Christmas and New Years in Eastern Europe!!

At the local bar "Little Soba" in Saint Etienne the night before our journey!

I just thought that I would warn you, this might be a long post. :) I had a 16 day vacation for the Christmas holidays and my sister Meredith came over on the 19th of December to help celebrate! I showed her around Lyon for the afternoon on the 20th we went out in Saint Etienne with a few of my friends here. Friday the 21st we headed out bright and early to Geneva where we caught a train to Zurich and then to Innsbruck, Austria.

It was quite a long journey through the Suisse Alpes (and unfortunately pretty cloudy) but once we arrived in Austria it was a clear night and we could see the alps, the moon, and the stars from the train.

We arrived in Innsbruck and stayed with our friend Max through couch surfing. He had a beautiful apartment in the city centre. Saturday we woke up and walked around the city centre and took a cable car up to the mountains. We had an absolutely beautiful view of the city and we were lucky to have sun and blue skies. We drank some gluwein (vin chaud, mulled wine) and some Austrian pastries for a snack and had some interesting conversations with Austrians who couldn't speak English. :) That night Mer cooked dinner for Max and then we went out to some local bars.

Innsbruck! (beautiful right?)

View of Innsbruck from the top of the cable car!

Sunday we woke up and walked around the city again and had some wonderful Austrian cuisine (sauerkraut on fried dough?!?! and cranberries and powdered suger on fried dough). It sounds a bit weird but man was that delicious. I never thought I would enjoy sauerkraut so much. That afternoon we headed to Salzburg to stay with another person on couch surfing, Miriam. Western and southern Austria is dominated by the Alps and the landscapes of both of these two cities is remarkable. Miriam was a great host in Salzburg and she invited us to stay for Christmas as well. We were very fortunate as we had no actual plans for Christmas. In Austria, they celebrate Christmas on the 24th of December. This includes a Christmas tree with actual candles (not electric lights), singing carols in front of the tree after it is lit, and presents of course! Miriam read a book to us that gave the history of "Silent Night--Stille Nacht". It originated in a small Austrian town where Miriam was born. Then we sung the song in German. It was pretty cool. Nothing like an snowy Austrian Christmas. We also saw the famed Salzburg xmas markets, the castle, and a few Sound of Music sites, as well as wonderful Austrian chocolates, pastries, and a few really cool cafes.

Christmas Eve (those are beeswax candles on the tree!)

After our 2 day stay in Salzburg, we hopped on a train and headed for Budapest, Hungary. Man was that eye-opening. We arrived in the late afternoon to a very communistic, WWII era city. We took a metro and then a bus to the outskirts of the city where we stayed with another couch surfer. We were on a run down looking bus and felt like it was 1946. Everyone was wearing those big fur coats and hats that are so stereotypically Eastern European/Russian. The atmosphere was so different here compared to Western countries and you could feel the economic insecurity and communist influence. People had cold, blank expressions on their faces and walking down the street gave you a depressing feel to the city. Needless to say, the city was absolutely beautiful, with a the huge Danube river separating Buda and Pest (once separate cities) and a large castle on the hill. We ended up staying in a hostel in the city center for the 2nd night because of proximity to the local sights. We met two Polish students who came around with us on the second day. We had a really great time with them at the Turkish Baths and checking out the local bar scene. I should also mention that we ate at this local Hungarian restaurant before parting with Budapest and the food was amazing. I had some porkmedallians with cheese and garlic... I am planning on going back just to go to that restaurant again. SOOOOO good.

The Chain Bridge in Budapest!

The Turkish baths

After parting ways with Budapest, we met up with Miriam and one of her friends who lives in Vienna. We went out to dinner and then after Michael gave us a huge tour of all of the monuments in Vienna. The city was absolutely stunning at night and there were some really beautiful buildlings (I especially preferred the city hall...) We also saw the place where Hitler made his famous speech in 1937(?) in front of like 200,000 people. That was pretty moving.

City Hall, Vienna (one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen...)

Hitler had his famous speech here...a Palace I think (equivalent to the White House)

The next day we set sail for our final destination: Prague and the Czech Republic. I think in general, Prague was both Meredith's and my favorite stop for the whole trip. I also think that we were extremely biased because we stayed with one of my friends, Zufan, who I grew up with and we had a wonderful tour guide (the owner of Dobra Tea, a tea house in Burlington as well as throughout eastern Europe, originating in Prague). Jirka is one of the founders of Dobra as well as a Prague resident. He took us around the city for a full tour and it was everything I could have asked for. We had beautiful weather and absolutely no complaints. He took us up to the monastery on the hill (past the beautiful Prague Castle) where they have been brewing beer since the 1400s. I should probably mention that not only did we have wonderful hosts, but wonderful beer as well (and food of course!!!) Another thing I really love about the Czech Republic is that ice hockey is the #2 sport and it is rrrright behind soccer in popularity. Now that is my type of country. (the women were beautiful, too. what are the chances??)

Views from the monastery

My favorite building in Prague (and maybe Europe...)

So here is one of the "typical" Czech meals we had. Roasted pork, fried pork, duck, red cabbage, white cabbage, dumplings #1, dumplings #2, and dumplings #3, 3 pints of Pilsner Urquell. Sorry I didn't really have room for dessert. Up at the monastery we had escargot, some type of mushroom quiche, and chocolate beer cake (that isn't a typo)...which was amazing. Actually all 3 were pretty amazing. I think I would consider flying back to Prague just for that monastery. Jirka actually knew the owner (and the owner's son who was the manager/brewmaster) so we got a tour of the brewery.

Massive meal that Zufan is attacking quite skillfully.

So New Year's Eve rolled around and we went out with Jirka for a little bit, went to Dobra, had some tea. We stayed in a bar for a while and then around midnight we headed to the river to see the fireworks. Once we got there, everybody was cheering and there was a huge countdown. People were lighting off fireworks left and right it was awesome. Crazy part of this story is that I was on the bridge and started talking to these 2 Americans, and it turns out that one of them went to the University of Delaware and was roommates with one of my best friends at UD!! It was sooo crazy, we just looked at each other and I was like..."Aaron? what the heck are you doing here!" Crazy. It's a small world after all.

Happy New Year! (this is in the bar before headed out to see the fireworks by the river...)

The next day we hopped on a train and traveled straight back to St Etienne with a few stopovers in some random cities. About a 25 hour journey. I felt bad for Meredith because she was catching a cold and still had to make another 25 hour journey back to Vermont! What a champ.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and keep in touch!!!

Vacation #2 (Grenoble, Chambèry, Alpe d'Huez, Briançon)

The view outside our Gite looking into the valley (Alpe d'Huez)random viewpoint on our drive through the mountain pass
waterfall on the way to Briançon from Alpe d'Huezlooking East during a small sunset hike

We arrived back in Saint Etienne and hung around for Thursday and Friday. My friend Ryan and I talked about taking a short trip up to the alps before all of the snow comes. We decided to rent a car for 3 days and drive up to the mountains. Saturday morning we hopped in our Renault 4 door manual transmission rental car. Rachel came along for the ride as well and we decided to go to Grenoble for the night to stay with a girl named Marie through www.couchsurfing.com. I was the only person with an international driver’s license so I drove the entire time, which really wasn’t much in comparison with the 8 hour drive to Delaware (or the trip out west!)… We arrived in the afternoon and took advantage of having a car…drove around the city to get our bearings and then followed a road up into the mountains/hills surrounding Grenoble. Grenoble is the capital city of the French alps and is surrounded by beautiful mountains and the Isere river cuts through the city as well. On our little drive up through the hills we ran into some interesting sights (4 hunting dogs ran right in front of our car all anxiously sniffing out prey as well as a woman painting the beautiful landscapes on an old dirt road.) We pulled up next to the woman and we talked a little bit about her painting and she said that this road was supposed to be used for painting landscapes not big cars. After our excursion, we headed back to park our car near Marie’s place. We decided to walk around the city a little bit and grab some dinner. We met up with Marie and her flatmate Kroc (Guillaume) around 7h30 and went to a wine bar that had all of these different fruit wines. To give some examples: Passion, strawberry and litchi, pear and walnut, cherry, nectarine, raspberry. After the bar we went to one of her friend’s apartment and hung out with about 5 of her friends. This was a very interesting experience as we had never met any of these people before and all of a sudden we were in an apartment hanging out with them. We had a very great first experience with couch surfing. We ended up walking back to Marie’s apartment which was about 30 minutes, and Marie was telling me about how she couch surfed for 10 months throughout the world (all over Europe, Peru, Bolivia, India, Africa, California, New York, Montreal.) It sounded like a crazy trip, I can’t even imagine it. We were talking about different cultures and the way of life in America vs. Europe vs. the rest of the world. So amazing.

Sunday we headed north to Chambery to meet up with 2 other assistants from Lyon (not Saint Etienne), Maggie and Tim. We picked them up at the train station and drove up to the mountains to do a day hike. We found this day hike in a book I bought called “Around Chambery”. It was filled with about 30 hikes around Chambery with everything from caves, rock climbing, and waterfalls, to village ruins, castles and fortresses. We picked a hike with pretty much everything, but only made it about halfway up so we missed out on the ancient villages and fortress. It was getting really foggy and we wouldn’t have been able to see anything at the summit anyway. We saw a lot of people rock climbing. The foliage was absolutely wonderful and it reminded me of my trip to Lago Como (up in the mountains in Italy) when I studied in Paris. After our hike, we headed to Alpe d’Huez where we booked 5 beds in a gite. A gite is like a large house that can house around 18 people with a fully equipped kitchen and dining room. In this case, it is much better than a hostel because sometimes hostels only have beds and is more similar to a hotel. We stayed in this gite and it was completely empty except for us 5. It was 18 euros a night and housed 18 people, with 2 kitchens, a huge dining room with a fire place, and a huge bathroom with 2 showers, 3 sinks, and 3 toilets. There were about 4 bedrooms upstairs with anywhere from 2 beds to 8. When we woke up the next day we were all amazed at the view as we had arrived late in the evening and couldn’t see anything in the dark.

Monday we headed to check out the Alpe d’Huez ski resort and then continued on our drive eastward through the alps towards Briancon. Briancon is the highest city in Europe and is about 20 km (12 miles) from Italy. There is an old Roman fortress that sits on top of the mountain overlooking the city. In the old part of the city near the fortress, there is also a huge gorge with a small river flowing through. After checking out the city of Briancon for the afternoon, we headed back through the mountain passes back to Saint Etienne. On the way home we took a short detour up a side road to try and catch the sunset from a mountain top and I practically ran up this mountain side. After reaching the top several times (multiple summits), I decided to give up as I was so far away from our car. I looked up higher on the mountainside and saw a mountain goat off in the distance. It was so crazy and reminded me of the Mountains episode on Planet Earth. After seeing the alps I can’t wait to go up and ski once it starts snowing!! ...I heard it is supposed to snow on Thursday in Saint Etienne... :-)

Vacation! (Avignon, Marseille, La Londe)

Mediterranean sunset at La Londe!! :)

The Pont d'Avignon at night and the old Palais des Papes

View of the Pont d'Avignon and the Rhone from a park

So after being in France for about a month, they gave us a nice 12 day vacation. I decided to take a little trip down to the Mediterranean with my friends Autumn and Ellen. Autumn is an assistant up in Nancy and she came down on Saturday night. Sunday morning we grabbed a train from Saint Etienne to Avignon (yes, there is a famous song about “Le Pont d’Avignon”). The city was very cute and had old Roman walls surrounding the city; very beautiful. The Pont d’Avignon used to be extremely long, stretching from the city to a fortress across two rivers, but most of the bridge was washed out by flooding. Now the bridge stretches about halfway across the Rhone River and is now a historical site and no longer a complete bridge. We had fun exploring the city for the day and spent the night in a hostel right on the river.

Monday, we headed on a train down to Marseille, which is the 3rd largest city in France. This large port town was an important part of the Roman empire. The Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde is a beautiful church that looks over the Vieux Port (Old Port) from a hill on the southern part of the city center. There are a few fortresses around the old port that look magnificent at night when they are all lit up! I have heard many stories about Marseille being very unsafe and not so welcoming for tourists, but we didn’t have any problems at all. The travel book I am using says, “Gritty, grimy and gloriously real….its rough-and-tumble edginess exerts an irresistible pull.” A lot of people have also told me they weren’t really impressed with Marseille, but for some reason I absolutely loved it. I think a lot of it has to do with the landscape of the city, the Mediterranean and the cultural differences of Marseille compared to other French cities. Being on the coast, it is very close to bordering North Africa and you can tell this just by a walk down the street. There is an overwhelming population of Arabic and African peoples which adds a lot of culture of the city. On the way back to the hostel, I met an Australian man who had been traveling through Europe since May 1st. He was in the process of writing a book about it in which he talks about different cultures and people by sharing his experiences. The interesting part was that he was in a wheelchair so needless to say his experiences have been very different than the average traveler.

After walking around Marseille Tuesday morning, we decided to head to Ellen’s aunt and uncle’s house on the coast in La Londe. We took a train from Marseille to Toulon and then a bus from Toulon to Hyeres and La Londe. Her aunt and uncle are British, but both retired so they spend a lot of time at their home in La Londe. They had another aunt and uncle and their 2 girls there, so originally they told us we couldn’t stay there. We showed up at their doorstep at about 3 in the afternoon and they pretty much insisted that we stay since it was quite the journey to get back. They took us down to the Mediterranean and Ellen, Autumn, the 2 girls and I took a swim. Surprisingly the water was quite warm, once you got in… took some beautiful pictures of the sunset over the Mediterranean and walked up a path into the woods on the point. The landscape and plant life reminded me a lot of the California coast by Big Sur and Monterey Bay. It was absolutely gorgeous. After we went back to her aunt and uncle’s and they cooked us this wonderful meal of lamb, roasted vegetables (potatoes, carrots, squash, onions), broccoli, beans, cheese and red wine (of course!), ice cream and cake.

The next morning we took the bus and train back and caught a train from Marseille back to home. We had originally planned on going to Aix-en-Provence for a day or so to meet up with another assistant, but that was canceled because we stayed at the Mediterranean instead. Maybe next time!

A month?

So it has been a full month since I arrived in Saint Etienne. Hard to believe for me as I feel like I just arrived. The past few weeks have been very good ones. I work about 11 hours a week, which may seem rough to all of you at home, but I assure you I am just barely getting by. Especially with Mondays and Wednesdays off... :)

Classes are going very well (compared to what I expected) and generally speaking most of the students are very interested in what I have to say. Most of the students I teach are girls (about 60 or 70 percent) so that also helps as I have realized the boys are a little bit more obnoxious. My classes range from groups of 17 to 8 to 3 and mostly I take a different portion of the students from their teacher each week. I am doing this with about 10 English teachers in the school and the students range from 1st years to 3rd years (in French High Schools/Lycées, there are only 3 years: sécondes 2°, prémiers 1°, and terminales...in that order). Basically they are equivalent to our sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Some classes have been very attentive and some students speak great English, whereas some classes (mostly the younger ones) choose to be difficult and/or don't speak that well. As you can imagine, disciplining French high school students is not the easiest thing when French is your 2nd language! That being said, I speak only English in class and I am not afraid to raise my voice... For these reasons I am very glad to only have 11 hours a week.

About two weekends ago I met a few Saint Etienne locals, Nadir and Salah, while watching the Rugby World Cup at a local bar. We ended up hanging out a few more times in the past two weeks, one of which was their Sunday ritual. I should tell you that Sundays in France are much different than in the USA because everything closes. When I say everything, I mean everything...shops, grocery stores, even the small bakery on the corner is closed. People tend to spend their day at the park or on leisurely bike rides. With that being said, Salah and a bunch of his friends usually play soccer at the local park on Sundays. This past Sunday he invited me to play, so I rode my bike to the park only to find out that they were playing 5 on 5 rugby (a tribute game because the French Rugby team lost to England in the semi finals the Saturday night before). So obviously I took off my glasses and joined the fun, playing in my first rugby game ever!

Saint Etienne is a cute little city and luckily very centralised in France, so traveling is quite easy. My friend Autumn from the Paris study abroad in 2005 is coming to visit at the end of October as we have a nice 12 day vacation. From here we are thinking of doing a short trip to the Mediterranean region of France or the French Alps (which are both easily accesible via train for about 30€ or 40 dollars round trip). It takes about 2h and 15 minutes to get to Avignon and Aix-en-Provence and about the same time to get to Grenoble, Annecy, and Chambery which are all possible destinations, the former of which are near the Meditarranean and the latter in the Alps.

Feel free to keep me updated on your exciting lives back home! I would love to hear from all of you.

Lyon and St Etienne

This past Saturday I went to Lyon to watch an Olympique Lyonnais soccer game. They have won the championships in the French league for the past few years so it was really fun to see a good team play. They played RC Lens and won 3-0. Our seats were right behind the goal and we saw OL score 2 goals in the last 10 minutes! It was my second French "football" match but the first one was a 0-0 draw with Paris St Germain and Monaco.
The city of Lyon is extremely beautiful and is known as the gastronomic capital of France. I walked around aimlessly to explore the city streets and Vieux Lyon. For those of you who don't know French, vieux is the word for old and that part of the city has 2 forums/theatres that date back to the Roman era. Its really cool to see the history of the city Lugdunum (the name of Lyon in the Roman empire). The geography of the city is very unique as Vieux Lyon sits on a hill on the west side of the city centre and borders the Saöne River. The Saöne flows into the Rhône River and the land in between them is called Presqu'île (trans. "almost an island") and the city centre is located there. To the east bank of the Rhône is a newer section of the city.
Today I had my first class with students. I will be working primarily with les terminales (last year in high school) and helping them prepare for their English oral exams. For now they have me working with a handful of the English teachers and I will be working with smaller groups of students. I had two different groups of students this morning for 30 minutes each and just introduced myself and asked them some fairly simple questions about their lives (in English of course!).
I am living in a tiny studio apartment at the Facotel which has all accomodations for students and assistants. It is very convenient as it is close to both the city centre and Jean Monnet University in Saint Etienne. I am working at Lycée François Mauriac in Andrézieux-Bouthéon which is about a 45 minute commute. I have to ride the tramway in St Etienne to the train station (about 15 minutes), ride the train from St Etienne to Bouthéon (another 20 minutes), and then walk about 15 minutes from the train stop to the high school.
Everything is working out nicely and the teachers (and students so far!) at the high school are very friendly.

Oktoberfest!!

So I arrived in Switzerland last Thursday the 20th. After spending a night out in Geneva and Friday afternoon, my friend Kevin and I decided to rent a car and drive from Geneva to Munich Germany for Oktoberfest. It was a bit of a last minute decision. We had no directions and no map of Germany so it was a total adventure.
We stopped in Germany somewhere to ask directions but the two German men we found couldn`t understand. We ended up getting to Munich around 2am and slept in the car. The drive wasnt too bad, about 7 or 8 hours and we just followed signs for upcoming cities. Driving on the autobahn was a whole other story. We thought 130 kmh was fast (about 75 - 80 mph) but other cars were flying past us at 180-190 kmh ( about 115mph or so).
The ride was absolutely beautiful with the Swiss and German alps.

Oktoberfest was absolutely the craziest festival I have ever attended. In the beer tents, german women bring about 15 stines of beer to the table at once (huge 1 liter beer mugs). I had enough trouble holding my own let alone 15. Everyone was very friendly there and we ended up hanging out with some Italians. On Sunday we attended a large parade through the streets of Munich.

Once I figure out how to post pictures I will put some on here.

This past week has flown by and I have been busy doing paperwork for my bank account and apartment. I start school next Monday Oct 1 but I think I am going to a soccer game in Lyon tomorrow night! A bientot!

Suisse!

So I arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport on Tuesday morning and took a train straight down to Saint Etienne. It has been a crazy last 3 days because I found out that there was not a room for me anymore at the high school. The first 2 nights I ended up staying with one of the female English teachers at the school (up in the French countryside!). Her and her husband have been extremely accomodating and helping me get down to Saint Etienne to find a place to live, bank account, etc...
Saint Etienne is about 190,000 people and I ended up finding an apartment that caters to students and other assistants as well. More on the expensive side than I was planning but it is a great location (near the city centre as well as the University, Jean Monnet). I met two other assistants which was nice to have some company while figuring out the housing situation.
Yesterday, I decided to hop on a train to Geneva to visit one of my friends from home (about 3 hours away). I am hanging out in Switzerland for the weekend and then I move into my apartment on Monday! Can't wait to get settled in and have my own place...it has been a crazy last few days. A bientot!

One week!

I'm heading over to Andrezieux, France on Monday Sept. 17th!