Gardens Galore

Note: I am actually back in Edmonton now (as of yesterday evening) but will continue to update my blog with a few more posts, since due to unreliable internet connections and being very busy, I wasn't able to update for a while!

One thing that has struck me during my 4.5 weeks in Paris is just how green it is! The great thing about Paris is that despite being such a busy city, there is no shortage of green space where both Parisians and tourists go to escape the hustle and bustle of the crowded streets and to enjoy a few hours of tranquility. Whether reading in the Jardins des Tuileries or eating a baguette-and-camembert meal in the Jardins de Luxembourg with a friend, I love spending a lazy afternoon in one of Paris’ gardens. But those are not the only ones worth visiting - some of my favourites have been ones that I have visited on day trips outside of Paris. In my opinion, a must-see is the garden at the Château de Versailles.

I first visited Versailles two years ago, and I went for the second time two weeks into this trip, when I was lucky enough to meet up with my dear friend Travis who was visiting from London! Together we made the 45-minute journey from Paris by train, arriving in Versailles mid-morning and joining the throngs of people lining up to see home of the unfortunate King Louis XVI and Marie Antionette. Formerly a royal hunting lodge, Versailles became the main royal residence during the reign of Louis XIV. It is a place where monarchs were born and died and where treaties were signed, with every bit of the palace and grounds designed to glorify the king and to display his power over men and nature. The amount of money that the royal family must have spent on themselves is staggering when you see the splendor of the Hall of Mirrors and even the King’s bedchamber! But even after seeing the beautiful rooms and learning about the history of the building, I much prefer the garden! The palace is very interesting, but the finery is almost overwhelming, and the number of tourists inside makes it very hard to get a good view of anything, or to escape without being elbowed or trampled. It is such a relief when you escape the crowds and see this stretching out in front of you!

In the time of King Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, the gardens of Versailles served as a retreat for the Kings and their families, an escape from the pressures and intrigues of the royal court. Today, it is a wonderful picnic spot and a place where locals come to jog, bike, or row on the long canal. There are also plenty of ice cream stands, perfect on a hot day :)

Some boys practicing their rowing by the Grand Canal.

In the gardens, there are two smaller palaces (the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon) and also a small hamlet built by Marie Antoinette. During their reign, the Grand Trianon was Louis’ holiday home and the Petit Trianon was Marie Antoinette’s. Yes, that’s right: when the king and queen wanted a break from the palace, they moved into a smaller palace ... in their own backyard! As for the hamlet, Marie Antoinette had it built so that she could go there to lead the simpler life of a peasant, complete with farm animals and a vegetable garden. Of course, Marie Antoinette had no idea what real peasant life was like - the hamlet is completely idealistic - but I understand why she loved her hamlet so much. It is absolutely gorgeous! If I were in her shoes, I would want to spend every second of my time there, even if it meant neglecting my duties (on second thought, maybe not ... I like my head where it is, thank you very much!!!)

Marie Antoinette's hamlet.

The Moulin, or mill.

My advice to anyone visiting the Château de Versailles: spend most of your time in the gardens, especially if it isn’t your first time there. You can soak in the beauty of the landscape as well as the sun, and you can skip the lines and the crowds, plus you will save a ton of money which you can then spend on ice cream!

On the opposite end of the garden spectrum are the gardens at Giverny, where Claude Monet lived and painted for several decades of his life. My day trip to Giverny is one of nicest I have had in France - I took the train to Vernon, a small town on the border of Normandy, and there I rented a bicycle and biked the remaining five kilometres to the village of Giverny. It was a perfect day, hot and sunny, and although I did get lost once or twice I loved the view of the river once I had found the bike path. It felt very European to be biking around but I would never be brave enough to do it in Paris, because the drivers are just too crazy! You can never be sure whether they will stop at a red light (or if they even bother to look).

It’s hard to decide which garden I like better, Versailles or Giverny, since they are both so different; Versailles is perfectly groomed and symmetrical, gigantic, and stunning, but Giverny has splashes of colour everywhere and is charming despite the haphazard placement of flowers. In the end, I think that I have to choose Giverny as my favourite simply because it was tended with such obvious care and love during Monet’s time there. Not only did he plant flowers, he also bought a piece of marshland close to the river and created a water garden with bamboo, willows, and plenty of waterlilies. He often worked on several canvases at the same time, only continuing when the light was perfect. I got the impression that Monet and his family led a simple life, but a content one, especially because the garden would have been any impressionist’s dream!

The Monet family's cute and very cozy house in Giverny.

Random Wanderings in Paris

If there's one thing I've learned in Paris - besides la concordance du temps, le discours indirect, and le passé simple, that is - it's that you can see even more interesting things just by wandering around the city than you can see while walking through a museum like the Louvre. True, there are some things that are not so pleasant to see, such as beggars, litter (see image below), and dog poop in the street, but there are so many things happening here all the time that it is a shame to take the métro, even if it is fast and convenient. Here are just a few of the cool things I've seen since my arrival ...

A typical street in Paris ... on a good day.

If there's something Paris is known for besides the Eiffel tower, the Mona Lisa, and unfriendly waiters, it is the frequent strikes and/or protests that can paralyze the city, or just cause a bit of inconvenience. So you can understand my surprise that I hadn't encountered one yet ... at least not until Saturday, as I was on my way to the Père Lachaise cemetery on bus number 69. I had planned to get off at the last stop, Gambetta, but without warning the driver suddenly stopped the bus ten minutes away from the end of the route and told us all to get off. I didn't quite catch everything that he said, as I was sitting near the back of the bus, but my ears perked up when I heard the word "manifestations." Was I about to see my very first Parisian protest, I wondered? As it turned out, no. The road was being blocked by a long line of people, but it wasn't a protest; it was a parade in support of fair trade. I was slightly disappointed, but as it turned out, I didn't have to wait to long to see a protest. Later that day, as I was walking though le Marais, I ran into a large crowd of supporters of Laurent Gbagbo protesting France's interference in the Côte d'Ivoire's elections and Gbagbo's arrest. It looked like the entire Ivorian population of Paris had turned out to protest, banging drums and holding signs, so I got out of the way pretty quickly ... but with the satisfaction that I could cross something off my mental checklist of things to experience in Paris!

My first Parisian protest (sort of)

It is also surprising what you can find just a few streets away from where you live. Last week I was walking around the Champs-Elysées with the other two girls staying with the same host family when we happened upon an exhibition all about Coca Cola! Just for the fun of it, we went inside to take a look around - after all, it was free. It was actually very interesting to see the old Coke bottles and advertisements from many decades ago, and after we were done we went to the garden at the back of the building and had drinks (Coke, of course). We also looked at the souvenir shop but I didn't buy anything, as everything for sale had Coca Cola logos plastered all over it. I think it's ridiculous that they want you to pay 25 euros for a Coke bag or t-shirt; if you ask me, Coca Cola should be paying people to wear the shirts and carry the bags, because it's advertising for them!

The three of us at the exhibition. Sadly, there are only two of us now, as one of the girls has returned to Oman.

Another cool thing that I saw the other day is the sculpture in the picture below. There is an artist whose work consists of creating huge plastic candies, and right now her artwork is scattered all over Paris. I saw this one on the Champs-Elysées, between rue Washington and the Arc de Triomphe. Unless I'm much mistaken, the design on the sculpture is the flag of Qatar.

Finally, I was walking by the Centre Georges Pompidou the other day (a true monstrosity if I ever saw one, but quite an interesting contrast with all of Paris' other buildings) ...

... when I saw a familiar face! Why hello, Gerard, how nice to see you here (and your lovely uniform as well)! :)

P.S. For anyone who isn't familiar with FC Barcelona or the Spanish national soccer team, this is Gerard Pique, a defender for both teams.

A Very Large Tomb for a Very Small Man

Another week has gone by here in la belle ville de Paris, a week that has been filled with endless hours of sightseeing (as I'm sure anyone could guess from the lack of blog posts this past week). I have been to so many museums and monuments that even now, as I think back, I am hard pressed to remember everything. One thing that I know for sure, though, is that my classes are going very well and my french definitely improving, if slowly. My new teacher is super nice, and although some people have left my class to return to their countries, there is no shortage of really nice people to talk to. The highlight of the week for me was the drama class I did on Thursday morning; I thought that improvisation in English was hard, but when you're trying to act out a bizarre scenario in french it becomes almost impossible! We also played Celebrity Guess Who and had a debate about Dominique Strauss-Kahn - people here never get tired of talking about him and I have heard about little else at the dinner table for the past week!
Today was also a really great day, one of the most relaxing ones I have had in a while. My friend from Taiwan, who lives with the same host family as me, a girl from Germany, and I were invited to another Canadian girl's apartment for lunch. Her apartment is in the heart of le Marais, a very old and beautiful area of Paris, and she will be living there until the end of August while she attends the language school. We all bought lunch on the way over and when we arrived we opened a bottle of champagne and ate together while chatting and watching french tv. After we had finished, we walked around le Marais and did some shopping in the cute shops lining the narrow streets. I made some new friends and got to see a beautiful section of Paris at the same time - it was the perfect way to spend a Monday afternoon!
Having seen so many things this week, I hardly know what to write about first, but I think that I will start with Napoleon's tomb and the military museum. Both are located at les Invalides, a hospital for war veterans built by Louis XIV which today also houses le Musée de l'Armée and the tombs of various french military leaders. It is surrounded by long sloping lawns, the Esplanade des Invalides, and is very close to both Napoleon's military school and the Eiffel tower. In fact, Napoleon and his classmates used to have military drills in the field where the Eiffel tower now stands!

 

The first place I visited at les Invalides was the royal chapel, the Chapel of St Louis, located underneath the striking golden dome that crowns the hospital. It was beautiful, with paintings from the life of Jesus decorating the walls, but I felt that France's military was really the thing being glorified in that chapel, the many tributes to french soldiers overpowering the religious paintings and objects.

However, the chapel was nothing compared to the room on the other side of the dome: Napoleon's tomb! My first impression of Napoleon's tomb is the title of this blog post: it is a very large tomb for a very small man (if I remember correctly, he was only 5 ' 5'' or so)! In fact, my french teacher told me that Napoleon's body is inside not one, but seven coffins. Seven! Apparently that is because seven is supposed to be the perfect number ... nothing but the best, the most perfect, for Napoleon! What an ego that man must have had! Take a look at the picture below and you will see the proof. Napoleon was originally buried on St. Helena, where he was exiled after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 - in an unmarked grave, because nobody could decide what to write on the tombstone - but it was moved to les Invalides in 1861, forty years after his death.

If the sarcophagus was fancy, it was nothing compared to the decorations surrounding it. On the walls were pictures of Napoleon dressed in a toga, seated on a throne and wearing a crown. Napoleon educating a child, Napoleon dispensing justice ... the list of his achievements was endless. There was even a huge life-size statue of him by the tomb of his son, also named Napoleon (many of his relatives are buried there as well). On the floor by his sarcophagus were the names of all of his battles, but there was one battle that was conspicuous because of its absence from the list - can you guess which one?

Even after my visit, I have to admit that I am a little confused about Napoleon and his place in French history. Napoleon came to power after France had had a revolution to get rid of their king ... and promptly crowned himself emperor. You would think that the French would be a little upset about this, having gone to the trouble of chopping off the king's head and everything to rid the country of the monarchy, but no - my visit left me in no doubt that Napoleon is glorified in France. I know that his military success was amazing and he was responsible for some social reforms, but still, his second wife even lived at Marie Antoinette's former residence at Versailles! If anyone could enlighten me on this subject, I would much appreciate it!

After this Napoleon overload, I was more than happy to make my way over to the section of les Invalides about France's military history, WWI and WWII in particular. With many costumes, artifacts, paintings, and even military vehicles on display and videos to watch, there was no shortage of things to see. The highlights for me were the uniforms, mostly of french soldiers but also of other allied and axis countries. The coolest uniforms were from France's regiments in northern Africa; judging from the ones on display, the men looked like a cross between soldiers and desert nomads! But the object that touched me most deeply was not designed with war in mind. It was actually a small stuffed animal, a penguin that a french soldier kept in his plane during WWI. When he was killed in 1915, at the age of 26, the penguin was one of the only objects recovered from the plane. I admit that I almost cried a little bit, seeing that stuffed penguin. It's all very interesting to see uniforms, weapons, and vehicles, but it's things like this that let you glimpse the humanity and the innocence behind the military strategy and logistics.

That's it for now ... hopefully I will have one or two more relaxing days this week, or else my head will definitely be filled with too many facts and sights to function properly!

Frenchified

I have come to the conclusion that I am slowly being Frenchified. This realization dawned on me the other day when I switched from french to english while I was talking to someone and then realized that I was speaking english with a slight french accent.
I guess it must have been because the only english I ever hear in Paris is accented, but it still surprised me! I also notice that when I speak english, I choose my words with more care and speak more slowly, just like I do when I am trying to say something in french. I guess my brain has trouble switching over from one language to another! Then again, speaking with a french accent can work to your advantage here. For example, if you tell a french speaker that you saw the grave of Jim Morrison at the Père Lachaise cemetery, they won't have a clue who you're talking about. However, if you tell them that you saw the grave of Jeem Morreeson (spoken with a soft J, rolled Rs, and emphasis on the last syllable), they will understand you right away.
Anyway, I will have to be careful or I will end up returning to Edmonton speaking french that is slightly improved and english that is slightly worse!
I have had a very busy weekend, including visits to the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Eiffel tower (only to look, not to go up), and Napoleon's tomb. I don't have time to write about them all today, but I will post pictures from them all later in the week, when I will be busy at school all day and won't have a lot of time to go to museums. My visit to the Louvre took place on Friday afternoon, after classes had ended for the day, which was a great time to go - the lines were not terribly long, it was not too crowded,  and some of the sections were almost empty! Though I spent four hours there, I only really saw one of the three sections, the Denon wing. The Denon wing is filled with Roman statues and Italian/French paintings, and after a few hours in there I never wanted to see another painting of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus ever again! (at least not until the next time I go to the Louvre, since I want to see it all!)
The first rooms I visited were filled with Roman statues from the second and third centuries. It is truly remarkable that they have survived so long in such perfect condition!

 This one below is probably my favourite. It depicts part of the story of Cupid and Psyche. Cupid's mother, Aphrodite, asks Psyche to go down to the underworld to fetch a flask from Persephone, but under no circumstances is Psyche to open the flask. Upon hearing this advice, does Psyche do the right thing and obey Aphrodite? Of course not! She opens the flask, breathes its magical fumes, and starts to die ... but at the last moment, her lover Cupid swoops down, kisses her, and pricks her with his magic arrow to bring her back to life. The statue is beautiful from the front, but if you go around to the back you can see further details, including Cupid's quiver and the magical flask hidden behind Psyche's form.

Next, I visited the rooms with German and Italian carvings from the 15th and 16th centuries. This one below is by Martin Hoffman. It is life-size and carved entirely out of limewood. There is something about it that I love - perhaps it is the sweetness of Mary's face, or the way that her clothing drapes over her as though it were real fabric instead of wood, or perhaps it is because the chubby baby Jesus in her arms reminds me quite a bit of a young Dudley Dursley from Harry Potter!

 This is another one I really liked. It is made out of painted wood, but it looks so realistic it's kind of scary! Her name is La Belle Florentine and she was carved and painted by Settignano.

 Next was the Italian paintings section - the one with the Mona Lisa! First, I walked by some beautiful frescos by Botticelli ...

 ... and then arrived at the Mona Lisa herself! I am no fan of the La Joconde, as they call her in France - her smile is rather creepy, the painting is tiny, and frankly, she looks exactly like all of the other people Leonardo da Vinci painted - but I did learn something new about the painting while I was there. Apparently the Mona Lisa is Lisa del Giocondo, and da Vinci was commissioned to paint her to celebrate the birth of a second son. And the reason for her mysterious smile? My audioguide informed me that she could be smiling because of her recent good fortune - in addition to the birth of a son, the family was also moving into a nicer house - or because of her last name. Giocondo, or Gioconda in the female form, means "cheerful." So, Leonardo da Vinci could have been referring to her last name when he painted the smile.

Madame Méchante

Today was another long day at school and I didn't do anything particularly exciting in terms of sightseeing, but I do feel like I learned a lot. And for the first time since the end of grade 12, I have homework! It's like I'm in IB again!
We did a lot of roleplaying and debating in class this morning, which was a lot of fun. In particular, I liked this one activity where we had to offer constructive criticism to our classmates (all in fun, of course) ... but we got so absorbed in the activity that our "constructive criticism" could be more accurately described as "carefully crafted insults." I learned some great new phrases (during the roleplaying and also during other activities), such as:
       - "Tu as rien dans la caboche!" (loosely translated as "Your head is empty")
       - "Magne-toi tes fesses!" (very loosely translated as "get over here!"... but a bit more impolite)
In all of these roleplaying activities, I often get the role of a nasty or rude person. Consequently, my teacher and my classmates have now started teasing me and calling me "Mme Méchante"! What can I say - being the baddie is rather fun!
As I said, I didn't do much sightseeing today other than walking around the area close to the language school during the lunch break, but I did take some photos of Paris. Really, when I think about it, just walking to the Georges V metro station to go to school in the morning is sightseeing because there is so much history everywhere!

First (and Second) Day of School

Today was my second day at the language school, and I am loving it so far and learning a lot!
On the first day, I had to be there at 8:15 am for the placement test, which had a writing and an oral component. To my surprise, I was placed in level B2, which is a level higher than I completed in high school. To be honest, I found it very difficult yesterday and became a bit discouraged, because I had trouble understanding some things that the teacher said and the other six students in the class seem to speak more fluidly and eloquently than me. However, I did find it easier today and I think that being challenged will be good for me!
The best part about the school is definitely all the people you get to meet, people of all ages, backgrounds, and nationalities. For example, I have made friends with a woman who is from Serbia but lives in Switzerland, and there is a guy in my class who was born in Nepal, lived in Italy for most of his life, and now studies in the US. Everyone has a different reason for learning french; one woman needs it for her job as an aid worker in a francophone African country, some people have French friends, others have just moved to France or married a French citizen, they are a few people who just want to learn it for fun, and there are those like me whose country has french as an official language. That's not my only reason for learning it, of course, because I also just love the sound of the language and want to be fluent in something other than English.
The teachers are all very friendly, helpful, and funny. Right away they got us practicing our french: while all of us new students were waiting for our placement tests to be marked, they made us tell them some stereotypes of French people that are common in our countries. The answers were hilarious: apparently pretty much everyone in the world believes that the French are a bit stuck-up, that all French men are Casanova's, that they drink wine and eat cheese all the time (which is actually pretty accurate), that they drive badly (but not as badly as the Italians), and that they refuse to speak anything other than french. I felt kind of bad for the teachers for having to hear all of that ... but they did ask for it!
Today was very fun as well. During the morning the fire alarm went off and we all had to evacuate the building, but we even practiced our french as we waited on the sidewalk for the firemen to let us back in. While my teacher (and all of the other staff!) had a cigarette, he got us to practice le subjonctif by coming up with good and bad advice for what to do when asked to evacuate a building!
Despite the long hours at school (9 am to 5:15 pm today), I still had some time to sightsee when classes were finished for the day. I visited the Île de la Cité this evening, taking the very crowded metro to the middle of the island and walking from there to Notre Dame. The crowds were not very thick, probably because the temperature had dropped quite a bit and it looked like it might rain, so I was free to take pictures without worrying that I was standing in the way of someone's camera!

Notre Dame is truly stunning, and as an added bonus the bells started ringing just as I arrived. But I think that some of the most interesting views of the cathedral are from up close:

 The guy below looks like he had a rather nasty encounter. Is he perhaps John the Baptist? Whoever he is, at least he's lucky enough to have a statue of himself on the front of Notre Dame cathedral, even without his head in the right place!

I had planned on returning to the rue Washington after seeing Notre Dame, but as I was turning to leave a sign caught my eye: "Mémorial à la Deportation." I walked in the direction indicated by the sign, all the way to the other side of Notre Dame, where I found the memorial inside of a beautiful garden, filled with roses and surrounded by a stone wall. The memorial was built in the 1960s as a tribute to the thousands of Jews deported from France during the occupation by the Nazis during WWII. In particuliar, many of them were arrested in July 1942, in what became known as the Vel d'Hiv roundup (after the Vélodrome d'Hiver, a bicycle racing stadium where they were kept for five days without adequate food or water, before being deported). The interior of the memorial had already been closed to the public, but I was able to look inside and read the sign in the garden. It was so sad, and I was shocked when I read that in France alone, 160 000 Jews were deported! I am definitely planning to return when the memorial is open so that I can see the inside as well.

On a happier note, I am really starting to settle in here. I enjoy staying with my host family and the student from Holland, and I love practicing my french while getting to know the other students during and between classes at the language school. Hopefully now I will be able to start picking up the teachers' beautiful Parisian accent!

The Sound of Music

As I write this, I can hear beautiful piano playing coming from another apartment. This morning it was the sound of Chopin echoing across the courtyard to my window, earlier this evening it was Beethoven, and now it is a song I am not familiar with but equally as nice.

Today was wonderful and I saw a lot of things, even though I didn't get out of bed until after ten in the morning (I set my alarm, but I turned it off to sleep a few more minutes ... and a few minutes turned into a few hours! I will blame it on the jet-lag.). I left the house at around eleven and walked down the Champs-Élysées, crossed the Place de la Concorde and went through the Tuileries gardens to get to the Orangerie museum. It has impressionist and post-impressionist paintings like the Musée d'Orsay, but it is not nearly as big and way less crowded. Definitely worth a visit, especially since I got in free! Technically you're supposed to pay once you've turned 18, but the man at the desk was really nice and gave me a free ticket!

My favourite part of the exhibition was the section with the huge paintings of waterlilies (or nymphéas) by Monet. There are two oval-shaped rooms, each with four gigantic canvases that curve with the walls, giving you the impression that you are standing on an island in the middle of a pond! It's amazing that an eighty-year-old man painted these when he was nearly blind, although an eye operation did improve his eyesight and he was better able to work on the paintings. Unfortunately, after all that work, he died before the exhibition opened, and when it did, impressionism was already out of style and not very many people came to see it. Worse, a shell fell through the roof of the gallery during the liberation of Paris in 1944, and after that the gallery was renovated in a style that was not at all what Monet had wanted (he painted the Nymphéas canvases specifically be placed in a certain way in the gallery). Now, after a renovation between 2000 and 2006, the paintings are displayed in the way that they were originally intended to be.

I had a more quiet afternoon. After wandering around Saint Germain de Près I found a small shop where I bought some lunch, which I took back to the jardins des Tuileries for a picnic. The weather was beautiful and the lower park was crowded with people, but the upper part was much quieter and I spent several hours just sitting and people-watching. In the early evening I decided to try out the metro in preparation for getting to school tomorrow. It is so quick and efficient; if there was a better view down there I would take the metro everywhere instead of walking, but as it is I like walking and get more exercise this way anyway! Then it was back to the apartment for dinner with my host family and the Dutch girl who is also staying here and going to the same school. Monsieur Z is a great cook - especially when he makes blueberry rice pudding - so I guess it's definitely a good thing that I'm getting lots of exercise!