dublin, eire

two weeks ago, i spent a weekend in dublin by myself. ireland is amazing: i have never seen so many shades of green as i did while flying over the island. irish history is fascinating and i wonder why more people don't study it... i don't think columbia has a single course on ireland. and it was nice to be in an english-speaking country for a couple days! (still, i think i prefer the francophone world...)



st stephen's green is REALLY GREEN.



in the national history museum they have an exhibit on bog bodies. these are mummified
prehistorical remains found in peat bogs. amazing! also sort of disgusting. when i was in the museum, a group of schoolboys was visiting and, as little boys are apt to be, they were simultaneously fascinated and repulsed...



"shop while the dollar drops," ie, come visit new york while you can afford it, europe!! these ads were everywhere.

the national gallery has my two favorite paintings ever:



The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio



and Woman Writing A Letter by Vermeer.

both have incredible histories: check out The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr and The Irish Game by Matthew Hart to read about them.




this is the interior of christ church cathedral. as my guidebook said, it's sort of strange that such a catholic country would have two protestant cathedrals in its capital city. unfortunately the church is now more of a tourist attraction than a functioning place of worship; it cost me 2E to enter and it didn't seem like there's a real congregation. (in contrast, notre-dame de paris, despite its touristic attractions, is a functioning cathedral with a devoted congregation. i went to mass there a few weeks ago, took communion, heard some archbishop give a sermon... it felt much more authentic.)



then i headed over to st patrick's cathedral, which is near the spring where the said saint baptized many irish pagans. jonathan swift is buried here. this church was even more touristy; 4E to enter and it's basically set up like a museum...



but it's still beautiful!!



fish and chips for lunch: delicious but so heavy, i could not finish it.



the natural history museum smells like old books. a lot of the animals are from the early 20th century (or late 19th century), so it's like walking into the minds of the early naturalists.



a skeleton of a dodo bird!



so why don't we have sex education like this in the states? you tell me. this billboard is brilliant (bonus points to anyone who knows which artist's work it's based on).



the liffey at night: it looks like a river of guinness.



the irish coast from my airplane...



and then back to paris.

amsterdam

a few weeks ago, i took a brief trip to amsterdam. by brief, i mean: we took an all-night bus ride to arrive at 8 AM on saturday, and left for another all-night bus ride back to paris at 11 PM on sunday. intense. and oh-so-worth it.



canals and bicycles everywhere...



and houseboats!



in fact, our hostel was a boat.



a fountain filled with bubbles...



i love street art.



it's possible that, due to the combination of water and light, amsterdam may beat paris in terms of nighttime beauty... but i'm not placing any bets...



heineken everywhere!



and a sad goodbye.

soon to come: dublin and thoughts on french higher education.

la grosse pomme vs. the city of love

as much as i love love love paris, i'm really suffering new york withdrawl. here are some of the many things i miss:

- 24-hour subway
- 24-hour supermarkets
- 24-hour EVERYTHING
- falafel carts everywhere
- hearing spanish, mandarin, arabic, hebrew, french, english, and a dozen other languages i don't recognize within fifteen minutes of each other - and not even taking note of it
- MEXICAN FOOD. and mexican people. and mexican beer.
- columbus circle/battery park/the village/fifth avenue/fourteenth street/soho
- the flatiron building
- central park. parisian parks are beautiful but they're rather sterile... (an example of french design in new york is bryant park behind NYPL, which i actually love.) i can't wait for spring!!
- efficiency/doing things in a rational manner/generally making sense

but then, there are so many things you can't find in new york, like...

- true café culture
- comté, the most amazing cheese ever
- so many varieties of wine, and people who appreciate them
- pain à tradition. the french have laws regarding how to make "traditional french bread." that is how important bread is in this country.
- a sense of history that extends backs centuries (as opposed to weeks)
- beautiful churches, beautiful buildings, beautiful everything!
- being multilingual is sort of expected
- universal health care (haven't taken advantage of this yet though)
- vespas
- EVERYONE HERE IS SO BEAUTIFUL.



my newest career aspiration is to go into (eco-)tourism, because i love to travel and to help people. i used to want to work in a museum, but in tourism i could basically do the same thing in terms of "guest services" except ALL AROUND THE WORLD. maybe then, i can jet-set between paris and new york and not have to pick one to live in for the rest of my life.

proof that french drivers are insane:



the city government has started a new campaign to try to get people to drive, you know, reasonably. i like this poster because it says "a license to drive is not a license to kill."

les catacombes de paris

last week we went to the paris catacombs. running for 186 miles underneath the city, the catacombs are the final resting place for thousands and thousands of french citizens. in the late seventeenth century, several parisian cemeteries had become dangerously overcrowded - coffins would emerge from the ground, leading to epidemics in several quartiers. what to do? in 1786, authorities decided to move the bodies into the former roman quarries which run beneath the streets of paris. the result?



the bodies are obviously not intact. it's strange to think about the workers who disassembled thousands of corpses to create the bone-lined hallways under the city. perhaps to amuse themselves during their labor, some of the remains have been creatively arranged.



throughout the caves, one finds poetic carvings, graffiti, and somewhat disconcerting memorials. for instance, this is one of the entrances to the grave (today the only legal entrance, part of the musée des catacombes):



("stop! here is the empire of death.")


what i wonder is why the city chose to dispose of the bodies in this way. wouldn't it have been more economical (and sanitary) to cremate them? it's not like the corpses were respectfully kept intact; for the most part, it seems like only arm and leg bones and skulls compose the walls.



the tunnels were originally limestone mines built and used by the romans, but people have long been going underground for other purposes - many of the walls are covered in graffiti. aristocrats would hold parties in the crypts before the revolution. during world war two, the germans set up a secret bunker, while the french resistance used the catacombes as their headquarters.



today, one can legally reach the catacombes only through the museum, but the crypts available for viewing are a tiny part of the system. of course, there are lots of illegal tours you can risk, but they can be dangerous...

sèjour en besançon

last week i did a "homestay" in besançon, a small city in franche-comte (eastern france, near switzerland). these were my "parents:"



i was with a group of american students from my program. we did all sorts of fun things, like:

exploring the beautiful city of besançon...



visiting a run-down chateau...



eating delicious cheese (the regional specialty is called conté and it is amazing!)...



visiting a smokehouse...



going to neuchatel in switzerland!!







seeing seventeenth-century robots... they were amazing.



that was a fun week!

un sejour en normandie

i passed this weekend in normandie with my french family.

who, exactly, are my french family? why am i so blessed as to have real parisian relatives?

my grandmother, madeleine, was born and raised in paris. she came to the states with my grandfather in the 1950s, and now lives in newton, massachusetts. her sister, jeannette, continues to live in france, right outside paris in a town called levallois. her daughter, micheline, would be my mother's first cousin. micheline also lives in levallois, not far from HER daughter, nathalie, and her family. nathalie and her husband roger (who is from martinique) have a twelve-year-old daughter, mathilde. (and an obese cat named cacaouette). that's four generations of the same family, all within walking distance of each other!

these wonderful (somewhat distant) relations have adopted me as another member of their family. that's how i ended up spending a glorious weekend in the french countryside.

late friday night, i arrived with nathalie, roger, mathilde and a distraught cacaouette chez eux. they own a typical norman house in a tiny village called beaumont-le-roger (the closest city is rouen - where joan d'arc was burned at the stake). this architectural style is typical of norman houses.



on saturday, we went to "balader" (walk around) in the area. our destination? the sixteenth-century abbaye notre dame du bec-hellouin.



the man in white is a monk giving a tour; obviously the monastery is still in use.





some family photos in front of the abbey...

the village was très mignonne aussi!!








the next morning, mathilde and i made quiches and other delicious things!





(then my camera battery ran out, so no more pictures.)

some neighbours came over for lunch, and i practiced my french with them. this weekend did amazing things for my fluency and comprehension. i also ate escargot for the first time!

tonight i'm leaving to visit another part of france, a small city called besançon. my program is doing a week-long homestay with a family. more updates next week!!