DONE!!!!!!

having finished A WHOLE lot of writing, i don't feel like posting anything now though i have many things i'm thinking of. yup. i'm done. wow. this was all so unreal.

A Dedication

So I don’t think people dedicate blogs in the same way that they dedicate books, but if that were the case, here is my dedication:

“To Mrs. Greenberg, the first person who tried (and failed) to make me less loquacious, and also the person who taught me that word.”

What made me think of this? And some of my constant readers (hi Grandma, mom, dad, Marianne, Alyssa & Sarah--hi!) may be asking, who is this Mrs. Greenberg anyway?

To answer the second question first, Mrs. Greenberg was my fourth grade teacher. You know how some people have those stupid posters that say “Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten”? (I’ve noticed these posters are especially popular with kindergarten teachers.) Well in all seriousness, for the second summer in a row, it has occurred to me that everything I need to know I learned in fourth grade. In Mrs. Greenberg’s class we had a loooot of homework. I hated it at the time, but I am convinced that I must have developed some sort of work ethic there. (I procrastinated a lot, and things haven’t really changed.) We had a list of spelling words each week. Monday night we had to alphabetize them, Tuesday night we had to write a sentence using each word, Wednesday night we had to write a short story using all of them, and Thursday night we had to study for our spelling quiz on Friday. Thursday night was easy since I was a super-duper-speller. (As several of my readers have pointed out (Amy/Dad) my spelling/general homonym use in this blog has taken a serious turn for the worse. The same thing happened when I was in Paris last summer; French immersion renders me unable to spell English words correctly.) So anyway, I got really really good at alphabetizing. When I spent all of last summer filing alphabetically endless documents/manuscripts/contracts at my two lit agency internships, I remember thinking that I could have completed these jobs--that I needed a personal recommendation and the Harvard name to get—just as well upon my completion of 4^th grade. But such is the stupid life of an unpaid/minimally paid intern, and that is a separate rant for a separate time.

So as any reader of this blog can tell, I am more than a little wordy. Part of the reason I hold Hemingway in such esteem is because he can do something with words I’ll never be able to do, that is, mainly, use less of them. My work this summer, however, for Let’s Go has been a constant exercise in conciseness. I must summarize every meal I eat, every museum I visit, every post office I encounter in 30 words or less.

“30 words or less” is the phrase that popped into my head today as I was walking through this gorgeous park in Amiens on one of the most gorgeous days I’ve had all trip. I found myself actually trying to take in the park in a 2 sentence summary (which I can’t include here for copyright reasons…haha, I feel slightly badass being able to say that). But it was very strange and I was reflecting on how I had come to perceive many things through this lens of “how can I best summarize this for readers in 30 words or less.” It is a very weird and difficult to explain phenomenon that you probably wouldn’t be able to fully understand not having viewed and experienced a 5^th of France in little 30 words or less segments. I suppose my editors would be happy about this state of mind.

Anyway, the phrase “30 words or less” was ringing in my head, and it seemed really familiar. Then I remembered these terrible book reports we had to do in fourth grade, which were the bane of my existence at the time, and sort of the equivalent of the 25 page papers I have to write now in their relative difficulty level. And the absolute hardest part was that we were required to start the book reports by summarizing the plot in “30 words or less.” This was always so difficult for me to do, but by the end of the year, I was awesome at describing how “Everyone in the dystopian town takes pills so they can’t see in color and except for one boy who can secretly experience all the sensations of the world.” (29 words, I think actually did read The Giver for the first time in 4^th grade, but definitely didn’t know the word dystopian).

And once again, this was a skill I learned in 4^th grade that would have allowed me to do this job when I was 10. Well okay, maybe I learned a few other skills between then and now that allowed me to travel through France by myself for the last 2 months (a blog entry on “skills” which I have been thinking about for awhile to come later…and I do maintain that a 10 year old could intern just as well as a 20 year old college student at a literary agency). But the ability to summarize succinctly, cleverly and comprehensively was the real basis and product of this job.

So yea, this is what made me think of Mrs. Greenberg. This has actually been the millionth time I have wanted to thank her for various things (4^th grade=major year), like when I played a strict teacher in a play in high school and based the character on her, or while doing homework late into the night and knowing I’ll actually get it done, or alphabetizing paperwork dating back to 1995 at the lit agency. Unlike most teachers who would give me work that I found really easy, and upon finishing it in like 2 minutes would let me have free time while the rest of my classmates kept working (or in the case of 3^rd grade, when I got a 100 on a test, didn’t have to take any more tests for the rest of the year—sorry to brag about these successes of 10 years ago, but hey, I was a smart kid!), she always had more work for me to do. As a 10 year old kid who just wanted to play on the playground, this was very frustrating. But I have realized retrospectively what an enormous impact she had on me, and I can’t think of any teachers from the Hendrick Hudson School District days who have pushed me as hard. Very sadly, she died (I think in 2004), along with several members of her family in a terribly tragic car accident in Mexico. I wish I could contact her to thank her for all these various things, and I think I actually might write her husband a letter about this.

Anyway, this ended up being a slightly less light-hearted entry than most, but it was what I was thinking about today. Off to din din, in this fabulous weather. And holy crapoli, tomorrow is my last day of this job. Just when I started to get good at it…

Belated Bastille Day Post

I have just arrived in Amiens, the LAST TOWN on my itinerary. The sun is shining. woohoo. but here is a post i wrote the night of Bastille Day (Bastille Night?) when I didn't have internet at my hotel, copied and pasted for your delight:

July 14, 2007

(I think I will put this on the blog). ((haha that i wrote that in the word document))

It occurred to me today, on Bastille Day, that I have known the Marseillaise for way longer than I knew it was the Marseillaise. I grew up listening to Alan Sherman (the original weird Al), and he has a song about Louis XVI called “You went the wrong way old King Louis,” and it begins to the tune of the Marseillaise. “Louis the XVI was the kiiiing of France in 1789…he was worse than Louis the XV, he was worse than Louis the XIV, he was worse than Louis the XIII…he was the worst, since Louis the first. King Louis was living like a king, and the people were living rotten, but then there was this whole thing called the French revolution that will never be for-gotttt-en….”

In any event, that is to the tune of the Marseillaise if you feel like singing along. This is also probably the reason I’m a nerd, since I grew up listening to things like this. (hi mom and dad! Thanks for making me a nerd, seriously!) I didn’t actually hear the Marseillaise today, though. While the general celebrations I attended (fireworks, carnival, etc) were like the U.S. (except for a few differences to come), they were must less cornily patriotic. I think I saw about one French flag hanging from somebody’s apartment window. Nobody was wearing blue, white and red, flag t-shirts, J’aime la France t-shirts, etc. And no Marseillaise. I kind of wanted to hear it, especially after falling in love with that amazing scene in La Grande Illusion where they sing it. (Conversation in Paris a week ago when the Star Spangled Banner came on in a bar we were in: Rich: I actually really like the Marseillaise. Me: Me too, have you ever seen La Grande Illusion? Rich: That’s my favorite movie.)

Calais actually proved to be an awesome town in which to celebrate 14 juillet, as everyone calls it. This is a serious beach town, so the night time festivities were all on the huge beach. There was a goofy polka band, and all the glace stands were still around serving big cones of deliciousness. The sun doesn’t actually fully set here till about 10:45pm, so the fireworks didn’t start till 11. At 10pm I saw a large crowd of people forming somewhere so I decided to investigate. Turns out the Calais festival committee was giving out glow sticks to the crowd, but then it turned out only to children. Confession: I lied and said I had a small child because they didn’t want to give me one. Oh well. I got my hot pink glow stick! I didn’t really think about the fact that after I swindled it I would look like a huge dork walking around with it because all the other people holding them were indeed small children. But I am a huge dork. So it is ok.

So I got a good seat on one of the walls by the beach, and settled in around 10:15. It was actually ridiculously cold, and the thousands of Calaisois were in winter coats and scarves. I luckily had put on a long sleeved t-shirt so I wasn’t utterly freezing. I was just generally crowd watching, taking pictures of the pretty sunset, and after watching like 20 wheelchairs go by I thought, “wow there are a lot of handicapped people in Calais.” Then I realized I was sitting on the wall of the handicap ramp down to the beach.

At around 10:30 it actually started to get slightly terrifying. There were thousands of people on the beach and dozens of kids who decided to start “les feus d’artifice” (fireworks) early, lighting off fire crackers, sketchy fireworks, loud noises, etc all over the beach. This was actually what I found to be the biggest difference from the U.S. I seemed to be the only person who was freaked out that 7 year old kids were lighting fireworks really haphazardly directly over my head. In the U.S., parents wouldn’t bring their darling children near such a spectacle, would warn them about firework safety, never to play with matches, if you see a person smoking a cigarette run away, etc.. Here, the parents were giving the kids more fireworks and cheering them on, laughing when the fireworks would fire horizontally across the beach landing inches from people. Taking the cue from the rest of the crowd of thousands that was completely okay with this rather dangerous (in my minority opinion) behavior, I chilled out and played with my pink glow stick. I actually could see the fireworks really far in the distance in Dover, and that was cool. (I know it is Dover because dozens of ferries go back and forth there and leave from right next to the Calais beach.) Why there were fireworks in Dover is more of a mystery.

When the fireworks actually began, at 11 on the dot, they were really impressive, and were shot off the pier near the Friterie stand where I had my first lunch of French fries earlier today at the beach. It was actually a complex music and light (the French love their son-et-lumiere) show, and the voiceovers in between the music were hilarious. The theme of the show was “travels around the world” (fitting for me!), and so the fireworks were divided into different “geographical segments.” As a crowd we traveled through the jungles of Africa, the wild west of the United States (to what sounded a lot like Holst’s Mars), South America (to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Carol of the Bells, which I truly found hilarious. Maybe French people don’t know that this is usually a Christmas song/not related to South America in any significant way that I’m aware of…at least they could have used it for the Russia segment?), each firework segment went along with the funny music. But the final “grand finale” segment was the best. The voiceover was essentially like, “And now that we have traveled all around the world, we must remember that all the people are brothers. And we must protect our brothers. And most of all, we must protect our brother, the planet, and conserve the environment.”

I thought about this while walking back to my hotel (in a HUGE crowd that reminded me of the time when we had to flee some island in Memphis because of the pouring rain, or something…I was young, but I remember a really big crowd leaving fireworks) enshrouded in a gigantic cloud of smoke left over from the fireworks that was just floating through and polluting the air, and then walking past a line of about 100 people in the street, lined up to buy cigarettes from the only Tabac that was open today. Sorry brother planet.

All in all, a really fun relaxing day. I’m happy I decided to take part in the 14 Juillet festivities. Only four more days of Let’s Go left to go. That is really wild. I have definitely really gotten into the groove of this. It is just what I do. I wake up, visit a museum or tourist office or two, eat lunch, visit more museums/internet cafes/Laundromats, pass out on my bed for about an hour, have dinner, briefly check nightlife, write, pass out. But I really realized that I was so used to this job today when I was sitting in a restaurant tonight with really slow service (but really delicious…and I had my first escargot of the trip, and it was actually fantastic, wish I started eating that earlier), and realized I had been sitting alone at my table for nearly 2 hours and was completely non-phased by this at all. Eating alone is actually really relaxing (once you get over the loneliness or awkwardness of it, which I forgot about after a week or two and now don’t even consider.) It is fun to wonder what that couple who has been staring at you for an hour thinks you are doing. Do they think I am a loser who can’t get a date? A liberated feminist who doesn’t need a man to take her to dinner? A reviewer? (d. all of the above? Haha). The past week or so I have been eating pretty expensive multi course dinners (though I’m still keeping under budget.) Once I didn’t have to take day trips anymore, which were the bane of my existence for awhile, that cleared up 10-20 euro a day to spend on making this “toute seule” life a little more luxurious.

Despite the fact that I still have an ocean full of sand covering my scalp after laying on the windy beach today (and this is after a shower, mind you), I am in a fabulous mood. The sun really makes life a lot easier, and fireworks are so pretty!

((note from actual day of posting...i still have some freaking sand in my scalp. several showers later i cannot get rid of it.))

the sun

came out. finally. i am in the beach town of calais and today is my day off since it is bastille day. i went to the beach and hung out for a few hours this morning and am now totally covered in sand.

yes. it may actually be summer.

On the SNCF lean

So, I have been thinking about this for a really long time. There has been nothing on this trip that has irked me more than what I have so lovingly named "the SNCF lean." For those who haven't had the pleasure of travelling by train throughout France, a really fun and relaxing way to travel, you may not know that SNCF is France's train company. I've actually had good experiences with the trains so far (excepting that one time that the train just didn't stop), but the absolute worst part is waiting in line for sometimes up to hour just to get a ticket. They have installed electronic machines to alleviate this wait, but unfortunately American credit cards don't have the chip you need to use them. Grrrr...

So while waiting in line to buy tickets, which is usually every day or two, the absolute most frustrating thing is the "SNCF lean". here is the situation. joe shmoe, or we'll call him jacques shmacques, goes up to the window. first of all, it is important to know that there are usually about 10 guichets (or ticket windows). without fail, only 4 are open at any time. workers can put on the "guichet ferme" sign whenever the hell they want. it is so weird. so anyway, jacques wants a ticket to Australia. simple thing. goes up to the window, and about 10 people are in line behind him. suddenly, it seems like he is going to be there for awhile. the girl at the window wearing too much make up and the hideous SNCF purple button down shirt is starting to look confused. she stares at her computer. does that french sigh thing that sort of resembles spitting (anyone know what i'm talking about?). she clarifies jacques' request. looks at the computer. another SNCF worker, who is sitting in a chair doing nothing (seriously, there are always at least two of these people sitting about 5 feet behind the ticket window, doing nothing at all.) notices that her colleague is looking confused. she comes over and worker one starts explaining the situation, slowly, and with more spitting/sighing.

two things can happen now. if the gods are smiling, the rescue worker can easily solve the problem. often, the gods are angry.

the second SNCF worker will lean over the computer screen, and start to look at it closely. they will start moving their head back and forth as if their eyes don't have the ability to move left and right. sometimes they will take the mouse from the original workers hand and start clicking. all of these things are done with the back at about a 75 degree angle to the legs. spitting/sighing noises are now made by both while the customer just stands there, not actually pissed off because at least he isn't waiting in line anymore.

unfortunately, this rarely helps. most of the time, the leaner will improve posture and walk away. those waiting in line might falsely take this as a sign that Jacques is almost done buying his impossible train ticket to Australia. but no. leaner 1 returns with a more senior member of the team. either an older man, or a woman in her 40s whose make up is much better than the original girl. as original girl sits there, leaner one will resume leaning position, and senior member will now also lean over the two others, at more of a 60 degree angle. the three workers will now chat, sigh/spit, ask clarifying questions to jacques, who still just simply wants his train ticket to Australia. Jacques may ask a question, and all three will chime in together, speaking over eachother.

Eventually, he will give up and go to the airport. The first person in line with start to make his way over to the now empty guichet, only to find that it is now ferme.


To people who have never waited in an SNCF line, you probably think I've lost it. But seriously, if you ever find yourself in a train station in France (I recommend the one in Metz btw...it is absolutely amazing. you could live in it, it has so many modern stores, and there is wifi. also the line you wait in is really high tech, with these funky chairs you can sit in while you wait forever), you might think back to this post and know exactly what I mean.






unrelatedly, i am currently in Lille, which has been my least favorite town yet, actually. I leave tomorrow morning for beachy Calais. Yay beach towns in 60 degree weather in july. But Lille. There is just absolutely no reason to come here. There is nothing here that you can't find in Paris, and obviously you can also find much more in Paris. While chatting with my editor, i likened it to the relationship between Boston and New York. New York=Paris, Boston=Lille. Sure boston has some "cultural character," as does Lille, but it is just generally further north, colder, smaller and less exciting, with a sub par public transit system. (It was on the metro here that I actually talked my way out of a 25 euro fine. yay/sort of. it was one of those situation where it is seriously the ONE TIME you forget and then get caught. i forgot to validate my ticket (i really did) and it was the only time the entire trip when the transit officers stopped me to check. to my prague buddies, it was like that, and i actually thought he was trying to sell me something at first too. so immediately dropped into poor innocent American tourist who is totally ignorant of this validation system but happens to speak good French. this worked, and i talked my way out of the fee. it was a minor annoyance, and i'm happy i didn't have to pay.

but lille. ugh. to demonstrate why people shouldn't come here, here is an anecdote to show that Americans don't come here. I was in a restaurant tonight and I was chatting with the waiter (sort of cute, sorry J). eventually he asked (as they all do because my accent sucks), where are you from? (this question is actually much preferable to people just speaking to me in English). I was like les etats-unis, and he was shocked. he was like, "vraiment? (this is in french, but i'll continue in English). Wow. that is so strange. we have tourists from Belgium and sometimes England here, but never anybody from the U.S. Quite a trip, eh?. So apparently people know not to come here. it really isn't a bad place, but there is just nothing here you can't get in Paris.

except, apparently, cheap appartments, which is why lots of students come here to study. (i was chatting with some people in my hostel looking for appartments).

this has been a long post, but i have been typing on an off while i watch the tour de france on the hostel TV.

also, harry potter in French was awesome. I realized there really is very little dialogue in the movie. it was much easier for me to understand than this movie i saw about a month ago called "conversations avec mon jardinier" which granted, as i should have known from the title, is just a long conversation between a man and his gardener. also, Hogwarts is called Poudlard in French, which is really badass/hilarious.



Ah, so something good about Lille. They had two really cool museums, one of which is in an old municipal pool and now has really funky modern art and statues. it was going that there i nearly had to part with 25 euro.


this has been random, and if you made it this far i commend you. woah, some guy just changed the channel on the TV to some really weird arabic music video.

one more week of Let's Go, and then I go to Berlin. Fun!

so i was going to post

on a whole variety of thoughts i had today, but i made a facebook album instead. go look at my pictures!

also i saw the new Harry Potter movie in french today. more on that in this ambiguous longer post that will exist at some point.

hi!

i am in lille, finishing up my 5th copy batch tonight. i'll probably do a longer post tomorrow on all the fun i've had in the past week or so. i didn't have wifi for 3 days (gasp!). ok, till soon.

Paris is wonderful. Having been here for the past two days, I realized that I have just been sort of rationalizing to myself that these other places are as good. They are interesting and I am more than happy that I've had the opportunity to visit them. But they aren't Paris.

Gothic Cathedrals, and my love/hate relationship with them

I go to, on average, 1-3 cathedrals/large churches a day, most of them gothic. I am frankly very very burnt out on them. If I see another freaking piece of stained glass (from the 13th century! glass that survived WWI! by Marc Chagall!--i am so sick of it all...well actually, the Marc Chagall glass in Metz and Riems is pretty cool).......I probably won't do anything about it. But yea, making empty threats on the stained glass makes me feel better. I am really just tired of looking at them though. Besides the interesting architecture (which is only interesting for so long), they are spiritually void for me. I can't really fathom how people can focus on praying with so many distracting things to look at (though i know, i know, the decorations are intended to enhance the experience.) I really don't mean this to offend anybody, but as somebody who is very much not Catholic, I just find the whole thing puzzling.

So that was the negative part of my relationship with les cathedrals. But indeed, there is some sunlight behind that stained glass! First of all, awesome thing to keep in mind if you are travelling in an old european city: a cathedral can save you from any weather. it is really the only indoor place besides your hotel room where you can sit down for free, and you can sit for as long as you want. Think about it...if it is raining and you need to get inside, you'd have to pay for something in a restaurant, cafe, bar, museum, etc. the cathedral will be nice and dry. if it is beastly hot outside, a cathedral is always at least 10 degrees cooler (figure made up by me, but there is a huge difference in temperature...not that i've seen the sun in two weeks, but once upon a time it was really hot here). Second, most cathedrals are really really really tall and always near the center of town. Generally taller than any other buildings in older cities. This means that if you find yourself lost, you can just look to the skies and find yourself again. (I have a feeling that the builders might have designed them so people could look to the skies and spiritually find themselves again, and less so physically when they are looking for an ATM--always near Cathedrals! I am uninterested in finding Jesus or any of his affiliates, but I often have a great interest in finding the center of town/tourist office, also usually near the cathedral.)

What sparked this rant? Well mainly just a lot of cathedrals, but more specifically today I had to walk about a mile out of town to visit some champagne maisons, and walking back (in generally the correct direction, but more generally confused), I found myself sort of lost. Then I looked up and saw Reims' cathedral and realized I was quite close to target. And then on the rest of my long walk I was just generally thinking about my pro/con feelings on the huge amount of them that i've seen.

I am pretty tired, but am going to head out to dinner/visit a few bars. Today just involved tons of walking because I had to get to the Champagne houses and then once there, take an hour long tour on foot of the caves. After visiting 5 champagne maisons in the last 3 days, I am truly an expert on every step of the process. Quiz me, grill me, I will not fail. Interested in degorgement? I'm your gal. At the last place I was slated to take a tour, they messed up and printed the wrong time on my ticket, and when I was perplexed about why no friendly, well dressed woman with a scarf (the caves are cold!) had appeared to lead me into the -30m abyss, I went to the desk and they were like, "oh no! you missed the last tour of the day." when i explained that it was very much their fault, they did feel bad and asked if i wanted 2 or 3 glasses of champagne instead of a tour. i thought about this long and hard. Pommery is a really fancy champagne company and you will never find 3 glasses for 10 euro. then i remembered that a) i was ridiculously tired, b) i had over a mile to walk back to the town, and c) this was probably a pour idea considering the only thing i have eaten so far today was a little quiche lorraine for lunch. so i just asked for my money back, which they begrudgingly gave me. but then they had a change of heart, and gave me a free glass of champagne anyway. score!!! (and besides, i really didn't want to take the tour anyway...they all say the same thing and i didn't feel like walking through another set of icy caves). so generally, win win all around.

Okay, so off to dinner/bars/sleep, not necessarily in that order. it's been a long day, but i am surprisingly in a very good mood for the first time in a few days. those 3 glasses i champagne i had today probably didn't hurt.

so close

only a few more finishing touches on my 4th copy batch, and then i get to go visit some more champagne houses. i can't wait to finish and indulge! (also, don't worry, i'm not becoming a drunkard...in order to do the champagne tasting you have to go through a one hour tour, which gives you enough time to my liver to properly deal with the glass from the previous tour)....that is, if i don't opt for the tri-tasting option they usually offer. (unfortunately, or not, i definitely cannot afford that.)

ALMOST DONE. i'll post more later, since i have super fast wifi in my hotel

Be Fabulous

So says Moet & Chandon, where I toured today. They are the makers of Dom Perignon Champagne. Sweeet. I am in Epernay, home to avenue de Champagne, where there are just tons of old filthy rich champagne houses on one long street. This town is a serious improvement over Verdun. Though I suppose lavish champagne drinking is generally more "fun" than visiting WWI memorials. Definitely towns for two different audiences. I am ridiculously exhausted because I had to catch a 6:41am train out of Verdun this morning, because otherwise I'd have to wait until 6:45pm to get out of that town, and I had no desire to spend another 12 hours there. I am taking a bit of a rest (on my hotel's wifi! yes!!!) before I head out to two more champagne houses. One would think that a visit to two champagne houses with included tastings might get one off of the computer quickly, but I am sooo tired. After the Champagne visits, I think I'm going to take a serious nap because I have a serious amount of Let's Go writing to do tonight.