Azay le Rideau castle

What to do on a Saturday afternoon?  Have you learned nothing from the Langeais post?  That's castle time!  This time I went to Azay-le-rideau castle with my fellow lectrice Luisaidh ("Lucy") and her french boo Clément.

Can you believe this pic was taken with my phone?  I mean,  COME ON.

Quick Summary: the castle of Azay-le-Rideau was built from 1515 to 1527, one of the earliest French Renaissance castles. Built on an island in the Indre River, its foundations rise straight out of the water.  A short history of the castle can be found in English here.

Frolicking lectrices.  Name for our new band?

Night trains and CouchSurfing in Eastern Europe

After leading a lovely, charming life in a small town for several months almost uninterrupted, it was only a matter of time before things became too tame and predictable.  Fortunately, I knew just the remedy for such conditions: EuroRail Pass and CouchSurfing combo.

As usual, the impetus was being in France.  In America, a young(ish) lass traveling alone would have many reasons not to go to Eastern Europe, but probably the most convincing reason would be the sheer distance.  Obviously, that is not an issue in France.  After a short 2 hour flight I could be in Poland, and with a rail pass I could easily travel from Warsaw to Prague to Bratislava to Vienna to Budapest.  Other than not speaking any of the languages spoken in those countries, not knowing anyone in those countries, and having heard the incredulous outcries from friends/relatives several times regarding the danger in eastern europe ("Have you seen Taken?!?!"), I had no reason not to go.  How could I justify being so close to places I've never been, and not even bothering to go?  I know many people do not share that logic.  It's hard to articulate all my reasons for traveling and CSing to those people.  Others get it immediately.  I'm not saying one group is better than the other, I'm just saying that if you read this blog and still think, "She's crazy," I hope you are at least entertained!

I began requesting hosts in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria and Hungary.  I had found some lovely, generous people when this message popped up in my CS inbox:

Important: Protect your safety

Dear Amanda,

Our records indicate that you recently posted an Open Couch Request seeking a host in Budapest. We are contacting you because Couchsurfing has recently received information in this city that might help you have a safer experience.

We have received reports from other Couchsurfing members traveling in Budapest that a male, roughly aged 33-35, hosting in a home close to the West Railway station between the XIII and V districts, has allegedly been putting drugs in the drinks of his guests. We have removed several profiles which were previously associated with this person, which indicate that he speaks English and German on an expert level, and Hungarian on an intermediate level.

Now this was annoying.  I had accepted an offer from a host in Budapest who was blond, 32, spoked perfect English and lived closed to a train station.  But his profile looked quite legit, and there were many discrepancies between my host and the criminal.  (I can hear my mom/sisters/boyfriend now: "Oooooh, discrepancies!  On an online profile!  Yeah good call Amanda, you're tooooootally safe!")  Budapest would be the last night of my trip.  Do I just book a hotel instead?  Do I trust humanity and continue as planned?  This conflict was at the back of my mind the entire trip, which was irritating.  How dare some loser make me doubt the goodness in the world?

Anyway, on I went.  After a small disappointment in Warsaw (rude people at the train station, host that didn't show up), I caught the night train to Prague.  This train was extremely old and kinda smelly, but I didn't care because the compartment made me feel like Harry Potter.
Anyway, there was only one other person in my compartment so I got to lay down, which was great.  Made it to Prague around 8am the next morning and walked around a bit in the snow since it was too early to call my host.

Pretty Prague

Where the trolley with every-flavor beans at?

First glimpse of Prague, outside train station.

I slowly but surely navigated the metro and trolley until I arrived at my host's house (What's up Pavel?).  Within a few moments of meeting Pavel I had calmed down significantly from the somewhat dramatic events of the previous 24 hours (plane/absent host/rude people etc.).  He had a beautiful roommate and a cute little apartment in a quiet neighborhood.  We went out exploring (well, for me it was exploring, for him it was the same things he has seen on a daily basis for ages) and I decided that I love Prague.  It's a very colorful city full of museums and cafes and mass transit and people walking.  Just loved it.

As you saw from the picture, it had snowed heavily in the days before I came to Czech land, but the snow was beginning to melt.  This resulted in avalanches plummeting from rooftops about every 15 minutes.  We were walking toward the Charles bridge when we saw an elderly homeless lady on the side of the street to our left.

What happened next is something that I won't forget for a very long time.  In the midst of some small talk, we heard a muffled kind of "splat" sound.  To my horror, I saw that a big heap of snow had just fallen from a rooftop onto the homeless woman.  What the hell, mother nature?  What kind of sick sense of humor is that?  Pavel immediately went to check on her and we both gave her some coins.  She gave us a grateful smile and said something along the lines of "Thank you, have a nice day," from what I could understand.  But at that point, Pavel bent down, brushed some snow off of her, and started having a full conversation.  Over the next few moments the lady's face absolutely lit up, it was obvious that most people don't give her the time of day, much less engage her in civil conversation.  Being a stupid ignorant American, I could add nothing to this beautiful exchange, but I could at least snap a stealthy picture.

Did I mention CSing will restore your faith in humanity?  I did?  Good.

John Lennon tribute wall

Little snow creatures everywhere.

Is this a thing in the US?  I've seen it in Tours now and don't remember noticing it in the US.  A couple puts a lock on a bridge and then they throw the key into the water to symbolize their unity.  PS this particular spot on the Charles bridge is famous for the fact that if you touch it and make a wish, it comes true.  Pavel asked if I wanted to wait my turn to make a wish and I said actually everything's fine, don't need a wish.  He agreed and we went on our way.

Well, after a semi-late night meeting up with an old friend in Prague, I left for Bratislava.  As usual, I missed the train I planned to take and took one a few hours later (rail pass to the rescue!).  I arrived in Slovakia just as it was getting dark, and my awesome host Daniel (Hi Daniel!) showed me around downtown and other interesting spots.

Downtown Bratislava.

The next day, Daniel had to go to work so he told me how to get to the train station from the city center, where he dropped me off to take pictures.  He gave me a map and everything.  Needless to say  I got ridiculously lost.  Only after walking for an hour and realizing I was on a highway instead of a sidewalk did the small, feeble voice of reason make itself heard in my thick skull.  I accosted an old Slovak woman in the street for help, pointing to the train station on the map.  

May this woman's soul be blessed for the rest of her days.  

She walked me to a bus stop and asked everyone there if they could speak English.  When none could, she asked if I already had a bus ticket (through sign language, there is not even one remotely English-sounding word in Slovak) to which she also received a negative response.  I saw a brief moral dilemma churning in her head, and then a bus pulled up and she smiled at me, grabbed my arm, and pushed me into a seat.  20 minutes later we pulled up at a stop (where I had been walking hours before, smack in the city center) and she motioned over a hill saying "desať minút." I rejoiced in my short years of Russian study, because I recognized the number for "10," and indeed it was a ten minute walk from there. I caught the train shortly after. Thank you, thank you, Daniel and Slovak lady! 

I arrived in Vienna mid-afternoon, and met my badass host Leander. Leander lives in a sweet loft apartment with roommates straight out of l'auberge espagnole (except instead of being limited to Europe they were from as far as China and Saudi Arabia). Vienna was picture-perfect.  No one will ever have a better experience or host there.  I had famous viennese pastries (compliments of my host after he realized I hadn't tried Sachetorte), saw architectural wonder after architectural wonder, had an apple strudel in a café, and basically enjoyed my face off. Significantly, for the first time in my multi-lingual life, I had the desire to learn German. Austrian German is absolutely schön (beautiful). 

Leander has lived on almost every continent and was working on his thesis when I visited. I already thought of him as an extremely intelligent individual. Imagine my awe and delight when the next morning, I woke up to see the entire household chatting in the kitchen drinking tea, and in walked Leander in his house robe which can only be described as "wizard-like," he was wearing the hood up and everything.  After that moment I almost called him "Methuselah" instead of his real name. It was awesome.

Like this, but dark blue.

Sachertorte

Strudel and tea.

Well, then it was time to go to Budapest.  I hope you have not forgotten that I was rather anxious about this part of my trip.  I arrived before my host got off work, so I walked around the city a ton.  I stumbled upon the parliament building, which throughout all my travels, remains the most beautiful man-made thing I have ever seen.

Well, this was clearly the spot to take my obligatory handstand picture. But I had no host yet and no Hungarian language skills. I went around to the back side (not quite as pretty, but less populated) (twss) and set up my camera on self-timer. I ran and did my handstand perfectly on the first try, picked up the camera, and went on my way.

Hahaha! Good one, right?  Of course what actually happened is that I proceeded to initiate a sequence composed of squatting by the camera, running to a patch of grass, waiting for the red light, doing a frantic handstand, and running back to the camera to realize that I had taken a picture of a half-done handstand or my backpack or the grass or a car. This happened at least 10 times because I Never Give Up.  Rabid squirrels probably look less deranged than I did.  At that point a hungarian lady let me know (again through sign language) that she would take the picture.  In retrospect, I was grateful that she had witnessed my pathetic display beforehand, because now she knew The Deal with the handstand pic.  I have asked people in many countries to take the pic for me, and they always smile and agree, and I try to gesture that it won't be a normal picture, and they smile and agree, and then I go and do a handstand and they look at me like, "Why are you making me take this strange picture?" and "Well for god's sake, if you're going to ask for a handstand picture, you should really be better at handstands."  It's a valid point, my handstands last for about one second.  It takes a gifted photographer to make the magic happen.  Anyway the nice lady left and at that point a construction worker motioned to me.  I traipsed over to him and he showed me something on his phone.  That's right.  He had been taking pictures of my deranged squirrel routine.  He actually had some good ones though!

I walked some more and ended up by the beautiful Buda Castle.

After that, I walked back down to the main street and waited, somewhat uneasily, for my host.  When he made it after work, he looked like an absolute cherub.  Balint (what's up Balint!) is a born Hungarian who did a high school exchange program in, you guessed it, Missouri.  I immediately felt like I knew him for years.  I only had that night in Budapest, and I had the usual CS dilemma in mind: "Will he want to go straight home and relax and do nothing?  Will he want to party all night?"  Hosts are well within their rights to do either of those things.  As it turned out, Balint wanted dinner at a Hummus Bar (YES!), one drink at a club housed in a hollowed-out 18th century building (YES!), and then to go home and rest because he agreed to take me to the airport the next day at the obscene hour of 4am (YAHTZEE!).  It was couchsurfing perfection.

Humtronz.

I made it back to Tours just in time to teach my afternoon class.  I cannot thank my hosts enough for such an amazing trip.  To anyone thinking of traveling to "dangerous" places, please don't hesitate.  Make your own judgements about places, but only after you've been there.  Of course, keep your wits about you and your belongings under strict watch.  But don't let movies or media change the way you think about something!  You will miss out on so much if you do.

Afterthought:  Who would design "armor" that exposes boobs?  Discuss.

Courtesy of Vienna - Belvedere Palace

Tangent - I love old people

This adorable French couple barely made it onto my train to the airport. They scrambled into the car (aided by yours truly of course) with tons of luggage as the doors were closing, grousing hilariously about their state of affairs and how these trains fall short of their expectations (their conversation was peppered with all sorts of "mais c'est impossible!" and "oh la la la la"s.) Just amazing. Since then they have discovered they were in the completely wrong cabin. Current the woman is telling everyone on the platform how much her husband snored last night and he is just sitting there rather proudly. I'll say it again: I love old people.

Me listening to book reports in which English words are mispronounced to the point that most of them sound like extremely offensive racial slurs and profanity:

Off the beaten path now has new meaning.

For the last few days, I have been going on runs equipped with my phone.  Full disclosure: this is because I had a traumatic run-in (get it?) on my last route with an old gentleman hiding in some bushes on the running trail while casually making extremely indecent movements with a very exposed part of his body which should definitely have been covered by at least two layers of clothing, if you know what I mean.  This incident left me and my running partner (shout out to Hannah) screaming with fear and disgust and running away saying, "Someone should call the police!" but I didn't have my phone.  Lesson learned.

But my traumatic, harrowing encounter is your gain, because I now have instagram on that phone and am taking pictures of everything in Tours. Most of the pictures are just small moments that transpire, previously unnoticed but now appreciated.  It also helps me cultivate my interpersonal relationships as I, a foreign transplant, climb the societal ladder in this new and enigmatic, dare I say esoteric, millennia-old French society by running along a bridge and then coming to a dead halt and crouching, gollum-like, to take a picture of a spiderweb in the fog:

Nailed it.

Visual approximation of photographer upon first glimpse of  whimsical spiderweb.

 Here are some more pictures from around the city:

The very bridge in question.

This is the church that is directly in front of my apartment, as seen from a bridge a bit further east.

Swans in the Prébendes park.

Cogito ergo sum.  Descartes.

Cathedral, finished in 1527.

Me on the way to a party.  Complete frenchification is evident by the nonchalant fashion in which I have chosen to carry the bottle of wine (protruding from coat pocket).

Back of cathedral complete with flock of chirping birds.  

Rue Colbert

 So there you go.  As I was opening to the door to my apartment after this run, I heard bells tolling in the distance.  I hopped up a flight of stairs to get access to an open window and took a video.  Whenever I see these "tourangeaux" rooftops, I lapse into a fantasy in which I'm standing in the same spot but it's 100 years ago, and there is really nothing that pulls me from this reverie until I realize I'm recording all of this on an iphone.  Anyway, you be the judge:

 For good measure: the beginning scene from Moulin Rouge.

Langeais Castle

Well, today I woke up to 5 cm of snow and absolutely nothing to do.  All my lessons for this semester are planned, my apartment is clean, and I wasn't hungry.  I had even already used up my weekly allowance of do-nothing-lay-around-watch-hulu time.

Luckily, Tours is only a few minutes from almost every castle in the Loire valley.  Today I decided to go to one on my own (the other lectrices were either planning or sleeping.  I swear I have friends.).  It was snowing and although that provided for beautiful scenery, it also made me realize I need new snow boots, because mine are not waterproof.  I realized that about 10 minutes after leaving my apartment, but all the stores were closed so I soldiered on with absolutely frozen feet.  Gosh, I tell the best back-stories!

Anyway, this castle was very interesting.  I invite you to read about it here.

Place Plumereau, next to my apartment.

The castle at Langeais.

Backscatter machines at airports

After reading this story, I have to stay I will stick with my decision to have an inconvenient and time-consuming pat-down every single time I go through security at the airport.  Especially as a female, I'd rather not get zapped with radiation when I don't have to.  I realize that being in an airplane has plenty of negative health benefits, but why add to them?  Can anyone justify going through these machines?

Quoted from a CNN comment: The "naked" issue is a red herring.
This is about radiation and cancer, because the backscatter machines can cause cancer.
The millimeter wave scanners aren't studied either and what little is known shows they rip the DNA, too.  Neither of these are good for humans. 

No thanks.

6 month report - Living in France (2012-2013)

For those who don't already know, I have been living in a small city in France for the last six months, and will be here until around June/July.  The city is called Tours, which means "Towers," so named because of the extraordinary number of tow trucks in the area.

Ha! Kidding. The towers 

reference is due to the abundance of castles in the area here in the Loire valley.  

Amboise

The city of Tours, located in France, is very hard to find information about before you go. When you google "Tours France" you get a lot of results about tour companies in France, which is technically what you typed. Luckily I went in person and found out plenty for you, including lots of castle information.

I have been to see some of these castles, and I must say I am impressed.  When my mom visited me here, we even went to the royal castle of Amboise, and I was surprised to see that Leonardo da Vinci was buried on the premises.  Of course, that is because he had a great relationship with Francois the 1st (king of France 1515-1547) due to Francois' appreciation of genius and the arts, as every semi-educated cretin knows.

Chilling with Da Vinci, stylish audio-guide dangling fashionably from my neck.

Also, King Charles VIII died there "in 1498 after hitting his head on a door lintel." You would think that after such a catastrophe the door lintels would be covered in plush padding, surrounded by signs saying "Pass under this lintel at your own risk."  But as I am continuously reminded, my ideas are quite American.  Although I myself am not a litigious, xenophobic walking side of ham, I still carry my American-ness with me.  This is evident when I see giant uncovered holes in the street and immediately think, "Someone is about to fall in there, and then the city will get sued."  Meanwhile, the "laissez-faire" French people are deftly side-stepping the death trap while dragging on their cigarettes and discussing plans for l'apéritif.  They also somehow avoid the ubiquitous piles of dog poo scattered everywhere.  No one picks up after their dogs here.  One time I was across the street from a woman who let her dog poo right in front of someone's car door.  I made eye contact with her to make sure she knew she was under the watchful eye of a concerned citizen, just in case she needed motivation to Do the Right Thing.  Well, Fido finished right up and she immediately left.  Not a care in the world.  It was in the STREET!  In front of a car door!  Not some distant wood where no one would have their day ruined by it.  That poo was smack in the center of a bee hive of pedestrian activity.  This is an OUTRAGE!  

And that is how you start a paragraph talking about kings and geniuses and end with an extensive diatribe on dog poo.  Don't worry, novice writers, you too will one day possess this art of effortless story weaving.  

Anyway, my job here is to teach English classes at a French university.  The majority of the classes have to do with phonetics, pronunciation, and oral expression.  Want to hear something hilarious?  For the phonetics classes, all the "lectrices" (lecturers) are supposed to speak with an English accent.  French people want nothing to do with American/Irish/Scottish/Australian accents.  They want to sound like Queen Elizabeth.  I like to tell meself that I do a bloody good job of sounding like a propah redcoat.  I mean, that very sentence could earn me an Oscar.  But really I sound like Nicolas Cage in this video (starting at :23).

Speaking of the lecteurs, there are 8 of us here for the English classes.  I've surrounded myself mostly with the Scottish and Irish girls.  They are all lovely and glamourous and put-together (i.e., they make an effort in the morning, emerging each day with styled hair, subtle yet trendy accessories, and liquid eyeliner applied just so, while I stick to my American regimen of making sure I can see through my unibrow).  Bonus: they say "wee" instead of little!  As in, "Ah yeah, I went to a wee shop today and got some toasties."  Ok so I forgot what they really say but it definitely has "wee" in it.  It's just adorable.

The food is lovely.  Being vegetarian is not frowned upon but rather laughed at (literally, my doctor here laughed at me.  He was also amused by my taking multivitamins, he had this facial expression that basically communicated the thought, "Whatever, you weird American.  You'd be healthier if you scarfed down some tortured duck liver every now and then.").

Honestly, I eat more vegetables here than I ever have before.

Also, in addition to my lovely day job, I've picked up a few shifts teaching Zumba classes.  I got certified to do it in Paris and my main audience is chic French women.  However, my jazzy dance vocabulary is somewhat lacking, so during each class I never fail to emit some nonsensical babble in what I hope is an encouraging and inspiring yelp, something like, "Très bien, et maintenant, faites un body roll!"  The French women always offer some helpful corrections after I say such nonsense, but they are always panting and the music is always blasting during these corrections, so I just smile and nod and do more body rolls.  I lead by example and a firm yet gentle attitude of undisputed authority.  I'm basically the Winston Churchill of polyglot Zumba.

Teaching a Zumba class with my friend Marine

So indeed, my year here is going fantastically.  I have 2 jobs that I love and a fantastic (if expensive) apartment overlooking the Loire river.

My view when I wake up: The Loire River

I took this pic while crossing the Loire.

15th century building w video game store on ground floor.

Downtown Tours - City Hall

Right by my building.

Future plans:

Next month I will be doing another rail pass/couchsurfing adventure - Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria and Hungary.

This summer I will be going on a safari in Kenya with my lovely little sister, whom there is a chance I will not murder after being in close quarters with her after 36 hours.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see!