Saying au revoir à la France—recap of my last 5 weeks

Now that I’m home safe in AMERICA, I’ll try and summarize my last five weeks in France.

1 Weekend in the countryside

November 26^th-28^th—I spent the weekend at my French friend Elise’s parents' house.  They live in the countryside by Belleville-sur-Vie, also in the Loire Valley.  The weekend was full of good food and wine, including raclette (which I will explain later) and chocolate mousse (that I am still drooling over).  Their house was very cozy and the fireplace was burning the whole weekend.  Saturday we went to the beach at Les Sables about 30 minutes away, an aquarium, and then a dinner party at her cousin’s house Saturday night.  A very comfy-cozy weekend!

Playing on the beach!

Dinner party at Elise's cousin's house

2 Weekends in Paris with my “brothers”

Weekend 1 (December 3^rd-6^th)—This weekend started with a last minute decision Friday evening to follow Wenonah to Paris and stay with our French host brothers at their cousin’s apartment.  Friday night, Pierre Etienne had a jazz concert in a bar/restaurant and Saturday we made brunch, lounged around the apartment, walked around doing some Christmas shopping, and then went to a raclette party at some of their friends' apartments.  I was livin' the real Parisian life—running around the city, hopping railings to take the metro, playing music on the metro trains, and being with my French brothers, who are also my friends :)  Wenonah and I also visited the Museum of Natural History Sunday morning and did a bit of exploring on our own before heading back to Angers in the evening.

PE's band! Swanky.

François (host brother/friend), Wenonah, and me--PE's concert

Whole family!  (PE, Wenonah, François, me)

jamming on the metro

Me and my T-REX buddy at the Natural History Museum

Shakespeare and Company, a famous bookstore on the Left Bank across from Notre Dame

Weekend 2 (December 19^th-21^st)—Wenonah and I again took the train to Paris Friday afternoon (Montparnasse is only 1 ½ hours from Angers via train).  We hung out at Fabien’s apartment (the cousin) with two other girls from Croatia and Lithuania, cooked dinner, drank some wine, and waited for PE and François to arrive from Normandy driving through a blizzard.  Once everyone got there, we went to the Latin Quarter (by the Sorbonne and the Pantheon) to a party in a bar with PE’s friends from osteopathy school.  This meant an all-night dance party in the cave under the bar ending at 5:30 am, followed by a stop at a restaurant by the Seine with PE’s friends, and finishing with the first metro of Saturday morning to arrive back at Fabien’s apartment around 6:30 am.  Definitely my longest night out in France, but a true Parisian and European experience.  Saturday night was much more relaxed; we stayed at PE’s apartment enjoying some nice wines from the Jura and Bordeaux regions and foie gras.  La classe!

The Gang at Fabien's apartment (we have mustaches drawn on our fingers)

Wenonah and me in the snow

3 Events in Angers to end the semester

·      Gala:  November 20^th—I went to a gala in the Château du Plessis-Macé about 15km outside of Angers.  A group of my friends from ESA (a school of agricultural arts in Angers) had their annual gala and invited Wenonah and me.  The castle was beautiful and we spent the night drinking wine and champagne and dancing.

with friends before the event

outside the château with Wenonah

group outside the château

 

·      Marché du Noël:  In Centre Ville, there were lots of little boutiques selling Christmas gifts and hot food and drinks.  There is one of these in almost every city and it lasts all through December.

Marché de Noël

·      Château d'Angers:  The main tourist attraction in Angers—a medieval castle right in Centre Ville.  After walking around the perimeter so many times during the semester, I finally visited the château my last week and it was amazing!  Whereas the other castles I visited in the Loire Valley earlier this semester were from the Renaissance period and meant for weekend getaways for royalty and the noble class, this castle was used by multiple kings, notably Roi René d’Anjou (King and son of Louis II d’Anjou and Yolande d’Aragon; born in 1409).  This castle was also designed as a fortress and not solely for aesthetics.  And finally, the castle houses the famous Tapestry of the Apocalypse, unique to the world because of it’s size, superior construction, and subject—the Apocalypse according to St. Jean, who is present in each scene.

Château at night

View from the ramparts

Tapestry of the Apocalypse

3 New foods/drinks I tried

Foie gras—you may already know how this is made, but I’ll tell you anyway (warning—could be very disturbing!).  The ducks or geese are force-fed with funnels for about 2 weeks before they are killed, thus producing a fattened liver that is served as is!  No paté about it.  Since it is an important French delicacy, my family served it at our last dinner together and François also bought it for our last apéritif together in Paris.  I surprisingly enjoyed foie gras; it's very creamy and doesn't actually taste like liver.  Actually I don't know how to describe the taste, but it's very mild and pleasing.

Saturday night--François and me, eating foie gras in PE's apt.

Raclette—a typical dish for the wintertime, originating from Switzerland.  It is a very communal meal as everyone shares a hot dish/plate in the center to melt cheese that is then poured over a variety of meats, potatoes, and vegetables.  One of my favorite meals in france—delicious comfort food.

Calvados—an apple brandy from Normandy.  Jean shared Calvados made by his neighbors (on his farm outside of Paris).  Perhaps the strongest alcohol I have ever had… It’s served as an apéritif, a digestif (after a meal), or as le trou Normand (“the Norman hole”) in the middle of a long meal to re-awaken the appetite. 

Au revoir!

And of course, the last thing before leaving France was saying goodbye to my wonderful family of 4 months.  We had a last dinner on Sunday night and then Wenonah left early Monday and I left in the afternoon with François and PE.  I spent one more night in Paris (we went to a jazz concert) and then headed to London Tuesday!  The trip home was a bit crazy, but I’ll save that story for later.  Thank you to everyone for reading my blog and checking in on me during the semester!  I already miss France and my family beaucoup.  However, I feel extremely lucky to have had this experience and even more lucky to have great friends/family to visit there in the future.

Jean & Me :)

Madame, Jean, me

Douchka me manque.

Bisous!

My mom and dad do a petit tour de France!

The week with my mommy and daddy started when I surprised them at the Angers train station when they got in from the Paris airport.  I was so happy to see them after such a long time!  Perfect timing in the semester, as I was getting pretty homesick.  We found their hotel and then ate lunch in Centre Ville together.  That night they came to my house and ate dinner with Madame and Jean.  Wenonah’s mom was in town and came too.  It was very entertaining because my parents don’t speak French and Madame and Jean only speak a little English.  But Wenonah and I did some translating, and everyone was in high spirits.  It was really special for me that my real parents and my French parents could meet each other.  After lots of wine (“vin”—the one word my dad learned in French :) ) and delicious cooking by Madame (my mom and dad’s favorite meal in France—turkey, mushrooms, and of course bread & cheese), we ate a tiramisu that Wenonah and I made in celebration of Mina’s birthday.  Truly une soirée heureuse (a happy evening)!  The other highlight of our time in Angers was getting a glass of cointreau (an orange-flavored liquor made in Angers) at K9—my favorite bar-in-a-church where I like to go dancing with my friends.

M&D in K9

After 2 days in Angers when I was still in class, we headed south to Bordeaux and spent Friday touring vineyards with our wine guide, Frédéric.  The Bordeaux region is made of many châteaux (estates) and we visited three very different ones.  The first being Château Gaby.  Here we saw big wine barrels and of course, tasted a few wines.  I’m not going to try to describe the wines we tried…but I will say that I looove me some Bordeaux wine!  The Bordeaux red wines are made from a mixture of three types of grapes—merlot, cabernet franc, and cabernet sauvignon.  Frédéric was awesome about describing the tastes of the wines we tried; he was even throwing out flavors like mushrooms and pepper.   

vineyards at Château Gaby

wine barrels

We ate lunch at a wine bar and I had some delicious sardines.  Then we took a quick tour of Saint Emilion, a small town that is entirely listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  

Saint Emilion

vineyards--I can't get enough of the French countryside

The next château was not a château, but the house of Arnaud Daudier de Cassini, an artisan and organic wine producer who works just out of his garage.  Definitely my favorite stop because we spent at least an hour in his kitchen tasting wines as he mixed them.  Another wine maker in the region (this was just around Saint Emilion) was there helping mix the wines and celebrating his birthday.  It was a very warm environment, lots of laughing.  I got to have real French conversations for the only time during the week, which was nice because I had missed speaking it after only speaking a bit at restaurants.  Arnaud and I made jokes about how my parents couldn’t understand anything we were saying and he also made fun of me that I spoke French like a mentally handicapped person.  However I would like to assert my proficiency in French by assuring you all that it was a joke, and that he also said seriously that I spoke “vachement bien”, which translates to really/flipping/freaking well.  We mostly talked about why I liked France, what I was studying, where I had visited, etc.  Speaking in French with French people is the greatest thing about studying abroad here.  And oh là là, Arnaud’s wine was magnifique!  My parents took a bottle home to open after I finish med school in a million or so years.

Youtube video of Arnaud (sorry, it's in French): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpfzIaeVuvM

Good lookin' Koehne clan

another family photo from the day

The last château we visited was remodeled for guests to stay.  It's very nice!  I have to get married one day so that I can honeymoon there.  We enjoyed a glass of wine by the fireplace with some chocolate chip cookies.  We also saw the wine barrels and talked a little about how it was made.  This château is run by a woman and she definitely makes an effort to present her product very well.

wine + fire + cookies= :)

Besides the wine, the best thing about Bordeaux was meeting really nice people!  Everyone was genuinely welcoming to me, especially since I’m here for the semester.  Particularly Frédéric, Arnaud, and Caroline (at Château Gaby) all told me I could ask them any questions, not just about wine or Bordeaux and that I could contact them if I went back

 

After Bordeaux, we spent the rest of the weekend in Paris.  This included the Musée d’Orsay, which we had visited during our last time in Paris together back in ’06, and the Musée de l’Orangerie.   

D&M in front of the Notre Dame de Paris at night

me and my mommy, also in front of ND

Claude Monet chose the Musée de l’Orangerie to house his masterpiece “Waterlilies”.  Absolutely spectacular.  The paintings are enormous and cover an entire wall each.  There are eight divided between two rooms.  The rooms are oval-shaped and make the infinity sign ∞ from the top.  One of the things I liked best is that he placed the morning paintings on the east walls and the sunset/night ones on the west walls to reflect the cycle of the sun.  The paintings speak for themselves...

Dad admiring

Mom and me (sorry it's blurry)

Monday morning (November 15^th) I went back to Angers and my parents went back to the US.  It was so fun to travel with them and show off my French skills and knowledge of the culture, even if I got a little crabby sometimes with translating menus (sorry M & D).  It was an awesome trip together and will go down in Koehne Family history.  I can’t wait to see them again at Christmas and crack open another bottle of Bordeaux wine ;)

LOVE YOU M&D! (Paris hotel)

Recap of Weekend in Lyon

Over Halloween weekend I went to Lyon to stay with an American friend of Wenonah’s who studies there (her name is Maddie and she goes to Tulane).  I had visited Lyon when I was 16 and came to France with my parents to visit Emmy, so I was really looking forward to going back.  It rained the whole time, but here are a few highlights:

oh là là la pluie!

• Discovering we had first class seats for the train to go there 10 minutes before we left the house.
• Shopping in La Croix Rousse Saturday afternoon in the rain, visiting lots of chocolate shops :)
   

Maddie and me in a bakery/café

crazy lamp shop!

mmmmm:)

yes, a chocolatefall

• Taking the funicular to and from Vieux Lyon (the old neighborhood).  It’s a train that just goes up and down a steep hill.

Wenonah and me, dancing with some new friends off the funicular

• Dancing in a cave under a bar in Vieux Lyon Saturday night.

• After the bar, waiting in the taxi while the driver ran after some guy, yelling at him for I don’t know what reason. I think it cost us about 30 cents.

Me and Maddie in Vieux Lyon Sunday morning for a pastry

• Eating lunch in a restaurant/Tea shop in Vieux Lyon Sunday.  We shared a table in the basement/cave with a French couple and an Italian couple.  It was a little awkward, but enjoyable.  I tried a tomato jelly that was pretty interesting...and less tasty after I found out it was tomato.

• Going to the Musée des Beaux Arts with Wenonah Sunday afternoon, getting a soy chai tea latté at Starbucks after, and walking all the way back to Maddie’s in the rain with only Wenonah’s broken umbrella and my not-water-proof rain jacket.  It took us about an hour, but was actually pretty fun to do some exploring.  And it was nice to have

Wenonah and her broken umbrella in the courtyard of the Musée

My favorite painting at the museum, this is what I look like eating cheese in France

• Having at least 20 stops on our train back, which means it took about 8 hours to get back to Angers.  And the train was overbooked so there were people sitting on their luggage in the aisles and little rooms in front of the doors.

overbooked train (sorry it's blurry)

It was a really fun girls’ weekend and I always love traveling in France!  I'm obviously a little behind on the blogging, but have a few posts to come about the week my mom and dad came to visit me and just other news of Angers.

Throwback to the last time I was in Lyon with Emmy and my mommy! (me at age 16 in 2006)

Chez Les Gailly à Dinard

A few weekends ago, I visited a French friend who I met at Laketrails 2 ½ years ago! His name is Nathan and he studies in Lille, but his family lives in Dinard, Brittany. All of his family was in town for the weekend because there was a British Film Festival (http://www.festivaldufilm-dinard.com/). Dinard is across the bay from Saint Malo, a town I visited earlier in the semester after Mont Saint Michel.  Dinard/Brittany are across La Manche (The English Channel) from England, which explains the reason for the British Film Festival.
I had a wonderful weekend and loved staying with his family! They were so nice and welcoming to me, I felt very comfortable and at home. Saturday, we saw Tolstoy, The Last Station as soon as I arrived. The other films I saw were Neds, and We Want Sex, which was the story of the female Ford factory workers striking in London in the late 1960s for equal pay (my favorite film).

Statue of Alfred Hitchcock, who supposedly filmed a movie in Dinard

Saturday afternoon after the film, Nathan baked a delicious chocolate cake and he and his siblings took me on a stroll around the town and on the beach. The best part of the weekend was spending time with Nathan and his siblings, practicing French, and learning tons of new vocab. I loved listening to their conversations; it was a challenge for my listening comprehension skills, but I think I improved after the weekend.

Nathan and Me on the beach :)

French family meals are my favorite, and the dinner and lunch I ate with his family were especially memorable. We ate in the garden and I tried galettes (similar to crêpes, but salty) and bulots! These are little snails that come from the sea. It was my first snail-eating experience, but I have since eaten escargots with my French host family. I actually really liked them! The bulots had more of the seafood taste, but that’s probably because the escargots were covered in butter and garlic…mmm. You have to pluck the body out of the shell with a little pick tool.

Me trying bulots!

It was great to see Nathan again and a wonderful opportunity to stay with his family, see some of their traditions, and visit Dinard. Definitely one of my favorite weekends here!