365 days later.

One year ago today, I moved to Paris. A year later, my blog draws to its natural conclusion. I'm back in Blighty, on a permanent basis this time, surrounded by my family deep in the deepest depths of exotic Hampshire. This is the 48th post on this blog (I’ve managed to write a lot more than I had expected that I would when I started this blog!). It’s also going to be the last post, for the obvious reason: there’s no more year abroad to blog about! Sad, sad times :( 

To business, then! This post is going to be a bit of a soliloquy, really. It's a post that I've been thinking about and writing, on and off, for quite a few months now, and the more I enjoyed my year abroad, the more I added to it. It’s become a bit of a love letter to the last year, if you like. Call me a sap if you like, I don't care.

302 days after I moved to Paris, 401 days after I started this blog, my life in Paris came to an end on 28th June 2014. And now, with my return from China, it’s official. All told, by the time I arrived back on UK soil on August 6th, I had spent 341 days as an official year abroader. Not quite 365 days, but I think, quite close enough. My (not-quite) year abroad is over.

And after all that, what can I really say? Sojourn to Chengdu aside, which I have already blogged about in six separate posts this month, my year abroad was really all about la cité d’amour that is Paris.

It really is such a beautiful and charming city, with a lot of character, and it’s not difficult to see why it is somewhere that so many people dream of visiting, it really isn't. Building on something I wrote to this effect back in February: I still prefer London as a city and as a place to live. Snap me in half like a stick of rock and London would probably be written there, I just love it so much. It’s also a gorgeous city, home to my favourite place on the planet, and has its own fair share of excellent restaurants, fascinating museums and historic landmarks. It’s the place I gained my independence, the place I have made most of my friends, and the place which has had a large impact on who I am becoming as an adult. It’s exciting, and fast paced, and a perfect balance between old and new.

I was always super excited to go on a year abroad and come to live in Paris – who wouldn’t be? But perhaps because of this love that I have for the British capital, it took me longer than it perhaps should have to really appreciate Paris as it should be appreciated. The turning point was somewhere in the middle of February, but I can now say this with absolute certainty – Paris is always going to be equally as special to me, just for different reasons.

Going clockwise, from top left: the canal at Versailles; the Louvre; the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Moulin Rouge, and the Sacre-Coeur

Paris was the place where I spoke in French every day; where French was just another language, not a foreign language. It's where nipping into the patisserie for a freshly baked croissant or a beautiful dessert was part of my normal routine. It has a unique charm that I've not seen anywhere else, with beautiful buildings, narrow streets, and a pace of life that is just slow enough so that you can sit back and enjoy life. (Lunch is so much tastier when you sit back and take your own sweet time to eat it, sat outside a café with a glass of wine!)

Paris is the place where it’s perfectly normal for men to hop on and off the metro with their accordions, playing their French melodies as each station whistles by.

True; the administration is slow; the bureaucracy incroyable, and not in a good way. Drinks, with the exception of wine, cost an absolute fortune, and as someone I know posted on their Facebook status quite early into the year;

"…bakeries are run by culinary angels, but beer is drafted by semi-trained monkeys."

Fact of the matter is, I've studied French since I was 4 years old and even with all that under my belt, I was remarkably ignorant, this time last year, about Paris, France, French life. Not so now, and I love all three of those things more than I ever had before or ever imagined I could.

We Brits might make jokes about the French, but Paris – and France in general – is a massive collection of weird and wonderful extremes, of every variety. It’s been an awesome year. One of the best of my life ever (so far, I hope).

I’m so lucky to have had the chance to do my year abroad there. Anyone can admire Paris, anyone can enjoy visiting it, but I don’t think you can ever understand it until you've lived here. And that’s probably true of most cities on this brilliant planet we call home. 

Going clockwise from top left: Champs Elysees, Palais du Luxembourg, the Catacombs and the Opera Garnier

Over the year, I've not just come to love Paris, but plenty of other places too. I've been to the beautiful franco-germanic gem that is Strasbourg. I've been to Dijon, in the Burgundy region. I've been to Berlin, and then there is the month that I have just spent, and posted about, in Chengdu, in the Sichuan province of China.

Fact of the matter is, my year abroad has given me the opportunity to see so many new things and have so many new experiences that so many people my age don’t have, and many people older than us never will. I imagine that living abroad would just get harder as you get older, and add jobs and mortgages and responsibility to your plate.

In Douglas Adam's story Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the supercomputer, Deep Thought, ponders the so-called "Ultimate Question":

"What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?"

...and eventually decided that the answer is 42. 

If you were to ask that question in reality, I say that the answer to the Ultimate Question is a year abroad. Because the year abroad is an education, about life, the universe and everything. That’s why Erasmus as a scheme and other cooperation agreements between universities in varying countries are so important.

Getting serious for a second, I actually did a bit of research on this point, because I wanted to make my point as effectively as I could, and I found a debate on the New York Times website (links at the bottom of this post), where various people submitted their opinions. For instance, Stacie Berdan and Allan Goodman, co-authors of 'A Student Guide to Study Abroad' write that;

"...[studying abroad] teaches students to appreciate difference and diversity firsthand, and enables them to recognize — and then dismiss — stereotypes they may have held about people they had never met..."

Another contributor, Violeta Rosales, pointed out that;

"[We]… should study abroad in order to realize that we are more alike than we are different… Cross-cultural understanding – the exchange of ideas, information and art – is imperative in a world made smaller by globalization and the internet"

But that's all to easy to write when you think about a year abroad in the abstract. I can speak quite passionately myself on this subject, just more in the context of my own experiences.

Clockwise from top left: Wenshu Temple in Chengdu, the Mutianyu stretch of the Great Wall, Pandas at Chengdu's Giant Panda Research Base, People's Park and the Leshan Giant Buddha

Clockwise from top left: Berlin Cathedral, the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and the Brandenburg Gate

I look on Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram, and I see photos from people doing their year abroad elsewhere – America, Holland, Australia, Spain… All kinds of places. We’ve travelled, explored, and laughed ourselves silly. We've overcome homesickness and language barriers and cultural differences; we've tried new things, and seen new places, and together, we've got enough photos and tickets and souvenirs to fill thousands of scrapbooks. 

The point I'm trying to make here is that we've had a year in which we've really truly lived, away from the constraints of the education system which for many, me included, is the only thing we've ever really known.

And that’s exactly what it’s all about really isn't it? There’re still so many places in this beautiful world that I want to go and see – I’m very well aware that I have barely even scratched the surface, especially after spending time with some much more seasoned travellers than I in China - but I’m still so thankful that I've had to chance to cover even the small - tiny, really - corner of the globe that I have. I dove into the deep end, feet first, and I don’t regret one single second. Not even the things that went completely tits up. 

Turning onto a different tangent completely: when I think about it, my Law degree has taught me a lot of things over the past 3 years, being completely honest, only a tiny portion of it has been about the laws of the land. The university experience is an education in and of itself, and the year abroad in particular is brilliant in terms of personal development. A year ago, right now, I was completely, gut-wrenchingly nervous. In fact, exactly one year ago as this post is published, I was in the air somewhere above the English Channel heading towards Orly Airport and the unknown – a flat I had never seen, a university I didn’t know, a city I had only ever visited for approximately 6-8 hours as a stop off on a school trip to Futuroscope. So yes – I was nervous, maybe more nervous that I have ever been in my life.

Having said that, I am now a firm believer that the unknown is (or at least, can be), a good thing. I said in one of my earliest posts that I was viewing the year as a confidence building exercise. It’s worked. I am a shy person by nature, but I’m now able to push that to one side and plough on through it. I picked myself up, lock, stock and barrel, and landed in the middle of a foreign capital city where the language isn't my own and where I could count the number of people I knew on one hand. Difficult situations have never fazed me, particularly, but they certainly won’t now. 

Going to China – a country where I couldn’t even pretend to speak the language, or read the characters and where I was really going to be on my own, with no one familiar around, was easy in comparison.

Me, being exceptionally fortunate, without exception. 

That said, I am the first to freely admit that this year hasn't been easy - you only have to read back through this blog and you could probably identify when I was feeling low and when I wasn't, and there were plenty of lows. It is tough, it is difficult, and sometimes I wished that I had never bothered to go away in the first place (these were most definitely half-hearted wishes – I wouldn't throw my year abroad away for anything).

One reason that most people go away – it was certainly an important reason for me – is to improve your language skills. The language gap was also the biggest hurdle I had to overcome.

Obviously, my French has improved considerably. I lacked confidence in my own language skills when I first got here – I just read back through my very first post from Paris, on 2nd September last year, and it was full of doubts. That’s definitely not a problem anymore – I know I can handle most of the demands of everyday life. I’m not, however, fluent, which is what I had wanted to be - and if you go on a year abroad expecting that to be the result, I’m here to tell you now that it’s unlikely, albeit a very worthy aim. (This is partly, I will admit, my fault, for hanging out far too much with other English people). I don’t think in French – ‘Franglish’ is a better description. When I first got home, if I were to say, bump into someone in Asda, my first reaction was to apologise in French. In China, my first reaction was actually French more than it was English (probably because a foreign language felt like the right response, even if it was the wrong foreign language). So, there's definitely been a touch of reverse culture shock. Language wise, though, I’d need to go back for a good few months yet before I could realistically achieve fluency.

Who knows? Maybe one day I will. I'd like to think so.

Left: Strasbourg, Right: Dijon

So - in addition to everything that was said in the New York Times, with all of which I am in complete agreement, I would say that the personal growth is a compelling reason all by itself to go on a year abroad.

This has been the fastest year of my life, and it's been a real journey, one which has helped me prove to myself and others what I'm really capable of. Let's face it; I’m a different person than I was a year ago, in [hopefully] all good ways. I've grown up; I'm more independent than ever, and the boundaries of my comfort zone have widened exponentially beyond what they used to be. The year abroad has opened my mind and I am personally of the opinion that it will continue to do so even after my year abroad is long in the past.

And one day in the future, I will tell my kids about this past year, and what I did and saw, and hopefully they’ll be similarly inspired and will go off and get to do something even more wonderful themselves. The cycle will start all over again – as it should. I am firmly of the opinion that you need to see and experience the world to be able to deal with it.

Last but not least, thanks to everyone who's been reading my blog, whether it was just the one post or each and every one. It's been nice to see the page views on my blog stats gradually creep up and know that people have followed my journey. 

That's it! At risk of sounding like a dodgy acceptance speech at the Oscars, I do need to say a massive thankyou my parents, my brother, my flatmate Parisa, and my two absolute best friends, Ashley and Akeelah, for carrying me through the last year. Couldn't have done it without you. Last but not least, thankyou Chengdu, thankyou Erasmus and most of all, thankyou, Paris, for a wonderful year abroad. 

It's been an absolute privilege. 

Signing off : Au revoir à tous.

Vicky xx

Quotes above may be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/10/17/should-more-americans-study-abroad/ (accessed 30/08/14)

Ich fahre nach Berlin - Part Two

If you read my blog regularly, you'll see that I've already posted about part of my trip to the Deutsch capital, Berlin (see 16/12). This post covers the second and final half of my trip.

You may have noticed from my first post that one of the most famous elements of Berlin - the Berlin Wall - was conspicuously absent in our whistlestop tour of all the sights. That's because we made sure to cover that on Saturday, my second day in Berlin, braving absolutely freezing wind and fog to do so (woe is me!)

We started off my taking the U-Bahn over to the site of the East Side Gallery. The East Side Gallery is a 1.3 km stretch of the Berlin Wall, which runs along the River Spree and which has been covered in graffiti art by various artists - apparently there are 105 paintings [or at least there were originally - a lot of the graffiti has itself been graffitied], all painted in 1990, the year after the wall finally fell, on its east side.

It's interesting to go and see - despite the fact that what's left of this part of the wall is covered in colourful and meaningful pieces of artwork, and is full of gaps through which you can see the river and everything on the other side, I still found the wall to be very imposing.

We all walk past walls every day and barely bat an eyelid at them or what is in the other side of them. But somehow, I think that the Berlin Wall seems a whole lot more solid than your everyday wall.

I suppose that part of that is knowing what it once represented; what it meant to the people of Berlin. But some of it, I think, is it's height and length, even considering it is much reduced from what it was. It was built to be imposing, after all, and to cause unease to the human psyche, and cause unease it does, by both it's physical presence and, now, also by it's reputation.

From the wall, we headed back into Central Berlin to see Checkpoint Charlie, which was the only official entry point between East and West, marking the entry into the American Sector.

It took us a good half an hour or so to get from the East Side Gallery to Checkpoint Charlie, which really started to give you an idea of the scale of the disruption caused by the wall. But what really put everything into perspective for me was going to see the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer - the Berlin Wall memorial.

This is a 60-metre (200 ft) section of the former border, including an old watch tower, and information about how there used to be a row of houses there, from which people tried to escape in the early days, before being forced to evacuate. The houses were later blown up. 

It was seeing this part of the wall - which felt a lot more real again than the section of the East Side Gallery - and reading about the effects of these evacuations and escape attempts, which really made me think about the wall. It only fell a few years before I was born, so not all that long ago really, and it's something I feel like I should make an effort to know a little more about, especially now having seen it for myself. 

After we'd finished at the memorial we called a halt to our strangely Cold War themed day and stopped off at the department store Ka De We (which reminded me very much of Harrods, and was exceptionally festive inside). We grabbed some dinner and then attempted to go the Christmas market at Alexanderplatz (I say attempted because it was actually closing when we rocked up, but there we go!).

The Christmas Section in Ka De We

Then on Sunday, we went for a meander around the flea market in Mauer Park before going back to Immy's flat to 'festify' it before some of her Erasmus friends came over, which lead to a lovely afternoon/evening of Christmas music, good food, conversation, and glühwein!

And with the end of my Berlin trip, that's basically my limit for cool year abroad stuff for 2013. We're already mid way through December. This week we've had a mini Christmas Dinner at our apartment with some friends, and in the next few days I am going HOME!! It feels like absolutely ages since I was there at the end of October for my 21st, so I absolutely cannot wait to see my family and to get in some Christmas traditions. 

On which note, this will be my last blog post for 2013. I'm pretty pleased with how things are going so far with my year abroad (and with my blog) and I hope to keep it up for 2014! 

So, I would like to wish everybody a Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année. I'll see you all again when I start posting again in the New Year!

A bientôt, Bis später!

Vicky xx

P.S. I feel the need to mention my flatmate, Parisa, here, because as I am writing this, she has just read Part One of my Berlin Blog and announced that she's very disappointed to see that she hasn't been mentioned, and did I not miss her at all? Yes, Parisa, I did :) I even instagrammed all my photos in your honour because I know how much it annoys you when I don't edit them! x

Ich fahre nach Berlin - Part One

So, have you guessed what my second exciting event is yet? The title of today's blog is not in my customary French, but in German, and that's because I visited my uni friend Immy in Berlin this weekend!

I was super excited about going to Berlin. Literally everyone I know who has been there before had told me that it's a really amazing city, and so I have wanted to go there for quite a long time. So what better chance than on my year abroad when a friend of mine happens to be doing her year abroad there?

I'm splitting this blog post into two parts because it's promising to be just as long and photo heavy as my Strasbourg post (see 8/12) which I almost made two parts itself, and that was just for a one day trip!  I arrived in Berlin late in Thursday night, and the air was absolutely thick with fog, which didn't bode very well weather wise, but thankfully we woke up on Friday morning to beautiful (if wintry) sunshine and crystal clear blue skies! 

We got up and got going nice and early to fit in as much as we could. Berlin was the European Capital of Culture in 1988 - for good reason - and it has advanced so much in that time so there was an absolute ton that I wanted to fit into three days! 

We started off by taking the U-Bahn to Alexanderplatz, which is a large public square practically in the middle of Berlin and close to pretty much everything, such as the Fernsehturm Berlin - a TV tower which at 368 metres is the tallest structure in all Germany, and was built by what was at the time, East Germany.

Walking away from Alexanderplatz, we passed Berlin Cathedral, on 'Museum Island'. It is pretty spectacular from the outside, and it seemed a shame not to explore a little more, so we decided to go inside and see what it was like.

For only €4 euros we got to explore most of the Cathedral - from the main section to the crypt, where lots of royalty are buried, and the large dome at the top, which was rebuilt after being bombed twice towards the end of World War Two - ...and wow, was it worth it! Berlin Cathedral is absolutely stunning inside - really, really beautiful. A bit like last weeks Strasbourg post, I shan't try to do it justice myself. As they say, a picture speaks a 1000 words.

Climbing up to the dome made me laugh, as it was the second cathedral I've climbed in a fortnight and anyone who's read my Strasbourg post will know how that turned out last time! Luckily, I didn't embarrass myself this time and made it to the top in one piece, which provided me with my first view over Berlin of the day [the second of which I'll come to later on...]

Once we were done at the Cathedral, we carried on meandering down the road, passing the Neue Wache (Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Victims of War and Tyranny) and Humboldt Univeristat, where Immy is studying this year (and whose building is also pretty spectacular, certainly in comparison to my own glass and chrome building back in Paris). Eventually we reached Berlin's famous landmark, the Brandenburg Gate. 

For those who don't know is a former city gate, a triumphal arch, and the site of a lot of famous by US Presidents during the time of the East/West German split and the Berlin Wall.

Then we grabbed a coffee each (everybody should know the the Christmas Orange Mochas from Starbucks are amazing!) before heading for the site of my second view over Berlin. 

The Reichstag building (history students will know that this is the one which famously caught fire in 1933) has a large glass dome at the top from which you can see most of Berlin, and which Immy booked for us and her friend Emma to go and see.

The dome has a giant ramp inside which takes you to the viewing platform at the top in a massive spiral and which, at certain points, automatically triggers a new commentary on the free audio guide that is available.

It explained a lot about what I was actually seeing of Berlin, and a little of it's history, which was interesting seeing as Berlin is absolutely rolling in it. 

After we finished in the dome (and we sure took our time, because there was a lot to look at) we headed to the German Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe which is just a few seconds away from the Brandenburg Gate.

The memorial basically consists of 2711 concrete blocks of varying heights, which is supposed to (and again, this is all thanks to Wikipedia which I freely admit may be leading me up the garden path):

"produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere... [and] represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason"

I personally found it a bit, well, random, and thought it looked a bit like a graveyard, but there we have it. Ours is not to question why.

After that we went back to Immy's flat to freshen up and grab some dinner, before we headed back out in the evening to meet with her friend Casey at Rosenthaler Platz. We walked from there to the Weinerei Forum, which was effectively a wine tasting bar.

Okay, so the photo isn't wonderful, but the inside of this bar was wonderfully quirky and, so I'm told, very 'Berlin'.

It's effectively a wine tasting bar. You pay €2 to get in and get a glass, and then you can try out and then drink as many of their different wines as you so choose, with helpful recommendations from the bar girl, before giving (at the end of the night) what you deem to be a fair price for the amount of wine that you've consumed while you're there.

Result: the most cost effective few glasses of wine I've had since hitting the continent back in September and a thoroughly enjoyable night out - and that was just Friday! There was a lot more to do in Berlin besides that which I have covered and I planned to do a lot more of that over the following two days...

On which note, the second part of this blog post (covering the said following two days) will be definitely go up by the end of the week, so keep an eye out for that, it will definitely be worth it! 

Until then, tschüss!

Vicky xx

À Strasbourg: le Christkindelsmärik

Hooray! A proper Erasmus post! This is going to be very long and very photo heavy - I've been on an instagramming spree! I mentioned in my last November post that I had some really exciting and Christmassy things coming up. Well, now it's December and I'm allowed to feel festive (according to my little brother who has apparently decided he is the authority on such things) - and this is the first of those Christmassy things!

Ever since I decided to come to France on my year abroad, ever since I found out that I'd be spending this year in Paris, ever since the beginning, I have wanted to go to Strasbourg for the Christmas markets - there are several - or as they say in Alsatian,, the Christkindelsmärik. 

Strasbourg, for those who don't know, is a city in the east of France, practically sat right on top of the border with Germany (and it has actually been German at certain points in its history). For that reason, it's quite different to a lot of French towns. It is France's little piece of Germany - the architecture is quite German, and scattered throughout the city there are little hints of each culture, such as the French/Alsatian road signs [Alsatian being a German dialect of sorts] It's an interesting blend!

The Dual-Language Road Signs found all over Strasbourg

Anyway - a couple of weeks ago I finally acted on this plan and booked my ticket. Then, yesterday morning, I hopped on the metro over to Paris Est and thanks to the TGV, I was in Strasbourg nice and early to spend the day there :)

Now, it would be a shame to go all the way to Strasbourg to do the Christmas Market and not to look at anything else in the city, so I was actually armed with a list of places to visit, and a route of sorts to take in my meanderings. I only had 7 hours or so, and I meant to make the most of them! 

So on leaving the Gare de Strasbourg, I didn't barrel straight for the market but headed off towards Barrage Vauban. It's a 17th century on the river Ill. That and the Ponts Couverts, where I headed next, make for some great views, and kind of act as a gateway into the city centre; a pretty entrance into La Petite France.

Barrage Vauban

The Ponts Couverts

The centre of Strasbourg itself is actually an island, the Grand Île, and in 1988 it was granted UNESCO World Heritage Status [according to Wikipedia, this was the first time it was conferred on an entire city centre]. I can totally understand why it got this status having wondered around La Petite France, where I went next.

This part of Strasbourg is so pretty. It is also known as Gerberviertel - the tanner's district - and all the buildings are very Alsatian and very medievalesque - I have no idea when they actually date from.

It was gorgeous, and after the past few stressful weeks I've had in Paris, really lovely to be able to meander around winding streets and just dip in and out of little shops and the various markets [they're literally scattered all over the city] as I felt like it.

By this point I was basically at the Cathedral, which is interesting both on its own and as the host to part of the city's Christmas Market. The Cathedral itself is something very like what I have come to expect from French cathedrals - at least, to those I have seen, which admittedly, it very few - with it's very gothic architecture, although it's kind of a rose colour, which is a little bit different.

I'm told it has a quite interesting Astronomical Clock, which puts on a performance every day around half twelve. I was in the the Place de la Cathédrale at the time, but I walked around several times and didn't actually spot it. I have a feeling that this is probably just another example of my not paying enough attention to my surroundings, for which I am sadly well-known by my friends.

Strasbourg Cathedral. 

Then, seeing a sign, in my wisdom, I paid the €2.50 to climb to the top of its spire. There's something like 322 steps to climb, which didn't seem like alllllll that many when I was stood at the bottom but seemed like a very different story half way to the top! 

The steps were very steep and in a spiral all the way to the top [unsurprisingly], and I had to stop several times up the tower huffing and puffing [only to be asked, quite embarrassingly, several times if I was okay by the 50-something year old French woman following behind, who was clearly convinced that I was about to drop dead of an asthma attack and that she had better not overtake me in case I needed resuscitation. Or something]

Although in my defence, I wikipedia'd the cathedral tonight when I was writing this blog, and I am quoting this directly from that webpage:

“At 142 metres (466 feet), it was the world's tallest building from 1647 to 1874 (227 years), when it was surpassed by St. Nikolai's Church, Hamburg. Today it is the sixth-tallest church in the world and the highest still-standing structure built entirely in the Middle Ages.”

So please don't judge me too badly!

On the plus side, the view was totally worth it. On a clear day, you're supposed to be able to see all the way to the Black Forest in the East, and the Vosges Mountain Range in the West, which despite the clouds, I could definitely make out in the distance.

When I eventually got my breath back enough to go back to the bottom [I swear, I'm really not as unfit as it sounds!] I went inside. I'd try to describe it, but I'm not sure that any words I could come up with would do it justice, so I'll let you see for yourselves.

Now [finally] we come to the Christmas Market! It was founded in 1570, which makes it one of the oldest Christmas Markets in Europe, and it's a good one!

The main thing that you notice about this Christmas Market, which I have never picked up on anywhere else [and this is also on its Wikipedia page, funnily enough] is that the streets smell heavenly, of Vin Chaud and spices. It's enough to get anyone's taste buds drooling, so it's no surprise that I sampled some of the Mulled Wine. I also got my hands on some marron chauds [chestnuts] which I have been craving ever since I spotted them at the Paris Christmas market, and a gaufre au chocolat [waffle]. My family will inevitably read this and point out that yet again I am talking about food, but I don't care. I'd like to see them do any different!

Other than the copious amounts of food on offer, there was a complete range of things, from beautiful hand made wooden dolls, to Christmas decorations, hand painted candlesticks and many many candles, models, Christmas decorations and so so much more that I'd never be able to cover it all in one post. 

One thing I did notice, though, was the lack of any music whatsoever - Christmas or otherwise. To me, a Christmas Market needs carols, which granted, are quite an English thing, but there was no music at all that I noticed, not even French music. I had to walk around humming to myself to fill the gap it left, like a slightly deranged person!

Back on track: finally, I ended up at another Christmas Market on Place Kléber, which is also home to Strasbourg's MASSIVE Christmas Tree. I got photos of it both before and after the sunset, and it definitely made an impression at night, when all the lights could properly be seen.

So that's pretty much that! I was going to walk up to see a few other things in Strasbourg, like the European Parliament, and the Jardin Des Deux Rives, which is basically the last stop before you cross the border from France into Germany, but I was having such a nice time meandering around the markets that I didn't bother. As it is, I have like a trillion more photos, and a trillion more things to say, but this blog post is long enough without adding all that in! Strasbourg is a beautiful city and I see myself going back there one day, not least for the fact that my mum has her name written all over it! I'm very jealous of all you Erasmus people who get to live there :)

I've got something else really exciting coming up next weekend as well, which I will also make sure to post about afterwards and which is also likely to be pretty long and photo heavy - so please keep an eye out for that! It's something I've wanted to do for a long time...

Hope everyone is having a lovely December,

Vicky xx