems to be one of the most oft-photographed.

we got incredibly lucky with the weather - apparently the next day it started raining and didn't stop for several days - which was a perfect mix of sun and clouds. and now we can officially say we've been calanque-ing. after we got back into town we capped off the day by watching some boules (pétanques, here) in the park before we caught our bus home.

that's all for now, more on the other half of our trip next time --