Well, I guess I took another nice vacation from my blog. I feel like this happens with most ventures such as this: you start out really strong and then somewhere along the line you cease to see the adventure as something to write about because you begin to LIVE in the adventure. It becomes your day-to-day, and as your day-to-day, you get caught up in it and (unfortunately) stop writing so much.
At least that is my excuse. My life in Rennes, while it still has an aura of unrealness, has become my actual life. I am living in Rennes. When I returned from Venice two weeks ago I had a sudden realization that Rennes felt like home. As I ascended the escalator from the métro station (after 18 hours on a train) and the sunlight showered me with warmth, I got to the top and looked around at the great stone buildings, the canal stretched out before me, the buses and people passing to and fro--and I finally felt some familiarity, that feeling of knowing a place so well that it's become a part of who you are. All the unfamiliarity around me--the language, the foods, the etiquette, the architecture, the stores, the brand names--is what makes being in France so hard at times, so it's wonderful to finally feel the sharp strangeness of it all ebbing away and slowly transforming into someplace that feels a little closer to home.
I survived my adventure in Geneva and Venice (yay!) and had a great time to boot. Carmen and I departed Rennes on a Saturday afternoon (Feb 26) and arrived in Geneva that evening. We spent about 36 hours roaming around Geneva before we hopped another train and road through the Alps to Venice. After a full day in Venice having the time of our lives getting lost in winding maze of the sinking city, we met up with two of our American friends who are on our program and spent another lovely 24 hours with them. They and Carmen went on to Florence, but I (frugally) decided to return home to recuperate. So I took a night train on Thursday evening, and after some train drama, arrived "home" on Friday afternoon (March 4).
Here are some highlights:
- Geneva is the financial capitol of the world. It consists of about a billion banks with some international relations buildings sprinkled in there somewhere (the seat of the UN is there), all back-dropped by the Swiss Alps. We were in Geneva on a Sunday so what was there to see wasn't really open, including restaurants, and making matters worse, everything was SUPER expensive. One of the shining moments of our trip was being turned away from a restaurant because we arrived too early (5pm), buying a loaf of bread to ease our hunger pains, and then devouring it in the rain in front of the cathedral in Geneva which just happened to be closed. We did manage to make it to the Red Cross Museum, which was pretty legit, and we took a nice walk around the large lake near the city.
- Another of my favorite memories of Geneva is our search for the green space on the map. Carmen loves walking around in parks, so when we saw a good 4 inches of greenness on our map, we made a beeline for it...except we couldn't because there were about 100 constructions zones blocking our path. When we finally untangled ourselves from all the jackhammers and concrete, we found ourselves facing a gigantic, gray-ish brown hill. This was supposedly the green space. So we climbed to the top and found a "park" without any living vegetation except for the brown grass and some sad looking trees, some graffiti-ed-on park benches, a menagerie with almost nothing but roosters, and a sketchy community garden. After some exploring there, we crossed a train trestle (yes, a train came of course, but don't worry; we are on a walking/biking path) and descended a vertical hill into...a sewer plant. Oh yes. This little failed attempt to find beauty in Geneva is actually one of my favorite memories. Carmen and I had so much fun failing in Geneva.
- If Carmen and I had fun failing in Geneva, we had fun succeeding in Venice. Venice is hands-down one of the coolest places I have ever been. Venice is made up of a series of islands which are riddled with canals that run through the interior of each island so boats can pass through. No cars are allowed and new construction is almost impossible, so Venice has been preserved in its 15th century state with a few modifications--like the Disney store. The streets are medieval alleys with no names that wind in all directions, so it's almost impossible to navigate with a map. You just kind of have to start walking in the general direction of your destination and hope you find a bridge somewhere. Making things even better, we were there right before Carnivale (Fat Tuesday), so everyone was dressed in full Venetian-masked glory in celebration.
- I saw and did the following in Venice: Piazza San Marco; Palais des Doges (palace of Venice's pointless political leader, the doge); Venice Naval History Museum, which had a random Swedish military exhibit; a small art museum in some aristocrat's old manor; the Museum of 18th Century Fashion and Fabrics which boasted about 8 garments but was cool nonetheless; visited the Galeria dell'Accademia (famous art museum); ate lots of gelato and pasta and had white wine with almost every meal; went to the old Jewish ghetto part of the island; watched people riding around in gondolas (it's about $100 per ride); chased a group of priests-in-training down the street to get a picture and then ended up running into them two more times; wandered around a lot in the streets to the point where I could go places without even glancing at the map (though I should mention that sometimes there are signs pointing you to the touristy destinations, so maybe I cheated a little).
So that's my Geneva/Venice adventure. When I returned to Rennes, my host family announced we were headed to Pornic for the weekend to visit Carole's sister and husband who have a house on the coast. We had a great time there. It was so beautiful! We balanced our time evenly between eating and walking off our meals along the rocky shore and in the little village. I ate sardine paté and beef tongue and the most delicious apple crumble I have ever tasted in my life but rejected the freshly-found oysters sloshing around in their own goo. I think I made a good decision as my poor host dad got sick on the way home.
Last weekend my friends Zoe and Bjorn, who are also here for the semester at Oxford and the organic farms of the South of France respectively, and I surprised Carmen for her 21st birthday. They arrived secretly on Thursday afternoon and surprised the unsuspecting Carmen in Ste Anne square. Happily reunited and with our German friend Rhea in tow, we went to a "Mexican" restaurant for dinner and then met some other American friends from our program at a bar called the Funky Munky for after-dinner drinks and conversation. Zoe, Bjorn, Carmen, and I then had a 4-day-long sleepover at Carmen's house and had a fabulous time exploring Rennes (Saturday market day is soooo cool), cooking, and laughing.
Well, I think that about gets us up-to-date. Today I went to Carnac and Vannes with the American group. Carnac is a collection of Stonehenge-esque rock arrangements dating back 6,000 years; Vannes is an ancient port-town with very well-perserved medieval ramparts and wooden houses. Now it's time for dinner with the Berthauts and some relaxation.
Pictures to follow.
