Well. I‘ve been in Europe for two weeks and no blog entry, woops! I’m sure you’ll forgive me, since if you are reading this you are probably my mom (Hi mom!).
First Day: missed train from airport (close to Paris) to Strasbourg. Got there in plenty of time, even sat around waiting, then realized at last second you needed a credit card with a microchip to validate your tickets (American cards don’t have the chip, they have a stripe), so we had to pay extra, get a train from the airport into Paris then Paris to the dorms. By that time all the “good rooms” in the dorms were taken, mine is a cozy walk-in closet with no internet, hence the lack of blogging.
My room (luckily I wasn't expecting the Ritz):
Since then: It’s kinda been a blur of classes, tours, outings, and parties. We rented bicycles for a month (Strasbourg is beyond biker-friendly) and have been appreciating that decision ever since. We were able to cross the border into Germany on bikes (international bike rides! Yes!) .
Bridge into Germay from France:
The locals run the gamut from helpful, friendly dreamboats to shady, aggressive rude people (both of these references include both genders) but in general we feel quite safe. We, by the way, are the people who live on the 5th floor of the dorms, a motley crew including an Australian girl studying international business (Katrina), another French teacher from Dallas (Laila), a student from Indiana (Gabby), and a Norwegian guy studying law (Roy). So we all live on the top floor of a building with no elevator and no AC. We take forever getting ready to go anywhere because it is a border-line catastrophe if you get all the way downstairs and realize you forgot something, rendering necessary another sweaty slog up the stairs.
There is a man-made beach in Strasbourg that we biked to last week and it was quite fun. The plan is to go again today since Laila didn’t get to come last time. We’ll see I suppose, I have a quite large paper to write and not very many people are awake right now (it’s about noon) since we went out last night, so that might not happen for a while. I initially planned an impromptu visit to one of the neighboring countries for this weekend but lots of schedule conflicts popped up so that is on hold.
The only part of Strasbourg that I don’t like so far (this may apply to several cities or even northern Europe in general) is that the people are extremely individualistic and rarely civil, much less welcoming, to strangers. The dorms are rife with exceptions to this generalization, but man, it can be rough. In an everyday context, saying “Bless you” (a vos souhaits) after someone sneezes is tantamount to asking them to recall a traumatic childhood event; they give you a cold look as if to say ”Why are you talking to me?” Then there was the couple I walked up to in a park (they were drinking wine) and I asked for a corkscrew, to which the woman responded in not-so-dulcet tones “We don’t have anything, go away.”
Again, probably isolated incidents and most people we have met are very friendly and welcoming. The mentality is definitely a change from southern hospitality though, which constitutes one of the (few) areas in which I prefer Texas to France :)
First Day: missed train from airport (close to Paris) to Strasbourg. Got there in plenty of time, even sat around waiting, then realized at last second you needed a credit card with a microchip to validate your tickets (American cards don’t have the chip, they have a stripe), so we had to pay extra, get a train from the airport into Paris then Paris to the dorms. By that time all the “good rooms” in the dorms were taken, mine is a cozy walk-in closet with no internet, hence the lack of blogging.
My room (luckily I wasn't expecting the Ritz):
Since then: It’s kinda been a blur of classes, tours, outings, and parties. We rented bicycles for a month (Strasbourg is beyond biker-friendly) and have been appreciating that decision ever since. We were able to cross the border into Germany on bikes (international bike rides! Yes!) .
Bridge into Germay from France:
The locals run the gamut from helpful, friendly dreamboats to shady, aggressive rude people (both of these references include both genders) but in general we feel quite safe. We, by the way, are the people who live on the 5th floor of the dorms, a motley crew including an Australian girl studying international business (Katrina), another French teacher from Dallas (Laila), a student from Indiana (Gabby), and a Norwegian guy studying law (Roy). So we all live on the top floor of a building with no elevator and no AC. We take forever getting ready to go anywhere because it is a border-line catastrophe if you get all the way downstairs and realize you forgot something, rendering necessary another sweaty slog up the stairs.
There is a man-made beach in Strasbourg that we biked to last week and it was quite fun. The plan is to go again today since Laila didn’t get to come last time. We’ll see I suppose, I have a quite large paper to write and not very many people are awake right now (it’s about noon) since we went out last night, so that might not happen for a while. I initially planned an impromptu visit to one of the neighboring countries for this weekend but lots of schedule conflicts popped up so that is on hold.
The only part of Strasbourg that I don’t like so far (this may apply to several cities or even northern Europe in general) is that the people are extremely individualistic and rarely civil, much less welcoming, to strangers. The dorms are rife with exceptions to this generalization, but man, it can be rough. In an everyday context, saying “Bless you” (a vos souhaits) after someone sneezes is tantamount to asking them to recall a traumatic childhood event; they give you a cold look as if to say ”Why are you talking to me?” Then there was the couple I walked up to in a park (they were drinking wine) and I asked for a corkscrew, to which the woman responded in not-so-dulcet tones “We don’t have anything, go away.”
Again, probably isolated incidents and most people we have met are very friendly and welcoming. The mentality is definitely a change from southern hospitality though, which constitutes one of the (few) areas in which I prefer Texas to France :)
