Too late to come up with a title
Posted by Jacques in Travelogue on May 24th, 2005
Finishing thermo homework at 1 AM that’s due the same day at 9:15 AM. Even in France, some things never change.
We went to the old Arsenal in downtown Metz for a concert tonight. They’ve converted it into a pretty nice little concert hall. It’s probably the perfect size for the kind of music they were doing. I’d call the music chamber music: it was 4 concertos by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, including a cello and flute concerto. Apparently all those years of music lessons paid off, because during the concert I was thinking to myself, “This really sounds like the very beginnings of the classical period” because it had a hint of polyphony, but much more use of harmony. Turns out CPE Bach is considered the founder of the Classical style. Who knew.
It was really obvious at the concert who had some appreciation of good music and who was there only because they got some sort of credit or something for their HTS class. Oh well. The Arsenal apparently has a bunch of free (as opposed to wildly cheap at 8 euros) concerts this summer. I’ll have to stop by again, hopefully next time I’ll have more time to hang out in downtown Metz after.
This weekend I’m off to Spain to meet up with Melissa (a friend from Atlanta) and hang out in San Sebastian. I’ll have a long layover in Paris because the TGV to spain leaves at 10:30 pm and I’m planning on rolling in around 6 pm.
At last, in France
Posted by Jacques in Travelogue on May 17th, 2005
Being me, I started my day by running around doing chores I should have done a week ago. One of them involved going to CVS to pick up a prescription. The lady at the counter of course butchered my name and called me “Jack-ques”. I corrected her and said “No, it’s ‘Jacques’”.
“Oh,” she replied brighly, “you shortened it!”
“No, that’s the way it’s spelled,” I said, leaving what I really thought unsaid. And then I thought, “that’s the last time I’ll have to deal with that bullshit for three months because at the very least people in France will be able to say my name.” And so, that brings me to France… almost. First, the trip.
The lady at the checkin counter in Atlanta insisted on calling Strasbourg “Strasenburger”. I have no idea why.
I talked to a retired woman in the departure lounge who was doing an “elder hostel tour” of England and France. She told me that this was her first time going to France because “The French can be so…”. She seemed at a loss for good word, so I suggested “French”. She happily agreed, so I explained to her my theory that acting less American would probably go a long way toward making the French act less French. Of course, that’s a bit harder when you don’t speak any French.
There was a moment of panic on the flight when I woke up and couldn’t find my glasses. I fumbled around trying to figure out how to turn on the light, until finally the lesbians in the row behind me took pity and showed me the button carefully hidden on the armrest. OK, it wasn’t really hidden, but I was half blind. Even with the light, I couldn’t turn them up, so I had to go to the flight attendant, who exclaimed “Ah, c’est vous qui les avez perdus!” Phew… the idea of doing a connection and then finding a train and getting to Metz without my glasses had me seriously panicking.
This trip was all about timing. I had pretty much 5 minutes to spare in my connection from Paris to Strasenburger. I arrived at the Strasbourg train station, got my pass validated, and realized the next train left for Metz in 3 minutes. I didn’t mind having to hustle because it meant not having to wait.
The train ride was pretty boring. Guess I didn’t miss much by only taking one train ride in the first 22 years of my life. The iPod was the smartest purchase I made for this trip (well, second behind the Eurail pass, but that was a no-brainer). What with the music and the noise-cancelling headphones, those train rides go by twice as fast.
So I’ve met three people in my residence so far, and none of them is really from France. One of them’s from Austria. He speaks fluent German, French and English and is working on picking up some kind of Chinese. My suitemate is really French I guess (his parents were native-born, but his grandparents were from India). I have a feeling that having non-native-born grandparents still makes you somewhat of a foreigner here. The last one is my “mairenne”. I think she said she’s from Morocco. Or maybe she just has a Moroccan name and is from France.
One of the French guys was amazed that you would have to pay fees to go to a public university. Ahh, the French and their socialist ways.