#the fact its snowing in my uni town but I am far away

[godreallyisawoman]

04/01/25

you are swimming through the walls of the chapel. I am cracking my knuckles in the quiet house. bubbles in the stained glass, you are breathing in the water. I am twisting my hair round my fingers. I am sitting in the dark. you are gasping and twitching on the floor of the last pew. it starts snowing when I hold my breath. the alter is a glass tank full of salt water. I am crawling up the stairs on bloody knees. there is only so much prayer. there is only so much song.

[misguidedleopard]

Dear all,

Hello to everyone from France, and a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Bloody Holidays to all you slackers! I hope you enjoy your holidays, your sunshine and your beach. I will enjoy my non-holidays, my dismal grey sky and rain and zero degrees and my non-beach. Have I mentioned that it’s cold?! Well, here’s the next chapter of the France saga, it’s a longun, I’ve been having fun, very sorry.

Possibly the worst photo of me in the history of all photos of me. But I still wear my Noel a Strasbourg christmas hat every year :)

So anyways, I don’t even know where to start to tell you all about my Christmas, Strasbourg and what my New Year’s Eve will be! It’s been such a fantastic week, I can’t imagine going back to school on January 2nd! That’s not even enough time to recover from New Year’s Eve!

Well, I guess let’s start with Strasbourg :) Last Tuesday I got up nice and early at 6 am to get to the train station, to change the tickets because the ticket man had gotten them wrong, to get on the train at 8 am. Two hours to Paris (Gare d’Austerlitz), change train stations via the metro (I love the Parisian metro!) to Gare de l’Est (the Eastern Train Station). Jump on the train very quickly and try and find our seats. I assured my companion that they were in car number 111, but no: “That’s first class it can’t be there!” So after two or three tours of the entire train looking for our American friend who was already on the train I began to think perhaps we were on the WRONG train, which wouldn’t really be a problem until the ticket collector came (never mind that we could be heading to a completely different destination…) (See how blasé I was by this point! I think this was truly the time I really started to settle into France. There’s a point when you tip over from translating your thoughts from English to French, to just thinking in French in the first place. It took a few months, but I was definitely thinking in French by Christmas. The next turning point is dreaming in French. By then, you’re practically a native. It’s a remarkable experience!).  Eventually we found our American companion in car 111, and voila, we were at least on the right train! (Tip 11: Your seat on the train becomes fair game if you don’t take it. Seating on a train is kind of like seating in a cinema – if you don’t get into your seat quickly enough, someone else will take it because somebody else has already taken their seats too. And so it goes.). We arrived in Strasbourg at about 3pm, and walked directly to the hostel to drop off our heavy bags. When we saw the hostel we were amazed. I knew that it would be 20.50 euros a night and thought that the place might be a bit of a dump because for that price that’s about what you normally get – and a lot of hostels aren’t exactly comfortable. But the place was spotless, new, with brilliant facilities – a bar, a restaurant, downstairs there was a baggage room and tv room, there was an elevator (essential since we were on the third floor and we all had luggage) and our room was bright, open, spacious and clean! Needless to say we were incredibly impressed. The price of the room also included breakfast – which we were only up early enough for one morning!

So we had just left the hostel to see the sights when we got a call from another American assistant from Paris. He is a friend of a Mexican assistant in Châteauroux with us. She has gone to Spain and Morocco for the holidays, but her friends were going to be in Strasbourg at about the same time we were, so she had told them to look us up. So we arranged for them to find a café while we looked around the Christmas market (Kristkindelmarik), just a wander through them really to see what it was about. When we got directions to the café it was already about 6 o’clock. So we gets to the café and there’s not one, but four young gentlemen waiting for us – three Americans and a Mexican.

One of the many stalls at one of the many Christmas Markets in Strasbourg

So, Strasbourg was a blast: the party scene was cool and the company was just superb – we couldn’t have asked to meet anyone better! After meeting the boys on Monday at the café, we bought some alcohol and snacks, found their car after a long walk in the opposite direction, crammed all seven of us into the very small 1989 volkswagon, and found the hostel on the other side of town without getting pulled over by the police. So then we took all four guys up to our room, brought out the snacks and alcohol and got down to the business of just sitting around chatting, drinking and eating until midnight when the wine and whisky had run out. At that stage we decided that it was imperative to go out to a bar or buy some more alcohol – OR, a much more enticing option: go to GERMANY. That, though, would require the car and since we had all been drinking, we decided that seven in the car was not a very good idea for crossing the border. You can just imagine the German police pulling over this pissy little volkswagon loaded to the teeth with drunken, foreign 20 somethings! Well… one thing led to another, and five of us ended up loading into the car and skipping across the border!!! I’VE BEEN TO GERMANY!!! We crossed the bridge and went to the first bar we saw – a pokey little one-roomer with the bar itself and about five tables, which was practically empty except for us. We had such an amazing time, the boys were those ‘matey, blokey, funny’ type of guys, with TERRIBLE French accents insistent on speaking drunken French (in Germany). Crawled into bed at 2am.

I should point out that the boys were staying in a dorm room for one person – it was the ‘uni hall’ type room of a friend who had vacated it for the holidays, so one boy had the bed each night while the others had a piece of cold, hard concrete floor each night. So… one of the guys may have stayed over in our room… and the staff said nothing.

Wednesday night the boys got back into Strasbourg late, nearly midnight. They had gone to a roman bath in Germany and were supposed to spend the night at a friend’s but it had snowed the night before, the roads were iced over, they were in the mountains – you can guess what happened: they hit a patch of ice and ended up in the wall. Luckily there were no injuries. By then they had already taken several wrong turns anyway, and they decided to call it a day and come back to Strasbourg to spend the night with ‘les filles’, after stopping to buy alcohol in Germany because nothing’s open in France. At 2am several of us ducked out once again to find a bar in the freezing night on the other side of town – walking of course. We eventually found a nice bar, with a cute barman (2 cute barmen in fact). Michel was my favourite. Samuel liked the American among us. Anyways, we left when they closed at 4 am, with the promise of coming back Thursday night, which we did. That night, two of the gentlemen stayed over, and once again the staff said nothing. We love that hostel and those staff!

I did see things in Strasbourg, I promise! Here’s the vieux Strasbourg with the quaint timber-clad houses backing straight onto the canals.

Thursday night was supposed to be an early night, since we had to leave the room by 9 am the next morning. The boys had left early on Thursday morning after two hours sleep, so us girls returned to our bar and had a bit of a more quiet night (3.30am that is). We had to be up at 7.30am to leave the room and have breakfast! Needless to say we were exhausted Friday when we had to wait for the train with our bags!

The intrepid travellers who made my trip to Strasbourg so memorable :) Love them to bits :)

So, moving on from our party life… The huge ttraction for us in Strasbourg was the huge Christmas market. We quickly found out that it’s not so much one huge market, but like five or six little markets in little places, or squares as we Aussies would say. The Christmas markets are made up of little villages of wooden ‘houses’, all selling from their open fronts little figures of Père Noël (Father Christmas), nativity scenes, animals, the usual trinkets, candles, toys, Christmas hats (bonnets de noel), waffles, crepes, chichis and the Strasbourgian favourite: spiced hot wine (vin chaud). This was my first taste of heated spiced wine and it basically lived up to its name – it’s hot, it’s wine and it’s spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and other Christmasy stuff like that. It takes your breathe away even before you drink it. It’s got a super-sweet smell, and it really warms you up on a freezing cold day. It wasn’t disgusting, not at all, but just far too rich and sweet for me.

  The little village underneath the biggest sapin de Noel (Christmas Tree) you could ever imagine. 

I absolutely loved the Christmas markets, tinsel and decorations and hanging ornaments and Father Christmases everywhere, every sort of Christmas tree decoration and every set of lights you can imagine – so many beautiful, sparkling sights to see.

  And outside of the markets themselves, an enormous Christmas tree that blots out the sky, and each restaurant, shop, house, museum, and other sort of building that exists is brilliantly decorated, giving the entire city a glittering festive look even though it’s one degree in the middle of the day! The enormous cathedral towers over the city, an enormous grey gothic mass of towers and statues – you have to look straight up from the base of it and you still can’t fit all of it in the photo!

The gros sapin de noel at night

Le cathédrale énorme

The front of the cathedral, with the Christmas Market at its base

We took a tour of the Kronenbourg brewery while we were there – it’s amazing what you can learn about beer from something like that! Did you know there are three types of beer – white, amber and brown. And they come from different types of wheat or mead or even corn! And did you know that Kronenbourg is now owned by a Scottish company which also owns Foster’s which would be why I can find Foster’s over here, but not decent Australian beer. We got two free drinks as well, which was really cool.

We also took a boat tour of the river for an hour. It was picturesque and extremely interesting. It seems that Strasbourg is the capital of the world. La Marseillaise, the national anthem of France, was written by a soldier in Strasbourg; the Gutenberg Press was invented in Strasbourg; the European Union Constitution was written, signed and ratified, or whatever, in Strasbourg; the headquarters of the European Commission are located in Strasbourg… If I could live anywhere in France, Strasbourg would be the city to choose, for sure.

Donc, restez assuré que je me suis bien amusée à Strasbourg, et que j’adore cette ville! Je voudrais bien y retourner un jour, et si je pouvais faire une année en plus comme assistante de langue, je choisirais fortement Strasbourg comme ville, c’est une ville merveilleuse ! Pour finir, sachez que je suis absolument fou de Strasbourg et aussi de France, je m’amuse bien ici et je pouvais rester ici pendant longtemps, tres contentement.

  For Christmas itself, rest assured that I wasn’t alone. I invited the remaining two assistants in Châteauroux (my South African bestie, and the same young Mexican lady I toured Strasbourg with) chez moi for Christmas dinner, on Christmas Eve. In France Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve. It was a fantastic multi-cultural affair. I made my family’s famous potato bake as well as coq au vin (a traditional Alsacian dish of chicken breasts in a mushroom and white wine sauce). The Mexican assistant made spaghetti with a light tomato and basil dressing. The South African looked after the fruit salad and ice cream. That girl knows how to choose ice cream! We ate and drank and danced around and looked at some photos and started watching a movie but were so exhausted that we all fell asleep just after it started! Christmas Day was a day of much the same as Christmas Eve with the South African, relaxing, eating, drinking, dancing, watching movies, and not at all lonely or sad.

Anyways, since I don’t know what I’m doing for New Year’s Eve and I have to prepare classes for next term and all of that boring stuff – the work that gets in the way of life – I should keep going and let you all keep going on your holidays.

So here is the end of this heavy tome, cheers to all and enjoy your holidays and your summer and your sunshine.

My footprints in the snow

A lovely light white blanket greeted me the next morning

PS: I’m adding this note onto this letter on Wednesday 28th because I have some incredibly, fantastical, superbly, marvellously, magnificently, fabulously, trop cool news for you! IT’S SNOWING!!! I’ve already been outside, taken photo after photo after photo, made snowballs, but there’s no one to have a snowball fight with! It’s so beautiful, it’s really light, it’s like powdered ice, tiny little square flakes of thin, frosty ice, it’s so beautiful! I love snow! It’s all white and fun and it’s really really cool! TROP COOL!

Love to all, cheers,

Karen.

Letters from France: Chapter 11 (Christmas in Strasbourg) Dear all, Hello to everyone from France, and a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Bloody Holidays to all you slackers!