10 signs you're heading back to America

My hometown. Franchement, I got teary eyed.

1. Everyone's speaking English. Loudly.
2. Too much ice in the water glass. 
3. Blue jeans and tennis shoes.
4. Beach boys radio station on the plane.
5. Smiling! Oh, I really missed smiling at strangers.
6. You have to take your shoes off to go through airport security (go, DHS!)
7. Nutrition facts no longer contain calories (vs. kilocalories) or irrational serving sizes. 
8. You're flight attendant's name is Cathy and she's maybe the nicest person you've ever met (hello, customer service!). 
9. You can see baseball fields from the plane window. 
10. Economic propaganda commercials by CNBC: "capitalize on it"

RDU -- 22 hours without sleep!

What I learned from my time abroad

1. Picnics are the best way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
2. Humiliation is a good teaching tool: the times that my cheeks went red are the mistakes that I won't repeat.
3. I like to run. 
4. A meal without cheese is like a pretty girl missing an eye. Un repas sans fromage est une belle à qui il manque un œil.
5.  Accents are endearing.  
6.  Always buy the one euro insurance. 
7. Every "weird" food is worth trying once. 
8. When you don't know how to say something "in so many words," you learn to just say what you mean.
9.  People are fascinating, and everyone has a story.
10. Not everything will go as planned, but everything will work itself out. Tout se rangera.
11. I've got the travel bug.
12. Life is a lot more enjoyable when you're not unnecessarily stressed. 
13. There is beauty in contrast. 
14. The French way of showering (only turning water on to rinse) saves a heck of a lot of water.
15. How to make crème brûlée. 
16. Don't let fearing get in the way of living. 
17. It is, in fact, possible for me to go without Mexican food for five months (but I'm not looking to run a second trial...).
18. I look far more German than French.
19. With but a step into a church, I can find community and family anywhere in the world.
20. I can't wait to get back to Europe.

A Country Bumpkin in Paris

Peur du jour- 21 Mai 2012: Making a fool of myself

In this episode of European Travels with Kathleen, we find our main character in the Charles de Gaulle Marriot on the eve of her homecoming.

My dad was too good to me. With a flight out of Paris at noon, I knew I was going to have to already be in Paris the night before. I was seriously considering spending the night at the airport to save some money and to avoid the hassle of dragging five months of belongings through the Paris metro system. But, Dad was generous and put me up in the Marriot where I have a real bed, wifi, and a fitness center (free weights and a balance ball for the first time in months!!!).

Home sweet home

But, it quickly became clear to me that I have no idea how hotels work. I must not stay in nice ones very often. Or maybe this hotel is just special. But you have to use your key card for everything. I completely missed the sign in the elevator saying that you have to insert your key to select your floor and was corrected by a bellboy and two American businessmen after I missed my floor. Then I couldn't figure out why none of the lights or electrical sockets in my room were working. I went down to the front desk (because even the phone was out of order) and told them (in French) that the electricity wasn't working... He chuckled at me and asked "did you use your card?" There's a card holder near the light switch that activates all of the lights and electricity.

I'm that clueless girl that gives everyone a reason to laugh. De rien.

"Amen" is always the same

Peur du jour- 20 Mai 2012: German Mass

About four months ago, I went to my first mass in French. And I was terrified. On my morning walk to mass in the small Bavarian town of Lupburg, I experienced similar anxiety. Only this time, I was going to mass in a language which I don't speak at all (other than ein bier, bitte or danke or tschüss). Luckily, God blessed me with a few German friends in Montpellier who helped me prepare for this very mass.

In comparison with what I came to know in France, German mass much more closely resembles American mass.

• It has the same sense of order concerning the procession for the Eucharist, the kneeling/sitting/standing business, and the communication of hymnal pages (they had a cool light up board in the front of the church so I didn't even have to try to interpret numbers!). This organization does not surprise me at all; I've already waxed poetic about the trains. 

German Church in Lupburg

French Cathedral in Montpellier

• The architectural style is completely different from what I experienced in France. White walls instead of stone; natural light instead of colored.

• Similar demographics. There were lots of children and families (so I definitely didn't feel like an outlier skewing the average age). This is likely because Catholicism is a lot stronger in this region. In Bavaria, I see the stations of the cross along the walking trails. In Montpellier, it seemed like more people were "PACS"ed (a type of civil union) than were married.

But I also noticed some differences:

• Much less singing than in American or French masses.
• Like French mass, worship is more personal (vs. communal) in the manner that no one holds hands during the "Our Father" and the exchange of peace seemed to be confined to those sitting only to your left and to your right. I think this probably goes back to the fact that Americans tend to be much more touchy-feely.
• Mass in general seemed to be a little more formal. There's the manner of dressing which in general tends to be less casual in Europe. Also, I noticed that everyone in mass always had their hands folded in prayer which seems a little stricter than the US and far stricter than France.

So I think that in addition to having caught the travel bug this semester, I've caught the Catholic-comparison bug. It's so incredible to me how the slight variations in the rhythm and customs of a mass can be such a manifestation of regional and national culture. I can't wait to keep exploring, but in the mean time, I'd love to hear about your experiences in masses around the world in the comments!

Awesome thing #342 about Germany: The trains

Day 5 in the motherland. Germany continues to impress me. Remember my big cultural lesson about how great the French train system was? I think I was coming from an uninformed perspective. Any train system looks great next to the relatively nonexistent one in the United States.

1. German trains are actually on time. Inconceivable! Lindsey and I have been taking the train daily for our day trips and never once has a train been late. It's nice to know that you can count on making a connection and that you can accurately plan your day.
2. German trains actually check your tickets. This is nice because a lot of the time on French trains I wondered why I had wasted my money on a ticket they wouldn't even check (the answer: because I am honest).
    
3. German trains give you great stories. Friday night train rides out of Munich have no shortage of activity. Lindsey and I were accused (in German) of being Chelsea fans by a dusty old German man drinking beer from his backpack. Another older German man heard us speaking English and asked if we could explain the one English word he didn't understand: stillbirth (he had seen it in a health warning on his cigars). At one point, the four German men in our car were shouting about the upcoming Champions League Final match this weekend and all Lindsey and I could understand were town names and Amerika and JA!!! Never a dull moment.

I, of course, will be cheering for FC Bayern

Guten appetit!

Peur du jour- 16 Mai 2012: Conceding

 On Wednesday mornings, the bread truck comes. Around 8:30, we heard a loud honk announcing its arrival. I watched the neighbors crowd around the back of the truck in the brisk gray morning similar to the way kids crowd around the side of an ice cream truck.

Now, I thought that I had earned the right to be a pastry snob. France does millefeuilles and réligeuses and pains au chocolat and escargots brioches and and croissants aux amandes and every other delicious thing you could imagine. What on earth could possibly come off the back of a German truck that could be tastier than what you purchase straight from the oven in France?

I stood deliriously corrected.

So delicious I didn't even want to take it out of my lap to photograph it.

The Germans understand that the chocolate is the best part of a pain au chocolat. So not only is the whole thing FILLED with Schokolade, but also the ends are dipped in it. The end result: chocolate with every bite. I feel cheated by those skimpy French pastries that contain only a single nugget of chocolate.

Deutschland ist wunderschön.

Mais, je parle français

Peur du jour- 15 Mai 2012: More language immersion 

Today, Lindsey and I went to Regensburg, a really cool Bavarian town on the Danube river. We looked at the beautiful cathedrals, wandered around a fest and enjoyed beer, sauerkraut, and sausage at a restaurant on the river side.

A bridge over the Danube with a view of the Gothic cathedral

The restaurant was one of those places with a bunch of picnic tables where you sit down at the same table with strangers. After spending a few minutes hovering (UNC's dining hall, Lenoir, has really honed our table hunting skills), we found two spots at a nice table in the sun. After ordering our beers (the waitress started talking to us in English after we most surely butchered her native tongue), I heard that the people next to us were speaking French. Génial!

Our incredibly delicious lunch

Lindsey suggested that I ask them to take a picture of us once we got our beers. And without missing a beat, as soon as the waitress set the beers down on the table I was speaking French. We got to talking about how I had just spent the semester in Montpellier and where they were from and all of that. We let them enjoy their meal, but they said goodbye to us before they left!

The aforementioned picture taken by French hands!

Before my semester abroad, I would have been way too shy to do this. Isn't it cool how things change?

Ich spreche kein Deutsch

Peur du jour: 14 Mai 2012- Not speaking the language

So, I'm no longer in Montpellier, but I figured that you guys still might be interested in my travels! I'm currently spending a week in Bavaria with a friend from UNC and her wonderful family! Did you know that they don't, in fact, speak French here, but rather, German?

The small town of Lupburg, where my friend lives.

One of my friends who is a Deutschmeister back at UNC gave me some helpful phrases to use during my stay in the land of beer and sausage: hello, thank you, you're welcome, I'd like, etc. Unfortunately, I kind of forgot to write all of these phrases down and learn them before I went out to interact with natives. So we ended up at a bäckerei (bakery) pointing at donuts saying "ein". Oh, goodness.

Luckily, we walked out with these. Not too shabby.

Later I committed myself to learning the phrases my friend had taught me, refreshing my German numbers, and learning the days of the week (I don't know why I would need to know that, but it could come in handy). It's pretty humbling to be in a country where you don't speak the language. It's not that they don't speak English, but it's a big jump from France, where I felt like I could really grasp the culture and get around.

Bavarian farm fields

But I'm quite taken with Germany, so add Deutsch to the growing list of languages I'd like to learn.

Trains, planes, and automobiles. But especially trains.

French Cultural Lesson # 8: Le Train

The very first thing I did when I got to France was take a train to Montpellier. I remember feeling so French as I took the TGV for the first time and watched the French countryside whiz by. Throughout my stay here, I've really gotten to know the train system.

The Good: 
Unlike chez moi (back in the States), the train is really the mode of travel here. While there tends to be a Paris-centroism to the system, the network of rail is fairly extensive. In fact, I have done a majority of my traveling by train:

• Montpellier
• Avignon
• Nice
• Grasse
• Beaulieu-sur-mer
• Nimes
• Sète
• Cannes
• Antibes
• Monaco
• Menton
• Ventimille, Italy
• Paris
• Versailles

Also, in the French style of offering great discounts to people under 25 (something I'm going to miss a lot when I go back home), there is a discount card you can buy called the douze-vignt-cinq (the 12-25) which is for travelers between those ages. I've used the train so much that the card paid for itself in the first month, and I'd really recommend it to anyone with an extended stay in France who is planning to travel by train!

The bad:

The SNCF (the organization that runs the trains) has a reputation of being a little disorganized. Trains are often behind schedule, sometimes two trains leave from the same platforms at essentially the same time, etc. Suffice it to say, we have had our fair share of train fiascoes. The tardiness of trains is somewhat of a joke among French people. Back in March, a law was passed that requires the SNCF to refund your ticket if you miss a connecting train due to a delay (which seems like an obvious responsibility in my American eyes..).



The ugly:

They don't all look like this, I swear.

Final thoughts about Paris

Paris was just as magical as everyone has always said it would be. In fact, it was more magical.

La tour eiffel from le centre pompidou

I have had a lot of contact with people who talk Paris down:

La Basalisque Sacre-coeur

"The metro is so dirty."  Honestly, the metro was no dirtier than any American system I've seen. To be fair, I may be accustomed to a certain level of filth after living in Montpellier for so long, but honestly, that's life in a city. I also enjoyed never waiting for more than two minutes on a platform (and this wasn't just traveling at rush hour times).
 

L'avenue des champs-elysées

"The Parisians are so rude." I think that this is a big cultural difference. The French (and Europeans in general, I think) are a lot less expressive than Americans. We are loud. We let everyone know how excited we are. Other than a snooty waiter at Angelina's who made fun of my French, my interaction with Parisians was very positive. Admittedly, speaking their native language helps.

A view from the top of la cathédrale Notre-Dame

 "The Mona Lisa is so small." Whoever told me le Louvre was a waste of my time was definitely wrong (I don't remember who you are, but let me take you there! I want you to have a good experience!). Not only was I thrilled to see The Winged Victory of Samothrace and other great works of art, but the building itself was incredibly beautiful. I spent three hours there and maybe got through a fourth of the museum. A revisit is definitely in my future.

La seine

I could definitely never live in Paris, but I could never live in any big city (I need fresh air when I run and green grass when I walk barefoot and trees to climb when I want to escape from the world). Paris is truly an incredible city, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to realize the error in some of my preconceptions. I can't wait to go back!

An energizer bunny in Paris

Peur du jour- 19 Avril 2012: Being a traveling machine

On this day in Paris, I literally did not sit down for more than five minutes until my metro ride back to the hostel at 11 pm at night. I ate all three meals sur le pouce (on the go, literally "on the thumb") while walking from destination to destination. I may have felt like I was going to collapse at the end of the day, but I got to do everything in Paris I had planned to do. Worth it.


We spent about three hours at la tour eiffel waiting in line to go to the top and enjoying the beautiful views!

La Tour Kathleen

 We walked from la tour eiffel to le louvre because it was such a beautiful day! We stayed there until they literally herded us out at closing.

Lauren and I went to the extended hours at le musée d'orsay where we drooled over Monets and Renoirs and Degas and Manets and Sisleys and Gauguins and Seurats and Toulouse-Lautrecs until we were once again herded out at closing. Heaven.

Le Musée d'orsay is housed in an old train station

These magnificent clocks overlook la seine

We ended the night with a walk along the Seine and a viewing of la tour eiffel's light show.

Paris-ing in the Rain

Peur du jour- 18 Avril 2012: Ignoring physical discomfort

If there's anything worse than trying to discover a city in the rain, it's trying to discover a city in the pouring rain.

Unfortunately, a lot of my time in Paris was plagued by cold and wind and rain which left me really missing my rain boots, but really thankful that I remembered to bring an umbrella with me to France. Fortunately, Paris is not like the South of France which shuts down at the first sign of gray. People in the South are so accustomed to the sun that they just shut themselves indoors until those golden rays make their reappearance. Parisians are very much like Chicagoans; life goes on in sun, rain, and snow.

Some things I did in the rain: waited in line (outside) to climb Notre-Dame, wandered around le Quartier Latin down some streets a friend had recommended, took shelter in a wonderful cozy restaurant for lunch, took shelter under the awning of a delicious pastry shop while devouring a chocolately treat, did a quick run through les jardins de luxembourg, saw La Sarbonne, took shelter in Sainte-Chapelle (or the most beautiful church that ever was), grabbed a cup of hot chocolate in a café to thaw out, waited out the storm in a cozy Irish pub and had a really delicious crepe dinner.

Picture attack.

Notre-Dame pre-rain!

I like this one because it looks like he's about to eat la tour eiffel

There's a storm blowin'!

Les jardins de luxembourg- pouring at this point

Sainte-Chapelle (ignore the construction)

One great thing about rain is that all you want to do is sit in a warm restaurant and eat. Wednesday was definitely the day where I had the most food adventures in Paris! Regardez:

 At the end of the day, my freezing toes and sopping jeans were definitely worth it.

Le gare du nord? More like, la labyrinthe du nord!

Peur du jour- 17 Avril 2012: Navigating that thing they call a train station

So on this Tuesday morning, I woke up early to go fetch my friend Jack from the train station. I left myself plenty of time to stop by the bakery (friends who visit me in France get a complimentary pain au chocolat), take the 45 minute metro ride, and find the platform to be there when his train arrived.

Little did I know, le gare du nord is a maze of underground tunnels and misleading signs when you're coming from the metro station. I got off the metro and started following the signs to le gare when I ran into another line of ticket-takers. I had already swiped my ticket to get on the metro, so I thought those tickets must have been for the RER train or another line. Plan B brought me up the escalator and into the gray morning (note the weather change...). I was kind of just going with what I remembered seeing on maps and what I thought to be North and South when I picked which direction to start walking.

As it would happen, my often-excellent sense of direction was spot on and I made it to le gare in about three minutes. Inside, I started following the signs to les grandes lignes where my friend's train would come in. This sounds simple enough but for the fact that sometimes the signs would just disappear and you would have no idea whether to go up, down, left, right, forward, backward, diagonal, or what have you. At one point I was back in the metro and was forced to use a metro ticket to follow the grandes lignes signs.

Goodness gracious, Paris.

Naturally, as I fumbled around with escalators and hallways, I started imagining the worst. I wasn't sure that my friend would have a working cellphone and I wasn't even sure that he had put my number in his phone. What would happen if he got off the train and couldn't find me? How would we find each other? (Kathleen, stop freaking out.)

Eventually I resurfaced, found the platform, and bought some hot chocolate to hand to my sleep-deprived friend as he got off the train. And we had quite the lovely day (despite the pouring rain...)

Jack and me at Versailles! (in the rain)

Elyse and I doing a myspace style photo in the Hall of Mirrors

Slap happy after being so cold and wet...

And then it turned into a beautiful evening

Our view from the top of the arc de triomphe

Versailles was closed

Peur du jour- 16 Avril 2012: Being flexible

On Monday, Elyse and I had planned to spend a wonderful day at Versailles. We stopped by the boulangerie (bakery) on the way to the metro to get breakfast (pastries and baguettes... being poor sure is delicious!) and a picnic lunch (sandwhiches! yum!) to enjoy in the beautiful gardens of Versailles. When we got to Versailles, we quickly found the chateau and excitedly made our way to the tourist office to buy tickets. But when I asked for our free student tickets, the woman behind the counter gave me a blank stare and said "you know that the castle is closed today, right?"

D'oh.

So Elyse and I wandered into a Starbucks in search of free wifi so we could salvage our day and get on with the adventuring! It always throws me through a loop when plans fall through because I plan EVERYTHING, so then I have to change all of the plans that were around the original plans. But one of my goals in coming to France was to become a little more go-with-the-flow, so that's what Elyse and I did! We took the train back to Paris and shuffled a few items in the week around and this is what my day ended up looking like:

While waiting to meet up with Lauren, we ate our sandwiches on the steps of Montmartre with a spectacular view of Paris, sunshine on our faces, and the melodies of quintessentially French songs being played by a harpist in our ears.

Sacre-Coeur

 We wandered from Sacre-Coeur to les jardins de Tuileries where we stopped by Angelina's for the best cup of hot chocolate in Paris.

Angelina's hot chocolate = like drinking brownies straight from the oven

We walked les jardins de Tuileries from start to finish

Lauren and Me; Le musée du Louvre- one end of les tuileries

 We walked to the place where the guillotine sat during the French revolution.

La place de la concorde

 We took a stroll down Paris's most famous street.

Il y a tout ce que vous voulez aux champs-elysées

 We marveled at one of Paris's most iconic monuments

L'arc de triomphe

 And then we marveled at another one.

Elyse and me; La tour Eiffel

Basically, Paris wooed me with its history and charm and nice weather (even if it was only for that day!). Which I had really been needing. Paris, je t'aime.

The Paris Metro

Peur du jour- 15 Avril 2012: (Successfully) Navigating the Paris Metro on my lonesome

It's always a little unnerving when you are navigating a new area on your own. It's a little more unnerving when this area is congested and complex. It's even more unnerving when you've heard about everything that could go wrong (in this case: pick pockets and not going the wrong direction and getting horribly lost).

But I am here to tell you that the Paris metro is not so scary. After my six hour train ride from Nice to Paris, I groggily entered the bowels of the city (the metro, not the sewers). I even figured out how to buy tickets in one try! Nothing was stolen from me. I was not attacked. I didn't miss my stop. I didn't get lost. All in all a very boring story.

And sometimes it's better that way.

St. Jean Cap Ferrat: Where dreams come true

Peur du jour- 14 Avril 2012: Jumpin' on the back of a moped

So it was definitely on my unofficial bucket list to ride on a moped while in France. I guess it's kind of silly, but, like snails and frogs legs and accordion music and berets and baguettes, it's just something I associate with France. And I want to do everything French (even the things that are quasi-french).

So when Marc and Tammy found this out, they wanted to make sure I got to do it! It rained a lot of the week, so we kept putting it off for Saturday when the weather was supposed to be nice.

It rained all day Saturday.

I was trying to be cheerful, but I just knew I wasn't going to get to do my moped ride (I'm so silly, I know!). But finally, as the day was drawing to a close, I asked if it would still be possible despite the rain. And Marc was kind enough to humor me and take me for my ride. We rode around St.Jean Cap Ferrat looking at the beaches and all of the fancy houses (Paul Allen has a house there!).

And even though my face was being pelted with rain, it was still really fun to buzz around the winding mountain roads with an unobstructed view of the sea. And I looked pretty cute in the helmet.

When in Italy...

Peur du jour- 13 Avril 2012: Crossing the border

So this is another one of those peur du jours that isn't actually a fear I had to overcome. What anxieties could I possibly have about going to a huge market in Italy? Niente. Italian markets are just as wonderful as French markets

These strawberries smelled out of this world!

Well hello there, gorgeous

It's funny how you can take a thirty minute train ride and actually feel like you are in a different country. Tammy told me that since they have opened the borders, the contrasts are not as stark, but the signs and announcements are still in Italian, the market is full of pasta and parmasean cheese and foccacia, and the third color on the flag is green.

Scrumptious

Parmesan and Sausages 

Desserts, Italian Style

We also had a wonderful Italian lunch: pizza, wine, profiteroles, and a complimentary limoncello.

Italian Wine- I prefer French!

Delicious Pizza

Profiteroles (Cream puffs, normally in France they aren't slathered with chocolate mousse, but these were delicious!)

On the contrary, I prefer Italian coffee to French coffee!

Limoncello

But at the end of the day, it's nice to come back to a country where I speak the language. I could tell my "grazi"s and "bonjourno"s wouldn't get me much farther than the few hours I spent there.