Nice and Marseilles Weekend

Wow! I’m sorry I haven’t updated in awhile – today was such a great day. By great I mean that it was really icky and rainy and cold outside but that meant that I didn’t feel the pressure to “see the sights” on this little time off (we had the afternoon free). So I sat in Max and Charlie’s apartment after lunch and after grabbing the best Chausson aux Pommes from this now favorite bakery of ours down the street – and you know what? I took a nap, wrote some letters, read a little, and then watched two movies – before coming back here. Normally my conscience would douse this situation with massive guilt, but after the nap and seeing the weather outside, I overcame that feeling.

But now, the details from the weekend! Actually, I’m getting a little tired of travelling and this Oktoberfest weekend 13 hour busride is looking more and more daunting. To continue, we (five other girls – Klaudia, Rosie, Angie, Shelly, Kelsey and myself) took a train to Nice and got there at 1 am Saturday morning. We misjudged the distance from the trainstation to the hotel and ended up walking 1.5 hours to sleep six people in a three person 50-60 sq.ft room. Insane. We slept two to a twin and called it a night at 3ish. The next day after waking up and taking the bus back to Nice (haha, we were right next to the Nice airport) we had some breakfast in the old town part (Kelsey had a beer at 11:30am – Haha, hilarious) and split up. It was great to get some alone time and walk to wherever I wanted to and pretty much blend in. Nice is incredibly touristy, but also situated on the Mediterranean – the give and take.

 

 

I made sure to spend some time on the beautiful rock beaches and old city center by the Sea, but my favorite parts about Nice were the old castle ruins that rose above and overlooked the area and the Museum of Contemporary Art, which I spent about two hours in. There were actually some really interesting art pieces, especially by Niki de Saint Phalle. I dug them. We ate dinner altogether and then stayed by the beach at night until we left for the hotel again. The next morning I woke up early and found the Cathedral Russo – A russion orthodox cathedral in the middle of Nice, but it was closed to I just hung out and took pictures until we caught the train to Marseilles.

Marseilles! Now that’s the city that I prefered to Nice, but then again Marseilles was really big and much more developed and I really liked the quaintness of Nice. Anywho, in Marseilles we had to act fast because we only had about 7 hours until our train for Paris left the station. In those hours we walked up to St. Mary of the Guard, a beautiful church that sits high above the city and overlooks everything from the mountains to the sea to the Island of Chateau d’If (haha, Frank, Kelsey and I were laughing because we remember the map in your apartment). Unfortunately, Sunday afforded me no time to go to mass, as our trains came and left the cities in the morning, and early evening. After climbing up the entire way to the Church we spend some time looking around up there. We took a lot of pictures, and the most random thing started happening: a bunch of asian men (tourists, as well) would ask to take pictures with us.

 

At first we thought that they wanted us to take a picture of them (judging from the hand motions) but after we caught on, and after four more guys asked each of us, we decided it was time to move on to a building designed by the famous french architect, Le Corbusier. We caught a bus to this apartment building/area he designed and talked about it’s asthetic values and interesting stair system (a giant spiral concrete emergency staircase on one side of the building served all the people inside – odd). From there we took the Metro (yes, Marseilles has a two train metro) to the center of town which is actually a small harbor for boats, with no beaches in sight. Here we walked around and just visited different churches/areas of town. We got back to the station and got to Paris and home. Woot, that was the weekend.

Phew! I hope that you, readers, aren’t completely bored with this! It was beautiful, but not what I anticipated.

Nice, Marseilles, and now, Monday. Not.

Ack, so I am going to try to type this post on a French keyboard. Tres dificil. Actually, I’m not, I have to go sketch but I will update later tonight. This keyboard really bites.

A little update and some wishes

So it’s about 1:30am and tomorrow I will be leaving for the French Riviera this weekend with five other girls. We’re going to go to Nice and Marseilles and check out some beaches and ancient Roman architecture – I’m really looking forward to it! These past couple days have just been school and sketching. It was sketching that was truly amazing though – yesterday I walked around the Versailles gardens for six hours with Max and Charlie sketching the Le Grand and Petit Trianon and the Queen’s Hamlet. I’m starting to feel more confident with my work, whereas before I was really insecure about “how to/what if people see this crap/am I doing this right” kind of sketching. Marker pens make me happy and it’s really amazing how many people NOTICE that you are trying to draw something and then come over and begin conversations with you. So far I’ve met several little kids, a French teacher, an English illustrator, and some American tourists. That’s another thing I really like about being here – the fact that almost everyone is at ease in just having a conversation – about anything! For example: tonight my roommates and I were invited over the our landlord’s apartment (adjacent to ours) to have an authentic french meal. We started out with the wines and then the meal with cheese and sorbet following it. During the dinner we talked about all sorts of things, which would mostly be taboo to talk about during dinner in an American home (from my experience) of people you don’t know very well. We spoke frankly about how we viewed the different cultures, the politics of France and US, and the importance of family. I feel like it would have been very hard to reach that level of conversation during an American dinner. This idea was also discussed at length at dinner too. I must explore this idea further.

Okay well, it looks like my internet will be turned off for tonight, so I will update again when I’m back from the south! Bon soir!

Oh! A lot of my friends have been having birthdays recently and I want you all to know that I love you and wish you all very merry birthdays! I’m sorry I haven’t been able to send anything besides letters, I’m still trying to figure out the entire French postal system, but know that you’re in my thoughts and prayers.

Love,

Liz

Hornstein, Austria – Sept. 14-16th

This past weekend I had to not only find my way through the Paris public transportation system to get to Charles de Gaul Airport, but relearn how to speak Deutsch after a couple of weeks of French! That’s right, I went to Austria beginning Friday morning underneath the city of Paris, and ending after Deutsch/Croatian mass and rushing to the Vienna airport on Sunday afternoon. But I had SUCH a great time.

A little background for some readers: Hornstein is a small (population approx. 3000) village outside of Vienna in BGLD which almost all of my relatives from my mother’s side of the family are from. My great great grandmother, great grandmother, grandmother, and mother all lived there and we’re pretty much related to everyone in the village. It’s one of the few villages in Austria that retains it’s Croatian heritage by being bi-lingual and continuing the cultural music/practices.

The reason I went to Austria, however, was not only to see my distant relatives but because my grandmother and aunts (Sylvia and Barbara) and uncle (Franz) and Tony were there all at the same time during their European travels. This, of course, merited a family reunion. So Omama prepared a massive luncheon get together for between 30-40 people (“close relatives”) complete with schnitzel and Tamburriza (played by the family, for the family) on Saturday after noon (I swear, every single woman there over the age of 65 prepared a dessert so we had 7 different desserts from which to choose from. Oh, dearest siblings, Iris and Astrid send ALL their love.

The party then moved to the community center where Stefan (part of the Tamburriza and my third cousin) and his band played some music people could dance to. This lasted into the night, with family members buying tons more food and drink (Golden Family Rule: Don’t just sit there, eat something!). I had an all around great time, especially because I could see Sylvia, Barbara, Franz, Tony, Oma, Kuma, Onkel and the list goes on… Earlier that morning I took a walk around Hornstein and went up the hill (on which the village is situated) and climbed up the remains of a ruined fortress, lined with large trees – it was very beautiful and calming, so the afternoon and evening partying didn’t phase me at all.

I haven’t been back there since I was in fourth grade.
It pretty much made me homesick. Haha, but here are some pictures:

Today in class we went sketching in Paris at the Place des Vosges and afterwards (around 5:30pm) just walked around the Latin Quarter with Max and Charlie, just checking out the sites and stores and eateries and having a great time talking. They stayed in Paris this past weekend, pulling an all-nighter touring the city. That is definitely on my to-do list. Next weekend I’ll be going to Nice and the French Riviera with some of the girls and then Oktoberfest in Munich!

Hope all is going well with everyone, you’re in my prayers.

Love,

Liz

Time Crunch

To people that have been emailing me (and to those that haven’t) I really enjoy your emails, I just don’t have a lot of time on the internet everyday to do everything that I want to do, so I choose to update this site. Keep emailing me, I will email you back.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. You’re all in mine.

Paix, Liz

Oh the cheeses of France

So today seemed to be all about Cheese. My french class went to the fresh market in Versailles (complete with all sorts of fruits, candies, breads, poultry, cheeses, meats, screaming grocers) to learn about how to get what we want and the different types of cheeses. It was a great experience and I’ve found that I don’t really like any of the goat cheeses (Le Chevre) but enjoy the harder, stronger, cooked cheeses (Comte, etc.).

Last night, some friends and I received our Imagine-R passes which allow us to use any form of public transportation in the 1-4 arondissmonts (sp?) and so we went to Paris to see the Tour de Eiffel at Sunset and walked around to the Arc de Triumphe and the Champs Ellysee (my spelling is horrible). We got back around midnight, but that doesn’t bother me too much, as every day class starts at 9:30am.

Phew. Things have still been going pretty fast – and it will be picking up, as today we started the Statics course. It still seems surreal that I’m here, living without my friends and family in a foreign country for a year. I do really like the culture, though. I enjoy greeting people in stores (a total must, and if not done, considered rude) and how everything is in walkable distance. In fact, I just like SEEING people when I walk somewhere.

I love nutella.

Taking it easy, just taking it eeeeaaaaassssy.

Hello everyone!

 I think I have the internet now in the apartment, but all, as usual, is up in the air. Today I tried to find a Catholic Mass somewhere in Versailles (I’m surrounded by three different Catholic churches) however I had to circle around twice to find a mass at 10:30am, after beginning to walk at 9am. I understood the sign of the cross but thats it! I was surprised to find that some of the Boulangeries were open and managed to grab some sweet bread on the way back to the apartment. Mmm doughy goodness. Our landlords wants us to keep it clean so we devised a complex schedule of who does what, so after a two hour nap (jetlag, even though I know I’m supposed to tough it out) I cleaned the kitchen and then went to Charlie and Max’s apartment (well, they actually live in the back of some old man’s office, but they’re in the middle of “downtown” Versailles, and close to where everyone else lives, so it somewhat makes up for the otherwise odd conditions) with my roommates. It was a great day to relax after going full speed the past couple of days.  After going to the lake next to the palace, I sketched the Cathedral St. Louis (remember that giant Church in Versailles, Mom? They live right next to it) and walked the 2 mile trip back home.

Last night seemed pretty eventful as we made some Versailles friends. However first, as World Cup Rugby is going on in Paris right now, we went to the Rugby area next to the palace and listened to a Rolling Stones cover band (much to Charlie’s taste). The oddest thing about this though, was the exotic dancer the band had on stage as they played these mellow jams. We left when the foreign guys (80% of the crowd) were getting pushy and as Americans, we met up with some of the other kids that came with us. Roaming in a pack of about 15 people, we were looking for a place to go for the evening, and started talking to these French students. It was sweet to meet people from the region, who seemed a lot like us, but interestingly enough, turned out to be Seniors in highschool (haha, Catherine).

So far, everything has been great – and school really begins tomorrow. I need to get some rest after walking around – something my body is still getting used to. Bon soir!

In Versailles, minus the internet

2C Rue de Ceinture! This is the address of my new apartment but NOT mailing address. I live with three other women and our apartment is about a 30 minute walk from school and a 10 minute bus ride. For our first couple of days here we have:

met our landlords, the Wamaeres (Catholic family with four boys under the age of 6),

figured out the bus & metro system,

gone grocery shopping (jeez, I never realized how hard it is to buy food for oneself, needing to take into consideration what you want to eat when, eating healthy, not eating out, prep time. Thanks Mom for always cooking for me),

been late for class due to jetlag, but it was our first day of french and we just sat around and chatted so I didn’t miss much (Thank God),

got a cellphone (0628917814 and anyone can call it from the U.S. and it will be free for me (I think)

took a walking tour of Paris,

found my home parish for now (Jean d’Arc) and another English speaking one is Paris (St. Mark’s)

bought and drank some red and white wine with my roommates,

lost a roommate and found her again,

took a walking tour of Paris and saw the Pompidou center, maisons, and “modern” building,

butchered the french language, but managed to get my point across with obnoxious arm movements and noises.

missed everyone.

I’m currently stealing internet in the apartment of some other students, so unfortunately this will not be a long post, but I will try and make up for it with pictures. Oh! And my address is:

Elizabeth Keane

c/o University of Illinois

UIUC-SAPV

2, Av. de Paris

78000 Versailles

France, Europe

Please mail me things, I would love to hear about everything going on in your lives as well.

Ack, I don’t have time to put up pictures but I will when I get a chance. AKA When I have a secure internet connection. Love, Liz

Beginning – My Last Night in Champaign, IL

Hello everyone! I’ll be writing about my experience in Versailles, France and across Europe as often as I can in this blog. I will also be including pictures. I actually don’t even know if I spelled the name of this blog correctly, but you get the point. I don’t speak French (at all really) so this will be a most challenging experience. Thanks for reading and I’ll be posting my new address up here soon.

To contact me: use facebook, my email address: lizkeane2@gmail.com, Skype (liz.keane2), or Windows Live Messenger (lizkeane2@hotmail.com) I prefer Skype, because I can video conference with those with webcams etc. and it’s free for me to talk to you over the internet instead of finding a phone and calling you. So get an account with it!!

In other news, today I had my going away party at my house. A great group of people celebrated (or mourned?) my leaving for this trip and it was great to have them all there. After attending 9pm mass at St. John’s (particularly moving, my sister Rosemary was with me) I said farewell to more people very close to my heart. I never realized how hard it would be. For all of you reading this, thank you for your presence in my life, how you have made me grow and enriched my experiences in preschool, gradeschool, highschool, and now college. You’re in my prayers and I ask you to pray for me.

Pictures!