MunItaParTrieParPar

If I were using a cell phone here, I bet I would have service in MunItaParTrieParPar. That's because since my last post about a month and a half ago, I've been on roughly a thousand trains to Munich, all over Italy, Paris, Trier, Paris, and tomorrow, Paris! I may have found a favorite city.

So right now I'm thinking that in order to do all these places justice, they each need their own posts. Especially Italy. This post will serve as the explanation for all of my future (or is it past?) anachronistic blog posts. And since I am about to go take a nap, I will give you a brief summary of my last months in case you were going to die in the next ten hours during which I plan on documenting my life (knock knock).

So I went to Munich on a whim with Cyborg aka Andrew Willenborg. It was pretty awesome. We toured the city, got stranded in K-Town, and then rode two hours in a car with a strange man who offered us a ride.

Then we had spring break! I went to Italy with James Bond aka Ben Blount. I feel the need to explain this new nickname. Ben wanted to get his hair cut. Ben doesn't speak French. So he found a picture of James Bond and showed the hairdresser, motioning that he would like his hair cut the same way. His hair has a striking resemblance to Daniel Craig.

Anyway, Italy. We had 10 days to go galavanting around. The first three we spent in Venice, then two each in Florence, Rome, and Cinque Terre. No joke, every place we went to was better than the last. I don't have any cliff hangers about creepy men, cars, or being stranded, but I can tell you that i thought we might be mugged when--

The next weekend (or two?) I took off. The weekend after that I took off to Paris with Adit and Eric Stribling to meet my friend Sarah Naples! We did all the Parisian stuff, like Le Tour Eiffel, l'Arc de Triomphe, and le Louvre. Our last morning we capped off a great weekend by eating a perfectly French breakfast at the Indiana Cafe. Not really. They had sold out of breakfast. Instead we ate chocolate bread from the local market. I guess part of trying to be French on a Sunday is just not doing anything. In that respect, we were like uber French. Adit and I rode the metro for one and a half hours waiting for our train back to Metz.

Then Trier! Home of Karl Marx. The Germans don't even like him, but if it will bring in tourists, they're game. I went on this Saturday day trip with James Bond and Rafi. Rafi does not sing children's songs about giraffes named Joshua or baby whales. That is Raffi. This is Rafael. He got a mohawk the day before our trip, and he has an eyebrow ring. He fit in perfectly in Germany. And they claim they're not fascists...

Then Sunday I went to Paris again to see my friend Eric from good ol' CSN. (btw we're gonna sail to Austrailia one day with Colin). We walked around and he showed us his favorite parks and waffel stand! Jason from GTL also met up with us along the way. We watched the PSG Marseille game in a pub then Jason and I said our goodbyes at 11:30pm. We wandered to the train station, then ate in Quick for two hours till it closed, then rode the bus around for two and a half more hours, then ate/slept in a sketch city diner till six when we went to go get our train back home at 6:30. It was an eventful night. We saw a guy get arrested for being so drunk that he fake-punched a cop as a joke. They didn't laugh. This will serve as a reminder for me to talk about the extreme cops in Paris. They don't eat donuts. They carry assault rifles. They are frightening.

This weekend I'm heading back to Paris once again bright and early at 7:25 to go watch some Premier League football with Eric again. This time it's Everton vs. Portsmouth, and Tottenham vs. Chelsea. I'm sure you were wondering. I head back to Metz at 12:00pm Sunday, and maaaayyyyybe I'll blog more when I get back. This is highly unlikely. What is more likely is that I will finish sorting through my pictures of Paris and Trier and post those on picasaweb. I'm pretty much just gonna tell you the stories of the pictures on my picasaweb in my posts anyway. Because, quite frankly, the details escape me otherwise. Never fear! I have an active shutter finger.

I think I'm done. It is possible that I completely forgot about a few weekend trips in there somewhere, but I'll figure it out soon enough and let you know. Oh, speaking of things you should know, I splurged 1.50 euros on a new spatula that actually works. A noble investment to be sure.

Nice play by play.

Okay, so I went to Nice, Monaco, and Avignon this past weekend. We started out on Thursday night with an overnight train, sleeping in a thing called a couchette. It's pretty much like a closet with or without air conditioning (completely random) and 6 beds in it. It's cramped, but the trade off is pretty much an extra day to travel on the weekends. So we got into Nice on Friday morning, found our hostel, and walked around the city for the rest of the day. We climbed a pretty high cliff that used to have a fort on top of it, now turned into a sweet public park. Oh yeah, it was raining for our entire weekend trip. The rare moments it stopped were glorious, but so were all of the others as Nice was like ten degrees Celsius warmer than Metz ever will be :) Afterward, we just walked up and down the entire length of Nice's beach on the promenade. The water is so blue it's unbelievable! And the rain clouds made for a pretty cool sunset too. Somewhere in this journey, I managed to stop twice at Mcdonalds. It's so tempting, even though I told myself I was going to avoid it at all costs. Sometimes I just need a solid, greasy breakfast. Chocolate croissants are very good, but you have to eat like 5 of them to feel satisfied, whereas two egg mcmuffins will do the trick. The second trip to the American Embassy was for dessert. One scoop of ice cream at a respectable restaurant will cost you five euros!? But a real ice cream shake from McDo (yes, real ice cream) is on the euro menu! Temptation at its finest.

The next day we hopped a 15 minute train to Monaco and made our way to the aquarium. Upon passing the palace and hoping to see the changing of the guard there, we saw that all these rally cars were in the square! We stayed for a bit to watch the awards ceremony for the 2009 Monte Carlo Rally. Quite cool. Then the aquarium--it was fantastic. I love underwater stuff, and this was the perfect time to explore the "Aquarium Mode" of my new camera. Oh boy! By the time we left it was dark, and we managed to walk by the famed casino before our train left for Nice again.

Avignon! On Sunday we left before the sun rose to catch yet another train to the land of the old popes. We toured the Palace of the Popes and the bridge of Avignon (which apparently collapsed like ten different times) with these free audio guides that look like ginormous old cell phones.

*Aside* My spellchecker recognizes ginormous as a legit word. You learn something new everyday.

There was also a really cool indoor market that we went to. At first, Avignon seemed really sketchy. But I guess it was just because the French don't leave their homes on Sundays except around mealtimes. After just five minutes of leaving the train station, we had to duck into another McDonalds just to escape a guy who was clearly tailing us. He saw us walking and stared us down until we walked past him, when he decided to take a leisurely stroll half a step behind us. Kind of scary, but I have no idea what he would have done as everyone carries their important things in inside jacket pockets. A+ for safety!

We had about five hours to kill before our train left for Metz at 12:30am, so we went to dinner for three hours, and a legit French movie for the other two: "Envoyes Tres Speciaux." It was about two radio reporters who are supposed to go to Baghdad to report the happenings, except they lose their plane tickets and money and end up staying in France. In short, they fake their capture by terrorists, then get the money from the ransom when they are "rescued." It was actually a good movie, and I could understand about 80% of what they said.

On a separate trip/not really a trip, I went to see the FC Metz game Tuesday night that got rescheduled on us two weeks ago because of ice! We played AC Ajaccio. It was an exciting 3-2 match in which, of course, Les Grenats (The Dark Reds/Maroons) prevailed. One penalty kick and two other goals came from pretty sweet set pieces. Our seats were in the 3rd row up right at midfield for five euros! We could have reached out and touched the players when they threw the ball in. Next time, however, I think we all want to get seats behind the goal, even though they're the same price as the midfield seats, because the supports section, albeit small, is wonderfully raucous.

***

This concludes the recap of last week's travels. In recent days, I have played more indoor soccer, qualified for the unofficial GTL soccer team, showered, made chicken and turkey successfully, discovered the glories of Provincial herbs, and finally found sliced bread at the grocery store. What remains to be done is to clean my room and do laundry. I have only washed 3 pairs of boxers and all my socks so far because 1) I wear only one outfit between Thursdays and Sundays, 2) since I'm wearing many layers, I can rewear all my shirts multiple times, 3) washing machines are four euros and driers are 50 centimes per 15 minutes, so 4) I do them by hand in my shower. I am staying in Metz this weekend though, so I will have plenty of time on my hands to attend to such trivial things as "hygiene."

A Tout!

PS You can click the title of the post, "Nice play by play," for a direct link to my Picasaweb album which has many more pictures than this! I'll try to remember to link the titles in every post, but if I forget, the address is http://picasaweb.google.com/figel450

GTL 101 - Intro to Life in Europe

Bonjour!

So first off, there are some things you should know before reading the rest of my blogging/journaling/not diarying:

1. My computer is broken so posts will be limited for a little bit.
2. I only eat eggs, bacon, and sausage for about 3 days every week.
3. My address(!) is:
Georgia Tech Lorraine
attn. Kyle Thomas
2-3 Rue Marconi
Metz, France 57070
4. I only have class from Monday through Wednesday.
5. Doing dishes by hand three times in a day = one shower.
6. I am in the process of setting up a Picasa web album to share all my pictures on.
7. I have been to Luxembourg (the country and city), Strasbourg, and Blois so far.
8. Touristy places are touristy for a reason.
9. Sometimes a train pulls in going forward and leaves going backward with the sole intent of making me slightly nauseated.
10. Europeans don't like ceiling fans and central air.

You are now equipped to comprehend my future blog posts! While I hope to update this with everything you might ever want to know, I still appreciate inquisitive emails and escargot mail too :)