Netherlands!

EYE Film Institute Netherlands in Amsterdam

As my work schedule changed, I now get a 4-day weekend every two weeks (woohoo!). Since everything seems to happen at the last possible minute here, I was told about my schedule JUST with enough time to still get tickets to the Netherlands (although by that time, the tickets had become very pricey). But since Amsterdam is my favourite city, and I was staying with a friend I'd met in South Africa, I was still pretty excited. I was even packed and ready to leave early (but I didn't becaue there are always a million other things to do).

I took the usual train into Paris, took the RER (like a metro, but further undrground and heads further outside the city of Paris) to the Gare du Nord, and waited for my train to Rotterdam. By that hour, all of the decent-looking baguette sandwiches had gone, so I stepped outside and decided to try food from the Quick across the street. When I first tried Quick, I was 16, and I hated it. It was significantly worse than McDonald's. But I was hungry and people seem to like the chain, so I thought I would give it another shot.



Me and Mathilde outside the film museum



First, the salads here are a joke. You either get straight lettuce with a balsamic vinaigrette or fat on top of fat with a side of fat on lettuce. If you order a salad, you probably don't want breaded goat cheese with bacon and a cream dressing. At that point, you might as well have ordered the burger. So I did, and it was awful. I ordered a breaded chicken sandwich with fries and the barbecue sauce was terrible, the breading on the chicken was a joke, and the fries weren't salted and they actually advertised that fact. Who wants tasteless, fatty fries?



Anyway, so I got into Rotterdam on a nice train, and found out that my train to Leiden had been cancelled from a kind man on the train. My friend had warned me that there was still snow on the ground and that the train service was interrupted (as in some lines had service cut in half), so I just told her and took the next one. 





A canal in Amsterdam

 

Me in Amsterdam

  

Magna Plaza shopping centre in Amsterdam





Houseboats and canals in Amsterdam

 

 




Amsterdam

 

In Paris, I had stopped to buy some chocolate from a cute store (HEMA) in the train station to give as a hostess gift, and when I got off the train in Leiden, an open HEMA store was the first thing I saw. My friend told me that it was actually Dutch, so my brilliant "here are some chocolates from Paris" gift didn't work! :p



10 minutes later, we had already walked past a windmill and reached my friend's apartment. I conquered my fear of Dutch stairs and stairs where you can see in between the stairs all at once when we got in.




Dam Square in Amsterdam

 



The next day, we toured around Amsterdam (yikes these Dutch trains are expensive!), and took a free ferry, checked out the film museum, attempted a terrible lunch in the Chinatown area, had tea on Dam Square, had a great Tex-Mex dinner of fajitas in Leidseplein, walked through the Red light District, and looked at a billion tourist shops (that last one was all me...I can't get enough of them!). And we ate stroopwafels in between. It was a perfect day. (Except for the freezing cold nights and the Arctic-like winds as we trudged back to her apartment)








Leiden under the snow



The next day, we checked out Leiden, bought the most delicious old gouda, and took a tram through Rotterdam to get to my friend's grandfather's birthday party. What I should explain (or rather, maybe what should have been explained to me!) is that my friend's family is very religious and that they have no TV, there are 7 children in her family, 7 aunts and uncles on one side, and that the women were probably mostly going to be wearing dresses. With a family that big, the gathering was in a church. I had had a nice quiet afternoon party at someone's house in mind, and I had certainly not brought a dress. When a man (whom I later found out was my friend's father) stood up to speak after sandwiches had been passed out, my friend told me that it was the prayer, and I quickly tried to put my sandwich down, hiding the bite I'd already taken out of it. Luckily, my friend's un-religious boyfriend had to do the same. As her father spoke, I figured it was the prayer (since I don't understand a word of Dutch), but when my friend said "Now the prayer starts", I realized that it was just the intro. Everyone's heads went down, and only the table full of kids and I seemed to get tired and start looking around (at least I had the excuse that I had no clue what he was saying). ;)



 

When I first opened up my sandwich, I noticed that the meat was really red. I asked if it was cooked (no) or if it had been dried (no). It was just sliced raw red meat. As much I was turned off, I tried it, and it was... edible. I did have to make a joke that if we collected all of those sandwiches, we could make Lady Gaga's meat dress, though. It seems that the Dutch force you to choose between meat or cheese sandwiches, and that they can't coexist. Well, luckily, I found a pack of cheese slices, and slipped one into my butter and raw meat sandwich. When dipped into the Italian wedding-type soup, it was pretty good.







Cheese shop in Leiden



Anyway, then we went out in The Hague, first to an overcrowded lounge/bar. Great way to meet Dutch people, right? Wrong. It turned out to be ex-pat night. Haha. Then we ended up in a club with 80s music and people who had just become legal. So we left and went across the square to a pub which was more my scene, but some of the group wanted to go clubbing, so me and my friend left to grab Turkish pizzas on the way home. What we ended up getting was what neither of us remembered as Turkish pizza, and we missed the train and had to wait an hour in the restaurant until the next one. Though I hadn't had enough alcohol to have any impact on my body, I was dead tired and napped on my purse...on the table. (I was never going to see any of these people again, right?) At 2 am on a Saturday night, I couldn't stay awake any longer. I am clearly a party animal.



Utrecht



Sunday, we slept in and then went to Utrecht to do a walking tour. While the walking tour was of alleyways and some uninteresting sights ("This is where something uninteresting used to be and is now a normal house"), we got to see the city on-foot, which was nice. Then we saw Life of Pi at their theatre (I smuggled in a McFlurry under my arm), and as we were waiting for it to start, my friend suddenly realized "since the character is Indian and coming from India, what if there are parts which aren't in English, and the subtitles are in Dutch?". I hadn't ever thought of that. My friend was nice enough to jump up and ask the staff, who said that while they hadn't seen it, it should be fine. And it was. There was only one scene like that, and I could guess what happened. And then, in the middle of the movie, it paused and the lights turned on. My first thought was "oh crap, technical difficulties", but it turns out that they have an intermission for movies. When I was in the bathroom, they even announced that "Life of Pi" would now resume, like at a play. Anyway, it was a beautiful movie, although I didn't feel that it needed to be in 3D.



Then we went for tapas! Garlic butter shrimp, bread with dips, chicken wings (her fave!), and ribs. It was exactly what we needed before heading home for the night.



Leiden on the day I left (when it warmed up a bit)



Sadly, I had to leave on Monday morning after we went to our beloved HEMA (like IKEA, but smaller and found in the cities) for a 1 Euro breakfast (ham and egg-stuffed croissant, a bacon and egg bun, and a tea), before parting ways at the train station. I finished off Amsterdam all by myself, which was perfect, because I could stop at all of the tourist shops and shops in general without guilt. Then I embarked on my 7-hour journey home.

Next week, I'm headed to Caen with some other assistants and then apparently I have the next week off because all of the English teachers are on training the week before our holidays when I go to Spain and Portugal! I really am working to live here, not living to work :)





Stuck Between Two Worlds

Going Back:
After a wonderful holiday, it was hard to return to Europe. Especially since I didn't see the sun for the first week after I was back. I knew that it would be 7 months without family or friends from back home, which is something I still find daunting. I fear what everyone else does: missing something. What if I come back home and I'm lost? If I'm behind on my own culture? If everything changes? Even scarier, I fear what will happen when I go back is that I'll be trapped between two cultures. I won't be able to live without maple syrup or French pastries. You can try to recreate the French experience in Canada, but it won't be the same, just as homemade poutine in France isn't the same as the late-night snack back home between friends after a night of drinking. What if I have to choose to live in one place, and I always feel like I'm missing something? Now I've made a life in both places, and I'm straddling both cultures. Will it be difficult to let France go when I go back home? I mean, I can't really see myself staying in this town. Maybe another part (like Nice) would suit me better, I'm not sure. But if I lived here permanently, I would be alone. There wouldn't be a network of other assistants around my age doing the same things and running into the same problems, and I wouldn't have sweet housing like I do now. And besides, will I even return the same person I was when I left? What if everything that I thought I wanted changes?

A baguette sandwich with truffle juice, peach ice tea, and a praline-filled eclair in Rouen

Well, as much anxiety as there is with moving to a foreign country, it makes it easier when you remember that you are living your dream in Europe. I even started tutoring and remembered how much I like tutoring in English. I'm starting up a pen pal exchange between my school here in Yvetot and my old high school French teacher's class back home. I'm going to a birthday party this weekend with people from all sorts of countries. I'm headed to the Netherlands next weekend, and then Spain during the holidays next month. I'm going on a class trip to Ireland in April with some pretty interesting guys and I think we'll have a good time. I get to show my mom, sister and best friend around Europe. I was blown away by my class of guys when they went off-topic to ask me (even making an effort to speak in English) what was in sushi. Later, they asked me if I played Call of Duty ("Coll-uv-Dootie"), and wanted to tell me that one of them made videos about video games online and even had a tax form for the profits he was making (it may not seem big, but it is huge with these kids. The teacher looked at me and said "how did you do it?!" when I told her). Hell, I just bought the cutest mug and spoon rest with French cows on it today for 6 Euros because it's les soldes, where things go on actual sale for a whole month everywhere in the country. I walked past the gardens today at City Hall, and some flowers were coming up, and they had just planted others (bit of a dumb move, since most were dead from the cold weather this week, but still, our ground is frozen solid in Canada and we would never even think of doing that in January). I went to a bakery in Yvetot today to get my favourite pain au chocolat aux amandes (think chocolate-filled croissant with marzipan inside too and icing sugar and almond slices on top).

Yeah, life here is pretty good. Guess I'll just enjoy every second of it and see what comes my way.

Round #2 in France

The Champs-Elysées

 I wish I could say that my laptop is fixed, but it is STILL being repaired by Best Buy, who has now apparently sent it to Sony to fix the damage done when Best Buy sent it from the store to the repair depot. They tried charging me $300 to fix "physical damage that isn't covered under the warranty"! What a pain.

And when it rains, it pours. I was noticing that it took me a billion shots of the Manneken-Pis in Brussels to get one in focus...and it was a stationary subject in daylight on a cloudy day. Lidia and I were also having trouble getting the camera to adjust to the lighting at the Christmas market when we took photos of each other in front of the market. So I asked my camera-genius friend Maegan to clean the lens, since I noticed some dust and hoped like Hell that was the problem. Fortunately, I wasn't crazy, and she also found a problem. Unfortunately, she said it would be costly to fix. I took it to a repair shop, and it cost a lot to fix it (they said there was cake in the lens (that'll teach me for taking pictures of food!), and a problem inside. To open up the camera and fix that would cost $140, but if that wasn't the problem, it would cost $320 to replace half the camera, and I might as well buy a new one. Oh, and he said the damage might be caused by me dropping it. I said I hadn't dropped it and he pointed to the scrape on one of the corners (oops - can't fight that evidence), and I said "oh, well that was over a year ago!" and he said that sometimes it take years for a drop to have an effect. DAMMIT. Luckily, I got the camera back on the day I was leaving for France, thinking it was all better. But it wasn't.



Tartiflette Stand at the Christmas market on the Champs-Elysées

So when I went to make a calendar from my photos this year like I did last year, I realized how I didn't have 12 photos that I loved and needed to look at for a month each. And I did try my camera again in Rouen last weekend, but it was going about it all wrong. Long story short, I am trying to get my Mom to buy a camera I want and ship it to me before I go to the Netherlands next weekend. :s

Without both a proper laptop and a camera, it has been tough for blogging, but here goes!

Let's start with Paris!
I met up with a friend of a friend from Canada and we checked out the Christmas markets on the Champs Élysées and at La Défense (even found a Beavertails stand!). It was sunny, but FREEZING. The tartiflette sure helped. So did going inside a mall to warm up and buy mitts!

Nougat chalet at the Christmas market on the Champs-Elysées

(Unintentionally caught) soldiers with guns at the Christmas market

The Obelisque at the end of the Champs-Elysées

Christmas market at La Défense

Me at the Christmas market at La Défense

Christmas market at La Défense

Eiffel Tower

Next: Strasbourg!


Accidentally stumbled upon the Christmas markets!



Paris was on Wednesday, and I knew I should have used the day to recover from Brussels and catch up on sleep. Basically, I was overdoing it and I was well-aware. But when else would I get the chance to see Paris at Christmas? So I went. But I paid for it. Thursday, I woke up SUPER sick, and it took everything inside me (and an Advil) to go to the Christmas lunch and pretend to be okay for an hour. Then I got a ride with a teacher to Rouen to buy a "solitaire" (an adorable teapot for one) for a Christmas gift, and this was my 3rd time at the store to pick it up (the other times I went, it had closed 4 minutes ago, or was closed on a Monday before Christmas when everything else was open). I went to go and pay for it and realized that I hadn't put my money and everything back in my purse from my trip to Brussels. I was stuck in Rouen without a way to pay for the gift or for the train back to Yvetot. I tried calling Lidia, who didn't answer. Suddenly, it hit me: I could go to the bank and ask if I could take out money without a card ("You don't have a passport for ID?" shocking...a resident who forgot their wallet doesn't have their passport on them at all times). Eventually, it all worked out, and I had just enough money to buy everything I needed to and get home. I just had to wait two hours while freezing cold (train station doesn't bother with heating) and popping Fisherman's Friends and Advils until it was no longer the peak period and the train prices went down.

The cathedral in Strasbourg and the Christmas market in front of it

Christmas market in front of the cathedral

I am so incredibly sick at this point. I put on lip gloss to appear slightly less dead

The Christmas market where the majority of the food vendors were

Flammkueche (don't ask me how to pronounce that) with goat's cheese

At the chocolate museum in Strasbourg

Still incredibly sick in Strasbourg

The streets all decorated

The market chalets

The sun came out for a brief moment! You can see that all of the rain has caused the canal to overflow

Strasbourg

The streets were filled with Christmas decorations



Petit France market in Strasbourg



So Friday morning at 6:00 am, I wake up to catch my train to Strasbourg, and I am beyond sick. I looked up what would happen if I cancelled my ticket, and I would lose part of my money, and I would have to call a number at 34 centimes/minute or go to the station. I figured that if I was walking to the station anyway, I might as well get on that train, and power through it.

I couchsurfed by myself for the first time, and my host was a really nice Swiss German girl (who also spoke French) who wasn't a germophobe like myself, and even had extra packages of Kleenex for me. I stopped at every Christmas market stand selling bredele (spiced bread goodies), and tried it, even though I could barely taste all weekend, and tried the foie gras samples everyday, but found them tasteless or awful (near the end when my nose cleared up slightly). The first evening while I explored the markets, I had to stop at McDonald's for a tea and painkiller since my Advil had run out and I definitely had a temperature. I even had to stop at the tourist office to take a seat for a bit. When the Advil kicked in, I charged forward, had a nice Strasbourgeois dinner with my hostess, and we went to bed early (in separate beds).



Escargot products for sale! :s



Petit France



The next day, we checked out a super lame and hard-to-reach chocolate museum, and I tried to do the river cruise, but it was almost all booked for the day and they told me to come back the next day for tickets. The next day, the water levels had risen with the rain, and all trips were cancelled. So I enjoyed the markets, tried white mulled wine (I thought it was ok, despite my lack of taste), and met two other German girls also lodging with my hostess for the night. On Sunday, I went out with a friend of my hostess, who showed me to a wonderful little place with tartine and tea, and we tried escargot quiche. It was okay until I got a chunk of snail and I quit! Then we checked out Petit France, the foie gras market one last time (I wanted to see if her functional taste buds could tell me which one was best), and then I went running to the train station. Though I was late, I stopped for one last crepe with Nutella, picked up my luggage in the lockers, and hopped on the train.



Trying escargot quiche...



When I got onto my train car, I realized that I had actually bought a first-class ticket. What a pleasant surprise! The seat reclined, and there was a TV screen to tell us how fast we were going (made it up to 330 km/h). Almost the perfect end to the day...Until my train from Paris to Yvetot stopped abruptly as we were leaving the station with the announcement: "We remind everyone that the doors are not to be opened unless we are at a platform. Thank you". Then we journeyed to out first stop (oops, took the 9:00 pm one which is the milk run train), and there was a second announcement: "The train in front of us hit a deer. We'll be staying here for a bit." Finally we got word that they were planning a detour, and I made it home only a half hour later than normal. All in all, it took me about the same amount of time (if not longer) to go from Paris to Yvetot than it did to go from

Strasbourg to Paris. If you look at a map, you realize how crazy that is!

Flying Home:


A fellow Canadian assistant had mentioned that her friend was also flying to Canada on the 20th, so I got in touch with her, and we decided to meet at the train station, have dinner, and then head out to the airport for an almost sleepless night. We were supposed to form a group with Lidia and her friend also doing the same, but Lidia was at a different terminal. Our bus driver to the airport from Paris recommended that we stay in my terminal, so we did, and there were no creepy homeless people, and it was quiet. :) Eventually, we each got an hour and a half of uncomfortable upright sleep, where it was cold enough that I had to put my mitts on. In the early morning, we said our goodbyes as she took the shuttle to her terminal.



Another scene in Petit France



After getting through security and everything, I waited for our flight to board. It seemed that Air Transat was missing an employee. I think that someone was late, but our flight was behind because the door to the luggage or passengers was frozen shut from the flight in from Montreal earlier that morning. At this point, I was beyond dead, and I had no energy budgeted for being squished in the bus with the doors closed whilst looking at the plane with sad eyes and a heavy backpack weighing me down (yes, the airport is archaic and you get on your bus at the boarding gate and it brings you to your plane). It turned out that the flight wasn't as long as the ticket said, so we landed even a few minutes before the time on the ticket anyway.



The towers in Petit France



Finally, I reunited with Mom and Amanda, and all was well and good. It was a beautiful 0 degrees in Ottawa, and there was a storm beginning a few hours later, so my timing was perfect. Thank goodness I'd left a day earlier than originally planned. The next day, we broke a record and received 35 cm of snow in a day. And it went down to -16 to -20-ish for the rest of the time I was there, and the snow didn't stop. At least there was sun, though! I really missed the sun when I was in Yvetot.  The cold front had followed me from Europe, and meanwhile in France, they sprang miraculously from 0 degrees to +12 over the Christmas holidays. My second last day in Canada, it was -20 and with windchill it felt like -30. I went back to 9 degrees in France and I felt so hot in the Paris train station that I couldn't believe it. There is no heating there and the place is practically outdoors. As soon as I got to France, the temperature dropped again, oddly enough. Haha.

Christmas Markets!

Two weekends ago, Lidia and I met up with Benni at the Christmas market in Rouen. It was my first Christmas market, and I didn't really know what to expect, but by the way one of the teachers talked about it, I guess it had been built up in my mind. When we saw the market, it was charming, but then we went to go look for the rest of it, and found out that it is actually surprisingly small! Stalls were selling hot wine for 2-3 Euros per cup (yes, you can walk around in public areas with open alcohol here!), nougat, chocolate-covered marshmallows, "Canadian" fleece garments, pretzels, tartiflette (basically a fattier (i.e. delicious) version of scalloped potatoes with cheese, crème fraîche, bacon bits, etc. all cooked in one giant wok), jewelry, sausages and toys. Not bad! I found some AMAZING hazelnut truffles.

La gang

What's interesting is that these markets seem to have what can only be called fair food... the stuff you would find at the Ottawa Ex or a fair, but with a French twist. There's cotton candy and candy apples, and then you veer off with churros and funny candies and sweets. It's interesting since they also install a merry-go-round (and a ferris wheel in Brussels), but that's about it.

There also seems to be the token Canadian stand at the markets! In both Rouen and Brussels, there were Canadian stands selling maple syrup, maple candies, mapo spread, dried cranberries (cranberries are just starting to be known here under the French word "cranberries"), bison sausage, Canadian beer, some backwoods Quebec drink with whisky in it, etc. The vendors are, of course, French Canadian. According the the vendor in Brussels, there is one man who coordinates the Canadian stalls at a bunch of markets, so they pretty much both had the same products. Since gravy is nearly impossible to explain to someone who doesn't understand what it is or how it tastes, I bought a packet (St-Hubert brand!) and I'll make Christmas dinner with Lidia and Benni before we go.

Chateau de Versailles

The day after the Christmas market, a teacher took us to see Versailles and although we had a few hours, it all seemed rushed (there is so much to see!) and it was freezing cold in the gardens! We did end up going on the free day of the month and snagging places in the tour of the private apartments, which was neat.

The hall of mirrors in Versailles

Gardens behind Versailles

Our first true Belgian food! :)

Last weekend, Lidia and I tried our luck at Covoiturage (rideshare) and Couchsurfing with strangers for the two nights. I learned several things, like how small the back seat of a Citroen C3 can be, and that while I'm used to a quick pit stop to use the bathroom and grab some food to go, some people prefer to bring mousse de canard and spend an hour spreading it onto bread and eating at a leisurely pace. Lidia and I got into Brussels an hour later than we were supposed to, and we were given bad directions, so we ended up taking a taxi when our tram ended up at the train station....the exact opposite direction from where we were headed! We finally met our hosts, who were quite kind, and we got mattresses on the living room floor. The only problem was that the house was freezing cold and I woke up in the middle of the night and had to put on my winter jacket to get back to sleep! Oddly enough, the public transportation doesn't seem to have heating either. I found the house the next night to be extremely cold as well, and our covoiturage driver told us that they don't have much insulation there.

Grand Place

The next day, Lidia and I started our day off with fries and chocolate-covered waffles and walked around Grand Place. It's beautiful as ever. I wasn't sure where the famed Christmas tree was, but then realized that they went modern this year (see photo). We checked out the markets (crowded, but wonderful), and then went to Planète Chocolat for a demonstration and a small tasting. We actually learned a lot about where chocolate comes from! Finally, we finished our day with a delicious raclette dinner with our host's friends.We discussed Saint Nicolas and how he visits with Père Fouetteur or Krampus, who whips/beats the naughty children. :s It's so dark, but interesting to learn about other cultures. 

Grand Place

Grand Place

The crèche/ Nativity scene with real sheep

Sunday we finished up at the markets and chocolate shops, found Manneken-Pis and Jeanneken-Pis, and even stopped at Delirium for beer (in Lidia's case) or something similar to absinthe (they don't sell it before 8pm) for me! A quick drink of 55% alcohol that went down smoothly was the perfect appetizer before lunch! Finally, we went and saw the European Commission in a hurry before meeting our ride home. A wonderful weekend where we learned the true value of heating. I may or may not have worn a tank top, t-shirt, 4 sweaters, 2 pairs of pants and my winter jacket out on Sunday!! 

Me in Grand Place

Food section at the Brussels Christmas market (at la Bourse)

Christmas market in Brussels

Our chocolate demonstration

The Christmas tree in Grand Place

The famous Manneken-Pis

Me and Lidia in front of the Manneken-Pis

Me in Delirium

A dangerously smooth drink similar to Absinthe

Christmas market in Brussels

Christmas market in Brussels

Tomorrow I'm thinking about going to Paris for the Christmas markets there and then this weekend I'm headed to Strasbourg (by train) and doing Couchsurfing again :).

I haven't been updating the blog as my computer's hard drive is a goner, and I've had to send it back to Canada (thank God it's under warranty), so I have to wait until one of my roommates' computers are free to even prepare for my classes. Should be back to normal in 2013!
Just a week left before I start on my way home for Christmas! Lidia and I have flights Thursday morning, so we're spending the night before in the airport. Should be an adventure! :)

Canadian Stand in Brussels