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 recette...

So there's not much going on at the moment, and I don't like to leave many-month-long gaps between blog posts (which drives me barmy). So as a little filler, I thought I'd share an easy recipe which has become extremely popular in the Goodsell-Fard residence as of late, since I got it into my head that living in Paris, I needed to try my hand at some French Cuisine. I've tried out Coq au Vin, and this little gem - 

Baked Camembert - very yummy, very French :)

And it's so, so easy! Literally, all you need to do is buy a Camembert - take the lid off and unwrap the cheese and then put it back in its little wooden box.

Use a knife to pierce a few holes on the top of the cheese and then stuff a few garlic cloves in. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle over a few herbs (I use Bouquet Garni or Herbes de Provence) and then shove it in the oven at 200 degrees (Celsius) for ten minutes until the cheese is all molten and runny inside.

Take it out the oven, and enjoy :) we dip warm baguette into it and it's delish. It's also pretty much the only way I'll eat Camembert - most French cheeses aren't to my taste, so it's also the cheat's way out haha. 

As I said - not much of a post today but I'll be back up and running again soon I'm sure!

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

Cartier: Le Style et L'Histoire

So what's new?

This week my flatmate Parisa and I headed over to the Grand Palais, and after a nice chat in the queue with a travelling American, headed into this lovely building to meander around the Cartier Exhibition for a few hours. 

It's an exhibition which, fairly obviously, if you look at the picture above, told the story of the style and history of this great jewellery house, which was once described by King Edward VII as

"the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers."

And you can see why.

Every exhibit was fascinating in it's own right, and even as you had to admire each item for the look and the workmanship, it was fascinating to learn a little bit more about the background behind each piece, which when put together, could almost tell the story of world history for more than one hundred years. As Maria Doulton put it, much better than I even could, in her review of the exhibition [see here]... 

"While clothes may decay and photographs fade, the bright colours and box-fresh excitement of jewels always best capture the zeitgeist and aspirations of an age."

So, for instance, the Amethyst and Turquoise necklace below belonged to the renowned Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor...

And then of course, there is the jewellery of the late, great, and stunningly beautiful Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco. 

Essentially, it was a really well put-together exhibition, which I really enjoyed looking around and which let me kill and afternoon doing something interesting and productive, rather than sitting around at home glued to my laptop. If you're in Paris, it's definitely worth going to see. It's not expensive, and it will be on until the 16th February.

Not the most eloquent of reviews, I grant you, but praise is praise. And as they say, a picture speaks 1000 words - I've got 5 of 'em in here. You can also check out my instagram - my username is the same as for my twitter account, the rather imaginative @9victoriag

Til 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

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