La Fin des Examens!

Hurray! My exams are over and I can get back to normal life once more. January is not even over yet and I can safely say that it has been the longest, most stressful and most tedious month of my entire year abroad so far. Revising for exams in another language is hard. And I am extremely thankful that the way my exam timetable panned out means that I have this week off because I am also exhausted. The Christmas holidays were not all that long ago, really, but any rest and rejuvenation I brought back with me from that fortnight at home has, without a doubt, long since been destroyed. 

Next week, my second semester modules will start, along with two from last semester that, rather to my dismay, I have to carry on with, and I am planning to learn a lesson or two from the misery that has been revising for these exams to make sure that in the summer I am markedly less miserable!

Luckily, just a few hours after the end of my last exam, my mum and my brother arrived in Paris to stay with me for the weekend. My younger brother, Sam, has never been to Paris before, so we did a lot of the old tourist favourites, which are definitely more exciting to re-visit when you're with someone for whom it's all new and exciting.

I would make exhibit A the Eiffel Tower, but for one thing, our trip there on Saturday was actually the first time I've made it to Paris' most famous landmark since I moved here almost 5 months ago, and for another thing, I've not actually been here in any case since a Year 9 school trip, 7 years or so ago. We didn't go up - Sam will be back in Paris in March on a college trip, and he will go up then. I'll go up again when my mum, aunt and grandma make a Paris stopover in May. 

 

Of course, the main reason we hopped over to the Eiffel Tower in the first place is because my Mum has always said that Paris is a place that ought to be explored by river, and so she'd booked us on a short river cruise which took us up past Place de la Concorde, the Louvre and Notre Dame, effectively covering all the major sites - and she was right, Paris does look a lot different by water, so it is definitely worth doing if at all possible.

 

 

And - bonus - we got given a lovely hot crêpe all smothered in Nutella to eat on the way around.

 

What followed this was an awful lot of walking. Sam wanted to see a lot of stuff while he was here, and so what we ended up doing was getting the metro to Charles de Gaulle - Étoile, which is immediately in front of the Arc de Triomphe.

 

So we went over to the Arc, did that, walked all the way down the Champs-Élysées, through Place de la Concorde and the Jardin des Tuileries and up to the Louvre - again, we didn't go in because Sam will when he comes over on his college trip, but we did however spend an inordinate amount of time trying to take photos like this one...

 

 

Anyway - once we'd done that, we walked from the Louvre, along the Seine, crossed over the Pont des Arts [the bridge which is covered all over in padlocks], and then walked down towards l'île de la cite, where we grabbed some lunch and went into Notre Dame Cathedral.

 

Mum wanted to see Galeries Lafayette, so we took the metro there next and went to the rooftop viewing terrace, before deciding that the last stop on our list should be Montmartre, because I wanted to see the Sacré-Cœur again, and because Mum wanted to see Moulin Rouge.

 

 

We actually got really lucky with the Sacré-Cœur, because we managed to time our entrance perfectly with the nuns coming out to sing. I'm completely unknowledgeable about these things, and I have no idea what they were singing, but it sounded beautiful and was very peaceful to listen to.. oh, and also, the view from the top of the hill was gorgeous :)

 

And here's the Moulin Rouge...

 

Not much else to say about that really.

 

We added it all up, anyway, and we reckon that we managed to walk about 16.6km which (I think?) is about 10 miles, so it's really not surprising that I woke up yesterday morning with muscles stiffer than a board!

We had to think about their train on Sunday, so we only did the Catacombs (third time lucky!!!) as opposed to a completely full day like Saturday was.

And I thought it was so worth it.

'Stop! Here is the empire of the dead'

 

It was really quite creepy seeing all the bones piled up - it is the largest necropolis in the world, apparently, and they reckon the remains of more than 6 million Parisians are down there, including several notable people such as Robespierre.

 

With the audio guide, you actually find out quite about about Paris' history. For instance, it was created because a local cemetery, which had been in use nearly 10 centuries was a major health risk - the milk in nearby houses would go off in less than a day (which really gives me such an unpleasant image of what the smell must have been like)!

 

So that was my weekend! I finally got to the Catacombs, I did a lot of walking and exploring, and thanks to Mum, my fridge is now well stocked up with Cheddar Cheese and other British essentials! ;)

 

I'm going to use this week off mainly to sleep and catch up on some well deserved (in my opinion) chillin', but it would be a waste for me not to use the time to go out and do a little more exploring, so at the very least I will be going to the Cartier exhibition at the Grand Palais!

 

Vicky xx

Les stéréotypes parisiens

As I mentioned would be the case in my first blog post of the year, I've not been getting anything in the way of fun stuff so far in 2014, because sadly for me, and everyone else in my situation, January is exam month. 

I've done two of my five exams now, and the light is at the end of the tunnel. Still - I don't like to leave my blog abandoned for weeks on end if I can help it, and so in the odd hour I don't spend revising, I've been racking my brains trying to think of something that I could post with.

Then I was out and about last week, and doing a little bit of people watching, and the idea came to me. I've now been in Paris for 4 and a half months or so, which I think means that I should be able to cover it pretty well, as I don't feel like I'm a starry eyed tourist anymore. So - how does Paris (and it's citizens) match up to it's stereotype?

When I was home for Christmas, and people kept asking me how things were going out in Paris, it became fairly clear that most people - not all, but quite a few - clearly had the following image in the minds when they envisaged my life here. 'All Parisians walk around dressed oh-so-chic, with baguettes tucked under their arm and a wine bottle tucked under the other. They drink coffee for hours, and there's a man with an accordion on every street corner playing the romantic french music you hear in the movies. That's when they're not being brusque and rude.'

Source: Google Images / www.languagetrainers.com/blog/

That's the image. It's probably an image which those people would extend to many French towns and cities, not just Paris - and of course, whilst not a completely authentic view, it has to be said that most (and here I mean most, not all, because I'm sure we can all think of several unpleasant stereotypes which are the exception) stereotypes have a foundation, however small, in fact. Still - the fact is that they are still stereotypes and still don't universally apply.

For instance, take Paris Chic. A few months ago, when my flatmate Parisa and I went on an epically long walk around the city looking for an H&M which turned out to be just 15 minutes or so away (and that is the short version of that story), we came to this conclusion, although I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with this - Paris chic is a myth, everywhere except the super posh St Germain.  Most people dress just the same as you and me. This isn't completely true, sure,  because you'll always see that occasional man/woman walking around looking like they're something straight out of French Vogue - but we decided it came pretty close to it.

Baguettes. Okay, this isn't far from true. You never have to search very hard for a patisserie or a boulangerie in Paris, and it's not uncommon to see people going home from work on the metro with a baguette tucked away in their bags. Wine? Not so much. I don't see people swigging wine here any more than I do at home.

As for the man with the accordion - they're not everywhere, but I am happy to report that they do crop up every now and then, usually hopping onto the metro and playing a tune or two for a couple of stops before walking up and down the carriage with a cup for people to drop change into. Not really the romantic image you get in films, but there we go.

I took this photo back in November - and it's not the only time
 we've been treated to Metro music!

'Parisians are rude.' Okay this is both true and untrue. True in that they can be very brusque and impatient - I've had quite a few experiences of some very rude behaviour since I have been out here, as have a lot of people I know. On the flip side, I can't help but feel like the french language is a inherently geared up towards good manners, of a kind. Why else do they have the informal tu and the formal vous? I'm also taking into account the fact that everyone seems to greet everyone else in this city. I've noticed this most particularly in the lift of my apartment building, where you can be saying Bonjour and Au Revoir like a parrot if you're not careful. By contrast, I'm firmly of the opinion that if you tried chatting to strangers in a lift at home, you'd probably get nothing more than a weird look. 

What else, then? Well it seems like 99.999999% of the French Population smoke. I have no idea what the true statistic is, although I'd be interested to find out. The Assas building of my university is set back a little way from the road with a small courtyard in front of it, and I am literally on the point of buying an oxygen mask of some kind in order to make that 5 metre or so trip from the pavement to the front door, because it's always crowded and the air is absolutely thick with smoke. I don't know whether smoking is really a french stereotype - I would say probably not - but it's an observation nonetheless.

A stereotype that you do hear all the time, and not just about french people but about Europeans in general is that none of the women shave. I'm including this because it is a pretty big stereotype - but I also don't go around staring at people's legs or armpits - so I'm not in a position to comment. 

The next two are absolutely classic stereotypes. The first is poodles. On this, I will say that all Parisian dog owners have small dogs. I'm almost able to state that as a categorical fact. I have not, however, seen any poodles. The second is stripy shirts = I do see a lot of these but there's a back story of sorts to that, in that on my very first night here, my Mum and I were people watching while eating out, and it came up in conversation. Since then, I think I've been consciously looking for them, so I think I probably just notice them more than I usually would have!

My final observation - Paris is a beautiful city - but it also smells really bad. The Metro is the worst offender for awful smells, particularly in comparison to the Tube in London which smells like a summer breeze in comparison. And if anyone reading this has ever had to go to the Metro Stop on Line 5, Place d'Italie, they will know exactly what I'm talking about!

Last but not least, I couldn't write a post on French Stereotypes without including this skit from Blackadder


Tehe. Until next time -

Vicky xx

Bienvenue, 2014!

Bonne année, tous le monde! It's now 2014, and yesterday I caught the Eurostar back to Paris after a lovely, lovely Christmas at home with my family, filled with presents and turkey and lots of wine and Mount Gay Rum. 

I actually found it a lot harder to go back than I did to move out here in the first place, perhaps because moving out here I was anticipating everything and now, to go back, I have a much better idea of what I'm heading towards.

Still, I can't spend to much time brooding because this month is exam month, boooo. That's actually been an adjustment of sorts of itself, because I've not had any January exams since I left college nearly 3 years ago. I didn't manage to get much work done over Christmas, and what I did manage wasn't very effective - so I've got a lot of knuckling down to do for the first few weeks of January. 

On the plus side, I will have a week off when they finish before my new courses - still to be decided upon - start, so that will be good and will give me a chance to regroup and do a little exploring around Paris, which I've not had a chance to do properly in quite a while.

This blog post is really just a bit of nothingness to gradually get back into the swing of things, but normal service will be resumed within the next few weeks once I get out and about. Plus, next month one of my absolute best friends in the world is coming out to visit me; I've got loads of ideas of things I would like to see and do in the next six months, and then there is my 'things to do' list to see about completing, or getting close to completing... so once things get going again I'll have loads of stuff to blog about in  2014!

Until then, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas too, and Happy New Year :)

Vicky xx