So I have arrived at the chateau, settled in and put in a few days worth of work. Let's be clear on this, this is not a vacation, I am working. It's a nice little deal, the volunteers, of which there are six of us at the moment all work about 5 hours a day, Monday through Friday. In exchange we get a place to stay and three meals a day. On the weekends there are French and business lessons taught here.
On the grounds there is the chateau, a moat, a well, a pool, a garden, two pigs, three cats (and a bunch of less than week old kittens, fun :), greenhouse, barn, chicken coop, 3 chickens (soon to be many more, Chris and Rachel are picking them up as this is being written)
The typical weekday goes like this.
8:00am-9:00am
Wake up and grab a quick breakfast, and get ready for the day.
9:00am-Noon
Work. The work consists of whatever needs to be done. So far I have weedwacked a whole overgrown area, filled in an useless ditch, and cleared out a room filled with about four tons worth of stones, then got rid of a 4 inch layer of dirt on the floor. Lots of heavy lifting, which is quite different than being a server or bartender where the heaviest lifting done might be a rack of glasses. Needless to say after the past few days, I am sore as hell, but that only means I am getting stronger.
Noon-1pm
Lunch! All work stops and we eat a prepared meal. I'm learning not to be a picky eater here, usually I don't eat ham or pork, but after all that work I don't care. I still won't touch mayonnaise though, seriously that stuff is revolting. How does everyone love it? I guess it's one of those mysteries of life that will never be solved, like the JFK assassination or Bigfoot.
1pm - 3pm
Continue work. Work at this time is a little tougher, after the hour long siesta, but it always seems to go by quickly. Two hours is nothing.
3pm-Rest of the day.
Relax. Take a shower. Read. Nap. Write. Internet. Explore. Whatever tickles your fancy, this is the time we relax and hangout and enjoy the French countryside. The rest of the day after work is for nothing.
We only work five hours a day, it goes by rather quickly (unless you are moving 12 different 500 pound stones. That just draaaaags on).
I am scheduled to be out here a month, I don't know exactly how long, could be longer. I'll know in a few weeks. I mean I am working hard, but it is on a freaking castle in the middle of the middle of nowhere France. Much better than a 9-5 in my opinion.
This is just a quick overview of the basics here. It's lots of fun so far, even though the work is tough. Everyone is really nice and laid back, after all, we are living and working in rural France, the pace of life here is a tad bit slower than in the rest of the world. :)
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
"I got blisters on me fingers"
Today is Sunday, the day of rest. The past two days have destroyed my yet to be travel hardened feet. Poor guys. Blisters. Painful. So today I will be putting my feet up and writing.
My usual goal of getting lost in the city was not accomplished yesterday. I woke up in a slightly self-destructive mood and decided to head to the most touristy area in the city. Some might say the world. The Eiffel Tower.
I don't understand the point of taking photos of these things sometimes. A photo of you in front of the tower (or any really famous touristy site), okay, understandable, I was there and I want to prove it so I can show my friends and family and they will all be jealous. I get that, I guess. It is what you are 'supposed' to do when you visit a place like Paris, the guide book said so. But trying to take scenic photos of something like the Eiffel tower is incomprehensible to me. What photo are you going to get that hasn't been taken 1,000,000 times before ( in the past year alone) and many probably with better equipment, angles, photographic technique and is already available in thousands of books, magazines and on the internet around the world? Maybe you are a budding photographer and are practicing technique? I have never been a big fan of of taking photos though. Not really my thing. If someone could explain this to me I would be forever grateful.
Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should travel and see the sites such as the Eiffel Tower at least once in their life, and when visiting places we are all tourists, but for me, going where everyone else goes just doesn't get my juices flowing.
I guess for me traveling isn't about going around and seeing the sites and taking redundant photos. So sometimes for fun, I turn my camera away from the site itself and onto the people visiting the site themselves. But, again, that's just me.
Anyway it wasn't long till my tourist allergy kicked in and I had to get out of there before and I headed on the metro to the other side of the city. To a cemetery, so I could pay my respects to an American poet.
Ah, Jim, good to see you again. I paid my respects, made the required sacrifices (goat, frog and a human liver) and moved on. While this site does bring a lot of visitors to it, there were only 20 people visiting the grave site when I was there. Much more sanity than the 20 billion (give or take a few) at the Eiffel Tower, so my allergy wasn't too bad.
That night Marco ended up taking me and four french Canadians out to a bar. The bar was okay, it was in a... let's say open minded district of Paris. We didn't stay there too long and at about 230 we hopped in the car and Marco gave us a night tour of Paris. The highlight of which must have been the catfight we saw happening on the Pont de Neuf. Hair pulling and everything good about girl fights. Of course all the guys were standing around looking confused because unlike fights between guys, you do NOT get in between two girls fighting. You are likely to get killed doing that. Now unfortunately we didn't see the outcome, we drove away when they were wrestling around on the ground in the middle of the street.
This was the third fight I've seen since I arrived three days ago. I saw one where one guy jumped another from behind and they fell down a large flight of stairs in front of the Sacre-cour. The guy who did the jumping then started throwing the skull of the other guy on the cement over and over until he was pulled off. They went their separate ways, and the guy who had his head thrown against the concrete multiple times climbed the stairs and started smoking a cigarette while looking quite dejected. I imagine he needed some Tylenol later.
Later that night, just a hundred yards away from the first fight, I saw a girl get into it with a one-legged guitar player. They were yelling and there was some pushing going on. I don't know how the one-legged man stayed on his foot, but he did. There was a group of friends and acquantinces who were being mostly vigilent about keeping them apart, but they got at each other briefly once or twice. Very interesting to watch that one even if it didn't get too far.
We then drove down the Champs Elysee's and ended up in Charles De Gaulle Etoile. CDG Etoile for those who don't know, is the large round-about around the Arc De Triumph. It has 8 roads leading into it and used to be 8 lanes. I say used to be 8 lanes because a few years ago they got rid of all the lanes, so now it is, as far as I can tell, a free for all. There is a reason that auto insurance in Europe does not cover anything that happens in this round-about. It is absolutely bonkers. Sitting on a bench and watching the madness unfold here during rush hour is a great thing to do if you are bored.
So the next time you hear from me I shall be in the countryside. I will start writing soon on how to travel in Europe cheaply, from finding cheap (or even free) accommodations and how to get from place to place cheaply, stuff like that. For now though, I am just going to hang out and prepare for my trip to the west side of the country tomorrow.
I don't understand the point of taking photos of these things sometimes. A photo of you in front of the tower (or any really famous touristy site), okay, understandable, I was there and I want to prove it so I can show my friends and family and they will all be jealous. I get that, I guess. It is what you are 'supposed' to do when you visit a place like Paris, the guide book said so. But trying to take scenic photos of something like the Eiffel tower is incomprehensible to me. What photo are you going to get that hasn't been taken 1,000,000 times before ( in the past year alone) and many probably with better equipment, angles, photographic technique and is already available in thousands of books, magazines and on the internet around the world? Maybe you are a budding photographer and are practicing technique? I have never been a big fan of of taking photos though. Not really my thing. If someone could explain this to me I would be forever grateful.
Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should travel and see the sites such as the Eiffel Tower at least once in their life, and when visiting places we are all tourists, but for me, going where everyone else goes just doesn't get my juices flowing.
I guess for me traveling isn't about going around and seeing the sites and taking redundant photos. So sometimes for fun, I turn my camera away from the site itself and onto the people visiting the site themselves. But, again, that's just me.
Anyway it wasn't long till my tourist allergy kicked in and I had to get out of there before and I headed on the metro to the other side of the city. To a cemetery, so I could pay my respects to an American poet.
 |
| The Lizard King |
Ah, Jim, good to see you again. I paid my respects, made the required sacrifices (goat, frog and a human liver) and moved on. While this site does bring a lot of visitors to it, there were only 20 people visiting the grave site when I was there. Much more sanity than the 20 billion (give or take a few) at the Eiffel Tower, so my allergy wasn't too bad.
That night Marco ended up taking me and four french Canadians out to a bar. The bar was okay, it was in a... let's say open minded district of Paris. We didn't stay there too long and at about 230 we hopped in the car and Marco gave us a night tour of Paris. The highlight of which must have been the catfight we saw happening on the Pont de Neuf. Hair pulling and everything good about girl fights. Of course all the guys were standing around looking confused because unlike fights between guys, you do NOT get in between two girls fighting. You are likely to get killed doing that. Now unfortunately we didn't see the outcome, we drove away when they were wrestling around on the ground in the middle of the street.
This was the third fight I've seen since I arrived three days ago. I saw one where one guy jumped another from behind and they fell down a large flight of stairs in front of the Sacre-cour. The guy who did the jumping then started throwing the skull of the other guy on the cement over and over until he was pulled off. They went their separate ways, and the guy who had his head thrown against the concrete multiple times climbed the stairs and started smoking a cigarette while looking quite dejected. I imagine he needed some Tylenol later.
Later that night, just a hundred yards away from the first fight, I saw a girl get into it with a one-legged guitar player. They were yelling and there was some pushing going on. I don't know how the one-legged man stayed on his foot, but he did. There was a group of friends and acquantinces who were being mostly vigilent about keeping them apart, but they got at each other briefly once or twice. Very interesting to watch that one even if it didn't get too far.
We then drove down the Champs Elysee's and ended up in Charles De Gaulle Etoile. CDG Etoile for those who don't know, is the large round-about around the Arc De Triumph. It has 8 roads leading into it and used to be 8 lanes. I say used to be 8 lanes because a few years ago they got rid of all the lanes, so now it is, as far as I can tell, a free for all. There is a reason that auto insurance in Europe does not cover anything that happens in this round-about. It is absolutely bonkers. Sitting on a bench and watching the madness unfold here during rush hour is a great thing to do if you are bored.
So the next time you hear from me I shall be in the countryside. I will start writing soon on how to travel in Europe cheaply, from finding cheap (or even free) accommodations and how to get from place to place cheaply, stuff like that. For now though, I am just going to hang out and prepare for my trip to the west side of the country tomorrow.
Friday, May 20, 2011
A poorly written first post
So due to requests I will try to blog my travels. I've never really done this blogging thing (minus a 3 day affair in the livejournal days, until I realized no one cared about what I ate that day. You can only describe pizza in so many ways) so bear with me. I really don't know exactly how I will use this blog, but I'm thinking for telling the stories of these travels and maybe sharing some travel tips. If you notice any grammar errors, I don't care (read: go f*** yourself, I mean that in the most polite way possible too ). Spelling errors on the other hand, well that means I wasn't paying attention to that little red squiggly line, therefore, if you notice any, you can bite my head off. Go for it, seriously.
This post is to quickly recap the past couple days.
The European portion of this adventure began on Wednesday when I left the home town of Detroit to head to Paris, via Chicago. While in Chicago I ate chips and salsa at a Chili's in the airp.... wait... I said I wasn't going to talk about what I had been eating... damn, two sentences in and I am already screwing this up.
Anyway, the flight to Paris was rather lacking in amenities. I guess I had been spoiled by my previous flights to the old world where we each had personal TV's in front of us. Not so on this flight, it was 'old school' style, with TV's every few rows. What is this, the stone age? Good god, I'm an American, I DEMAND to be entertained at all times!
Luckily, with the flight from Chicago being about eight hours I didn't get the fat man taking up his seat and half of mine, nor the screaming child (as experienced on my recent flight to Detroit from Denver, absolutely amazing), instead I had a (rather attractive) study abroad student from Wisconsin. She was very nice and smart (triple majoring, holy crap), but unfortunately she had a boyfriend which put slight damper on any Mile High club hopes. Who the hell goes to study Europe while in a relationship? What a travesty.
We flew overnight, landed in the morning, cloudy the whole way so no spectacular views of Paris, just clouds. Oh well from the airport I exchange the little money I have, hit up the ATM and decide that it would probably be a good time to notify my bank that I am out of the country. I'm sure they will get the point, I tried calling them but couldn't get past their automated system, so I sent I 'nice' email.
After landing I hopped on the train to a station a few stops away to be picked up by my couchsurfing host (I'll explain couch surfing in a later post, for those who want to know now: www.couchsurfing.org). It is interesting waiting for someone when you don't have a cell phone, you just say be at this place at this time, and you have to wait there without knowing for sure if they are coming. It takes a certain trust I guess. He finally showed up and brought me to his place, where I am writing this now, and will be here till Monday morning.
Marco (my host) and I hung out at his place for where we chatted and I took a nap. He found me a play to attend for very cheap (a french groupon type thing I guess). He had to go to dinner with his mother, so he drove me to Paris (I'm staying in a suburb) on the way we got stuck in traffic, unfortunately 300m in front of us there was a bad accident that made him late for his dinner :(.
The play was entirely in French so I only understood about half of it (optimistically). It was in a small (40 people) theater and unfortunately I was still tired from the flight and ended up catching myself dozing off a few times, I feel bad because I think the actors could see me falling asleep. Ooops. It was some sort of comedy, taking place in an office of a fashion business. I think. I could be way off though, like I said, my french is a tad rusty.
Today I went to Paris and just walked around, started around Notre Dame and ended up next to the Moulin Rouge, walking wherever, getting lost and trying my hardest to avoid tourists, because tourists kinda piss me off even though technically I am one. Loud and obnoxious they are, never looking where they are going. Also, my god, it is way too easy to spot Americans. Seriously, they are usually *ahem* bigger, and wearing bright yellow Pittsburgh Steelers Superbowl championship T-shirts and tennis shoes. Grrrr, I see why the French might have a problem with us sometimes.
When I got back to the apartment where I am staying Marco was making dinner for us, and the appetizer happened to be escargot. I've spent 5 months of my life in France and I have never had snails here (or anywhere for that matter). This was an opportunity I could not pass up because I have severe doubts about my ability willingness to order them in a restaurant. They were surprisingly lacking in the disgusting department as would be expected. In fact, dare I say, they were damn good. Damn, again with the food, but I think this could be an exception, don't hate.
Now I have two days left in Paris before I head out to the country side to start working on that castle. I really have no idea what to do, as I have seen everything I've wanted to see on previous trips, and doing stuff on a budget in Paris is really not an option (everything is damn expensive here) so maybe I'll just go get lost in different areas of the city. Why not? I really have nothing else to do except write mundane blog posts about my mundane days.
Anywhoo, hopefully I will keep up this blog, even if no one reads it, at least it is documentation of my travels, because I am damn horrible at taking pictures. I didn't even take one today. Maybe I'll take some if I decide to go down in the catacombs. Now it's time for some after dinner bread and cheese. Nom nom nom nom.
This post is to quickly recap the past couple days.
The European portion of this adventure began on Wednesday when I left the home town of Detroit to head to Paris, via Chicago. While in Chicago I ate chips and salsa at a Chili's in the airp.... wait... I said I wasn't going to talk about what I had been eating... damn, two sentences in and I am already screwing this up.
Anyway, the flight to Paris was rather lacking in amenities. I guess I had been spoiled by my previous flights to the old world where we each had personal TV's in front of us. Not so on this flight, it was 'old school' style, with TV's every few rows. What is this, the stone age? Good god, I'm an American, I DEMAND to be entertained at all times!
Luckily, with the flight from Chicago being about eight hours I didn't get the fat man taking up his seat and half of mine, nor the screaming child (as experienced on my recent flight to Detroit from Denver, absolutely amazing), instead I had a (rather attractive) study abroad student from Wisconsin. She was very nice and smart (triple majoring, holy crap), but unfortunately she had a boyfriend which put slight damper on any Mile High club hopes. Who the hell goes to study Europe while in a relationship? What a travesty.
We flew overnight, landed in the morning, cloudy the whole way so no spectacular views of Paris, just clouds. Oh well from the airport I exchange the little money I have, hit up the ATM and decide that it would probably be a good time to notify my bank that I am out of the country. I'm sure they will get the point, I tried calling them but couldn't get past their automated system, so I sent I 'nice' email.
After landing I hopped on the train to a station a few stops away to be picked up by my couchsurfing host (I'll explain couch surfing in a later post, for those who want to know now: www.couchsurfing.org). It is interesting waiting for someone when you don't have a cell phone, you just say be at this place at this time, and you have to wait there without knowing for sure if they are coming. It takes a certain trust I guess. He finally showed up and brought me to his place, where I am writing this now, and will be here till Monday morning.
Marco (my host) and I hung out at his place for where we chatted and I took a nap. He found me a play to attend for very cheap (a french groupon type thing I guess). He had to go to dinner with his mother, so he drove me to Paris (I'm staying in a suburb) on the way we got stuck in traffic, unfortunately 300m in front of us there was a bad accident that made him late for his dinner :(.
The play was entirely in French so I only understood about half of it (optimistically). It was in a small (40 people) theater and unfortunately I was still tired from the flight and ended up catching myself dozing off a few times, I feel bad because I think the actors could see me falling asleep. Ooops. It was some sort of comedy, taking place in an office of a fashion business. I think. I could be way off though, like I said, my french is a tad rusty.
Today I went to Paris and just walked around, started around Notre Dame and ended up next to the Moulin Rouge, walking wherever, getting lost and trying my hardest to avoid tourists, because tourists kinda piss me off even though technically I am one. Loud and obnoxious they are, never looking where they are going. Also, my god, it is way too easy to spot Americans. Seriously, they are usually *ahem* bigger, and wearing bright yellow Pittsburgh Steelers Superbowl championship T-shirts and tennis shoes. Grrrr, I see why the French might have a problem with us sometimes.
When I got back to the apartment where I am staying Marco was making dinner for us, and the appetizer happened to be escargot. I've spent 5 months of my life in France and I have never had snails here (or anywhere for that matter). This was an opportunity I could not pass up because I have severe doubts about my ability willingness to order them in a restaurant. They were surprisingly lacking in the disgusting department as would be expected. In fact, dare I say, they were damn good. Damn, again with the food, but I think this could be an exception, don't hate.
Now I have two days left in Paris before I head out to the country side to start working on that castle. I really have no idea what to do, as I have seen everything I've wanted to see on previous trips, and doing stuff on a budget in Paris is really not an option (everything is damn expensive here) so maybe I'll just go get lost in different areas of the city. Why not? I really have nothing else to do except write mundane blog posts about my mundane days.
Anywhoo, hopefully I will keep up this blog, even if no one reads it, at least it is documentation of my travels, because I am damn horrible at taking pictures. I didn't even take one today. Maybe I'll take some if I decide to go down in the catacombs. Now it's time for some after dinner bread and cheese. Nom nom nom nom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)