Mountain Climbing, Wine Tasting, and Fairy Tale Villages

This past weekend we went on the second Dickinson excursion. This time, we visited two of the most beautiful towns I have ever seen: Conques and Cordes-sur-Ciel.

They were so gorgeous, seriously, I felt like I was living Beauty and the Beast. See?




I took about a million pictures, although they were all entirely incapable of showing just how beautiful these towns actually are. I have another facebook album (separate from the others that I have been plugging in the past two posts) that you can see if you click here. It's entirely devoted to the many pictures I took over the weekend, although it's not all of them. It's a good thing I took my computer along so that I could upload pictures off of my camera as I went, otherwise I wouldn't have had space.



Conques, the first village we visited, had a beautiful church (pictured above) with sparrows flying all around the towers... in some of my pictures you can see them, there had to have been hundreds. We arrived and had some free time to grab a pastry before taking a long hike up a mountain (which was harder, I think, than either Roquefixade or Montségur). We had a picnic
at the top, with a view of the city and it's surrounding mountains... absolutely phenomenal view, as I'm sure you would imagine.

(Conques)

After we left Conques, we headed to Cordes-sur-Ciel, a city located on the top of a very high mountain, with a steep cobblestone path which we had to climb up carrying all of our bags. Of course, given that we had just climbed a massive mountain, I was not pleased. But, at the top, it was totally worth it. I had my own hotel, beautiful hotel room with my own bathroom (most importantly, a shower). I took the longest and probably the nicest shower I have ever taken in my life... I was sore and tired and sweaty and I really didn't want to do anything but stand under the water for the rest of my life. Getting out was painful, and getting dressed and going to dinner was equally difficult.

But, it was definitely worth it. Dinner was delicious, we started with salade and quiche, followed by guinea fowl (basically small chicken), followed by chocolate hazelnut deliciousness. We also drank a regional specialty: violet liqueur mixed with white wine. It was really good... very sweet. After a long meal and lots of laughs, I collapsed into bed, and fell quickly asleep.

The following day, our resident tour guide, Monsieur Crema, took us around the town and told us all about its history. Just like Cordes, Conques-sur-Ciel was gorgeous... old, stone buildings with large windows, ivy and flowers covering almost every surface... I never wanted to leave.

After a nice lunch, we just barely had enough time for a quick trip to the Museum of Sugar Art... everything was made out of sugar! Incredible, don't you think?? Afterwards, we headed back down the mountain... it was so steep that the way down was equally difficult. When we finally got down, we got back on the bus, and headed off to the winery, where we had a wine tasting of les vins de Gaillac. The winery was located on a beautiful plot of land in a town called L'Isle-sur-Tarn, because it is located just on the bank of the Tarn river. In this case, the Tarn actually ran through the winery's back yard.

The owner showed us around the beautiful winery, as well as a little bit of the surrounding land. The building has always been in his family, although not always under the same name, as sometimes there were no male heirs to take it. He seemed incredibly proud of what he did, while still seeming to really enjoy the opportunity to share his work with us. He said the main thing he wanted to have us learn was that nature played a huge role in what he did... no matter how well his job was done, it all depended on how generous nature wanted to be. We got to taste the white, rosée, and red Gaillac wines he made, and had a good time being taught how to properly taste wine... starting with looking at the color, smelling the wine and naming the smells, and then, finally, tasting it so that it touches many different senses. It was an interesting look into something that comprises such a huge part of French life and culture.

(Château Lastours winery)

That's about everything... it was another extremely successful Dickinson excursion, I had a really fantastic time. I'm sorry if this post is a little more vague... I have a lot of work to do for this upcoming week, but this blog has been nagging me for quite some time. Hope you enjoy these three posts in rapid succession... I'll be sure to write soon about classes, etc., just let me finish off this week. Leave a comment, let me know you're reading, it'll make me more obliged to keep up.

À toute à l'heure!
Bryna

Life to do list #42: Spontaneous European Vacation

Check.

So. Mediterranean beach vacation anyone?


We decided to go gallivanting off to a town in southern France (Agde) along the Mediterranean sea a grand total of one day beforehand. Jarrod found a cottage for six that wound up only costing 22 Euros apiece, so we ended up taking twelve people (filling up two cottages). It's a funny story, actually, it was a mere hours after we bought the tickets and booked the cabins that someone rustled up this little gem... as it happens, Agde is the naturist capital of Europe. So... we headed off with backpacks and a hope that we wouldn't see too many naked people. Or at least that we wouldn't see more than your average number of naked people on a French beach.

Turns out we needn't have worried. The entire weekend was a resounding success, from start to finish. Example:

1. Get to train station and have to stand in absurdly long line in order to pick up an already purchased ticket. Would have missed the train, but it was delayed.

2. Due to the delayed train, we missed our connection (sidebar: is that word used when trains are involved???), but we arrived exactly two minutes before a second train left for Agde and managed to get ALL of us on it and accounted for (all of us coming from different cars on the first train) within that time.

3. Arrived in Agde, myself and three others took off to find a grocery store for supplies to make a nice family dinner, only to find ourselves in the only store three minutes before it closed. We managed to find everything we needed (pasta, sauce, and baguettes for dinner; coffee, yogurt, milk and cereal for breakfast) at a cost of only 5 Euros per person.

4. Managed to call a taxi after leaving the grocery store. This was only a success because we actually called two taxis because the first one said it would take fifteen minutes, and we didn't want to wait that long, so we called a second without considering the awkward possibility that the two might arrive at the same time. They didn't.

5. Had a wonderful family dinner in an adorable and quite comfortable cabin with 11 other friends.



6. Slept in a little, then made our way to the beach, a lovely hour long walk along a nice bike path. Fresh air galore.

7. Met up on the beach, then headed to lunch, where we found cheap Moules et frites (Mussels and french fries), Agde's specialty. It was a little cloudy when we first got there, but by the time we had finished our leisurely lunch, it was sunny and beautiful.



8. Spent all day relaxing on the beach, looking out at the Mediterranean, with no fully naked people in sight.


9. Stopped for crepes, and then meandered back to the cabins and jumped directly into the enormous pool.

10. Took a relaxing shower, and then had a second family dinner, equally delicious and enjoyable, followed by exhausted sleep.

11. Had a nice morning walk into town after having successfully cleaned the cabins ourselves and gotten back the deposit. We were closer to the train station than we thought, so we didn't have to pay for another taxi, and we got to do some shopping in the central market before having a wonderful lunch.



12. Headed to the train station, and found that we can all just hop on an earlier train that goes straight back to Toulouse, as opposed to having to transfer in Narbonne.

13. Spent the ride back enjoying the scenery and sharing music with Andrea.

14. Arrived safely home in Toulouse and discover that it has been raining there all weekend.

Now really, who could ask for anything more?

(More pictures, if you're interested.)

Bryna

Mountain Climbing in the Pyrénées

Hello all! Sorry it has been so long since my last update, but due to the extreme demand for new posts (aka the occasional question from my mom and Michelle) I'm going to do at least two new ones now instead of working on my intercultural journal. Turns out I'm just as good at procrastinating in Europe as I am in the good old US of A.

This first post, as the name so clearly describes, is going to be about my trip to the Pyrénées with the Dickinson Center. I'm going to do more than one post because I don't want everything I need to write to get jumbled. Alright. Onto the mountain climbing.

So on Tuesday, September 7 the entire Dickinson en France group got up very early to catch a bus to Pays Cathare... a region of France in the Pyrénées where the Cathares lived when they were being hunted down by the Christians. They believed in Dualism... the existence of a God of good (heaven and man's soul) and a God of evil (the body and earth's material things). Once the Christians heard about it, they were none too pleased, and essentially decided to start a crusade to hunt down the Cathares, and either have them renounce their religion or be burned alive. As a result, the Cathares took to the mountains to hide from the crusaders.

On this trip we visited two ruins of châteaux in which the Cathares hid: Roquefixade and Montségur. Roquefixade, as shown in the picture above, was the smaller of the two mountains we climbed, and has been there since 1034. Can you believe that? The age of everything in Europe is absolutely astounding to me. I feel like nothing we are currently constructing will be in existence a thousand years from now.


Anyway, the bus stopped in the town at the base of the mountain (picture above). It was an adorable little place, I think someone told me that only 50 people live there today, although I'm sure the town gets tons of foot traffic from all the avid expeditioners. The going up was definitely not easy, and at times somewhat treacherous, given the tiny gravel on the steep parts of the trail. I was made painfully aware of the age of my tennis shoes; the soles have been worn slick and offer little to no traction. Once we got to the top, there was a little bit of actual rock climbing involved to get to the ruins of the châteaux, which was fun. I kind of like scaling rocks, as long as they're not too high. It is, however, a miracle that I didn't kill myself on this excursion... mountain climbing is generally no the best idea for people as clumsy as I am.

(Commencement of the actual rock climbing... the people on the ruins are other Dickinson students)

(View from the top... the picture never does it justice.)

After we made our way down the mountain and refilled our waterbottles, we hopped back on the bus and headed off to Montségur. We had lunch at the base of the town, outdoors, all organic food... the most enormous and delicious peice of quiche I have ever seen and then subsequently eaten in my life. It was nice and relaxing, although we were all stuffed and ready to go take a nap right around the time that we had to do more hiking.

(This is where we started. The path straight ahead is actually perilously steep, although you can't tell from the picture.)

Montségur was an interesting place because it was actually the last of the Cathares' strongholds. It's name actually comes from words that mean "secure mountain", which is clear even in English. This is probably because the mountain was much, much higher. It's difficult to tell from the picture above, but it was a lot steeper, too. I had a tough time... I'm not really much of an outdoorsy girl, and though I do love the mountains, I don't really make a habit of scaling them every chance I get. I wouldn't have missed the view for the world, though.

(View from the top.)

After we made our way back down the mountain, we hopped in the bus again and headed off to a little town called Vals, where we visited a church that was quite literally built inside a rock. Although the church was added onto in many different time periods, it's believed that people first started worshiping there in 2000 B.C. Crazy. The church was beautiful, and, as a bonus, we were all able to cool off inside the cool rock after having been sweating all day.

(Church at Vals.)

Well, that's all for now. Needless to say it was an incredible trip, albeit entirely exhausting. I hope my summary was concise enough... it's hard when there's so many pictures I want to show. Here's a link to my facebook album with all of my pictures... and I mean all of them. There are more pictures of my house, life in Toulouse, this trip as well as my more recent vacation (which should be the subject of my next blog post)... you name it. So, check it out, and leave a comment here to let me know what you think.

And, as always, thanks for reading.

Bryna

Alright, let's try for a coherent one this time.

Sorry for the last post... I had a lot of information to dispense, and as I mentioned, living abroad can be somewhat exhausting. I appreciate the fact that so maybe people have actually taken the time to look at this blog... it really means a lot to me to be able to share this experience with the people I care about.


So today, we spent some class time walking around the Basilique de Saint Sernin; a basilica dedicated to the first bishop of Toulouse, who was martyred. It's absolutely stunning, as you can see from the picture I took and put at the top of this entry. My favorite part inside is the feet of a destroyed statue of St Christopher that are fused into one of the pillars inside the church (pictured above). People go there to pray to St Christopher for safe travels home, and touch these feet that have now been rubbed smooth as a result. My favorite ritual involving this feet, though for some reason it died after WWII, was that when children began to take their first steps, the parents would bring them to walk around this pillar for the same reason... a safe journey to wherever life may take you.

After we looked around in the basilica and its museum, I decided to go off on my own for a while, and walked around Toulouse. It was probably the best thing I've done since I've been here. I love getting myself lost, and then finding my way... walking down streets and people watching.



Toulouse is a gorgeous city. I was able to see the Place du Capitole almost entirely covered with bright red poppies... an advertisement for some sort of perfume, I think. Needless to say it was beautiful. There is a street where branching off of the Place du Capitole heading towards the Place Esquilrot, where I was literally hit by a car a couple days ago. No worries, it was a funny sort of hit by a car... in a slapstick sorta way... I'm fine, my left arm is just a little sore.
Place Esquilrot is probably the busiest part of Toulouse... I looked around for a while, saw a sign in the window of a store that made me laugh ("les prix fous!"-- literally, crazy prices!), and spent a little time looking at the cell phones in an electronics store (I really need to get one, for safety's sake, but I can't bring myself to spend that much money... phones are really expensive here, and I am terrified that I am going to run out of money).

One of my favorite things to do here is to find the back streets that twist and turn, usually just located a street or two over from the large boulevards (left). They are beautiful and oddly silent considering the bustle of town life happening only a street or two away. It's very surreal.

I then headed to Place Wilson (named after Woodrow Wilson), where many a hilarious sight awaited me. So apparently today was the day for hazing the University students, which the French seem to take very seriously. All over town there were groups of students dressed up as robots, spacemen (covered in tin foil, of course), gladiators, cavemen... you name it. They were forming human blockades in the busiest part of town (Place Esquirol), stage fighting (those dressed as gladiators, naturally), and generally just singing in loud voices. It was shocking to me, the fact that everyone seemed not to mind when these kids slowed down traffic or generally disturbed the peace. They stopped to watch, laughed along, it was surprisingly good-natured fun. At the underclassmens' expense, of course.

When I arrived at Place Wilson, there was a large crowd standing around the fountain. I walked up, and there were a bunch of students playing games in the water (more hazing, of course). It was absolutely hilarious. They were chanting, climbing the statue in the center, racing to see who can do a lap inside the fountain the fastest, holding hands between each others' legs and walking a lap... honestly it looked like fun. I was in a crowd, so I couldn't get great pictures, but...


Why don't we do this kind of stuff in America??? We need some good rituals.

Bryna

Okay...

I really didn't want to fall into this blogging trend, but since there have been a lot of people asking about how France is going, I thought I'd go ahead and start this thing so that I wouldn't have to constantly repeat the same things to everyone. Not that I don't want to be in contact with everyone, it's just that I'd rather get my talking done in one fell swoop, and move right on to hearing your comments.

So. I have a little less than a week that I need to catch most of you up on. Let's see. The plane ride was a typical plane ride. I was tired. I never sleep on airplanes, and it kills me whenever I have to travel long distances. Eventually, I made it to the house of my famille d'accueil (or host family, which in my case is just one woman named Marie-Claude, who has a 30 year old son who no longer lives with her, although she lives literally right next door to her parents). I wasn't able to sleep because Marie-Claude wanted to take me to her friend's birthday party, so I only had time to take a relatively quick bubble bath (the bubbles were ever-so-thoughtfully provided by Marie-Claude) and get ready again. Let me tell you, hot water has never felt so good.

My room is quite pretty. It's up in the attic (quite common for France), the walls are all yellow, and it's kind of like a studio apartment, in that there's a tub, sink, and bathroom without there being any sort of divide or separation. I also have this really great floor-length window with those awesome European shutters... it's fantastic. What was even more fantastic was that directly outside that window there is a bar/cafe across the street where once a month there are tango lessons. So, I finally arrived in Toulouse, I get up to my very French-looking room, and this great live tango music is floating through a gorgeous window where I am sitting and taking the most wonderful bubble bath.

I have never felt so much like I was in a movie in my life. (I hope those pictures are enough... I have more if anyone's interested. The first is directly to my right when I walk in the door, the second is my bed, and the third is zoomed in a little closer to my left when I walk in the door... check out the great window.)

Right now, I am doing orientation at the Dickinson Center in Toulouse, which was described to me by Marie-Claude as a "short walk" from our home. In reality, it's thirty minutes long, but I guess that's short to the French. To me, it's somewhat annoying, because I'm so used to living on campus and being able to walk eight minutes maximum to each class. I'm incredibly spoiled. But, the walk here is along the pretty Canal du Midi, which is nice despite all the bikers that fly along and nearly kill me every morning.

My orientation classes are going decently, although it's simply exhausting to be constantly surrounded by a foreign language. By eight o'clock every night, I'm totally ready to go to bed. However here, they eat at 10 at night. Which I kind of knew before I came, but when I'm already really tired, and the last time I ate was at noon, it can be more than a little frustrating. But Marie-Claude is an excellent cook, and a great conversationalist, so I enjoy eating dinners with her.

The only problem is she doesn't stop feeding me. I feel rude refusing perfectly good food, so my stomach feels like it's going to explode at the end of dinner each night. We eat a full meal, but then there's a cheese course, and after that there's fruit and yogurt (the yogurt here, by the way, is amazing)... I keep trying to remember to look up the word for "full".

As for classes at the actual Université de Toulouse... I had my meeting with Madame Toux (head of Dickinson en Toulouse) today, and she made me feel significantly less overwhelmed. It looks like I'll be taking some great history, art history, and international relations courses at l'Institut Catholique de Toulouse (ICT), and l'Institut des Etudes Politiques (IEP). I'm looking forward to it.

All right I think that's all for now... next time I'll be a little more specific, and hopefully a little more interesting, as I've covered all the basics. Feel free to comment, make sure to keep checking back.

Bryna