Whirlwind

The last couple of weeks of my stay in France sped by so fast that I am now sitting at home in Scotland, wondering exactly how/when I got here and why no-one is speaking French. My excuse for not blogging before I got home is that I didn’t have internet in the flat during July, having judged it unnecessary to pay 30€ when I’m only going to be there for half the month.

During my final weeks in Rennes, I spent most of my time at the Red Cross, and I can confirm that it lived up to it’s initial impressions, and that I was incredibly sad to leave all the fantastic people that I worked with and met there! 6 weeks was too short a time to really get to know them, but just enough to know I’ll miss them!

At the last “jeudi soir” drinks that I’d be attending, there was the only other remaining-in-Rennes ERASMUS buddy and we discussed how strange it was to be still in Rennes but not at the IEP. It feels like I’ve had two very different experiences of the town, and am pleased to report that I continue to love it even with the responsibility of having to get up for a 9am start every day and without the ERASMUS vibe.

Many many goodbye dinners and goodbye drinks were had, and every time, we ignored the fact that it was an au revoir with an uncertainty of the revoir part. It’s best to be optimistic I feel, otherwise you’d just get too upset during the time when you should be taking advantage of what remains of your year abroad!

So, I’ll get out a couple more posts on final events and final thoughts, before getting some closure on my year abroad by finishing off the blog which documented it all!

Au revoir!

So that’s it. I’m at the smallest airport ever (Dinard), with a 1 ½ hour wait ahead of me and not even any duty free to distract me.

The last day of my year abroad in France went something like this:

6h20: wake up 40 minutes earlier than alarm due to excitement/nervousness/sadness etc and have a breakfast made up of the bits and pieces still kicking around. With yoghurt on top.

7h: shower and get dressed in the airport outfit (jeans, heavy trainers, t shirt, jumper – with hoodie and jacket waiting to be put on when trying to go through security).

7h45: shift around all of the stuff in my bags and hand luggage in an attempt to make them conform to Ryanair’s annoyingly strict rules. Get the weight close enough to 15kg and hope that if they start getting shirty about the size of my hand luggage I can summon up some “this is my last day in France!” tears so they’ll take pity.

9h: Go to bank to check that I can close my account online as friends have told me is possible. Find out that it is not.

10h Buy flowers for the kindest landlady ever; a souvenir Breton flag; baguette and cheese for lunch and two pastries from my favourite boulangerie in Rennes (last chance to live up to the title of “gourmand”).

11h: Change into shorts to take advantage of the sunshine before returning to, from what I have heard, a very rainy Scotland.

11h30: Head to the Red Cross to say my third goodbye since finishing, end up helping unload a delivery and eating lunch there – might as well keep it up right until the end!

14h: Say a sad au revoir to the awesome people at the delegation de Rennes de la Croix Rouge Francaise.

14h30: Get picked up by landlady and driven to Dinard airport via the small roads occasionally getting lost, doing a U-turn on a busy road but avoiding stress by taking in the French countryside on a brilliantly sunny day.

16h: arrival at Dinard, rearrange my hand luggage after finding that the bag is a leetle too big for Ryanair’s frame.

16h15: rejoice at being able to squish my bag in the frame, proceed smugly to check in.

16h45: realise that this incredibly long wait is a good opportunity to write the final blog post of France.

 

All day, I haven’t really been able to believe it. Helping out and eating at the Red Cross made it feel just like a normal day, until I had to leave and instead of a demain it was a la prochaine.

Because as I’ve said to all my French friends, c’est certain that I’ll be back in France. A simple reason being that I have family living here, who provide the perfect excuse for a trip. Another being that I now have that many friends from all over the country to visit. And finally just because this year has made it even more obvious to me that as a country France suits me, in so many ways: where you can discuss food for ages without the other person in the conversation getting bored; where being called “gourmand” is a good thing; where life is not just made for working; where you can sit out on a terrace for your meal or drinks without getting rained on; and where, although they appear on the surface to be pretentious, the people are simply proud to be citizens of a country which, you must admit, has provided the world with a lot: delicious food, tourist attractions, art, culture, sources of mockery… France has it all! 🙂

French flags and brilliant hats

As if being in France for Bastille day wasn’t good enough, I decided that being in Paris would be even better!

So, the day after finishing my stage I took a painfully early train to arrive on the streets of Paris surrounded by a sheep-like crowd of tourists all heading towards Place d’Etoile. I heard that further down the Champs Elysée the view of the military parade would be better and set off on a pretty unsuccessful search, finally slipping into a spot beside some barriers I could climb onto. I was incredibly jealous of those who were clearly experienced parade-watchers, wandering around with stepladders, and was tempted to join some people up a tree who must have had a great view until the police told them to get down.

I didn’t manage to get into the “pens” which were closer to the road, but enjoyed observing the things that people had had to give up before getting searched to enter – as well as bottles of water and a few chairs, there were a couple of bottles of wine (this is France after all) and an egg in a bag.

Someone was all prepared to egg the new president

Unfortunately, my position down at the near-end of the parade meant that I missed all the stuff that was happening up where the president was arriving, but a while after the official beginning of the event, he drove down the Champs Elysee to great applause. I wasn’t actually expecting this and so was not yet properly balanced on the barrier, hence excuses for the fact that the photo I ended up with was of his back. But hey, I’m still pretty pleased that I can say that I saw the new French President!

Hollande is the one without the hat :p

And so began the celebrations. There was an aerial display, followed by a march-past of all the military regiments on foot (who all wore the aforementioned fantastic hats – I took so many photos that I won’t bore you with here!) , then the motorised sections, the cavalry, finishing off with the firemen (who got the biggest cheer), the helicopters and some parachutists  for the finale.

It was all incredibly disciplined as you’d expect, and the kitted out vehicles very impressive. It was easy to get swept up in the patriotic atmosphere and watch in wonder as all the army cars with their machine guns roll past, but it occurred to me at one point what these vehicles were all actually used for, and that was a scary thought, as I realised I had never before seen this much fire power close up. I later discussed this with a French girl who had felt the same, and who saw it as an attempt to reconfirm the power of the French military in a world where it no longer had a powerful presence.

After the parade had finished, I spent an age getting out from the crowds in order to meet up with a friend, with whom I was spending the afternoon. Annoyingly, loads of roads were cut off, for pedestrians as much as for cars, so getting to the Louvre took a lot longer than it should have done!

Eventually I got there, and had a great time catching up and walking around in the sun (so glad it was good weather, as I had heard that the 14 juillet celebrations in Rennes were cancelled due to rain!). Fortunately I have been to Paris several times and thus have seen the usual attractions, so we didn’t have to hurry around trying to fit them all in to a day. We did however go and see the Bastille monument, as that’s one I had not visited before, and felt rather appropriate!

That evening I met up with my flatmate from Rennes to see the fireworks with her friends, and we had a great spot just above Trocadero, with a massive crowd all sitting on the grass and waiting. The theme being “Disco Pop”,  Eiffel Tower had a giant disco ball underneath it, and once the display began, the music was all from the 70’s/80’s/90’s and included such great hits as “girls just wanna have fun” and “it’s raining men” – about as big a contrast as you can get with the celebration of the military hours before!

This along with some amazing fireworks all contributed to a great atmosphere, and I was incredibly glad that I had stayed around in France to see such a display of national pride and unity – it certainly increased my attachment to this country!

Making mistakes

It may be because I feel like I’ve been speaking French more consistently in these last few weeks, but I swear I’m noticing more mistakes when speaking French than I did before!

For instance, there are only 5 vowels right? Sure, but there are so many different ways to put them together, and each language has its own way of pronouncing them. And even after my 10 month stay here I still cannot pick up how the French do it!

This has led to some embarrassing incidents:

Example 1. Shopping with the cooking club and suggesting we get some chicken (poulet), which absolutely no-one understood – one girl even asked if I meant tomates – until I kind of imitated a bird and said chicken. There followed some hilarity as they all corrected my pronunciation, which I promptly forgot.

Example 2. Trying to tell my colleague at the Red Cross that my friend, whom she had just met, thought that she was cool. Turns out that the Scots aren’t great at long vowels (this being previously noted by an English friend who found great amusement in saying “google” and “poodle” in a better Scottish accent than my own), and so my compliment came out  more of an insult (for those who know what the French word cul means, this is approximately what I was saying to her… whoops!).

Example 3. Even though it’s an English word that the French use, saying “smoothie” to a waiter led to a very confused expression until my french friend clarified that I wanted a smoozie. Sigh.

This is an ever-exhaustive list of language mistakes made this year, and I’m sure there are many that I’ve made without even noticing – but, the important thing is, I have still managed to get through the year without getting punched. So for those who are about to embark on the same journey as the one which I am oh-so-close to finishing, and are afraid that their speaking skills aren’t up to scratch – seriously, don’t worry about it! You’ll be understood, and as long as people know that you aren’t a native (which was always my case, within a couple of phrases the other person of the conversation would be asking where in the world I’m from), then any unintended insults should simply be laughed off! 🙂

Prolonging the French adventure

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned here already that I went in search of an internship here in Rennes in order to have an excuse to stay longer in France than the “year” abroad officially provides you with. This mission was successful, as I found one for 6 weeks with the Red Cross (handily located just across the canal from my flat!).

So, the week-and-3-days that followed the end of my exams and before the beginning of the internship were indeed pretty excellent:

• beach trip x3 (St Malo, Dinard, Dinard – 1st two times in the sun, last in a slight drizzle but still good!)

Yeah that’s me swimming in the Breton sea! (I won’t lie, it was freezing!)

Dinard in the sun…

…and the rain

• a 4th and final international buffet, again chez moi, but this time with the Eurovision song contest involved (forgetting the fact that there were non-europeans there who didn’t understand the fascination with the terrible songs and …interesting costumes)

• brunch with the colocs  before they left me alone in the flat (how I will miss their continual laughter and constant playing of an apparently well known but old french singer – Jean-Jacques Goldman anyone?)

• a 6 1/2 km run from a friend in the north to a friend in the south’s flats (which I did much faster than I normally would just so I could keep up with the guy at the front who had a map)

• and a fair amount of cooking and baking (nutella stuffed brioche from the cookbook gifted to me by a year-round loyal baking buddy and double crust strawberry cheesecake for my coloc who had only ever tried savoury cheesecakes – and for those who are slightly confused by that concept, she does make an excellent spinach cheesecake it has to be said!).

And yes filled with the expected sad goodbyes but also the upside of promised visits and skype chats 🙂

And then came the day before the beginning of the stage (internship) and I was a bit nervous seeing as I had no idea what exactly I was supposed to be doing, what sort of situations I may end up in, what the people I would meet would be like…

But from the 3 days that I’ve done so far, I can tell you that I am exceedingly glad that I decided to prolong my time in France, and that I found this internship as the means to do that! All the people who are volunteers or who work at the Red Cross are so lovely, with good banter and loving the fact that I am Scottish (the first girl I met there introduces me to everyone else as “C’est Lyndsay, elle est ecossaise!”, which led one guy to ask, ‘very good, but what is she doing here?’). They all seem to really appreciate having an English speaker around, as already there have been people coming in for help who speak little to no french but who do know english, so I’m able to feel as if I’m actually helping! It’s funny though, moving from the environment of the IEP where all the students are obliged to learn english, to being around other students doing internships or volunteering, who haven’t done it since high school!

So far, I have found a comfortable little niche helping out with the food distribution sector, which requires us to sort out all the food which comes in from supermarkets and the EU food bank, and then to make up packages for those who come in in need of them. On top of that, it turns out that they do cooking workshops each week, at which I was able to help,  and as several people have already said, suits me down to a tee :p. As they were searching around for ideas of recipes to make, I suggested Pain Perdu having noticed all the stale bread they had around – an idea greeted with more enthusiasm, and eventually compliments once it had been made and munched, than you would expect from a recipe so simple I’d already eaten it for breakfast that morning!

I have done little bits and pieces in other sections, such as the shop where they sell low-price necessities for babies, and should be doing more diverse things as the weeks go on.

But from what I’ve seen and done already, even in just these first three days, I can tell you that I am contente that I stuck around that bit longer, to be able to improve my French that bit more (hearing and talking french from 9am-6pm makes these days the most intensive language-wise that I think I’ve had all year!), to have more time to discover a bit more of France (hoping I’m not too tired at the weekend to travel a bit more around Brittany), but also to take advantage of this opportunity to help people in the way I’ve always wanted to but never really known how, in being right at the heart of an active humanitarian organisation 🙂

Beginning of the end

It has been a funny kind of exam season this time round.

The nervousness is still there, with all the normal stresses of trying to fathom what my incomplete (although better than last term) notes are actually trying to tell me (thank goodness for French friends and their kind passing on of comprehensible and typed-with-accents notes!).

But on the other hand, I managed to get a rather nice spacing out of my exams, giving me the impression that I have a good amount of time to study in between them while still being able to take part in all the events that are happening in this run-up to the final goodbyes.

One such event was a BBQ in Parc de Gayelles, held by Zephyr (and for some bizarre reason called “Last International Party” – this keeps happening to me, that I see a sign or something in English and feel like “wow I’m getting properly fluent here” then only later realising that no, that is not the case…). After a rainy start to the day the sun came out for an excellent evening of hot dogs in baguettes and dancing to tribal drums and chatting to everyone possible.

But then, at the end of the night just before going home, the French girl that I was talking to pointed out that it would probably be the last time we saw each other. And so we had to do the goodbyes.  And though I’ve only really spoken to her maybe 3 or 4 times, it was pretty sad! Maybe just because it was the first goodbye, and that made me realise that this process was only just beginning… I have also noted since that I will be the last one to leave here, and thus will be having to watch everyone leave one-by-one…

And so began what’s looking to be a socially fulfilling few weeks of goodbye-dinners out/bar nights/general group activites, scattered with promises of visiting Turkey/Mexico/Brazil/Japan/Norway/America/Holland/Latvia/Germany/Italy/France (again :p).

It’s still not really hit me yet though, possibly because I am not having to think about packing and flights and homesickness just yet. The fact that at 14h40 today, my year of studying in France will officially be over just doesn’t really make sense – the sunny cloîtres of Sciences Po Rennes has become the place that I associate to studying, the University of Edinburgh a distant and other world. I’ve enjoyed being able to walk into the library and find a seat quickly for a start! I’ve gotten used to the 2 hour long lectures in French and the lack of “homework”. Most of all, I’ve settled into a routine which, while still including studying enough to pass exams etc, also finds time to see people and places – so the transition back to “proper” university, and worst of all, the 4th and final year (!) is not going to be an easy one…

the sunny courtyard of the IEP

Finally getting into politics

Being at the Political Sciences university here in Rennes, there was no chance that we could escape discussion of the French presidential elections which occurred this May.

Obviously, the whole society was talking about it from a few months before, and so it was all over the place (although having no TV I avoided it a bit, and having my radio tuned to a station not quite intellectual enough to discuss the elections took me even further away). I’ll admit, I ignored most of the information until after the premier tour, and so wasn’t really qualified to join in the conversations.

However, after the disturbing (but according to French friends not-so-surprising) figure of 20% votes for Marine Le Pen, candidate for the Front National (French equivalent of the BNP), I took more of an interest , actually listening properly to people talking about the elections.

One British friend took a very active interest in it all, and so together we decided to go to the Place de la Mairie to watch the election results on May the 6th. This was such a fantastic experience, which made me incredibly glad that I was in France for such an event, as I could notice the many differences between these elections in France and our own at home.

First of all, there’s the fact that the nation is voting for a person, rather than a party. This makes it obviously more of a personality contest, which may not be the best way to go about it, but on the other hand, at least you will be taking part in deciding who exactly will be the next one in charge.

Then there’s the fact that the voting takes place on a Sunday, rather than a day during the week like in Britain. I feel like the structure of French society thus contributes to the higher participation, seeing as the voting would relieve some of the usual Sunday monotony.

They are also able to give an exact time for the announcement of the results which came as a bit of a shock, being used to just thinking that we’ll find out the results when we wake up and see it on the news. I am much more of a fan of this aspect of the French system though, as it allows for events such as that in the Place de la Mairie to be organised, and so allowing us to go along and get caught up in the excitement of it all.

We arrived at about 19h45, as the results were to be announced at exactly 20h and my friend wanted to assure us a good spot. The square was already pretty busy, and filled up as time went on. The giant screen was showing some newsreaders trying to fill in the time before the results, and as it got to 19h55 we could feel the tensions rising.Two minutes before and everyone was staring intently at the screen, 30 seconds before and we got our cameras ready.

Then, exactly on time, a graphic of a red carpet unrolling towards the Champs Elysée came up and all of a sudden there was François Hollande’s face on the screen and a huge outburst of cheering all around us (it turns out that Rennes is a very Socialiste region.). 

A couple in front of us offered us some champagne (we felt it only polite to accept despite neither of us liking the stuff), and all over the square people were happily opening bottles. From one of the flats beside the square people had even unfurled a banner (making us wonder if they had another for the event of Sarkozy winning, and in which case, what it said…):

The Left Act II : Francois is Back! (reference to Francois Mitterrand, socialist leader in the 1980s/90s)

Then followed people of various political parties talking about the results, which became more amusing as the crowd booed and cheered respectively for those defending Sarkozy and those from the Socialiste Party. Their boos got even louder when Sarkozy himself came on the screen to make his speech, with one child behind me on his dad’s shoulders shouting casse-toi at the screen and another man just constantly yelling Facho! which I felt was a leetle bit too strong…

Then we had to wait until about 21h30 for Hollande to turn out and make his victory speech, which to me seemed lacking in something, though I have no idea what. I get the impression that he hasn’t quite as strong a personality as Sarkozy.

Still, it was really cool to be around all the French people as a massive changed occurred in their politics, and I’m actually interested enough now to follow what’s happening next and wonder what his first measure will be! (never too late to get interested in the subject that you study at university…)

Chips and chocolate

Unfortunately I only managed the second entity of the title (but in a large quantity to be fair) during the 9ish hours I spent in Belgium.

I was supposed to, according to my itinery, have a bit longer, but the second of my travel hiccups (a late night train from Belgium = miss the connection from Köln to Brussels = have to get a train an hour later than planned – thank goodness that the guy I reserved my ticket from convinced me to pay the 6€ extra that makes your ticket exchangeable!!!) shortened my time there. Reflecting back on it now though, I realise that this wasn’t such a bad thing anyway, as I got round everything I needed to see at a leisurely pace and still got back to the train station in good time for the following train on to Lille without feeling that I’d missed out.

I was pretty tired on arrival in Brussels though, having not really slept at all due to:

1. worrying about the fact the train was late and not knowing what I’d do about the missed connection.
2. being certain that I’d booked an all-female cabin but walking in to find that this was not the case and so worrying that I had the wrong cabin.
3. then worrying I had the wrong train, as Köln wasn’t written on the sign on the door.
4. Constant interruptions : one man “looking for his keys” (suspicious), our fire alarm going off for no apparent reason, and other passengers leaving the door open when they left.
5. no pillow being provided meaning i had to sleep with my head on my suitcase.
6. security worries (especially after the man looking for keys) meaning I wrapped my arms though all of the handles of my various bags and therefore was not in a terribly comfortable position.

However, I arrived safely in the end and after leaving my luggage in a locker for the day I set off to see what Brussels had to offer me.

Tintin graffitti 🙂

I’m not going to lie, at first it seemed like not a lot. Again, the rain doesn’t help impressions, but also, the train station isn’t in the most picturesque of areas, and it took a bit of walking to find something which looked vaguely like it could be touristy. Turns out it was just a random church (of which I have encountered perhaps too many on this trip to accord them the admiration that I’m sure they all deserve).

From there I planned a route with the map that I picked up at the station and then, trying to find a flea market I’d heard about, promptly got lost. I did eventually find the market and was pretty disappointed (I don’t think any will beat the one in Berlin now!), then found the Place de la Chappelle; Place du Grand Sablon; got lost; discovered that Speculoos is Belgian (more on this later); got lost; Palais de Justice; headed the wrong way; a shopping mall which I went into more to get warm than to shop; Palais Royal (very impressive but doesn’t seem to be made out as a tourist attraction; and Parc de Bruxelles (FULL of runners!).

The Palais Royal seen from Parc de Bruxelles

I did start to head for Grand Place then saw a fancy looking building at the end of the road which was off the edge of the map, so thining it may be worth a look I walked towards it. Turns out that it was on one of those roads which is deceptively long, and I was going for like half an hour before I reached it and discovered that it was just another random church. Sigh.

From there I got lost again (although found 2 New Looks! Oh and a really delivious raspberry flavoured waffle, with chocolate sauce obviously).

The Grand Place is pretty nice I have to admit (again would  have been better if it wasn’t seen from underneath an umbrella).

I had a tour around all the surrounding chocolate shops (and had many many many tasters – hence the fact that all I really ate was a pear for breakfast, a waffle for lunch and bought a salad for dinner…) and also a very fancy Speculoos shop.

For those of you who don’t know, Speculoos is a type of biscuit made with brown sugar and some kind of spice that I can never quite place and it is delicious. You can also get a spread made from it (for your toast / teaspooned like nutella) and I had tried this at the first international buffet waaay back at the start of the year and loved it. I had never, however, bought the biscuits myself and just seem to have built up an obsession with them based of that first taste. When I think about it, I have the feeling that I don’t actually love them as much as I believe I do, but that didn’t stop me buying 100g of artisan-made belgian Speculoos biscuits and a jar of spread that costs double what it would normally if I bought the brand version in France. (Although now that I have tried the spread – and yes the half jar that has disappeared really has just been spoon-to-mouth – I believe that it was a worthy investment!)

I joined the crowds around the Mannekin Pis – an incredibly famous, but disappointingly small fountain of a boy peeing into a pool. Thinking about it, I really have no idea why it’s such an attraction, although it does allow the food vendors to play on the theme:

the actual Mannekin Pis

On my way back to the train station, I hesitated at every friterie (chip shop) that I passed, wondering whether my desire to always eat what the country/area is famous for outweighed my lack of appetite and recognition that I had spent the day eating chocolate. In the end, my healthy side kicked in, and I reasoned that I’d simply have to come back to Belgium – and the next time visit Bruges, where I had originally planned to go before the trains got too complicated – and have some chips then instead!

I’m not even sure what the thinking behind this was but love it none the less!

All in all, Brussels was nice enough. It certainly wasn’t my favourite place visited, but I think there were the factors of being on my own, rain and having already visited such incredible cities to contribute to my opinion of it. I certainly would say you don’t need any longer than a day to see what it has to offer (and eat your fill of chocolate!).

What I did appreciate (substantially!) was being able to communicate again!!! I hadn’t realised how much I missed speaking French and knowing what people were saying and what things were until I got back to a French speaking area! Yes everyone everywhere else could speak to me in English – the language barrier was rarely a problem – but I could get back to doing what I am on this year abroad for in the first place! 😀

That night I stayed in Lille, with a friend of a friend and her lovely (and very interested in my luggage – to be fair it was now filled with food) cat. I left before lunch the next day, and slightly regretted not staying a bit longer in Lille to see what it has to offer, but in the end was pretty happy to be back in Rennes and able to relax a bit after what had turned out to be an amazing and totally-worth-all-the-money-that-I’m-not-paying-attention-to trip! 😀

Don’t mention the war…

Something which is actually quite a challenge when you are a tourist in Berlin, due to all the sights being pretty centred around this event.

However, the first thing to do was have a night out, as the friend who was providing my bed has just started her ERASMUS term there (the semesters start much later in Germany than everywhere else) and there was a big welcome party for those students at a club. I have heard many a story about how fantastic Berlin is for clubbing, and heard even more while there – apparently the clubs stay open basically from Friday night until Monday morning!

Unfortunately it was pretty cold, which made the hour that we had to stand waiting to get in a very very long one! It was a pretty good night though, but I crashed pretty early, by Berlin standards (4h30).

Day 1

Woke up early as per, but the great thing about finally being out of a hostel is that I didn’t feel like I had to get up immediately and go out and do things. In the end we stayed chilling around the flat until midday, when we headed out to visit a kebab stand reputed to be the best in Berlin. Totally plausible, judging by the queue that was there when we arrived:

When we finally got to the front, and got our tinfoil-wrapped kebabs, we were really hungry, but decided to wait just a little longer to get to a nearby park to enjoy it properly. That 5 minute walk was so hard! But in the end, we got there, and surrounded by nature I had my first doner kebab – and it was good! I can’t imagine the ones in Scotland are at all the same – this one had meat that you could identify immediately as chicken, salad with fresh mint, 3 sauces, roasted veg and potatoes and a squeeze of lemon juice right at the end.

This photo doesn’t do justice to the tastiness that was this kebab!

About half way through, this dog came and just sat and stared at us/our food, and it’s a sign perhaps of how hungry I was, but more likely how good this was that I didn’t feel too guilty about continuing to eat it all up in front of him.

Satisfied, we walked around the park, and then around all the local shops and found an indoor market with loads of tasters (we may have been full but they were free!), and were tempted enough to end up buying a selection of stuff for a picnic the next day. I even saw a stall which made me feel more at home in this foreign-country-that’s-not-France:

That evening was the most relaxing since the beginning of the holiday, with a light dinner, chick flick and early night 🙂

Day 2

After another lazy morning, we went to a local park to have the picnic purchased yesterday, even though it was not terrifically warm. Then to the Fleamarket which seems to be the thing to do on a Sunday in Berlin, it was packed! It was really massive though, with so many cool stalls of really diverse stuff – if I lived there I’d love to kit out my flat in all the bits and pieces that you can pick up quite cheap from there.

In the end all we ended up buying was some honey – but not just any honey! My friend chose a normal-ish one, simply with vanilla, so it tasted just like ice-cream, whereas I branched out with blueberry and basil flavour – no idea what i’m going to use it for except to shove under people’s noses and saying “smell this! Isn’t it weird?”.

We then met up with another Edinbugger for cheesecake and chat, which was great – I hadn’t realised how excited I was to see this friend until we met up! We made plans for the next day when my hostess would have uni classes and then parted for me to start sightseeing with the East Side Gallery,

Checkpoint Charlie, these two churches which are replicas of each other and the Ampelmann shop.

The Ampelmann is basically the Green and Red men on lights to cross the road, but have built up to become a bit of a cult phenomenon here, as they are pretty cute with their little hats 🙂 They were originally only found on the lights in East Berlin, but have been spreading into the West side nowadays. In the shops you can buy all sorts of Ampelmann merchandise – I even bought one friend (who had asked specifically that  I buy him something with the logo on it) a set of Ampelmann cookie cutters 🙂 – and there’s even an Ampelmann restaurant!

I really appreciated not being in a hostel that night – it might just be me but being there, and especially on my own and not spending long in a city, makes me feel like you can’t really just relax for an evening, you should always be taking advantage of the time that you have in that city. So tonight, without feeling guilty about it at all (mostly because we were exhausted from the night before) we ate a delicious dinner of roast chicken and veg cooked by my hostess, and then watched “10 things I hate about you” – the ultimate chillaxing kind of evening! 🙂

Day 3

My Berlin sightseeing day with the other Edinbugger began with my very first currywurst, which was so simple but so tasty!

they are not both for me! (although I kind of wish they had been…)

Then we walked around the Tiergarten, talking away and admiring the parts of the zoo that we saw along the route. To get to the Victory Column at the end we had to go through an underpass, which contained this wall which reacted to you walking past, and so had fun with that for a while 🙂

Strangely enough, as we then walked along to the Brandenburg gate, I met the girls who had been on the train with me from Prague – seeing as Berlin is meant to be about 5 times the size of London, this was a bit of a surprise! Moreover, as we headed for lunch, I ran into one of the girls who had been in my room in Prague, and as we chatted away the two others passed behind us!

We had lunch in a really nice café after I had taken photos of the Gate, the Jewish memorial and the Reichstag during the daytime. Then went right next door to  frozen yoghurt place (they seemed to be everywhere and despite the cold wind it felt sunny enough to justify it!) . Seeing as mine only had mango, raspberry sauce and granola on it, it felt more like a breakfast than a treat, so we felt perfectly justified to then go to the Ritter Sport chop to create our own chocolate bar – mine: dark chocolate, raspberry and banana pieces and hazelnuts 🙂 (I’d like to point out proudly that this made it all the way home and was not eaten in one go – mostly because I then proceeded to buy a substantial amount of chocolate in this shop and then in Brussels…). This shop is definitely worth a visit if you’re in Berlin – while the “chocolate creation” costs about 4 times as much as just a normal bar, (and you don’t really make it of course you just tell them what you want) it has a “museum” to wander around during the half hour wait plus a café and the shop itself of course.

Next was the Hackescher Markt (which I have considerable trouble pronouncing), which has some really cute courtyards and shops to look around, then Alexanderplatz with the TV tower (which is a bit like Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh as you can see it from all over teh city, and always seems closer that it is) and the World Clock.

I met my hostess again to do our tour of the Reichstag government building (by the by – if you are going to do this you need to book 2 days in advance and go though lots of email-y processes to get confirmation that you can go!). We had deliberately chosen a scheduled time to visit which would coincide with the sunset so we could get some good photos. The tour goes around the dome at the top of the building, which is a very picturesque thing in itself:

The thing about Berlin is that the views don’t look that great – the buildings aren’t as pretty as in other cities, or as uniform to give a nice skyline or anything, but on the other hand, no matter which way you look, ther will be at least 3 or 4 landmarks that your handy German-studying friend / free audioguide that comes with the tour can explain the history of for you.

After this, I had a proper german dinner at a proper German restaurant with stuff all over the walls and railway station signs hanging up – very cool atmosphere! I loved that the french students sitting at the table next to us got an upmarket version of the currywurst, with sautéed potatoes and a little German flag on a cocktail stick. My dinner did not unfortunately come with such a flag, but was still excellent (and I’m glad again that I went for my original, but yes more expensive choice) – marinated beef in a raisin and pumpkin seed sauce, served with apple sauce and potato dumplings (another lot of dumplings – check!) It was very sweet for a main meal, but really, really good!

And I may have had one of the Ritter Sport purchases for dessert…

Day 4

It’s always when I set an alarm that I sleep past 7h30! Today I was going to the Sachsenhausen Labour Camp just outside of Germany with yet another friend. (after travelling alone all that time I now feel so popular all of a sudden :p).

I had seen an advert for guided tours round the camp for only 15€, so I figured that was the way to go, as they meet you in the centre of Berlin and take you on the trains there. Our guide was a really animated and fast-talking New-Zealander, who was really nice, but when explaining the start of the war events on the trains was saying Hitler and Nazis a little too loudly I thought – I saw quite a few Germans just staring at us…

The camp is in what’s now a pretty residential area, so the HQ comes as quite a contrast to the nearby houses. This was the base of all the camps in Germany’s administration of rationing and organisation etc. The Sachsenhausen camp was not in fact an extermination camp, but a labour camp, which means that some of the things you’d expect to see perhaps aren’t here.

On this tour (this list may be upsetting for some):

• The road that all the inmates will have walked down to reach the camp
• The commandants house, from which he would come out to greet the new arrivals
• The A tower with a slogan on the gates along the lines of “hard work = freedom” and a clock on top which has been stopped at the time of liberation.
• Roll call square: twice a day the inmates had to stand here (from 4am in summer and 5am in winter), still with their heads bowed, and if there was a punishment to be carried out at the camp, they’d have 24 hour roll call, within which, obviously, people would die from cold or exhaustion.
• Neutral zone between the roll call square and the wall: if you were seen on this you would be shot. To escape the camp you’d have to cross this zone then trip wire, coiled wire, electric wire a 2 1/2 metre wall and then you’d find yourself in an SS village…
• Special cells for special prisoners, such as Stalin’s son and a would-be assassin of Hitler (I cannot believe how many assassination attempts that man escaped!).
• Boot-testing track : the inmates would have to wear leather boots which were never the right size and run around this track, with its different surfaces, in order to test out the boots.
• The East German memorial dedicated only to the Soviets and forgetting the rest of the victims.
• Execution pit: where some inmates were shot point blank.
• Gas chambers: “rarely” (in comparison to the other camps, but even rarely is too much) used because of the cost.
• Crematoria
• “medical examination rooms”: ie where executions could be carried out without the soldier having to look the inmate in the eye – a pretend doctor would measure the height of the inmate, and behind the ruler which is attached to the wall is a smaller room containing a soldier who points his gun through a small hole positioned just behind the ruler.
• Dormitory with 3 tiered beds which would contain 3 people on each tier.
• Gallows for public executions
• Pathology centre: used for experimentation.
• Mortuary: apparently there used to be graphic photos in here but they were taken away.
• A monument of the Death March: before the liberation all the inmates were taken from the camp and forced to march towards the coast, anyone falling or trying to escape would be shot.

I hesitated about mentioning all of the above, as obviously they are not pleasant facts. But,in the same mindset as the several school trips that we saw going around the camp at the same time as us, they are truthful facts, and ones which should be remembered – for the memories of the lives of the victims, as a reminder of what inhumanity humans are capable of, and as a warning to never let such atrocities happen again.

While the tour was useful in terms of working out the transport and having a guide who knows what and where everything is, I would recommend to anyone who may visit the camp not to use a tour. I felt that the impact of what you are seeing would be greater without someone (especially someone as animated as out guide, nice as he was) talking constantly at you. There were so many bits of information that I would have liked to but didn’t have time to read as he hurried us along.

On my return, I had time to pick up my luggage before my hostess and I met a group of her friends for dinner at an Indian restaurant (my first in ages!) and then to head to the station for my night train to Brussels. I ended up leaving Berlin with an extra bag full of things (mostly food) that I hadn’t arrived with…

 

 

 

 

A lot of history in a day and a half

Arriving at 11h30 at night with none of the local currency and only a few basic phrases of a language for which I wasn’t entirely sure how to pronounce the vowels wasn’t exactly the best way to begin my visit to Prague. Moreover, it turns out that the metros there aren’t just marked by a big M.

So, going from the train station to the hostel, I encountered a few difficulties:

1. Find my way to the metro. Here I had to ask a lady at the information desk where it was – using what would become my stock phrase : Mluvíte anglicky = do you speak english. Following the vague wave of her hand in the direction of some stairs I found the various metros travelling in different directions.
2. Buy metro ticket. The problem here was the lack of currency, which leads to…
3. Get money. The first ATM I tried had no buttons for which to select the options, or at least no mechanism with which to do so that I could see. When I finally got to a selection screen on the neighbouring machine, I was a bit surprised (although i shouldn’t have been, knowing about the difference in currency) to see the lowest amount as 1000CZK. Figured I’d stick with that for the moment, seeing as a metro ticket was 24CZK.
4. Got a 1000CZK note from the machine, but for the metro machine I needed coins. I had thus to find the one coffee shop still open in the station and buy a pot of fruit (here all I could do was point, having already established that the girl on the counter didn’t speak english). I felt really guilty handing over the massive note, like when you give over a 50€ and you do that grimace to say “sorry, I’ve got nothing smaller” even though it’s not your fault, it’s just that ATMs like to make life tricky.
5. get metro in right direction. (check)
6. get off metro at right stop. (check)
7. find tram stop and try not to look too much like a tourist. (check and probably not-so-check)
8. get off tram at right stop. (minor panic here when I couldn’t figure out what the announcer was saying and had to use my stock phrase again and ask a couple where we were., but finally, check)
9. Get through all the hostel paperwork and fall into bed. (check)

Day 1

I went for the walking tour that someone from one of the other hostels had recommended, despite the rain which was making Prague look pretty moody. The tour included everything that I had on my to-see list, so I thought why not get some more historical knowledge happening at the same time. Good thing I did as I probably would have given up if I hadn’t wanted to get my money’s worth.

Tramping around the sights of Prague in the rain, while informative isn’t the best way to make you love a city. However, in nicer weather, it’s something I definitely recommend, as the 4 hours that we spent on this tour taught me everything I needed to know. And then for the second half, after a half-hour lunch break which everyone else spent in MacDonald’s whereas I found a tasty bagel, it brightened up and we managed to dry off a bit.

From this tour, I learnt that:

• Czech people drink the most beer per person per year in the world (not surprising if the happy hour prices at our hostel are anything to go by!)
• The guards at Prague castle are allowed to shout at people who annoy them.
• The crown jewels are locked away in a room to which only 7 people are given the key – and if anyone who isn’t entitled to them gets in, they will not survive a year and a day after that (and this happened to a Nazi leader in WWII).
• the Zizkov tower has giant baby statues all over it, made by a controversial artist, believed to represent communism – they all have the same face = the conformity of communism, and are crawling either up or down the tower = the rise and fall of communism.
• that same artist created the statue below, where the two men are peeing into a pool which is a map of the Czech republic, and they move so that they are “writing” out famous Czech quotes.

• The Old Jewish Cemetery is above ground level because they did not have enough space to expand it to accomodate more people, so they began to bury families on top of one another.
• Hitler decided to preserve the Old-New Synagogue as a “memorial to an extinct race” – this fact disgusted me so much I couldn’t help but shudder every time I walked past the Synagogue after that.
• The Astrological Clock, with it’s 45 second “spectacle” is pretty, but also pretty disappointing.

After the tour I headed to Wenceslas Square to see if what my parents say about it being disappointingly commercialised was true (it was – there was even an M&S), then back to the Easter Market that I had seen in the Old Town Square, which was made up of 7 stalls repeated over and over, but was still cool to see.

Heading back over Charles Bridge I ended up in a park, where I discovered what I believe to be the same baby statues that are all over the Zizkov tower:

I then managed to locate Frank Gehry’s “Dancing House”, which had become something I needed to do seeing as in 6th Year Art I designed a toaster based upon it. It wasn’t too difficult a task when it looks like this:

I arrived back in the hostel all set to just tidy myself up and head out to dinner, when I got chatting to one of the girls in the room and soon found myself in the hostel bar with 2 Canadian girls and an American, talking about our travels. The others were taking full advantage of the bars Happy Hour (massive beer for 1€) and we ended up getting some free popcorn as the movie night began. However, as I was not filling myself up on beer, the original plan of dinner remained firmly in my mind, and finally at 21h30 we headed out to a restaurant I’d passed that afternoon, which had a 1/2 roast duck on the menu which appealed…

It was so worth the wait! In fact that made it better, as I could then quite happily finish off my duck and dumplings, and then also try the other girls dishes (ok, I say try, what I really mean is finish…). I’m glad that I met the girls before going, because, nice as the restaurant was, it felt more like a bar, and I would have felt pretty awkward just being the small scottish girl in the corner devouring half a bird.

Day 2

I kind of felt like I had covered everything worth seeing with yesterday’s walking tour – my list was all ticked off, so what was I going to do for half a day?

In the end, breakfast took up a nice chuck of time, funnily enough it took longer than the hour I had set aside to get through 2 bowls of cereal, 2 pancakes, 2 thick slices of bread, cheese, cucumber, fruit and yoghurt.

I remembered that the guide had suggested a visit to a garden near the castle, so after getting a tram to roughly where I thought it should be and walking in random directions, I eventually stumbled across it by chance and wandered round what turns out to be the Senat garden, filled with replica’s of statues which were “rescued” (ie stolen) by Sweden. It also contains an albino peacock, normal peacocks and owls, as well as a really odd wall made from modelled stalac either -mites or -tites, I never know which is which.

Another walk around the Old Town and the Jewish Quarter; buying a salad for dinner (no lunch needed, I think breakfast could have seen me through the entire day but better to be safe than sorry!); buying a couple of cakes to take to my friend in Berlin with whom I was going to be staying (goodbye hostels!); and off to the train station for an earlier train than planned. It probably wasn’t the best idea to drag my suitcase across all the cobbles, but I had time to kill and the energy to do so.

I met a couple of girls that I recognised from the tour at the station, and heard all about the pub crawl they’d done the night before, which finished in Europes biggest nightclub, which was, according to them, a bit of a let-down. Unfortunately the train was über crowded so we didn’t get to sit together, although I think they were just about to crash anyway.

It was nice to actually watch the countryside go by on this journey, which I’ve missed on the ones before, and getting properly excited for the next part of the holiday! 🙂