it turns out, i'm not a tourist

What a week, what a month, what I life I've got going on here. Last week was one of the first weeks I realized that I have a life here in Paris and that I'm not just a glorified tourist getting my master's degree (yes, it took a year to come to this conclusion - don't judge me). When I leave here eventually, I'll have friends to say goodbye to, routines to abandon, and physical things to pack up that have been acquired from my time here in Paris and from my various travels to other countries. When you move somewhere new, there's an art to getting into the groove and finding the sweet spot where you belong. I've got my apartment, my Starbucks, my hairdresser, my metro stop, my park, my grocery store, my shortcuts, my secrets to the city that you can't get from a week-long vacation through the eyes of a visitor.

This realization came after a great friend of mine left France this week...my Marie. I've been anticipating her departure for a few months now, but didn't know how sad I would be until I went to say goodbye last week. Marie is approaching 80 years old and within the past year her memory has been deteriorating slowly but surely. Lately when I've been going to visit her for lunch, we would spend hours looking for things she's misplaced, I would listen to her tell me things she's told me about hundreds of times, I would ask why the table was set for 6 people instead of 2 and I would leave fearing that she would accidentally leave the stove on and burn the whole apartment complex down. I brought Marie to the airport a year ago so that she could visit her daughter who lives in a tiny island off of the coast of Africa called Reunion Island (known as La Réunion, it's a French territory). I talked to Marie's daughter to let her know I got her to the airport and on the plane just fine.  It was then that her daughter expressed that she was concerned about her mom's ability to live alone for much longer and I agreed because Marie's usual absent mindedness seems to be headed towards something more serious. Marie knows her memory loss is problematic and it's sad for me to see her get so frustrated about it. So this year, instead of going for a visit, it was decided that Marie would move to Reunion Island to live with her daughter where she's got someone watching out for her if/when things get worse. To get an idea of how far away this island is, here's a map of Africa - the island is just off the coast of Madagascar:

I've never known France without Marie, she was my first friend here when I studied abroad in 2006 and has been a fixture in my life ever since. We had the perfect last day together, though - we "oohed" and "ahhed" over her fancy new passport, she read me the rules from the new passport in its entirety (for the second time), we went to her favorite park, went out to lunch, ran into her favorite neighbors who had thrown my going away party in 2006, and she asked me to help her perfect the only English phrase she knows..."As you like it" - which always sounds funny and comes out with a thick French accent no matter how much I emphasize my American accent in order to get her to say it right...it's always more like "Hazz yeww lieg eet".  As our perfect day came to an end, my heart sank as she walked me outside because I knew it would probably be the last time I would see her.  Although the invite to visit Marie is open, as she has assured me multiple times, I'm not sure that a trip to the island is in my near future. Here are a few pictures from the last couple of times I went to Marie's:

Waiting for lunch

Marie ran out to this statue during lunch so she could report back to me exactly how the man and woman carved into it were standing

I love this picture because it shows Marie's shall we say...eclectic way of decorating and a picture of when she had me and my family over for dinner in 2006.

Reading me the rules to her new passport over Easter lunch

I don't know why it took Marie leaving for me to come to the realization that I've built a life here, however temporary it may be. Maybe it's because I'm usually the one leaving France, not the one being left behind. It seems fitting and also a strange coincidence that the same week I found my sweet spot here was the same week I officially got my residence permit to live in France, something that has been several months in the making. So here I am, a real resident - legally and mentally.

an unpaid advertisement for malta:

Ah, Malta. There's so many things to say about this strange little country. Jaime and I were completely surprised by everything Malta has to offer and we would both go back in a heartbeat. Sometimes you visit a place and leave thinking to yourself Alright, not bad, glad I went but I don't need to see it again.  This was not one of those places...gotta go back. 

The island is super tiny - it's got a population of around 400,000 and you can get from north to south in about an hour.  Jaime and I relied heavily on public transportation to get everywhere because they a) drive on the other side of the road and b) drive manual cars. Not happening. It took us maybe three full days to even learn how to look out for oncoming cars when we were crossing the streets...and even then we sometimes were looking at the wrong lane and doing the whole street dance where you run out to cross and then realize you shouldn't have and then contemplate finishing what you started or just making a run for it. I usually ran for it, Jaime usually went back. When we could find crosswalks, they were our best friends and usually the only time we made it across the road together. So, we took a liking to the buses. And who wouldn't? Look at these gems...they are all unique, most were pretty old (and consequently, not the most comfortable rides I've ever had) and the best part...one ticket was .47 cents!

The people in general were so nice, super helpful and most of them spoke English. The bus drivers, however, were another breed. Jaime and I had noticed that the buses didn't really come to a full stop when picking people up or dropping people off, they were a little impatient with traffic and loved to take corners really fast. We thought that maybe it was our Minnesota Nice mentality shining through but our observations were confirmed by a local shop owner the day before we left saying that yes, the bus drivers and crazy, rude and impatient. And here is further evidence that they just don't care...this picture was taken in the middle of a bus route.  Our bus driver pulled over, took the keys to the bus and walked over to a convenience store where he chatted it up for several minutes with a worker. He then came back with a sandwich that I thought maybe he would eat while driving. Well, here he is...outside of the bus just leaning up against the wall enjoying his sandwich while we all stared at him from inside. 15 - 20 minutes later we were back on the road. It was bizarre.  

Jaime has a knack for finding awesome places to stay while vacationing and the place she scored in Malta gets first prize, hands down. We had an entire Maltese "house" to ourselves...there's not much space in the capital city of Valletta so our house was stacked and had four stories: the first floor was a kitchen/sitting area, the second and third floors were bedrooms and the fourth floor was a rooftop terrace. I don't know what was better, the prime location or the unique decor...part of me thinks the decorating wins - it kind of felt like we were living in the pages of a magazine or something.

The House

First floor sitting area

This creepy monkey pillow slowly won me over and I liked him by the end of the week

Second floor bedroom

Lots of stairs all to ourselves

The only thing Jaime and I decided was missing from the house was a basket. The first morning I was getting ready and I saw a basket across the street being let down from someone's window...naturally we had to go check it out and creep on the neighbor. Little did we know this would be an every day occurrence, but we were both completely fascinated by the basket situation. Basically, there are little convenience stores/grocery stores on the streets - and I really mean little. The one next to us was maybe the size of a full bathroom in an American home...it could either be me, Jaime and the owner inside or one of us, a stranger and the owner - three is the limit for being able to move around in there.  So people living around these shops drop their baskets out of the window while the shop owner runs over and puts their items inside and voilà - shopping is done! Even after creeping around every day watching this happen, we still aren't sure about the logistics like how does the shop owner know what to put in the basket?, how do they get paid?, etc. It's probably better that I live in a place where the whole basket thing wouldn't work - in the winter I'm not sure if I would ever leave my apartment. Here's the exchange in action:

We spent a lot of time just walking around the tiny streets because they all had so much character. By the end of our visit we both had a ton of pictures of door knockers and handles. Every door had something unique...since they don't have space really, I felt like this was their version of a suburban competition between neighbors of my lawn is greener than yours but they've got competing doorknockers instead.

Since the island is so small, we were able to travel around to different areas pretty easily.  It wouldn't have been a complete trip without me getting roped into a conversation with an elderly local gentleman...this happens on every vacation I take for some reason. Jaime was a victim of this interaction because we were coerced into taking a boat ride with this man around the harbor at sunset.  It turned out to be a good time, despite the fact that it was a little chilly, a little long and the apple of my eye was missing some digits on his left hand. 

Our new friend on his boat

He insisted on taking a picture of us on our boat ride. Between the wind, the waves, his shaky hands and the absense of some important fingers, I was terrified for the entire time he was holding my camera. It all turned out ok in the end...my camera did not go overboard, which is all I could have asked for.

On the way back to dry land

Before we got on the boat

After the boat ride we grabbed dinner along this harbor

We also made it to Malta's former capital city called Mdina. It's a completely walled in medieval town that's fairly small (I would say you could walk across the whole thing front to back in several minutes) and has a population of around 300 people. It was pretty quiet when we were there but I could see the potential for it to become a tourist trap during the right part of the day.  We walked around the city, shopped around in stores that boasted an impressive collection of it's famous glass in various forms (I miraculously escaped without breaking anything) and had a little break for tea + cake at a café that had been recommended to us. So to sum up Mdina - tea, cake, glass:

tea

cake

glass

One morning we ventured out to Marsaxlokk, a fishing village in the southeastern part of the island. Not surprisingly, it smelled overwhelmingly of fish and there were avid fishermen fixing things on their boats all up and down the boardwalk.  The water was unbelievably blue and the boats were so colorful...it looked like something out of a travel book. Ok, so actually it was the picture on the front of our Malta travel book that we had with us...but usually those are photo-shopped and look better than reality so when you get somewhere you're a little disappointed you aren't seeing things through a photo-shopped lens. BUT, this place was maybe better than the travel guide pictures.

And lastly we journeyed in our favorite buses way north for beaches and sun - the only sandy beaches are in the north, the rest of the island basically consists of giant flat rocks leading out to the ocean. We took the bus to the edge of the island and then hopped on a ferry that took us out to an even smaller island called Comino. It was on this ferry where I gained a new-found respect for the sea...the boat was small, the waves were big and there were a few times were I was pretty sure I would find out what it meant to capsize. It looked and felt like we were on some crazy amusement park ride except we had the joy of not being able to get off even if we wanted to. And we wanted to. But the good news is we made it there and it was beautiful. We spent some time at the blue lagoon - to clarify this is not THE blue lagoon but just a lagoon that happens to be blue. And it was so very blue.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and so we left Malta the next morning. It was probably for the best, though, because Jaime and I both miscalculated our proximity to the equator and on this day suffered severe sunburns. It didn't look cool when it was bright red, it didn't look cool a couple of days later when it turned purple and it doesn't look cool now, peeling off in all its glory. I hope we both have learned that our ivory Minnesota skin can't handle sun like that for when we visit again...which will definitely happen.

seeing green

Last week I saw the smallest sign that we've made it through another winter...trees that are almost green and blossoms that are ready to open! The first signs of spring never used to excite me, I always thought that was for old people who had nothing better to be excited about. So maybe it's my old age, but but seeing green totally made my week. 

For the past month I've been completely consumed with writing my thesis proposal. It's what keeps me shut in for six hours at a time at Starbucks when it's 70 degrees and sunny outside. But apparently it's not going to write itself, something I discovered at the beginning of last month. It's due April 15th so it will be nice to have it turned in and off of my plate. The latest version I emailed to my advisor for him to review just said "Here it is...I can't look at it anymore!" I'm sure he's sick of looking at it, too. We're both anxiously awaiting the 15th I think.

I did get a break a couple of weekends ago when my friend Peter came to visit.  He is currently living in Spain, but he hit me up on his way back from a trip to Amsterdam and it was just what I needed. A weekend with no schoolwork and lots of hanging out.  One night we went to an uppity bar that our friend, Kate, works at...we spent one drink being fancy and then headed out to do something a little more low key...street food and wandering around the city. We also got some quality café time in, as well as a sushi lunch, some more wandering around and some making fun of American tourists when we grabbed wine by the Eiffel Tower.

The visit was short and sweet, but a nice break in the middle of a very busy month. Next up - Jaime and I are heading to Malta on Saturday! Don't know where Malta is? I didn't either until about 2 months ago. Word on the street is that it's a verrrrrry tiny island just south of Italy. It's so small that it's not even deserving of a dot on this map apparently. But you get the idea...sun and ocean. Updates on that trip coming soon - gotta get there first.

zee alps

So after Budapest I had about 24 hours to regroup, do laundry, pack again and get on a train heading east...to Switzerland! Apparently this is what people who know how to partake in winter sports do when it gets cold. My friend, Shauneen (who also lives in Paris and is doing the school thing), was kind enough to convince her grandparents (and her grandparents were kind enough to be convinced) to let eight of us stay at their chalet in the alps during our winter break from school. I love Paris, but it was nice to walk around and see trees instead of buildings, to breathe in fresh air instead of strange city smells and to not have to watch my every step for fear of stepping in dog crap. It was so relaxing and just what I needed before school started up again.

We took the train from Paris and stayed in a little village on a mountain called Veysonnaz. When I say little village, I mean little - "main street" has an ATM, a couple of restaurants, a tiny grocery store, a bar and a ski shop. I was told that the chalet that we were staying at was basically at the top of a mountain, but I guess I never really thought about how would we actually get there. Shauneen just kept saying we have to get the bus that takes us to the top. So we get on the bus. The extra large coach bus. On tiny mountain roads. In the dark. I was terrified the whole time. As we got higher, the roads got smaller and the turns got sharper. Thirty to forty minutes later we get to the top and I see the city where we started our journey was now just a bunch of tiny sparkling lights. But we're not there, yet. We have a 10-15 minute walk with all of our luggage up a never-ending very steep hill. At the time, when we were all struggling to make our feet move forward while dragging luggage, groceries and ski/snowboard gear in the pitch black up a hill that seemed to unfold endlessly before us, we were not happy campers. But we made it to the top in one piece and arrived at the chalet that was waiting for us, swallowed up in the darkest sky I've ever seen with stars bigger and brighter than I ever imagined.  Here are some of my favorite pictures from the week:

The mountain roads that terrified me to my core. Good thing our first trip up was at night so I couldn't see what was really going on.

The Chalet

The view from the chalet

Hanging out on the porch

Life above the clouds

So this brings me to mid-week when we all agreed that for one day everyone would buy lift tickets and we would go skiing/snowboarding together in the alps.  All of us were at different levels - some had never been on skis or a snowboard, some had been but not for many years and then there were the pros who helped the rest of us with...well, pretty much everything. I had been snowboarding a few times many years ago and knew that this would be a stretch for me, but I was ready to try it again anyways. 

So, we get on the lift. We're gliding above the alps and I'm noticing it's a little more intense than Minnesota slopes. And then we get off the lift...the bunny hills that I'm planning on circulating all day still look like mountains to me.  Suddenly I feel as though my Minnesota upbringing has left me ill-prepared for the alps.

And then it comes back to me. I vividly remember why I didn't continue snowboarding in Minnesota. I don't have the ability to disembark from any type of lift when attached to a snowboard. Here I am, almost a decade later and I haven't magically acquired this ability.

And alas, it turns out I can't snowboard. These are the things I can do, however, when placed on an alp strapped to a board:

- crash into a group of people who see me coming, note my inability to stop and don't get out of my way (to the man whose skis i ran over while he was still wearing them, i'm sorry)

- get shown up by three year old children on skis

- run into a sign that says "caution: slow down"

- face plant trying to get figure out how to work a button lift while getting dragged up the bunny hill

This isn't me in the video, but it is essentially what happened to me when it turns out this is the only way to get back up the hill. 

My friend, Nora, and I called it quits after lunch. We returned our boards to the shop owner in town who gave us a once over and tried to not sound judgmental when asking "...that's it? you're done?". Yes, sir...we're done. At this point, I had more bruises on my derrière than a free banana. Here's me right before we dropped off the snowboards. The walk home was arguably the most successful part of the day. Even so, face plants and all - I'd do it again.

The rest of the time, we let the people who knew what they were doing hit the slopes and those of us who had their fill of winter sports wandered around and relaxed.

Me and my friend, Asmir

Asmir and Nora risking their lives on icy snow to bring bread back for the crew

Raclette - A traditional Swiss meal and a good excuse to eat cheese for dinner. Eight of us polished off an entire half wheel of cheese.

Cheese: it's what's for dinner.

Shauneen's birthday dinner...the big 2-4

Here's the crew!

On the train back to Paris

budapest, you da best

One of my favorite things about living in Europe is that a weekend getaway to another country is super easy. So, late in January, Jaime and I met up for a long weekend in Budapest, Hungary. Just a hop, skip and a 2 hour plane ride away and there I was waiting for Jaime at the airport trying to figure out the Hungarian word for arrivals so I could actually find her (it's Érkezés if you ever need to know). I was just happy to be on solid ground after developing a increasingly irrational fear of flying over the past year. Flying gets to me more and more because I don't trust machines to function correctly all the time and I don't trust people to not make stupid mistakes. Seeing as flying is a combination of these two things, I'm always expecting a wing to fall off or the pilot to push the wrong button. With every flight I've taken recently, something happens that pushes me a little closer to insanity every time I board a plane. This trip was no exception.

It started while I was boarding the plane. First of all, I should say that I was flying with easyjet, a low fare airline that flies in and out of obscure airports all over Europe, let's you check in online 60 days in advance, only allows one carry on item per person with a 10 kg (22 lbs) max weight limit, sometimes you have to walk out on the tarmac to board the plane and it also has a first come first serve seating policy once you're on the plane so there's no prearranged seating assignments. It's kind of terrifying. Sometimes people clap when the plane lands and in my mind I'm wondering if they're clapping because successful landings are rare. I'll never understand it. Flights like this are super popular in Europe though, so I do it - but I'm always watching everything and everyone with a critical eye (as if I have any control over the situation). As I'm boarding this particular flight to Budapest, I spot the pilot in the cockpit right before I get on the plane and I see him scribble something on a piece of paper, jab a hole through the middle of it and stick it on a knob on the control panel. Once I choose my seat, I've got time before take off to think about what the pilot wrote. Actually, it's all I could think about. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me and finally I convinced myself that he had written one of these:


Needless to say, I spent the majority of takeoff and landing in panic attack mode hoping that he would at least read the reminder about the wheels. I hate landing. Naturally, I decided that I would look online later to calm my fears about the intelligence level and experience of easyjet pilots because I'm still convinced that my pilot's note held more importance than something like call mom or buy milk. So I look at the website. Bad idea:

Recently we’ve been looking for pilots with a minimum of 1,500 hours, but as a result of the feedback we have received, we will be relaxing this requirement, in favour of placing more emphasis on “quality” of hours achieved.

Relaxing requirements? I need Xanax.

But I made it to Budapest. Wheels on the tarmac and all. And the city was beautiful.

Jaime and I crammed a lot of fun things into a few short days. We did a lot of walking around and, since it was January, a lot of warming up in cafés. We were both surprised with the food and wine in Hungary. Everything we had was so delicious...Jaime and I both ate dinners that placed within our top five meals ever...who knew Hungarians can cook?!

One day we hit up Budapest's famous Gellért Thermal Baths. It's not normally my thing to sit and stew in other peoples' filth, but these baths are something Hungary is known for so Jaime and I wanted to at least try it. Mostly, we had heard/read that the inside of this particular bath was beautifully decorated with stained glass and mosaics; the interior had been compared to that of a cathedral so we had to see it. It was basically us two Minnesota prudes amongst shameless naked 70 year old women. We stayed for a little over an hour, mostly people watching and turning into prunes. All in all, it was pretty (err..the interior was pretty- not the old women), relaxing and entertaining. I'm not sure if the thermal baths healed me in any way, but at least I now know the general idea of what my ass will look like at 70.

We went on quite an adventure one morning trying to find a flea market that was mentioned in our travel books. We have both been to flea markets in other countries and were super excited for the potential of this one because it was talked up in our books. It was definitely off in its own part of the city, a little difficult to find but finally we stumbled upon it at the edge of a park. Jaime was excited to find some vintage pottery and I was on a mission to find an antique skeleton key. We get to the entrance and it turns out we have to pay to get in. We look at each other, a little confused because that's not normal, but we assume that good things in life aren't free and we have to pay the price to get into the awesome flea market...

Fold out table upon fold out table of crap. Useless crap. It's like the clearance shelf of a gas station convenience store. Batteries, cracked cd's, diapers, hairbrushes, a scumbag selling Hungarian porn, expired crackers, cigarette lighters, etc. We cruise around to make sure that's really all there is and promptly leave.

It's ok though - the city was cool enough to compensate for the piles and piles of crap flea market debacle.

me, on a bridge

Jaime making friends with a German language enthusiast to get directions

My favorite thing in Budapest - the vintage metro cars


one of our coffee breaks


Jaime leading the way to Buda Castle


Parliament at night

Buda Castle at night