Au revoir, Paris…for now
This is a very hard post for me to write. This Saturday, I will leave one of my favorite cities in the world and the country that I have called home for almost the last year. But I’m departing on a good note.
The Cat in the Window
I had an unexpected visitor in the wee hours of the morning today: a furry siamese cat from down the hall. How did she get in? My window.
The last few days in Paris have been very hot and humid, with temperatures hovering around 90 F/30-33 C. I live on the sixth (and top) floor of the building without air conditioning or even a fan. So it is unbearable to sleep, let alone breathe, without keeping the windows to my bedroom open.
There is a small plastic gutter outside of my window that extends the length of the building. I had seen my petite neighbor try to enter my living room window once before a few weeks ago. I was simply watching a World Cup match on my TV (can’t remember who now), and all of a sudden, two big blue eyes were peering in at me. Taken aback, I immediately shooed her away from the window, without realizing I shouldn’t scare her too much as we are on the sixth floor. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her. I also felt bad as she kept meowing, as if looking for a friend. If I had some milk or cat food, I might have let her come inside, but I don’t exactly have a litter box here, so I don’t want to be responsible for cleaning up after someone else’s cat.
Since then, I keep the windows closed when I’m not home, but I have to open them again as soon as I return. Last night, I got home at about 2:30 AM, but with the heat, I must not have fallen asleep for at least an hour and a half. After drifting off into a sweet dream land (Ugly Betty was there, and that’s all I remember), I was awaken with a start when I heard a soft thump on the floor.
There was the same cat, looking around my room. The alarm clock read 6:01 AM, but miraculously my head wasn’t throbbing terribly. I got up from the bed and tried to point her back towards the window. She didn’t seem as interested in me as taking a look around her new surroundings, rubbing up against the drawers and stretching on the carpet. Again, if it weren’t for the litter box issue, I’d let her stay as she is pretty harmless. I tried picking her up, yet she clawed into the rough carpet making it impossible for me to lift her. However, the cat didn’t growl or hiss at me.
Finally, I managed to grab her (gently) before she could clench to the carpet, and I set her back outside the window on to the gutter so she could go home. I feigned closing the windows by drawing the curtains, but when I peeked back out, I saw her glassy blue eyes shining back at me, with a sadness and loneliness that made me feel horrible for abandoning her. Still, I was exhausted, so I went back to bed.
The Temp Expat at the U.S. Embassy
I can’t believe that I’m writing this (or that this could actually happen), but my passport was almost full after my last trip to Ireland in May. The standard rule is that a traveler must have up to two blank pages in a passport when traveling, at which point he/she must apply for additional pages or a new passport.
Originally, I was planning to hold off on mailing in my new passport until I returned to the U.S. when it wasn’t as vital to my everyday life anymore. But when I read that passport fees will be raised on July 13 and that the fee for additional visa pages would skyrocket from free to $82, I realized it might be best to act now.
After taking a look at the U.S. Embassy’s site for France, it turned out I could go in person with my passport to have the pages added since I live in Paris. Anywhere else, you have to mail it to the Embassy or the closest consulate (only Marseille and Strasbourg now). However, I still wasn’t sure if I had to buy the specified envelope mentioned on the website. Along with an application form that I did print out (but turned out to be available in bulk at the Embassy), it stipulated to buy a “Chronopost” envelope from La Poste (translation: an express mail envelope from the post office). But these cost 20€ minimum. Betting on the slim hope that either I wouldn’t need it or it would be available at the Embassy, I walked out of post office without one.
The King and the Frog
I’ve been living in Paris for over two months now, and with only four weeks left to go in France, I figured I should update. Some of my many adventurous endeavors in France have involved food. Up until a few years ago, I used to be quite picky when it came to my meals. But now I’m open to trying more things. In Finland this past April, I gave reindeer heart a chance.
And two weeks ago, I caved and ordered…frog legs.
Finland: The Land of Snow
April 29, 2010
Filed under Europe, Travel
Tags: Finland, Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Scandinavia, Scandinavian Airlines
Thankfully, the one-hour flight from Stockholm to Helsinki was relatively smooth and didn’t involve any time travel. (While that might seem fun, 1930s/1940s Europe is somewhere I’d want to avoid.) However, given the delays and the one hour jump in time, I was now running behind schedule as I was planning to meet my friend/former Mansueto Ventures co-intern Laura in downtown Helsinki for dinner.
By the grace of the airline gods, my purse turned up on the conveyor belt quickly with everything in tact. I proceeded to take a 30-minute bus ride into the city and then transferred to the tramway at the Central Railway Station (or as Laura described, the building with the four guys and glass balls). It turned out that my hostel for one night was conveniently located in the city’s design district, which reminded me quite a bit of either SoHo for New Yorkers (but less commercial) or Valencia Street in San Francisco. Unfortunately, it was not nearly as nice as the hostel in Stockholm, but then again, it was only for one night.
Lille’s Top 12
As this is my second to last night in Nord-Pas de Calais, I’m sharing a bit about my favorite places that I’ve visited in Lille in the last few months. They’re not in any particular order, and I’ve probably forgotten quite a bit. But here’s my top 12, at least according to Four Square (so please pardon the informal punctuation and formatting. I’ve included photos where I’ve remembered to take them.
1. @ Hotel Le Moulin d’Or: Favorite hotel in Lille. Very affordable for singles/doubles with bath. In Centre-Ville and right next to the train stations (which is actually a safe area). Also includes free Wi-Fi and cable TV!
2. @ L’Empire: Cheap lunch menu and nice outdoor seating during the summer months. They also have a sign that says “Here We Speak English.”
3. @ Gare Lille Europe: Eurostar/TGV station…basically the connection to the rest of Europe. Do not confuse this with Gare Lille Flandres.
Stockholm: Venice of the North
April 23, 2010
Filed under Europe, Travel
Tags: Museums, Scandinavia, Scandinavian Airlines, Stockholm, Sweden
A museum curator in Stockholm told me that Sweden’s capital is sometimes referred to as the “Venice of the North,” as it is a city built on a collection of islands. Despite the cold, I prefer Stockholm to Venice.
Actually, it wasn’t even that cold – or at least it didn’t give that impression in comparison with the high winds in Normandy. After a train trek via Paris to Lille and then later to London for four days, I packed up my things from the flat we were staying in (near Buckingham Palace!) for Heathrow. It’s funny writing this now – a few days after the European skies have reopened to air traffic – as the day I left London for Stockholm, it was a relatively normal travel day. I certainly got lucky with my flights over all…although I wouldn’t have minded missing a few more days of work back in France.
The two-hour flight on Scandinavian Airlines was relatively routine, but I got into the city rather late (jumping ahead an hour again) at about 10PM. I just made it to the baby bullet train from Arlanda Airport to the city center by a hair as an English woman in front of me could not figure out the ticket machine.
Visiting Normandy
After a month of solitude in a tiny village near La Manche, I finally broke out for three weeks, starting with two days in Paris when my brother came to visit France for the first time at the end of March. But it was our trip to Normandy, a site I’ve longed to visit for some time now, that I was looking forward to the most.
My brother and I boarded the train to Bayeux in Basse-Normandie (lower Normandy) from Paris’ Gare St.-Lazare. Despite it being a local train (and not TGV), it was only a two-hour long ride as there was only one stop (Caen) in between Paris and our destination. And it didn’t take long to notice the sharp differences in landscape and terrain in Normandy than that of Nord-Pas de Calais, which was surprising since it’s only a few hours away by car.
French Kids Say The Darndest Things
When you’re learning a new language, you’re bound to make mistakes – especially silly and even embarrassing mistakes. Whether it be using the wrong grammar, vocabulary word or even pronunciation, it can completely change what you mean to say. Sometimes it can be really bad, but sometimes it’s just plain funny.
I’ve found that geography words and names have proven to be a little sticky for my French high schoolers. Here’s a few examples over the last few months:
Me: Which U.S. state is President Obama from?
(no response)
Me: It begins with an H and there are islands.
Student: Haiti?
Me: Can you name some other cities in California (besides San Francisco)?
Student: San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento…
Another student: Chicago?
Third student: New Jersey?
Me: Can you name the largest state in the U.S.?
Student: Canada?
Only time will tell on the last one…
Porto: Valentine’s Day at McDonald’s
More restaurants need to stay open on Sundays in Europe. There, I said it. It’s one of the biggest frustrations that Americans seem to encounter when traveling in Europe, and it’s the only reason I’m thankful that there is a McDonald’s everywhere. There, I admitted that too.
We left Lisbon on a late Sunday afternoon, which also happened to be Valentine’s Day. We boarded a bus that was similar to Bolt Bus in both price and comfort, sans the free Wi-Fi. You can’t have it all. But Rede-Expressos is more like the equivalent of Greyhound, being a nationwide bus company…although that nation is a tad smaller. By the time we arrived in Porto, it was already nightfall and dinnertime. This time we had a map and found the hostel much easier this time, with the exception of taking a few dark back alleys that I would never enter again – especially not by myself.
