We started our third day quite early, as it was the day dedicated to the reason why Evan came out to Paris in the first place: an international competition for solo tuba. Now is a good time to mention a source of stress that had been hanging over our shoulders for the last couple days: his tuba landed in Paris with a problem. The large changes in air pressure and temperature that are normal in the undercarriage of the plane had caused a part of his instrument to malfunction. He had been trying to oil the piece to get it to move correctly, but it hadn't been working and we were reduced to praying. The competition was not actually in Paris, but in another suburb outside that we needed to reach by train. We left with a good sense of what we needed to do to get their--metro--train--walk, however we encountered a few problems buying the train tickets (the machines often don't accept cash and only specifically French credit cards) while the ticket office we found was closed for the day. We did however, after a good amount of panicking and swearing, find another ticket office inside the train station where we bought our ticket there. Upon arrival, I had a list of directions complete with a simple hand-drawn map of where we needed to go. My sense of scale, however, was off and what seemed like a five/ten minute walk turned into a thirty minute uphill sprint trying to get to the competition in time for him to warm up for a couple minutes before playing.
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| waiting to play |
Fortunately, he did get a later spot that he thought and ended up having more time to warm up before being called in to play. Unfortunately his tuba still was really functioning, which really negates anything the musician can do. After many laborious attempts on the part of Evan as well as the competition, he really had to accept that he wasn't going to be able to play the way he should have been able to play. It was a huge disappointment, but at the same time not all was wasted. He really got an opportunity to meet other players from all over the world and to hear how they were playing, which is really invaluable. After a long day in this tiny town, we decided to head back to Nanterre and call it a night after a delicious fondue dinner and a couple sweets bought from a Nanterre pastry shop.
Our next day in Paris was occupied mostly with finding a couple famous dwellings and finishing with Mass at a very famous Parisian cathedral (with a lot of meandering in between). We managed to find first the house of Igor Stravinsky, a Romantic Russian composer, on our way to the oldest square in Paris and the house of Victor Hugo. Our route had us pass the Bastille where one finds another of the huge opera houses of Paris and ended at la Place des Vosges and the House of Victor Hugo. It actually took us quite a long time to find this house, as there really weren't any signs to be seen apart from the namesake restaurant on the corner. Tucked away in one of the covered corners of this square is the apartment of Victor Hugo. It was really wonderful to look out the windows to see the same view that such a great, historical mind saw hundreds of years ago.
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| Bastille |
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| Place des Vosges |
Leaving the ancient square, we headed towards the Pantéon, which I actually found to be very strange. I'm semi-used to seeing Roman architecture, but I'm not used to seeing faux-Roman architecture made thousands of years after the Romans. Maybe a good history lesson of this building would help me, but I didn't really understand why such a thing was built in the middle of this French city.
Down the hill from the Pantéon, we made it to the famous Notre Dame cathedral. We managed to spend a good amount of time walking all around it, takings far too many pictures from every angle possible, like one often does when seeing something that they've seen often before in pictures. We managed to get ourselves inside with the rest of the masses to see how the interior rivaled the outside. My first impression was just of the huge
space that there is inside; how incredibly high the ceilings are and how wide the aisles. I've learned by now after a hundred of blurry, dark, disappointing photos that capturing the kind of beauty inside this stunning cathedrals is near impossible. It really is near incommunicable, something that someone can only feel. We made our quick pass around the inside and then headed back out into the light of the day. With an hour still before the Sunday evening mass, we walked around a little big of the Latin quarter just on the other side of the river. There I had my first ever French crepe (!) from a window on one of the streets. We decided on the banana nutella crepe to split and were not disappointed. Really, you put bananas and nutella together and there is really no way to go wrong. After savoring the last bits of chocolaty goodness, we sat by the Seine until it was time to go in for Mass. The service was really beautiful, although obviously we understood nothing that was being said, the atmosphere is really hard to beat. It's easy to understand after going to a good amount of Masses in other countries why the Catholic Church has so much of it structured and standardized--I didn't need to understand the words to still feel at home eve.
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| Notre Dame |
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The next morning we headed off to the train station and grabbed a train to the small city of Valence (Some may remember that I have already stayed in Valence, on accident, last semester). Valence is my black hole. It must have some need to suck me in without ever wanting to let me go because also this time we had problems connecting to our friend, Cecilia's, town of Die. Fortunately this time I didn't have to find a hotel for the night and we made it to Die by 4pm. Actually, we didn't make it to Die and got off instead at the slightly larger town of Crest to meet up with the other language assistants that I had met during my previous stay. Cecilia first took us on a little walk up and up, with gorgeous views of Crest and the mountains the whole way.
After a quick descent we met up with the assistants, where we had an all-American dinner of hamburgers, cooked by one of the other American assistants. Joining us were a French brother and sister, bringing the nations represented to: U.S., Colombia, U.K, Italy, AND France. Everyone in the room could speak in at least two languages, which lead to another great, international experience in Crest. We ended up sleeping there and left for Die the next morning. We dropped our stuff off at Cecilia's house before going out for a lunch with one of the other assistants. Cecilia had to work for a little bit after lunch, so she showed Evan and I a path that we wandered along while she was teaching. It was lovely to be surrounded by farms, vineyards, and, of course, mountains (although I always prefer Colorado's).
Once she finished up, she took us to Jaillance to do a tasting of the Clairette de Die and the Cremant, two sparkling white wines unique to Die. As you may remember, I had done that once before with her in December, but am always up for a free tasting of good wines! We grabbed some food for a dinner, along with the mandatory baguette, and ate together at her house. It had started to rain, but we decided to venture out and do a short climb up to a tower that sits right above the little town. It was after sunset, so it was a bit tricky seeing the trail, but we made it up and got to see how beautiful this little old tower is at night, all lit up. It was a great end to our day in Die and definitely worth a little rain.
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| At the tower |
The next morning we went to one of the weekly markets. It was a gorgeous morning, so we sat out with an espresso before perusing the offerings of the market, including local cheeses, breads, fruits, vegetables, and preserves. After walking around the town a little bit as well, we returned to the market and grabbed our second crepe of the trip, from a little stand. This time we picked one filled with the "crepe-lady's" homemade preserves and were not disappointed. Soon after we went to Cecilia's school to sit in on one of her classes. Her students were doing presentations in English about Die and the surrounding region. It was great to get to see what she's been doing this year and how great of a teacher she is, as well as the type of students she has been teaching as they talked about their home.
We did another walk with Cecilia around the remains of the ancient city walls, spotting some little donkeys along the way and some more beautiful views of the area. That night we made ourselves another dinner and watched the film "The Last King of Scotland." Those who have seen the film know that it has nothing to do with France and was sort of a "downer" for our last night together in Die, but it was still a movie worth watching.
We had to leave early the next morning to get a bus to Valence and then our train back into Paris for our last day. We made it back to Randall and Monique's house in Nanterre, where they were kind enough to take us to the nearby American Cemetery of WWI and WWII soldiers. It was beautiful and made me feel incredibly proud of my country. It was wonderful to know that at least a couple Parisians still hold Americans in high esteem in it's role during those two wars. The rest of the day was spent talking to Randall and Monique about--everything really--plus preparing all of our stuff to leave the next day. After dinner and a night of sleep, we got ourselves up early and were helped to the train station by Monique and Randall where we said our adieu's. A chaotic series of trains later, we got ourselves to our respective gates and said goodbye. Fortunately, it was made less difficult having had such an amazing trip and knowing that we would get to have yet another European adventure just two months later.
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| Randall, Monique, and Evan at the American Cemetery |
The first, Lago Maggiore, I saw from the small town of Laveno with my friend from class, Ieva. Taking the train out of Milan one early Saturday morning, both of us groggily watched the landscapes become greener and denser until arriving at the end of the line. The forecast promised sunshine, but unfortanately the day was a stereotypical Lombardian gray with patches of low laying clouds. The environment that resulted was actually quite mystical and magical looking out onto the water. The lakes in this northern region of Lombardia are at the foot of the Alps, so each lake is surrounded by hills or small mountains rising up all around. With clouds encircling the steep inclines of the land where it meets water, it led for a very esoteric scene. Walking around the waterfront, we clumsily found our way up the surrounding hills upon which the town is built and, by chance, arrived at a little park that houses bit of castle ruins. There happened to be some sort of event going on, seemingly historical or political or both, with a procession of musicians that played the Italian national anthem towards the flag that was raised only at half mast. After watching to procession a bit, we got some pictures of the beautiful views from the top of the hill before taking a winding street down and through the small town. We grabbed a gelato to eat while retracing our steps around the lake and chatting a bit before heading back to the station to catch the train back to Milano
