So, Where Was I?

I didn't mean for that title to be a pun, but I guess it kind of is. Anyway, I really need to catch up on blog entries so I figured I'd do a rundown of a bunch of cities.

No pictures (yet); my ipad is still being a princess about charging properly. It appears that it will only charge at a snail's pace, and even then it will only do so if it is completely turned off and left to its own devices.  I'm telling you--princess. Hopefully once I get it charged to an acceptable level (and really, I'm not being picky at this point; 40% will feel downright extravagant) I can come back and pop some photos in here for those of you who hate words and prefer (pretty?) pictures.

So, here is a very brief breakdown of what I was up to one or two weeks ago.

Montpellier (May 12-15)
A vacation from my vacation--awesome! I stayed with my cousin Nick and hung out with him, my Aunt Linda, Uncle Ed, cousin Chris, and his girlfriend Stephanie. I did not have to plan anything, find anything, or do any sort of errands. It. Was. Awesome.

We had some great dinners, explored Montpellier, and did a really interesting wine tour in the Pic St Loup region. I learned a lot about wine, and I re-learned that my alcohol tolerance is laughably low. (I am the very lightest of the lightweights, and after a quarter of a glass of wine I look like I've got a bad sunburn all over my face.) But the tour was accompanied by a fantastic dinner, the guide was really friendly and knowledgeable, and there were like ten different varieties of wine to try. (I'm even starting to like red wine, everyone!)

Finished out my sojourn in the south by doing some shopping, and by some stroke of luck I FINALLY found a pair of black Oxford heels that didn't look like they were created with the cast of Pretty Woman in mind. Carrying them home would prove difficult, however, so I shipped them, along with some other souvenirs I picked up. Packing everything took some doing, as I refused to buy a shipping box (I had a perfectly good shoe box right there!), but I eventually managed it. Granted, Chris did have to hold the lid on for me while I taped, and all parties involved (except for me) were extremely skeptical that the box would ever make it out of the post office. (Bets were placed at 90-10 odds.)

The happy ending/epilogue to this story is that the package arrived in the US this week, apparently unscathed. Ha-HA! (That was my triumphant laugh of victory.)

Tours and Chateau Chenonceau (May 15-17)
Left Montpellier just as the rain was blowing in, and managed through the magic of the TGV (France's high-speed train) to mostly outrun it. Arrived in Tours feeling tired and sort of blah, but had a pretty awesome hotel (not hostel!) room.

Went to Chenonceau (a castle on the River Cher) the next day, and had all sorts of plans to write a very historically informative and hilarious blog post about it, but now that it's been two weeks I've sort of forgotten my angle and am too lazy to be bothered. Sorry, everyone. But eventually there will be pretty pictures to make up for it!

Rennes (May 17-18)
I had zero attachment to Rennes--it was mostly a convenient stop-off for seeing Mont St. Michel the next day. So, as often happens with these things, Rennes ended up being a fantastic stop. It started with the cleanest, most efficient subway system I've ever seen and continued with an open-air book fair. The hostel room had only one other bed, so I had a pretty fair amount of privacy, which was nice.

Ate a late lunch at Creperie Sainte Anne, in the medieval heart of Rennes, among timber-framed houses and other outdoor cafés. It was delicious and I had a mug of cider (which is a thing in Brittany--hurray for my favorite variety of booze!) and just sat and people-watched and did some writing. Not having any particular points of interest to check out was quite relaxing. Less relaxing were my attempts to download the season finale of Elementary from itunes, which were thwarted at every turn. They remained thwarted for the next 4-5 days, so that was sort of a bummer.

Mont St. Michel (May 18)
This is going to get its own entry. Eventually. I mean, a couple of these points might get fleshed out in future posts, but I'm not going to bother getting into Mont St. Michel right now.

Paris (May 18-20)
Ditto for Paris, which was a series of unfortunate events from start to almost-finish. There's a happy ending (sort of)!

Inverness/Loch Ness (May 21-23)
Inverness is located in the Scottish highlands on Loch Ness. In the course of the day and a half that I was there, the weather went back and forth between rain and sun at least five times a day, and occasionally there were high winds, hail, and rainbows (three! Complete rainbows, too--all the colors and a full semi-circle) thrown in for good measure. (Also, the morning I left, it snowed in the Highlands.) I did a Loch Ness boat tour in the afternoon but was otherwise pretty lazy, since I didn't feel well at the beginning of my stay. And then I accidentally ate meat (I think...either that or it was the most convincing fake sausage I've ever tasted). And then there were, um, blog issues.

Inverness was a perfectly nice city in general but a pretty weird experience for me personally, let's just leave it there.

Edinburgh (May 23-25)
Edinburgh is such a crazy, morbid, messed-up, awesome city that it deserves an entry all to itself. Prepare yourself for all manner of miscellany, from Harry Potter to body-snatching to more accidental ingestion of meat (possibly? It's unclear. Either way, I ended up leaving a lot of meals uneaten north of the border.).

The Peak District (May 25-28)
A.k.a the site of my technological downfall. This is going to get its own entry as well...I hope.

And that about brings us up to the present! I realize that I did very little in the way of actually updating things and much more in the way of "Hey guys, remember how I haven't written the stuff I was supposed to write? Here's me not-writing it some more!" But you'll just have to accept it as it's all I can manage at this point. Sorry.

Between that and the "no pictures" thing, you're probably feeling pretty cheated with the "new" post. So here is a picture of a cat hugging a kitten. Happy Thursday, y'all.

Technical Difficulties

Hey, guys, greetings from Oxford! It's been awhile!

The reason, aside from sheer laziness, that I haven't updated in what seems like eons is that I managed to fry both my ipad charger and my universal plug adapter in one go. The technology-frying venue? A hostel five miles from the nearest small rural town, and hours from any major technology-selling city. I was also there for three days. (Sad trombone/trumpet/whatever-instrument-that-is noise.) I had also pre-paid for three days of wireless internet access on a device that no longer worked. (Sad noise again.)

So my first order of business this morning in Oxford was amending that situation. I needed an ipad cord and a plug adapter, and I figured in a university city like Oxford it would not be overly difficult to find either.

I started by asking at the hostel. Sometimes hostels will have plug adapters, seeing as their client base consists almost entirely of poorly-prepared foreign tourists. No luck. The guy at reception even checked the lost and found for me to see if I could snag somebody else's abandoned power adapter, but alas, it was not to be. So I did some googling on the hostel's computer and then set off.

My research, however, had not extended to getting directions to the possible vendors of said items. So after I hit the Staples that was literally steps down the street from the hostel, the universe was like, "Should have prepared more, suckaaaa! Enjoy wandering around the least picturesque parts of Oxford!"

I went to the train station, as I remembered seeing plug adapters in stores at other stations. As luck would have it, the convenience store at the station--the one selling magazines and candy and generic Oxford souvenirs--had a universal plug adapter. I bought it and tore that sucker open only to realize that it was converting British plugs to every other type of plug in the world, when what I needed was the EXACT OPPOSITE of that. This led me to two (very legitimate, I think) questions:

1. How can one bill such a product as a "universal adapter" when it clearly only works for people whose universe happens to be based in the UK? I mean, I know "the sun never sets on the British empire" and all that, but "universal" and "convenient for British people" are really, really not the same thing. Down with all remaining vestiges of imperialism!

2. Why, why, WHY would you need to buy an adapter for OTHER COUNTRIES in Oxford? If you are in Oxford or traveling through Oxford, odds are pretty good that you are going to be in the UK for the foreseeable future, as it is not a border town (the UK has no border towns, it's an island, guys!), nor does it have an international airport. Is Old Joe Englishman just wandering through the train station one day like, "Dum diddly dum, must kill some time in Oxford before my train to another equally British town. Maybe I should buy a plug adapter so all my electronics will work in Africa, Asia, and/or North and South America! It never hurts to be prepared, cheerio!"

So I spent £19.99 (that's like $35 for those of you keeping score at home) for a plug adapter that was literally just as useless as the one it was meant to replace. In fact, it turned out to be EVEN MORE USELESS (more on that in a sec). So I was quite unhappy. I chucked the packaging in a bin in a manner so perturbed that it clearly marked me out as an Ugly American (TM) and not a Polite, Proper Brit. Then I stalked off down Botley Road because there was an electronics store located at 3 Botley Road Retail Park. In my mind, this meant that the retail park would be located at 3 Botley Road. The British had another idea and said retail park was nowhere to be found. So I stomped back up the street in search of the Westgate Shopping Center, where an Apple dealer was located, thinking that maybe I could at least replace the ipad cord.

And then I had a horrible thought: what if ipad minis weren't in wide release in the UK yet? What if the cord just wasn't sold overseas?

This trip is sucking, I thought. I am so tired of being a grown-up and having to deal with all the--my mom reads this, so I'll censor--muddyfuddling poo life throws at me. One day with no problems! One day! That's all I ask!

The adult, logical part of my brain stepped in and tried to smooth things over: "It's okay. Stop and think: you're in Europe on a backpacking trip for a month. Do you know how many people would kill to have an experience like this? Are you seriously going to let a dead ipad and a rapidly depleting camera battery ruin everything? Just because you can't take a million pictures everywhere you go doesn't mean you've seen or experienced it any less."

Shut up. What are you, my mom?!

"Hey now, there's no call for that. Your mom is a lovely lady and you didn't get her anything for Mother's Day AND it's her and Dad's anniversary today and what have you done? NOTHING.* You are not winning the Daughter of the Year Award, stop lashing out."

I'VE GOT OTHER STUFF ON MY MIND, OKAY?! LEAVE ME ALONE!

It was an unpleasant walk down Park End Street because I was giving myself the silent treatment, which was obviously awkward. But I did manage to locate the Westgate Shopping Centre on a bus station "You Are Here" map, so there was that.

Made it to the shopping center (CENTRE, sorry, Great Britain) and was immediately shown an ipad mini cord exactly like the one I needed. Sweet Jesus in heaven, a miracle! While I was there I asked the salesguy where I might find a universal plug adapter. He recommended Argos, a store across the street, and, failing that, Curry PC World in the shopping center--CENTRE! Dammit! Gosh dang it! (Sorry, Mummers)--a block away.

That being settled, I went into Primark, the discount department store across the mall corridor, and engaged in some serious retail therapy. Let it be known that I generally despise clothes shopping. You can get about ten minutes of browsing out of me before I'm like, "Take me either to food or a bookstore, 'cause I ain't havin' no more of this. Uh-uh." (I get sassy when presented with the prospect of an afternoon spent among clothes racks.)

However, today I walked into Primark and was like, That's blue. I'll take it! This one has side cut-outs, which will undoubtedly not flatter my body type. I'll take it! This one isn't even the right size. I'LL TAKE IT!

I filled up a bag with a LOT of clothes and then actually tried them on, where cold logic prevailed: "Sweetheart, this makes everything about you look saggy and sad. I don't care if you like the pattern, you cannot buy that."

Even so, I spent £55 ($90...eek) on three dresses, a pair of pants, a shirt, a comb (I lost mine), hair elastics (I'm down to one really stretched-out one), novelty bobby pins, a blingy necklace, and a mud mask in a hermetically sealed pouch. You know how people say you should never grocery shop when you're hungry? You should never go clothes shopping when your entire wardrobe for the past month has consisted of the same three outfits worn over and over, sometimes for days in a row. (Yep, that's right, I've officially become THAT person. Sometimes I don't feel like digging around in my backpack for a clean top, so I just wear the one I wore yesterday or, if I'm feeling particularly lazy, I just put a bra on under my pajama top. Voila! Dressed and out the door in five minutes!)

Primark cheered me up (I mean, the deals! £55 for all that stuff?! What a savvy shopper!), so I headed over to Argos feeling confident, only to have my bubble of happiness punctured by the lady behind the counter.  Upon examining the dead adapter I'd lugged along as a visual aid, she said, "No, I've never seen anything that looks like that. Ever." (Fab.) So off to Curry's PC World in the OTHER mall in the middle of downtown Oxford.

I had much more luck here; although I was doubtful about the adapter that was shown to me, as it did not have any clear-cut spot for American plug prongs, the salesguy assured me that American plugs would fit into the holes on the adapter. "I've sold millions of these to millions of people," he said, which seemed like a bit of an overstatement but I just rolled with it because MY ICKY ERRANDS WERE DONE AND NOW I COULD SIGHTSEE IN OXFORD!

I was so excited about this that I accidentally shoplifted two postcards from a knick-knack store down the street. I made it all the way to High Street before I noticed and walked shamefacedly back, expecting every second to be tackled by a stereotype of a British bobby and thrown into British jail (GAOL, sorry Brits, I'm the worst) where, with any luck, I would at least be given a free cup of Earl Grey. But once I'd paid my £1.40 (quite the heist I'd pulled off there) my day remained mostly crisis-free. Until...

Until I got back and tried to plug my camera charger into the adapter. It wouldn't go in.

It'll be kind of hard to describe, but I'll give it a go. The actual slots in the plug adapter are, for reasons unknown to me, in-set into the design of the device. Imagine the adapter in the shape of a Roman arena (ie, the Colesseum), and the slots are at the lowest part in the middle where Russell Crowe yells "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!"

I was not amused, as it turns out, because my camera battery charger does not have, like most appliances, a plug attached to a cord that will easily fit within the walls of the arena. Instead, the prongs stick straight out from the back of the rectangular charger, and the rectangle shape was preventing the prongs from reaching far enough to connect in. It was the Three Stooges "poke-in-the-eyes" gag but without any of the amusement that usually accompanies physical comedy.

Since my camera charger was the only device for which I needed the adapter, I was pretty unhappy about this. (All my Apple devices can be charged at a computer.) But then a stroke of genius combined with a stroke of luck.

My old universal adapter, the one that I murdered, had a bunch of interlocking pieces that could be used in various combinations depending on what country you were in and where your electronic item was from. (It, unlike the adapter I got at the train station, was truly universal. Just saying.) By a stroke of luck, the American-to-European plug piece had not been in the adapter at the time of the murder, so it presumably still worked. And the charger I'd just bought had a spot for Euro plugs. Success!

And now I'm sitting at the hostel's PC charging my ipad (it does not like the new cord very much, as it insists that it is "Not Charging" when it, in fact, is), and all is right with the world--for now, anyway. I'm sure that tomorrow will bring some new challenge and all I can say is, "Universe, I am ready. Bring it on! Please don't hurt me. Yesterday I cried over a U2 song on a bus. Leave me alone."

*HAPPY 25TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, MOM AND DAD!!!!!

...And Then I Fell Into an Alternate Dimension

The long-awaited (?) tale of my further adventures in the mountains. 

Last Sunday, the twelfth (still behind on the blogging, sorry, guys), I took the train to Montpellier from Marseille to meet up with my relatives. My Aunt Linda, Uncle Ed, cousin Chris, and his girlfriend Stephanie have all been visiting my cousin Nick, who lives in Montpellier. The five of them have been traveling around France but were making a stop in the city for about three days, and I had arranged to meet up with them there.

We were all sitting at dinner when Chris asked me what my weirdest experience so far had been. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I realized I had a truly bizarre backpacking story; I was only surprised that I hadn't thought of it right away.

Things had started innocently enough. I'd been sitting in Sospel after my hike up Mount Agaisen. It was around two o'clock, I think, and the next train back to Nice would not arrive for nearly two hours.

I did, however, have a train schedule in my bag, and some investigating revealed that there was a train going in the opposite direction that would be by in about forty-five minutes. "Hmmm," I thought. "Now that's a possibility."

The truth is, I felt like I was not being nearly impulsive enough on this trip. Planning was, of course, necessary in order to see everything I wanted to see on a reasonable budget, but I felt like my tight schedule was keeping me from the quintessential backpacking experience of just hopping a train a going somewhere, anywhere. So I decided to be impulsive and hop a train. It wouldn't cost me anything extra, since the day's travel had already been covered by my rail pass.

I checked the guidebook pages I had stored on my ipad for some guidance as to where I should get off. The only relevant town mentioned was Saorge. "Saorge is the prettiest spot in the Roya Valley," the guidebook gushed. "Set in a natural amphitheater high over the river, its slate-roofed houses are tiered between narrow alleys in the style of a typical stacked village."

Sounds cute, I thought, and one of the train stops on the schedule was Fontan-Saorge. Awesome!

If only I'd thought! If only I'd known!

I took the train to Fontan-Saorge, looking forward to checking out some slate-roofed houses in a natural amphitheater. What I got was a barren wasteland...in a natural amphitheater.

Things seemed okay when I first stepped off the train. I mean, the conductor didn't do anything like ask, "Really? Are you SURE?" when I got off, and there were a bunch of other people disembarking as well, which would seem to imply that Fontan-Saorge was, at the very least, not an undesirable location. But once the train had pulled out of the station, things got REALLY different REALLY fast.

First of all, all the other passengers hightailed it to the parking lot, got into waiting cars, and cleared out of there as quickly as humanely possible, leaving me standing in the middle of the cracked, empty pavement all by myself. If we'd been in a cartoon there would have been a giant dust cloud that cleared to reveal me standing alone in the parking lot as some stray tumbleweeds drifted by.

Second, the train station was locked and empty. It looked as if no one had been inside in quite awhile. Weird, but not SO weird, since a lot of the smaller train stations are locked up most of the time.

But things got weirder. Now that I was by myself, could take full stock of the situation. The train station, unlike most French train stations, was not located in the middle of town or even on the outskirts of it. It was unceremoniously plunked down between two towns, and my only guidance was a signpost with two arrows, one pointing to Soarge, one pointing to Fontan. There was no mention of the distance to either.

I walked to the sign and looked around to get my bearings. To the left, the road went through an underpass built to accommodate the train tracks and then swerved around a corner, so I couldn't see anything beyond it. To the left, the road to Saorge entered what appeared to be a fairly long tunnel dug into the mountainside. I had no desire to be hit by a car while walking through a dark tunnel, so that narrowed down my options considerably.

And then: oh happy day! There was a hiking trail going up the mountain, away from the road. This seemed like a godsend, since I was starting to feel sort of uneasy and exposed standing alone on the road next to what appeared to be an abandoned train station. I set off up the path.

It was immediately clear that this trail was not nearly as well-traveled or maintained as the GR 52 in Sospel. It looked less like a hiking trail and more like a path that animals or errant hikers had created accidentally. Branches and thorns crisscrossed the pathway, which was overgrown with grass and weeds. I soldiered on anyway, despite my realization that this steep, pretty exposed path would be difficult to hike back down without falling on my butt.

Adding to the general Twilight Zone atmosphere was the natural amphitheater aspect of things. While it was kind of cool in theory, in practice the amphitheater meant that all the sounds from miles around felt like they were being bombarded straight at me. I kept thinking I was coming upon a waterfall or something, but it was really the sound of the river far below being projected into the mountains. The distant highway made it sound and feel like I was going to be run down by an eighteen-wheeler at any second.

I kept climbing until the path simultaneously entered a patch of woods and turned a corner. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by a totally illogical, primal fear, like when you turn off the lights and you suddenly think, "What if there's someone lurking in here with me?!" Obviously, it's crazy and unfounded, but it's one of those feelings that's hard to ignore.

"What if there's a crazed mountain man behind that corner?!" I thought, freaking myself out even more than I already had. "What if there's a yeti (or whatever the Alpine equivalent of a yeti is), but instead of being shy and gentle it has an insatiable hunger for human flesh?!"

"That's stupid," said the logical, adult part of my brain. "There is no yeti or mountain man back there...but if it's all the same to you maybe just go with your gut and turn around anyway."

Even the LOGICAL, ADULT part of my brain was freaked out. This is what Fontan-Saorge has done to me!

I got back down the mountain more quickly than expected with the aid of a branch that I used as an impromptu walking stick, but when I got to the bottom I still had forty minutes before the train to Nice came to return me to civilization, where people hardly ever have to worry about yetis or mountain men.

So I walked up the road toward Saorge, past an abandoned basketball court and a deserted tennis court. A car stopped and the driver asked if I wanted a ride. "Non, merci," I said, heart hammering, before turning around and walking in the opposite direction, looking more and more like a mentally confused vagrant with every passing moment.

I walked through the underpass and around the corner and was treated to view of a town I assumed to be Fontan, which was just far enough down the road to make walking there pointless given how much longer I had before my train arrived. So I decided to just walk back to the train station and hope for the best. When I got there I saw three teenage girls sitting on the platform waiting as well, which made me feel ever-so-slightly more secure. I sat down on the next bench over. We waited.

Just when the feeling of having been dropped into some Twilight Zone-y parallel universe was beginning to abate, two skinny, mangy dogs came trotting up the train tracks, looking for food. They had collars with string leashes dangling off of them--but there was no sign of their owner. At all.

The scaredy-cat part of my brain and the logical adult part of my brain, for once in perfect agreement, clutched each other for dear life and cried, "Dear God, we're going to die in a post-apocalyptic wasteland surrounded by scavenging dogs and snotty French teenagers and probably a mountain man and a yeti! WHYYYYYYYY?!"

This anecdote has been pretty amusing when I re-tell it over dinner with my family or via Skype to my best friend, but let me assure you that it was pretty darn unsettling at the time. I mean, I could recognize the humor as I was experiencing it--the dog thing: really?! I couldn't have planned a better capper to the whole experience if I'd tried--but it's harder to appreciate the humor when every instinct in you is going, "Nope. Nope. Nuh-uh. I DO NOT LIKE THIS ONE BIT."

When I look back at the whole thing, it almost feels like a dream I had. You know what I mean, the sort of dream where everything sort of makes sense but seems really...off, and then once you wake up, you feel very strange and on edge?

Yeah, it felt like that. Thank God I woke up.

Caffeine 1, Renee 0

In case you did not know it, guys, I'm a lightweight. I had a pint of cider--with dinner!-- last night, and before I was even finished, I was in no state to do things like drive or operate heavy machinery. I wasn't drunk, but I was well on my way there. Off a PINT. Of CIDER. Like I said, lightweight.

 But I'm also a caffeine lightweight, too. Betcha didn't even know that was a thing, but it is. Ohhhh, it is. I'm super-sensitive to it. I had to stop drinking Mountain Dew when I was sixteen because it made me act like a really, really energetic drunk. The final nail in the coffin came when I drank a can of Mountain Dew and then kept incessantly challenging those nearby to race me to various area landmarks ("Let's race to the flag pole and back! Come on, it'll be fun! I'm winning! I'm winning! Hahahaha, run faster, loser! Just kidding, I'm STILL WINNING!").

 I also had to stop drinking chai tea lattes after 4 pm because I realized they were keeping me up literally an hour after I would attempt to go to bed. This was a much greater sacrifice than the Mountain Dew, because chai lattes are infinitely more tasty. (Your heartfelt pity is appreciated, thanks.)

 But today in Edinburgh I learned about a drink called Irn-Bru, which our tour guide jokingly referred to as "Scotland's OTHER official drink" (aside from whiskey, obviously) and touted as being a Scotsman's go-to hangover cure.

"It's full of sugar, full of caffeine, and full of quinine, which is a mildly addictive painkiller," he told us. "In the U.S. it's a controlled substance."

 "Sounds like something I should drink and then blog about!" I said to myself. "I wonder if I have a greater tolerance for caffeine than I used to. Experiment time!"

So I bought myself a can of Irn-Bru. It cost 39p, or about 65 cents. Quality stuff here.

I would like to quote to you the ingredient list--and accompanying WARNING LABEL--in its entirety:

INGREDIENTS: Carbonated water, Sugar, Citric Acid, Flavourings (Including Caffeine and Quinine), Preservative (E211), Colours (Sunset Yellow & Ponceau 4R), Ammonium Ferric Citrate (0.002%).
Sunset Yellow & Ponceau 4R: may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.

!!!

Like I said, quality stuff.

But I drank it anyway. I did it for you guys! This is an act of self-sacrifice so you never have to let something as suspiciously innocuous-sounding as "Sunset Yellow Colouring" ever enter your body.

It tasted like orange soda and bubblegum flavoring mixed together. If this sounds only barely appetizing to you, it's because this is only a barely appetizing beverage. After the first couple sips the flavor became sort of moot and I would mainly just call it bubbly, cold, and wet.

I wasn't even halfway through the can before I caught myself drumming my fingers against it at a pretty rapid clip. Fifteen minutes later I had drunk face going on. "Drunk face" is what I call the numbed sensation that creeps over my mouth, nose, and cheeks once I've had anything beyond a couple sips of alcohol. This was mildly surprising and slightly disconcerting.

I couldn't finish the can and threw it out while there was still a quarter cup of soda left. The aftertaste was still present ten minutes later but other than that I seemed to be suffering no other ill effects. I was a little disappointed at the anti-climactic nature of it all, as I had been hoping for some caffeine-induced hijinks to ensue. (Hijinks generally make for entertaining blog posts.)

An hour after I had drunk the Irn-Bru, I started having hot flashes in my stomach. Weird, but then they spread over my body. I had two or three really decent, fevery hot flashes. Odd, but then they subsided. I was still surprised at how I'd gotten off scot-free, so to speak (ha! Scot!).

The afternoon progressed normally until I realized around 5:30 pm that I'd been stifling an inexplicable urge to weep uncontrollably for the past half-hour or so. And that I was tearing up over army uniforms in the Scottish War Museum--not exactly normal behavior for me. By the time I'd reached the gift shop I realized that my hands felt so limp it was like they were two floppy vestigial appendages uselessly attached to my wrists. This might have been the result of being out in the chilly Edinburgh weather all day, but I've been sitting indoors typing this for a good forty minutes and I've still got some seriously shaky hands.

Perhaps chasing the Irn-Bru with a hastily-downed half-pint of Magners at lunch was ill-advised. Maybe combining a depressant with a stimulant has been the thing that has kept me from challenging strangers to foot races on the Royal Mile. Either way, I can safely say that Irn-Bru and I are not friends and will never be so, and that it has successfully beaten me even as it ostensibly protects me from malaria (thanks, quinine!).

But now I need to pop off and get dinner somewhere. I'm actually getting pretty tired of eating out but the closest grocery store appears to be a bit of a hike from here. What's more is that I seem to be hurtling headlong toward a caffeine crash despite never having actually experienced the caffeine buzz that's supposed to precede it. What's a girl to do?!

Eat chocolate I have hidden in my backpack somewhere? Ehhh, sounds like a plan!

EDIT: The night that followed this one was noteworthy not only for the fact that it took me AGES to fall asleep but that my stream-of-consciousness thought process was approaching James Joyce levels of insanity. "Scotland Scotland I wonder what movies are playing these days if I were in a movie I'd be pink dress big grin dog on a leash Scotland Edinburgh murderers be crazy I wonder what drives people to become serial killers vampires dogs on leashes shouldn't have drank that soda drank drunk oh geez my grammar is horrible laundry okay stop. Slow down. This is just the caffeine, take a deep breath. This is crazy. Crazy. Crazy like serial killers I wonder what makes people become serial killers I wonder who thought up vampires pink dress I want a pink dress I don't have a pink dress Confessions of a Shopaholic Legally Blonde VAMPIRES!!!"

It was a long night. I recall there being a lot more random insanity, but for the life of me I can't remember what it all was. I think it might be better that way.

Magnifique, Merveilleux, Marseille!

If you'll recall from an earlier entry, I unfortunately missed my train from Nice to Marseille. As you can imagine, I was not in the greatest of moods when I arrived in the city, and I did not have particularly high hopes for my stay.

For starters, in a classic tour-de-force performance, GoogleMaps sent me the wrong way. Remember how I once said I love GoogleMaps more than I love some people? It's probably still true, but I have to say that I love GoogleMaps a little less now. It's still not as bad as the time it sent me and my friend Madison walking down Santa Monica Boulevard in the exact wrong direction for an hour (through a seedy neighborhood), but I was still none too pleased.

When I finally made it to the hostel, the first thing I noticed, unfortunately, was that someone had smashed the window. There wasn't a hole, but it was covered in cracks radiating outward from the point of impact. Oh sweet Jesus, I thought, I've made it this far only to die in a hostel in Marseille.

For some background: Marseille has a reputation for being what one would call a "rough city." Every single guidebook I own begins its page on Marseille with something like, "Don't let Marseille's reputation scare you!" which is a pretty scary statement for a guidebook to make anyway. The point is, though, that Marseille is reclaiming itself after sort of being the Detroit of France, and in the last few years, when there were race riots in every major French city, the very multi-cultural Marseille continued on without any problems (because everyone there gets along! All together now: awwwwwww!).

Despite my trepidation, the reception area of the hostel seemed very legit and not seedy or dangerous, and the receptionist was very friendly.

Once I got to my room I was even more impressed. It was probably the nicest hostel I've ever stayed at. For starters, it was a four-woman dorm, which always beats fourteen-bed female (Nice) or fourteen-bed mixed (Prague) or even eight-bed mixed (Munich). Second, the room was TWO STORIES! (Hello, luxury, I've missed you.) The downstairs contained a toilet, a bathroom (the French keep the toilet separate from the shower/sink...I dunno, it's just a thing here), and some wooden lockers tucked underneath a curving staircase. Upstairs was a bright and cozy room containing four beds (two bunked), a couple end tables, and a table and chair. The room was lit by a skylight and a couple lamps and there was a graphic print hanging on the wall. Furthermore, the wifi worked in the dorms (a rarity in the world of hostelling, unfortunately), there were enough electrical outlets for everyone (woohoo!), and the bathroom was a real bathroom with a real shower and not a hostelly shower.Real talk: I would go back to Marseille just to stay at this hostel.

I was already recovering from my icky day when one of my roommates arrived. The last of my roommates, I should say, since two other beds had already been claimed even though their occupants were apparently elsewhere. Anyway, she was very friendly and introduced herself right away as Katherine from South Africa. We chatted a bit and discovered that we both wanted to check out Marseille's Saturday markets the next morning, so we made plans to go together. In the meantime, I headed out to explore a bit.

After some walking around I was getting hungry so I picked up some dinner at the supermarket and returned to the hostel to cook it. While I was in the kitchen area I started chatting with another woman my age, Nadja, who was from Australia but was working in France at a vineyard. We had a nice conversation and I went back up to the room after dinner only to discover a few minutes later that Nadja was the third roommate, which left only one more mystery person. (It turned out to be a middle-aged French lady who was perfectly nice but not anyone I got to know particularly well.)

When Katherine returned to the room she and Nadja hit it off right away and went out bar hopping together, while I opted to stay in and catch up on New Girl. (Zero regrets on that front. That day had beaten the crap out of me.)

The next morning the three of us hit the markets (fish, produce, and random junk) and had a nice morning before splitting up--Nadja and Katherine to explore Marseille some more, and me to hike Les Calanques near Cassis, about a twenty-five minute train ride away.

Unfortunately the walk from the train station into the center of Cassis took me about twice as long as the train ride itself, but it was no big deal. It was a lovely sunny day and the tree-lined path to town was bordered on one side by the road and on the other by vineyards, so yeah, things could have been worse.

I made it into Cassis and after brief stop-offs at the Tourism Office (the lady was hardcore judging my poor French), the bathroom (which cost 50 centimes and was run by a blind guy and a guy who looked like Steve Buschemi), and the supermarket (to buy "lunch"--aka a box of Pims cookies--for my hike), I set off.

Les Calanques are narrow channels of the Mediterranean that cut into the coast around Cassis, creating deep gorges and some truly unique landscapes. There are six Calanques altogether, I think, and three of them are accessible by foot from Cassis. I was only able to get as far as the first one (Port Miou) because I had to get back in time for the girls' night Katherine and Nadja had planned, but it was definitely a fantastic hike. I'd love to go back and spend more time there someday.

Les Calanques were designated a national park only last year, which is really surprising to me because they are some of the most beautiful natural landscapes I've ever seen (and I've only seen the one! I've heard that the others are even prettier.). Judge for yourself:

They've also been well-traveled by tourists; the rocks are really slippery and shiny, worn down by people's shoes. You know those fake, fiberglass-like rocks they use in water rides/fake rivers at amusement parks? A lot of the rocks at Les Calanques look and feel like that.

I left myself plenty of time to get back, not being entirely sure how long it would take me. As a result, I ended up having a little time in Cassis, which would be worth a return visit in its own right, I think.

I made it to the train station a full hour ahead of the time I'd planned, and ended up taking an earlier train back. This turned out to be a good thing, as I got a little downtime before dinner.

At around seven, Nadja and Katherine and I started getting ready to go out to dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. We listened to music and drank wine and Katherine did our hair--stereotypical girly stuff. We had a lovely dinner in terms of both conversation and food, and then I begged off to do some work (I know, LAME and BORING but I'm super-behind on my freelance work) while the other two went out.

In the morning the three of us attended what basically amounted to the final quarter of Sunday mass at Notre Dame de la Garde, which overlooks the city and is decorated with maritime/nautical imagery as a nod to Marseille's seafaring history. (I particularly liked the model ships hanging from the ceiling like mobiles. It was some of the most whimsical church decor I've ever seen.) Around one o'clock Nadja and I left for the train station but not before the three of us exchanged contact info and a group hug.

It's funny how people you meet can really make your experience in a place. Marseille was not a city that particularly attracted me, nor is it now--I mostly picked it for the cheap lodging and easy distance to Les Calanques. But Marseille has definitely ended up being one of the highlights of my trip so far.

But now--on to Montpellier!


The post title is shamelessly stolen from Katherine's Facebook album. Credit where credit's due.

Eats Across Europe: Candy Edition, Part One

Candy--okay, chocolate--is a food group unto itself, I think you'll agree. I had no particular plans to research (read: eat my body weight in) candy bars when I started this trip, but one fateful afternoon at a Prague metro station changed everything. (EVERYTHING!) I was hungry and shaky and so jet lagged and out of it that I felt like I was standing on a ship at sea, rocking back and forth, when in reality I was standing on the very solid and stationary concrete floor of the Malostranska metro station. With blood sugar plummeting and stomach growling, I grabbed the first candy bar that looked palatable. I had no clue what it tasted like or what was in it, but I took one bite and I was in love.

Unfortunately I was still starving and out of it, but the Great Candy Love Affair had began. Since then I've been seizing every opportunity to sample new candy bars. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the sake of giving you, all six-and-a-half (Miss Jessalyn "I only look at the pictures"*) of my blog readers, a complete guide to European candy bars for your future travels. You are so very welcome.

Most of these (with the sad exception of Delissa) can be found in more than one country, so I've just labeled each with the country where I first tried it.

(*Jessalyn, best friend, I love you! Please keep looking at all my pictures. Kay, thanks.)

Kinder Milk Bars (Germany)
Yummy but inferior to KinderSurprise, which is pretty much the same in terms of flavor but of course comes with the added advantage of containing a prize. Apparently the US Customs will confiscate KinderSurprises, though, since they're choking hazards. (Really? REALLY?!)

Anyway, Kinder Milk Bars are standard but delicious milk chocolate candy bars with a white filling that is ostensibly like milk (albeit milk saturated with sugar and whatnot). Market Basket people, I hope this sounds good to you because this is what you're getting from me. (Bought a 30-pack at the duty free store at the airport for like 5€...score!)

Ritter Sport - Yogurt Flavor (Germany)
It really tastes like yogurt!!! I don't mean in the way people usually mean regarding candy, when they say something like, "This Fruit Roll-Up tastes like strawberries," when what they mean is, "It tastes like sugary [but delicious] strawberry flavoring." I mean that Ritter Sport Yogurt Flavor really tastes like yogurt sandwiched between layers of milk chocolate. It's got that perfect, sour yogurty tang to it. Which is good, because I bought it for breakfast at the duty-free store after sleeping all night at the airport. It was between the yogurt flavor and the cornflakes one, both of which seemed appropriate to the situation. I got the yogurt one because it sounded weirder. I sort of wish I'd gotten both. Über breakfast!

Delissa (Czech Republic)
Oh Delissa bars. I can't even begin to express my love for you in prose, so I won't even try. Poem time!

Chocolaty, wafery, hazelnut sweet,
I can think of no better candy to eat.
When I was hungry you came to my rescue,
To which all I can say is, "Delissa bar, bless you!"
Light and delicious with crispity crunch,
It is true that I once ate Delissas for lunch.
The nutritional value may be debatable,
But a candy this tasty is simply unhateable!

Noteworthy: autocorrect has learned how to spell Delissa. Not only that but it will correct other words to Delissa. My work here is done.

Also noteworthy: they come in white chocolate as well, but the filling for those appears to be coconut instead of hazelnut. Still good, but not quite as good as the original.

Knoppers (Germany)
Like layers of Vienna wafers but crunchier, alternated with a layer of chocolate hazelnut and a layer of milk cream. The bottom wafer is chocolate coated. Overall, Knoppers are all right but lack the poetry-inducing magic of Delissas.

Lion (France)
Made by Nestle, so my first thought was: why they don't distribute them in the US?! Upon reflection I realized it's probably because we already have them, we just call them 100 Grands. Lion bars are basically the same thing--chocolate outer coating, then a layer of crispy bits, then some weird but delicious caramel-nougat-hybrid sludge in the middle. I got a three-pack and ate one at breakfast time, one at lunch, and then one at senior citizen dinner time (4 pm on my stalled train). Lion: a candy bar for all meals!

Ritter Sport - Marzipan Flavor
About a month or two ago I bought some almond paste at Market Basket so I could make cookies. I had about 2 ounces left over, and those 2 ounces have been sitting in my fridge ever since, undisturbed except for when I'm craving something sweet but am trying to resist the urge to eat junk food. In these kinds of situations, I will slice myself off a piece of almond paste and happily snack away. Sometimes if I'm craving some chocolate I'll spread Nutella on top of it.

The Ritter Sport Marzipan bar tastes pretty much like almond paste with Nutella, except about a million times better.

Balisto (France)
Chocolate-coated honey almond wafers. I was hoping for a sort of wafery, crunchy Toblerone sort of situation, but no such luck. Had the consistency of chocolate covered graham crackers and was just sort of meh. (Full disclosure, though: this is the opinion of someone who doesn't particularly like chocolate-covered graham crackers. If you happen to be a fan of them, then I guess Balistos could well turn out to be your Delissas. Just something to think about.)

Daim (France)
Sort of like Skor or a Heath Bar: a thin wafer of toffee coated in chocolate. Simple but top notch. Would eat again. DID eat again, in fact, and was eating it with so much gusto that a stranger wished me bon appetit. Thanks, random train station lady who "only needed three more Euros for a ticket to Marseille"! I appreciate it!

And that's it for now! Fear not, I'll continue my candy crusade and be back to update you on the merits of some more foreign candy bars in the not-too-distant future.

View from the Top of the World

Still playing catch-up here, so the events of this post took place about a week ago, on Thursday the ninth. I mean, the date's not importantly anything, it's just to give you a frame of reference as to just how behind I am. Anyway, onward!

When I was planning my European adventure, I read a lot of books. But perhaps no book was more central to the locale-choosing process than my copy of 501 Must-See Destinations. You have probably seen this book on the bargain table in the vestibule of Barnes and Noble. It is fantastic. It cost me all of five dollars, probably, and it has been invaluable not only in trip planning but in making me forlornly (wander)lust after other exotic locales.

At any rate, one of the Must-See Destinations featured in the book is Mercantour National Park in France. As soon as I started planning my trip, I knew I HAD to go there. That being decided, I spent most of my time using the book to borderline assault the rest of my family.

"IT'S JUST SO PRETTY!" I said, shoving the book in my mother's face as she tried to cook dinner.

"LOOK HOW PRETTY IT IS!" I commanded my father as he went upstairs to change after work.

"IS THAT NOT THE PRETTIEST THING YOU'VE EVER SEEN?!" I demanded of my sister as she tried to nap on the couch.

And now I've been and gone and I can say that, while the part of the park I saw looked nothing like the picture in my guidebook, it is definitely among the prettiest places I have ever visited.

The pretty scenery overload started with the train ride from Nice to Sospel, a small mountain town on the southern boundary of the park. The train on that particular route is called "Le Train des Merveilles" (the Train of Marvels) because it travels a really beautiful scenic route--so pretty that a train ride is a tourist activity in its own right. I got some pretty pictures but, like the photos from my last pretty train ride, I'm saving them for a later post.

I got off the train in Sospel and set about trying to find one of the GR trails that supposedly went straight through the middle of town. GR stands for "Grandes Randonnées," or "big hikes," and there are tons of them all over France. However, I was having some problems locating them in Sospel. I'd walked down the street out of town, hoping to run into something that looked hiking trail-like, but no such luck, so I'd turned around and wandered back into town. In a stroke of brilliance (read: an average level of logical problem- solving skill) I decided to go to the tourism office. It was, of course, closed for the public holiday, so I was on my own. Keep on wandering, sad hiker without a hiking trail! Keep wandering!

By a stroke of luck, I happened upon a wooden sign pointing me in the direction of GR 52. "GR 52 it is, then!" I said to myself, and started climbing up a giant hill past houses and walls and cars. As I got higher, the houses got farther apart and the road became less busy, and eventually it dead-ended into a dirt hiking trail.

By this point I was soaked through with sweat, not only because the hill was giant (GIANT, I TELL YOU!) but also because the weather, which was supposed to cap out at around 65-70 degrees, was clearly well into the mid-seventies or above already, and it was only mid-morning. I was cursing my jeans and sighing forlornly at the thought of my gym shorts just sitting in my bag back at the hostel.

Luckily, the path became more winding and therefore less steep and strenuous, so my lack of shorts quickly became less of a problem. The trail went through a wooded area for a little while and then began its winding ascent up Mount Agaisen. The path was out in the sunlight, bordered on either side by bushes or rocky bluffs. As I walked, the foliage ahead of me rustled as tiny lizards that had been sunning themselves on the path ran to hide. (There were a LOT of lizards, guys. If you don't like reptiles then I would suggest that you stay well away from Mercantour National Park.)

Just look at this adorable little guy!
Every time the twisty path changed directions, a new "level" began, and at each new level I stopped to take about a gazillion redundant pictures of the view. I knew it was pretty much the same scene every time, but I couldn't help myself. It was so beautiful that I felt compelled to take as many pictures as possible, even though photos just don't do justice to the real thing. I really tried, though:

I reached the summit of the mountain in probably about two hours, and the view there was every bit as lovely--and perhaps even more impressive--than the scenery on the way up. I stopped to eat lunch and enjoy the sunshine and the sight of the mountains and valleys spread out all around me, but had to move on a bit quicker than I'd planned because the spot seemed to be frequented by giant buzzy insects. I don't mind bugs generally--in fact, I think they're pretty interesting to watch most of the time--but these things were giant, like they'd been bred in a mad scientist's lab or something. Plus they seemed to enjoy speeding past my head in group formations, like the insect equivalent of the Hell's Angels. I finished my sandwich and got moving.

I explored the mountain top for quite awhile and eventually came upon a view that can only be described as breathtaking. And I'm not exaggerating or being hyperbolic; I mean that I literally stopped breathing for a second. I was not aware that this was a legitimate reaction to something and not just a tired cliché, so I was pretty surprised by this turn of events. The picture might help explain it a bit, but it won't really convey the feeling of being high above everything else, having a view that stretches for miles, and seeing mountains and valleys spread out before you with very little evidence of humans. In some directions I could see distant towns and houses, but mostly the only human additions to the landscape were some power lines stretching from one mountain top to the next, and even THAT was impressive given the sheer distance from one tower to the next. It was a truly awe-inspiring experience.

Looks like the mountains have been photoshopped in (they haven't) but still doesn't come close to capturing how incredible it all was.
After wandering to my heart's content, I realized that I was beginning to get a bit tired and that I still had at least a two-hour hike back into town. I made good time coming back down the mountain, even though I ended up on a self-inflicted detour with the steepest hills known to man--seriously, they were practically just vertical drops. But I made it back into town with a couple of hours to spare before the next train to Nice.

The story of how I killed that time is worthy of its own post (it's a pretty fantastic anecdote, if I do say so myself), so au revoir for now!

Un Petit Pause

It's 8 pm (and still light out!), I'm twenty-three, and I just rolled into Tours. Better get out there and soak up the culture, right?!

Well, maybe, but I ain't gonna do it.

I'm tired, guys. I've been on the go for nearly two weeks now and things are catching up with me. Plus I just spent a couple lovely days hanging out with my awesome relatives in Montpellier, and during that time I had the luxury of never needing to check a map, watch the clock, ask for directions, catch a train, or find a place to eat. So setting off on my own again today was something of a bummer in a sense, for those reasons and for the simple fact that seeing my family made me a touch homesick.

I hadn't been homesick at all up until this point, which was at first faintly surprising to me until I realized that I haven't really had the opportunity to be homesick. I've been constantly on the go, doing things, planning, catching trains, sorting out food and accommodations and directions and maps and whatnot. Over the last couple of days, though, I had a chance to chill out a bit, and that added to the (very welcome) presence of family is making me feel sort of like a sad sack tonight. I mean, I spent the train ride from Montpellier listening to the Amelie soundtrack; that should give you an idea of the sort of mood I'm in right now.

I read a quote once that about how "melancholy is the pleasure of being sad," and it seems really applicable right now. I'm quite looking forward to spending my night in catching up on some shows I've missed since I've been away (got up to date with Doctor Who yesterday and New Girl today on the train, so tonight will be devoted to Elementary) and wallowing a bit before going to bed good and early. (It's 8:30 pm and still really light out now, so I do have a bit of time to kill before my body will even allow me to go to sleep for the night.)

But I'm gonna take a nice hot shower. I'm going to eat the chocolate marzipan candy that I bought as a gift but that became all melty and squished and therefore ungiftable. I am as pumped about this night in as I was about some actual destinations on my trip. Introverts for the win!

Tomorrow it's a trip to Chateau Chenonceau and possibly some exploration of Tours, which seems like a pretty cool city. Keep an eye out for more posts in the next couple days...I have some partially written already and this brief break might allow me to actually finish them, post them, and get mostly caught up--hooray!

But for now, it's time for a Me Party. A tout a l'heure!

Eats Across Europe, Part One

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned food much in talking about this trip. If you know me at all, you might find this suspicious lack of food talk puzzling, since I can rarely get through a normal conversation without:

1. Talking about a food I've recently cooked and/or eaten,
2. Expressing a desire to be cooking or eating either at this moment or in the very near future, or
3. Actually eating something during said conversation.

Well, if you've been wondering what's up with me and my non-food-centric blogging, here's your lightbulb moment: I've been reserving an entire blog post to devote to food. AN ENTIRE POST. You're welcome.

This is part one of many, since I'm obviously only about a week into this trip and still have many, many foods to sample and enjoy--especially now that I'm in France, the land of macarons, cheese, chocolate, Gratin Daupinois, ratatouille, croissants (au chocolat!), tarte citron, quiche, and SO MUCH DELICIOUS BREAD.

So without further ado, here's the rundown on my trip's cuisine so far. (This isn't every meal; just the ones I deemed noteworthy for whatever reason.) Keep an eye out for the next food post, which will focus exclusively on European candy bars! (I do this for you guys! It's tough work but someone needs to tell you non-travelers what a Daim bar tastes like.)

Grilled vegetables and goat cheese (Prague)

In Prague, I got dinner with Jenny, a fellow American I met on the Prague tour. We asked our guide to recommend a good restaurant where we could try some Czech specialties, and she sent us to a bar/restaurant a couple streets away, telling us it had vegetarian options as well as the more meat-based Czech dishes.

I wanted to get fried cheese, since it's sort of a Czech specialty (and it's cheese! That's fried!) , but the restaurant was all out. If I couldn't have THE fried cheese, I at least got SOME fried cheese. The meal was good, nothing to write home about really (although, ironically, I am LITERALLY writing home about it right now), but it was so cheap: the meal plus a soft drink cost me the equivalent of about seven US dollars. Go Prague!

Donut and butterbreze (Munich)

I wanted some German food. The German vegetarian place near my hostel was closed and I was feeling quite lazy, so I swung by the train station and was like, "Okay, here we go, fine German cuisine." I got a standard sandwich for dinner but accompanied it with a donut and a butterbreze (butter pretzel), since they're both sort of Bavarian things. No Bavarian cream in the donut, unfortunately, but it was still chocolate-frosted deliciousness, a little fluffier and cakier than donuts I'm used to.

Butterbreze is pretty much what it sounds like: it's a pretzel. Filled with butter. Literally, they slice it open and then spread butter on each half before smooshing the sides back together. The fattiest, most delicious sandwich ever.

Tofuschnitzel (Munich)

Delicious. I don't even know everything that was in there...some kraut, I think, definitely mustard, lettuce, tomato. The guy named off a couple of spices, ginger for sure and, I think, cumin. Had a couple bites where I could really taste the ginger and it was quite unexpected and refreshing.

I ate this magical meal at Royal Kebabhaus by the Hauptbahnhof in Munich, after having read about it on happycow.net, a vegetarian restaurant review site. The proprietor was super nice and friendly, really patient with me even though he spoke only a little English and I speak absolutely no German. Since schnitzel is kind of a thing in Germany (but is traditionally made with super-tenderized meat), I was excited that I got to experience it in my own vegetarian way.

Käsespätzle mit Röstzwiebeln and Augustiner Hall beer (Munich)

I'm not typically a fan of beer, but in when one is in Munich it's kind of obligatory to try the beer. I'd already passed on famous Czech beer in Prague, so I felt like my hands were tied on this one. The beer was okay if you ask me, a non-beer-drinker, but my evaluation is probably not the one to go by, especially if you actually happen to like beer a lot.

The Käsespätzle was really delicious, though. "Käsespätzle mit Röstzwiebeln" means " cheese noodles with fried onions." I'm not sure if it's specific to Bavaria or Germany in general, but it's delicious, like macaroni and cheese but even better. (And you know how I feel about mac and cheese to begin with.) The spätzle, or noodles, are made of eggs and semolina, generally, and they are softer and more tender than the sort of pasta I'm used to eating. The cheese was sharp and salty and perfectly balanced by the sweet sharpness of the onion, which had not been cooked very long and had therefore retained a pretty strong flavor. Yummy, yummy, yummy. The picture does not do it justice at all.

As a side note: I got this dinner with Amanda and Rachel, two women I met on the tour to Dachau. Amanda had somehow found out about this place--the restaurant of the Oktoberfest Museum--and had suggested it. It was a fantastic choice--the restaurant itself was cozy and labyrinthine, with long shared tables and bench seating. Very atmospheric, and a good way to cap off my admittedly brief time in Munich.

Socca (Nice)

Delicious. I'll admit that I was predisposed to like it because I like chickpeas and I like crepes and these are essentially chickpea crepes, but OH MY GOD.

While socca is eaten around the entire Côte d'Azur region and into Italy, Nice is particularly known for socca. There are rivalries between different restaurants in the same way that New York pizzerias all claim to have the best pizza in the city, and people's socca tastes vary just as some people prefer one place's pizza over another. Some restaurants make crispier socca, some do it softer, but I think it's safe to say they're probably all delicious.

The traditional way to eat socca is with a little bit of black pepper. I'm not a huge fan of pepper so I put only a very little, and I didn't think the peppery bits were any better than the plain parts. In fact, I think I preferred it plain. It is definitely a savory dish but the socca I tried (I got mine at Lou Pilha Leva in the Old Town) had a really subtle sweetness to it and an almost peanut buttery flavor. Think of it in those terms to understand the sweet/savory balance...it's sort of got the same ratio of sweet to savory as peanut butter. As a result I'm inclined to say (blasphemy?!) that socca would taste good drizzled with chocolate, but if you ask me there are few foods that wouldn't be improved by that.

Gelato from Fenocchio Glacier (Nice)

Fenocchio is an institution in Nice, a famous ice cream/gelato place offering 70 different flavors. I was only in Nice for two days, so I couldn't try all 70, but I made an honest effort and tried six. I went for the weird ones, too.
You're welcome.

Vanilla with pink pepper: Really weird at the first bite (weird but good!), but I got more used to it as I plowed through it. Pink pepper, in case you've never tasted it (I hadn't) is milder than black pepper, and tastes surprisingly good with vanilla. The only way I can think to describe the taste/texture combo is "sparkly."

Cactus: Mild, sweet, and perfume-y, with some strangely citrusy undertones to it. I wanna say it tasted like aloe (it may have actually been straight-up aloe), but I can never remember actually trying aloe so I have no idea where I'm getting that frame of reference.

Speculoos: This is what made me stop for ice cream in the first place. I'm crazy for Speculoos anything (if you've never tried Speculoos, they're like gingersnaps but better), and this ice cream did not disappoint. It tasted a little like the cinnamon-gingersnap ice cream Tracey and I made once.

Honey and pine nuts: Can I just eat this for the rest of my life? Okay, thanks. The warm sweetness of the honey was in perfect proportion to the savory pine nuts, which kept things from getting too sicky-sweet.

Rice and milk: Creamy taste, chunky texture, delicious overall. If you like tapioca pudding, you would love this. If you don't like tapioca pudding, then I feel sorry for you but you should probably just pick a different flavor of ice cream.

Mojito: My love of mojitos is well-documented (see: every picture from my twenty-first birthday) so I figured I'd love this sorbet. And it turns out it was only okay. It tasted like it had dried mint, not fresh (which I suppose is more practical, but it's just not the same) and there was a sour/bitter aftertaste. It wasn't bad, per se, but I wasn't really sure how I felt about it. On the plus side, I wolfed this down because I was quite thirsty after a day spent hiking in the mountains near Nice and this was definitely a thirst-quencher.


Well, that's it for this round of "What's Renée Been Eating?" Tune in next time for Speculoos macarons, famous Marseille cookies, long-lost favorite French foods, and more!

Nice is...Nice Enough

As far as cities go, I've never been particularly attached to Nice. Or I guess I should say I was never particularly attached to the idea of Nice, since my firsthand knowledge of the place was limited to my once getting a connecting train there.

But now I have actually stayed in the city and can say it with conviction: I have never been particularly attached to Nice.

There's nothing wrong with Nice. It's a perfectly fine city. I just didn't get that vibe from it. You know the vibe I'm talking about.

However, I did enjoy quite a few aspects of the admittedly meager amount of time I spent exploring the city. Colline du Chateau, or the Castle Hill, is pretty cool and offers, among other things, stunning views of Nice, some rather sparse (compared to other places) castle ruins, some interesting cemeteries, a cute park, a picturesque waterfall, and lots of stands selling postcards to tourists.

Some views of Nice from Colline du Chateau

I'm going to straight to hell for even saying this, but doesn't the face in the middle remind you of Voldemort?

Waterfall on Colline du Chateau

Beaches in Nice are made up of rocks, not sand.

I also spent some time walking in the Old Town, which was really cool, and along the famous Promenade des Anglais, which was really overrated in my opinion. For instance, compare the guidebook's portrayal of "relaxing on the Promenade des Anglais" (upper righthand page) to the reality of "relaxing" on the Promenade des Anglais (basically the same picture, zoomed out):

See what I mean?

I did have some pretty good food in Nice, but that's going to be the subject of its own post. There's not much more to say on this front, I guess, so here's an obligatory touristy picture of Hotel Negresco (a Nice landmark).

Until next time!

Dachau

No cheeky titles or wordplay today, guys, because its not really appropriate when you're talking about a place that was simultaneously a prison, a torture chamber, and a mass grave. Fair warning, this is not a particularly light and happy post.

I'm talking, of course, about Dachau, the only concentration camp to be open for the entirety of the Third Reich. Originally an ammunitions factory, Dachau caught Hitler's eye because it was an already-fortified campus, it wasn't being used for anything at the time, and it was a quick train ride from Munich, the center of the Nazi government's power.

I, like many other people, have been fascinated by the history of the Nazis and of Hitler's rise to power. How did a failed Austrian painter who didn't even embody the Aryan "ideal" he championed convince an entire government to participate in widespread murder, torture, and persecution?

I didn't expect a solid answer to that question, but I really felt that touring a concentration camp would be a way to grapple with these really difficult concepts in a way that was not as sanitized as many history books' way of presenting it. I booked a tour with Sandemans again. It was a good choice, because I think an experience like that, where you're forced to confront a lot of truths you'd rather not have to think about, is definitely different when it's shared among others.

When we arrived at the camp, the sky was gray and overcast and it was threatening to rain, which seemed appropriate to the subject matter. Our guide told us about the history of the camp and its origins as an ammunitions factory. The first prisoners at Dachau, he said, were not Jewish people or gypsies, two of the groups most often associated with Hitler's "purification" efforts, but political opponents of Hitler. Basically anyone who had voted against the Nazi party was deemed an enemy of the state and was sent to Dachau to be "re-educated."

As time went on, however, the camp was used to hold men and boys over fourteen who were "unsuitable" for a number of reasons: they were Jewish, gay, Jehovah's Witnesses, Slavic, Roma, or criminals. (The last category was particularly sketchy, as Hitler had achieved his campaign promise of cleaning up the streets of Munich by simply throwing all vagrants in jail. Of course, this overcrowded the prisons, and the prisoners were moved to camps. Often, the "criminals'" worst crimes were simply being homeless or drunk in the wrong place at the wrong time.) And of course, political enemies of the Reich continued to be thrown into concentration camps.

One thing I didn't realize was that the camp wasn't immediately emptied and shut down following the end of the war. Dachau was a refugee camp until the 1960s. This is so hard for me to wrap my head around--how people had to live in the same camp under still-horrible conditions even after the war was over. Obviously the Nazis were no longer there killing and torturing them, but these people were forced to live in the same barracks where they'd been starved and exposed to the most unhygienic, unhealthy, uncomfortable conditions...and they were still encountering a lot of the same food shortages and unsanitary living conditions. Every day they looked out into the square where the Nazis had lined them up and, guns in hand, told them that they were subhuman. They lived a stone's throw away from mass graves containing the ashes and bodies of family members and friends, and every day they passed the places where they had been tortured and their loved ones killed.

It must take incredible strength of character to preserve a place like this, a place that has seen so much tragedy and darkness and injustice, in the name of educating future generations. When American soldiers arrived to liberate Dachau, they wanted to blow up the buildings that had been the site of so much horror--the gas chamber, the crematoriums. The camp survivors insisted that the buildings be kept as they were: "Honor the dead by warning the living," reads one memorial in Dachau, just steps away from the gas chamber where entire groups of people were sent to their deaths.

I can't tell every story I heard on my tour--they were nearly all horrifying, appalling reminders of what human beings are capable of. It's enough to say, in a fairly family-friendly blog, that thousands of people were tortured for no reason other than the amusement of their captors. That the Nazis would keep prisoners locked in tiny cells for months at a time--or even a year--only to take them outside in to the sun, blind them, and shoot them. To put it another way: the Nazis would invest the time and expense in keeping someone alive for a year knowing full well that they were going to kill them. They weren't murdering people to spare the expense of keeping them imprisoned. They weren't killing them in the heat of battle. They weren't even doing it for ideology anymore. They were doing it for fun. The idea that people like that have existed at all on this planet is terrifying, but to remember that they were in positions of power--and that they held these positions a mere sixty-odd years ago--is truly chilling.

Despite all this, I did not have the reaction to the camp that I'd expected. I've heard from many people that visiting sites like the Holocaust Museum or concentration camps are very, very difficult emotionally and even physically--some people have very visceral reactions. I did not. I knew this was horrible, I understood its significance, but there was a disconnect between this knowledge and my emotions. I could not wrap my mind around the fact that these events were real, that they happened not long ago, and that I was standing in the middle of the camp where they had taken place. I knew it, but I couldn't feel it. This, of course, makes me feel like a truly awful human being. How can anyone encounter evil like this and not be completely, utterly floored by it?

It seems odd to spend a chunk of your vacation wishing you could feel sadder and more depressed, but it feels somehow disrespectful to not be haunted by this experience every minute of every day. (Also, it makes me a bit worried that I'm a sociopath and have no capacity for empathy.)

There was however, one thing that triggered a gut reaction of sheer fear and despair, and that was the gas chamber. Dachau did not use gas chambers in the same way as many other camps; it was in fact a testing facility to determine the best, most efficient way to kill the most people. (I hate that I had to type that sentence. I hate that there were--and still are-- people whose horrible actions gave me a reason to type it.) The Nazis tested a number of variables in the gas chambers at Dachau--how much poison? Should it be pumped in as gas or sprinkled on the floor in another form to be converted into gas by raising the temperature once the prisoners were in the room? How could they most effectively poison loads of people from as safe a distance as possible? Those are the questions the Nazis encountered.

This is the reality that their victims met: The gas chamber at Dachau was made to look like a shower. The men were told they would get a hot shower. They were led into a room with towels hanging on the walls and told to undress. They were then sent into the chamber, which was fitted with shower heads to really sell the illusion. If they asked why it was so hot, they were told that it was the hot water coming up through the pipes. The doors were closed, and the men who had entered would never leave. Their bodies were unceremoniously burned in a crematorium located in the next room, and their ashes were dumped into unmarked mass graves.

Even as a perfectly safe and healthy tourist in 2013, standing in the gas chamber was like standing in a nightmare. The room was dark and low ceilinged and gave the impression that it would crush you if you stood there long enough. It felt claustrophobic even though the doors were open and I was practically the only person in there. And I started to tear up.

I tried to imagine the pain, the suffering, the fear these people faced as they realized they were being poisoned to death. I tried to imagine the horror of being the last living person in the room, surrounded by the bodies of friends and strangers alike. But I couldn't even fathom what that might be like. I can't even fathom how a situation like that could be possible in the first place.

It sounds a little overdramatic, I think, but if there's anything you're allowed to be ashamed and horrified and appalled and depressed and overdramatic about, it's the Holocaust. And this is really difficult for most people. Our guide, who's been leading Dachau tours for four years, sent us into the building by ourselves while he waited outside. "I've only been in that room once," he said, "and I have no desire to ever go back." I heard stories of other tour guides who stopped leading Dachau tours after a year or so because they could not deal with the pain and horror of visiting the camp three or four times a week.

But, as our guide pointed out, it's important and even impressive that Germany has made these sites so accessible. The site is 100% open to the public: no admission fees, no tickets, no line to get in. Schoolchildren from Munich visit about once each year. Members of the German military also visit frequently as part of their duties. Germany is committed to making sure atrocities like the ones at Dachau never happen again. As our guide pointed out, how many countries would put the darkest parts of their history on display like this? The United States, for instance, is no stranger to racism and genocide, but we do not acknowledge these darker parts of history in the same way that Germany has acknowledged the tragedies in its past. We try to whitewash American history by ending with a "happily ever after" sort of conclusion about how all men are created equal and therefore we must all be equals--hooray, America! But this is our ideal, not our reality, and somewhere deep down, we all know it.

I'm not trying to pick on America or hold Germany up as a model of the perfect country, because there is no "perfect country," just as there is no perfect society or perfect race. World history, not just American history or western history, is fraught with hatred, murder, prejudice, and injustice. It's just something I feel like I think a bit differently about now, and that's what I'm trying to convey.

But it's discouraging, to say the least, to live in a world where hatred still exists. On a large scale, it's evident in the fact that Hitler's genocide was only the third largest in the twentieth century. Only. The third largest. In the twentieth century. That there were two other instances of mass extermination of human life is horrible enough in and of itself. (In reality, there were a lot more than just two.) That these two managed to knock HITLER and the HOLOCAUST into second and then third place is even more disheartening and tragic.

On a smaller scale, hatred is still evident in this memorial at Dachau. It's modeled after the badges that prisoners were forced to wear to indicate their "crime." For instance, just as Jewish people had to wear yellow Stars of David, gay men wore pink triangles, criminals wore green triangles, and gypsies wore black or brown. The monument pictured below is a memorial to the victims and survivors of Dachau, but you'll notice that some colors are missing.

The colored glass was smashed by other camp survivors, who didn't feel that some of the groups represented deserved to be memorialized alongside the "real" innocent victims of Dachau. The memorial has never officially been fixed. I say "officially" because our guide told us about a former Dachau guide, a friend of his. The night after this guy stopped being a guide, he broke into Dachau and replaced the empty triangles with high-quality plastic pieces that looked just like the original glass. When he came back in the morning to check out his handiwork, the new tiles had already been removed.

To leave things on a slightly less depressing note (although I feel like a post about Dachau is allowed--nay, expected--to be a downer), in the years since the war, a convent has been built adjacent to the camp grounds. The sisters wanted the entrance gate to the convent to be through one of the old guard towers at the far end of the camp, near the various religious monuments, but the Powers That Be (the earthly ones, I mean) kept saying no. "The problem was solved," our guide told us, "by a sixty-two-year-old nun with a sledgehammer"--thus confirming my belief in the inherent badassery of nuns everywhere. The power of Christ compels you, indeed.

No legal action was taken against the nun; a group of Roma people (gypsies) backed her up and lent their support to the convent's unorthodox building plans. And the gate to the convent remains there (after a bit of touching up...sledgehammer holes aren't that pretty) to this day, a symbol that Dachau is no longer an enclosed prison, but an open memorial site.

So I guess the takeaway from this post is that some people are unimaginably horrible, some people have the most inspiring and incredible strength of character, and some people are kick-ass nuns who get shit DONE.

"Honor the dead by warning the living."