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)

Un weekend des châteaux: #1 - Le Palais de Versailles

On Saturday, I finally made it to Versailles, with a week to spare!

Well, it sounds like I was cutting it close, but I've honestly been 'saving up' Versailles if you like, mainly because I thought that it would be better to go and see it in the summer when its beautiful gardens should be at their best, but also because I realised, upon doing some idle googling one day, that the light show happens on Saturdays, starting from yesterday, and yesterday being my very last Saturday in Paris, (I know! *sob*), it was the only day that I could do it.

Me and my friend Anne-Marie headed over to the RER station at Musée d'Orsay earlyish on Saturday morning - but if you're going there, note that you can get there on the same ticket and a lot lot quicker if you get the train from Montparnasse to Versailles-Chantier, which we realised on the way back. The walk from the station to the château is a bit longer but it's worth it.

The Versailles website suggests that on the busiest days you start off on the Gardens and make your way into the Château itself later in the day to avoid the worst of the people traffic, and so that's what we did. 

The gardens themselves are very beautiful, and I think that holding off on a visit until summer paid off very nicely. The flowers were in bloom, the fountains were running, and people were out boating on the Grand Canal, and it gave me a very nice holiday feeling, thankyou very much, as opposed to feeling like I was on 'just' a day trip.

It was also sweltering hot - there was not a cloud in the sky until well after 19:00 and all in all I really think the gardens were at their best. 

A (rather pricey) chocolate ice cream later, and we walked leisurely up the Grand Canal towards the Grand and Petit Trianons, and Marie-Antoinette's hamlet. 

This is where you start to understand why the citizens of France started to get a bit disgruntled with their esteemed Royal Family and start a wee revolt. The Grand Trianon was apparently built so that the King could have a little privacy with which to conduct a love affair. 

An excellent use of the peoples taxes, no?

Anyway, the gardens of the Grand Trianon, again, were what struck me the most, and me and Anne-Marie spent ages taking pictures of them.

Marie-Antoinette's hamlet was something else that made me laugh. Of course the woman who supposedly declared, "let them eat cake!" would play pretend and be 'normal' by ordering an entire mini village to be built in her back garden!

It was very lovely though. I could have spent a couple of hours there alone, meandering around and enjoying the sunshine.

After this, we were getting quite hungry, so we stopped off at a restaurant, whose name currently escapes me, for something to eat. Considering we were sitting in the middle of one of the biggest tourist-traps in the whole of Île de France and beyond, the prices were fairly reasonable - €11 or so for a pizza, €8 for a ham omelette with a salad and bread. The ony thing that was noticeably extortionate was the coke. A medium sized one cost Anne-Marie something on the region of €5.60!

Anyway, hunger satisfied we made our way into the château itself. Truly, you can see why Versailles earned the reputation it did. It is dripping in splendor, nearly everything covered in marble and gold leaf and so on. 

Most famous of all, and for good reason, is the Hall of Mirrors, a long gallery adorned with several mirrors (duh), chandeliers and large windows which make the room bright as anything and very very beautiful. 

If I had one complaint to make about the château, it would be this.

Overcrowding.

The amount of people filtering through the Grands Appartements was, at times, slightly alarming. There were people every which way, the temperature in the room was climbing steadily, there wasn't much in the way of seating for those - I'm thinking here of the elderly and not the lazy - who needed it, and at times it was hard to see any of the room in which we were standing for the throng of bodies. It made it quite hard to appreciate what we were seeing. And this was late in the day when there was supposedly 'less' people traffic.

They need to, in my opinion, introduce a system rather like that which they have running at Buckingham Palace in London, where you pay for a ticket which can only be used within a  certain timeframe, thus staggering out the number of visitors. I understand the need to make money from opening the palace up to the public, I do, but Versailles obviously makes so money in a year that I really wouldn't be all that concerned if I limited the number of people who could go through at once. The gardens are more than big enough and nice enough to keep people entertained in the meantime. 

Anyway, my whinging over and done with, I can carry on to the Royal Serenade, which we also paid to see (largely, I admit, to fill the gap in between the closure of the château and it's gardens and the light show in the evening).

Basically, it consisted of a company of actors in period dress, putting on three mini performances throughout the grand apartments.

First, an opera singer and period instrumentalist - I'm completely ignorant about these things, but if I had to guess, I would say it was a lute or something similar.

Second - and my favourite segment, was a display, set to music, of the rituel d'habillage, or the ritual in which courtiers of the day would dress their King and Queen.

And last, a man playing some kind of instrument that reminded me a lot of bagpipes, but which was actually something else.

Anyway, after this an hour wait in the sunshine saw the gardens being reopened for the evening show. Wandering around the gardens, all of the fountains had been turned on. Some were playing to music, some had strobe lights and dry ice, and some put on seven minute 'displays' which were pretty awesome to watch.

The sunset was spectacular, and right before the sun dipped totally below the horizon, the sky was a bright crimson, which reflected in the Grand Canal made a real sight to behold.

And then, the pinnacle of the night - the fireworks. This was what we'd all been waiting for, really, and it didn't disappoint. I would add pictures, but my phone had died by this point and they're all on my camera (and I currently have no laptop to transfer them to, as I sent it back to the UK with my dad for some much needed repairs).

All told, it was a very nice, if very exhausting day, and I'm glad I managed to cross it off my bucket list. It wasn't the only château I went to this weekend - I visited Fontainebleau on Sunday, but I'll post about that separately. 

Speaking of, today is Monday and I leave this week (!!!!!) so I only have 4 more full days to explore. 

Time flies -

Vicky xx

Le tennis: Roland Garros!

Anybody been following the French Open? Of course you have, it's the last major before the quintessentially British Wimbledon begins later this month.

Of course, rather conveniently, the French Open happens to be held in Paris. And seeing as I live here...

I love being on my @thirdyearabroad casually just bought tickets for the French Open :) #rolandgarros #excited
— Victoria Goodsell (@9victoriag) March 13, 2014

HOW exciting?

In the light of the exams we've been ploughing through, me and Parisa have been really looking forward to this for a while. We only had a ticket for court one and the other annexed courts, because a) the tickets were quite pricey, and b) they had 'sold out', so we were quite irritated to see on the big screens that there were loads of empty seats in the bigger courts. Still, never mind.

On Sunday morning, we got there quite early expecting it to take ages for us to get through the gate, but it was actually super easy. The gate opened at 10, and we were inside by 10:06, which made things nice and easy. We wandered around exploring for a bit, and had a go in the free photo booth...

We literally only had two seconds to make each face, and I think I panicked a bit, leading to the really stupid expression in the bottom right picture *blush*, but it was a laugh. 

Anyway, by the time we'd finished, it was nearly time for some tennis. We basically situated ourselves in Court One for most of the day, where there were a lot of doubles matches going on - women's, men's and mixed.

The first match was an absolute walkover, two sets played and won (6-0, 6-2) in an hour flat, but then I've also since realised that the winners are seeded first in the women's doubles, so perhaps that's less surprising than it seemed at the time.

After this, Parisa was starting to get a bit hungry, so we went exploring for food. I bought a gaufre for €5, which I didn't think was too bad considering, but I attempted (and later failed) to resist getting a packet of crisps to keep me going. €2.50 for a packet of some thin, fried bits of potatoes is enough to make anybody wince.

Parisa wanted to finish her hot dog, so we hung around outside to see the outcome of Andy Murray's mammoth 5 set match, which had carried on over from the day before. We got our picture taken, and I got accosted by a woman with a TV camera, and when asked about who I thought was likely to win in the match between Djokovic and Tsonga, made some completely inane remark along the lines of, "Djokovic, because he's Djokovic, he always wins!" and sounded like a complete chump in the process.

Which is pretty embarassing, but I was kind of put on the spot. 

And in all fairness, I was right. *smug face*

Back to the tennis, though. What we'd really been waiting for were the matches featuring french players. A few people we know were there earlier in the week (in the pouring rain, sadly for them. We were really lucky and had perfect weather all day), and they said that the best atmosphere was when the french players came on, for what I think are really obvious reasons.

The first match was les français contre les français, but it only lasted ten minutes before one side had to retire. The second match was two french against a mixed nationality team, but they lost 6-3, 6-4. 

So that was that! It was a really good day, and although I felt a tiny bit guilty for not revising, you only do your year abroad once and I wasn't going to miss out on this! :)

I have three more exams to go, but two of them are this week and there's a long gap after that before the next one, which, fingers crossed, should allow me to revise and do some other stuff at the same time. I've still got a lot of stuff to do before I leave - but just 26 days to do it in!

As they say, profitez-en!

Vicky xx 

Une vie tranquille...

My blog has been more silent than I'd like it to be of late, and the absence of much to post can well and truly be blamed on the fact that my classes are well and truly underway and I'm pretty sure I already have more on my plate than I did at this point last semester - November wasn't the most exciting of blog months, either.

That being said, I think I have finally reached a turning point because despite the increased workload, I'm feeling remarkably positive and calm(ish) about everything. At the very least, as I said to my friend the other day, I now feel like I'm treading water rather than drowning in it. So that's definitely a positive!

It's also getting to the point in the year now - I've been in Paris for 6 and a half months, which quite frankly I find unbelievable - where I am starting to look ahead to my return to London and the final year (finally) of my degree, thinking about what modules to take, where I'll be living and so on. It's quite exciting actually :) 

Life's not been all work and no play though and the reason for that can be summed up like this:

The weather has been beautiful! Which makes for a very happy Victoria. Everything seems better when the sun is out - cliche but true. Just walking to and from Uni is a pleasurable part of my day. Paris is a beautiful place at the best of times, but never more so that when the weather is good. 

We took advantage of that last weekend and had a 'barbecue' of sorts - my flatmate Parisa got up really early and went trekking halfway across Paris looking for an actual barbecue but there was none to be found [which is really bizarre to a Brit like me who not only completely agrees with the below statement but is also perfectly willing to have a barbecue whether the weather is sunny or not]:

Buying 10 cases of Pimm's the second the temperature nudges 12°C
— VeryBritishProblems (@SoVeryBritish) March 8, 2014

So we just trashed our kitchen cooking everything instead and then ate out on the balcony. (and when I say trashed, I mean it. Took ages to clean up!)

So I spent the day sunbathing, stuffing my face, and watching England beat Wales in the Rugby [hooray!!]

That's all for now but tonight I'm going to the cinema with Parisa to see The Monuments Men, and I mean to use the next week or so to get on top of my workload so that I can start taking advantage of the beautiful weather and so a little more exploring!

Til then - 

Vicky xx

Une visite: ma meilleure amie est ici!

The weekend just gone was one of the loveliest weekends of the year so far, because my best friend from Uni back in London, Akeelah, came out to spend the weekend with me. It was so good to see her - for the first time since she turned up at my house to surprise me for my 21st birthday back in October, and although we FaceTime quite a lot, there's nothing that can quite match the pleasure of catching up with your bestie over a cup of tea and a biscuit. 

She managed to catch a really early train on Friday morning, so we were able to spend most of Friday, all of Saturday, and most of Sunday together. Friday was a repeat of your average tourist activities, really. We headed to a Cafe near the Pantheon for a crepe, before doing the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Louvre, and the Champs-Elysees.

Then we spent the evening back at my apartment, literally just catching up, eating baguettes and Coq au Vin, which is a meal I've made twice now and I think it's going to become my french specialty - because really, I feel like I should be able to cook something native to my temporarily adopted home country.

Saturday, for me, was exciting because we headed to a part of Paris that I've not actually done yet, which is the Canal Saint Martin in North-eastern Paris, and which anybody who's seen the film Amélie really ought to recognise.

It's very scenic, and it just screams 'Classic Paris' with lots of pretty arched pedestrian footbridges, locks and cobbled walkways. Saturday was not exactly the sunniest of days - which was a shame, because we've had a lot of beautiful sunshine here lately - but I can just imagine that the Canal would be a brilliant place to go in the summer for pedestrians and roller skaters; tourists and Parisian's alike. I'll be making plans to go back there once Spring/Summer kicks in. 

After that, we headed to Galeries Lafayette, which I've now done numerous times, but which I particularly enjoyed this time because it had Akeelah's name written all over it, and as I predicted, she was enthusing that whole way around that 'this place sh*ts on Harrods'. 

And of course, we went up to the roof, which has resulted in yet another 'I'm-standing-on-the-roof-looking-at-a-view-of-Paris-but-this-time-it's-in-black-and-white' photo. 

Tadah. 

Sunday; we did Montmartre. I was only there a couple of weeks ago, with my Mum and brother, but this time we went in the daylight, and the sun had finally deigned to make an appearance, which really put a whole new spin on the place.

We took the obligatory photos of the view; had a proper walk around and look inside the Sacre-Coeur itself, and went behind to find the pretty cobbled streets full of Portrait-drawers and little shops crammed wall to wall with beautiful canvas paintings that I wish I could buy and take home with me

Then we went back to Au P'tit Grec [which I mentioned back in November as being a brilliant place for a gallette or, as I have since found out, crepes], and Akeelah headed back to London. Sad times! :(

I've not, in my earlier posts, made a secret of the fact that I prefer London to Paris as a city.

Spurred on, no doubt, by a touch of homesickness, the French Capital, probably rather unfairly, paled in comparison (in my eyes at least) to the city where I've spent my university life so far. 

Without a doubt, I still prefer London - there's just something about it that speaks to me. The reasons for that could probably make up a whole blog post on their own, so I won't go into them now. But this weekend, I really realised for the first time what a beautiful city I am lucky enough to be living in.

Why I'm realising this only now, I don't know. I've been living here for nearly six months now, and while I've always admired Paris - there's a reason it is one of the most visited cities in the world, after all - I think I've still been looking at it as if I were a tourist, going to sights because, well, that's what you do when you visit.

I'm going to put it down, I think, to a well phrased question from Akeelah, who asked me after a comment I made in passing, to describe the difference between living in London and living in Paris. Not the differences between the two cities, the differences between living in them. 

Forcing myself to become less detached and think more like a citizen, I tried to come up with a decent response to her question. After babbling for a few minutes and undeniably not making much sense, I finished, rather lamely, by saying 'it's difficult to explain unless you've lived it yourself'.

No, it's not the most eloquent of responses, but it's a true one - and one I would bring up in recommending a year abroad to anyone (which I absolutely do!) To understand the world around you; to experience the differences between regions; countries and continents, sometimes visiting isn't enough. 

Sometimes, you just have to live it.

And this weekend, looking out over Paris from the sun drenched hills of Montmartre; wandering the cobbled streets near the Sacre Coeur, and crossing the pretty iron bridges of Saint-Martin - taking in all those things with the mindset I have just attempted, rather poorly, to explain, as opposed to the attitude I've taken so far - Paris finally captured a little piece of my heart.

And with that little nugget of sentimentality, I'll sign off. Until next time...

Vicky xx

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

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